Haga the fisherman found a great sturgeon that had been cast upon a rock by his enemy the hawk. The sturgeon spoke with a human voice and told Haga that if he returned him to the lake, he would have a limitless bounty of fish thereafter. Although Haga was starving, he did as he was asked. The very next day, Haga caught a sturgeon. The fish spoke to him, telling Haga to eat his flesh but to place his bones in a deerskin. This was done exactly as the sturgeon had told him and unexpectedly the next morning a child was found in the deerskin. This child was named "River Child."

There was a great green (tco) Waterspirit living in Devils Lake (De Wákâtcâk, "Holy Lake"). [below] Every year this Waterspirit demanded from the Hotcâgara a sacrifice of their most beautiful maiden. That year, she was the chief's daughter. One day while River Child was swimming, he followed a beaver to the very spot where Haga had found the sturgeon. The sturgeon appeared to River Child and they talked a long while. The Spirit Fish revealed to his child that the seven-headed green Waterspirit had a peculiar vulnerability: a weapon thrust through the corner of the left eye of his center head would strike his pebble-sized brain.

As he was walking home, River Child met an old woman who immediately recognized him. She told him that he was destined to fulfill an ancient prophesy of mysterious meaning: "The river shall swallow the lake." She arranged to supply him with warriors, but in the strictest secrecy, for she feared that the chief would veto the scheme, inasmuch as attempts to kill the Waterspirit had never succeeded. And they kept it secret from the medicine men as well, for many thought them to be in league with the Waterspirit.

At sundown when the maiden was to be sacrificed, and just as the green Waterspirit rose up, the warriors opened fire at his vulnerable eye but to no avail. Without hesitation, River Child jumped in the water, luring the Waterspirit beneath his net, then spread walnut husks whose foul juices caused the Waterspirit so much distress that he surfaced right into the net. River Child, after a great struggle, drove his knife into the Waterspirit's vulnerable eye and killed him. The young man, now a celebrated hero, married the chief's daughter and they built a village at a place called "Old River Bottom." However, the ghostly shrieks of the Waterspirit could be heard every time that a thunderstorm approached, so in the end the Hotcâgara had to abandon this village. [1]

Commentary. "sturgeon" -- in this story, a sturgeon is born into a Hotcâk family as the hero River Child. A rather remote connection between sturgeons and the Hotcâk people is the strange homonym in Lakota: Ho-tâ´-ke, "Hotcâgara," and ho´-tâ-ka, "sturgeon" (lit. "great-fish"). [2]

"Devils Lake" -- this Devils Lake is the one located in Sauk County, Wisconsin. The Hotcâk name of the lake means "Holy Lake," presumably a reference to the strong presence there of Waterspirits. High bluffs with strange rock formations wall the lake in and restrict the sunlight on the lake to a mere 5 hours a day, contributing to a sense of a sinister presence. Sounds echo strangely off these precipices, contributing further to the sense that supernatural forces are at work. [3]

We learn from the waikâ The Green Waterspirit of the Wisconsin Dells (qv) that the Waterspirit that created the Dells disappeared into Devil's Lake. Presumably, the green Waterspirit of this story is one and the same.

"walnut husks" -- the Osage use the bark and leaves of the walnut tree as bait on their fish hooks [4], which suggests that the story, which was filtered through a white man, may be slightly in error as to the function of the walnut husks: rather than repelling the Waterspirit, the juice probably attracted him, bringing him to the surface.Links:

Comparative Material: An episode in a Kickapoo story is similar to our Hotcâk tale. A young man in his travels meets a young woman that he wants to marry. However, this woman, like many women of her village, was carried off by a giant, ten-headed manitou. The young man sought this manitou out, and after a struggle in which he was aided in spirit by his animal friends, he slew the monster. He married the woman he rescued, and brought all the other captives who had died at the hands of the monster back to life. [5]

Links: Waterspirits, Devil's Lake, Fish Spirits, Traveler.

