438 ISLETA, NEW MEXICO [eth. ann.47 



37. The Girl Who Was Restored to Life 



My father told me about a girl who was living with her brother, 

 and a boy came and asked her to marry him. She said she did not 

 want to marry him, that her brother would take care of her. That 

 evening when her brother came home she told him about the boy 

 and how he had said she would remember him some day. Her 

 brother began to worry about it. Still they lived along pretty well. 

 At last the girl fell sick. But that morning she said, "You better 

 go out to work. I do not feel very sick." He got water and wood 

 for her and went to work. Wlien he came back she was very sick. 

 He thought he would get a medicine man the next morning. That 

 night the girl died. They buried her. At the grave was a medicine 

 man who said to her brother, "You stay here behind." They let the 

 people go. The medicine man encircled the grave with his stone 

 point. He said, "Your sister is not dead, although we have 

 buried her. The young man who asked her to marry him, when she 

 refused, worked (made) his power and she died. Those bad people 

 want her very much. She is not dead. They want to carry her away. 

 We will not make the (death) ceremony for her. We will watch here." 

 So they went into a corner of the graveyard and watched. That 

 night a black dog came into the graveyard and looked around and 

 sniffed in every direction. The next night they watched again. The 

 black dog came again. It was that young man (the rejected suitor) 

 dressed up as a dog. The fourth night the medicine man said, "This 

 is the night they are going to take her out. We will watch." At 

 midnight four men came and dug her out and carried her to where 

 the witches were and brought her to life. They said to her, "You 

 see what happened to you because you would not marry that young 

 man. Now you are married to him." She began to cry. Then 

 the chief of the witches said to the young man, "Now you can have 

 her." Another man said, "If you do not want her, I will take her." 

 So they fell to fighting about her, when in came her brother and the 

 medicine man. The medicine man seized the witch chief, and had 

 more power than he, and the witches ran away. The girl's brother 

 took her into his arms and carried her home. The medicine man 

 made a ceremony for her. She used to work at night and sleep by 

 day. The people saw how well kept the boy's house was and how 

 well washed his hair and how clean liis clothes. And they wondered 

 who was taking care of him. After two years they foimd out. The 

 war chief summoned him and he had to tell how his sister had come 

 back to life and how the medicine man had helped him. That is the 

 way the people learned how the witches exhume a dead person and 

 bring him back to life. That is the way it happened some time ago 

 in our village; in no other place, just in our village. 



