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Overview

Curtin’s Yana personage list associates Wakara with moon, his daughter Halai Auna with morning star, his brother Tuina with sun, and his wife Ochul Marimi with mountain lion. In The Winning of Halai Auna, Wakara’s daughters are the stars. Most already have husbands. He refuses Halai Auna to any suitor whom Tuina can kill, and the surroundings of Tuina’s house contain the remains of earlier candidates.

The family travels through the air by dancing in a circle and rising through the smoke-hole. At Tuina’s house the latest suitor, Pun Miaupa, survives five tobacco trials with help from his uncle Igupa Topa, hidden inside his heart. Tuina’s wife is Utjamhji, identified with mock sun, and his three daughters are called Wediko, meteors. These correspondences come from the book’s personage list; the narrative itself proceeds through a family visit, hospitality and dangerous tests.

After an angry Igupa Topa floods the house, Wakara, Tuina and their wives and daughters drown and are subsequently revived. Wakara then tries another test at home: a tall deer-sinew pole that can be bent to the ground and released. The protected suitor cannot be thrown off. When the positions reverse, Pun Miaupa sends Wakara permanently upward and declares that he will shrink, die, return and grow again.

Wakara’s grieving daughters ask to join their father. Chuhna, the spinner associated with spider, makes an immense basket and draws the daughters and their husbands upward on a rope attached to the sky. The stars remain there. Halai Auna has already departed with her husband and his uncle. The account therefore distinguishes her successful marriage from the later collective ascent, rather than describing every daughter as following the same route.

Dancing aerial travelSun’s lethal tobacco testsMoon launched by sinew poleCyclic decline and renewalSpider basket raises star household
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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

Complete The Winning of Halai Auna at the House of Tuina,281–294 read through its final episode; relevant personage lists and collector notes520–521 checked. No independent Indigenous-language transcript is claimed.

Selected bibliography

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

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    Creation Myths of Primitive America

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

    The Winning of Halai Auna at the House of Tuina,281–294; Yana section statement281 and collection provenance486–487.

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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