THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLK-LORE. Vol. II.—JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1889. —No. VI. NOTES ON THE COSMOGONY AND THEOGONY OF THE MOJAVE INDIANS OF THE RIO COLO- RADO, ARIZONA. Early on the morning of the 24th of February, 1886, I left the train of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad at East Bridge station, the westernmost one in Arizona, situated on the banks of the Colorado River ; through the failure of telegrams sent in advance, there was no one to meet me from the post to which I was travelling, Fort Mojave, one of those poems in dreariness nowhere to be found save in our own military establishment, on our remote frontier. The station a moment’s glance showed me to consist of the bridge-tender’s shanty and nothing else ; the bridge-tender was affable enough, and desirous to extend the hospitalities of the metropolis, in exchange, perhaps, for such information of the doings of the great world as he might hope to extract from the first visitor who had been deluded into appearing at the place for more than a month. I im- posed on his good nature, however, only to the extent of leaving my grip-sack in his shanty, while I started to walk across the bridge to the California side of the river. When half over, a freight train overtook me, and as it was going very slowly, there was no trouble in jumping upon a coal-car and riding for three miles to the town of Needles, California. This town was a small collection of pretty wooden cottages, occu- pied by conductors and other railroad employees, and their families. There was a very excellent hotel, providing an abundance of well- cooked food, and good, clean beds. During the winter season the climate is lovely, and one might be travel-bound in many a worse place. I hired a Mojave Indian runner for two dollars, to carry a message twenty miles to Fort Mojave, and while awaiting a reply, amused myself as best I could by strolling about among the Indians. There were numbers of them, men, women, boys, and girls, sprawling on 170 Journal of American Folk-Lore. the sand in all the graceful attitudes that perfect laziness and perfect freedom from care could suggest. The Mojaves, of both sexes, are famed for beauty of form ; many of the gentler sex are lovely to look upon, in spite of tattooing, dirt, and premature decrepitude, induced by too early marriages. At times they would arouse themselves from their listlessness, and engage with spasmodic enthusiasm in games of “ shinny,” the balls being of rags tightly sewed together. The Mojaves have not the “stick” game of the Pueblos, but they show the same wonderful power in the toes, and will often, at a criti- cal point in the game, pick up the shinny ball between the great and second toes of the right foot and hop off with it for some distance. Immorality is the general rule, and the young girls are corrupt from the earliest years. The men bear a good reputation for industry, when hard work is offered, and have labored efficiently on the grades of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, as well as on the engineering work for the improve- ment of the river channel. They evinced much affection and tenderness for the children with them, but seemed incapable of feeling for the sufferings of the brute creation. An instance of this occurred while I was in the town. A Mojave came over to complain to some of the white people that a Chinese laundryman had killed his dog, or rather had given it poison. Pretty soon the suffering animal appeared, dragging itself across the railroad track, its hindquarters already paralyzed from the effects of nux vomica, or something of that kind. The Mojaves gathered in great circles, watching the contortions of the dying brute ; one of the boys seized an axe; I expressed approval, feeling certain that he was going to put an end to so much misery. The axe gleamed in the air, the youngster looked at me with a smile, I smiled in return. Bang! went the biting blade, and off went the poor dog’s tail. The dog yelled in agony, and squaws and children screamed with delight. Hereupon, one of the Americans stepped to the front, drew his revolver, and blew the half-dead animal’s brains out. Several of the squaws wore beautiful necklaces of glass beads, and in the fabrication of these necklaces show themselves not a whit be- hind their sisters of the tribes in the Missouri drainage. Towards evening word came that an ambulance had arrived for me at East Bridge, to which station I had to return, again crossing the Rio Colorado on the railroad bridge. The road up the valley of the Colorado follows through a heavy growth of arrow-weed, and after some miles passes through mes- quite thickets. It is very sandy until you strike the mesa, within Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 171 three miles of the fort, when you get upon a gravel and hardpan. Indian villages dot the intervening distance, but a description of them will occur farther on in this article. It was after midnight when we reached the post of Fort Mojave, and were cordially welcomed by Lieutenant Phister, the commanding officer ; he arranged to have an Indian guide come to his quarters early the next morning, with whom could be made all arrangements for visiting the several villages of the Mojaves, or any other objects of interest in the vicinity. As good fortune would have it, the Indian selected was Merry- man, whom I had known very well in 1871 and 1872, when he was one of the scouts employed by General Crook in the operations against