Native American Creation Myths by Jeremiah Curtin

Author:Jeremiah Curtin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486148076
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

Kol Tibichi

Kol Tibichi was born at Norpat Kodiheril on Wini Mem, just before daylight. When a small boy, he used to go out by himself. If he went to play with other boys sometimes, he would not stay with them. He went out of sight, disappeared, and was lost. Then his father or mother or others would find him in this place or that unexpectedly. Sometimes they found him at home, sometimes at a distance, far away in some gulch or on some mountain. It happened that his mother would look at his bed in the night-time and see him there sleeping. She would look again and find that he was gone. She would look a third time, and find him just as at first. In the day he would be seen in one place and be gone the next moment.

Once he was playing with children; they turned aside to see something, then looked at him. He was gone. After a while they saw him in the water under the salmon-house. Another time he disappeared.

“Where has he gone?” asked one boy.

“I cannot tell,” answered another.

Soon they heard singing.

One asked, “Do you hear that?”

“Yes,” said the other; “where is it?”

They listened and looked. Soon they saw Kol Tibichi sitting near the north bank of the river, under water.

“We must run and tell his father and mother.”

Two of the boys ran to tell his father and mother. “We lost your son,” said they. “He went away from us. We looked for him a long time and could not find him. Now we have found him; we have seen him sitting under water; we don’t know what he is doing.”

His mother hurried out; ran to the river.

“We think he must be dead,” said people who had gathered there. “We think that some yapaitu [spirit] has killed him.”

They soon saw that he was alive; he was moving. “Come, my son,” called his mother, stretching her hands to him,—“come, my son; come out, come to me.” But he stayed there, sitting under water.

A quarter of an hour later they saw that the boy had gone from the river. The people heard singing in some place between them and the village. They looked up and saw that the boy was half-way home and going from the river.

“That is your son,” called they to the woman.

“Oh, no,” said the woman; but she ran up and found that it was her son.

Another time the boy goes south with some children. These lose him, just as the others had. In half an hour they hear singing.

“Where is he?” ask some.

“On this side,” says one.

“On that,” says another.

South of the river is a great sugar-pine on a steep bank. They look, and high on a limb pointing northward they see him hanging, head downward, singing.

They run to his mother. “We see your son hanging by his feet from a tree.”

The woman hurries to the river, runs in among the rocks and rubbish around the tree, reaches toward the boy, throws

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