Siv Yis, remembered in English-language ethnography as Shee Yee, is the archetypal healer of the Hmong. When the death lord Ntxwj Nyug was killing more people than were being born, the benevolent creator Saub gave Siv Yis a share of his own power, together with healing spirits and ritual instruments, and sent him to protect humankind from disease. Siv Yis fought sickness and the schemes of the death lord, rescuing souls that had been carried off to the otherworld. Hmong tellings recount that when he finally withdrew again into the sky his tools remained among humankind, and those whom his spirits choose take them up and become shamans in their turn. To this day the shaman who mounts the wooden bench, veils his face and enters trance announces himself as Siv Yis, so that the first shaman is held to be present in every seance; the resident shamanic spirits a master serves are the same neeb that once served Siv Yis.