“Forever and forever the Three Brothers sit looking over each other’s shoulders from the north wall of Ah-wah-nee.”
Kom-po-pai-ses, Leaping Frog Rocks
FOREVER and forever the Three Brothers sit looking over each other’s shoulders from the north wall of Ah-wah-nee.
The Indians likened these peaks to frogs sitting back upon their haunches ready to leap, and called them Kom-po-pai-ses, the Leaping Frog Rocks. This the white man did not know when he named them the Three Brothers.
The story of the Three Brothers is history, not tradition. It has to do with the coming of the white man to Ah-wah-nee, and the downfall of Ten-ie-ya, the last chief of the Ah-wah-nee-chees.
Across the plains that billow away toward the sea, Ten-ie-ya watched the approach of the white stranger, having always in mind the words of the old man who was his counselor when he left the land of his Mo-no mother and returned to Ah-wah-nee to rule over his father’s people.
The patriarch had heard the call of the Great Spirit, bidding him to the happy land of the West, and had told Ten-ie-ya many things. This, last of all: