6. “The Boy Who Grew Up at Ta'k'imi l ding”
and Other Stories
Hupa 1963–1964 Minnie Reeves and Louisa Jackson, narrators Victor Golla, collector and translator
INTRODUCTION BY VICTOR GOLLA
Together with their close neighbors the Yurok on the lower Klamath River, and the Karuk further upstream on the Klamath, the aboriginal Hupa of the lower Trinity River subsisted (and subsisted well) on the abundant spring and fall runs of salmon, which they supplemented by gathering acorns and berries, trapping eels, and hunting deer and small game. The modern Hupa people have been able to preserve a close attachment to this rich environment, since they are fortunate to possess a large reservation that includes the center of their traditional territory, Hoopa Valley. This spectacularly beautiful eight-mile-long stretch of bottomland, studded with oaks, is located on the Trinity a few miles above its confluence with the Klamath. In the Hupa language it is called na: tinixw ‘where the trail goes back’, and its geography is closely interwoven with traditional Hupa religion and story.
In addition to the people of Hoopa Valley (na: tinixwe ‘those of na: tinixw’), there were several Hupa-speaking tribelets, all virtually identical in language. Two of these tribelets (known ethnographically as the Chilula and the Whilkut) were located on Redwood Creek, west of Hoopa Valley. There was at least one tribelet upstream on the Trinity River, centered on the village of Le: lding where the Trinity and South Fork join.
Shortly before the turn of the century, Pliny Earle Goddard came to Hoopa as an interdenominational missionary. He built a church, which still stands, and learned Hupa sufficiently well to be able to preach in it. In 1900, however, he abandoned religious work to become an anthropologist. His ethnographic sketch “Life and Culture of the Hupa” is a classic, and he also published an important volume of traditional Hupa narratives, “Hupa Texts.” These studies, together with Goddard's numerous publications on the language, made the Hupa one of the best described Indian cultures of California in the early decades of this century. In 1927 the great anthropological linguist Edward Sapir added even more to the documentation of Hupa traditional culture in a field study that focused on language and literature. He collected seventy-six narratives, some of them quite long and most of them full of cultural detail. This important collection is now being readied for publication in a forthcoming volume of The Collected Works of Edward Sapir.
I began my own work with the Hupa in the 1960s. My work was primarily linguistic, but I also collected a number of narrative texts. The four Hupa stories included here are translations of narratives collected on tape in 1963 and 1964 from Mrs. Minnie Reeves and her younger sister, Mrs. Louisa Jackson. Minnie Reeves (1880–1972) was well past eighty at the time, and Louisa Jackson (1888–1991) was in her late seventies. Although married into Hoopa Valley families, Minnie and Louisa were actually from the Chilula tribelet. Their father, Dan Hill, and grandfather Tom Hill had refused to resettle the family on the Hoopa Valley Reservation after its establishment in 1864; they continued to live in the traditional village of Nolehding (‘waterfall place’) on lower Redwood Creek, a few miles northwest of the reservation boundary. The family moved to Hoopa in 1888, and both sisters attended the boarding school there.
Minnie Reeves was a talented narrator, and her carefully told stories
“The Boy Who Grew Up at Ta'k'imilding” is the sacred charter of the two principal World Renewal dances. These ceremonies, the Hupa term for which is ch'idilye, are unique to the traditional cultures of the YurokKaruk-Hupa area and continue to be performed today. They focus on maintaining the equilibrium of the physical and social world through songs and dances pleasing to the k'ixinay, the supernatural inhabitants of the world before humans arrived who still exert influence on human a airs from a Heaven beyond the sky. The ceremonies are performed in two ten-day cycles, the White Deerskin Dance (xonsi l ch'idilye ‘summer World Renewal’) and the Jump Dance (xay ch'idilye‘winter World Re-newal’). The White Deerskin Dance takes place in August or early September at a series of dancegrounds in Hoopa Valley. The Jump Dance is performed in late September at a single site about one hundred yards upstream from the village of Ta'k'imilding (‘acorn cooking place’). Formerly the two dances may have been annual events; today they are biennial, held in odd-numbered years.
