Sacred Texts Native American California Index Previous Next
Yīmantūwiñyai and his daughter lived by themselves. He used to fish for eels and when he had caught some he would say to his daughter, "Cook plenty of them and carry them to your uncle." When she had gone with them Yīmantūwiñyai would take the house on his head and, by following a trail higher up on the mountain, run ahead and place it where the imaginary uncle was supposed to live. He would also bring the sweathouse. He used to eat the eels himself. 1 After his daughter had started back he would take the house on his head again and run back, so that on her arrival she found it as she had left it.
He used to tell her not to look up as she was carrying the eels, but one time she did look up and saw someone carrying a house along the upper trail. When she got to the place, the house was there. Yīmantūwiñyai ate the eels as usual. When his daughter had gone home he took up the house and carried it back. When the girl got home she said, "I looked up and saw someone was carrying a house along the upper trail toward the south." "It was wrong for you to look," said Yīmantūwiñyai, "sit down facing the back of the house. I am going to shake a stick." He made a kinaLdûñ dance stick. He saw no one, but after night-fall he heard the sound of many feet. The invisible people ran in until the house was crowded. They danced till morning. The next night more people came and the
night after still more. After the tenth night they ceased dancing. Standing outside Yīmantūwiñyai threw incense root into the fire praying, "May you live to be men."
When it was dawn he did not see them. He went into the house. When they ceased dancing the noise stopped in the house. He sang again and stopped. The invisible ones sang in the smoke-hole. A cloud enveloped her and took her away. They took the girl with them to the world above. They are dancing there now. The girl became a perpetual kinaLdûñ. They always dance there; only when the Hupa dance here they stop up there.
237:1 Told at Hupa, June 1901, by Robinson Shoemaker, a man about 30 years of age. His father and mother, both quite old, are unusually well supplied with myths and formulas.
KinaLdûñ means a girl who is undergoing her first menstruation. Life and Culture of the Hupa, p. 53.
A story similar to this is told of Coyote.
239:1 For other devices employed by Yīmantūwiñyai to gratify his greed, compare pp. 129, 130.