Kele and his mountain household

Overview

Olelbis gives lonely Kele a great sweat-house at Puidal Winnem. Kele splits a maple stick into two pieces, places them overhead and receives blows from the daughters who emerge before dawn. They become Klereu Lulimet and Pili Lulimet. When they wish for game, he makes twenty sons from mountain ash: ten smooth sticks become restrained brothers, while ten untrimmed sticks become unruly brothers who strike him repeatedly. Their contrasting conduct continues in their hunting and household life.

The sisters lure Sedit with a song whose apparent distance they change while remaining in place. His wandering eventually reaches the roof of their mountain house. Pom Piweki, whom he mistook for an old man lying across a trail, opens its entrance. Kele hides the guest, but the rough sons smell him, drag him out and toss him across the house through the night. A root falls from Sedit into the fire; its pleasing smoke distracts them and ends his ordeal.

Kele establishes an exchange: future hunters will offer the smoking tsarauhosi root and ask him to place deer within reach. Curtin includes a parenthetical report of Wintu hunters carrying and burning this root when unsuccessful. Kele rubs Sedit with deer marrow, later creates a separate mountain house for him by wishing, and explains how to make children from wood. Sedit’s imitation brings failures as well as eventual sons.

The story closes with Kele’s household still together: his sons continue hunting and his daughters remain unmarried. Its final sentence presents them as wolves outside and people at home inside the mountain. Curtin’s later comparative note on pp. 509–510 reverses that arrangement while discussing another account of their travels; this profile follows the explicit ending of the narrative rather than silently reconciling the two formulations.

The separately presented Wintu account in Curtin’s notes, pp. 511–516, describes a more dangerous encounter. A Kele daughter appears as an attractive woman; a son may take the form of the particular man a woman has been thinking about. A tuft of hair at the foot reveals the disguise. Recognizing and naming the visitor forces a retreat in wolf form, while accepting the encounter can lead to loss of mind or disappearance into the mountain. The account associates their compelling song with the sisters’ attraction of Sedit and locates their home at the head of Hazel Creek, on the mountain it calls Wenempuidal. These are attributed narrative claims, including the reported effects of the song.

Origins & earliest records

Jeremiah Curtin, Creation Myths of Primitive America in Relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind (Boston: Little, Brown, 1898). Collection notes pp. 486–487 identify the first nine narratives as Wintu and describe his California collecting in 1895 and earlier publication in The Sun. This chapter names no individual teller.

Records & interpretation

Complete Kele and Sedit, pp. 243–263. Its final household transformation statement and the different formulation in Curtin’s note on pp. 509–510 are distinguished. The note’s proposed European werewolf equivalence is the collector’s comparison, not established historical transmission.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Creation Myths of Primitive America

   Jeremiah Curtin, collector and English presenter; individual Wintu teller unnamed here · 1898

   Kele and Sedit, pp. 243–263, read completely; contrasting formulation in Curtin’s comparative note, pp. 509–510. Also complete The Making of Doctors Among the Wintus, pp. 511–516; the mountain household and disguise account is at pp. 512–516.

Family, evolution & connections

Kele’s created daughters and sons

The household expressly fashioned from sticks in Kele and Sedit, pp. 243-263.

Branches record the account’s creation-parent relationship, not biological descent. No mother is supplied. Sons remain grouped as ten smoothed-stick and ten rough-stick figures. Narrative wolf appearances do not establish natural ancestry; the final prose and collection note disagree over indoor versus outdoor appearances.

References

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

1. Primary textCurtin1898 digitised primary collectionResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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