the then hostile Apaches. He was an exceptionally bright fellow, speaking, reading, and writing English fairly well, and not at all averse to communicating what he knew on the subject of the manners and customs of his people. The day was passed in looking in upon the Mojaves living close to the fort, and noting what was of most interest; they were nearly all engaged in playing “ shinny ” or “ quoits.” The quoits were two round, flat stones, four inches in diameter ; the side which could first throw them both into the hole, twenty paces away, won the game. What surprised me most was to receive corroboration of the state- ments made to me by Indians at the San Carlos agency, to the effect that the Mojaves did have customs strikingly suggestive of the Couvade, of which so much has been written in other parts of the world. Reference has been made to the fact that the Mojaves are tender parents, fond of their exceedingly bright children. Doctor Ord, the post surgeon, told me that Jim, a Mojave of considerable prominence, would not eat any salt in his bread last week because the medicine-men had warned him that if he did his child, sick at the time with the whooping - cough, would die. Another Mojave would not eat for four days, fearing bad results to his child ; but the medicine-men allowed this man to drink coffee. Previous to this, I had been informed from other sources that when a Mojave youth has led one of the young girls astray, and she finds that she is about to become a mother, he will betake himself to a secluded spot and fast and wail until the child is born. While I do not doubt the ac- curacy of this information in the least, I am of the opinion that it relates to the primitive life of the tribe, and must be falling into dis- use at the present time, when so large a percentage of the women lead lives of immorality. We had been at the post twenty-four hours before Merry man had made his boat ready to take Phister and myself down the river on a visit to the spot where the gods “ made the world.” 172 Journal of American Folk-Lore. Merryman pulled slowly on his oars, while the boat was pro- pelled by the swift current of the turbid river, Phister and I, mean- while, languidly reclining in the stern, listening to the flow of talk with which we began to be favored. We let our guide’s words come unchecked, only asking a question now and then to prompt him to fresh topics. It was a red-letter day for an ethnological student. There was absolutely nothing to do but write down what Merry- man said, and occasionally to help him get the boat off a sand-bar. The scenery was sullen and impressive; the treacherous channel wound its way among islets of bleak sand, sometimes collecting its forces to make a rush against the bank, from which it bit off every few minutes great slices of rich soil. The mountains closing in upon each side of the valley were lofty, rugged, and naked. “ That sharp peak, over in Nevada, above the fort,” Merryman pointed out as “ Spirit Mountain ; the gods live there.” (It was the Mojave Olym- pus.) “ That other sharp, high mountain, down there near the Needles, in Arizona, was also a spirit mountain ; that was where the Mojaves went when they died.” (It was the Mojave Elysium.) Mojave doctors are born, not trained. Their gifts are supernat- ural, not acquired. They can talk to the spirits before they have left their mother’s womb. There are spirit doctors who are clair- voyants and exorcists ; they talk to the spirits. There are snake doctors who cure snake bites; sometimes by suction, sometimes by rubbing something on the wound, but generally by singing. They can find rattlesnakes any time they wish. They can pick them up unharmed, and can talk to them. They have no Snake Dances, such as I described to Merryman as having seen among the Moquis, but, he asserted, “the Mojave doctors can do all that.” The Maricopas have eagle doctors ; Merryman could not say why, except because the Maricopas are afraid of eagles. The Mojave doctors can cure the Hoop-me-kof (whooping-cough). The Mojaves have no phallic dances; the Pi-Utes and Hualpais, their next-door neighbors, have them at rare intervals. Merryman rowed and talked in this delightfully interesting way as we drifted down the river, passing the iron column marking the boundary between California and Nevada, and pulling up to the shore at a plantation of ky-ssa, a plant which the Mojaves sow broad- cast on wet sand-bars while the waters are receding. The tender, lanceolate leaves are boiled in water while green to remove bitter- ness, and then boiled again and eaten. The red twigs, looking like those of the rhubarb and sumach, are hollowed out for pipes. The grain is gathered in March, dried, ground, and eaten. On the gravel mesa, overlooking this field, was an insignificant stone-pile, which Merryman said had been placed there by Mus- Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 173 tam-ho, otherwise called Pa-o-chash, the god, son of Maty-a-vela. The Colorado River was then very high, and came up to the crest of this bluff. Mustam-ho was the god of water. He ordered that every man and animal should swim, diving into the river from this point. This was no doubt the place where formerly dances and games had been held by the Mojaves to celebrate the recession of some abnormal spring flood of the Colorado. The lustration de- scribed was possibly a kind of sacrifice to propitiate the angry god of waters, Mustam-ho, who, Merryman said, “ made all the waters.” The stone-pile was exactly like the Apache sacred stone-heaps, the