The Intersection of Karuk Storytelling and Education

activity between menstruating women. (190-191) This pikvah teaches the participants
that the women’s community, strengthened by the time alone together, extends beyond
the physical world and includes Ikxaréeyav women. Where sweathouse was primarily a
men’s domain, and strengthened male unity, menstrual isolation seems to have
strengthened old-time women’s communal female identity on both a physical and
spiritual level. In both instances, the spiritual aspect is facilitated largely through stories
told about it.
Training in the mountains is one of our people’s highest forms of prayer and
education. As such, there are many stories told about different places in the mountains,
and what people have done there. I would like to look at two: “Two Brothers Go Target
Shooting,” told by Phoebe Maddux to J. P. Harrington; and “The Source of Sregon Jim’s
Family Wealth,” in Richard Keeling’s Cry for Luck.
“Two Brothers Go Target Shooting” begins at the World Renewal Ceremony: the
two brothers are target shooting. (16) Not only that, but “They ate no breakfast.” That is,
they’re fasting as people do when preparing for spiritual business like ceremony or
mountain training. Next, we learn that the two brothers are poor and, as such, excluded
by taunts from the ceremony. That’s when the tears come, and continue to come for ten
nights. All this should now be familiar: the importance of wealth rooted in the High
Dance or World Renewal culture, crying to participate fully in that culture, ten days as
the usual amount of time for a man to prepare for spiritual business. After this, they head
up the hill to the Lake of the Place where the Person Eats Himself (‘Arâar
‘U’ípamvâanatihiróokram). The first part of this process, going uphill, is reminiscent of
firewood gathering for sweathouse or menstrual isolation. The second part is new: instead
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