XXXVIII.

p. 305

Formula of Woman's Love Medicine. ¹

p. 308

The young men of the Kīxûnai used to come to a certain rock that stands in the ocean at the mouth of the Klamath. They used to hold there their sports and shooting matches. But notwithstanding all the attractions, a modest woman lived there who never went out of her house. Once, while she was sitting working on her baskets, a beam of sunlight fell on her without cause. "What is going to happen?" she thought. As she was going on with her weaving, she noticed a person coming in. "Up there is the place they go in," she said. "The Kīxûnai who live around here never come in this house."

The one who came in, came intending to be the woman's husband. He lived there for a time and then he went away and never returned. She heard no longer the sound of the games and the talk of the Kīxûnai.

p. 309

Mink came to her, one time, and said, "You won't see again the one who used to come here. Across the ocean to the south he has two wives. One lies in each of his arms." When she had found out this, she was more lonesome than ever. She went outside. "When Indians come," she thought, "they will do this way." She used to go outside and look in vain for the herb with which she was to make the medicine. She looked all over the world for it.

Once she was surprised to see that as the lonesomeness fell upon her, the herb grew. It came into the world with lonesomeness. She looked at the ground and saw the herb growing there. She pulled off part of it and took it into the house with her. She bathed her arms and legs with it, and when it was night lay down with some of it in her hand and a bundle of it behind her. In the middle of the night she took the bundle up and put it in front of her.

Then speaking to it she said, "If ten times his heart goes from me to other women, finally it will come back to me. I hope he may be crazy. How many soever women he likes, even if they lie in his arms, this medicine will come to him. Among how many soever of them he goes, this my heart will find him."

The noise of the Kīxûnai was quiet. She did not hear their talk. "This way it will be," she thought. "You will hate the one you used to like. Before all others you will think about me. It will be this way in the Indian world, if they do this." When she got up in the morning, she put the bundle of medicine toward the north. When the sun was just here it shone upon her. "This way it will be," she thought, "if Indians when they come, make medicine. But there will not be many who will make it," she thought. "I have made it good," she thought. "This way it will be." It went even on him and he came back to her. It was the moon who discarded her.

Footnotes

305:1 Told at Hupa, December 1901, by Emma Lewis.