Látkakáwas

Látkakáwas by Jeremiah Curtin (1912)

"Látkakáwas" is a myth from the Klamath people of Oregon, recorded by Jeremiah Curtin, centering on themes of beauty, betrayal, death, resurrection, and the origins of natural phenomena. The story begins with Látkakáwas and her five brothers living on the south side of Klamath Lake. Látkakáwas possesses a dual nature: when working she appears as an old hunchbacked woman, but when she shakes herself and steps outside she is young, blue, and radiant. Young men from a western village repeatedly attempt to approach her while she is beautiful, but she always detects them and transforms before they can reach her, and they mock her aged appearance. A remarkable young man from the western village, kept hidden underground by his father and equally blue and beautiful as Látkakáwas herself, is persuaded to try where all others have failed. Unlike the others, he watches her without laughing or mocking her, and she is moved by his respect. He visits twice, traveling underground to draw close. On the second visit his brilliance dazzles her as she emerges from the smoke hole of her house. Though she knows he is watching her through a crack, she does not transform into her aged form. That same day her brothers prepare to move the household to an island in the lake for safety. As they try to push the canoe into the water, the young man invisibly holds it back repeatedly. When at last he releases it, he follows the canoe in the form of a salmon. One of the brothers spears the salmon, and the moment it is pulled into the canoe it becomes the young man, who immediately dies. Látkakáwas grieves deeply. The brothers return to shore and burn the young man's body along with all their possessions. In the ashes remains a brilliant disk, the crown of the young man's head. Látkakáwas is told to take the disk to Kumush, a powerful old man at Nihlaksi, who can restore life from a single hair. She travels through the day, camps overnight, and gives birth that morning to a wonderfully beautiful boy. She carries the infant on a board on her back and presents the disk to Kumush, who is dazzled by its beauty. Kumush performs a sweat-house ritual with heated stones and boiling water, and the disk revives into the young man. However, upon seeing the young man's extraordinary beauty, Kumush covets it and wishes him dead again. His wish is immediately fulfilled; the young man dies a second time. Látkakáwas, overwhelmed with grief, waits as Kumush builds a fire to burn the body. While Kumush gathers wood, she straps her baby to her back and leaps into the fire, dying alongside her husband. Kumush barely saves the infant. The disk remains in the ashes. Kumush cannot keep it attached to his body until he places it on the small of his back, where it fuses with him, making him young, brilliant, and the most radiant being in the world. He becomes the father of the child, whom he names Isis after trying many names. He hides the infant in his knee, disguised as a boil, and later has old women press it out. He raises Isis on the southeast side of Tula Lake. As Isis grows, Kumush sends him on a series of arduous spiritual trials, directing him to swim in sacred mountain ponds, dive repeatedly to their depths, talk to mountains, acquire gambling medicines, and endure ordeals without speaking to anyone or drinking water on the return journey. Through these trials Isis accumulates great power, wisdom, and strength. He acquires the gambling medicine Tcok and receives gifts from petrified figures such as Mukus the owl, once the world's greatest gambler. When Kumush decides they should withdraw from the world to preserve Isis's purity, they settle on a high mountain, but two women, Skakas and Nada, find them and both desire Isis as a husband. Kumush devises a water-fetching contest. Skakas cheats by using nearby water. Nada proves herself genuinely swift and worthy. Kumush destroys Skakas by throwing her from the cliff, and Isis accepts Nada. Isis eventually acquires many wives. Kumush, consumed by desire for these wives, tricks Isis by sending him to retrieve eagle feathers from a towering nest. While Isis climbs the tree, Kumush speaks a word that causes the tree to grow impossibly tall, nearly reaching the sky, stranding Isis near death. Kumush takes Isis's clothes and identity and returns home, deceiving most of the wives. Only three wives, Kols, Wálwilegas, and Tcíkas, remain suspicious and faithful. Kols and Wálwilegas track Isis to the tree, and Wálwilegas, a butterfly, flies up in a basket to rescue him, feeds him, and carries him down. The two women nurse Isis back to health. Meanwhile Kumush, impersonating Isis at the gambling grounds, is exposed when the south wind lifts his blanket and reveals the disk fused to his back. Isis returns to the gathering place, his fire smoke rising straight to the sky unlike Kumush's crooked smoke, signaling his true identity. He summons his unfaithful wives by sheer will, burns their feet, and transforms them into ducks and water birds. He then throws Kumush into a great fire and burns him to ashes, but the disk survives, and at the call of the morning star Kumush revives. Isis realizes Kumush is immortal and cannot be destroyed. Isis wanders alone through the mountains singing a beautiful, untranslatable song. Kumush pursues him for years seeking reconciliation. When Kumush finally overtakes him, Isis refuses friendship, declaring that Kumush is no true father and expressing the wish that no future father will treat a son as he was treated. Kumush withdraws to Tula Lake. Isis transforms his three faithful wives into a butterfly, a badger, and a wren, and goes to live alone on the high mountain of Tcutgósi.

By Jeremiah Curtin · First published 1912 · Genre: Mythology, Folklore, Indigenous Literature · 6,938 words

First lines

CHARACTERS / Dásläts California lion / Djakkonus A duck / Dohos A duck / Dútûte A duck / Isis / Kai Jack rabbit / Kládo Duck / Kols Badger / Kumush / Látkakáwas / Lok Bear / Mówatwas South wind place people / Mukus Owl / Nada A bird / Skakas Free toad / Tcíkas Wren / Tókwa Mole / Wálwilegas Butterfly

Látkakáwas and her five brothers lived on the south side of Klamath Lake. The brothers went every day to fish from an island in the middle of the lake. Látkakáwas stayed at home; she gathered wiwhi seeds and burned the down from them to prepare them as food for her brothers and for herself.

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Látkakáwas is listed on Textopian as a short story by Jeremiah Curtin, dated 1912 CE.

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Native American mythology · Indigenous folklore · oral tradition · traditional tales · legends · myths · ethnography · cultural anthropology · California Indigenous peoples · Wintun culture · tribal narratives · creation stories

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