AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS

by Richard Erdoes

  Bear followed these instructions, for Lizard had told her that the two fawns were in his house. As Bear entered, eyes closed and mouth open, Lizard took the red-hot stones from the fire and thrust them down her throat. Bear rolled from the top of Lizard’s house and landed on the ground dead.

  Lizard skinned her and dressed her hide, after which he cut it in two pieces, one large and one small. The larger piece he gave to the older fawn, the smaller piece to the younger. Then Lizard instructed the girls to run about and see what kind of noise was made by Bear’s skin. The girls proceeded to run, and the pieces of skin crackled loudly. Lizard, watching them, laughed and said to himself, “The girls are all right. They are Thunders. I think I had better send them up to the sky.”

  When the fawns came to Lizard to tell him that they were going to return home, he said, “Don’t go home. I have a good place for you in the sky.”

  So the girls went to the sky, and Lizard could hear them running about up there. Their aunt’s skin, which they had kept, makes the loud noises that we call thunder. Whenever the fawn girls (Thunders, as Lizard called them) run around in the sky, rain and hail fall.

  —Reported by Edward W. Gifford in 1930.

  The Miwok were master basket makers and had elaborate containers used in gathering and leaching acorns, transporting other food and goods, and in many other facets of their daily life. When the fawns fled from their aunt, therefore, they would naturally be sure to take with them not just their valuable baskets but the awls with which they fashioned the coils from which they wove and decorated them.

  WAKINYAN TANKA,

  THE GREAT THUNDERBIRD

  [BRULE SIOUX]

  John (Fire) Lame Deer, a Sioux medicine man, was about seventy when he told this tale and like “A Legend of Devil’s Tower” it bears the hallmarks of his own crusty, evocative vision.

  Wakinyan Tanka, the great thunderbird, lives in his tipi on top of a high mountain in the sacred Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. The whites call it Harney Peak, but I don’t think he lives there anymore since the wasichu, the whites, have made these hills into a vast Disneyland. No, I think the thunder beings have retreated to the farthest end of the earth, where the sun goes down, where there are no tourists and hot-dog stands.

  The Wakinyan hates all that is dirty. He loves what is clean and pure. His voice is the great thunderclap, and the smaller rolling thunders that follow his booming shouts are the cries of his children, the little thunderbirds. Four paths lead to the mountain on which the Wakinyan dwell. A butterfly guards the entrance at the East side. A Bear guards the West, a Deer the North, and a beaver the South.

  There are four large, old Thunderbirds. The Great Wakinyan of the West is the first and foremost among them. He is clothed in clouds. His body has no form, but he has giant, four-jointed wings. He has no feet, but enormous claws. He has no head, but a huge, sharp beak with rows of big, pointed teeth. His color is black.

  The second Wakinyan of the North is red. The third Thunderbird of the East is yellow. The fourth hunderbird of the South is white, though there are some who say that its colors are blue. That one has no eyes or ears, yet he can see and hear. How that can be is a mystery. From time to time a holy man catches a glimpse of a Wakinyan in his dreams, but always only a part of it. No one ever sees the Thunderbird whole, not even in a vision, so the way we think a Thunderbird looks is pieced together from many dreams and visions.

  The Great Wakinyan’s tipi stands beside the tallest of all cedar trees. That’s why we use its foliage for the “cedaring,” the “smoking up,” in our ceremonies which call for sweet-smelling incense to purify our houses and ourselves. Inside the Wakinyan’s tipi is a nest made of dry bones. In it lies the giant egg from which the little thunderbirds are hatched. The egg is bigger than the whole state of South Dakota.

  You cannot see the Wakinyan because they are wrapped in robes of dark clouds, but you can feel their presence. I have often felt it. During a vision quest they may come and try to frighten you, to see whether you have enough courage to go through your “crying for a dream”—your four days and nights of fasting and listening and staying awake on top of a lonely hill. They test you this way, but the Wakinyan are good spirits. They like to help the people, even if they scare you sometimes.

