One time there was a man who gambled all the time. He played the hoop and pole game and every other game. But he had no luck and lost all he had.
He had a companion and pet, a turkey, and this turkey followed him around wherever he went.
One time when he was away his relatives were talking about him. The turkey was there lying around and heard all that was said.
These relatives said, “We’ll give him one more chance. If he loses all we give him this time, we’ll kill him.”
The turkey heard this and went straight to his partner. The turkey told him all that his brother had said.
The gambler talked to his turkey. “What are we to do now?”
The turkey said, “Let us go away, and I’ll help you in some way.”
The man came home first. His brother wanted to give him some more things with which to gamble, but he wouldn’t take them. He went away without telling the others where he was going.
He went to the river. He asked Beaver for an ax [Beaver figures as the lender of the ax because he can fell trees]. “When I get through I’ll bring it back. I just want to use it for a few days.” The beaver let him have it.
He went up the hill and he found a spruce tree close to the river. He tried to chop it down. He chopped and chopped. He had it almost cut down when the sun was about to set. He was very tired. He left it and went away. The next day he came back again. The ax was there. But the tree was just as it had been before he started chopping. He began to work at it again. He chopped all day. He nearly had it chopped down at sunset and he stopped, for he was very tired. When he came back the next day the tree was as before; there was not a trace of his chopping. It happened just the same the third day.
So he came back the fourth morning. He saw the tree was whole again. He started to chop once more. Then he heard a voice.
“What are you doing to my tree? Why do you try to chop it down?”
He was a little frightened. He looked around. Black Hactcin was there.
“I want to use your tree to ride down the stream to the place where it runs into another river,” he said.
Black Hactcin said, “How large do you want it?”
“Just large enough to fit me, just as high as I stand.”
Hactcin said, “Let me have that ax.”
He hit the tree and it fell at one stroke. Then he measured off the proper length and hit it again, and with one stroke it was severed there. Then he took the top part of the tree that was not wanted and placed it back in the earth, and the trunk and the tree grew as before.
That is why the Indians say you must not cut a tree without prayer to Black Hactcin, for all trees belong to him.
Then this man turned around. He asked Black Hactcin for further help. “Do you know how to hollow this log out for me?”
“I can’t do that, but I can send someone who can help you with it.”
So he called the woodpeckers, all the different kinds, and told them to help this man. And Black Hactcin told this man, “While they are working you had better go out and look for payment for them, for something to give them.”
So the man went around looking for beads to give them. That is why people who do things for you must be paid today. He gathered up turquoise, narrow white beads, abalone, and assorted beads, jet beads, white beads, yellow beads, and varicolored beads. He collected them all there. He came back with them. By that time the woodpeckers were all finished. In a few minutes they had hollowed out the whole log.
Black Hactcin asked for cornflowers. That was going to be his pay. Now all the work was finished and the laborers sat in a row. The man began to pass out all the beads. That is why these birds have all these colors. Some received blue beads and became that color, some obtained red heads this way. He gave Black Hactcin the cornflowers too. When he had gone back to eat he had seen his pet, the turkey, and Turkey had the cornflowers. So he gave these to Black Hactcin.
Then when all was ready he said, “Now what am I going to do?” He rolled the log down to the river. The woodpeckers went away. Black Hactcin went back too. But the turkey was with him and the turkey had power and knew things too.
Then the turkey said, “You must ask Spider to help you. You must call on Black Spider, Blue Spider, Yellow Spider, and Glittering Spider.”
So he called on those spiders.
The woodpeckers had bored in from one side, and so this side remained open. That is the place the man was to enter.
The spiders were standing there. Then the turkey told the man to call on Green-Backed Swallow. The swallow came. Then the man went into the log. The spiders began to work. Each one made a web; the first was black, the second blue, the third yellow, and the fourth glittering. With these they covered the entrance. The swallow then brought mud and covered the hole so the water wouldn’t leak through.
Before he went in, though, the man returned the ax to Beaver. And he told Beaver, “When I get in, you must roll the log down to the water.”
