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

Overview

Curtin’s Kol Tibichi follows a child at Norpat Kodiheril on Wini Mem whose disappearances alarm his family. He is seen singing underwater and hanging head downward from a pine, then abruptly appears at home. When he wishes for a great bird’s feathers and blows upward, Komos Kulit falls before him. A voice names him Kol Tibichi and promises that he will become the river’s greatest Hlahi, or doctor. He kills the bird with a spirit flint, and two elders remove its longest wing feathers for safekeeping.

The assisting voice later directs him to pluck grass with his mouth; in his hand it becomes five hundred flicker feathers. At the doctors’ gathering his possessing spirit is identified as Sak Hikai, the rainbow. Animal-skin headbands cannot release him to eat or drink. A red-painted maple-bark woman’s apron, made into a headband, finally satisfies the spirit. In his first narrated cure, his helper confronts and kills a hostile spirit waiting outside chief Notisa’s house, while the boy passes his moistened hands over the patient. The chief recovers next morning.

Kol Tibichi grows into a renowned healer, once surpassing another doctor’s displayed rattlesnake by blowing flames from both sides of his mouth. In extreme old age he offers two possibilities for his remains: an unburied body will become a healing rock, or a body left in an oak will leave healing water. The younger chief rejects both. Kol Tibichi accepts burial, predicting a rainbow and directing mourners not to stand east of the grave. These cures remain proposed alternatives in the narrative, not events that occur.

The rainbow rises from the grave and gradually moves through places associated with his childhood, finally reaching a mountain. After knocking sounds within the mound, an immense bird emerges at sunrise, rests briefly in the pine where he once hung and flies into the rainbow. Bird and rainbow disappear together. The ending names the bird Komus Kulit, a spelling variation within the printed account, and identifies the rainbow as his yapaitu; it does not explicitly equate every member of this partnership with Kol Tibichi himself.

Rainbow as a named spirit helperGrass transformed into feathersRed apron headband ends possessionGrave bird joins departing rainbow
01

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.

02

Records & interpretation

Complete Kol Tibichi, pp. 267–278. Legendary healing and spirit encounters are reported as elements of Curtin’s Wintu narrative, not medical evidence. No individual teller is named in this chapter.

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

    Complete Kol Tibichi, pp. 267–278; collection provenance pp. 486–487.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

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.

FT·2670 · RESEARCH EDITION 01Back to top ↑