29. Xe'niax
(Lower Uta'mqt.)
(cont.)Then the women went gathering roots, and feasted all the men, who afterwards went to their respective homes; but some of them who had been ith Xe'niax many years, found on reaching home, that several generations had passed during their absence. The husbands went back with their wives to their house, and followed their usual avocation of hunting.
Eagle's child began to cry for his grandmother: so the father asked the women if they had a mother to which they answered in the affirmative, so he told them to take the boy back to their country to see his grandmother. He said, "On your way back you will come to where the trail divides. Take the ordinary one, and avoid the one painted red, because it will lead you to a country inhabited by bad people and cannibals."
The women started off on their journey, Stata'ga carrying the boy, and her sister carrying the Frog. When they came to where the trail divided, they had a dispute as to which was the trail they had been told to follow, and eventually set out on the red trail. After travelling some distance, they came to a house inhabited by uncanny people (xaxa).1 These people shoved them into a large copper kettle. and put them .on the fire to boil. The cannibals left them there to cook. and retired for the night, expecting to eat them for breakfast next morning The Frog was lowermost in the kettle, and made a hole in the bottom through which he urinated on the fire, so that it went out underneath the kettle, and they did not boil. At midnight they came out of the kettle and fled.
Next morning the cannibals finding they had escaped, gave chase, and
soon came up with them on a piece of open, flat ground. When they saw they were nearly overtaken, We'latck said to the Frog, "Have you no pubic hair?2 He said " No, have you any" She answered, "Yes, I have four." He said, "Give them to me.' So his mother gave him the four hairs, which he threw on the ground, and at once there sprang up four large yellow-pine trees (Pinus ponderosa)3,close together They all climbed up into one of these; and the cannibals, reaching the bottom, at once began to chop it down. When it was nearly down, they jumped into the branches of the second one, and the cannibals began to chop it down also.In the mean time the four dogs at the hunter's house began to growl
and show their teeth, and strained at their halters: so the husbands, thinking
that something must be wrong and the women in danger, let them loose,
and they went bounding away to the rescue, Rattlesnake rattling as he went.
They reached the spot just as the cannibals had nearly gotten the fourth tree
down, and, attacking them, killed them and ate them up.1 xaxa means also a person possessing mysterious or magical power.
2 puxt, or poxt, hair of the private parts; sometimes applied to that of males alone.
a This tree does not grow in the Uta'mqt country but is one of the most common trees in the Upper Thompson, southern Shuswap, and Okanagon countries.
