YAHYÁHAÄS AND THE KÚJA SISTERS
As usual in Indian myth-tales, the younger sister has the most power.
Yahyáhaäs boasted that he could conquer the Kúja sisters. The eldest, to show her power, stuck a woodpecker’s feather in the ground and it came up a streak of fire in Yahyáhaäs’ cane.
Kûlta had been dead a long time. Kúja washed his body and stretched it, then, by stepping over it, brought it to life.
Bringing to life is one of the most familiar performances in American and in Oriental mythology. The Mongolian hero sprinkles a pile of bones with the Water of Life taken from a spring near a silver-leafed aspen tree. Immediately the bones resume their old connections and take on flesh; the man rises and proceeds on his journey as though nothing had happened.
It should be remembered that, whatever be the names of the myth-tale heroes at present, the original heroes were not human; they perform deeds which no man could perform, which only one of the forces of nature could perform, if it had the volition and desires of a person. In a beautiful myth of the Warm Spring Indians of California, Summer, a long time dead, is brought to life by the South Wind.