30. The Sapia
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30. THE SAPIA
A man who had just married went off hunting with some other people and the wife he had left behind followed them. They went on and made camp and spent the night, and when day came they went on again. They went on and camped at night.
The woman who had been left behind came on and used magic. She wanted to see him. She could not remain quiet and after she had stayed a while she followed him again. She followed on, running. She went on without stopping until, ahead of her, she heard someone singing. By and by she got near it and found it was singing beside the road. When she went on farther she saw a sapia 1 standing
p. 149
in one place with its top moving around. She stood for a while looking at it and then pulled it up.
Then she came back. She came down to a stream of running water, broke a piece off of the sapia and put it into the water. She sang as it had sung, blew into the water, drank, and threw it up, and came on. She came on steadily and when she got home her mother shut her up in the corncrib.
Then her husband followed her. He came on; he came on running without stopping and got home. He hunted for his wife in the house. He went round everywhere after her until day came. He questioned people about her but they did not tell him and he stood around helplessly. He asked his mother-in-law repeatedly but she said she had not seen her daughter. "I thought she went on with you," she said. After he had cried repeatedly she opened the corncrib and he saw her.
Footnotes
148:1 Or sable, a magic plant, or rather a magic stone borne by a magic plant. See Forty-second Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 498-501.
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