Kumeyaay - In-yar'en Ah-ha' (No Eyes in Water)
A spring which rises in the edge of the river flat at Descanso is p9ointed out by the Indians as one in which dwells a bad spirit. The following tale concerns its evil power.
All night long those who were awake heard the uncanny screams of Kwin Mari' (Blind Baby), who dwelt in the bewitched spring of In-yar'en Ah-ha' (No Eyes in Water), which oozed from the muddy bank and trickled down a sedgy flat to the river. Sharp, distressing sounds they were, like the cries of a frightened baby, and left a shuddering fear in the hearts of all who listened in the little village of Pilch 'oom-wa (White as Ashes).
This village, so called because nearly every morning the frost caused the ground to appear as though powdered with ashes, was just west of the river, and so near the evil spring that the piercing wails penetrated the remotest 'ewaa (house).
Old women of fearless men listened with bated breath; young mothers clasped their little ones closer in shivering fear, thinking how they might perchance have been born under the blight of Kwin Mari' (Blind Baby); and those dear women who were living in daily hope of giving a beautiful, brave man-child to their people, cowered in agony on their pallets, of fur, drawing the soft robes closer about their heads to deaden the shrill cries.
All who heard know that the spirit of Kwin Ma-ri' (Blind Baby) was seeking a victim. Even the children knew that it could cast a spell over the mother before her little one entered the world, which would seal its eyes to earthly sight forever. So throughout the night they lay in waking dread.
As the first gray line of dawn pushed up through the blackness of the night the cries ceased, and a strange woman crept into the village faintly calling for help.
Eagerly the people succored her; and when her strength returned she told how those in her own village had been killed by fore, she alone escaping.
How, after wandering about for several days, she had heard in the night just passed the screams of a baby in distress and set out at once to find it. Stumbling in the dark, over rocks and thorny brush, she at last entered an open space soft under foot with the touch of new grown grass. As she drew nearer and nearer to the sounds, she reached a bank, mucky and wet. Here she stooped down to pick up the baby, thinking she had found it; but her hands plunged into a pool of water instead, and, as the sharp cries rose again from her very feet, she fell back, paralyzed with fear.
Not until dawn had she been able to move. Then she crawled to the nearest shelter which she saw rising ghost-like on the hill before here. Little did she know what had befallen her; but the people, who well knew, kept her with them caring for her tenderly till her little one was born.
Only after she had seen how tightly closed were his tiny eye-lids, resisting all efforts to open them, did they tell her of Kwin Ma-ri' (Blind Baby), dwelling in the bewitched spring of the In-yar' en Ah-ha' (no eyes in water), and how it had the power, could it but touch the mother, of blinding her unborn babe.