This is what the old men told me when I was a boy.
Once when all the people of the settlement were out in the mountains
on a great hunt one man who had gone on ahead climbed to the top of
a high ridge and found a large river on the other side. While he was
looking across he saw an old man walking about on the opposite ridge,
with a cane that seemed to be made of some bright, shining rock. The
hunter watched and saw that every little while the old man would point
his cane in a certain direction, then draw it back and smell the end
of it. At last he pointed it in the direction of the hunting camp on
the other side of the mountain, and this time when he drew back the
staff he sniffed it several times as if it smelled very good, and then
started along the ridge straight for the camp. He moved very slowly,
with the help of the cane, until he reached the end of the ridge,
when he threw the cane out into the air and it became a bridge of
shining rock stretching across the river. After he had crossed over
upon the bridge it became a cane again, and the old man picked it up
and started over the mountain toward the camp.
The hunter was frightened, and felt sure that it meant mischief, so he
hurried on down the mountain and took the shortest trail back to the
camp to get there before the old man. When he got there and told his
story the medicine-man said the old man was a wicked cannibal monster
called Nûñ'yunu'wi, "Dressed in Stone," who lived in that part of the
country, and was always going about the mountains looking for some
hunter to kill and eat. It was very hard to escape from him, because
his stick guided him like a dog, and it was nearly as hard to kill him,
because his whole body was covered with a skin of solid rock. If he
came he would kill and eat them all, and there was only one way to
save themselves. He could not bear to look upon a menstrual woman,
and if they could find seven menstrual women to stand in the path as
he came along the sight would kill him.
So they asked among all the women, and found seven who were sick in
that way, and with one of them it had just begun. By the order of the
medicine-man they stripped themselves and stood along the path where
the old man would come. Soon they heard Nûñ'yunu'wi coming through
the woods, feeling his way with his stone cane. He came along the
trail to where the first woman was standing, and as soon as he saw her
he started and cried out: "Yu! my grandchild; you are in a very bad
state!" He hurried past her, but in a moment he met the next woman,
and cried out again: "Yu! my child; you are in a terrible way," and
hurried past her, but now he was vomiting blood. He hurried on and
met the third and the fourth and the fifth woman, but with each one
that he saw his step grew weaker until when he came to the last one,
with whom the sickness had just begun, the blood poured from his
mouth and he fell down on the trail.
Then the medicine-man drove seven sourwood stakes through his body and
pinned him to the ground, and when night came they piled great logs
over him and set fire to them, and all the people gathered around to
see. Nûñ'yunu'wi was a great ada'wehi and knew many secrets, and now
as the fire came close to him he began to talk, and told them the
medicine for all kinds of sickness. At midnight he began to sing,
and sang the hunting songs for calling up the bear and the deer and
all the animals of the woods and mountains. As the blaze grew hotter
his voice sank low and lower, until at last when daylight came,
the logs were a heap of white ashes and the voice was still.
Then the medicine-man told them to rake off the ashes, and where the
body had lain they found only a large lump of red wâ'di paint and a
magic u'lûñsû'ti stone. He kept the stone for himself, and calling
the people around him he painted them, on face and breast, with the
red wâ'di, and whatever each person prayed for while the painting
was being done--whether for hunting success, for working skill,
or for a long life--that gift was his.