Once there was a man, a fine hunter and good provider, who was very much in love with his handsome wife. They had two beautiful children, with a third on the way.

When his wife was about to give birth, she was in labour for a long time. The baby wouldn't come out, and it hurt so much that the woman cried. The husband fetched an old woman who knew about such things, and she tried birthing medicine and all her other powers. But nothing helped; the child wouldn't come out, and the young wife died.

The husband was crazy with grief. He had loved her so much, and now he didn't know what to do. He ate almost nothing. He cut his little finger off to show how much he missed her. He held all kinds of ceremonies for her. Sometime after she had died, the man was walking near his tipi one night when he saw a ghost. It was something like a white fog, a mist shaped like a woman. It was his wife, calling him. She said:

"I couldn't stand seeing you grieve so much. I took pity on you. It's not at all bad where I am, and I can arrange for you and the children to join me. Then we can walk the Milky Way together and never be separated again."

The man said: "Come into the tipi. Let's talk this over."

So the white shape went inside with him. They sat down. The man said: "I'm not quite ready to die yet. And the children are too young to die. Instead of our going with you to that spirit place, can't you arrange it so that you come to life again and stay with us?"

The ghost didn't know, and said she would ask and return in four days with an answer.

Four days later she came back, standing outside the tipi in the moonlight like a white mist. She called her husband and told him:

"Well, all right; it's arranged for me to come to life again. Make a curtain of buffalo robes that I can hide behind, and don't look at me or try to touch me for four days. If you do I'll remain dead, so be careful, Husband."

The man followed every instruction. He hung the curtain and didn't look or let the children look behind it. He did everything right. And after four days his wife came out from behind the curtain, young and pretty as before. The couple and their children lived again as if she had never died. They were happy together.

When years had passed, however, the man fell in love with another woman. He told his wife: "I shall marry a second woman, and she will share the work with you. You'll have someone to talk to when I'm away hunting. Things will be more pleasant."

But things were not so pleasant. The first wife tried to get along with the second one, but the new woman was proud and jealous. And as often happens, the man paid more attention to his new wife, the younger and prettier one. The new woman did not like having the old one around, either, and she told her:

"You're nothing but a ghost; you're not even real. Why do you hang around? Why don't you go back up to the Milky Way where you belong? Go away, ghost!"

The first wife said nothing, but the next morning she was gone, and her husband and children also were gone with her. They had vanished without a trace. This time the ghost wife had taken them to the spirit land rather than stay with them down on earth. When the new wife realized what had happened, she was sorry for what she had said, but that didn't bring them back.
 

* Told by Leonard Crow Dog in 1968