426 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boix. 196 



He always arose before daylight, and he always said that he went 

 off to hunt, but he never brought anything back when he returned at 

 night. When he came in at night, he always stood with his back to 

 the fire. No one ever saw his face. When he was asked why he always 

 stood with his back to the fire, he said that he had a toothache and 

 that the heat of the fire made it worse. 



Then the brothers of the girl decided that they would see his face; 

 so next day, when he was gone, they got some dry sumac to burn. 

 (Dry sumac pops, and sends out sparks in all directions.) 



That night, when he was standing with his back turned toward 

 the fire, they put on the fire a stick of dry sumac, and soon sparks 

 were flying in all directions. Some of them flew onto his back and 

 set his clothing on fire. 



He was scared, and he looked around to see what was wrong with 

 the fire. Then they saw that he had two big eyes and a crooked nose. 



He was an owl.^^ 



4.— THE SAPSUCKER HUSBAND 



A man saw a girl that he wanted to be his wife. He was a good- 

 looking man, well dressed, and with something red upon his head. 

 He finally succeeded in marrying her. 



One cold day he told his wife that he was going out into the woods 

 to cut wood. At noon she cooked him a good dinner, but after some 

 time had passed and he still had not come home to eat it, she went out 

 into the woods to look for him. 



As she walked, she listened for the sound of his chopping. She 

 did not hear it. After awhile she started home. On her way she 

 noticed a big red-headed bird pecking as hard as he could all around 

 a tree, as if he were trying to cut it down but was unable to do so. 



Late that afternoon her husband came home and sat down near the 

 fire. He sighed and put his hands to his head. 



"I have a headache. I chopped too hard," he said. 



His wife told him about the bird she had seen. 



"That was I," he said. 



The girl had married a gh(v)gwo:ghaJ* 



5.— THE RED WORM HUSBAND 



There was a man who used to come to see a girl in a family. He 

 used to come by often. Finally he asked to marry the girl. 

 He was a good-looking man who wore red-brownish clothes. 



" Although there is a story of an owl-husband In Mooney (1900, pp. 291-292), the above bears less affinity 

 to It than to a tale (ibid., pp. 292-293) wherein the huhu (yellow mockingbird) is the mate. The episode of 

 the sumac in the above is found in an Oklahoma Cherokee tale wherein the husband with questionable 

 credentials is the slant-eyed giant, Tsu:hHi)gvl(a) (Kilpatrlck and Kilpatrick, 1964, pp. 65-€9). 



'< Sapsucker. This story is very similar indeed to "The Huhu Gets Married" in Mooney (1900, pp. 

 292-293). 



