There was a boy who used to go bird hunting every
day, and all the birds he brought home he gave to his grandmother, who
was very fond of him. This made the rest of the family jealous, and
they treated him in such fashion that at last one day he told his
grandmother he would leave them all, but that she must not grieve for
him. Next morning he refused to eat any breakfast, but went off hungry
to the woods and was gone all day. In the evening he returned,
bringing with him a pair of deer horns, and went directly to the
hothouse (âsï), where his grandmother was waiting for him. He told the
old woman he must be alone that night, so she got up and went into the
house where the others were.
At early daybreak she came again to the hothouse and looked in, and
there she saw an immense uktena that filled the âsï, with horns on its
head, but still with two human legs instead of a snake tail. It was
all that was left of her boy. He spoke to her and told her to leave
him, and she went away again from the door. When the sun was well up,
the uktena began slowly to crawl out, but it was full noon before it
was all out of the âsï. It made a terrible hissing noise as it came
out, and all the people ran from it. It crawled on through the
settlement, leaving a broad trail in the ground behind it, until it
came to a deep bend in the river, where it plunged in and went under
the water.
The grandmother grieved much for her boy, until the others of the
family got angry and told her that as she thought so much of him she
ought to go and stay with him. So she left them and went along the
trail made by the uktena to the river and walked directly into the
water and disappeared. Once after that a man fishing near the place
saw her sitting on a large rock in the river, looking just as she had
always looked, but as soon as she caught sight of him she jumped into
the water and was gone.
