Kotharian Lightning

From Karuk Folklore

Long ago a person of Savari decided to go swimming. When he got to the river’s edge he looked around and spotted an egg lying on the sand. As he looked at it, he thought what a nice looking egg it appeared to be. He’d been told for many years about what a Long Snake egg looked like, and how it was the king of medicine, luck.

He picked up the egg, then carried it upslope to his living house. He put it on the bench above the yoram, his trunk, for it was said that many belongings will come to the egg.

“This must be a Long Snake egg,” he thought. And so he treated the egg well. Before long he was winning money all the time, so great had his luck become.

One morning he looked at the egg and found that it had hatched. Within the broken shell there sat a baby snake. And so that little snake became his pet. He used to invoke the snake while he was gambling, saying, “He is a good pet, my little snake.” For the snake was his money whenever he bet on the other side.

After a while he bought a woman to be his wife. By that time the snake had already grown large. It coils were on the yoram bench, and they reached into the bench below. It ate a great deal of food, salmon and deer meat. In time, the man’s wife gave birth to a baby girl. The snake was even bigger by that time, for every day it grew larger and larger.

After a while, the man and his wife grew to hate the snake, for it was too big. It helped itself to all the meats they had stored in the house, all of their dried salmon.

One morning, while the little girl was asleep in the baby basket and the man was in the sweatshop, the woman thought, “I’ll go get water.” She stood the baby basket up by the fireplace, then she hurried out. As she was returning to the house, a noise arose. She glanced down towards the river, and beheld the snake going down the slope, the baby’s head hoop sticking out of its mouth. When the snake leapt into the river, a mighty noise sounded.

The woman ran downslope, hoping that the baby had fallen out by the river. Yet, it was the serpent itself that had made the noise. It had swallowed the baby, and that was the end of it. Now the serpent made its home in the river, and only then did the man and woman understand. The Long Snake had become large, become mighty. They had made a pet out of a creature which could have eaten all the people within the house.

Source:

Karuk Indian Myths, John P. Harrington, 1932