Tze-na-a-chie. I am pretty sure my conjecture is correct because Merryman said that before engaging in these games every Mojave had to purify himself in the sweat-bath. Those who now dived into the water as an exhibition of skill, were, perhaps, in pre-historic days, thrown into the seething flood as a living sacrifice to the angry deity. Herein may be found a suggestion as to the generic basis of all sacred games. Originally, beyond a doubt, the slowest runner was immo- lated ; later on, he was only beaten ; and, as civilization had made greater strides, simply ridiculed and derided; the old expression, “ The Lord for us all, and the Devil for the hindmost,” may have more significance to the student than that of a mere vulgarism. A hundred yards or so from this point was a flat-topped, rocky mesa, known as Mat-ho-ko-sabbi, or “ the place or land of holes in the nose,” because here once all created life met to engage in games of running, jumping, swimming, and walking. All the birds had holes bored in their beaks. The duck came last. “Your nose is too flat,” said Pa-o-chash, called the Judge, because he is the judge of all actions of men or animals, here or hereafter. “ I can’t help that,” said the duck, “ I was born so ; I must have a hole in my nose like the rest; I wouldn’t look pretty without it.” The Judge consented and the hole was bored. Then men came up. The Judge said : “I don’t bore holes in flat noses. No flat-nosed creature, ex- cept the duck, can have a hole in his nose. A flat-nosed man would n’t look pretty.” After that, the animals ran round in a circle. The duck and dove both ran and flew and so came in ahead; the horned toad ran until out of breath, and then stopped. (This was evidently the site chosen by the Mojaves for the cele- bration of their Creation Dance, or dramatic repre- sentation of their myth of the creation. Here was an irregular, elliptical curve, marked with small heaps of rock (see diagram), at distances of from five to twelve paces, each designating the point where, ac- cording to Merryman, some animal (or rather a medicine-man dressed up to represent one), had broken down in the course which was 174 Journal of American Folk-Lore. run with the Sun, from left to right. Where the big medicine-man representing the Judge was to stand was marked thus: Q and near this on the ground was traced a hieroglyph, the meaning of which Merryman was unable to give, but which bore some slight resem- blance to the figures of a man, a woman, and a child, or of three grown persons tied together, When Mustam-ho first created men and animals they were very much alike in appearance, and Mustam-ho did not really know what any particular kind was good for. That’s the reason why he as- sembled them here, Merryman said, and made them run to see which could best live on its legs; swim and dive, to see which could best live in water; fly, to learn which were qualified to abide in the air. He also asked them many questions: “Which of you is anxious to live without work and eat such food as man may throw to him ? ” “ I,” said one. “ All right, then you shall be the dog,” said Mustam-ho. And so with the others. He and man went among them and Mus- tam-ho separated them, and some he called fishes, and made them to live in the water, and some were snakes and crawled on the ground. All animals received their names that day. The dog was made the same time that man was. The Mojaves used to eat dogs, and most of them do so yet. The bear and the coyote were not made until some time afterwards. “After death, we follow the shadows of our great, great, grand- fathers, those relations whom we have never seen. When we come to where they have been, they have gone on. We don’t catch up with them: they have died again and changed into something else. Maybe so, bimeby, long-time, we ’ll catch up and be the same as they are, but I don’t think so, I don’t know.” “When a Mojave dies, he goes to another country, just like his own ; it is the shadow of his own country, the shadows of its rivers, mountains, valleys, and springs in which his own shadow is to stay.” “ When you dream of your dead friends five or six times, that’s a sign you are soon to die.” “When a man dies, his friends consult the spirit doctor, who falls into a trance, and then visits the spirit land, which is at the mouth of Bill Williams Fork ; if the dead man be not there, the doctor who attended him has been guilty of mal- practice and has killed him and put his spirit in some mountain known only to the doctor. (A sort of Hades or Limbo; see farther on.) This doctor, thus proved to be a wizard or a quack, must be killed at once, so that he may be made to go and keep the dead man company.” It is an insult to speak of the dead to the widow or other survivors. It is to the interest of quack doctors and witches to kill a number of people, because the dead take with them to the spirit land the Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 175 shadow of all their possessions, and the doctor or witch becomes the chief of a rich and powerful band. Doctors and witches keep in a sort of Limbo or Hades, known only to themselves, all the victims who fall a prey to their nefarious arts. “ It is,” said Merryman, “ the nature of these doctors to kill people in this way, just as it is the nature of hawks to kill little birds for a living.” “ Once a witch was paid seventeen dollars by a Mojave to kill another Indian whom he disliked. She watched and followed in the trail of the victim, stepping carefully in his foot-prints. —‘ ’T is well,’ she said, ‘ say nothing: he dies in four days : say nothing. I don’t want to be killed just yet. I ’ve killed only two, and when I die, I want to rule a bigger band than that.’ “ But the spirit doctors consulted the spirits and knew that the victim had been murdered. “‘We can’t tell who killed him,’ they said to the relatives, ‘but watch near the spot where his body was burned. The poison which the witch put in his body must come out from the ashes in four days, and if the witch don’t be on hand to gather it up, it will do her great harm.’ So they watched, and, sure enough, they saw tracks and they caught the witch, and they killed her with rocks and then burnt her, and I was a very small boy at the time and saw them do it over there on that spit of land next the sand-bar.” (This idea that power can be obtained over a person by walking in his foot-prints, or by cutting out a sod upon which he has stood, prevails in Europe and other parts of the world.) “ What I tell you, I have learned from the old men. The Mojaves sometimes have meetings, when the old men lecture the young men on the history of the tribe and of the world : they never get through.” (Merryman was perfectly aware of the meaning of the term he used, “ meetings,” as connected with religious services, con- ventions, etc.) “The Mojaves have women doctors, who are born with the gift, just as the men are; they are regarded by the male doctors as their equals and treated with every consideration.” The rocks near this spot were scratched with various figures : 176 Journal of American Folk-Lore. Merryman further said that the Mojaves never drank water while travelling, if they could possibly avoid it. (The Indians of the South- west very rarely drank water while on the march: they preferred to put in the mouth a stone or twig to induce a flow of saliva. Of late years, however, they behave more like our own people on such oc- casions.) The Mojave men wear their hair in long tresses or curls, in rear. They never cut except at edges, in sign of mourning. “ It would be a disgrace to have their hair cut off, much as it would be to a China- man to lose his pig-tail.” They dye their hair with the black pitch exuding from the mesquite, and with the blue mud of the river bottoms. False hair is often added to the natural supply. The Mojaves, Apache-Mojaves, Hualpais, Pimas, Yumas, Cocopahs, and the Camilya (a very small band living in Lower California), sprang from the same stock and came from a point on the Colorado River, above Cottonwood Island, near a big stone. The Mojaves know of the ocean to the west and to the south. Once, fifty years ago, in the time of Merryman’s grandmother, the Mojaves sent forty of their warriors over to Cucamungo ranch (i. e. between San Bernardino and Los Angeles, Cal.), to steal horses. The Mexicans invited them in to eat, and drink, and killed all but two, who made their way back to the Colorado River. Panta-cha, the runner of the Mojaves, who now lives at the Nee- dles, can run, so Merryman insists, from Fort Mojave to the Mojave reservation, one hundred miles, between sunrise and sunset. He can beat a horse in speed. He will then stay at the reservation only a little while and start back for the Needles. Merryman says he can make the whole journey, going and return- ing, almost two hundred miles, inside of twenty-four hours. “ He never gets tired.” The runner whom I dispatched to Fort Mojave on the 24th instant went twenty-one miles, over a heavy sandy road, between .ten a. m. and 1.30 p. m. This was regarded as so commonplace a perform- ance as to be worth but two dollars for the round trip. Merryman says that the Mojaves now tattoo for ornament alone; there is no clan or gentile symbolism involved. The first man, he said, was not made of clay, but of Mustam-ho’s own body. Merryman started across the Colorado with the boat, intending to “ cordel ” it up to the post on the opposite side. Phister and I walked home along a trail on the California-Nevada bank, through the packed sand of the river bottom. We passed through a few Mojave fields, all patterned after one model. They were brush and post fenced, and planted with wheat and kyssa in clumps like the grounds of the Moquis and Zunis. Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 177 The bottom land was a jumble of arrow-weed and mesquite, with some small groves of cottonwood. The Mojave winter huts were made of upright cottonwood logs, covered with others, then with smaller branches and earth, with but one door and no windows. They seemed warm and sufficiently comfortable. The floor was of sand, which served its purpose when their measly dogs snapped at visitors, as the squaws promptly threw a handful into the eyes of the miserable brutes, who ran off howling for dear life. The walls of these huts are of wattle work, made of arrow-weeds and grass; there are generally two centre-posts. This is the winter residence, shared by the dogs and chickens. The summer house is close at hand and is a simple ramada or awning of branches, of the form familiar to Mexican travellers. There is another ramada, upon top of which great caches of basket-work contain stores of mesquite beans, corn, beans, acorns, pumpkin seeds and other dainties, together with all the industrial implements and surplus pots, pans, and kettles. Not far from the entrance of each house was a mortar made of the stump of a mesquite tree, the pestle for which was a huge affair of lava, eighteen inches long. Ranged along the walls, in suitable places, was the surplus ward- robe of the family, the most interesting