42. The Deep Underground House.
(Lower Uta'mqt.)There were two underground houses close together near the mouth of Spuzzum Creek. One was inhabited by Indians; while the other, which was very deep, was inhabited by a strange people or xaxa',1 who never came out of their house in the daytime. It is said that the young men of the one house repaired at night to the outside of the other house, and, gathering up all the chips, etc., swept the ground quite clean ; and on the following night the xaxa' young men repaired to the outside of the Indian's house, and did likewise. Thus they did these favors alternately for one another, and the outside of their houses was always clean.
They never entered one another's houses; and if an Indian wished to shell something to the xa xa', he took it to their house and lowered it down with a rope. The xaxa' took it off at the bottom, and, tying in its place the equivalent of whatever the Indian wished in return, the latter pulled it up and took possession of it. If, however, a stranger came to trade from up the river, and, not knowing the ways of these people, descended the ladder into their underground house, as soon as he reached the bottom, he fell in a fit.2 Then the xaxa' carried him to the top of the ladder and threw him outside, were after a. time he recovered, and never again evinced any desire to enter their underground house.
These people were possessed of much magic. Whenever they wished to have a fire, they cut some sticks up in small pieces, and, placing them down on the fireplace, they turned their backs to the wood and said in a loud voice, "Take fire!" (in the Yale language) and immediately the sticks blazed.
1 xaxa' are mysterious, wonderful, supernatural, etc. The word xaxa' has the same significance as the Dakota term waka'. They are said to have spoken the Yale language.
2 A fit of violent convulsions. Some say the people, when they stepped off the bottom of the ladder (on to what they thought was the door), fell down out of sight, and never came back. The house had a hole in the floor, which was very deep or bottomless.
