Lok was a widow with two children; she lived with her mother. The old
woman took care of the roots. She put them in a hole and slept with her
head near it. When her daughter brought roots home and poured them into
the hole, the children wanted some of them to eat, but the old woman
said: “First I must give roots to the fire, to the mountains, the
trees, the house, and the springs.” (This is the custom.)
The daughter said: “My children are hungry; you must give them some of
the roots.”
Lok said: “You don’t know about these things. If they get sick, you
will blame me.”
The old woman took roots and talked to the mountains; she said: “You
must give us wood that won’t burn us.” To the springs she said: “Old
grandmother, you always have water under your care; give us plenty of
good water.” To the house she said: “You know us, our house that we
built.” She talked to each part of the house. (If people didn’t talk to
the posts of the house they would fall. The woman who told this myth
said she had known of such cases.) To the posts she said: “Hold up this
house; be good to us.”
She packed away all the roots they dug, ten large basketfuls, then she
and her daughter brought in wood enough to last till spring.
The old woman said: “Grandchildren, I want you to bring me gum from the
cedar trees.” When they brought it, she covered her face with it and
stopped up her eyes. Then she lay down with her head over the hole and
didn’t go out of the house again all winter. Some mornings she woke up
and gave a handful of roots to the children. In the night, when the
children were asleep, she ate plenty of roots herself.
One morning her daughter asked: “How is it that rats are always
gnawing; why don’t you kill them?”
“I wish you wouldn’t listen to everything,” said the old woman.
One morning she said to the little girl: “I wish you wouldn’t cry in
the night.”
The mother said: “You don’t give the children enough to eat; they are
hungry.”
“You don’t know about the winter,” said the old woman. “It’s going to
be long, and our roots won’t last: the snow will be deep yet.”
The children were hungry, but their mother said: “You mustn’t cry, it
makes your grandmother worse.”
The boy said: “Let us kill her; she has no eyes.”
“If we tried to kill her, she would kill us; you are small and I
couldn’t run fast enough to get away from her.”
“What are you whispering about?” asked the grandmother.
“The children talk low because they are weak; you are starving them to
death.”
One morning old Lok asked: “Which way does the snow come?”
The boy looked out, and said: “It comes from the north.”
“That shows it will be good weather to-morrow.” She gave the children a
few roots.
The next day the old woman said: “I wish I had some meat to eat.”
“Stop!” said her daughter. “Don’t talk like that.” She was afraid that
her mother wanted to kill the children and eat them.
The next morning the grandmother asked: “How does the sky look?”
The little boy said: “There are clouds.”
“Where are the clouds?”
“They are around Omisna.”
“That means rain,” said the old woman. “It won’t be long till spring
comes.” She took out plenty of roots and pounded them for the children.
(They were fooling her.)
The next day she sent the little girl to look at Mlaiksi.
The girl said: “Smoke is rising from the top of the mountain, as if
someone had made a fire up there.”
The old woman was taking out a few roots, but she poured them back, and
said: “There is going to be a great storm.”
The storm came. It put out their fire, and for four days old Lok didn’t
move. Five days the children were without anything to eat; then she
asked the little boy: “How does it look now?”
“It is raining.”
The old woman said: “If it rains, you can go and dig roots.”
The daughter cried and told her the children were starving. She gave
them a few roots. The little boy said to his mother: “Why can’t we dig
a hole near the roots and steal some of them?”
“I know what you are talking about,” said the old woman. “I know that
it is winter yet.”
One morning she asked: “Is it spring?”
Her daughter said: “I don’t know,” and she told the children not to
tell their grandmother anything about the weather. It rained and
hailed. Every night the mother and children cried. Each morning they
stamped on the ground to find out if it were soft. One day the mother
went off, and when she came back she brought a few roots. The children
were sitting out of doors, and she heard the old woman ask them: “Where
is your mother?”
“She has gone for wood,” said the boy.
The mother put away some of the roots and gave the rest to the
children.
The old woman asked: “Does it snow yet?”
The little boy said: “There is so much snow that I can’t see the tops
of the trees.”
The grandmother put more gum on her eyes, rolled herself up tight, and
lay still.
The mother made two pairs of straw moccasins, and the next morning
started for roots. It was spring now, and she found plenty for her
children to eat. While she was gone, the old woman asked: “Which way is
the wind?”
“From the southwest,” said the boy. His mother had told him to fool his
grandmother, and let her lie there all summer. The mother could make
the wind blow—the wind was her medicine. Every time she found a fly in
the house, she killed it with a porcupine quill, so the old woman
wouldn’t know it was spring.
There were a good many of the Lok people around the place where the
mother dug roots; she left some roots for them to take care of, and
said: “In two days I will come back and bring my children.”
When she got home, she made moccasins for the children, and in the
morning, when she was ready to start, she said to her mother: “It
snows. I am tired of packing wood; I am going to take the children to
the woods and keep a fire there; you never stay by the fire.”
The mother worked all day and dug a great many roots; she had a big
basketful to put away. She wondered where she could put them so the old
woman couldn’t find them. Then she thought of Keŏnise, a hill where Lok
didn’t go. It was a long way off, but she carried the roots there and
hid them.
When the children didn’t come back, the grandmother scratched around in
the ashes, found live coals and melted the gum out of her eyes; then
she tracked her daughter.
As soon as the daughter knew that her mother was coming, she went to
the house, took the roots out of the hole, and threw them around
everywhere.
When the old woman came back, the daughter said: “We won’t be persons
any longer. In later times people will kill and eat us.”
The old woman said: “It is better so.”
They wandered off to the mountains, and from that time only a male bear
and female bear live together, and they never have more than two
children.