CHARACTERS
| Kéis | Rattlesnake | Tcoóks | Crane | |
| Kékina | Lizard | Tusasás | Joker (Skunk) | |
| Kéwe | Eel | Wámanik | Bull Snake | |
| Kûlta | Otter | Wískäk | Cedar-bird | |
| Moi | Squirrel | Witkátkis | A Hawk | |
| Ndúkis | Duck-hawk | Ygiak | A Bird “that never sleeps.” (English name unknown.) |
Ndúkis’ house was on the bank of Klamath Lake and near it was the house of old man Tcoóks. On the south side of the lake lived Wískäk and her two daughters. The daughters liked the Shasta people; they went often to see them and carry them presents. Once, on the way home, the girls stopped to dig roots west of where Ndúkis and Tcoóks lived. Ndúkis saw them. He thought: “Those are nice-looking girls. They dig roots fast. I like those girls.”
Now Witkátkis came to visit Ndúkis and his son; they were kin. Ndúkis’ wife said: “I’m glad you have come, there are nice-looking girls living right south of here. They are good workers; they dig roots summer and winter, you should get one of those girls for a wife.”
“I am afraid they wouldn’t like me,” said Witkátkis.
“Where do they live?” asked Ndúkis’ son.
“You have traveled all around,” said his mother. “You ought to know where they live. When you are on the mountain, look toward the south, and you will see a big house; they live in that house.”
The next time the sisters came from Shasta, they camped [[195]]on the way, and in the night one said to the other: “I can’t sleep; I feel that somebody is looking at me.”
“I feel that way, too,” said her sister. They got up and started for home.
Ndúkis’ mother said: “If you want to see those girls, you must go to the mountain and watch for them. After a while you will see them digging roots. Don’t go to their house. Wait a little while and watch them, then go down the mountain till you come to a small house. An old man lives in that house. He is kin of old man Tcoóks. Go in and talk to him.”
Ndúkis went to the mountain and soon he heard the girls singing. They always sang when they worked. He watched them and saw how quickly they dug roots; then he went to Tcoóks’ house.
Tcoóks had been fishing. He was cooking fish when Ndúkis got there. “What did you come for?” asked the old man. “You never thought of me before—young men should travel around and see people; that is the way to be strong. Do you want some fish?”
Tcoóks’ wife said: “Ndúkis never eats our kind of food; he eats ducks.”
“Cook him a duck,” said Tcoóks, but he thought in his head: “Why doesn’t he eat fish?”
The old woman cooked a duck and gave it to the young man. He ate all around the neck, but didn’t eat the rest of the duck.
“Why don’t you eat?” asked Tcoóks. “My old woman is kin to you; you should eat lots. In a strange house it would be right not to eat much; here it’s different.”
“He never eats much,” said the old woman. Ndúkis didn’t say anything.
“You are a young man, you should have a wife,” said Tcoóks. “There are nice-looking young women in the next house; they are great workers.”
“They wouldn’t like me,” said Ndúkis.
“Once Kûlta tried to buy those girls,” said Tcoóks. “They wouldn’t go with him. They said they didn’t belong to the water and they wouldn’t marry a man who lived in the water. [[196]]Maybe they will go with you; you live on land. Every time a rain is over, they bring out nice things,—beautiful shells, and beads.”
“I want you to go and buy them for me,” said Ndúkis. “I am kind of scared.”
Tcoóks went to old woman Wískäk’s, and Ndúkis went home.
Tcoóks said: “Don’t you get tired of your girls sometimes? They are old enough to get a man. They have lived single a long time.”
“Kûlta wanted them but I couldn’t make them go with him,” said Wískäk.
“My nephew wants them,” said Tcoóks. “He told me to ask you for them. He will give you nice things.”
The girls were digging roots; when they started for home, and were near the house, the elder said: “I hear somebody talking. Some man is in our house. Let us sit down outside.”
“No,” said the younger. “It is better to go in.” They went in, sat by the fire, and held their heads down. The elder whispered: “I wonder what Tcoóks is here for?”
Their mother asked: “Will you marry this man’s nephew?”
The elder sister asked the younger: “What will you do?”
“Ndúkis lives on high rocks,” she said. “Maybe we would fall off. I don’t like high rocks.”
Wískäk said: “I knew you would say something bad.” Then she asked the elder sister: “Will you go with him?”
“No. Why do you ask a second time? Ndúkis is not like us. He doesn’t live the way we do. I wish you would let us alone.”
Tcoóks said: “I am afraid of Ndúkis. He can beat everybody by getting up early. That is the kind he is. If you go around digging roots, he will be watching you. He won’t want you, but he will be mad. That is his way.”
