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The Flood in World Myth and Folklore
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Arapaho

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An eye on the back of the neck is said to indicate that a person is a hiintcabiit, or horned water monster.

An old man, his wife, daughter, and little son lived near a river. The old man was sick and unable to hunt. Every day, the girl would go for water. One day, she found a dead rabbit. She wondered how it came to be there, but she brought it back home, and the old man was glad for the meat. Next morning, the girl found a dead antelope by the trail. Now she suspected something strange and made a hiding place to watch that night. Toward morning, a _wanou_ (a large wart) came rolling along. It laid an elk by the trail and said, "By now my food must be getting fat."

When it left, the girl ran to tell her parents what she had seen and heard. "It must be planning to catch us," she said. She told her family to prepare for traveling. When night came, she took a pair of old moccasins from her mother, her father, her brother, and herself and placed them under different tent poles. Then they fled. The wart brought a buffalo cow that morning and a buffalo bull the next, but seeing that the cow had not been moved, it realized the family was trying to escape. Thereupon it swallowed the cow and bull and went after them. First it went to their tent, but they were not there. It swallowed the tent and everything in it except the four pairs of old moccasins which had been hidden. Then it followed the family's trail.

When it had almost caught up with them, it heard the old man crying behind it, so it returned to the source of the noise, swallowed the man's moccasins, and went in pursuit again. The woman's, girl's and boy's moccasins called it back in the same way as it gained on them. At last the woman, and then the old man became exhausted, and the children, after brief but tearful goodbyes, went on without them. The boy also fell back. The wart caught and devoured all three.

As the girl ran through some woods, she found a man chopping wood. She said to him, "A powerful being is chasing me. Help me escape, and I will be your wife." The man said, "Continue fleeing. I cannot help you." Four time the girl asked him, and the fourth time he said, "Run around me four times."

Soon the wart came up to the man and said, "Where is my food?" The man said, "She went on." The wart went off but soon returned and asked again, and the man said the same thing. After the fourth time, the wart said, "Give me the girl, or I will devour you." The man had a third eye on the back of his neck. When the wart opened its mouth to swallow him, the man, who had been cutting a bow, wedged the bow in the wart's mouth. Four times the wart tried to swallow the bow, but it could not. "You are more powerful than me," the wart said. "Hit me in the middle." The man did so, and wart broke open. The old man and woman were already dead, and the boy died soon after.

The man asked the girl if she loved her brother, and when she said yes, he kicked the boy and said, "Get up, my brother-in-law." He did this four times, and the boy stood.

The boy's name was Beaver-foot. His sister's name was River-woman. The man took them to his home, where he had a wife called Crow-woman.

The man warned his new wife not to go out anywhere with Crow-woman, who was jealous. But when the others were out, Crow-woman urged the girl to go with her to a swing over a pool in the river. River-woman refused the first three times she was asked. In the meantime, she had a son. The fourth time, Crow-woman said, "I will make you come." The girl went, and when she swung on the rope, the rope broke, and she fell into the pool. Crow-woman said, "Here is your food, my grandfather." She had done this with all her husband's previous wives.

Crow-woman returned and told her husband that River-woman had insisted on swinging over the pond and had drowned when the rope broke. Beaver-foot took his sister's crying son down to the pond, dipping in his finger in hope of quenching the infant's thirst with water, but the baby was not quieted. Then there was a sudden wave, and his sister appeared above the water to her waist, riding on the neck of a hiintcabiit. Beaver-foot held the infant to her breast until it was satisfied; then he returned home.

All next day he wandered along the river carrying the crying child. Finally a man came who, hearing his story, offered to help him. The man told Beaver-foot, "Wait by the pool and, when the hiintcabiit comes, tell it that you want to see your sister once more, and you want to see her entire body." The man made a hiding place at the edge of the pool. The hiintcabiit appeared at daybreak, and the man speared it as it raised the girl fully into view. As the monster jumped back, the woman was thrown on the bank. Beaver-foot carried her back and put her in the sweathouse. He said, "Come out, my sister" four times, and she came out alive.

Some time later when the men were away, River-woman said to Crow-woman, "Let us go swinging." Crow-woman agreed, and when they reached the pool, River-woman held Crow-woman under the water until she was dead. Then she threw the body into the pool, saying, "Here is your food, my grandfather." When her husband returned, she told him what she had done. "It is well," he told her, but she saw that he mourned for his wife.

Next morning the husband noticed that the waters were rising, and he told the others. Beaver-foot said to them, "Give me black, yellow, white, and red paint, and go to the top of the tallest mountain." They went, and he caused the tent to reach the top of the mountain before them. He followed slowly. Four times the water nearly reached him, he hurried on a ways, and then he dallied again. At last he reached the tent. The water rose to the pegs of the tent. Beaver-foot put black paint on his right foot, yellow on this right shoulder, white on his left shoulder, and red on his left foot. Then he stretched out his right foot, right arm, left arm, and left foot, successively to the four directions, and the water retreated before them. Fish, turtles, frogs, and other water animals were left lying on the newly exposed land. Beaver-foot said, "Springs, rivers, streams, and lakes will occur where those are." And so it is today.

George A. Dorsey and Alfred L. Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho, Field Columbian Museum Publication 81, Anthropological Series vol. 5 (Chicago: Field Columbian Museum, 1903), 8-12.

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