portion of which, to the American eye at least, was the apron and bustle of the fine inner bark of the cottonwood, which forms almost the complete raiment of the women, old and young alike. The squaws were parching corn and then serving it up in that simple style, or as a mush; some were making mush of acorns, of mesquite, of grass seeds, or of pumpkin seeds, but it was always mush. (The food of the tribes along the Rio Colorado is almost the same as it was when Alarcon first went among them in 1541.) There were coarse dishes, jugs, ollas, and bowls, painted and un- painted, in shape and decoration very much like those of the Pueblos, but not so good. The women and children, in nearly every case, had their heads plastered with mud and mesquite pitch, for warmth, they said ; but 178 Journal of American Folk-Lore. more likely to restore the rich blue-black color, faded by exposure to the sun, or to kill vermin. We were shown some half-finished rabbit-skin mantles of the same pattern as those to be found in the Moqui villages. This little animal, the jackass rabbit, has been to the inhabitants of the interior of our continent of almost as much consequence as the buffalo was to those living in the plains of the Missouri. From it have been taken food, and clothing of the warmest kind. There were fishing-hooks and lines with which the Mojaves catch the great, tasteless Colorado salmon, and several shinny sticks, just bent and hardened in the fire. The Mojaves make two or three kinds of baskets ; the first re- semble the beautiful ones fabricated by the Apaches which hold water; the others are flat and much like those in which the Utes and Shoshonees parch their grasshoppers. In one hut a young girl was employed upon a lovely bead neck- lace, using as a support a beer bottle, steadied by filling it with sand. Two or three paces from her, an old woman had just finished paint- ing a large olla, which she then proceeded to burn in a fire made in a hole in the ground. Upon none of the pottery was there to be discerned anything in the shape of a totemic emblem. The next morning Merryman resumed his conversation : “ We don’t sing or dance before going out to hunt deer. The Hualpais and Pi-Utes do : we would do so too, if we depended on deer for. food, but we don’t: we get all the food we want by planting. The Pi-Utes and Hualpais don’t approach their wives for one day before going out hunting: that would kill their luck.” “ This Earth is a woman ; the Sky is a man. The Earth was sterile and barren and nothing grew upon it ; but, by conjunction with the Sky—(here he repeated almost the very same myth that the Apaches and Pimas have to the effect that the Earth was asleep and a drop of rain fell upon her causing conception,) — two gods were born, in the west, thousands of miles away from here. They were Ku-ku-matz and his brother, To-chi-pa. I don’t know much about them: I heard they jumped down a burning mountain, what you call a volcano. They are not dead, but we do not see them any more.” (It is possible that Merryman was presenting the dim vestiges of a pair of deities of whom nothing but the names remained. The word “ Ku-ku-matz ” or “ Gu-ku-matz ” — he pronounced it both ways — is certainly similar to that of the deity Kukulkan, or Gucumatz, of the Indians of Guatemala. His connection with the volcano could be explained by the fact that he must have been a god of the earthquake or volcano; and volcanoes, we know, still belch forth on the north- Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 179 west coast, in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands; Arizona and New Mexico have been subject to them within the historical period, and Pinart has found small ones still smouldering in the desert regions of northwest Sonora.) “That volcano was away off on the other side of the ocean.” (Merryman had been to the Pacific.) “ But the Earth and the Sky had other children — Maty-a-vela and his sister Ca-the-na, who is all the same as Queen of the Sky.” (At another point in the story, he stated that this goddess was the sister of Mustam-ho, the son of Matyavela, but it was not deemed best to be too censorious, lest he discontinue his story-telling.) Matyavela made himself a son and a daughter out of his own flesh. “The son’s name was Mustam-ho, or Pa-o-chash, who made for him- self out of his flesh a boy and a girl, from whom all men and women are descended. So you see that all men and women come from God.” Matyavela died on the Colorado River near to Cottonwood Island. He now lies up there on top of Spirit Mountain (i. e. the one in Nevada, on the west bank of the Colorado River, north of Fort Mojave). “ Before he died, he told his son to provide food for man. Mus- tam-ho made corn, tobacco, and mesquite for his children. The Mojaves were the youngest; consequently he gave them more to eat than he did to the Hualpais, Apache-Mojaves, and the other Indians who were older. He separated us from them because we could n’t all live in one place. We received our name from him. Once we lived over there at Date Creek, with the Hualpais, Apache- Mojaves, and others. This valley was then all under water, — all except the lofty mountains down there by the Needles. The wood- pecker lived on that mountain for ten days. The water kept rising and wet his tail; you can see the stain there yet. “ The water remained very high ; all the land was covered and it was very dark, for as yet there was no day and no night, just dark all the time. “ So Mustam-ho took the Mojaves in his big arms and carried them until the