Dy-yoh-wi and His Eagle (Native American Folk Tale)

Once upon a time an Indian boy, Dy-yoh-wi, had an eagle. When Dy-yoh-wi went out to hunt rabbits and other small animals for food for his eagle, the people in the village were mean to the eagle. They treated it so unkindly that the eagle grew unhappy. One day he said to Dy-yoh-wi: “Go put on your war clothes and I will take you up to live among the eagles. It is pleasanter up there than here.”

Di-yoh-wi did not like to leave his people; but the eagle insisted, so he did as he was bid. Then the eagle took him on his back and flew four times around the plaza. While they were flying around, Dy-yoh-wi cried and sang for he felt so sad.

The people heard him singing. They came out of their houses in time to see the eagle fly away to the cliffs with him. When his father and mother heard what had happened, they wept and moaned.

Dy-yoh-wi was not very happy, either, up among the eagles. His eagle did everything to make him happy. He took Dy-yoh-wi to visit in all the other eagles” houses. He flew down among the Navaho Indians and brought back clothes and skins for him; but still Dy-yoh-wi was homesick.

Two spiders saw that he was sad, so they took him down on their web one day to their home in the valley. While he was there he hunted deer to the north, the south, the east and the west. He ate and ate and then saved some of the meat for his eagle. The spiders spread the skins out in the sunshine and pulled all of the hairs out of them. Then they told Dy-yoh-wi that when he left the cliff he should stick a needle through the skins and see what he could make. That was the way they taught Dy-yoh-wi that he could make clothes and shoes out of buckskin; for the Indians had not known the use of buckskin before.

But Dy-yoh-wi was not happy with the spiders either, so the eagle came down and took him up again to his home on the cliffs.

“You cannot be happy here, Dy-yoh-wi,” said the eagle to him one day,” and I cannot be happy with your people, so now I will let you go home and you must let me stay here.”

So Dy-yoh-wi took all the things that the eagle had gotten for him from the Navahos, and all of his deer skins and tied them in a bundle on his back. Then the eagle took him to the bottom of the cliff and he walked home.

His people saw him coming and ran to tell his father and mother. They all rushed out to meet him and there was great rejoicing over Dy-yoh-wI's return.

Dy-yoh-wi grew to be a great man. He taught his people how to make clothes and moccasins of buckskin and never again caught another eagle.

Note: Seama, a Laguna Pueblo