So Beaver did and the log began to travel down the stream. It floated for a long way. The turkey followed it along the bank. The log traveled for four days and was halted on four separate occasions by those in the water.
The first time it was Water Monster who held the log back. It happened in the middle of the day. The turkey was there. These asked for some pay. Turkey had nothing but fruit. He gave them fruit and they allowed the log to continue. After traveling for a long time the log was stopped by Otter. He, too, wanted something before he would allow the log to go on. The turkey did the same thing as before and the otter let the log go. Then the log floated down till the third day. This day it was Beaver who stopped it. Turkey did as he had done before and the log was released. The fourth day something in the water called Kabaskin stopped the log. [Kabaskin is the water-being that symbolizes the waters around the earth. He is represented in a ground-drawing of the Bear Dance as an elongated border figure.] Turkey again paid and the log was released. The water always wants a present; if you have pollen it wants some of it. It wants pay. That’s why it held the log four times. The log went on till it met the whirlpool.
When the log got to a certain place Turkey called, “Father, already we are here.”
So the man got out. The log was in a whirlpool and was whirling around. It wouldn’t go any further. So he got out. They left that log there and started to walk along the bank. The river was too wide to cross. On the other side of the river they saw a big mountain.
At this time Turkey gave this man his name. It was Man-Who-Floated-on-the-Water.
The man was wishing. “I wish we could have a garden here. This is a good place. I wish we had the seeds.” He was just thinking this in his mind. But Turkey said, “Don’t think that only. Why don’t you say it? I can give you those seeds.”
There was a fine level place there, a good place for planting. Turkey stood to the east of it. He shuffled along the east side of that field. On that side a great deal of black corn seeds were left.
Then he went around to the south in the same way. Blue corn seeds lay there. They came from the body of the turkey. Then Turkey went to the west in the same way and yellow corn seeds were there. He did it next at the north, and fruit and vegetable and tobacco seeds were there.
He told the man to get busy, and the man began planting the seeds with a sharp stick. After the work was over they made a camp by the garden. The man’s bed was made of nothing but turkey feathers, feathers of his pet that had fallen out.
They stayed there till the garden was all grown. In those days the gardens grew more rapidly. The plants matured in twelve days.
Every evening after that the man was facing the east, sitting there with his companion. One evening he saw a light on the other side of the river. The next morning he thought, “Who can be making a camp on the other side of the river?” He went over there but could find nothing.
It happened in the same way the next night. But again he could find nothing the next morning. Then the third night he saw it again. By this time he already had tobacco in his pocket from the tobacco plants he had raised. The next morning he failed to find anything though.
The fourth night he saw the light again. This time he brought a forked stick and set it in the ground. He pointed the crotch straight to the fire. Now he was sure he could find it the next day.
He went over in the direction to which his forked stick pointed. As he approached the place he saw a young woman washing buckskin clothes at a spring. The cicada was sitting there in the leaves.
As he came to the woman, a point on the inside of his ear spoke to him. It said, “You must ask the cicada to let you have his flute.” [Cicada and the flute are associated and both are connected with the practice of love charms.]
He spoke to the cicada and asked him for it. The cicada gave him the flute. It was divided along its length into the four colors. He came to the girl with this flute in his hand and started to blow on it. He used it in the same way as the cicada does.
The girl looked around. She wondered what the peculiar sound could be. He had blown it the first time. Then he blew it again. She arose this time and searched about in the leaves and all over the place where she had sat.
“That is a sweet sound,” she said.
The third time she was very eager to learn the source of the noise. She was delighted with it, but she could find nothing. He blew it the fourth time.
She pulled her dress up then, for the music made her very much excited [her excitement was sexual in nature]. She looked and looked and looked, and finally she found him. There stood the man who had made the noise.
When she saw him she picked up the clothes she had been washing and ran straight for a rock wall. She went right in as though a door were there. The point on the man’s ear told him, “You must follow closely.” He did so. He went in the mountain also. He followed her.
