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The Rattlesnake Echo
From American Myths and Legends by
Charles M. Skinner, 1903
In Bear's Gulch, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, lived
Turtle Dove with her little girl, Ohoteu, and her baby boy, Sage
Cock. She would leave the children together, sure that they would
keep out of mischief, while she went off to gather berries, nuts,
and seeds.
These absences were noted by a woman who lived on a mountain,
alone, and had become a witch, out of spite because nobody had
ever made an offer of marriage to her. Seeing that Sage Cock
was a bright, stout youngster, she resolved to make him her husband;
so, during one of the daily visits of the mother to a distant
berry-patch, she ran off with him, and took him to her home.
She was "no chicken," as to years, and had she waited
till the little shaver had grown to manhood she would have been
yet more hopelessly an old-maid than she was then. But she did
not wait. She had supernatural power. She worked over Sage Cock
all night, mauling and stretching, and finally pulled his arms
and legs to adult size. She fed him on buffalo meat and fish,
and in a few days he was as large and strong as any warrior in
the hills.
Alas for her hopes! Sage Cock was a man in stature, it was
true, but he remained an infant in understanding. His mind did
not grow any faster than the minds of other babes. In order to
hurry his education in hunting, that he might at least seem to
be a man the earlier, the witch had to take him abroad, though
she knew that his mother would be on the watch.
So it was. Turtle Dove had the help of her brother, Eagle,
in the search, and they traveled for days together, climbing
the trees for better views now and again.
Once Sage Cock cried to the witch, "I hear my mother!"
and indeed the voice of Turtle Dove was heard, calling across
the hills. The witch pretended that it was some stranger, imitating
his mother's voice that she might find and eat him. "Crawl
into this skin," she urged, "and you will be safe."
It was a skin that had been stripped from a huge mountain-sheep,
after he had shot it, and was big enough to cover them both.
The seekers came closer, calling, for they had seen the two at
a distance, and knew that they must be near.
Search revealing nothing, the mother and Eagle tried strategy.
They hung a dead rabbit in a tree, stripped the trunk to a height
of ten or a dozen feet, hid in a thicket, and waited.
As they expected, the witch put out her nose, after a time,
for a breath of air, and sniffed the carrion. Her appetite, already
large, was sharpened, and in a little time she stole out and
tried to climb the tree; but the smoothness of the trunk and
the age in the limbs of the old woman made this nearly impossible.
Being desperately busy in trying to reach the rabbit, she
did not see Turtle Dove and Eagle run to the sheepskin, pull
out the smooth-faced lummox who lay under it sucking his thumb,
and carry him off. So soon as they had put him back in the hollow
where the witch had found him, he shrank into the same baby that
he was before, and bawled for milk. The rescuers put the youngster
into his sister's arms and went back to kill the witch.
Suspecting that they would attempt revenge, she crept into
the cast-off skin of her grandfather, the rattlesnake. And lying
on a ledge among other serpents where there was little likelihood
that any one would attempt to disturb her, she mocked the call
of her pursuers, and, feeling more safe and more at home in the
company of reptiles than in that of human kind, she has lived
in the same place ever since. She takes a pleasure in mocking
people, and white men call her cry an echo.
Since white men came into the country the Indians say that
the rattlesnake has been talking in lower and lower tones, and
may in time become altogether silent.
Editor's notes:
Unfortunately, Skinner did not
mention what Native American
tribe this tale came from. I have not been able to find any stories
featuring the same names or plot points in any of the books in
my collection, or any references on the Internet or elsewhere
that hint that such stories exist elsewhere. Skinner was generally
considered a literary folklorist, in the sense that he was believed
to have modified tales he had heard to make them sound better.
Without other sources to verify the content of this story, there
is no way to know how much of it was based on traditional legends
and how much, if any, was invented by Skinner.
The original text of this story
is in the public domain. I have edited some of the words to be
more understandable to modern readers and have added paragraph
breaks. The new content/editor's note is copyright 2003 by Dan
Norder.
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