Story 25—
Siuuhu's Revenge:
Siivan I Vahki
Now they came to Siivan i Vahki at Casa Blanca. The man Siivan went into his house with all his people. The Wooshkam watched him and said, "You come out like a man. You're not a woman to stay in the house." Some of them said, "Maybe he's not home, and that's why he doesn't come out."
Four different kinds of fog surrounded the vahki so the Wooshkam couldn't see it. They told one of their medicine men to roll a cigarette and breathe and find out if he [Siivan] is in there. The medicine man did this and saw Siivan inside with his hands tied by a snake and unable to do anything. The medicine man sang:
Vahki is built of clay
In it I saw
A medicine man.
He is afraid of me
He is staying in there
The vahki is made of clay.[10]
The people inside the vahki were shooting their arrows through holes made in the walls for that purpose, and they were killing the people outside. They fought for four days. Then they [Wooshkam] searched for a child who had become an orphan, whose [recently] dead father and mother were powerful medicine people.
Meanwhile the people inside the vahki looked out and said [insultingly] that the "plate-licker" (was a a viñ oo ma dum )[j] couldn't do anything. Then the child pulled one of his hairs, held it between his hands, and threw it crossways to the vahki, which it hit and broke. The vahki fell down, and that was the end of Siivan.
After they killed this man, who lived here at Casa Blanca, they came to his body to search it and make sure he was dead. They asked a medicine man to work over the body and be sure he was dead, because they had heard a lot about the power of these Hohokam people. The medicine man sat down to work and sang:
I am now sitting down
And my power is shining forth
I saw rainbows.
The medicine man said that the man was dead, the understandings that he had were gone, and the
[j] Huas-ha'a Wiñumdam, 'Pottery-plate (literally "basket-pot," a post-Hispanic neologism used to describe European-style pottery table goods) Licker'.
things that he used were just shining dimly. All that the medicine man could see [of Siivan's things] were just colors like a rainbow. The people cried out that they must destroy this last little bit of understanding, that shows in the rainbow colors. Then the medicine man sang another song:
I am holding my hand
And with my cane
I have destroyed the understanding
Of this medicine man
And the stones that he used
Are now coming out in black colors.