Howichinaipa came out and stood beside the bear. “I am tired,” said he. “I was almost dead. You tried your best to kill me, but I am hard to kill.” Then he took his flint knife, cut around the bear’s neck and behind his two fore paws, and skinned him, put the skin on his shoulder, and started for Jigulmatu. He came behind the others, reached home at dusk. He hung the skin near the door, and said,—
“We shall hear what Ahalamila’s friends will say to-morrow morning.”
Popila’s mother heard what her son had done, and when she saw the bearskin she cried and rolled upon the ground. Next day the old woman was sweeping; she swept out a little red-eared boy, a Pakalai Jawichi, and as she swept, he squealed. Popila Marimi took him up, took a deerskin, and made a blanket of it, and put the little fellow in this deerskin. She boiled water then with hot rocks and washed him, and every time she washed she sprinkled flint dust on the little boy to make him strong. He could creep around next morning; but she said:
“Stay in one place; you must not move. There may be poison in some place; if you touch it, it will kill you. Stay right where I put you.”
The second day the boy could talk. “You cry all the time, grandmother; why do you cry?” asked he.
“Do not ask that question, grandson; it makes me grieve to hear you. All my people were dead except my son; now he is killed and I have no one.”
The fifth day the boy was walking around the house outside.
“Grandmother,” said he, “make a great fire.”
She made a fire in the sweat-house. The boy stood near the central pillar and sang, “Hála watá, hála watá.”
He fell asleep while sweating; slept till morning. Next day when he woke he said to his grandmother, “What am I to do with my hands?”