43. Hinon Saves a Woman from Suicide
In a certain village a young man and a young woman were married. Soon after their marriage they set out on a hunting expedition. After traveling some distance they came to a dense wood, where they stopped and built a brush lodge. Every morning the young man, leaving his wife at the lodge, always with the warning not to sleep during the day, went out in pursuit of game.
One afternoon, coming back earlier than usual, the young man found her asleep. He saw a great rattlesnake among the skins on which she lay. While trying to pull the snake away, it disappeared into her body through her pudendum. When she awoke the young man, without saying anything of what had occurred, proposed that they should go back to the village, as he was tired of hunting. On reaching home, he told his wife to go her way and he would go his.
Not long after this she married another man. On the following morning her new husband was found dead. She soon married still another man, who was also found dead on the morning after the marriage. Her people then resolved to find out from the first husband why he had put her away. After much persuasion he told them why, saying, “While hunting I often asked her never to sleep in the daytime, but one afternoon on returning to my camp I found her asleep; there was also a rattlesnake in the bed, which, when I tried to drive it away, disappeared into her body.”
The mother of the young woman told her what they had heard from the first husband. She was so ashamed and troubled that she determined to kill herself by going over Niagara Falls. Getting into her canoe a mile or so above the Falls, she pushed out into the middle of the river. The mother followed her, but too late to stop her daughter. As the canoe neared the Falls the latter, lying down and covering her face with her mantle, disappeared over the brink. But Hinon, who dwells under the Falls, taking the young woman from the water, carried her to his home, where he prepared medicine which he gave to her; then, looking at her, he raised her by the shoulders and let her down on her feet. The second time he did this a dead snake dropped out of her person on the ground. Hinon said, “I am glad to see this snake. Now I shall have something to eat.” Roasting the snake on the hot coals of his hearth he ate it.
The young woman lived with Hinon for some time. As she could not eat his food, he often brought ears of corn, saying, “Here is some corn from your mother’s field.” Then he would bring a roasted squash with the words, “I brought this from your mother’s coals,” having taken it from her fireside. [[229]]
They lived in this way until the woman was far advanced in pregnancy. Then Hinon said to some of his companions, “It is now time to deliver this woman to her mother. You must take her only to her mother’s field.” So, taking her to the field, they left her. Soon she heard some one crying, and then she saw her mother. The mother was frightened, but she stopped crying and called out, “Are you in your natural life?” The young woman assured her that she was, and together they went to the mother’s lodge. Not long after her arrival there the young woman gave birth to a boy.
When the boy was large enough to run around they often heard Hinon coming, and then it would rain very hard. The boy would go out into the storm and he would be gone some time, but when he came back he would be perfectly dry. At last he said, “The next time my father comes I shall go away with him, and not return.” So he went and he was never seen again; but he is always with his father, and it is he who thunders in the sharp voice of a young man.