Creation Myths of Primitive America. Jeremiah Curtin

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СКАЧАТЬ Yupchi was waiting all this time in Olelpanti. Olelbis’s elder son, Wokwuk, had tied the hair on top of his head with a young grapevine and thrust a chirtchihas bone through it—his father had given him this bone at starting. With this bone he was to raise the sky. He put it under the edge of the sky and raised it. When he and his brother had passed through, the sky came down with a terrible noise. When they had passed the third sky, they could see far east. Everything was nice there and looked clear, just as it does here at daylight when all is bright and beautiful. After going a short distance they saw two boys coming toward them. Soon the four met.

      “Hello, brothers!” called out the other two.

      “Who are you?” asked Wokwuk. “How do you know that we are your brothers?”

      “We know because our mother talks about you always. She told us this morning that we must go out and play to-day. ‘Perhaps you will see your brothers,’ said she to us; ‘perhaps they will come, we do not know.’ You have come, and now we will go to our mother.”

       When they reached the house, on the third evening, the two sons of Olelbis stood by the door while Kahit’s two sons ran in and said: “Mother, our brothers have come!”

      Mem Loimis was lying at the east end of the house. She was lying on a mem terek, water buckskin; her blanket was a mem nikahl, a water blanket.

      “Well, tell them to come in.”

      The brothers went in. Mem Loimis rose and said—

      “Oh, my sons, I think of you always. I live far away from where you do, and you have travelled a long road to find me.” She spread the mem terek on the ground, and said: “Sit down here and rest.”

      “My mother,” said the elder son of Olelbis, “my brother is very dry. We have had no water in Olelpanti for many years. Did you think that we could live without water?”

      “I could not help your loss. What could I do?” said Mem Loimis. “I was stolen away and carried far north, and from there I came to this place; but your father is my husband. He knows everything; he can make anything, do anything, see everything, but he did not know that I was here. You shall have water, my children; water in plenty.”

      She held a basket to her breast then and took water from it, as a nursing mother would take milk, filled the basket, and gave it to the boys. She gave them plenty to eat, too, and said—

       “You boys are all my children. You are sons of Mem Loimis. I am here now; but if there should be disturbance, if trouble were to rise, my husband Kahit would come and take me away. He told me so. Some day my husband Olelbis will know his son in the north who is living with Kahit. Some day my husband Olelbis will think of me; he may want me to come to him, he may wish to see me.”

      Wokwuk and Kut stayed five days with their mother, then one day, and after that one day more. Sanihas Yupchi, who was dancing and chanting in Olelpanti continually, said after the boys had gone:

      “Get me a suhi kilo” (a striped basket).

      Olelbis got him the suhi kilo, a little basket about two inches around, and very small inside. Sanihas Yupchi put it in the middle of the sweat-house. Nine days more passed, and Sanihas Yupchi was dancing all the time.

      That morning Mem Loimis said to Kut, the youngest son of Olelbis—

      “Your uncle Mem Hui, an old man, who lives at the first horizon west of Olelpanti, is dry. He is thirsting for water. Take water to him. Your elder brother will stay here with me while you are gone.”

      Sanihas Yupchi had danced fifty-nine days. On the sixtieth evening Mem Loimis gave Kut a basketful of water for his uncle in the west.

      “Go,” said she, “straight west to where the old man lives. When you have reached Mem Hui with the water, I will go and see my son Sotchet in the north. I hear him cry all the time. He is dry. I will carry him water.”

      She gave Kut, in a net bag before he started, ten gambling sticks cut from grapevine. She tied the bag around his neck, and said—

      “Son of Mem Loimis, you will be a bola heris; you will be a great gambler.”

      Kut was a very quick traveller, and could go in one night as far as his brother in many nights and days. He started. There were holes in the bottom of the basket, and as he went over the sky, high above the top of Olelpanti Hlut, the water dropped and dropped through the holes in the basket, and just before morning one drop fell from the basket which Kut was carrying, and dropped into the basket which Sanihas Yupchi had placed in the middle of the sweat-house at Olelpanti.

      No one saw the water come, but in the morning the little basket was full; the one drop filled it.

      “Now,” said Sanihas Yupchi, “I have worked as Hlahi all this time, and that drop of water is all that I can get. You see it in the basket.”

      The little basket in Olelbis’s house that the one drop filled stood there, and Olelbis said—

      “Now you are dry, all you people in this sweat-house. You are thirsty, you are anxious for water. Here is one drop of water. We do not know who will drink first; but there is an old man on the west side of the sweat-house crying all the time, crying night and day, for water. Let him come and look at it.” He meant Hubit.

      Hubit stood up, came, looked at the basket and said: “What good is this to me? There is only a drop there. It will do me no good.”

      “Drink what there is; you talk so much about water,” replied all the others, “that you would better drink.”

      “That drop can do no good to any one.”

      “Well, take a taste, anyhow,” said Olelbis; “it will not hurt you.”

      “I don’t want a taste, I want a drink,” answered Hubit.

      “Take a drink, then,” said Olelbis.

      Hubit began to drink. He drank and drank, took his belt off about the middle of the forenoon, put his head on the edge of the basket and drank from morning till midday, drank till two men had to carry him away from the water and lay him down at the upper end of the sweat-house.

      Though Hubit drank half a day, the water in the basket was no less.

      Kiriu Herit drank next. He drank long, but did not lower the water. After him Sutunut drank till he was satisfied; then Moihas drank all he wanted.

      “Let all come and drink. When each has enough, let him stand aside,” said Olelbis.

      Tsararok drank, and then Kuntihle drank; then Hus and Tsurat; after them the old women, Pakchuso Pokaila, the grandmothers of Olelbis, drank; then Toko; then Kopus drank. But the people murmured, saying—

      “Kopus is no Hlahi; he ought not to have any of our water. He is only good for acorns.”

       The two Tsudi girls, who had sung so long, drank very heartily.

      Lutchi lived outside, east of the sweat-house; they called him to drink. He took one sip and went out. Lutchi never liked water.

      Now Sanihas Yupchi, who had brought the water, drank of it; and last of all, Olelbis.

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