  Everything in nature moves in a certain way that whites call clockwise. Only the thunder beings move in a contrary manner—counterclockwise. That’s their way; they do everything differently. That’s why, if you dream of the Wakinyan, you become a heyoka: an upside-down, hot-cold, forward-backward man. This gives you power, but you don’t want to stay a heyoka for long, so we have a ceremony through which you can become your old self again.

  The Wakinyan’s symbol is the zig-zag lightning, forked at the ends, which I use in some of my rituals. It’s a design I like and to which I feel in some way related, because a heyoka is also a sacred clown, and there is some of that clown nature within me.

  The thunder beings are guardians of the truth. When you’re holding thesacred pipe and you swear on it, you can say nothing but the truth. If you lie, the Wakinyan will kill you with their lightning bolts.

  So thunderbirds stand for rain, and fire, and the truth, and as I said before, they like to help the people. In contrast, Unktehi, the great water monster, did not like human beings from the time they were put on this earth. Unktehi was shaped like a giant scaly snake with feet. She had a huge horn coming out of the top of her head, and she filled the whole of the Missouri River from end to end. The little water monsters, who lived in smaller streams and lakes, likewise had no use for humans.

  “What are these tiny, lice-like creatures crawling all over the place?” they asked. “What are these blood-clot people creeping out of the red pipestone? We don’t want them around!”

  The Great Unktehi could place her body and puff it up in such a way that it made the great Missouri overflow, and her children, the little water monsters, did the same with their streams and lakes. So they caused a great flood that spread over the whole country, killing most of the people. Only a few escaped to the top of the highest mountain, and even there the waves threatened to sweep them off.

  Then the great thunderbird spoke: “What’s to be done? I like these humans. They respect us; they pray to us. If they dream of us, they get a little of our power, and that makes them relatives of ours, in a way. Even though they are small, helpless, and pitiful, Grandfather put them on this earth for some purpose. We must save them from Unktehi!”

  Then began the great battle between the thunderbirds and the evil water monsters. It lasted many years, during which the earth trembled and the waters burst forth in mighty torrents, while the night was like day because of the flashes of lightning. The Wakinyan have no bodies as we imagine them—no limbs or hands or feet—but they have enormous claws. They have no mouths, but they have big, sharp teeth. They have no eyes, but lightning bolts somehow shoot out of the eyes which are not there. This is hard to explain to a wasichu.

  The Wakinyan used their claws, their teeth, their lightning to fight the water monsters. The Wakinyan Tanka grappled with the Great Unktehi and the little thunder children were pitted against the smaller water monsters. The battle was not only long but desperate, for the Unktehi had spikes at the tip of their powerful tails that could gouge out fearful wounds as they roared and thrashed.

  At last the Wakinyan Tanka called to the little thunderbirds: “My children, the Unktehi are winning. This close body-to-body fighting favors them!”

  All the thunder beings retreated to the top of their sacred mountain and took council together. The Great Wakinyan said: “Our country is the air. Our power comes from the sky. It was wrong to fight the Unktehi on their own ground, on the earth and in the water where they are all-powerful. Come, my children, follow me!”

  Then all the thunderbirds flew up into the sky. “When I give the signal,” said the Wakinyan Tanka, “let’s use our lightning and thunderbolts together!”

  So the thunde
r beings shot off all their bolts at the same instant. The forests were set on fire, and flames consumed everything except the top of the rock on which the humans had taken refuge. The waters boiled and then dried up. The earth glowed red-hot, and the Unktehi, big and small, burned up and died, leaving only their dried bones in the Mako Sicha, the Badlands, where their bones turned to rock.

  Until then the Unktehi had represented the water power, and now this power was taken by the Thunderbirds. And the few humans who survived climbed down from their high rock, praising the Wakinyan for saving them. These few again peopled the earth, and all was well. The battle and the victory of the Wakinyan took place in the first of the great four ages—the age of Tunka, the Rock.

