The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

whole. Not that all the stories are graced with a happy ending.
Some come to a tragic conclusion, sometimes resulting from
someone’s inability to follow the rules or perform a ritual in the
proper way.
Other Kochinnenako stories are about her centrality to the
harmony, balance, and prosperity of the tribe. “Sh-ah-cock and
Miochin” is one of these stories. John Gunn prefaces the
narrative with the comment that while the story is about a battle,
war stories are rarely told by the Keres because they are not “a
war like people” and “very rarely refer to their exploits in war.”
Sh-ah-cock and Miochin or the Battle
of the Seasons
In the Kush-kut-ret-u-nah-tit (white village of the north)
was once a ruler by the name of Hut-cha-mun Ki-uk (the
broken prayer stick), one of whose daughters, Ko-chin-nenako,
became the bride of Sh-ah-cock (the spirit of winter),
a person of very violent temper. He always manifested his
presence by blizzards of snow or sleet or by freezing cold,
and on account of his alliance with the ruler’s daughter, he
was most of the time in the vicinity of Kush-kut-ret, and as
these manifestations continued from month to month and
year to year, the people of Kush-kut-ret found that their
crops would not mature, and finally they were compelled to
subsist on the leaves of the cactus.
On one occasion Ko-chin-ne-nako had wandered a long
way from home in search of the cactus and had gathered
quite a bundle and was preparing to carry home by singeing
off the thorns, when on looking up she found herself
confronted by a very bold but handsome young man. His
attire attracted her gaze at once. He wore a shirt of yellow