C. The Brothers Get Wives
7b. In the morning the two boys went west. There was a man who had a daughter Tšese'ilye;[14] her they wanted to get. As they went west they saw a bird hanging in a tree in a cage of red and white woven cloth.[13a] The bird was hwetše-hwetše.[15] "Look, that girl has a bird," they said. (1 song.)
[14] My notes, after a correction, say that she was Tšese'ilye's daughter; but the correction may be in error, since later the woman is said to have been Tšese'ilye, daughter of Sun. Cf. notes [35], [38], [52], [54], [58], [60], [63], [68], [75], [78], [83], [87] on the confused relationships and names of certain characters.
[15] A yellow bird.
8. When they reached the house, Pukehane did not take the bird with his hand, but caused the cage (sic—the bird?) to be outside the door. The bird was singing: the woman was inside; she came out, saw it in front of the door, and said: "What sort of people are you who have come? That bird belongs to me; do you not know that? It watches everything I have when I go out to gather seeds." The two boys stood and laughed, the older east of the door, the younger west of it.[16] The woman went back into the house, put on a (pretty) dress, and beads around her neck. She took a white peeled willow stick, qara'asap, to sweep the dress under her thighs so as not to crumple it when she sat down.[17] Tied to the top of her dress she had two bags of paint (kômkuvī), one black, one red. When she came to the two boys standing outside the door she did not go to the older, she went to the younger: she liked Tšitšuvare. Pukehane said, "She is mine." His younger brother said, "No, if she were yours she would come to you." The older said, "She is mine." The woman said nothing. The older embraced her. The younger said, "Do not embrace her. She belongs to me." He embraced her too and they both held her and pulled. Pukehane became tired. He stood aside. "You are the better; take her," he said. So now they had one woman: Tšitšuvare had her. (1 song.)
[16] The door was sohlyêpe, woven of willow inner-bark.
[17] A piece of coquetry or swank, rather surprising in a culture so meager in its material aspects.
9. They started to go home from there: Pukehane wanted to. They had far to go, too far for one day. So they slept in the desert where no one lived. Tšitšuvare made a bed. Pukehane said, "My brother, when you marry, both of us sleep with the woman.[18] That is what you said." Tšitšuvare had not said that: Pukehane only wished it; and Tšitšuvare did not let him. Then in the morning Pukehane said, "Let us go, my sister-in-law."[19] (1 song.)
[18] "You at the vagina, I at the anus." While the younger slept with her, the older sat up, had an erection, tried to clamp it under his thigh and sit on it, could not.
[19] Hunyīk. The term denotes any female affinal of a man (except his wife's sister) irrespective of generation, and all male or female affinals of a woman (except her sister's husband).