LEGENDS OF THE VALLEY. 367 
for about one whole snow, and at last he reached the top. Then he took 
the little boys and came down the same way he went up and brought them 
safely down to the ground. And so the rock was called after the measuring- 
worm (tultakana) 'Tutokanula. 
This is not only a true Indian story, but it has a pretty meaning, being 
a kind of parallel to the fable of the hare and the tortoise that ran a race. 
What all the great animals of the forest could not do the despised measur- 
ing-worm accomplished simply by patience and perseverance. It also has 
its value as showing the Indian idea of the formation of Yosemite, and that 
they must have arrived in the valley after it had assumed its present form. 
It should be remarked that the word tultakana means both the measuring- 
worm and its way of creeping. 
We turn now to the legend of Tis-se’-yak. As it stands in Hutchings’s 
Guide-Book it was written by 8. M. Cunningham, one of the earliest set- 
tlers in the valley, who first printed it in an eastern newspaper. It is a thou- 
sand pities to hack and slash in such a miserable way this somewhat tropical 
legend, but fidelity to aboriginal truth compels me to do it. In its present 
shape it is a production quite too embellished to have originated in a Cali- 
fornia Indian’s imagination, hence it is not representative, not illustrative. 
Tisseyak, instead of being a “ goddess of the valley”, was a very prosaic 
and commonplace woman, who was beaten by her husband because she 
drank the water before him; and the picture of Indian life revealed in that 
action, however rude and brutal it may be, is wholly concealed in the story 
as Mr. Cunningham wrote it. 
LEGEND OF TIS-SE’-YAK. 
Tisseyak and her husband journeyed from a country very far off, and 
entered this valley foot-sore and weary. She came in advance, bowing far 
forward under the heavy burden of her great conical basket, which was 
strapped across her forehead, while he followed easily after, with a rude 
staff in his hand and a roll of skin-blankets flung over his back. After their 
long journey across the mountains they were exceedingly thirsty, and they 
now hastened forward to drink of the cool waters. But the woman was 
still in front, and thus it fell out that she reached the lake Awaia first. Then 
