Oct., 1903. Arapaho Traditions — Dorsey and Kroeber. ii 



her: "Be quiet! You always do that when I bring my wives in. Sit 

 down." Then Crow-woman sat down again and was quiet, and the two 

 came in. The man had told his new wife not to go out anywhere with 

 Crow-woman. But when he was out hunting, and Beaver-foot was 

 away shooting birds, Crow-woman urged the girl to go with her to a 

 swing which she had hung on a tree that leaned over a pool in the river. 

 The girl refused and on his return told her husband. Three times 

 this happened. Meanwhile the girl had borne a boy. The fourth time 

 Crow-woman said : "I will make you come." So the girl w^ent and 

 swung and the rope broke and she fell into the pool. "Here is your 

 food, my grandfather," said Crow-woman. Thus she had done to all 

 her husband's other wives. When her husband came home, she was 

 holding the baby to her dry breast, trying to make it stop crying. 

 The man asked her : "Where is River-woman?" She said: "She in- 

 sisted on swinging with me, but the rope broke, and as she could not 

 get out from the pool, she was drowned." Beaver-foot mourned and 

 cried for his sister, wandering about with the child, which from hungii 

 also cried. About morning he came to the pool where his sister had 

 been drowned. He dipped his finger into the water several times in 

 order to quench the child's thirst, but did not succeed in quieting it. 

 Then, as it became light, there was a sudden wave in the pool and his 

 sister appeared above the water to her waist, riding on the neck of a 

 hiintcabiit. He held the child to her breast till it had enough. Then 

 they went back and his brother-in-law put up a sweat-house for him. 

 All that day and the next night he again wandered along the river, 

 carrying the crying child. Finally, a man came up along the banks of the 

 river where they were steep, looking into the deep pools of water as if 

 hunting something. When he came to Beaver- foot he said : "Why do 

 you cry?" Beaver-foot told him.^ Then the man said, softly: "Be 

 quiet. Do not speak so loudly : it might hear you. I will help you. 

 Go close to the pool again, and continue to cry until the hiintcabiit 

 comes. Then tell it that the child is crying for milk and that you want to 

 see your sister once more, for the last time ; that you want to see her 

 entire body. And if he tells you : 'Go to the other bank,' tell him : 

 'This one is just right to allow me to reach the child to its mother.' 

 Do this, and I will try to help you." This man lived on water mon- 

 sters,'' and carried a spear whose flint point was as long as the forearm, 

 and the shaft long enough to reach the pools from the bank. He built 

 a hiding place of brush at the edge of the bank. At daybreak the 



' .'Xs the myth was obtained, Beaver-foot repeats tlie preceding events in full. 

 - Cf. Cheyenne tales, Journ. Am. Folk Lore, XIII, 179. 



