CHAPTER XXXIII.
FAIRY TALES
THE WOMAN OF SIN.
HUNDREDS of years ago a young man and his wife resided at what is called Tu-rep village, which is located on the south side of the Klamath River about six miles from its mouth. The Tu-rep bar on the river is very large, consisting of fifty or a hundred acres of rich and productive soil. This man’s wife before her marriage belonged at the Si-elth village, across the river from Tu-rep on the north side. They lived very happy together for a number of years, he being very kind to her in every way and never spoke in a cross manner at any time. As the years went by he began to drift away from her and their home, neglecting her more and more. It seemed that a soul affinity had come into his life, a woman at the Reck-woy village, at the mouth of the river, was enticing him away from his wife and home. He found a resistless charm in her serpent-like arms, and as the days went by he would tarry longer in her company and he would be loath to part with her at all. At last his wife was being left alone so much and neglected that she became suspicious that another woman had robbed her of his love. She found her suspicion to be true as her husband was now giving all of his attention to the woman at Reck-woy. The wife became very sad and broken hearted over her husband’s actions and unfaithfulness, and went about her work in a dispirited manner and her attitude and appearance became one of profound sadness. In company she always seemed down hearted, as the same sad look was always upon her face, making her appear to the visitors as wretched and lonely.
As the miserable wife spent the lonely days at Tu-rep village, the people decided to give a large entertainment a host of guests gathered to make merry. Among the crowd was a man from the Ur-ner village, which is nine or ten miles up the river at the mouth of Blue Creek. During the entertainment the Ur-ner man was attracted to the lonely Tu-rep wife who appeared to him to be very sad and lonely in the midst of such gaiety. He came over to where she was seated and began a conversation by exchanging a few remarks. He thought he might be wrong in addressing her so boldly, and started to walk away but something stirred his inner emotions strangely, so much so that he could not resist the temptation to return to her. This time after a few remarks he summoned up courage to inquire into her troubled life, as he said she seemed very lonely. Deeply impressed by his winning manner and kind words her confidence was easily won and she readily related to him her unhappy marriage and how unfaithful her husband had grown. He at once became more interested and listened patiently to her story of sorrow, and with his sympathetic words of comfort, strange emotions that had long been dead within her breast thrilled into life once more. She had become a victim of his beguiling words of comfort as he drew her into his arms of passionate love. Alone and together they planned a secret meeting place that her husband and the village folks might not know of their clandestine meetings.
When the Tu-rep husband would go down the river to Reck-woy to bask in the love of the woman of his affections, his wife would wait until the darkness of night had cast its gloom over the village, when she would creep carefully forth from her dwelling and meet her lover. She had a long way to go up the Tu-rep bar from her house, and each step she would take, she would cover her foot-prints with stones. In this manner she would cover her tracks over, for a distance of at least one mile along the river bar and when she reached the upper end of the bar she would step out into the water, and as before she covered over her tracks with stones until she stepped into her lover’s boat. The Ur-ner Indian would come across the river from the opposite bank and take her into his canoe and paddle back to what is known as Stah-win bar. This is also a large bar covered with huge redwoods. Together they would wander into the inky blackness of the huge redwoods where they would enjoy each other’s company until a late hour at night, when the Ur-ner man would again take his soul affinity into his canoe and return her to the upper end of Tu-rep bar, where she would leave him and proceed down the bar to her home, as before covering over her foot-prints with stones. She held these clandestine meetings with the Ur-ner Indian in that manner every time her husband would leave her and go to Reck-woy. After a while her husband became suspicious of her action, as when he returned home at night he never found her at home, yet he was very kind to her. He made every attempt to trace her footsteps but they were always lost upon the bar and all his efforts were futile. At last in desperation he made up his mind to try other plans to detect her mysterious whereabouts. He would start down the river on a pretence of going to Reck-woy, but would hide where he could see his wife’s movements around the house. This was kept up for sometime but he could not find out which way she had gone, but in his earnest endeavors to discover her whereabouts, one night he saw her covering over her foot-prints with stones as she went to meet her lover. Her shame and sin was at last discovered in spite of all her efforts and precaution to hide her disgrace from human knowledge. This covering of foot prints with stones is called in our language, “Way-nah-mah way-lap-po-lah hah-elth-werm-chelth,” which means covering the tracks of sin and shame with stones. To this day there can be seen at Tu-rep bar in the summer months when the waters of the river is low, the rows of stones that this sinful woman used to cover up her foot-prints of shame, and they stand out in strange relief along the waters edge where they were supposed to have been placed centuries ago by the woman of sin. The Indians point to these stones as a warning to all married women that no matter how secretly they sin against the marriage vows, they will be discovered sooner or later, and their sins will be reflected upon them throughout their lives. The moral of this story is to keep women from sinning and when they are tempted into sin that they are forever burdened with the heavy stones of disgrace that points to their sins and time cannot efface it.