  When I was young, hardly more than a boy, I went after some horses which had somehow got lost. Following their tracks into the Badlands, I searched for many hours. I lost all sense of time and was surprised by nightfall, sudden and pitch-black. The clouds that were covering the moon and stars split open in a thunderstorm. Hailstones as big as mothballs blanketed the ground with icy mush, and I thought that I might freeze to death in the summer.

  I happened to be in a narrow gulch, where I was in danger of drowning from the rush of water. As best I could, I began scrambling up toward a high ridge. I couldn’t see except when there was a flash of lightning, and the earth was crumbling under me. Somehow I made it.

  The thunder never stopped, and the lightning became almost continuous. I could smell the wakangeli, the electricity, all around; it made my hair stand up. The thunder was deafening. I straddled the ridge as if I were riding a horse. I could see enough in the lightning to know that I was very high up and the canyon was a long way down, and I was afraid of being blown off the ridge and hurled into that black nothingness. My teeth chattering, my legs and hands clamped to the razorback ridge, I moved inch by inch as I tried to get out of there.

  But I felt the presence of the Wakinyan, heard them talking to me through the thunder: “Don’t be afraid! Hold on! You’ll be all right.”

  At last the storm ended, and finally dawn came. Then I saw that I was straddling a long row of petrified bones, the biggest I had ever seen. I had been moving along the spine of the Great Unktehi. Stiff with cold, I waited until the sun warmed me. Then I scrambled down and ran toward home. I forgot all about the horses; I never found them. And I searched many times for the ridge deep inside the Badlands that formed Unktehi’s spine. I wanted to show it to my friends, but I never found the ridge either.

  —Told by Lame Deer in 1969 in Winner, Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, and recorded by Richard Erdoes.

  COYOTE KILLS THE GIANT

  [FLATHEAD]

  Coyote was walking one day when he met Old Woman. She greeted him and asked where he was headed. “Just roaming around,” said Coyote.

  “You better stop going that way, or you’ll meet a giant who kills everybody.”

  “Oh, giants don’t frighten me,” said Coyote (who had never met one). “I always kill them. I’ll fight this one too, and make an end of him.”

  “He’s bigger and closer than you think,” said Old Woman.

  “I don’t care,” said Coyote, deciding that a giant would be about as big as a bull moose and calculating that he could kill one easily.

  So Coyote said good-bye to Old Woman and went ahead, whistling a tune. On his way he saw a large fallen branch that looked like a club. Picking it up, he said to himself, “I’ll hit the giant over the head with this. It’s big enough and heavy enough to kill him.” He walked on and came to a huge cave right in the middle of the path. Whistling merrily, he went in.

  Suddenly Coyote met a woman who was crawling along on the ground. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I’m starving,” she said, “and too weak to walk. What are you doing with that stick?”

  “I’m going to kill the giant with it,” said Coyote, and he asked if she knew where he was hiding.

  Feeble as she was, the woman laughed. “You’re already in the giant’s belly.”

  “How can I be in his belly?” asked Coyote. “I haven’t even met him.”

  “You probably thought it was a cave when you walked into his mouth,” the woman said, and sighed. “It’s easy to walk in, but nobody ever walks out. This giant is so big you can’t take him in with your eyes. His belly fills a whole valley.”

  Coyote threw his stick away and kept on walking. What else could he do? Soon he came across some more people lying around half dead. “Are you sick?” he asked.

  “No,” they said, “just starving to death. We’re trapped inside the giant.”

  “You’re foolish,” said Coyote. “If we’re really inside this giant, then the cave walls must be the inside of his stomach. We can just cut some meat and fat from him.”

  “We never thought of that,” they said.

  “You’re not as smart as I am,” said Coyote.

  Coyote took his hunting knife and started cutting chunks out of the cave walls. As he had guessed, they were indeed the giant’s fat and meat, and he used it to feed the starving people. He even went back and gave some meat to the woman he had met first. Then all the people imprisoned in the giant’s belly started to feel stronger and happier, but not completely happy. “You’ve fed us,” they said, “and thanks. But how are we going to get out of here?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Coyote. “I’ll kill the giant by stabbing him in the heart. Where is his heart? It must be around here someplace.”

