Kluskap was a spirit, a medicine man, a sorcerer...
Kluskap had also created a village and taught the people
there everything they needed to know. They were happy hunting and fishing. Men
and women were happy making love. Children were happy playing. Parents
cherished their children, and children respected their parents. All was well as
Kluskap had made it.
The village had one spring, the only source of water far and
wide, which always flowed with pure, clear, cold water. But one day the spring
ran dry; only a little bit of slimy ooze issued from it. It stayed dry even in
the fall when the rains came, and in the spring when the snows melted. The
people wondered, "What shall we do? We can't live without water." The
wise men and elders held a council and decided to send a man north to the
source of the spring to see why it had run dry.
This man walked a long time until at last he came to a
village (now a swamp at the end of a dead end street).
The people there were not like humans; they had webbed hands and feet. Here the brook widened out. There was some water in it, not much, but a little, though it was slimy, yellowish, and stinking. The man was thirsty from his walk and asked to be given a little water, even if it was bad.
The people there were not like humans; they had webbed hands and feet. Here the brook widened out. There was some water in it, not much, but a little, though it was slimy, yellowish, and stinking. The man was thirsty from his walk and asked to be given a little water, even if it was bad.
"We can't give you any water," said the people
with the webbed hands and feet, "unless our great chief permits it. He
wants all the water for himself."
"Where is your chief?" asked the man.
"You must follow the brook further up," they told
him.
The man walked on and at last met the big chief. When he saw
him he trembled with fright, because the chief was a monster so huge that if
one stood at his feet, one would not see his head. The monster filled the whole
valley from end to end. He had dug himself a huge hole and dammed it up, so
that all the water was in it and none could flow into the stream bed. And he
fouled the water and made it poisonous, so that stinking mists covered its
slimy surface.
The monster had a mile-wide mouth going from ear to ear. His
dull yellow eyes started out of his head like huge pine knots. His body was
bloated and covered with warts as big as mountains. The monster stared dully at
the man with his protruding eyes and finally said in a fearsome croak:
"Little man, what do you want?"
The man was terrified, but he said: "I come from a
village far downstream. Our only spring ran dry, because you're keeping all the
water for yourself. We would like you to let us have some of this water. Also,
please don't muddy it so much."
The monster blinked at him a few times. Finally he croaked:
Do as you please,
Do as you please,
I don't care,
I don't care,
If you want water,
If you want water,
Go elsewhere!
The man said, "We need the water. The people are dying
of thirst." The monster replied:
I don't care,
I don't care,
Don't bother me
, Don't bother me,
Go away,
Go away,
Or I'll swallow you up!
The monster opened his mouth wide from ear to ear, and
inside it the man could see many things that the creature has killed. The
monster gulped a few times and smacked his lips with a noise like thunder. At
this the man's courage broke, and he turned and ran away as fast as he could.
Back at his village the man told the people: "Nothing
can be done. If we complain, this monster will swallow us up. He'll kill us
all,"
The people were in despair. "What shall we do?"
they cried. Now, Kluskap knows everything that goes on in the world, even
before it happens. He sees everything with his inward eye. He said: "I
must set things right. I'll have to get water for the people!"
Then Kluskap girded himself for war. He painted his body
with paint as red as blood. He made himself twelve feet tall. He used two huge
clamshells for his earrings. He put a hundred black eagle feathers and a
hundred white eagle feathers in his scalp lock. He painted yellow rings around
his eyes. He twisted his mouth into a snarl and made himself look ferocious. He
stamped, and the earth trembled. He uttered his fearful war cry, and it echoed
and re-echoed from all the mountains. He grasped a huge mountain in his hand, a
mountain composed of flint, and from it made himself a single knife sharp as a
weasel's teeth. "Now I am going," he said, striding forth among the
thunder and lightning, with mighty eagles circling above him. Thus Kluskap came
to the village of the people with webbed hands and feet.
"I want water," he told them. Looking at him, they
were afraid. They brought him a little muddy water. "I think I'll get some
more and cleaner water," he said. Kluskap went upstream and confronted the
monster. "I want clean water," he said, "a lot of it, for the
people downstream."
Ho! Ho!
Ho! Ho!
All the waters are mine!
All the waters are mine!
Go away!
Go away!
Or I'll kill you!
"Slimy hump of mud!" cried Kluskap, "We'll
see who will be killed!" They fought. The monster shook. The earth split
open. The swamp smoked and burst into flames. Mighty trees were shivered into
splinters.
The monster opened its huge mouth wide to swallow Kluskap.
Kluskap made himself taller than the tallest tree, and even the monster's
mile-wide mouth was too small for him. Kluskap seized his great flint knife and
slit the monster's bloated belly. From the wound gushed a mighty stream, a
roaring river, tumbling, rolling, foaming down, down, down, gouging out for
itself a vast, deep bed, flowing by the village and on to the great sea of the
east.
"That should be enough water for the people," said
Kluskap. He grasped the monster and squeezed him with his mighty palm, squeezed
and squeezed and threw him away, flinging him into the swamp. Kluskap had
squeezed this giant creature into a small bullfrog, and ever since, the
bullfrog's skin has been wrinkled because Kluskap squeezed so hard...”
Lifted from:
Also:
Glooscap, Glooskap, Gluskabe, Gluskap, Koluscap, Koluskap,
Kuloscap, Kluskap, Kluscap, Gluskabi, Gluscabi, Gluskonba, Gluskôba, Gluskoba,
Kloskabe, Kuluskap, Klouskap, Glousgap, Gluskab, Klosgab, Glouscap, Gluskape,
Gluscabe, Glusk8ba, Klosk8ba, Gluskoba, Glous'gap, Gloosekap, Gloskap, Gluskap,
Kloskap, Kloskurbeh
Pronunciation: klue-skopp or kuh-loo-skopp in Micmac, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy; glue-skaw-buh in Abenaki and Penobscot
Type: Culture hero, Transformer, trickster
Related figures in other tribes: Nanabozho (Anishinabe), Napi (Blackfoot), Wesakaychak (Cree)
Pronunciation: klue-skopp or kuh-loo-skopp in Micmac, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy; glue-skaw-buh in Abenaki and Penobscot
Type: Culture hero, Transformer, trickster
Related figures in other tribes: Nanabozho (Anishinabe), Napi (Blackfoot), Wesakaychak (Cree)
No comments:
Post a Comment