Jicarilla Apache

(map)

Before the Apaches emerged from the underworld, there were other people on the earth. Dios told an old man and old woman that it would rain forty days and nights. People were warned to go to the tops of four mountains (Tsisnatcin, Tsabidzilhi, Becdilhgai, and another whose identity isn't known), and not to look at the flood or sky. The people didn't believe the old couple. When the rains came, only a few people made it to the mountain tops and shut their eyes. Those who looked at the flood turned into a fish or frog (as did some who were caught in the flood); if they looked at the sky, they turned into a bird. The people sitting on the mountains were told, when they got hungry, to think of food, and Dios would feed them. After eighty days, Dios told the 24 people remaining to open their eyes and come down. These 24 people went into 24 mountains. Eight other people survived the flood who were able to travel by looking where they wanted to go, and they were there. These people told the Apaches about the flood before going into two mountains themselves. Dios told them to stay there until the world is destroyed. Around the year 2000, when the Apaches dwindle in number, the surface of the earth will again be destroyed, this time by fire.

Opler, Morris Edward, Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians (New York: 1938; reprint, New York: Dover, 1994), 111-113.

When people still lived in the underworld, the chief, after an argument with his mother-in-law, decided that men and women should live apart for awhile, so the men all moved to the other side of a river, and the chief prayed to Kogulhtsude (a water spirit) to widen the river. They lived four years like this. The women's farms became less and less productive, and they began to go hungry. The men wanted sexual satisfaction and began some sexual perversions; the older girls, likewise affected, began to masturbate with elk horns, eagle feathers, and other things. These things impregnated them and produced the monsters that afterwards killed men. About that time, Coyote found a baby in a whirlpool in the river and took it out to raise himself. But the baby was Kogulhtsude's child, and he sent water out to draw it back. Some people were drowned and turned into frogs and fish; the other men and women escaped together to a tall mountain. Coyote used his magic to make the mountain grow, but the waters kept rising, finally overflowing onto this world. The people suspected Coyote was causing the trouble and found the baby hidden under his coat. They threw the baby (which was almost dead from drying) into the water, and the water receded. The people went down into the underworld again. When they later emerged, the surface of the earth was covered with water from that flood. The four Holy Ones made black, blue, yellow, and glittering hoops and threw them in each compass direction, and the water receded. They commanded the four winds to dry the land further.

Opler, Morris Edward, Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians (New York: 1938; reprint, New York: Dover, 1994), 265-268.

As the waters rose, a chief led his warriors into the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. When it became clear that even the mountain peaks would be submerged, the chief told his braves that, rather than let them drown ignominiously, he would turn then to stone. They are there guarding the heights even today.

Vitaliano, 1973, 170.