Wishram texts / by Edward Sapir ; together with Wasco tales and myths, collected by Jeremiah Curtin and edited by Edward Sapir.
- Edward Sapir
- Date:
- 1909
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Wishram texts / by Edward Sapir ; together with Wasco tales and myths, collected by Jeremiah Curtin and edited by Edward Sapir. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![I I. TALES.^ A Wasco Woman deceives her Husband.” A man and his wife and four children lived at Wasco. It was the time of year when the women were cutting grass to pack their dried fish in. One day, while this woman was getting grass, a man from Tenino^ came and talked with her. They fell in love with each other and planned to deceive the old husband. The woman said, “I will go to a creek and eat alder-bark till I spit it up-, he will think I am spitting blood. After a time I’ll pretend to die.” — “All right,” said the man. She chewed the bark. At night she came to the house, apparently suffering terribly, and said, “I cant live.” “Whats the matter?” asked her husband. “Oh, I must have bro- ken something inside.” She had ‘ told the other man, “I’ll die at daybreak. They will bury me, and you must be near to dig me up quickly. At daybreak she died. Before dying she said to her husband, “When I die, take my cup and mountain-sheep horn dish and cover my face. Don’t cover it all up.” t Under this title are included five narratives that deal with the doings of human beings as such; in other words, the idea of a mythic or pre-Indian age, the people of which are the untransformed prototypes of present-day animals or plants is either absent or kept in the background. The word “tale,” as contrasted with “myth ” is not meant to imply that supernatural or mythical elements aie lacking but' merely that such elements are thought in these tales to have entered into the life of human beings as now constituted. The last few sentences of No. I almost wilfully turn a pure tale into a myth by the introduction of Coyote in his fainiliar role of transformer. With these tales as a class compare Wishram Texts DO 20I-21I of this volume, and Boas’s Kathlamet Teats, pp. 155-23°- 2 For the myth motive of pretended death in order to satisfy forbidden lust, compare Wishram, pp. .05-i°7 °f this volume (Coyote and his Daughter). 3 Tenino (or Ti'naino), a village of the Wa'yam Indians (known to the Wasco as llk-a'iniamt), was situated nearly five miles above The Dalles, being the first Shahaptin village on the south side of the Columbia east of Chinookan territory. [242]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877852_0262.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
