In a moment another whistling may be heard as the spirit touches the
housetop and goes in. Another man or woman falls; the spirit has
entered that one. The persons into whom spirits have entered know
nothing. They become as if crazy, as if they had lost their wits. They
try to go to the housetop. Some try to climb the central pole; some
want to leave the sweat-house; they know nothing for half an hour
perhaps.
One doctor keeps on calling spirits, and they come one at a time. Many
doctors may be made in one night, or a few, or none. There are always
many people in the sweat-house to whom spirits will not come. The
spirits never go into people unless they like them. The spirit looks
straight through a man and knows him immediately.
The people dance all night. There is no light in the sweat-house; the
place is very hot, though there is no fire there. Next day those to
whom spirits have come tell the doctors and chief what spirits are
with them. If not, the chief may give them food offensive to the
spirits, and the spirits would kill them if they ate. Some spirits may
stay two or three days with a person, who would then sit inside all
the time. The old doctors have to ask this spirit what it wishes, and
make it go away for a time, so that the person possessed may eat
something. Each spirit has its own kind of food. If we give a man
something that the spirit has never eaten, it will kill him right away
if he eats. The old doctors ask his spirit what it wants, and it
tells. The salmon spirit, for instance, likes leaves or water; a
sucker of the mountains would eat mountain pine nuts, but a valley
sucker needs nuts off the digger pine. If strange food is placed
before a spirit, it is afraid; and if the man possessed eats this
food, the spirit will kill him. Some spirits don't like buckskin, and
the man to whom they have come must not wear it.
The bad spirits are numerous; the sucker is one of these, and so is
Kele (the mountain wolf). This wolf is dangerous; it may hurt you in
this way: you may think that you see a good-looking man or woman on
the mountain or in the woods. If you go toward this person or this
person comes toward you, comes near you, speaks to you, and you agree
with it, the next thing you know this strange man or woman turns into
a wolf, runs away, and your mind is gone; the wolf has taken it. The
sucker does the same, but disappears before your eyes or turns into
something ugly.
There are three causes of sickness. The first is when a good yapaitu
spirit is angry with a man and strikes him with his spirit point;
second, when a bad spirit puts his missile in a man and makes him sick
(the spirit in this case does it at his own instance); third, when an
evil spirit sends his missile into a man at the request or prayer of a
doctor.
When the dokos or missile that has been sent into a man is drawn out
by the spirit which assists the curing doctor, the doctor forces the
dokos to tell what yapaitu sent it, and at the prayer of what doctor.
But the dokos does not tell the truth in every case, and sometimes
accuses the wrong person. It is very difficult, therefore, to know
surely what doctor is guilty of making a man sick. A doctor, if the
spirit is in him when he comes to see a sick man, is able to look
right through the body of the patient and see where the dokos lies.
Sometimes he is not able to draw it out; he can see where the dokos
is, that is all; but if his spirit were stronger than the one who put
it there, he could draw it out and cure the patient.
There is danger, however, in drawing out a very powerful dokos by
sucking, for when it is coming out of the sick man's body it may be
sent down through the mouth of the doctor into his body by the spirit
who owns it, and the doctor is killed in this way.
A doctor may have twenty or thirty spirits, but he rarely calls on
more than two or three, and it is seldom that any great number are
fitted to work together in a given case.
The office of doctor is very dangerous, especially if the doctor is
powerful. If he has many spirits to help him, each has to be pleased
in its own special way; each has its own food, prefers certain kinds,
and dislikes others. The doctor must not eat food hateful to his
spirits: if he does, he is liable to be killed. A man who has twenty
or thirty spirits is greatly limited, therefore, in his manner of
living.
Some spirits do not like venison, others do not eat fish; the doctor
who commands these spirits must eat neither venison nor fish, and so
with other kinds of food in the case of other spirits.
The man who seeks to be a doctor cannot choose his spirits; they come
to him; he cannot refuse to receive them, and must live in a way to
please them.
Every dokos can be extracted from a sick man's body by the aid of a
spirit stronger than the one who put it in.
