Sedit (Curtin’s Wintu account)

Overview

In Curtin’s Sedit and the Two Brothers Hus, Olelbis plans a stone road from earth to Olelpanti. Future people would climb it when old, drink and bathe in renewing waters, then return young. Sedit arrives in elaborate clothing while the Hus brothers build. He demands that they pause out of respect for an older relative and threatens their work when ignored. Once they explain the purpose, he disputes the plan.

His argument is more extensive than a casual wish that others should die. Repeated rejuvenation without marriage would, he says, leave people without children and meaningful shared activity. He praises cooperation in gathering and husking acorns, household work, marriage, birth and communal concern at funerals. He also observes that a world without death would prevent people from killing animals for food. The narrative presents these arguments as Sedit’s position, including their acceptance of grief and violence, rather than as the compiler’s advice.

The elder Hus brother is persuaded, but the younger asks whether Sedit himself would willingly remain dead. The brothers destroy the unfinished road and fly away. Sedit immediately regrets speaking. He strips off his fine clothes, fastens sunflower leaves to his body as wings and a tail, and tries to follow them upward. The leaves dry and break; he falls and dies. Olelbis identifies him as the first to die through the consequences of his own words.

Curtin’s personage list associates Sedit with coyote through the transformation framework used for these first people. This is a specifically Wintu account, not a single biography of every Indigenous Coyote. Curtin’s note distinguishes stopping the work that would have excluded death from literally manufacturing death; that distinction fits the unfinished road at the centre of the narrative.

In the separate Kele and Sedit episode, Sedit follows the songs of Kele’s daughters to a mountain household. After surviving the rough sons’ abuse, he asks to imitate their father’s creation of children from sticks. He first succeeds in making two daughters. His attempts at sons fail when he looks up too soon, then when he cries out under the required blows: the children revert to sticks, including his daughters. A final attempt produces twenty sons, but the daughters never return. The sons paint themselves yellow instead of hunting deer, then learn to eat gophers and grasshoppers. Sedit warns them away from the dangerous spring-woman Tunhlucha Pokaila and disperses them through the country. This episode supplies a different setting for his coyote household without joining its sequence to his death in the Hus narrative.

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 notes486–487 distinguish the first nine narratives as Wintu and the later thirteen as Yana. Curtin describes California collecting in1895 and prior publication of these narratives in The Sun. The selected story does not name an individual teller.

Records & interpretation

Complete Sedit and the Two Brothers Hus, pp.163–174, including the closing Sonomyai stone-removal statement; personage list and relevant notes505–506 read. Collection provenance486–487 inspected. Complete Kele and Sedit, pp. 243–263, separately supports the appended household episode.

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; Wintu teller not named in this chapter · 1898

   Sedit and the Two Brothers Hus,163–174; notes505–506; collection provenance486–487. Also complete Kele and Sedit, pp. 243–263.

Family, evolution & connections

Sedit’s created children and the lost daughters

Sedit’s imitation of Kele’s child-creation procedure, pp. 259-263.

Parallel branches distinguish the lost daughters from the eventually successful sons. Created narrative parentage, not biological descent. Both daughters permanently revert to sticks; the twenty successful sons follow a later attempt. Kinship greetings elsewhere are not used to reconstruct unnamed shared ancestors.

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.