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Overview

The people possess a weak kind of fire that cannot cook their food. Ahalamila searches from mountain summits and, with sharp-sighted Siwegi, detects real fire far to the south. Ahalamila can shorten the road by folding it, but the later expedition remains exhausting: of about fifty volunteers, only he, Metsi and the old woman Shushu Marimi reach the river guarding the fire’s owner.

Ahalamila puts pitch on the three travellers’ hands and feet so they can cross the narrow slippery bridge. While Au Mujaupa’s household sleeps, he enters and passes coals to the others. Each carries fire in both ears. The awakened owner sends rain, hail, snow and winds in pursuit. Ahalamila and Metsi lose everything, but Shushu protects one ear with her hand as she runs. The coal falling from her other ear splits, misleading the pursuers into thinking that they have recovered all six pieces.

The younger companions reach home first and report failure. Shushu arrives slowly at sunset, cold and exhausted; the people had feared she had frozen. After resting, she lets the remaining coal fall from her ear into wood-dust. The house warms, meat is roasted and the people discover its good taste. Another chief obtains fire at the ensuing feast, and it spreads throughout the country.

Curtin’s personage list associates Shushu with dog, Ahalamila with gray wolf and Metsi with coyote. The narrative assigns the decisive success to the older woman’s endurance and care, rather than to her companions’ greater apparent strength. Siwegi’s exact bird identity is explicitly unknown in the source and is not supplied here.

Fire carried in the earsRoad shortened by foldingOne protected coal survivesCooked food shared between communities
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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 Yana section begins at281; these selected chapters do not name individual tellers.

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Records & interpretation

Curtin presents this as a Yana narrative. The complete The Finding of Fire, pp. 365–370 was read through its ending; the chapter does not identify its individual teller. His personage list describes later animal correspondences, not an already biological animal society.

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 Yana teller unnamed here · 1898

    The Finding of Fire, pp. 365–370; Yana section statement p. 281 and 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

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