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5. The Devil Who Died Laughing

Karuk 1950 Mamie Offield, narrator William Bright, collector and translator

INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM BRIGHT

My principal fieldwork on the Karuk language (previously called “Karok”) was done in the spring of 1949 and the summer of 1950. During the latter period, in search of Karuk speakers who could tell traditional stories, I visited Mrs. Mamie Offield, an elderly woman living at her summer home on the slope of Mount Offield, near Somes Bar, in Siskiyou County. (During the winters, she lived in Los Angeles.) Some years before, she had served as a translator and consultant for the ethnographic fieldwork of Professor Edward W. Gi ord, of Berkeley; people told me that she knew a lot, but that she was “kinda mean”—that is, unfriendly or uncooperative. I was apprehensive, but in fact she proved to be knowledgeable, friendly, and very cooperative. During that summer she dictated eighteen stories and helped me translate them. Most were myths, about the deeds of Coyote and the other Ikxaréeyavs—the First People who inhabited the earth before humans came into existence. But others were stories with human characters—sometimes involving

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supernatural occurrences, but believed to have happened in “modern” times.

Among these, the anecdote that I have called “The Devil Who Died Laughing” has always been one of my favorites. It involves no superhuman characters and no moral lesson: it's simply a funny story, which I have enjoyed retelling, and my Karuk friends have enjoyed hearing, for the last forty years. Years ago, I published the text (Bright 1957:274–75; there is a photo of Mrs. Offield on page 155) in a technical transcription system for linguists and other specialists. The spelling for Karuk used in this introduction is a more practical system, which I have recently developed for the Karuk tribe's language program.

To understand the story, one needs to know what the Indians of Northwestern California mean by a “devil” (Karuk apurúvaan). The term has nothing to do with demons from Hell, but rather refers to sorcerers: human beings, male or female, who practice malicious magic. (One could use the term “witch” except for the female connotation of the English word.) Devils get their power from magical objects called ápuroon ‘ devil machines’; armed with these, they prowl around human dwellings at night, sometimes emitting machnat, or small flashes of light (will-o'-the-wisps?), spying on the inhabitants and choosing their victims.

In Mamie Offield's story, a pair of devils come to spy on a man and his wife, who are occupying a temporary house in an acorn-gathering area. But the devils get a surprise and never have a chance to practice their sorcery. Stories in which devils are thwarted seem to be a recognized genre; Mrs. Offield told me three such stories on a summer afternoon in 1950 (see Bright 1957:274–77). The humor of such stories is perhaps enhanced by being at the expense of a hated and feared class of people; we might imagine a similar modern story in which the prowlers were tax collectors.

In spite of its secular nature, the story shows an ethnopoetic structure similar to that of Karuk myths and other narratives. It consists of fourteen “verses,” most of which begin with a sentence-initial particle construction—usually kári xás ‘and then’, indicating sequentiality. As is typical in Karuk storytelling, the initial verse lacks this element. The following central passage shows a variation in the use of initial particles: verses 11–12, at the climax of the action, begin not with kári xás, but with the word hínupa indicating a surprise, translatable as ‘and there … !’ This

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initiates a kind of freeze-frame e ect: the sequence of actions is suspended and previously unknown features of the situation are revealed.

5	Kári xás chámuxich ú-ykar.
	And then sucker he caught it.
	And then (the husband) caught a sucker.

6	Kári xás pa-asiktávaan u-piip, “Chími kan-thimn$uCup-i.”
	And then the woman she said, “(intention) I'll roast it.”
	And then the woman said, “I'm going to roast it.”

7	Kári xás u-thímnup, pa-chámuxich.
	And then she roasted it, the sucker.
	And then she roasted it, that sucker.

8	Kári xás pá-faan u-yhúku-rishuk.
	And then the guts she ripped them out.
	And then she ripped out the guts.

9	Kári xás pa-mukun-ikrívraam u-súru-ruprin-ahi-ti, yítha-kan.
	And then their house there was a hole through, at one place.
	Now then, there was a hole through their house-wall, at a certain place.

