Seven Mohave Myths. A. L. Kroeber
Where fighting is involved, motivation becomes particularly elusive. The main thing seems to be that there should be war and the happenings that go with war. Hence, in place of a definite sense of identification of the teller or hearer with one or the other of the personages, there is often a sense of foreboding or of the inevitability of what will happen. This is not confined to the tales which professedly deal with war, but recurs in the Cane myth, and, with reference to death instead of war, in that of Deer. In the latter, the identification is particularly obscure. Jaguar and Mountain Lion create a pair of Deer in order to kill them for the benefit of the future Walapai. But a full three-quarters of the story tells about the Deer, their thoughts and feelings; so that it is difficult not to feel them as what we would call the "heroes" of the plot. If so, they are unquestionably tragic heroes.
The tales are given their great length less by fundamental complications of plot than by expansion of detail. The most common expansion is geographical. There are long travels. If no events occur on the journey, many places are nevertheless enumerated, and the traveler's feelings or thoughts at each point, or what he sees growing or living there, are expatiated on. The Mohave evidently derive a satisfaction from these mental journeys with their visual recalls or imaginings.
In Raven the physical movement of the whole story exists only in the mind. How people will travel and fight is told and sung of, but in the tale itself the entire journey is that from the rear to the front of the house in which the two fledgling heroes grow.
Another method of expansion is more stylistic. What is going to happen is discussed first, and then it is told over again as a happening. There are arguments between personages on whether to do this or that; whether to understand an event in one way or in another; or as to what is going to happen later.
Most of the tales are given some tie-up with Ha'avulypo in Eldorado Canyon and the first god Matavilya and his death there; or with Mastamho who succeeded him and his Avikwame which we call Dead or Newberry Mountain—both north of Mohave valley. These tie-ups seem to be for placement reference: they indicate that the events occurred in the beginning of time. Sometimes an incident of the creation serves as the introduction of a tale; or it may be only alluded to. The heroes or personages are preponderantly boys, sometimes even miraculously precocious babies. Then overnight they may have grown up sufficiently to get married. These irrationalities or surrealisms of time should not be disconcerting when one remembers that to the Mohave the whole basis of knowledge of myth is due to a projection from the present into the era of first beginnings—is the result of the utter obliteration of time on the mythological and spiritual level. Even the culture hero Mastamho is sometimes described as merely a boy; so are the future tribes whom he is instructing; at times the informant refers to himself as a watching and listening boy. There is an evident feeling that the eras dealt with are those when everything in the world was fresh and young and formative.
I have put the Cane tale first because it has more plot and less of mere prolixity, geographical or otherwise, than the others. Next follow three stories that to the Mohave are concerned with war: Vinimulye-pātše, Nyohaiva, and Raven. After that comes the story of Deer, with animal actors; and then some fragments on Coyote, without songs and perhaps unorthodox, secured from a woman. Women are not precluded from dreaming, but on the whole the Mohave seem to have no great interest in women's dreams. The last is another tale unaccompanied by songs, the long one of Mastamho, which is essentially an account of the origin of human and tribal culture.
I. CANE
THE NARRATOR
The story of Cane, Ahta, more properly Ahta-'amalya'e, Long Cane, was told me on three days between April 24 and 27, 1904, with one day of intermission, by a middle-aged man named Tšiyêre-k-avasūk, or "Bluebird," who said he had dreamed the tale, beginning at Avikwame. I neglected to write down personal or biographical details about him, and dare not trust my memory at this interval.
This story has more plot interest than the majority of those which the Mohave profess to dream and sing to. It might be described as a tale of adventures on an almost epic scale, and it does not systematically account for the origin or institution of anything, although a bit of cosmogony drifts in toward the end.
The version recorded was told carefully and accurately. There are a number of internal discrepancies, especially as regards relationship of the characters and topography, which are considered in a section following the story itself; but the plot is well constructed and maintained.
The song scheme is also given after the tale. The songs are accompanied with a double beat of a stick struck against the bottom of a Chemehuevi bowl-shaped basket. Cane is not danced to.
The Cane type of plot recurs in another kind of Mohave singing called Satukhôta, of which only a brief outline was obtained. The singer of Satukhôta beats time by striking his palm against his chest.
THE CANE NARRATIVE
A. Kamaiavêta Killed at Avikwame
1a. All the people at Avikwame had gone out of the house and had sent for (the great snake in the ocean to the south) Kamaiavêta.[1] They thought it was he who had killed Matavilya and they wanted to kill him. No one knew this to be so but all believed it. Then when he came they killed him, and his body lay stretched over the earth. When he was dead, I[2] took a piece from his tail, the rattle nearest the body. I took it for good luck. Several tribes dream about this killing: the Yuma, the Maricopa, the Kamia, the Walapai, the Halchidhoma, and others down to the mouth of the river.[3]
[1] "Sky-rattlesnake-great." Also Kumaiavête or Mayavete.
[2] The narrator believes that he has seen and heard what he is relating.
[3] The Kamaiavête incident seems to be mentioned only for the purpose of fixing the time and place of the beginning of the story. The myth properly begins at this point. Most Mohave song-myths begin with an allusion to the death of Matavilya, of which the Kamaiavête story is an after-incident.
B. Two Brothers Go Off
1b. Now there were two brothers there. They stood east of the house and told of it. They did not speak, but sang. They sang of its posts, the rafters, the sand heaped around and over it, and the other parts. (4 songs.)
2. Their names were Pukehane, the older, and Tšitšuvare, the younger.[4] They went north a short distance, where there was a little gravelly place and thorny cactus. The ground-squirrel, hum'ire, lived there. When the two brothers came, it ran away, crying like a boy. It had never seen them before. They stood there and sang about it. (3 songs.)
[4] Both names refer to cane. Hipūke is the "end of the root" or butt. Hipūke-hane is probably the full form. Tšitšu-vāre is said to refer to the points of the cane. In the text, ū and ā have been rendered u and a in these two names.
3.