When Sʻhodieonskon drew near to the third village he called out, Goʹweh! goʹweh! The people gathered around him, asking what had happened. He told them that in the place whence he had come the young men were killing all the old ones, who could be saved only if the women would give themselves to the young men; so the women did so, and nothing happened to the old men.
Sʻhodieonskon then hurried to another place. When he arrived there, all asked what the matter was in his place. “Another sickness,” he said, but he had the medicine to cure it. This medicine was bear’s oil, which he carried in a bark bowl (it was his urine). He sold it to the villagers to be drunk with their food. When warm it crackled like salt. Although they knew it was not oil, they drank it. As he left the village he said that he had never seen such stuff eaten before, and ridiculed them.
Continuing his journey, Sʻhodieonskon met a man, and they sat down by the trail. He offered the man a cake which corresponded to the oil he had just sold, but the man refused to eat it and went his way.
Sʻhodieonskon, not to be baffled, called up a couple of bears. When they came to him he said: “I want you to carry me. I will rest one foot on one of you and the other foot on the other. We will go in this direction, running around until we meet a man. I will tell this man that I will give you to him to mount, and when he places one foot on each of you his feet will become fastened to your backs, whereupon you must go in opposite directions, tearing him apart.” Having agreed to do this, they soon ran around ahead of the man, to whom Sʻhodieonskon said, “I have ridden these bears so long that I am tired of them; if you would like, I will give them to you.” They seemed so tame and were so fine-looking that the man gladly took them and jumped on their backs, whereupon his feet grew fast to them in a moment. After running together a little way the bears ran in different directions. The man, badly injured and half dead, finally became free from the bears. He said to himself, “Well, I have found Sʻhodieonskon.”
Sʻhodieonskon, having journeyed farther, met a party of young women. Stopping them, he said: “It is not best for you to continue on that road—it is dangerous, for when you meet a man dressed in hemlock boughs you must not be afraid, but must do everything he wants you to do, so as to keep on friendly terms with him.” Going on through the woods, the women soon saw something moving in front of them, which they noticed was covered with hemlock boughs. They [[285]]were frightened, but after a while one of them, saying “I will not be afraid,” went straight up to him and talked with him some time behind a tree. Then she came back, telling the others to go, that there was nothing to be afraid of. So they went, one by one, and after all had been there he went away. One of the women whistled out his name and called him, but he had gone after fooling them all. Sʻhodieonskon and the man in the hemlock boughs were one.
Sʻhodieonskon went on again, soon coming to an opening where there was a number of bark lodges. Going into the lodges he said, “There is a man coming to destroy all the people, and to escape him they must cover all the smoke-holes, for he has a long spear which he thrusts into them to spear the people.” Then he invented a name for the man. All went to work covering the smoke-holes of their lodges. The chief of the village had two beautiful wives. Sʻhodieonskon coveted them and did not tell the chief the story of the man with the spear. When all the other lodges were covered and full of smoke, Sʻhodieonskon ran over the roofs, frightening everybody almost to death; not daring to go out, all remained half stifled in the smoke. At last Sʻhodieonskon, climbing the roof of the chief’s lodge, speared him to death and took his wives and all he had.
In due time the funeral of the chief was held, and all came to bury him. Sʻhodieonskon, appearing among the mourners, cried, saying: “I am sorry for the chief; he was a friend of mine, and now he is dead and gone. I am so sad. I do not wish to live. You must bury me with him.” So they put Sʻhodieonskon in the ground beside the chief. The next day some boys who were out at play heard a man calling for help, his voice seeming to come from the graveyard, whereupon they went to the spot. The voice seeming to come out of the grave, they ran and told the people. The people agreed to dig him up. When they had done so Sʻhodieonskon, standing on the ground, said: “There is a very important thing to be done. I came back because the chief had two wives; they mourn for their husband, and I feel sorry for them. I am sent back to marry the two widows.” After talking over the affair the people said it was a great thing that a man should be sent back from the other world to marry the widows of their chief, so they consented to the arrangement, and Sʻhodieonskon, having married them, settled down.
57. The Cannibal Uncle, His Nephew, and the Nephew’s Invisible Brother
An uncle and his nephew dwelt together in a forest, subsisting by hunting. They lived in a lodge which had a partition through the middle and a door at each end. Neither one ever entered the part occupied by the other, all communication between them being held [[286]]by means of conversation carried on through the partition. Each went in and out of his own part of the lodge whenever he liked, but never dared to cross the threshold of the other’s room.