340 THE NISHINAM. 
derly, she gradually faded away before his eyes and died. He had loved 
her with a love passing the love of brothers, and now his heart was broken 
with grief. He dug a grave for her close beside his camp-fire (for the Nishi- 
nam did not burn their dead then), that he might daily and hourly weep 
above her silent dust. His grief knew no bounds. His life became a 
burden to him; all the light was gone out of his eyes. He wished to die, 
that he might follow his beloved Yototowi. In the greatness of his grief he 
’ fetl into a trance. There was a rumbling, and the spirit of the dead woman 
arose out of the earth and came and stood beside him. When he awoke 
out of his trance and beheld his wife he would have spoken to her, but she 
forbade him, for in what moment an Indian speaks to a ghost he dies. She 
turned away and set out to seek the spirit-land (ush'-awush-i kim, literally “the 
dance-house of ghosts”). He followed her, and together they journeyed 
through a great country and a darksome—a land that no man has seen and 
returned to report—until they came to a river that separated them from the 
spirit-land. Over this river there was a bridge of but one small rope, so 
very small that a spider could hardly erawl] across it. Here the spirit of 
the woman must bid farewell to her husband, and go over alone to the 
spirit-land. When he saw her leaving him, in an agony of grief he stretched 
out his arms toward her, beckoning her to return. She came back with him 
to this world, then started a second time to return to the invisible land. 
But he could not be separated from her, so she permitted him and he spoke 
to the spirit. In that self-same instant he died, and together they took their 
last departure for the land of spirits. 
Thus Aikut passed away from the realm of earth, and in the invisible 
world became a good and great spirit, who constantly watches over and 
befriends his posterity still living on earth. He and his wife left behind 
them two children, a brother and a sister; and to prevent incest the moon 
created another pair, and from these two pairs sprang all the Nishinam. 
Their land of spirits is the Happy Western Land of all the California 
Indians, and thither go the souls of all good Indians, to live forever in 
indolent enjoyment. (As the Nishinam reckon the points of the compass 
rather by the trend of the Sierra Nevada than by the sun or the stars, their 
west is nearly southwest. Most other Sierra tribes seem to do the same.) 
= 
