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Source: Frank Russell, Myths of the
Jicarilla Apaches, 1898
There was once an old Apache who went begging from camp to camp every
evening. His wife tried to reform the old beggar by playing a trick upon
him.
One night during his absence she fetched a bleached horse's
pelvis into the tipi, and painted it so that it somewhat resembled a
face.
The old man came home about midnight, and beheld, as he
thought, the head of a monster glaring at him in the bright moonlight
from the door of the lodge.
Twice the woman held up the pelvis, when he turned in
terror-stricken flight, calling, "Help, help! Something has killed my
woman. Bring spears, bring arrows!"
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With a spear he cautiously lifted the side of the tipi, but his wife threw
out the bone at the back, and he could not discover the cause of the
apparition.
The next night he went out to beg again. He found plenty of
buffalo meat at one of the lodges, some of which was given him to carry
home. There were several horses lying outside the lodge, and the old man
mistook one of them for a log, and jumped upon its back. The frightened
horse rose under him, and soon succeeded in bucking him off.
As the Indians came out of the tipi to investigate the
cause of the stampede of the ponies, the old man said, "I told you long
ago to break this horse, and now I must do it myself!" Thus avoiding, in
some measure, their ridicule, he groped about until he found his meat
again, and then hastened home.
The next morning he decided to move his camp. His family
formed a large party, and he wished to precede them on the march. His
sons were alarmed, and told him that the Cheyenne would kill and scalp
him.
"Oh, no," said he, "nobody will attack a warrior like me,"
and he walked on ahead of the others.
His three sons painted their faces black and white, so that
they were no longer recognizable, and then ran around in front of their
father. As they ran toward him he shot all his arrows, but was too
frightened to shoot straight.
The young men caught him; one ran his fingernail around his
scalp, while another placed a fresh buffalo's heart on the old man's
head. The blood from the heart ran down his face, and he thought he was
scalped.
His sons allowed him to go back toward the party; on the
way he came to a river, where he stooped to drink, and saw the reflected
image of the raw flesh upon his head. He was then sure that he had been
scalped, and sat down to die.
His sons made signs to him to cross the river and go back.
Again frightened by their gestures, he ran until he reached the women,
who all laughed at his story of being scalped by the Cheyenne.
The sons had explained the joke to their mother, and when
the old man appealed to his wife for sympathy she only laughed at him, as
he sat and shook with fear before her. At last they pulled off the strange
head-covering, and a fresh burst of ridicule of the "brave warrior"
followed.
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