After a time the children came back to camp and found everything gone, the fires out, and only ashes left. They began to cry and wander about. The oldest girl said, “Let us go toward the river.”
They found a trail leading across the river and crossed it. Then they found a tent pole lying on the bank and picked it up.
Suddenly the screeching voice of an old woman broke the forest silence: “Bring my tent pole here!”
The children carried it toward her and she invited them into her tent. At night they were tired and the old woman told them all to sleep with their heads toward the fire. Only one little girl, who had a small brother, pretended to sleep, but did not. The old woman watched them carefully. When she thought they all were asleep, she put her foot in the fire until it became red hot. Then she pressed it down on the throat of one of the children and burned through the child’s throat. Then she killed the next one and the next one.
Before she came to the girl and her brother, the little girl jumped up, saying, “My grandmother, let me live with you and work for you. I will bring wood and water for you.” The old woman nodded.
First, she pointed to the dead bodies and said, “Take these out!”
The little girl, carrying her brother on her back, buried all the other children. Then the old woman sent her to get wood. Five times the girl brought wood, and each time it was the wrong kind of wood. Cottonwood, then willow wood, then birch wood, then cherry, then sagebrush. Each time the old woman said, “That is not the kind of wood I use. Throw it out. Bring another load.”
The little girl went again and again. She cried and cried. Then a bird came to her and told her: “Bring her ghost-ropes, for she is a ghost.”
Then the little girl pulled down some of these plants, which grow on willows, and brought them to the old woman. She was glad. “You are my good granddaughter,” she said.
Then the old woman sent the little girl to get water. The little girl brought her river water, then rainwater, then spring water, but the old woman always told her, “That is not the kind of water I use. Spill it! Bring another load.” Then the bird told the little girl, “Bring her foul, stagnant water, which is muddy and full of worms. That is the only kind she drinks.” The little girl got the water, and when she brought it, the old woman was glad.
Then the girl’s brother said that he needed to go outdoors to relieve himself. “Well, then, go with the boy,” said the old woman to the girl, “but let half of your robe remain inside the tent while you hold him so I know you are still there.” Then the girl took her little brother out, leaving half of her robe inside the tent. Outside, she hung the other half of the robe on a metal spike she stuck in the ground. Then she took her little brother and ran.
Seeing the robe still there, the old woman called, “Hurry!” Then the metal spike answered, “My grandmother, my little brother is not yet ready.” Again the old woman said, “Now hurry!” Then the spike answered again, “My little brother is not ready.” Then the old woman screamed, “Come in now, else I will go outside and kill you.” She started to go out, and stepped on the spike. She screamed as blood gushed out of her foot.
Running as fast as they could, the little girl and her brother came to a large river. A water monster with two horns lay there and demanded that they pick the lice off its body. The lice were as big as frogs. The children worked hard; then the water monster said, “Get on top of my head between my horns, close your eyes, and do not open them until we have crossed.” When they had climbed on, he dove under the river, quickly swam, and came up on the other side. The children got off and ran on.
The old woman, hobbling behind them, screamed, “I will kill you! You cannot escape me by going to the sky or by entering the ground.” When she came to the river, the monster had returned and was lying at the edge of the water. “Pick the lice off me!” it said. The old woman cried, “These dirty lice! I will not!” Then she climbed onto the water monster. “Take me to the other side!” she shouted. He went under the surface of the water, stayed there, drowned her, and ate her.
The children went on.
At last they came to the camp of the people who had deserted them. They came to their parents’ tent. “My mother, here is your little son,” the girl said, holding the boy out to her.
“I did not know that I had a son,” their mother said, turning away.
They went to their father, their uncle, and their grandfather. They all said, “I did not know I had a son,” “I did not know I had a nephew,” “I did not know I had a grandson.”
Then a man said, “Let us tie them face-to-face and hang them in a tree and leave them.” Then they tied them together, hung them in a tree, put out all the fires, and left them.
The people had also left behind a small dog with sores all over his body. But the dog had secretly kept a little fire going and had hidden a knife. When they had all gone off, the dog climbed the tree, used the knife to cut the ropes, and freed the children.
The little boy cried and cried. He felt bad about what the people had done.
Then many buffalo came near them. The boy took one look at them and they fell dead. Another look, and their meat was all cut up. One more look and the meat was dried. Then the boy, the girl, and the dog had much to eat, and the dog became well again.
Next, the girl sat down on the pile of buffalo skins and they became smooth like cloth so she could make clothes and tents. She folded them together, sat on them, and there was a tent. Then she found old broken branches and told her brother, “Look at these.” When he looked, they became large and straight tent poles. A fine tent soon stood there.
“Go inside and look,” she told the boy. He went in and looked. Then the tent was filled with beautiful skins and furnishings, including a bed for them and a bed for the dog. The dog was really an old man who had been treated badly by the people. Now he was comfortable and he became himself again.
The girl made fine clothes of antelope skins for her brother and herself and the old man. The boy looked into the woods, and there was a corral full of fine horses. The girl called bears from the forest and they came gently, as if they were pet dogs, and the girl ordered them to guard the buffalo meat and the horses. The children lived at this place, the same place where they had been tied up and abandoned. They had much food and much property, and they took good care of the old man.