10	Kári xás vaa kaan u-ákith-rupri, pá-faan.
	And then that there she flung them through, the guts.
	And then she flung them through that hole, those guts.

11	Hínupa vaa káan u-t-n$uCuprih-ti, yítha pa-apurúvaan.
	And there that there he was peeking through, one the devil.
	And there he was peeking through that hole, a certain devil!

12	Hínupa yúp-yaach t-u-ákith-tir.
	And there smack in the eye she had flung them.
	And there she had flung them right smack in his eye!

Apart from the initial particle constructions, features of ethnopoetic structure in this passage include the following:

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Word Order

There is regular alternation of preverbal and postverbal position for nouns to indicate new and old information, respectively. Thus we have, in verses 5–7, “He caught a sucker [new]—And then she roasted it, that sucker [old]”; then, in verses 8–10, “She ripped out the guts [new]—And then she flung them through that hole, those guts [old].” Along with the repeated kári xás, this pattern suggests an atmosphere of routine activity or “business as usual,” serving as a background to the surprise that comes in verses 10–11.

Repetition

There is repetition of the verbal suffix meaning ‘through a hole’, with the three variants -ruprin ~ -rupri ~ -n$uCuprih: (9) “There was a hole through their house-wall”; (10) “She flung them through that hole, those guts”; (11) “He was peeking through that hole.” Apart from the poetic echo e ect of the partial phonetic repetition, the reiterated semantic element gives extra cohesion to the narrative at this point of climax.

For a translation of this text, I would have liked to present Mrs. Offield's own English version, but unfortunately, I have not preserved that—either in a verbatim transcript, or in an audio recording—so I've done my best to reproduce features of her colloquial storytelling style, as I remember it: short sentences, informal but totally clear vocabulary and syntax, and certain Karuk stylistic devices such as the movement of old-information noun phrases to the end of the sentence (“And then she roasted it, that sucker”). Where the Karuk text uses repetition, I've tried to reproduce that faithfully in English. Finally, at several points where the Karuk uses vocabulary items that are highly distinctive, semantically or phonologically, I've attempted to find correspondingly colorful English vocabulary. Thus, in verse 8, the verb-form uyhúkurishuk means ‘she pulled (something) out’ but can refer only to the guts of an animal; I translate “she ripped out the guts.” In verses 10 and 12, the verb stem ákith means not simply ‘to throw’ but ‘to throw something soft’—such as mud, dough, or (in this case) fish guts; I propose the translation

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“to fling.” In verse 12, the alliterative yúp-yaach, literally ‘eye-ex-actly’, suggests not just ‘right in the eye’ but the more vivid “smack in the eye.”

FURTHER READING

For an overview of Karuk culture, see William Bright's article “Karok” in the California volume of the Smithsonian Handbook. Concerning sorcery in Native Northwest California, see William J. Wallace and J.S. Taylor's article, “Hupa Sorcery.” A Karuk grammar, text collection, and dictionary are presented by Bright's The Karok Language. For ethnopoetic analyses of Karuk narrative, see Bright's “A Karuk Myth in ‘Measured Verse’” and “Coyote's Journey,” both collected in American Indian Linguistics and Literature; see also Dell Hymes's “Particle, Pause, and Pattern in American Indian Narrative Verse.”

THE DEVIL WHO DIED LAUGHING

	A lot of people were gathering acorns,
	up in the mountains,
	in acorn season.

	And then they had gone home,
	all those people.

	Only one man was left,
	he and his wife.

	And then he said,
	“I think I'll go spear some fish.”

And then he caught a sucker.

	And then the woman said,
	“I'm going to roast it.”

	And then she roasted it,
	that sucker.

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And then she ripped out the guts.

	Now then, there was a hole in their house-wall,
	at a certain place.

	And then she flung them through that hole,
	those guts.

	And there he was peeking through that hole,
	a certain devil!

And there she had flung them right smack in his eye!

And then that other devil burst out laughing.

	And then he just laughed himself to death;
	the next day his friend saw him,
	he was lying there,
	he was still laughing,
	even though he was dead.

So then the other one told what happened.