Wintu

(map)

Olelbis is the Wintu supreme being; he lives in Olelpanti, the highest place above the sky.

There was a world before this one. It lasted a long, long time, and many people lived in it before the present people came.

Katkatchila (swift) was one of those people. He could hunt wonderfully; he had something which he aimed and threw, but nobody could find out what it was.

Torihas (blue crane) was the chief of the people who lived in the upper Sacramento valley. "Let us send for Katkatchila," he said one day. "Let us invite him to a great dance." He sent Tsaroki Sakahl (green snake) with the invitation, and Katkatchila agreed to come. He came the following day and sat down a little way off from where people were dancing. Torihas saw him and said, "Come over, Katkatchila, and sit by me."

Olelbis happened to be looking down from Olelpanti just then. He said to those around him, "I see many people gathered together. They are going to do something."

After the dance, Katkatchila gladly accepted Torihas's invitation to hunt with them. Torihas's people planned, when Katkatchila killed a deer, to rush up to it and take the thing with which he killed it. On the first day of the hunt, Torihas sent his grandson Kaisus (grey squirrel), a swift runner. Whenever Katkatchila shot a deer, Kaisus rushed to the deer, but Katkatchila was always faster and had already taken out the weapon.

Katkatchila was ready to leave then, but Torihas persuaded him to hunt one more day. That day, Hau (red fox) went with him. Hau sprang forward the moment the weapon was shot and reached the deer first. He found the flint weapon and hid it in his ear. Katkatchila demanded it back, but Hau denied having taken it. Katkatchila kept asking for it all day, but Hau never owned to taking it. Finally he left, saying, "I saw you take my flint. It would be much better for you and your people to give it back to me. You will see something in pay for this."

After he left, the others examined the flint. Hilit (house fly) rubbed the flint with his hands and legs, making it large. He worked all night until it was four or five feet long. Patsotchet (badger) had warned that Katkatchila would make trouble, and in the morning people agreed that they should not keep the flint there. Torihas asked Patsotchet to carry it north, but he said it was too heavy. He asked Karili (coon) to carry it, but he also found it too heavy. Finally, Tichelis (ground squirrel) put the flint on his back and headed away north.

Meanwhile, when Katkatchila reached home, he told his sister Yonot (buckeye), her husband Tilikus (fire-drill), and her husband's brother Poharamas (shooting star) of the theft. They cleared an area in front of their house and made a large pile of finely split pine sticks there. Yonot had a baby whom she called Pohila (fire child). She brought out Pohila and sat him next to the pine sticks, and fire blazed up. Poharamus took a burning brand and ran southeast to where the sky meets the earth, and Tilikus did the same in the southwest. Both ran northward near the sky leaving a trail of fire behind them.

The fire spread to Torihas's people, making a terrible roar as it came from the south, east, and west. People ran to the north. Tichelis, struggling with the great block of flint on his back, saw that there was no escape for him above ground, so he threw down the flint and ran under the ground. The flint lies there yet, and the Wintu go there when they want black flint.

Just before the brothers Poharamus and Tilikus met in the north, two people rushed out between them; they were Klabus (mole) and Tsaroki, who had carried the invitation to Katkatchila. Katkatchila, Yonot, Pohila, and Tilikus went behind the sky. Poharamus went to Olelpanti, where Olelbis lives in a wonderful house made from living oaks.

Olelbis looked down on the world and saw only waves of flame. The sparks stuck fast in the sky and remain there as stars. Fire in the rocks also came from the wakpohas, or world fire.

Olelbis's grandmothers told him of Kahit (wind) who lives in the far north outside the first sky, sitting with his head in his hands facing north. They told him to summon Kahit and to have him bring Mem Loimis (water). Olelbis sent Lutchi (hummingbird) to prop up the sky, and he had Sutunut (black eagle) deliver the message to Kahit. Kahit turned his face to the south. Sotchet (beaver), who lived just south of Kahit, urged him on. His mother was Mem Loimis, and he told Kahit he would help them forward. Olelbis made an oak paddle and threw it to Sotchet, who made a tail of it.

