Sanihas Yupchi (Curtin’s Wintu account)

Overview

When Olelpanti loses its water, the acorn specialist Kopus cannot find Mem Loimis despite five days and nights of dancing. Olelbis then sends the swift messenger Lutchi to Sanihas Yupchi in the far east, offering reed and yellowhammer-wing arrows. His mother Sanihas questions why Olelbis, who claims such extensive knowledge, needs someone else to locate his wife. The chapter identifies the archer also as Tsaroki Sakahl.

The crowd doubts him when successive pipefuls do not bring his spirit helper. Toko explains that the helper must come a great distance. After sixty pipefuls he becomes possessed, and after fifty days and nights of dancing, accompanied by the two Tsudi singers, he describes Mem Loimis’s movements and children. His helper is Patkilis’s Winishuyat, the foresight spirit of the jack rabbit. This invisible guide accompanies her sons through two horizons and explains how to cross the third.

Sanihas Yupchi continues dancing while the boys travel. He places a tiny striped basket in the sweat-house; a drop from Kut’s leaking water basket fills it. Hubit initially dismisses the quantity, then drinks for half a day without lowering it and must be carried away. Everyone receives water, including the unsuccessful Kopus, despite complaints against him. Sanihas Yupchi drinks near the end, Olelbis last. With abundance restored, the archer wishes the household well and returns home.

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

Curtin’s complete Olelbis and Mem Loimis, pp. 51–65, including the final explanation of springs. This is a Wintu narrative mediated through his English presentation and colonial-era comparative framing; it is not a claim about every Indigenous tradition.

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

   Olelbis and Mem Loimis, pp. 51–65; collection provenance pp. 486–487.

Family, evolution & connections

Sanihas and her son Sanihas Yupchi

The explicit mother-and-son exchange in Olelbis and Mem Loimis, pp. 56-57.

One branch records the stated parentage. No father is supplied. Sanihas Yupchi and Tsaroki Sakahl are identified as the same person here, not siblings. Curtin’s English account is the inspected witness.

Hawt and Tsaroki Sakahl - stated brothers

Repeated narrator brother statements on pp. 183-187 and 195-196.

Parallel branches show stated siblings under a grouping heading, not an ancestor. No parents or birth generations are supplied here. Grandfather and grandson forms of address elsewhere are not used to invent a wider pedigree. This is Curtin’s English narrative witness, not a universal account of Wintu relationships.

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.