  “Look at the volcano puffing and beating over there,” someone said. “Maybe it’s the heart.”

  “So it is, friend,” said Coyote, and began to cut at this mountain.

  Then the giant spoke up. “Is that you, Coyote? I’ve heard of you. Stop this stabbing and cutting and let me alone. You can leave through my mouth; I’ll open it for you.”

  “I’ll leave, but not quite yet,” said Coyote, hacking at the heart. He told the others to get ready. “As soon as I have him in his death throes, there will be an earthquake. He’ll open his jaw to take a last breath, and then his mouth will close forever. So be ready to run out fast!”

  Coyote cut a deep hole in the giant’s heart, and lava started to flow out. It was the giant’s blood. The giant groaned, and the ground under the people’s feet trembled.

  “Quick, now!” shouted Coyote. The giant’s mouth opened and they all ran out. The last one was the wood tick. The giant’s teeth were closing on him, but Coyote managed to pull him through at the last moment.

  “Look at me,” cried the wood tick, “Im all flat!”

  “It happened when I pulled you through,” said Coyote. “You’ll always be flat from now on. Be glad you’re alive.”

  “I guess I’ll get used to it,” said the wood tick, and he did.

  —Based on a tale reported by Louisa McDermott in 1901.

  A LEGEND OF DEVIL’S TOWER

  [SIOUX]

  This is another characteristically tongue-in-cheek tale from Lame Deer.

  Out of the plains of Wyoming rises Devils Tower. It is really a rock, visible for a hundred miles around, an immense cone of basalt which seems to touch the clouds. It sticks out of the flat prairie as if someone had pushed it up from underground.

  Of course, Devils Tower is a white man’s name. We have no devil in our beliefs and got along well all these many centuries without him. You people invented the devil and, as far as I am concerned, you can keep him. But everybody these days knows that towering rock by this name, so Devil’s Tower it is. No use telling you its Indian name. Most tribes call it Bear Rock. There is a reason for that—if you see it, you will notice on its sheer sides many, many streaks and gashes running straight up and down, like scratches made by giant claws.

  Well, long, long ago, two young Indian boys found themselves lost in the prairie. You know how it is. They had played shinny ball and whacked it a few hundred yards out of the village. And then they had shot their toy bows still farther out into the sagebrush. A
nd then they had heard a small animal make a noise and had gone to investigate. They had come to a stream with many colorful pebbles and followed that for a while. They had come to a hill and wanted to see what was on the other side. On the other side they saw a herd of antelope and, of course, had to track them for a while. When they got hungry and thought it was time to go home, the two boys found that they didn’t know where they were. They started off in the direction where they thought their village was, but only got farther and farther away from it. At last they curled up beneath a tree and went to sleep.

  They got up the next morning and walked some more, still headed the wrong way. They ate some wild berries and dug up wild turnips, found some chokecherries, and drank water from streams. For three days they walked toward the west. They were footsore, but they survived. Oh, how they wished that their parents, or aunts and uncles, or elder brothers and sisters would find them. But nobody did.

  On the fourth day the boys suddenly had a feeling that they were being followed. The looked around and in the distance saw Mato, the bear. This was no ordinary bear, but a giant grizzly so huge that the two boys would make only a small mouthful for him, but he had smelled the boys and wanted that mouthful. He kept coming close, and the earth trembled as he gathered speed.

  The boys started running, looking for a place to hide, but there was no such place and the grizzly was much, much faster than they. They stumbled, and the bear was almost upon them. They could see his red, wide-open jaws full of enormous, wicked teeth. They could smell his hot, evil breath.

  The boys were old enough to have learned to pray, and they called upon Wakan Tanka, the Creator: “Tunkashila, Grandfather, have pity, save us.”