The next morning, when the girls started off, they said: “We are going to Mlaiksi.”[1]
“Why do you go there so often?” asked their mother. “You had better not go to-day, you might meet Ndúkis.” [[197]]
“We will go where we like,” said the elder sister. “We are not afraid; Ndúkis can’t hurt us.”
They started early, but Ndúkis was on the mountain, watching for them. The elder sister walked ahead. Every step she took she stumbled, as if the steps were telling her that she was going to meet somebody. At last she said to her sister: “My steps stumble. That means something.”
“Tcoóks told us Ndúkis was a bad man when he got mad. It is your fault if we meet trouble,” said the younger girl.
They looked around as they climbed the mountain, but Ndúkis was sitting on the highest rocks and they didn’t look high enough to see him. When they were on the other side of the mountain, the younger sister looked back. She saw Ndúkis and screamed. She ran one way, and her sister ran another. They were frightened. They went into thick bushes and stayed there a long time. Ndúkis sat on the rocks and laughed to see how frightened they were. He sat there till midday, then went home.
That day young man Moi was out hunting for deer. He was fine-looking. He wore a beaded buckskin band around his head. All at once he came upon the Wískäk girls hiding in the bushes. “Who are you?” asked he. “You scared me.”
The elder sister said: “I know you; you are the little chief who lives by the river. You are our kin.”
“Come out of the bushes,” said Moi. “Who frightened you?”
“We saw Ndúkis watching us,” the elder sister said.
“He is a nice young man,” said Moi. “He won’t hurt you, but you can go with me if you are afraid of him.”
“No,” said the elder sister, “we are going to Mlaiksi.” And they traveled on.
When Ndúkis passed Tcoóks’ house, the old man asked: “Where have you been?”
“I have just been walking around,” said Ndúkis. “I met the two sisters. They were scared and ran into the bushes. I don’t like them.”
When Tcoóks told Wískäk that Ndúkis was mad at her daughters, she cried; she thought maybe he had killed them. [[198]]
On the way home from Mlaiksi, the girls saw people digging roots in places where they had always dug.
When they told their mother, she said: “Stay in the house. I will go and see why they are digging around here.”
She took five steps and was there. The people were scared. They had never seen Wískäk, for she always stayed at home and sent her daughters to dig. When she found that they were getting all the roots, she went home, and said: “Come and help me; we must dig fast and get as many roots as we can.”
Those people lived near Shasta River. When they started, they sent word to all their kin that they were going off to dig roots, but they forgot to tell young man Wámanik, who lived on the north side of the digging place, so he started off alone.
The elder Wískäk girl said to her mother: “You go straight ahead: we will go on the north side, where there are nice long roots.” When they got there, the ground was turned up and all the roots were gone.
Wámanik was there. When he found that the roots had been dug, he was mad. He stood up tall and looked bright. The elder sister didn’t see him. The younger one saw him and ran.
Wámanik fell in love with her right away. He thought she was so nice-looking that he would like her for a wife, and in some way he took hold of her heart, so she wouldn’t get frightened. He followed her to the spring where she went to get water to drink.
Her sister was there. The younger asked: “Did you pass anybody?”
“No.”
“Then your eyes are poor, for I saw a nice-looking young man.”
The elder sister took her cap and was going to drink. Just then Wámanik stood up in the form of a snake. She screamed, dropped her cap, and ran off, when she came to where her mother was digging, she was so scared that her eyes were sticking out, and she couldn’t speak. [[199]]
Her mother asked: “Why don’t you talk?”
After a while she said: “There is a big snake in the spring.”
“Well, well,” said her mother, “what kind of a man do you want? You can’t live single all your life.”
When the elder sister ran away, Wámanik turned to a nice-looking man. He came up to the younger girl and said: “I can be a great many different things. I am a spirit of this earth; I have seen you often, but I didn’t want to show myself to your sister; I wanted to frighten her. I don’t like her as well as I do you. I have heard you talk, and I want you for a wife, for I like you. I can turn to a snake, but I am a man, and I have lots of nice clothes.” Then he turned to a snake again, for he saw the old woman and her daughter coming.
On the way home the younger girl said to her mother: “Make a bed for us and put on our panther-skin blankets.”
Wámanik was under the ground just where the girls were sitting. In the night when they woke up, they felt somebody between them. At daylight Wámanik went down in the ground right where the bed was. Every night after that the girls changed. If a person saw them one day they didn’t know them the next. Wámanik came each night. In the daytime he was under the ground near where they were digging roots.
There was a Tusasás among the people digging roots, and he said: “I am going to marry those nice-looking girls. They are great workers; they will get me lots to eat.”
People knew now that Wámanik was the husband of old Wískäk’s daughters, and that that was why they looked different each morning, so they said to Tusasás: “If you make Wámanik mad, you won’t be a person long. He is a strong man; he can do anything.”
Tusasás said: “I am stronger than Wámanik. I am not afraid of him.”
