| |
Once he pretended that he could swim in the water and eat fish just as
the Otter did, and when the others told him to prove it he fixed up a plan
so that the Otter himself was deceived.
Soon afterward they met again and the Otter said, "I eat ducks sometimes."
Said the Rabbit, "Well, I eat ducks too."
The Otter challenged him to try
it; so they went up along the river until they saw several ducks in the
water and managed to get near without being seen. The Rabbit told the
Otter to go first. The Otter never hesitated, but dived from the bank and
swam under water until he reached the ducks, when he pulled one down
without being noticed by the others, and came back in the same way.
While the Otter had been under the water the Rabbit had peeled some bark
from a sapling and made himself a noose. "Now," he said, "Just watch me;"
and he dived in and swam a little way under the water until he was nearly
choking and had to come up to the top to breathe.
He went under again and
came up again a little nearer to the ducks. He took another breath and
dived under, and this time he came up among the ducks and threw the noose
over the head of one and caught it. The duck struggled hard and finally
spread its wings and flew up from the water with the Rabbit hanging on to
the noose.
It flew on and on until at last the Rabbit could not hold on any longer,
but had to let go and drop. As it happened, he fell into a tall, hollow
sycamore stump without any hole at the bottom to get out from, and there
he stayed until he was so hungry that he had to eat his own fur, as the
rabbit does ever since when he is starving. After several days, when he
was very weak with hunger, he heard children playing outside around the
trees. He began to sing:
Cut a door and look at me;
I'm the prettiest thing you ever did see.
The children ran home and told their father, who came and began to cut a
hole in the tree.
As he chopped away the Rabbit inside kept singing, "Cut it larger, so you
can see me better; I'm so pretty."
They made the hole larger, and then the Rabbit told them to stand back so
that they could take a good look as he came out. They stood away back, and
the Rabbit watched for his chance and jumped out and got away.
Click here to Return to the Native
American Myth and Folklore contents page
|
