452 ISLETA, XEW MEXICO [eth. ann.j? 



46. White Arrow-Poixt 



I 



One time, about 12 years ago (1913), my father-in-law was on an 

 antelope hunt in the Jicarilla Mountains.''' A woman neighbor oanie 

 in to our house and asked us if we did not want to know what was 

 happening to our father, and was there not something of his we were 

 familiar with? We thought of the white flint (arrow-point) in a 

 buckskin bag he always carried under his shirt. That night the 

 woman left. The next morning when she came into the house, I 

 said, "Have you come back?" "Yes. I have come back. . . . Your 

 father has killed five antelopes. That is all he will kill. He will be 

 back in three days, in the afternoon." Under her arm she had 

 wrapped in her handkerchief my father's white flint. He did come 

 back three days later. In the morning they sent a messenger on in 

 advance. We went to help them cross the river. There was no 

 bridge then; we used a boat. It was afternoon when our father 

 reached our house. He told us about losing his flint. He had gone 

 to sleep ^^^th it; in the morning he did not feel it in the bag of his 

 bandoleer.''* He retraced his tracks for two days. On his return, 

 next day, somebody said perhaps he had lost it in the blankets. He 

 shook them; in the last sheepskin he shook, he found it. We told 

 him about our neighbor. He was not surprised; he knew she could 

 do such things. She did them only for good. She had power, she 

 was nat horde. 



II 



I was hunting deer with two other men. One night while two of 

 us were boiling coffee the older man stood near us laughing. "What 

 are you laughing at?" "Well, boys, I will tell you my thought. 

 Would you like to know what your family are doing? " he asked me. 

 "Would 3'ou both like to know what your sister is doing?" "Yes." 

 He took out his white flint and some poUen. He put the poUen in 

 his left hand and on it his white fUnt. He said, "Your sister has 

 gone to the river to get water. A young man has come to talk to 

 her. She is throwing water on him. He leaves her. She has filled 

 her jar, and is going back. She sees the young man under some 

 trees. She sets down the jar and goes over to speak to him. They 

 see a woman coming along. The girl says she does not want the 

 woman to see her. She has picked up her jar and is going on home." 

 After I returned home, when I had an opportunity, I asked my sister 

 about it. "Yes, it happened just that way," she said. After a year 

 she married that boy who talked to her at the river. 



'" Sixty miles away. 



" The notorious Mrs. Chavez was said to have a medicine bag which she lost on a visit to Zuni. A 

 child fotind it and threw it in the fire. "So now Mrs. Chavez's luck is cut at Zuni." 



