Chir Chuma and the Chir Pokaila sisters

Overview

Chir Chuma cannot walk and is carried on two sticks by the Siriwit brothers, who move rapidly across water as easily as land. When the opposing fire fighter Nor Patsas attacks, the carriers are invisible. They repeatedly scatter the warriors that spring from his firebrand while Chir Chuma strikes with red sucker flint. The narrator later identifies Chir Chuma as the actual killer of two men whose deaths are charged to his commander, Sehinom Chabatu.

Sehinom’s grandmother is Chir Pokaila, also called Kahi Buli Pokaila. She perceives distant preparations without a messenger and warns her grandson about Chulup’s approaching challenge. She says that a cold northern wind expresses her anger. A second Chir Pokaila comes from Pokaitin Mem and joins her sister in defending the grandson. Chir Chuma is expressly their brother, and the three relatives’ powerful arrows reverse the battle when Sehinom’s army is in danger.

The grandmother’s knowledge has a crucial limit. Two years later she sleeps without knowing that a raid is approaching. She rushes to bring Sehinom weapons and is killed at the door. Chir Chuma fights until the Siriwit brothers carry him home; Sehinom independently survives underground. The surviving uncle should not be included in the account’s broad lament for the slain settlement. The sisters and brother are grouped here because their combined intervention and its later reversal form one substantial household episode.

Origins & earliest records

Wintu narrative Norwan in Jeremiah Curtin’s 1898 collection. His provenance describes California collecting; no individual teller is named for this chapter. These are first-world personages, not a description of living Wintu people.

Records & interpretation

Complete Norwan introduction, personage list and narrative pp. 69–117, through the final returning armies and subsequent metamorphoses, read alongside the complete interpretive note pp. 497–503. Curtin’s solar theory and comparisons with Greek and Algonquian traditions are his interpretations.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Creation Myths of Primitive America in Relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind

   Jeremiah Curtin · 1898

   Norwan, complete pp. 69–117; selected profile passages 88–106; interpretive note497–503; collection provenance486–487.

Family, evolution & connections

Chir Chuma and the two Chir Pokaila sisters

Norwan, pp. 95–101.

Narrator-stated sibling group, with the first woman’s grandchild separately labelled. The grouping root is not an ancestor. The two Chir Pokaila women are distinct despite sharing a name. The edge to Sehinom skips an unspecified parent generation. Kawas relationships conflict elsewhere and are excluded rather than forced into this pedigree.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary textCurtin1898: Norwan, complete Wintu war cycleResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.