waters began to recede and then he put Hama-pok (the little red ant) on Spirit Mountain (the place where the dead Mojaves go down near the Needles), and made him build himself a house; — and that was the first house ever built in this country. Animals in those days were n’t as they are now; they were almost the same as men. And then Mustam-ho walked down to the mouth of the Colorado River, waved his hands and told the water of the ocean to fall back, and it did fall back. And the earth began to get dry, although rain still fell. 180 Journal of American Folk-Lore. “ However, as he moved back, up the river, as he reached the country of the Cocopahs, the water was still up to his neck; when he reached Fort Yuma, it was only breast-high; at Camp Colorado, it barely touched his hips, and here it had fallen to his knees. “So at this place he made spades, and gave them to the Mojaves and told them to plant, and they did so. “ Mustam-ho could do whatever he pleased. Do you see that big rock over there ? (Pointing to one on the west bank of the Colorado River, two hundred feet high.) Yes? Well, Mustam-ho could pick that up in one hand and easily carry it over to any place he wanted. They say that in those days there were some pretty big men among the Mojaves. Two I have heard of and will give you their names after a while. They were as long as from here to there (twenty feet). They turned into stones, so I’ve heard : but they were n’t so big or so strong as Mustam-ho. “When the Mojaves got back from the mouth of the Colorado, they found some other Mojaves here, —people of the same blood as themselves, speaking the same language, — but these other Mojaves did n’t want our people to come back; they said that there was n’t enough land for all. “ They fought and our people killed them all.” (Evidently, this story relates the exodus and return of a band of Mojaves, as well as something concerning former great floods in the Colorado. The “ arms of Mustam-ho,” the god who made the water, no doubt were rafts.) “Our people then had to scatter to live. The Apache-Mojaves went up from the Needles to Date Creek. (/. e. up the Bill Williams Fork.) “The Hualpais were driven away down the Colorado to where they joined the Maricopas, who were once of our people. But after- wards the Hualpais made their way over to the Apache-Mojave country and down into the Grand Canon. Another band of the Mojaves went off to the Four Peaks and over into the Tonto Basin.” (Central Arizona.) “The Mojaves are divided into fourteen different families, but they are all the same Mojaves. 1. Hual-ga. Moon. 2. O-cha. Rain-cloud. 3. Ma-ha. Caterpillar. 4. Nol-cha. Sun. (The family of the chief Osykit.) 5. Hi-pa. Coyote. 6. Ku-mad-ha. Ocatilla or Iron Cactus. 7. Va-had-ha. Tobacco. Merryman’s own family. 8. Shul-ya. Beaver. 9. Kot-ta. Mescal or Tobacco. Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 181 10. Ti-hil-ya. Mescal. 11. Vi-ma-ga. A green plant, not identified. 12. Ma-si-pa. Coyote. 13. Ma-li-ka. Not identified : family of the chief Siky-hut. 14. Mus. Mesquite. (The difference in meaning between Nos. 7 and 9 was not made clear: all Indians have several kinds of plants which they make use of for smoking; this may explain it. No. 12 was originally a band of Maricopas that came to live with the Mojaves but have always remained as a separate clan.) “The Yumas have these same families : the Apache-Mojaves have also. The Maricopa families are somewhat different, and the families of the Hualpais are altogether different. “Children belong to the father’s family. (This is different from the rule obtaining elsewhere in the Southwest.) “The Mojaves marry but one wife at a time. The daughters all answer to the family name just as you would say Jones, Smith, etc., but they have their own names at home, such as Big Girl, Little Sister, etc. “ Boys when two years old receive names chosen for them by the father. Four days after birth, at sunrise, the ears of boys are pierced : two holes to each ear, one at bottom, one at top, on the inner rim of the cartilage, — two small holes, not gashes or slits. Girls have three holes bored in the lower end of the lobe. “ Noses are pierced at manhood. The women’s noses are not bored. The Mojaves have never worn anything in the lips (labrets). “After death, Mojaves become spirits; then they die again and become a kind of an owl ; a second time, they turn into a different kind of an owl; and a third time, into still another; fourthly, they become water beetles ; after that, they turn into air.” “ If anything is left of their bodies, the arms, the muscles of the upper arms become one kind of an owl, and the heart another.” In early days, Merryman went on to tell us, the Mojaves were much harassed by maleficent animals and genii. The bear, then a great monster called Mahual, used to eat the children. He was killed by the Mojave Hercules, Apatch-karawi. (This word means something about killing enemies. It is a peculiar fact that the word “Apache,” by which we have persisted in designating the southern bands of the widely-spread Tinneh family, is not under- stood by the people to whom applied; they call themselves Tinde or Inde, and do not recognize the other designation when they first hear it, but finally accept it complacently, esteeming it only as an additional instance of the erratic nature of the Caucasian. But the 182 Journal of A meric an Folk-Lore. word “Apache” occurs in the idioms of all, or nearly all, the adjacent tribes, and was probably the name given by them to the Apaches and adopted by the