86 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. VIII. 



21. HOW THE POOKONGS DESTROYED COOYOKO AND 



HIS WIFE.i 



Haliksai! In Oraibi the people were living, but there were a 

 great many people at that time living there, and it frequently hap- 

 pened that when the men or women would get wood, some of them 

 did not return, and the people were thinking about it and wondering 

 what became of these people, whether they had gone away or whether 

 they had been killed. They were worried about it. So one time a 

 man again went after wood. He took his straps, tied them around 

 his body and went to H6tvala (a spring about five miles northwest 

 of Orafbi). North of this spring he gathered some wood, made the 

 usual frame-work of wooded sticks into which he piled the wood, 

 put the wood on his back, and went to the path leading to Oraibi, 

 when he heard a voice. Somebody was singing the following song: 



lya yahina kilicina hanaa, 



lya yahina kilicina hanaa, 



Honayish pichiya cakicta, 



Kooyna ahinahina, 



Tovashkakolita Coovokooo. 



These words are archaic 

 > and are not understood by 

 the Hopi. 



It was the C6oyoko. When he saw that somebody came with wood, 

 he said: "Now then, I shall feast upon that one." The man carry- 

 ing the wood, however, quickly threw down his large burden of wood 

 and crawled under it. When the C6oyoko arrived at the place he 

 .could not find the man, and thought he had escaped. "Let me go 

 on farther, I may find some one else," he said, and so proceeded to 

 another place in the woods singing the same song again. Here he 

 found a woman getting a burden of wood ready. "Now then, I 

 shall feast upon that one," he said again. 



When the woman saw him she was very much afraid and ran and 

 climbed a juniper-tree, micturating as she did so. When the C6oyoko 

 arrived at the tree he noticed some moisture on the ground and 

 said: "There must be clouds somewhere, it has been raining." So 

 he left the place and went westward saying: "I shall hunt somebody 

 else," and as he went along he sang the same song again. The man 

 whom he had met first, had in the meanwhile escaped, and the woman 

 also climbed down, when the Cooyoko had left her, and ran away to 

 the village. These two informed the people in the village that it 

 was C6oyoko who killed the Orafbi people. When the village chief 

 heard this he was very sorry and was thinking. He was thinking in 

 the night who could help him. 



» Told by Kwdyeshva (Oraibi), 



