Miwok · numen · myth age (first people / animal people time) · numen
Yayali is the man-eating giant of the Central Sierra Miwok, attested in two independent versions in Gifford's Miwok Myths (tales 3 and 14). He roams the hills hunting the animal-people, kills Chipmunk with the stone in his burden basket, and forcibly takes Chipmunk's widow as a wife; she deceives him, escapes with her children, and with her kin brings about the giant's death, a fall into fire or from a bridge in the recorded variants.
Domains
cannibal giants
Powers
to kill victims with a stone carried in his burden basket
Sources
Edward Winslow Gifford, "Miwok Myths," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 12(8), 1917
Edward W. Gifford and Gwendoline Harris Block, Californian Indian Nights Entertainments, Arthur H. Clark Co., 1930