Spaniards.) The Shooting Star, Ku-yu, was also vaguely malevolent. The Shark came up from the Gulf of California to help the Mojaves ; he seized the Shooting Star and dragged him under water and drowned him, but did not drown his spirit, which can still be seen, every now and then, flying through the air. The Shark, Hal-ku-ta-da, himself afterwards became an annoyance to the Mojaves : Mustam-ho then killed him. “ I want to tell you more about our families. Mustam-ho divided our people up. He said : ‘You remain together and take this name for distinction, and you others take that name ; ’ and so on. Now, he said, ‘when you want to marry, you Va-ha-dha men cannot marry Va-ha-dha women, because they are your sisters : you must marry some one else, of another name. You must have but one wife at a time, but, if you don’t like her, send her away and get another one.’ ” Merryman also went on to say that a long time ago the Mojaves dwelt in stone houses, in cliffs, on the other side of Spirit Mountain (Nevada). “Those big chiefs I was telling you about, who were turned into stone, were named Witchy-witchy-yuba and Matna- pocua. They led the Mojaves back from Date Creek to the Colorado River. (Evidently apotheosized chiefs.) “ Cathena was the sister of Mustam-ho. She don’t do anything for us at all. She never sent us corn, nothing.” “But, Merryman,” I interposed, “what good is she then? She don’t seem to be of much account.” “Well, she isn’t; she just stays up there in the sky. She never did nothing but pisen her fadder.” “ Poison her father ! Goodness gracious ! What did she do that for ? ” “ I don’t know; medicine-man he tell me ; I tell you. Medicine- man say ‘Cathena pisen her fadder just for meanness ; I guess she pretty bad anyway.’ ” And that was all I could then learn of the mysterious Cathena, whose behavior to her parent recalled what I had read of the killing of the god Chronos by his undutiful offspring. “ When Mustam-ho was born, he did n’t want to come to the surface of the earth; he resisted with all his might, and to bring him forth there had to be an earthquake, and ever since then when women have children they have more or less trouble. “ Sometimes, we have felt the earth shake not far from here, and that must be because Ku-ku-math and his brother have been out and are returning inside the earth. “The rainbow (Kwallissay) is Mustam-ho’s medicine for stopping rain ; sometimes, you see two or three or four colors, sometimes seven or^eight; those are different medicines.” Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 183 (The idea expressed by this Indian is strictly analogous to our own obsolete or obsolescent views on the same point; what is known to scholars as color symbolism, no intelligible explanation of which has ever been made, was nothing more or less than color-medicine; the changing hues of the raiment of the priesthood in many religions is one manifestation of it; our stained Easter eggs, another; the old- time method of curing scarlet fever with scarlet medicines, or the use of scarlet blankets upon the patient’s bed; the cure of yellow jaundice by the administration of yellow rhubarb; finally, the reten- tion by apothecaries of the gaudy bottles in their windows, —all these record the persistency of the idea which finds open and avowed expression among savages.) “The full number is only used when Mustam-ho has to stop a big rain.” “ The rainbow comes out of the hole of the kangaroo rat (O-hul-ya), which has a long, hairy tail. “ Pregnant women must not cross over a beaver dam ; the beavers would destroy their progeny.” Pre-natal influence is fully believed in. A Mojave mother-expec- tant must not play too much with dolls, — the hideous things which the Mojaves make out of baked clay. “ If she did, her baby would be born looking like it. There is a youngster among the Mojaves now who has a little horn on his head because his mother always played with a calf.” “ When the first baby is born in a family, the father must bathe himself from head to foot, twice each day, at sunrise and sunset, in some one of the sloughs, and he must fast all the time, he must not touch salt. If the baby is a boy, he does this; if a girl he does this too, all the same, no different.” After the fast has ended, Merryman says that the parent must still curtail his diet, especially avoiding mesquite and pumpkin seeds for thirty days ; after that he can eat what he pleases. Some of the Mojaves paid no attention to this precept, which emanated from Mustam-ho, and the consequence was that their wives never had any more children. When subsequent children are born, the fasting and lustration are for four days only. When a baby dies, neither father nor mother should touch food of any kind, liquid or solid, until after the medicine-man has notified them that the ashes of the pyre are cold. They would become sterile if they did. The Mojaves have no nubile dances or feasts. At the time of first purgation, a young maiden is buried to the arm-pits in hot sand; this will help to develop muscles of arms, legs, and breasts. She eats no mesquite, no meat, no corn, no salt, no pumpkins, nothing Joiirnal of American Folk-Lore. 184 but beans and grass seeds and “ mush-melons ” (but no water-melons). She must not drink coffee. The Mojaves believe that she will grow rapidly for five months after this and then stop. (The Apaches have ideas almost identical with the foregoing.) The Mojaves seek fortune through dreams. The medicine-men divine the future from the dreams of those who consult them. When a Mojave dies, there