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Yesterday in Quaker Meeting, I remembered (very imperfectly) one of the stories, The Ku-Bird . I retold the story in my mind as follows. The character of Jesuchristo does appear in some of the stories my mom collected, but not in this one; he is not at all the Christian Jesuchristo, but since I was in some sense in "church" while telling myself this story, I put him into it, as a kind of all-purpose benevolent creator spirit.
Every day Ku-Bird would fly down to the waterhole to drink and admire his reflection in the water, and every day the other animals... the coyote, the donkey, the fish, the javelina... would compliment him on being the most beautiful animal in the world. The Ku-Bird was starting to get a little conceited, and Jesuchristo worried about it, but he just let things be and started work on the other birds.
One day he came up to the Ku-Bird at the waterhole and asked, " I want to make a bird called the Cardinal. Can I have your red feathers?" and of course the Ku-Bird couldn't say no to Jesuchristo, so the let him take the red feathers.
The next day, Jesuchristo was at the waterhole again. "I'm working on a bird called the Canary. May I have your yellow feathers?" "Of course," replied the Ku-Bird, for although he was sad to lose these bright colors, he still had plenty more, and there was something about giving away some of his beauty that actually made him happy, even happier than all the compliments from the other animals.
On succeeding days, as Jesuchristo made more birds... the Crow, the Bluebird, the Green Parrot ...., Ku-Bird lost more and more colors until finally all that was left him was a nondescript grey.
He would fly down to the waterhole and the other animals wouldn't speak to him because they didn't notice him: he was too unremarkable to their eyes. Finally, one day, Ku-Bird realized that he had become entirely invisible. He became downhearted and almost said something bad about Jesuchristo but thought better of it. He landed and trudged over to the bank of the waterhole for a drink. As he lowered his beak to the water's surface, he saw a flash of brilliant colors. His reflection had all the colors of the rainbow and all the other colors too; he was once again the most beautiful animal in the world! Then, just over his shoulder, he saw the smiling face of Jesuchristo. reflected in the water.
In the original story there is a cynicism about human nature that might even come up to modern standards of snarkiness. The Ku-Bird took feathers as charity from other birds and then disappeared into obscurity in order to avoid having to give them back. It's wonderful what memory can do to stories and songs. My reconstruction of this story as an inspiring one reminds me of the way some tragic Child Ballads from Europe became happy-go-lucky ditties in North America.
Tags: birds, family stories, myths, yaqui
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