Others exclaimed: “Let us carry them to the lake of muddy water and drown them!”
Instantly they ran with them. They threw the Fish and the Turtle into the lake. Toward the center of the large lake the Turtle dived. There he peeped up out of the water and, waving a hand at the crowd, sang out, “This is where I live!”
The Fish swam hither and thither with such frolicsome darts that his back fin made the water fly. “Ĕ han!” whooped the Fish, “this is where I live!”
“Oh, what have we done!” said the frightened people, “this will be our undoing.”
Then a wise chief said: “Iya, the Eater, shall come and swallow the lake!”
So one went running. He brought Iya, the Eater; and Iya drank all day at the lake till his belly was like the earth. Then the Fish and the Turtle dived into the mud; and Iya said: “They are not in me.” Hearing this the people cried greatly.
Iktomi wading in the lake had been swallowed like a gnat in the water. Within the great Iya he was looking skyward. So deep was the water in the Eater’s stomach that the surface of the swallowed lake almost touched the sky.
“I will go that way,” said Iktomi, looking at the concave within arm’s reach.
He struck his knife upward in the Eater’s stomach, and the water falling out drowned those people of the village.
Now when the great water fell into its own bed, the Fish and the Turtle came to the shore. They went home painted victors and loud-voiced singers.
Colophon
Old Indian Legends
was published in 1901 by
Zitkála-Šá.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Weijia Cheng,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 by
Judith Boss and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Tóh-to-wah-kón-da-pee, Blue Medicine, a Medicine Man of the Ting-ta-to-ah Band,
a painting completed in 1835 by
George Catlin.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 23, 2022, 5:12 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/zitkala-sa/old-indian-legends.
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