The Dragonfly Brothers

Wili yowo. There is a house at the place the Rogue River flows wide and quiet, then mixes with the ocean, at the river's mouth where waves crash over sand bars, and in that house lives Daldal, the Giant Dragonfly with great blue wings and two heads.

Daldal stands on a hill overlooking the river. He sees bodies all cut through floating down the river, people with limbs all lopped off.

He says to himself, "Where do they come from? What is the matter?" For a long time people float down the river with their legs cut right through.

Daldal packs his things and starts walking upriver to find out who is killing people. A little ways up the trail he spots a lark. He pulls out his bow, fits an arrow and shoots. The arrow whizzes up and up and up, goes through the lark's nose, pierces his nose through the middle.

The lark says, "Thank you, nephew, I am glad you made this fine hole in my nose. But you'd better watch that arrow!"

The arrow whizzes down and down and down, comes straight down THUNK! between Daldal's two heads, goes all the way through his body and splits him in half.

Now there are two of them, Elder Daldal and Younger Daldal, the dragonfly brothers. And they both go upriver looking for who is cutting up people.

While they walk, Younger Daldal talks all the time. His feet go clunk! on this rock, clack! on that rock, and the only time you can't hear him half a forest away is when they pass a thundering rapids.

Elder Daldal is quiet. He hardly says a word. As they pass the slow, wide places in the river, his footsteps are as quiet as the flowing.

On their way they wrestle with all kinds of beings, each in his own way. They wrestle oaks bearing white acorns, oaks bearing black acorns, firs and pines and bushes and rocks. They wrestle all sorts of beings to make them strong.

Younger Daldal leaps full-bodied onto a tree and with a great lot of grunting and shouting, he pulls the tree, roots and all, from the ground. He tosses it into the river. "Hey, Big-nosed Daldal! Let's see you top that!"

Elder Daldal looks amused. He walks up to a tree and with sudden, intense eyes holds the tree so tight in his stare, the tree finally says, "Enough!"

In this way they travel upriver.

They arrive at a house. Inside, in the voice of an old woman, someone is saying, "Warrrm your back! Warrrm your back! Warrrm your back!"

Younger Daldal says, "Big-nosed Daldal, put on style. Stay out here in the cold if you want, I'm going inside."

He leaps onto the roof of the house, jumps down the smoke hole, and there is the old woman with her back to the fire. "Warrrm your back," she says.

Younger Daldal lies down by the fire. The old woman leaps up and rolls him toward the flames. Then she sits on him. It is in this way she likes to kill people.

Younger Daldal can't move at all. He calls out, "Oh, elder brother! I have blistered my back!"

Elder Daldal goes inside and kicks her off his brother. Then he says in a quiet voice, "Do you think you will be a woman? People will call you camas. You will grow in the meadows. You will not be a woman. You will be food."

Nowadays she can be seen blooming in the meadows along the river. She has become good food for the people.

Elder Daldal and Younger Daldal travel on up the Rogue River, sometimes walking alongside the crashing rapids, sometimes along the deep pools where the river flows slowly. Younger Daldal pulls trees out of the ground and Elder Daldal stares hard. Each does his own kind of wrestling to keep him strong.

Now they hear: tut tut tut tut tut.

"Well, Big-nosed Daldal, put on style. I'm going to go see what makes that noise."

Younger Daldal walks toward the sound until he sees a house. He jumps up on top and looks down the smoke hole. He sees two old women without eyes, blind, facing each other and pounding acorns: tut tut tut tut tut.

Younger Daldal reaches down and steals their food from on top of their house.

One of the women says, "Well, sister, did you eat it all up?" She says that to the other woman who says, "How so? Perhaps it was you who ate it all up."

Younger Daldal reaches down and ties their long hair together.

Now they start quarreling. One feels the other's hair pull and says, "Now she is fighting me." The other says the same thing and they take hold of each other's hair, jump at each other and bang their heads: TUT TUT TUT TUT TUT!

Younger Daldal starts laughing, rolling around on the roof of the house until he nearly rolls off. "Big-nosed Daldal, put on style. This is funny!" The two old women stop. "So it is him!"

They grab sharp sticks and start poking at him through the smoke hole. Then they jump up on the roof and are about to poke out his eyes when Younger Daldal screams, "Oh, elder brother!"

Elder Daldal climbs onto the roof and says, "So my grandmothers are without eyes." He takes the sharp sticks from them and goes inside. Younger Daldal takes off stumbling toward the trail.

Elder Daldal puts the points of the sticks into the fire until they are red hot. Then he crawls back on the roof and carefully puts the sharp sticks into each of their eye sockets: Fssst! Fssst! Fssst! Fssst!

"Now I have made you eyes," says Elder Daldal in a low voice. "Now look around you. See the trees and the river. Now you can see the world."

Elder Daldal leaves the two old women and continues up the trail.

He catches up with his younger brother and the two of them travel upriver together, now alongside the rapids, now past those pools that flow slowly.

They come to many houses where people have been killed. Sometimes Elder Daldal helps people out of trouble. Those who are causing the problems he turns into salmon spear shafts, morning and evening stars, echoes that move up and down the canyons, deer sinew to tie arrows with -- all things to help the people.

Each place they go, Younger Daldal says, "Big-nosed Daldal, put on style." Then he walks into trouble and a few minutes later he calls out, "Oh, elder brother! Come and help me!"

In this way they travel upriver, changing things.

They come across Coyote at the falls called Tilomikh. Coyote has snatched up a fishing net and is thinking, "I shall catch salmon in the river."

Coyote tosses the net into the river and pulls it out, but the net is full of mice. He throws the net back in and draws it out, but rabbits are all he catches! Again, he tosses the net. "Gophers?!"

Younger Daldal is laughing so hard the ground is shaking.

"Say, Coyote," says Elder Daldal. "It is not your place to catch salmon. People will net and spear salmon. They will catch salmon here at the falls where the river runs fast. And you, Coyote, you shall eat mice and rabbits and gophers as long as the world goes on."

Coyote goes on his way, poking his nose into holes, looking for someone to eat, thinking that someday he is going to change all that.

Farther upriver, Younger Daldal stops and Elder Daldal walks on ahead. When he gets to his place he whistles like a lark and the two brothers become flat-topped mountains along the Rogue River.

Younger Daldal is called Lower Table Rock, the one downriver towards the crashing ocean. And Elder Daldal is called Upper Table Rock, the one towards the beginning of the river where it gurgles out of the ground.

Nowadays, in the twilight of a fall evening, anyone walking the trail from the river up the slope of either Table Rock, might walk through buzzing swarms of giant dragonflies, so many that the air turns blue and loud. But up on top, the world is quiet.