Juan one evening told me the story of a wonderful cave in a region far to the northward, where his tribe lived in the days of his fathers—long and long before they came south, and long before the first white men crossed the Plains. This cave was in the side of a great mountain, and when the Evil One tried his hand at creation and began to make scorpions, tarantulas, snakes, horned toads, cactus, deserts and pools of alkali water, the Good Spirit (Pahah) caught him and put him into the cave, closing the entrance with a great mountain. There, far down in the ground, for many hundred of winters the Evil One used to roar and bellow. At times the hills trembled with terror; great rocks were shaken from their beds on the mountains and rolled down into the valleys, and fire came up out of the ground. Some of the mountains burst open, and one—a great one—sank down out of sight and left in its place a broad lake.
The hill rolled off the mouth of the cave at this time and the devil came out and flew away toward sunrise. So large was he that, though he flew more swiftly than a hawk, his wings had not passed over when three sleeps were done. They shut out the light of the sun. There was no moon or stars. The medicine men said there would be no more day till the Evil One was again shut up, for he was very mad and had swallowed the sun, moon, and stars. The medicine men, however, held a council and by burning a great deal of buffalo hair made such a smoke as to make the devil very sick, when he vomited up the sun, moon and a great many stars, and it has been light ever since; but now there are not so many stars as in former times. Since the flight of the Evil One there has been no more groaning in the mountains, and the hills have ceased to tremble.
THE STORY OF THE CAVE.
After the devil left the cave, a great buffalo came and lived in it. This buffalo was larger than twenty ponies, and had horns growing out of his nose. All the other buffalo went into this great cave every winter to see their big chief and did not come back till spring. At last this big buffalo got to be so old and weak that when he went to get a drink at the lake where the mountains had sunk, he stuck fast in the mud. The Indians there found him, and got all round him, and for three days shot him full of arrows and beat him with great stones. Still he was not dead. They then built a big fire on his head, and so killed him. Afterwards, an old man came out of the cave. His hair was as white as snow, and reached to his hips. The Indians called him Taweeta. He never spoke to living man, for he had seen the Great Spirit and had spoken with him, and therefore dare not again speak the language of man.
Taweeta was very wise; he had seen the place where the sun sleeps, and had visited the wigwam where a great black man keeps the thunder in a gourd: he had been allowed to view the happy hunting-grounds, where all who die like men are permitted to live and hunt in peace forever; and he knew the place where winter hides from summer and where the summer has its home.
The white sage on which the herds of Nevada now fatten, was in times past much used by the Piutes as an article of food. Juan, in speaking of the many advantages enjoined by the Indians since the coming amongst them of the whites, said that in former times they were often almost starved. He said that he could still remember a time, when he was a little boy, when they were obliged to live almost wholly on white sage.
“How did you cook it?” I asked.
“Well,” said Juan, “the women cooked it. They made soup of it.”
“How did they make the soup?”