Blaiwas Eagle
Kaiutois Wolf
Näníhläs Bat
Maûk Fly
Múkus Owl
Two Näníhläs brothers and their sister lived together. The brothers
were small men. They had no way of killing deer, so they tried to trap
them. They dug a hole so deep that if a deer fell into it, it couldn’t
get out.
One morning when the brothers went to their trap, they found a deer in
it. “We don’t want to shoot this deer,” said the elder brother.
“Why not?” asked the younger.
“Because we want the skin for a dress for our sister. If we make a hole
in it, her body will show through. We must catch the deer by the throat
and choke him to death.”
“I don’t think we can kill him in that way,” said the elder brother,
“but we can try.”
They caught hold of the deer’s throat. The deer ran around in the pit
and tried to get out.
“Hold on tight,” said the younger brother. “He will soon die.”
After a while the deer got out of the pit and ran off, but the brothers
held on. The deer ran to a mountain where there were trees and tall
brush; the blankets and caps of the Näníhläs brothers were torn off and
their bodies were scratched, but the younger brother kept calling:
“Hold on tight; we will kill him.”
At last the elder brother let go of the deer and dropped to the ground.
He went back and picked up his cap and the pieces of his blanket. He
pinned the pieces together with sticks and mended his moccasins with
sticks.
The younger brother clung on for a good while, then he hit against a
tree, and got such a blow that he fell off and lay on the ground for a
long time. At last he got up, and started for home; as he went along,
he picked up the pieces of his blanket and fastened them together with
sticks. He was mad at his brother for letting go so soon. When they
met, they quarreled a while, then made up and went on. Soon they saw a
number of women coming toward them; each woman was carrying a basketful
of roots. The brothers sat down and waited.
When the women came, they put their baskets on the ground, put some
roots in a small basket, and gave the basket to the elder brother. He
called to his brother: “Come and eat some of these roots.” The brother
didn’t go; he made believe that he was mad; he didn’t say a word. The
elder brother called him a second time; the third time he called, the
younger brother said: “I won’t eat those roots. The women gave them to
you; they didn’t give me any.”
The women were afraid; they knew that those brothers were cross and
powerful. One of the women asked: “What is the matter? Why are you mad?
What are you quarreling about?”
The two began to fight. Each brother had a piece of burnt fungus; they
chewed the fungus and rubbed it on their faces and heads to frighten
the women. The women were so scared that they left their baskets and
ran off.
Then the brothers stopped fighting and laughed. They took the roots and
went home. They had a sister married to a man on the other side of
Klamath Lake. They started off to visit her. The elder brother asked:
“What will you do when we get there?”
The younger said: “I don’t know; what will you do?”
“I will make the young men fight; the chief’s son will get shot in the
eye. Everybody will run off to see him, and while they are gone, we
will steal all they have in their houses.”
When they got to their sister’s house she cried because she had nothing
to give them to eat. She began to pound fish bones for them. The
younger brother asked: “Why do you cry? I will make those bones good.”
He made the fish bones into nice sweet seeds just by thinking hard.
After a while, the young men of the village began to quarrel and then
to fight, and right away the chief’s son was shot in the eye. Everybody
ran to see what had happened. The two brothers stole all there was in
the village,—blankets, beads, everything,—made packs of them; made the
packs small and put them under their finger nails; then they started
off in their canoe, taking their sister with them.
When the people went back to their houses and found their things gone,
they knew that the brothers had stolen them. They followed them in
their canoes, and were catching up when the elder brother asked: “What
shall we do now?”
“I will make ice,” said the younger brother. Right away there was thick
ice.
“What will you do with our canoe?”
“I will put it under one of my finger nails.” He did that.
The men, finding their canoes fast in the ice, got out and ran after
the brothers.
The elder brother asked: “What shall we do now?” “I will break up the
ice and those men will drown.” Right away the ice melted. All the men
were drowned, but the brothers and their sister got home safe.
Blaiwas and Kaiutois and a good many hunters lived near the Näníhläs
brothers. One day the younger brother said: “I am going to drive all
the deer in the world into a great pit and keep them for ourselves.” He
had only to think hard and the pit was there and the deer were in it;
not one deer was left outside. That was the kind of man he was.
The hunters wondered where the deer had gone. They couldn’t find one,
and soon they were starving. Maûk lived with the hunters; he scented
the deer to the house of the Näníhläs brothers and found where they had
them shut up. Then the hunters sent Múkus to watch the brothers. He
went to their house, sat down by the fire, and pretended to fall
asleep. The younger brother looked at Múkus’ eyes, ran a stick into his
nose, and put a coal of fire on the top of his head. Múkus didn’t move
or wink. They thought he was sound asleep. They wanted to kill a deer.
When they opened the pit, the deer were scared and made a great noise.
The brothers caught one of them, brought it out of the pit, and
fastened up the place. They killed the deer and skinned it, hid some of
the meat, and roasted the rest.
Múkus saw everything. The brothers thought: “He sees nothing; he is
asleep.”
Múkus went home and told the hunters that five great rocks fastened up
the pit where the deer were. That the rocks were so big that it would
take a great many people to move them, but the brothers rolled them
over the hole by thinking. The hunters found Tcúititi and hired him to
break the rocks. He broke them by flying up to the sky and falling down
against them. He did that five times, and the five rocks fell to
pieces. The deer came out and scattered over the whole world. The
hunters were watching, and as the deer passed them, they chose the
biggest bucks and killed them. The brothers didn’t try again to hide
the deer.