i;0TH] HEROES 121 



had an accident, having fallen on a stump. He was a shrewd piai, however, and 

 knew exactly what had happened, and though he said nothing then, he determined 

 not only upon getting rid of her, but of his other wife also; he just then, however, 

 directed her to return home. 



4. Next morning he bade both the womjn accompany him, as he intended fishing 

 in the pond, and he merely wanted them to do the cooking and make the fire. When 

 fire had been made, he brought them a turtle, which they put on the hot ashes with- 

 out killing it, so it promi)tly crawled out; they pushed it on again, but with the 

 same result. It was the omen betokening their death. The semi-chichi [medicine- 

 man] had bewitched them and they thought they had already killed the turtle. 

 What they imagined was that the fire was not hot enough, and so the faithless 

 s])ouse went to look for more dry wood. Now. as she was breaking up the timber 

 she found it very hard work, and exclaimed Tata — Ketaiaba (lit. hard — to break), 

 but no sooner were the words out of her mouth, tlian she flew away as a hawk, the 

 "bul-tata," which can often be heard crying bul-tata-tate-tata. ... Of course it 

 was her husband who had done this. The other wife said she felt hot and would 

 bathe her skin: no sooner had she ducked into the pond, than her husband turned 

 her into a porpoise— she was the very first poqwise that ever swam in these waters. 



5. Hariwali thus punished his wives, and now pondered over what he should do 

 with his Itrolher. \\'hile returning home, he met the very man with Iww and arrows 

 starting out to hunt, but neither spoke. That same afternoon the brother, who had 

 never missed a bird before, made a bad shot everj' time now, the arrow invariably 

 flying absurdly wide of its mark. This was really all Hariwali's doing. At last the 

 brother did manage to hit a bird, but only just hard enough to knock a few feathers 

 off, nothing more. "Don't do that again," said the bird, "and now look l)ehind 

 you." And when he did so, there was a large sheet of water, and he realized that he 

 was upon an island. But how to escape? Round and round he wandered, until he 

 finally found a path: no ordinary path, but a Yawahu's path leading to the Spirit's 

 house. Arrived at the house, the Yawahu caught him, and took aU his hones out 

 except those of his fingers: this was done only out of kindness, so that he could not 

 escape, the Yawahu putting liim into a hammock and paying him every care and 

 attention.' The bones themselves were tied up in a bundle under the root (as 

 bundles are kept by many other Indian tribes). The Yawahu was quite a family 

 man, with plenty of youngsters who were always practising with their bows and arrows; 

 when their arrows got blunted they had only to go up to the captive's hammock and 

 sharpen them on his tony finger tips. All this time. Hariwali's mother would cry 

 regularly every night over her absent son, whose whereabouts and condition she 

 was absolutely ignorant of. So at last the piai's heart became softened, and he 

 determined on going to fetch his brother home again. It was aU due to his 

 "medicine" that lus brother fell into the clutches of the Spirits. He told the old 

 woman to pack up everything, because when he returned with his brother they and 

 all their family would have to leave the place forever. 



6. The night pre\-ious to their departure, he "played the shah-shak" (i. e.. called 

 up his Spirit friends with the rattle), and next morning hosts of parrots were passing 

 overhead. His children called hLs attention to them: so he went out and asked the 

 birds to throw down a seed of a certain tree the bark of which he used medicinally. 

 This they did . and though the youngsters saw the seed falling, directly it touched ground 

 the father put his foot on it, and look as much as they could, the children could not find 

 it. As he did not want them to know what he was doing, he told them that nothing 

 had fallen, that they must be mistaken, and that they must run away now. Young 

 folk are not allowed to see what the old medicine-men practise. When left alone, 

 Hariwali planted the identical seed just where it had fallen, and that same evening 



1 Compare Kon, the boneless Tribal Hero of the Yunka Indians of Peru (PE, 29, 41).— W. E. R. 



