Chapter XVI: Part 16

Is an attractive myth. Kékina is early Spring. Every time the little fellow calls: “Spring is coming. Spring is coming!” he hurries Spring along. The Loks are clouds; they prefer winter.

GRASSHOPPER IN LOVE WITH DEER

Is an illustration of unfaithfulness and deceit.

KAI AND HIS FATHER-IN-LAW

Old Ko-a-lák-ak-a, who told this myth, did not know who Natanatas was, but she thought that he represented Wind. He could cause a storm, and when a storm was raging, by wishing hard he could quell it. Natanatas gave his son-in-law what he thought to be impossible tasks.—The giving of tasks to a new son-in-law is a feature in many Indian myths, and also in Aryan myths.

NOTES

[1] Different events in the lives of Isis and Kumush are represented by rocks on that side of Tula Lake. Half-way up a high mountain is the house in which Kumush and Isis lived (a large rock); near Deus (Stork’s bill), is Isis (a rock of peculiar shape), and at the northwest corner of Tula Lake is Kumush himself.

[2] The rocky summit of a mountain near Lake Tula.

[3] A mountain in Oregon.

[4] Gauwams, a pond or small lake.

[5] The seed of a certain kind of weed.

[6] A red root.

[7] Doctors often rub a whipsnake in dust and pull off his skin, then he gets a new skin, so what Wéwenkee said was true.

[8] Obsidian knife.

[9] A grass that grows in the water.

[10] The edge or rim; meaning the end of the story.

[11] A certain root. English name unknown.

[12] A vegetable like an onion.

[13] A “medicine man.”

[14] Mount Shasta.

[15] The relator of this story said that after telling it there would be heavy wind, for the story always brought a wind-storm.

[16] A medicine basket is made of tckula, a kind of willow, and is painted red. When the basket is not a medicine, it is used as a sieve. The old Indian woman who related this Gäk myth said: “The basket is a good medicine. If a man is wounded, and the basket is put over him, he gets well.”

[17] When Indians tell this story, they talk down in their throats, to imitate the Näníhläs people.