Stories: in which Waterspirits occur as characters: Waterspirit Clan Origin Myth, Traveler and the Thunderbird War, The Green Waterspirit of Wisconsin Dells, The Lost Child, Bluehorn's Nephews, Holy One and His Brother, The Seer, The Mulberry Picker, The Creation of the World (vv. 1, 4), The Sioux Warparty and the Waterspirit of Green Lake, The Waterspirit of Lake Koshkonong, The Waterspirit of Rock River, The Boulders of Devil's Lake, Devil's Lake -- How it Got its Name, Old Man and White Feathers, The Diving Contest, The Lost Blanket, Redhorn's Sons, Îtcorúcika and His Brothers, Great Walker's Warpath, White Thunder's Warpath, The Descent of the Drum, The Shell Anklets Origin Myth, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, Snowshoe Strings, The Thunderbird, Hare Retrieves a Stolen Scalp (v. 2), The Two Children, The Twins Join Redhorn's Warparty, Earthmaker Sends Rucewe to the Twins, Paint Medicine Origin Myth, Warughápara, Ocean Duck, The Twin Sisters, Trickster Concludes His Mission, The King Bird, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, Great Walker's Medicine, V. 2, Peace of Mind Regained, How the Thunders Met the Nights, The Boy who was Captured by the Bad Thunderbirds, The Shaggy Man, The Woman who Married a Snake (?), Hare Secures the Creation Lodge, Ghost Dance Origin Myth I; featuring (spirit) fish as characters: The Man who went to the Upper and Lower Worlds, The Were-Fish, The Greedy Woman, Wolves and Humans, The Great Fish, The Spirit of Maple Bluff, Lake Wâkcikhomîgra (Mendota): the Origin of Its Name, The King Bird, Fish Clan Origins, The Blessing of a Bear Clansman, Trickster's Adventures in the Ocean, Otter Comes to the Medicine Rite, Hare Visits the Bodiless Heads; featuring sturgeons as characters: Redhorn's Father, Wolves and Humans, The Great Fish, The Twin Sisters, see also White Flower; about man-fish: The Were-fish, The King Bird, The Greedy Woman, Lake Wâkcikhomîgra (Mendota): the Origin of Its Name, The Spirit of Maple Bluff about the founding of a village: The Chief of the Herok'a (Nîjîrajajará), Manawa Village Origin Myth (Manawa), Winneconnee Origin Myth (Winneconnee), Sand Pillow; set at Devil's Lake (De Wákâtcâk): Devil's Lake -- How it Got its Name, The Boulders of Devil's Lake, The Green Waterspirit of Wisconsin Dells, Traveler and the Thunderbird War (v. 1), The Lost Blanket.

Themes: talking fish: The Greedy Woman, Redhorn's Father, Trickster's Adventures in the Ocean; a sturgeon talks to a man who not long afterwards catches a sturgeon: Redhorn's Father; animals volunteer to be eaten: Hare Retrieves a Stolen Scalp (beavers), Hare Recruits Game Animals for Humans, Hare Establishes Bear Hunting (bears); a Waterspirit demands a human sacrifice: The Seer, Old Man and White Feathers; someone is offered to a Waterspirit: The Shaggy Man, White Thunder's Warpath, Warughápara, Old Man and White Feathers, The Seer; a Waterspirit kills a human: The Shaggy Man, Warughapara, The Two Children, The Waterspirit of Lake Koshkonong, The Waterspirit of Rock River, The Seer, The Twin Sisters, The Sioux Warparty and the Waterspirit of Green Lake, The Green Waterspirit of the Wisconsin Dells, The Lost Blanket; a green (tco) Waterspirit inhabits Devil's Lake: The Green Waterspirit of the Wisconsin Dells, Devil's Lake -- How it Got its Name; a being is vulnerable in a highly unusual way: Snowshoe Strings, The Green Man, Partridge's Older Brother, The Dipper, The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, The Shawnee Prophet and His Ascension; marriage to a yûgiwi (princess): The Mulberry Picker, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, The Big Stone, Partridge's Older Brother, Redhorn's Sons, The Seduction of Redhorn's Son, The Resurrection of the Chief's Daughter, The Roaster, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married, He Who Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle, White Wolf, The Two Boys, Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, The Shaggy Man, The Thunderbird, The Red Feather, The Orphan who was Blessed with a Horse, The Birth of the Twins, V. 3, Trickster Visits His Family, The Woman who Loved Her Half-Brother, Redhorn's Father, Old Man and White Feathers, Morning Star and His Friend, Thunderbird and White Horse, Rich Man, Boy, and Horse, Shakes the Earth, The Nightspirits Bless Tciwoit'éhiga.

Pictures: of Devil's Lake: Scene 1, Scene 2, Balanced Rock, Color pictures (external link).

Notes:

[1] Capt. Don Saunders, When the Moon is a Silver Canoe. Legends of the Wisconsin Dells (Wisconsin Dells, Wisc.: Don Saunders, 1947) 34-42.

[2] Stephen Return Riggs, A Dakota-English Dictionary (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992 [1890]) ssvv Ho-tâ´-ke, ho´-tâ-ka, p. 155.

[3] Henry Ellsworth Cole, Baraboo, Dells, and Devil's Lake Region (Baraboo: Baraboo Publishing Co., 1920) 29.

[4] Francis LaFlesche, A Dictionary of the Osage Language, Smithsoninan Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, bulletin 109 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1932) 137, sv. tá-ge-hiu.

[5] Kickapoo Tales, collected by William Jones, trs. by Truman Michelson. Publications of the American Ethnological Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1915) IX:45-53.