Then the man who had first abandoned them came and saw their tent and the abundance they had, and he went back and told the people: “Break camp and move to be with the children, for we are without food.” Hard times had come and they were starving, so they broke camp and traveled to the children.
When they arrived, the hungry women went to take meat, but the bears drove them away. The girl and her brother would not come out of the tent. Not even the old man would come out. Then the girl said, “I will go out and find a wife for you, my brother, and for the old man, and a husband for myself.”
Then she went out into the camp and selected a girl, a woman, and a young man and told them to come with her. She took them into the tent, and the visitors sat down by each of them. She, her brother, and the old man gifted them fine clothing and married them.
Then the sister told her brother, “Go outside and look at the camp.” The boy went out and looked at the people. They all fell dead.
There are as many monsters in American Indian cultures as our minds can imagine: great and small monsters of every shape and description. Monsters have been part of North American culture since the beginning of time. They are different from tricksters and heroes in American Indian mythology, like Rabbit and Coyote, who help define the identity of the people and their customs. Rabbit and Coyote are sometimes frightening, but they can also be humorous, insightful, and helpful. Monsters, on the other hand, have no redeeming qualities. Some monsters hunt people and eat them. Others terrorize sweet dreams and turn them into nightmares. Still other monsters capture a person’s spirit and steal it away forever. Monsters live in darkness just outsid
e our view. If you run into one, your only hope is to outsmart it and escape. Some monsters hide in deep, dark waters where a person must never go. Others make their homes in caves far beneath the Earth. Storytellers may say that monsters exist only in our minds. But then, after a dark night’s storm, you may find massive footprints near your home, or the still-warm skin stripped from an animal. You know monsters exist when someone leaves home one night, and never returns.
Pa Ki Sko Kan (Bones)
TOLD BY SOLANGE K., CREE, CANADA
In the northern United States and Canada, winters are long and harsh. Years ago, food was often scarce in the extreme cold and snow. Then a starving creature called Wendigo would hunt the countryside for people to eat. Algonquian tribes describe the monster as “a giant with a heart of ice,” whose body was like a skeleton and whose footprints were filled with blood. The Ojibwe tell about its glowing eyes and mouth without lips, filled with yellowed fangs and a long, curling tongue that unrolls in a loud hiss as it breathes. The Cree tell the legend of a creature called Pa ki sko kan, meaning “bones.” Do these creatures still exist? You be the judge.
It was late evening, very windy, with snow swirling around—I love this kind of weather. I was about twelve years old and I wanted to play outside. When I asked my mom, she just said, “Be careful.”
I put on my boots and winter gear, but as soon as I stepped outside, I had an uneasy feeling. I didn’t go out very far, just stayed close to the house, beneath the little roof over the doorway, above the steps.
Then I heard something nearby—something I’d never heard before. I stood still, and was trying to figure out what it was. It sounded as if something was clapping its hands together. Frozen with fear, I listened as the sound came again and again.
Something told me not to go out in the open.
When I looked up to search the sky, I couldn’t see anything. Whatever it was, it continued clapping, clapping. It would pause for a moment, then clap again.
You’re in danger, my gut was telling me. Don’t go any farther. At first, I didn’t.
But something was drawing me toward it. Then, gradually, I moved to the other side of the porch steps. Slowly, I peeked around the corner of the house.
And there it was. Pure evil. Staring at me. Its glowing orange eyes bored into mine. Something massive and gray—I couldn’t see if it was a body or a big, detached head—was floating sideways, seven or eight feet off the ground.
A shock, like electricity, ran through my body. I jumped, pulled open the screen door, and ran in, tripping over my siblings’ winter boots.
“What?” my mom cried out. “What’s wrong?” She looked up from the stove, where she was cooking dinner. She was bewildered at my panicked face.
“I tripped on the shoes,” I said, unsure how to explain it. She let it go.
Years later, I told her. She listened intently, nodding her head.
“I wondered about that night,” she said. “There is something that folks have always talked about—a thing that flies around on windy days and during blizzards. It is silent, but it takes people, and no one sees those people again.”
She called it “Pa ki sko kan,” meaning “bones.” It’s a legend of the Cree people, and they say it does exist. One of my uncles saw it, and he hid from it when he was out hunting. But that’s his story, and I believed him.
When I think back now that I’m older, it made a sound like the flapping of wings—and we don’t have big birds in my territory.
To this day I get uneasy when I’m outside in weather that’s really windy—even though I live in the city now. I still remember that moment as if it happened yesterday.
If I had stepped out, I don’t think I’d be around.
