Blaiwas Eagle
Gäk Crow
Kéis Rattlesnake
Sloä Wildcat
Tskel Mink
Wámanik Bull Snake
Wûlkûtska Marten
Five Sloä brothers and their two sisters lived together. All the
brothers were married, except the youngest. That one was beautiful; he
had long blue hair, and his face was white and bright. His father and
mother kept him in a basket under the ground. Every night his mother
brought him out, washed his face, combed his hair, and gave him nice
things to eat; then put him back before his brothers and sisters were
awake.
The sisters hadn’t seen him since he was a little baby, but the elder
sister liked him so well that she wouldn’t marry anybody else. Each
night she lay on the ground near the hole where his basket was. The
eldest brother didn’t like that. He said: “Our sister has no sense. She
acts as if she were no kin of ours.”
There were many people in the Sloä village. One day all those people
went off to hunt deer. When they came together to roast meat, Wûlkûtska
said to Blaiwas: “Why doesn’t your son marry Sloä’s sister?”
“My son isn’t old enough yet; he hasn’t much sense. She is a
nice-looking girl; you should marry her yourself.”
“I will try,” said Wûlkûtska. He told old man Yaukûl to ask Sloä’s
mother if he could have her daughter.
That evening Yaukûl said to old woman Sloä: “You must be tired of
keeping your daughter after she is old enough to marry. The chief’s
youngest brother wants her. He will give you nice things for her.”
The old woman told her daughter that Yaukûl said Wûlkûtska wanted her.
Her father said: “You are growing old; the chief’s son is a
nice-looking young man; you should marry him.”
The girl was mad; she said to her mother: “If you want him in the
house, you can marry him yourself; I don’t want him.” The girl was
cross. She wanted to make everybody do as she liked.
The next morning, after the brothers had started off to hunt, and the
sisters had gone to swim in the river, the father and mother took their
youngest son out of the basket to bathe him and give him roots to eat.
He said: “My sister uncovers my basket and talks to me. I want you to
hide me in some other place.”
Out in the ocean there was a little island as big as a house; the
eldest brother made a place there to keep his blue-haired brother.
While he was making the place nice, he pretended to be off hunting;
when it was finished, he carried his brother there and hid him under
the ground. One day, when he took roots to the island, his little
sister went with him to watch that her older sister didn’t follow them.
They went home after dark, for they didn’t want their sister to see
which way they came.
The elder sister spent all of her time out of doors, swimming and
gathering wood. The third time the brother went to the island, he left
his little sister there to take care of her brother and keep the elder
sister away.
For five days the sister hunted for her brother. She hunted
everywhere,—over the mountains, under the rocks, and out on the flats.
Then she said: “I wonder where my little sister has gone. If I find
her, maybe I will find my brother, too.”
When she asked her mother, the old woman said: “Your sister is in the
south, with your brother.”
“Why did you stop bathing my brother and why have you carried him
away?” asked the girl. “Some day I will kill you all.”
When she had hunted everywhere else, she went to the island and there
she found tracks, then she knew that her brother and sister were
somewhere on the island. She pulled up the tula grass and looked under
each blade of it, but she couldn’t find them.
When the little girl saw her sister coming straight toward the island,
she took a spear of tula grass and scraped it out with her finger nail,
made it like a canoe; then she put her brother in it and they went
under the water, went home.
When the elder sister couldn’t find them, she knew that they had seen
her and had gone away. That made her mad. She said: “We will see who is
the most powerful!” When she got back to dry land, she lay down, and
rolled over and over on the sand, and cried “Wah-ha-ha! Wah-ha-ha!”
Then she sat up on her knees and began to travel fast; all the time
calling out “Wah-ha-ha.” Right where she had rolled and along the trail
she traveled, fire roared and blazed up to the sky. She went around the
village where her father and mother lived and each minute she called:
“Wah-ha-ha! Wah-ha-ha!”
The whole place began to burn. The people were terribly scared. Gäk
turned to a crow and flew up to the sky; Blaiwas became an eagle;
Witkátkis turned himself to a hawk and flew away. Tskel and Wámanik and
Kéis and their kin went deep under the ground and were saved. All the
other people, and the girl’s own family, except her little sister, were
burned up.
The little girl was like her sister; she was powerful, could do
anything she wanted to, and she got outside the ring of fire.
The elder sister took her brothers’ hearts, put them on a string and
tied the string around her neck; then she swam back to the island. She
was glad now.
The little sister wandered around and cried, she felt so lonesome. At
last she stopped crying and began to watch her sister when she swam in
the lake. The sister would call in different ways, sometimes like a
duck or a water bird, sometimes like an animal, but she always looked
like a woman. Once, when she had been all day swimming and dancing in
the water, she went to the island and right away fell asleep. The
little sister made her sleep.
Then the girl took a spear of tula grass, changed it into a canoe, and
went to the island; she cut the string of hearts from her sister’s neck
and put it in her bosom: then she cut her sister’s head off and went
back to land.
The head went back to the body, and the young woman was alive again.
She made a mournful noise, like an animal crying.
The little sister heard her, and said: “Cry all you want to; you can’t
kill me!” She took up a handful of ashes, threw them toward the island,
and said: “You can never burn people up again. You will always live in
the water. When the coming people taste of you, they will say: ‘This
meat doesn’t taste good,’ and they will spit it out.”
The young woman heard what her sister said. She was mad; she made a
motion up and down with her hands; they were turning to wings. Right
away she became a large, spotted sea bird and swam off on the lake.
The little sister got dry grass from the mountain and spread it down on
the ground where each house had been. In one day there were as many
houses as there had been before the fire. She gathered all the bones
she could find and put them in a basket of boiling water; then she said
to herself: “I mustn’t get up when they call me. No matter what they
say, I must lie still and not answer.” She rolled herself up tight in a
mat and lay down.
At sunset the people began to come out of the basket. Each person went
to his own house and soon the houses were full again. The five brothers
came back to life. Their father was the last one to get out of the
basket; he stepped on the little girl’s feet, and then she got up. Her
brothers and father and mother were lying by the fire. She saw smoke
coming out of all the houses and knew that everybody was alive. Then
she was glad, and all the people were glad.