After a while he found a camp. There an old woman and an old man were sitting.
The woman, as soon as she saw him, said, “Oh, here is my son-in-law. I’d better hide,” and she ran away.
That is why among these people the mother-in-law cannot see her son-in-law and hides from him. It started at this place.
The old man who was sitting there was called Animal-Raiser. This old man, when he spoke to the boy, used the polite form. That is why the father-in-law uses that form now when he speaks to his son-in-law.
The old man said, “Come in, make yourself at home.”
The young man sat down. He said to Animal-Raiser, “Give me a smoke of tobacco.” Animal-Raiser prepared some tobacco and put it in a pipe. He drew on it and then handed it to the boy. The boy took a puff of it, but he didn’t like it. It was made of a big odorous plant called “big leaf,” that grows among the rocks. “How is it you do not like my tobacco?” He smoked it himself. Then after a while the boy fixed his own tobacco. The old man begged, “Won’t you give me some?” He spoke in the polite form.
The boy handed the pipe to him. He took one deep puff and fell down. It was so sweet and good that he was overcome. It was just as it is with a child who has eaten too much of something sweet. The boy took the pipe out of his hand as he lay there and puffed on it and blew the smoke on the old man’s right foot, then his right hand, then on the top of his head, then on the left hand, and then on his left foot. At that the old man recovered and arose again. The old man said, “This is the best tobacco I ever have known.”
The boy smoked it for a while and then passed it to the old man. They passed it back and forth like this till it was all used up.
The old man said, “Whenever you come here again you must bring tobacco like this for me to smoke.”
Then the boy went out and went back to his turkey.
The next time he came that way he brought with him some corn, some tobacco, some pumpkins, and some bread. He gave these as a present to the old man. The old man was very grateful.
This family had never used those things before. Before this they had had no fruit nor vegetables. The young man gave them some of the products of his garden and they gave him some meat. They exchanged gifts and were friends. Soon after this he married Animal-Raiser’s daughter.
The turkey was very proud because his father was being married. He told all the people, “Now we’ll have plenty of meat, for my father is marrying Animal-Raiser’s daughter.”
The people were all glad to hear what Turkey said.
Animal-Raiser had many animals of all kinds in that mountain. He let them graze, as they do sheep now, in a flock, and they were tame and gentle with him. There were animals out in the world at this time, but they were few and not enough for the people.
The men who know this story well are the ones who know Deer or one of the game animals. They are the ones who have the best success at hunting and always have plenty to eat. They have songs and prayers to go with this story.
The young man who married Animal-Raiser’s daughter came to live with her people. [Matrilocal residence is still the rule among the Jicarilla.] He showed those people how to use the plants and fruits, and they showed him how to use meat. That is why these Apaches use both now.
The deer and other animals there were very tame and gentle. They stayed around the camps of the people all the time and when the people wanted meat they had only to call the animals. Among the people there was one silly woman. She lived by herself. All the other people were careful about what they said to Deer and how they treated Deer and they advised her to be that way too.
But one day she made a shade out of fresh green brush. A deer came and ate of it. The next day she made another shade, but that night Deer came and ate the leaves again. This happened several times until she became very angry. The next time the Deer came she drove him away. She picked up a fire poker and hit him on the face with it. The marks can still be seen today. And she said, “After this you’d better smell me and keep away.”
The deer ran away. The day after that it came back, but stayed a little while only. The second day it came but stayed some distance from the camps. The third day it came around, but not very close. The woman was hungry for meat now and called to Deer to come.
But Deer, too, was angry. “You hit me and drove me away,” he said. “After this you will not see me around your camp. I’ll smell you and stay away. And you, for what you have done, shall have a hard time. It will not be easy for you to get meat.” And he went away.
The fourth day he did not come at all, and though she called to him she could not find him. After that the deer went away from that place and spread all over the mountains. Deer did not come near the camps of people again. After that deer were shy and could smell the people from a distance.