Billy Goat and Bigfoot
TOLD BY DAN SASUWEH JONES, PONCA, VISITING THE COLVILLE CONFEDERATED TRIBES, WASHINGTON STATE
On an Indian reservation the people are bonded by a common language, customs, the land, and a government that is unique to that place. They are also bonded by beliefs and legends. The bands of the Colville Confederated Tribes tell of a giant, hairy being with a nauseating stench who walked their mountains and woods. One band called him Choanito, the Night Person, another Skanicum, or Stick Indian. Many know him as Sasquatch, or Bigfoot. Today many people leave the reservation for the city, but many stay and carry on the tribal stories and traditions of their ancestors. Billy Goat had chosen to stay.
My travels had brought me to North Central Washington State, a few miles from the Canadian border, to the Colville tribal lands, some of the most remote lands in America. I was living in a cabin on the banks of the Columbia River. An elder gentleman who everyone just called Billy Goat had rented it to me. The cabin had running water (but an outside toilet), a woodstove for heating, and a wood-burning cookstove that made anything cooked on it taste so good. Billy Goat was my closest neighbor, about a half mile away. The area around my cabin was wooded and beautiful, but it had one oddity—a creature the locals called Bigfoot.
I enjoyed going out and cutting wood as a break from writing. One day during winter, the fresh snow was about knee-deep. It was a perfect day to bring my neighbor some warmth in the form of firewood, so I loaded my truck. When I pulled up to his cabin, Billy Goat was outside shoveling the new snow from trails he had made to his firewood and outhouse. He always greeted me with a hearty wave and a big smile. Billy Goat was a tribal elder, and tribal members would bring the elder whatever he needed. He didn’t even need the wood; I just wanted an excuse to visit him. “Well, hello!” he called out as I parked.
After we unloaded and stacked the wood, Billy Goat invited me into his cabin for coffee. When I entered, it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust from the bright outdoors. It was like a little museum, with American Indian photos and artifacts either hanging on the walls or carefully placed about his living room. Every time I visited I’d pick one item and Billy Goat would always have a story about it. As Billy was getting the coffee, I was fixated on an old pair of snowshoes hanging on the walls; they were long trail shoes and I could tell they were masterfully handmade.
“What’s the story on these classic snowshoes here, Billy?”
“Oh, those, yeah, I made those back in the sixties,” he said.
I was taken aback by the craftsmanship to begin with, but now, knowing he had made them, I was in total awe. He brought in the coffee, handed me the cup, and stood next to me as we both admired his handi-work. “My father taught me how to make those, and his father taught him. Last time I wore them, I was tracking a monster.”
“Can’t get around these parts without them, I guess, unless you have some real big feet!” I laughed, but I was puzzled by what he’d said about the monster. Turning to Billy for an answer, I could see he was deep in thought.
“It started with the fish shack, out back where I smoke my fish,” he said out of nowhere. “One night, just last year, I woke to a heck of a commotion, sounded like the fish shack was being torn apart. I immediately thought a bear was in the shack and frightened by the dogs, so it tore its way out. I was sleepy and groggy but it hit me pretty quickly that it was December and bears wouldn’t be out—they were hibernating.”
He continued, “The other problem was the dogs. They were upset, all right, and barking their heads off, but they were on the porch. That struck me as unusual; when there is a threat they always run after whatever it is. But this time they were trying to get into the cabin.
“When I let them in, I had a pretty good idea what it was—because of the smell.
“Next morning I noticed prints coming up to the shack, then leaving. It was no bear. The tracks were humanlike but much, much larger. Half the shack was torn off and tossed over on the trail like it was nothing. I measured the tracks: eighteen inches long and eight inches wide at the ball of the foot. That was a monster. I followed the tracks into the woods with those snowshoes until I saw them meet up with smaller tracks. Was there a clan of them?”
I was stunned b
y how the old man’s tone was so matter-of-fact, as if he were talking about a normal occurrence. I started asking questions: “So these are the legendary Bigfoot? Are they common in this area?” Now I was thinking of my place just down the road.
“Oh yes,” the old man said.
Billy Goat looked out his window, then to me. “Over the years there seems to be a pattern to when they come around. I’ve never had problems with them until last year.”
He turned back to the window as if he were looking far off, back in time. “First it was the fish shack attack, then the dogs. I had three dogs, mainly strays I had taken in, but they had become family. One night I was sleeping when the dogs started barking outside and woke me up. I grabbed my shotgun and opened the door. They’d been cowering and whining, and they were running over each other to get inside. As I turned to ask them what was wrong, a cold chill ran up my back. I turned around to look out, and there was nothing. That’s when I smelled him—it stank real bad. I shut and locked the door! I could feel that this new beast was mean and vicious, and the dogs knew it, too!
“The next night things got dangerous. I went to bed the usual time, only to awaken in the night by the dogs going crazy outside the door. They weren’t just barking and growling—they were in a fight for their lives. I couldn’t grab my rifle fast enough. Then a loud thump hit the cabin and this old place shook. I opened the door and two dogs ran inside. When I got outside, I heard tree limbs breaking as something traveled away fast, from the cabin and into the woods.
“What I will never forget is hearing the third dog yelping for its life as whatever carried it faded into the darkness. When the yelping stopped, I knew it would be useless to follow. Back inside, I sat up all night with the other two dogs, who were traumatized. These things had come before, but never like that.”
Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters Page 7