Among other spirits, doctors have the spirit of the sun, the spirits
of stars and the clouds to help them. These are good spirits. Sedit's
spirit cannot help doctors much. They call it sometimes, but it
doesn't do much; it has not the power. Suku (dog) is very powerful and
bad. If Suku wants to kill a man, he does it quickly. A doctor who has
the Suku spirit in his service is great. If a man has been made sick
by Suku, he will vomit blood, or bleed from his nostrils all the time.
The Suku spirit is a good one to send to kill people. Chir (the sucker
fish) is an evil spirit too. When Chir wants to kill a man, it makes
him giddy and crazy right away. He becomes senseless and dies, unless
some doctor cures him, and generally doctors can do nothing against
Chir. The Chir sickness is the worst that spirits bring. It is called
chiruntowi, sickness from the sucker. The man who has it dies; he
cannot tell where he is troubled; he grows dizzy and senseless. No one
can cure him unless by great luck. Something tried by some doctor may
save him--just by chance, just because it happens so. Kele is also an
evil spirit. He has a song, the same which his two daughters sang on
the mountain top (see the tale "Kele and Sedit"), and which Sedit
heard far away in the west. This is a poison song, and draws people
after it. Kele is here now, suppose, in Cottonwood or in Tehama, and
sees a man up at Yreka. Kele sings, and the song goes as straight as a
string to the man. It draws him and draws him; he is drawn as water is
when people pump it. The man must follow the song; he has got to do
so, he cannot help himself, he is sick; his sickness is called
lubeluntowi (sickness from lubelis). The man will keep going and
going and going; he will not know what makes him go. Suppose I am
listening to Kele's song. I go, and it is the song that draws me. I
hear it; but nobody else does. The spirits of the Kele girls drew
Sedit to them; he couldn't help himself, he couldn't stop; he had to
go, and he never went home again; he had to stay up at Kele's. The
spirits of Chir and Kele always make people crazy.
Many Wintu women lose their minds, and are killed by Kele's sons. Many
Wintu men have been lost through Kele's daughters. Suppose I am out
here in the wood, I see a woman coming, a nice woman. She stops and
talks; I talk to her. If I have sense in me, I look at her toes to see
if she is one of those Kele women. If she is, she has a bunch of hair
on the tip of her foot, and if I see it, I say right there, "You are a
Kele!" At these words she will leave me and run. When ten feet away,
she will turn to a mountain wolf, and I shall see that Kele running
away very fast.
Suppose some woman is out in the woods. She is thinking of some man
that she likes, and right away she sees the very man she is thinking
of. He is coming to meet her. He comes up and asks, "Where are you
going?" The woman is glad to see him. She tells. He carries her to the
mountain, and never again will that woman be seen by her friends or by
others. It was one of Kele's sons who took the form of the man she was
thinking of, so as to entice her away and destroy her. If the woman
has sense she will look down at the foot of the stranger, see the tuft
of hair, and say, "You are Kele; go off." He turns to a wolf on the
spot, and runs away to the mountain. All Wintus went barefoot in old
times, and this tuft could be seen, if a person had sense enough left
to look for it. As every one wears shoes or moccasins now, it might
not be easy to find it. But to this day the Keles lead people astray.
All the Wintus know them, and are afraid.
They live on Wenempuidal, a high mountain near the left bank of the
Little Sacramento. Dekipuiwakut, a small creek, comes down from Kele's
Mountain and falls into the Sacramento. White men call it Hazel Creek.
The Keles live at the head of this creek. The whole mountain is their
sweat-house. They are up there now, and almost any night you may hear
them howling on the mountain when the evil brothers are going home.
The following four spirit songs are from my Wintu collection. Two I
give in the original, with literal translation; the other two, in
translation only. The lightning song, by referring to the connection
between lightning and the sucker, which has one of the most formidable
spirits, enables us to suspect why the sucker is so much feared by
Wintus. In the Olelbis song, the great one above is the
cloud-compeller, as in classic mythology. The tanning is described in
"Olelbis." In the Hau song, the celestial Hau is described as
travelling along the Milky Way. This is the Wintu comment on the text.
Many readers will agree, I think, that the Polar Star song, the
fourth, is composed on a scale truly immense. The lightning song
sounds wonderfully like an extract from the Sanscrit, "Rig Veda."