Heluta and Nyenyega Contest for a Wife

HELUTA AND NYENYEGA CONTEST FOR A WIFE ⁵

Heluta, ¹² the father of the katcinas, and N^yen^yega, ¹³ contested as to which should marry Yellow Woman. ¹⁴ Yellow Woman "ground" at the dance (i. e., she rubbed the notched stick with the deer's scapula, resting it on an inverted dried pumpkin). Heluta and N^yen^yega watched her all the, time, and they thought she was very beautiful. They fell to fighting for her. They fought and fought. The koshare said, "What is the use of fighting for Yellow Woman? Go out hunting, both of you, and whoever kills a deer without wounding it shall marry her." Next day Heluta and N^yen^yega went out to hunt. Yellow Woman said, "Whoever kills a deer with out a wound and brings it to me first, I shall marry him." Heluta did not find a deer, but Nyenyega killed his and brought it in unskinned without a wound. So N^yen^yega married Yellow Woman.

Footnotes

9:5 Informant 2. Notes, p. 207.

9:12 Heluta is often equated with Ganadjani. See pp. 60-62, 251. He comes in first in any line of masked dancers. His mask is black with white zigzag stripes and he wears a buckskin, and spruce around his neck.

9:13 N^yen^yega is father of the curdzi and is considered one of the most beautiful of the katcinas. He wears a white shirt and a whole buckskin. His mask is green, with two lines slanting downward and outward on the forehead. He wears downy feathers on the top of the head and carries thin switches.

9:14 Yellow Woman is the stock female katcina, as she is the stock heroine of folklore. Her mask is green and she wears her hair done in the large characteristic knobs at the Hopi of the unmarried maiden. She wears as a dress the embroidered ceremonial blanket and an all-white manta over her shoulders.