CHARACTERS
| Blaiwas | Eagle | Maûk | Fly | |
| Kaiutois | Wolf | Múkus | Owl | |
| Näníhläs | Bat |
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 [[340]]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 [[341]]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, [[342]]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. [[343]]
[1] When Indians tell this story, they talk down in their throats, to imitate the Näníhläs people. [↑]