The story that Minnie relates is not in the strict sense a myth. Hupa myths relate events that happened in the days when the k'ixinay were still on earth, whereas this story has the character of a religious legend set in human times. In it the World Renewal dances are said to be the inspiration of a specific young boy, a child of the family that owns the xontah nikya: w (‘big house’), the largest and most prestigious house in the principal Hoopa Valley village, Ta'k'imilding. This boy is well-behaved and “sings all the time,” an indication that he has been chosen by the k'ixinay as a vehicle of spiritual power. Then one day he disappears in a cloud to join the k'ixinay beyond the sky. After a long absence he briefly reappears to his father to convey to the Hupa people how and where the k'ixinay want the World Renewal dances to be performed. “I will always come back. …I will always be watching,” he both promises and warns.
Minnie Reeves's telling of this sacred story was appropriately solemn and serious. Although her version was abbreviated and broken here and there by a hesitation or groping for words, it was clear that she was reciting well-known lines and phrases—a sacred text in the most real sense. (See the “Hupa Language Sample” at the end of this introduction for a closer look at the language behind the translation.)
The incident that Minnie Reeves relates in “Grandfather's Ordeal” probably occurred in the 1850s or early 1860s, when hostilities between white settlers and Hupas—particularly the Chilulas—were at their worst. Minnie's maternal grandfather and the Indian doctor he was escorting were by no means the only Indians gratuitously killed or wounded by whites on the trails between Hoopa Valley and the coast. The need to import a shaman from Hoopa Valley underscores the peripheral status of the Chilula tribelet.
“The Stolen Woman” is one of many legends whose theme is a raid on a peaceful Hupa village by “wild Indians” from the south. There is undoubtedly a historical kernel to these stories, and the raiders (usually called mining'wiltach' ‘their faces-tattooed’) may be either the Yuki of Round Valley or the Hayfork Wintu. A particular twist to this story is the implication that the wealth of Me'dilding, the leading village of the upriver (southern) half of Hoopa Valley, is based on stolen treasure. Not surprisingly, Minnie's connections were largely to Ta'k'imilding and the downriver (northern) half of the valley.
“It Was Scratching” was told to me by Louisa Jackson. It belongs to a popular genre of “Indian Devil” stories, based on a widespread belief in witchcraft practices (k'ido: ngxwe). Devils are said to sneak around houses and graveyards in the night, peering through windows or catching people when they venture outside alone. They insert “pains” into people, causing illness, bad luck, and even death. Note how the woman in the story accuses the devil of having killed o her entire family (ch'e'whine l ya: n ‘he ate me up’ is the Hupa idiom). In traditional times, suspicions and accusations of deviling were quite common, giving social life a distinctly paranoid tinge.
Hupa Language Sample
The following lines of Hupa, with their glosses and translations, come from the beginning of the first story presented here, “The Boy Who Grew Up at Ta'k'imilding.”
Ta'k'imilding nat'tehldichwe: n, at Ta'k'imilding he grew up He grew up at Ta'k'imilding;
xontah nikya: w me' ts'isla: n—kile: xich. House Big in he was born a boy he was born in the Big House—a boy.
Haya: l ang' lahxw na'k'iwing'ah wehst'e’; then it was only/nothing but he sang continually He would do nothing but sing all the time;
na'k'e'a'aw. he would keep singing he just kept singing.
Haya: l hay diydi ‘a:ya:xolch'ide'ine’, then whatever they would tell him Then, whatever they would tell him,
'aht'ingq'a'ant'e: mida' q'eh na'a'a'. everything its word/mouth after he carried it about he minded it.
'e'ilwil na'ky'a'ah'xw, it would get dark as he sang, He would sing all day long,
xontah nikya:w me', Ta'k'imilding. House Big in at Ta'k'imilding in the Big House at Ta'k'imilding.
FURTHER READING
Readers should consult William J. Wallace's entry, “Hupa, Chilula and Whilkut,” in the California volume of the Smithsonian Handbook. For a more in-depth ethnography, there is Pliny Earle Goddard's classic “Life and Culture of the Hupa.” Goddard's “Hupa Texts” is also an important collection of Hupa oral literature. The stories presented here are taken from Hupa Stories, Anecdotes, and Conversations, a booklet prepared by Golla for the Hoopa Valley tribe in 1984.