Kahit and Mem Loimis came through the opening in the sky. Mem Loimis came first, followed closely by Kahit, who was blowing his whistle with all his might. The water covered the earth, putting out the fire, and rose to the top of the sky. All kinds of people who could swim came with them, such as Yoholmit (frog) and Sosini (a water bird). Some of these people Olelbis sent far away; others stayed at Olelpanti.

Olelbis told Kahit that they had wind and water enough, and Kahit drove Mem Loimis back to her home in the ground in the north. Olelbis looked down and saw nothing but naked rock. There was no water left except in a rock basin at Tsarau Heril. But Yilahl (gopher) told him that there was soil in the west beyond the sky. At Olelbis's bidding, Klabus (mole) worked five days bringing baskets of earth and spreading it over the world. He and Yilahl then raised mountains and hills.

"We need fire," Olelbis said. Seeing smoke in the southwest where Yonot had returned with Pohila, he sent Tede Wiu (a small bird) to get some fire. The house was closed, but after five days Tede Wiu caught a spark that came out and quickly carried it to Olelbis.

With a stick, Olelbis made furrows for rivers and streams. He threw a grapevine root and tule roots onto the earth, and water flowed from where they hit. He directed Tsurat (woodpecker) to carry Hlihli (white oak acorn) over the earth; meal drifted out of it, and oak trees sprung up everywhere. Olelbis also spread seeds of all kinds of plants from around his lodge.

When the water hit the great fire, the steam and smoke was driven south and became a people, the cloud people. Katkatchila and his brother tried to keep them from going north, but the clouds were very wild. Olelbis told them to make a fence where the clouds pass, leave one gap in it, and to put a snare in the gap. They did so and caught one black cloud; the rest broke down the fence and got away. They gave the cloud to Olelbis, who skinned it and gave the skin to his grandmother. They repaired the fence and caught a white cloud, which Olelbis also skinned and gave to the other grandmother. Now, when they hang out the white skin, white clouds go to the south and bring rain. When they hang out the black skin, the black clouds come and bring heavy rain. The clouds that escaped became a new people and sometimes bring snow.

Olelbis sent to earth all of the people who were not needed at his home. The great people he kept at Olelpanti, but he sent down parts of each to turn into something in the world below.

Jeremiah Curtin, Creation Myths of America (1899; reprint, London: Bracken Books, 1995), 3-48. For variants without the flood, see Cora Du Bois and Dorothy Demetracopoulou, Wintu Myths, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 28 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930-1931; reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint, 1965), 305-306; Marcelle Masson, A Bag of Bones (Naturegraph, 1966), 26-28.

People came into existence and dwelt a long, long time; no one knows where. Then one of them dreamed. He said, "I dreamed of a whirlwind." The others said, "You have dreamed something bad."

Then it blew, and the wind grew stronger. They had an earth lodge, so they said, "Let us go into the lodge. The world is going bad." They all went into the lodge. It blew terribly. The one who had dreamed stayed outside and told the others, "It is raining, and trees are falling down westward. The water is coming; the earth will be destroyed."

All the other houses were blown away. He came into the earth lodge and leaned against the pole. "My dream must be coming true," he said. "I must have dreamed right about the destruction of the world." All the other people went. At last the pole came loose too. The one who dreamed was the last destroyed of all the people. Only water was left.

After some time, Olelbes (He-Who-Is-Above) looked down from the north. He looked for a long time, all around, and finally saw something barely visible in the north in the middle of the water. It swam around a little. It was lamprey, the first to come into existence, and it lived there, on the bedrock, all alone.

No one knows how long the water sat there, but it was a long, long time. A little mud lay on the rocks. At last the water receded to the south, turning into numerous creeks. Some earth came into being, and it turned into all kinds of trees.

Cora Du Bois and Dorothy Demetracopoulou, Wintu Myths, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 28 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930-1931; reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint, 1965), 286-287; Malcolm Margolin, The Way We Lived (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1981), 128-129.