They began the search for the Corn Maidens, found at last only by
Paiyatuma, the god of dawn, from whose flute came wonderful music, as of
liquid voices in caverns, or the echo of women's laughter in water
vases, heard only by men of nights as they wandered up and down the
river trail.

When he paused to rest on his journey, playing on his painted flute,
butterflies and birds sought him, and he sent them before to seek the
Maidens, even before they could hear the music of his song-sound. And
the Maidens filled their colored trays with seed-corn from their fields,
and over all spread broidered mantles, broidered with the bright colors
and the creature signs of the Summer-land, and thus following him,
journeyed only at night and dawn, as the dead do, and the stars also.

Back to the Seed People they came, but only to give to the ancients the
precious seed, and this having been given, the darkness of night fell
around them. As shadows in deep night, so these Maidens of the Seed of
Corn, the beloved and beautiful, were seen no more of men. But Shutsuka
walked behind the Maidens, whistling shrilly as they sped southward,
even as the frost wind whistles when the corn is gathered away, among
the lone canes and the dry leaves of a gleaned field.

The myths of California, in general, are of the same type as those given
in a preceding volume on the myths of the Pacific Northwest. Indeed many
of the myths of Northern Californian tribes are so obviously the same as
those of the Modocs and Klamath Indians that they have not been
repeated. Coyote and Fox reign supreme, as they do along the entire
coast, though the birds of the air take a greater part in the creation
of things. These stories are quaint and whimsical, but they lack the
beauty of the myths of the desert tribes. There is nothing in all