“The Boy Who Grew Up at
Ta'k'imi ding” and Other Stories
THE BOY WHO GREW UP AT TA'K'IMI LDING
Minnie Reeves
There once was a boy who grew up at Ta'k'imilding—born into the Big House there.
He did nothing but sing all the time. He would always be singing. He was a good boy and did what he was told, but he would stay there in the Big House at Ta'k'imilding, singing all day long.
One day his mother went down to the river to fetch water, leaving the boy singing in the house. She dipped up some water, and was on her way back up to the house when a sound stopped her. It sounded like someone was singing inside a cloud that hovered over her house. She put her water basket down and listened. She could hear it clearly: someone was singing there inside the hovering cloud. After a while the cloud lifted up into the air. She could still hear the singing. Eventually it vanished into the sky.
She went on back to the house. When she went inside, the boy was gone. It was clear that he had gone o inside the hovering cloud.
When her husband returned from hunting she told him what had happened. They had loved him very much, and they cried and cried.
A long time passed and there was no sign of the boy. Then, one day, many years later, the man went up the hill to hunt. After hunting for a while he got tired and decided to rest under a big tan oak. As he sat there smoking his pipe he was suddenly aware of a young man walking toward him out of the forest. Looking more closely he saw that it was the boy, now grown up. He leapt to his feet and ran to embrace his son.
“Stop there, Father! Don't come toward me,” the young man said. “Don't try to touch me. I can't bear the scent of human beings any more.”
Then he continued, “The only reason I have come back is to tell people the way things should be done in the future. When I went o to Heaven in that cloud, I found them dancing there, dancing without ever stopping, dancing the whole day long.
“And that is why I have returned—why you see me now. I have come to tell you about the dances. I am here to tell you the ways they should be danced, and the places where they should happen.
“You will dance downstream through Hoopa Valley, you will finish the dance over there on Bald Hill: that is where the White Deerskin Dance is to be danced.
“Ten days after the White Deerskin Dance is finished, you will dance the Jump Dance for another ten days. There behind the Jump Dance fence I will always be looking on. I will always come back for the Jump Dance, although you won't ever see me. Because I will be looking on from there, invisible though I am, don't let anyone go back of the fence, don't even let a dog go back there.
“I will always be watching.”
That is the end of the story.
GRANDFATHER'S ORDEAL
Minnie Reeves
I will tell you now about how my grandfather—my mother's father—got shot, a long time ago.
His mother had gotten sick. The Chilula Indian doctors who were treating her told him that she probably wouldn't pull through. They told him that he should go get this Indian doctor from Hoopa who had a good reputation. She might be able to save his mother.
My grandfather immediately set out on foot for Hoopa Valley. He found the Indian doctor and the two of them started back toward the Bald Hills.
The Indian doctor carried a lot of stu in a pack basket, and my grandfather carried another pack basket. They crossed Pine Creek at the ford called Soaproot (qos-ding) and went up the Bald Hills past Birds Roost (k'iya:wh-nondi l ding).
As they were heading down the far slope, my grandfather happened to look back along the trail and caught sight of a party of whites on horseback. The whites had seen the two of them and were pointing their rifles at them. My grandfather tried to raise his hands—he raised them straight up—but it did no good: the whites shot at them anyway. A bullet hit the Indian doctor and she fell down dead. Another bullet tore through the upper part of my grandfather's back. It didn't kill him, but his legs got caught in some berry vines and he too fell to the ground. Thinking that they had killed both of the Indians, the whites went o downstream.
My grandfather dragged himself back up the trail toward the ridge. He remembered that there was a cedar-bark hunting shelter up there. He finally found it and crawled inside, where he collapsed and fainted.
Meanwhile, the people back at home were getting worried. “They should have gotten back long before now,” they thought. “Maybe something has happened. Somebody should go out looking for them.” So a party went o to search for them. When they got to the hunting shelter, they saw my grandfather lying inside. It looked like he had been dead for some time. They took a piece of bark from the shelter and were going to lay him out on it, like a corpse, to carry him home for burial.
