Then, after a little while, she commenced again:
“Ha ash tchaa ni—Ha ash tchaa ni:
Tche pa naa—thlen-thle.
Thlen! Thlen! Thlen!”
The boy stretched himself up, and said: “Look here, grandmother! I have heard your ‘Thlen! Thlen! Thlen!’ enough this time. I am going to open my eyes.”
“Oh, my grandchild, never think of such a thing.” Then she began again to sing:
“Ha ash tchaa ni—Ha ash tchaa ni:
Tche pa naa—thlen-thle.
Thlen! Thlen! Thlen!”
She was not near the ground when she finished it the fourth time, and the boy would not stand it any more. Lo! he opened his eyes, and the old grandmother knew it in a moment. Over and over, boy over bat, bat over boy, and the basket between them, they went whirling and pitching down, the old grandmother tugging at her basket and scolding the boy.
“Now, you foolish, disobedient one! I told you what would happen! You see what you have done!” and so on until they fell to the ground. It fairly knocked the breath out of the boy, and when he got up again he yelled lustily.
The old grandmother picked herself up, stretched herself, and cried out anew: “You wretched, foolish, hard-hearted boy; I never will do anything for you again—never, never, never!”
“I know, my grandmother,” said the boy, “but you kept up that ‘Thlen! Thlen! Thlen!’ so much. What in the world did you want to spend so much time thlening, thlening, and buzzing round in that way for?”
“Ah, me!” said she, “he never did know anything—never will be taught to know anything.”
“Now,” said she to him, “you might as well come and eat with me. I have been gathering cactus-fruit, and you can eat and then go home.” She took him to the place where she had poured out the contents of the basket, but there was scarcely a cactus-berry. There were cedar-berries, cones, sticks, little balls of dirt, coyote-berries, and everything else uneatable.
“Sit down, my grandson, and eat; strengthen yourself after your various adventures and exertions. I feel very weary myself,” said she. And she took a nip of one of them; but the boy couldn’t exactly bring himself to eat. The truth is, the old woman’s eyes were bad, in the same way that bats’ eyes are usually bad, and she couldn’t tell a cactus-berry from anything else round and rough.
“Well, inasmuch as you won’t eat, my grandson,” said she, “why, I can’t conceive, for these are very good, it seems to me. You had better run along home now, or your mother will be killing herself thinking of you. Now, I have only one direction to give you. You don’t deserve any, but I will give you one. See that you pay attention to it. If not, the worst is your own. You have gathered a beautiful store of feathers. Now, be very careful. Those creatures who bore those feathers have gained their lives from the lives of living beings, and therefore their feathers differ from other feathers. Heed what I say, my grandson. When you come to any place where flowers are blooming—where the sunflowers make the field yellow—walk round those flowers if you want to get home with these feathers. And when you come to more flowers, walk round them. If you do not do that, just as you came you will go back to your home.”
“All right, my grandmother,” said the boy. So, after bidding her goodbye, he trudged away with his bundle of feathers; and when he came to a great plain of sunflowers and other flowers he walked round them; and when he came to another large patch he walked round them, and then another, and so on; but finally he stopped, for it seemed to him that there were nothing but fields of flowers all the way home. He thought he had never seen so many before.
“I declare,” said he, “I will not walk round those flowers any more. I will hang on to these feathers, though.”
So he took a good hold of them and walked in amongst the flowers. But no sooner had he entered the field than flutter, flutter, flutter, little wings began to fly out from the bundle of feathers, and the bundle began to grow smaller and smaller, until it wholly disappeared. These wings which flew out were the wings of the Sacred Birds of Summerland, made living by the lives that had supported the birds which bore those feathers, and by coming into the environment which they had so loved, the atmosphere which flowers always bring of summer.
Thus it was, my children, in the days of the ancients, and for that reason we have little jaybirds, little sparrows, little finches, little willow-birds, and all the beautiful little birds that bring the summer, and they always hover over flowers.
“My friends” [said the storyteller], “that is the way we live. I am very glad, otherwise I would not have told the story, for it is not exactly right that I should—I am very glad to demonstrate to you that we also have books; only they are not books with marks in them, but words in our hearts, which have been placed there by our ancients long ago, even so long ago as when the world was new and young, like unripe fruit. And I like you to know these things, because people say that the Zunis are dark people.”4
Thus shortens my story.
The priest of the Kʻiáklu or epic-ritual of Zuni is never allowed to initiate the telling of short folk-stories. If he make such a beginning, he must complete the whole cycle before he ceases his recital or his listeners relax their attention. The following tale was told by an attendant Indian (not a priest), whose name is Waíhusiwa.
“Son ah tehi!” he exclaimed, which may be interpreted: “Let us abide with the ancients