Wámanik heard him talk about his wives and right away he was mad. He made Tusasás itch till he scratched the skin and flesh off from his body. People laughed at him, and said: “Maybe Wámanik will kill you; he is a great doctor.” [[200]]
Wámanik said to Kéwe: “Go and tell Tusasás to stop making fun of my wives and stop talking about me. If he doesn’t, he’ll no longer be a person.”
Wámanik was bright like the sun, and both his wives were bright. He was so bright that people couldn’t go into old woman Wískäk’s house. He was a man at night and when he went to hunt for deer, but if he got mad, or didn’t want people to see him, he turned to a snake and went under the ground. He was a great hunter. There was lots of deer meat in the old woman’s house.
Wískäk’s brother had such a large family that his children were always hungry. Wámanik told his mother-in-law to send for him to come and get meat. The old woman sent a man for him, but the man came back alone, and said: “He won’t come.” That made the old woman cry; she said: “My kin hate us.”
The man said: “They are afraid of your son-in-law; that is why they don’t come here. They don’t want to see him.”
“I won’t hurt them,” said Wámanik; “they are my wives’ kin. I have no people; I belong to the Earth. I live under the mountains and under the water. Go and tell them not to be afraid of me; tell them to come. I am a person. Maybe they don’t know that.”
The man went back and talked nice, but they wouldn’t come. Then he said: “If you don’t come, you will make Wámanik mad.”
They all came. Wámanik gave nice things to the youngest boy. “Are you afraid of me now?” asked Wámanik. “I heard what you said. I can hear what people say when they are far away. I like you and I want you to like me.” The children ate lots. They felt glad.
One day old Wískäk said: “My girls are tired of digging roots, I want to dig sometimes.”
“They’ll never get tired,” said Wámanik, “they’ll always work. You are old and you must rest; you’ll die soon.”
Kékina said to Wámanik: “Your wives don’t love you. There is a young man after them all the time. They wanted to marry Ndúkis.” [[201]]
That made Wámanik feel badly. In the evening, when he went to his mother-in-law’s house, he asked the elder sister: “Is any one in love with you and your sister?”
“No,” said the woman. “Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t like the way you talk. You don’t tell me the truth,” said Wámanik. “The first time I saw you, your eyes stuck out, as if you had seen somebody; you looked scared. I won’t keep you if somebody else wants you.”
Old Wískäk had been after red bark to color roots; when she came home she found her younger daughter crying. The girl told her what Wámanik had said. The old woman was angry, but she didn’t know what to do.
Kékina went to Ndúkis, and said: “Wámanik is saying bad things about you.”
Ndúkis listened and heard what Wámanik said to his wife. The next morning he went early, before anybody was up in the world, and sat on a rock where he could see old Wískäk’s house; he looked awful ugly. Ygiak, a man who never slept, was out hunting for sticks; when he saw Ndúkis, he was so scared that he dropped his sticks and ran home.
At midday Ndúkis came down from the rocks. Somebody ran into Lok’s house, and said: “There is going to be a great fight. Ndúkis is mad at Wámanik and he will kill him.”
Lok said: “Ndúkis has a big spirit. Wámanik is strong, too. They will scare each other, but they won’t fight.”
Old Wískäk was willing Ndúkis should kill her son-in-law, for she didn’t like him. She said to her daughters: “I am going to leave you; I have lived with you long enough. I don’t like your husband. When he wanted you, why didn’t you say that you couldn’t live under the ground, that you would smother? You should have taken Ndúkis; he is your kind.” As she talked, she turned to a bird, and when she was through talking, she flew off to the mountains. She did it herself; she didn’t want to be a person any longer. But each day she came back and talked to her daughters; she wanted to make them willing to turn to birds and go with her to the mountains, for she could not go far away while they were persons. [[202]]
People heard Wískäk talk as she flew around. The youngest daughter said: “I wouldn’t talk so much. You wanted us to marry. Wámanik is as good as Ndúkis.”
“Ndúkis doesn’t turn to a snake every time he goes out of the house,” said the old woman.
The elder daughter cried all the time, and didn’t eat anything. She didn’t want to go to the mountains; she didn’t want to stay with Wámanik, and she didn’t want to marry Ndúkis. She said to her mother: “You mustn’t come around where people live; you must hide among the brush and trees.”
Wískäk didn’t like that. She said: “I will turn you into a snake, and when you cross the road in front of people they will throw dirt in your face. You will deceive people; you will pretend to be kind, then you will bite them.”
She turned her daughters into snakes, and then flew off toward the east. As she started, she called out to her son-in-law: “You will never be a man again; you will be a snake, with a body like your panther-skin blanket.”
The old woman kept going east till she came to a place where there were low cedar trees; she made her home there. She talks like a person yet, and that place is full of her kin. [[203]]