But when they started to handle him, he jumped up. The moment he leapt up, blood and matter spurted out of his wound and he started gasping for breath. He had been in a deep coma, near death, but he had seen a vision of a white grizzly bear pouncing on him and tearing open his infected wound. He had trained for power and had acquired a lot of it—he was a strong believer in all of those things. A vision came to him from Heaven, and he survived.
They carried him back home, where he recovered. And that is the end of the story.
THE STOLEN WOMAN
Minnie Reeves
A long time ago, they were having a Brush Dance at the village of Me'dilding. In the middle of the night, when the dance was going strong, an extraordinarily handsome man showed up, carrying two valuable fisher hides. He went right into the pit and danced between two girls.
As they filed out of the pit at the end of the set of dances, he caught hold of one of the girls and ran away with her. He took her far o. She had been kidnapped.
He took her along with him from place to place, across the mountains. After a long while they arrived back at his home—a bark house, located at the base of a large rock. They lived there together, and eventually she had a child—a little boy.
When the man went out hunting he would take the woman with him. When he saw a good-sized deer, he would point a magic Jump Dance basket (na'wehch) at it and wiggle it around, and instantly the deer would fall over dead. He was always careful to keep the woman with him and would never let the magic basket out of his sight. They would then go back home. After the venison was all eaten up they would go out hunting again.
One time when they were doing this, the man incautiously put the magic basket down while he went to pick up a fallen deer. The unhappy woman thought that she saw a way of getting home to Me'dilding. She picked up the magic basket and pointed it toward him, wiggling it around the way he did when he was killing a deer. He didn't see her do this, and they went back home. That evening he complained of a headache, and before the first light of dawn appeared he was dead.
The woman searched the man's house. She found her child, now grown to be a fair-sized young man. She also found that the man had a large number of valuable things that he had stolen from people. She fixed up a pack basket full of such things and then she and the boy set o for home.
She thought hard about how they had come when she had been kidnapped, and the two of them traveled for several days. Finally they reached Me'dilding. The boy had never seen so many people before. It scared him, and he would run and hide behind the houses.
This is how there came to be rich people at Me'dilding. The kidnapped woman had brought back all sorts of valuable things.
This is the end of the story.
IT WAS SCRATCHING
Louisa Jackson
Once, a long time ago, when the harvest season came, a group of women went o to gather acorns. They camped in a bark hut at the place called Mortar Lies There (me'ist-sitang-xw). They had gathered lots of acorns, and when it came time to pack them home they decided it would be best to fetch a man to help. So they went back for someone, leaving one woman to stay with the acorns.
She spent the night alone in the bark hut. In the middle of the night she heard something making a noise, like an animal scratching the outside of the hut. She didn't get concerned about it. But when she got up in the morning she thought she'd look, and discovered scratch marks outside the hut next to where she had been sleeping. In spite of this she went out and spent the day gathering more acorns.
That evening she got ready to spend another night in the hut. Thinking that perhaps someone was trying to devil her, she placed a log where she had slept before. She covered it with a blanket and sat down beside it. In the middle of the night she again heard the noise of something scratching. As she watched, she saw someone put his hand into the hut. He kept pushing it in until his arm reached the log that was lying there like a person in the blanket. At that instant, the woman caught him around the wrist, held his arm down, and sawed it o with a knife. When it was severed, she hurled it aside.
When she got up in the morning she decided to go back to the village. She gathered some ferns and stu ed them in her pack basket. Throwing the severed arm on top of the ferns, she set o for home.
As she was coming down the ridge past the village of Xonsahding, she heard the sound of people crying. She wondered what was going on and decided to go down and see. When she got there she found a man laid out for burial and people mourning him. She asked what had happened.
“That poor man met with a great misfortune,” they told her. (They also mentioned his name, but I won't repeat it here.) “A tree limb fell on him out in the woods.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. A tree limb fell on him.”
She took her pack basket down, felt around in it, and pulled out the severed arm. She threw it on top of the body.
“This too,” she said. “This too is his. He was the one who was coming after me, trying to devil me. Now I know who it was who killed o my family!”
And suddenly the mourners were silent.