1052 ZUNI KATCIN'AS [eth. iNs. 47 



head. As they came along the boys were sitting on the sand hill 

 right above the trail. A man came along with his load of wood and 

 looked up and saw the boys sitting there. Then the boys were 

 ashamed and tried to cover themselves, for they were naked all over. 

 They were very poor. They never were able to go to see the world 

 because they had no clothes to wear. Their grandmother, too, was sorry 

 that they had notliing to wear. So she thought, "We are very poor. 

 Your father and mother never come to see us. They left us here and 

 they never come to talk to us and they never send you poor boys 

 anything to wear." Then she thought that she would send the boys 

 to the Sacred Lake to see if their parents had any clothes for them to 

 wear. She felt very sorry that her grandsons had to run away and 

 hide whenever they saw people coming, because they had nothing 

 with wliich to cover themselves. So when evening came she made 

 mush and roasted the wood rats that the boys had killed and set it 

 out for them. Then the httle boys took hold of the two rats. Their 

 grandmother looked sharply at them and said, "Please give me the 

 heads of the two rats and I shall put them in my bowl. You may 

 have the bodies of the rats, and I shall be satisfied with just the heads." 

 The poor grandmother had only a Uttle stone dish before her with a 

 little water and some dried herbs. Then the bo.ys twisted off the 

 heads of the rats and gave them to their grandmother and she dipped 

 them in the water and sucked at them as she ate her corn mush. 

 Then she thought, "Oh dear, we are so poor! I hate to tell you 

 poor boys that you must not eat everything." She did not want to 

 scold the boys for being greedy because she felt so sorry for them that 

 they were so poor. Then she thought she would tell the boys to go 

 to the Sacred Lake, and she said to them, "I shall tell you boys 

 what to do, and you will get clothes and good tilings to eat."" 



After they had finished their evening meal the boys were sitting 

 beside the fire playing with their bows and arrows. Then she said to 

 them, "Now my sons, as we were sitting here I thought I would like 

 you boys to go to the Sacred Lake where all the fathers and uncles and 

 brothers are. You boys go there and go right in and say, 'How do 

 you do, my people.' Then Pautiwa will say, 'Who are these nice 

 boys who have come in here. I do not know them. We have no 

 boys like them here. I wonder if they belong to our people.' Then 

 you tell them that you come from Itiwana and that you live here at 

 the sand hill, and then they will know you. They will know you, 

 but they will pretend not to know you. They will ask you what 

 you have come for. Then the older brother will say, ' We have come 

 because we are so poor over there at sand hill. Our grandmother is 

 so old that she cannot look around for food. And when we hunt we 

 can only kill little wood rats, one each day. We can not live on one 



^^ Yepnawe, any food besides corn. 



