Each day for three days Isis killed deer. The fourth day, while he was hunting, the younger sister put her child on her back and went for wood. The elder sister wanted water and she ran to the spring to get it. She forgot that Isis had told her not to leave her child alone. The boy was beginning to walk. He tried to follow his mother, but he fell and hit his head on a stone. He gave one loud scream and died. The younger sister heard the scream and ran to the child. The mother heard it, too, and came back quickly. Her sister said: “I told you we had better stay with our mother; that we didn’t know this country. See what trouble has come to us.” They set bushes on fire to let Isis know what had happened.
The moment the child fell, Isis struck his foot against a stone and stumbled. Right away he knew that something had happened to one of his boys. When he saw the smoke, he left the deer he had killed and went home.
When the younger sister told him that his child was dead, he said: “I didn’t think that my wives would cause me greater grief than my father did, but you have. I thought my children would live, that they would go to the swimming places and talk to the earth and mountains, that they would be wise and able to do things. If my first child is dead, I don’t want to live in this world. Bring me the other boy.”
When the younger wife brought her child, Isis took it in his arms, put the top of its head to his mouth and drew a long breath. He took the breath out of the child and it was dead. He put the second child by the first, and said:
“These children are half mine, and half yours. The breath is mine, the body is yours. I have taken the breath into myself. You can have the bodies. This is the last time I will have a wife. If I live forever I shall never have a woman again. This place where my children died will be called [[38]]Yaulilikumwas. People who come in after times will find you under the bushes. They will make sport of you and call you Yaulilikumwas. You will die from the cold and snow which you yourselves make. Your brother will run around the world and be Kĕngkong’kongis (a medicine) and doctors will dream of him.”
Right away Isis’ wives and their mother turned to snowbirds and Cogátkis became Kĕngkong’kongis. Sometimes ordinary people see him in their dreams. Doctors always see him in the country where his mother and sisters lived. Isis went north, went far away. [[39]]
KUMUSH AND HIS DAUGHTER
CHARACTERS
| Kumush | The Creator, according to Indian myths |
| Skoks | Spirit |