Näníhläs by Jeremiah Curtin (1912)
"Näníhläs," collected by Jeremiah Curtin, is a Native American myth featuring the Näníhläs brothers, small bat-like men of supernatural cunning and power, and their encounters with other mythic figures in a world where animals and elemental forces take human or semi-human form. The story opens with two Näníhläs brothers and their sister living together. Unable to hunt deer by conventional means, the brothers dig a pit trap. When they catch a deer, they refuse to shoot it, wishing to preserve the hide intact for their sister's dress. Instead, they attempt to choke the deer bare-handed. The deer escapes the pit and drags both brothers through rough mountain terrain, tearing their clothing and scratching their bodies before each eventually loses his grip. The brothers quarrel bitterly over who let go first, then reconcile. On their way home they encounter a group of women carrying baskets of roots. They stage a theatrical quarrel, chewing burnt fungus and rubbing it on their faces to appear frightening, causing the women to flee and abandon their baskets. The brothers laugh, collect the roots, and return home. They then travel to visit their sister, who lives across Klamath Lake and is married. Finding her weeping because she has nothing to feed them, and with only fish bones to pound, the younger brother concentrates hard and transforms the fish bones into sweet seeds through the power of thought. The brothers proceed to stir up a fight among the village's young men, engineering a situation in which the chief's son is shot in the eye. While the entire village rushes to witness the commotion, the brothers ransack every house, stealing blankets, beads, and all valuables. They compress their plunder into tiny packs hidden under their fingernails, take their sister into a canoe, and flee. The robbed villagers pursue them in canoes and begin to close the gap. The younger brother conjures a thick sheet of ice that traps the pursuers' canoes. When the pursuers abandon their boats and give chase on foot, he melts the ice suddenly, drowning them all. The brothers and their sister return home safely. The brothers then turn their power toward controlling the entire deer population. The younger brother thinks the feat into existence and creates a vast pit into which every deer in the world is driven and imprisoned. With no deer remaining in the wild, the surrounding hunters, including Blaiwas the Eagle and Kaiutois the Wolf, begin to starve. Maûk the Fly uses his acute sense of smell to trace the missing deer to the brothers' dwelling. The hunters send Múkus the Owl to spy on them. Sitting by the brothers' fire and feigning deep sleep, Múkus endures being poked with a stick in the nose and having a live coal placed on his head without flinching. Convinced he is truly unconscious, the brothers open the pit to retrieve a deer for themselves. Múkus observes everything and reports back to the hunters in precise detail: the pit is sealed by five enormous rocks that the brothers move using thought alone. The hunters seek out a figure called Tcúititi and hire him to destroy the rocks. Tcúititi accomplishes this by repeatedly flying up into the sky and hurtling himself downward against each rock in turn, shattering all five with five separate dives. The pit broken open, the deer stampede out and scatter across the entire world. The waiting hunters select the largest bucks as they pass and make their kills. The brothers, outwitted and outmaneuvered, make no further attempt to imprison the deer, and the natural order of hunting is restored.
By Jeremiah Curtin · First published 1912 · Genre: Folklore, Myth, Fantasy · 1,523 words
First lines
CHARACTERS / Blaiwas Eagle / Kaiutois Wolf / Näníhläs Bat / Maûk Fly / Múkus Owl
Two Näníhläs brothers and their sister lived together. The brothers were small men. They had no way of killing deer, so they tried to trap them. They dug a hole so deep that if a deer fell into it, it couldn't get out. [17]
What this Textopian page supports
Näníhläs is listed on Textopian as a fable by Jeremiah Curtin, dated 1912 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Fable
- Author: Jeremiah Curtin
- Date: 1912 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Folklore, Myth, Fantasy, Adventure, Fable
- Length: 1,523 words
- Structure: 1 section, 30 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Näníhläs by Jeremiah Curtin
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph
Genres
- Folklore — The narrative is explicitly presented as a traditional Native American story from the Klamath people, featuring anthropomorphic animal characters and magical elements characteristic of oral folklore traditions.
- Myth — The story contains mythological elements explaining natural phenomena and the origins of how things came to be, such as the dispersal of deer across the world and the establishment of power dynamics between supernatural beings.
- Fantasy — The narrative heavily features magical realism with characters possessing supernatural powers such as telekinesis, transformation of objects, and the ability to control weather and natural elements.
- Adventure — The plot involves a series of quests and challenges including deer hunting, village theft, pursuit by enemies, and confrontation with rival hunters, creating an episodic adventure narrative.
Tags
Native American folklore · Modoc mythology · indigenous oral tradition · traditional stories · ethnography · anthropology · mythology · cultural heritage · California indigenous peoples · Oregon indigenous peoples · creation myths · legendary narratives