Blaiwas Eagle
Ktilisúnak Ktilis’ Son
Skoks Spirit
Skoksun Kalo The Land of Spirits
Ktilisúnak (Ktilis’ son) was so young that he couldn’t talk plainly. He
lived with his grandmother. His sister was married and lived on a broad
flat near the mountains. The grandmother was tired of taking care of
the boy, and one evening she threw the little fellow out; then she
threw him his bow and arrows, and said:
“Go off now! Maybe you will be a big chief and have many wives!”
The boy was naked and cold, but he got up and started off to see if he
could find his sister’s house. He cried all the way. When he got to the
flat, he saw a woman coming with a great pack of old ragged mats on her
back. The boy was scared; he trembled all over. He could see the
woman’s head and pack, but he couldn’t see below her waist. He thought:
“That isn’t a living person,” and he grew as cold as ice.
When he thought: “That isn’t a living person,” the woman screamed out,
and right away the boy changed. He could see the woman, and he said: “I
am not afraid of you now. My grandmother has thrown me out; I will give
myself to anybody I meet.”
The woman was a Skoks, and she came in a whirlwind. As the boy looked,
she grew taller and taller. At last her head reached the sky. She
screamed a second time. The boy’s eyes were big from looking at her.
The third time she screamed, she was there by him. She tried to pass
him on the right side, but he pushed hard to the other side. As she
passed him, he fell on his back; blood came out of his mouth and he
lost his mind. Skoks had pulled his heart out and carried it off. (If
she had passed on the left side she would have taken his spirit and
carried it to Skoksun Kalo.)
Skoks went off in the air till she came to where the sun goes down; she
stopped there just above the earth. Her hand was shut tight, and she
held the boy’s heart in it; she talked to the heart, and laughed.
She said: “Heart, I am trying you to see if you will be like me,” and
she laughed again.
The boy lay on the ground as if dead, but his spirit heard the Skoks
talk to his heart, as she sat on the air and held the heart in her
hand. After a while she opened her hand and let go of the heart. Then
the little boy thought he saw a bird coming from the west. It came to
him and lighted on his breast. That moment he jumped up and went toward
his sister’s house. He had changed; he wasn’t a little boy; he was a
young man.
His sister didn’t know him. When he called her “sister,” she asked:
“What has changed you so?” She was scared. He didn’t answer; he only
laughed.
“Why don’t you speak?” she asked.
Then he said: “Out on the flat I saw a tall woman with a big pack of
old ragged mats on her back.”
Right away the sister knew that he had seen a Skoks; she said: “My
brother, why did you come so far alone?”
“My grandmother threw me out,” said the boy. “I thought I was going to
die.”
The sister cried; she felt sorry for her brother.
He began to be sleepy. Skoks made him feel that way; she was coming to
him again. She was going to be his medicine and make him a great
doctor. He rubbed ashes on the right side of his face; on the left side
he made stripes with a black coal, then he asked his sister to sing for
him. She didn’t want to sing, for the first person who sings for a
doctor must go with him always, and sing for him. When he asked the
second time, she sang. They didn’t see the Skoks, but Ktilisúnak knew
she was there.
Every evening the young man called out as Skoks called, when he met her
on the flat; then he fell to the ground and was senseless till Skoks
got through talking to him. Each time his sister asked: “What does your
medicine want?”
“I see a crowd of medicines around me,” said he. “They want somebody to
sing and talk for them. You must go and ask old men to come and talk
five days for them.”
The sister went to Blaiwas’ village, where there were many old men.
They came and sang and told the medicine spirits what they must do.
They said: “If you want this young man to work for you, you must be
good to him; you mustn’t make him crazy.” Then they asked each medicine
what it wanted. Skoks wanted a cap made of tula grass, and two grass
plates. Eagle medicine wanted eagle feathers, and fish-hawk medicine
wanted fish-hawk feathers. Each bird medicine wanted its own kind of
feathers.
The old men got all of those feathers, and tied them on a long pole.
There is a dream medicine, and the man who has it can cure himself, but
he can’t cure others. That medicine came to Ktilisúnak.
When the old men finished singing and talking, they said to the sister:
“You mustn’t cook or sweep or have any dust around when your brother is
in the house. In the evening don’t stir the ashes or let them fly up
when you put wood on the fire; if you do, he will die; he is afraid of
his medicines. Don’t tease him to eat; let him eat when he wants to. If
his medicines trouble him, we will come and talk to them.”
The young man lay in the house day after day.—Doctors don’t go out
often; they go only when sick people send for them.
Near the sister’s house there was a sick man who was only skin and
bones. He sent for Ktilisúnak. The young man told his sister to sing
for Skoks. Skoks came, but nobody could see her. When the three got to
the house, the man was dying. Ktilisúnak put a hand each side of him,
front and back, and caught his life, didn’t let it get out of his body.
In half a day the man was well.
When the sister got home, the medicines heard her say: “Oh, I am
tired!” In the night they said to the young man: “We didn’t think she
would get tired of us so soon.”
The next morning Ktilisúnak asked his sister if she was tired of his
medicines. She said: “I am tired of singing so much.”
“I am tired, too,” said the young man, “but I wouldn’t live long if I
didn’t work for my medicines.”
The next night Ktilisúnak sang for himself. Skoks was angry because the
brother and sister were tired. The other medicines said to him: “We
didn’t know you felt so. We thought you would be glad to have us for
servants. Hereafter you will be a common man; you will have no power to
cure people.”
The medicines left him. As soon as they were gone, he began to feel
sick; he cried and sang for his medicines, but they didn’t hear him,
they had gone far away. The old men came, and sang and called to them,
but they didn’t come. When Ktilisúnak told the old men how he and his
sister had got tired of singing, they said: “We will try once more.”
“It’s no use,” said Ktilisúnak. “Skoks has got my life.” He grew thin
and died. People brought nice beads and mats and burned them with his
body.
Blaiwas said to the sister: “It is as if you had killed your own
brother. Haven’t old people told you that medicines listen to what we
say and that they can hear, even when they are a long way off?”
The sister felt badly. She burned up her house and went to another
place. As soon as Ktilisúnak died, his old grandmother knew it. She was
sorry that she had thrown him out, and three times each night she
walked around the sister’s house crying. Her voice sounded Like the
voice of a spirit. The sister wrapped herself up tight when she heard
her grandmother around. Once, when she saw her, there were red tears on
one side of the old woman’s face and black tears on the other. At last
she called out: “My granddaughter, I am going to the mountains. I don’t
want to be a person any longer, and hereafter you will not be a person;
you will be a bird, and appear to doctors.” They both became birds.