Hupa texts / by Pliny Earle Goddard.

  • Pliny Earle Goddard
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hupa texts / by Pliny Earle Goddard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    water on the further side, but to no purpose, for the women did not come out. Then because he failed to entice them out he tore the dam down and turned back.* When he came again to Or- leans Bar he saw someone making a white stone knife. What are you doing?” he asked. We are going to cut those women open,” they said. Hold on,” said Yimantuwihyai, and he began to plan how birth should take place. First he thought it might be from the woman’s shin. After thinking about it again he looked into his quiver. He saw there a net-sack had grown. This he thought would become the uterus forming a part of woman and from it birth should take place.! From there he went back to his home. He thought he would now go toward the south. He made baskets and gave them away.J Then he came up along the Trinity until he came to Sugar Bowl. There he made a dam and then went back down on the other side of the river until he came to Xonsadin. Two women were soaking acorn meal at this place. He climbed up the steep bank and went toward the top of Bald Hill. Wherever he turned to look back the ground rose up making little knolls. From the top of the hill he looked back at the dam he had made. He thought it looked so good with the falling water that even a newly made widow would think of many things, if she should see it, and would sing love songs. As this would not do he went back and made the ridge which stands in front of it so the water-fall could not be seen. Then he made a butte on each side at Djictahadih from which he might look. He made a canoe and started toward the south thinking he might have intercourse with some woman. Failing in this he took away the buttes and went back down the river.§ * This incident and the one at Orleans Bar explain the presence of a large flat, furnishing a good village site at one place and the lack of one at Somes. Yimantuwinyai’s acts are governed by his elation or chagrin as he succeeds or fails with the women in question. t These were the same women who had pursued the baby in the canoe a few days before. It is believed that the act of looking at Yimantuwinyai would cause pregnancy. {Therefore better baskets are made on Klamath than elsewhere,” explained the narrator. ^ These incidents account for the topography of the extreme ends of the valley.
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