STORY OF NISH-FANG. 83 
valley below; but still the smoke rose not until four weeks had elapsed. 
Then one day he saw it curling up at last! Great was the joy of the 
Hupa that they had found favor in the eyes of the Great Man; but the 
dance was prolonged yet two weeks more, such is the patience of their 
fanaticism and credulity. 
This and the dance of propitiation of the Karok are genuine aborig- 
inal customs; and it seems scarcely necessary to remark that they indicate, 
on the part of the leading Indians at least, a consciousness of a Supreme 
Being who holds them accountable for their actions, and whom they think 
to appease by fasting and expiatory dances. No Indian would fast until 
he is a living skeleton (as Americans testify that the Karok do) merely to 
dupe the populace and wheedle them out of their money. 
The Hupa bury their dead in a recumbent posture, and mourn for 
them in the usual savage manner. They have the same superstitious ven- 
eration for their memory as the Karok, and the same repugnance toward 
allowing any one to view their graves. Most of the valuables are buried 
in the grave with the deceased. 
STORY OF NISH-FANG. 
Once there was a Hup& maiden named Nish-Fang, who had left the 
home of her forefathers and was sojourning with a white family on Mad 
River. When that mysterious and momentous occurrence first took place 
which announced her arrival to the estate of womanhood, she earnestly 
yearned to return to her native valley in order that she might be duly 
ushered into the sisterhood of women by the time-honored and consecrating 
ritual of the puberty dance. Without this sacred observance she would 
be an outcast, a pariah dishonored and despised of her tribe. First it was 
necessary that she should fast for the space of nine days. Three days she 
fasted therefore, before setting out on her journey, and on the morning of 
the fourth she started homeward, accompanied by a bevy of her young 
companions, Hupa maidens.. It was a long and weary journey that lay 
before them; over two rugged mountain-chains, across deep and precipi- 
tous valleys, through wild, lonesome forests. 
Already weak and faint from her three days nearly total abstinence, 