is a feast made of some of his horses and other edibles ; but none of his clansmen will eat of it. The rest of his property, the portion not burned with him, is apportioned among his clansmen. The Mojave men always help in farm labors when possible ; this rule applied to all tribes that Merryman was acquainted with. The Mojaves once lived close to Camp Cady, California, and also at a place to the north of the Cottonwoods. (A settlement very near San Bernardino, California, which Merryman had visited.) This latter locality is known to Mojave tradition as Avi-hamoka, the Three Peaks, which used to be a spirit mountain until Mustam-ho moved over to this other spirit mountain near by in Nevada. (That is to say the god changed his habitat when the Mojaves changed theirs.) “From Avi-hamoka, the Mojaves came to Bassa-ora (Spirit House, which is north of Camp Cady, California), from Bassa-ora they moved to Cottonwood Island, on the Colorado River. “ Pa-o-chash (Mustam-ho) led the people until they reached the Spirit Mountain over here in Nevada. “ Then he said ‘ Idgo-to-ash, I have finished ; you can’t see me any more;’ then he walked a little to the north, south, east, and west, and came back to the centre of his people. He had turned into a bald-headed eagle. His wings were sprouting out of his shoulders, and he could already fly a little. “He was sorry to leave the Mojaves, and sorry to leave the birds which he had created also. He gave the Mojaves great power over the birds, and they lived on them ; and he taught the birds to talk to one another ; and then he flew away. “ Sometimes we see a bald-headed eagle flying down to the mouth of the river and back ; the medicine-men say, ‘ That is Mustam-ho coming to see his people.’ ” Merryman repeated the statement that the Mojaves were once mountain Indians ; they came back here from Date Creek, and had a disagreement with the Mojaves who had remained in the valley of the Colorado. They fought with them, killing a good many of the war- riors, making slaves of others, and driving off a small band toward the country of the Moquis and Sevintch. He did not know where they went; had never heard. The women and children are incorpo- Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 185 rated in the present tribe, which then assumed the name of Mojaves; could not tell what their name had been before that. Men and women of the same clan cannot marry under any circum- stances ; neither can relatives inside of the third degree. “ Second cousins can’t marry,” he said. He seemed to understand this per- fectly, and explained by marks on the ground which I afterwards put in this form. Let A and B represent two brothers; their descendants cannot intermarry until we reach A3 and B3. In naming children, Merryman said the Mojaves never call any of them Maty-a-vela, Mustam-ho, Pa-o-chash, Ca-the-na, etc., — these being names of their deities. This disinclination is in marked con- trast with the practice of the Spaniards living so close to them, whose families are made up of Manuelas, Jesuses, Salvadores, and other titles ascribed to the Most High. Tzi-na-ma-a was the name of the Mojaves before they came to the Colorado. Merryman had previously declared that they had another name, but he could not remember what it was. (Warriors, in most of the Indian tribes, assume new names after each battle ; probably as much as anything else to keep the ghosts of the enemy from recognizing them and doing harm; the same pecul- iarity of changing names, or possessing secret names, has been noticed in several instances of whole nations ; for example, the Romans in Europe ; the Zunis and Moquis in America, and now this instance of the Mojaves ; the impelling motive is probably fear in each case.) The names of the bands which they found in the Colorado valley, and conquered, absorbed, or drove out, were the Tze-ku-pama, the Kive-za-ku, and the Sakuma. According to Merryman, the Pacific coast near San Bernardino, California, must have been the officina gentium for all the tribes related to the Mojaves. They used to live over there, and there is yet in existence what, from his description, must be a phallic shrine, not very far from Old Camp Cady, and between it and San Bernardino. “ The old men knew all about it, but the young men would n’t pay attention. When the railroad was built, a lot of our people went over there to California to work on the road ; some of them went to that place and saw it, and the old men said, ‘ What did I tell you ? VOL. II. — NO. 6. 186 Journal of A merican Folk-Lore. Now you had better believe what you are told.’” But Merryman added that “ the first people came out of the bowels of the earth in a skiff.” (Undoubtedly referring to the fact that their remote ances- tors were canoe Indians.) Cathena means simply Woman, or First Woman ; she is also called Qua-kuina-haba, or The Old Woman in the West. (This name sounds a trifle like Kuanon, the Japanese goddess of the Ocean ; the Navajoes, Rio Grande Pueblos, Zuiiis, Moquis, and Apaches have a story of a similar goddess.) In her character as a maiden, Cathena is her title; but after reach- ing the status of a matron the other designation was invented for her. Thus she bears some resemblance to the Diana-Hecate of the Romans and Greeks. She was adopted as a sister by the Shark, by the Ku-yu (Shooting Star), and by their brothers, Pathrax-satta and Pacuchi. These last two went off with the Maricopas, became great warriors, died, and were deified. The meaning of their names could not be ascertained. The Mojaves have meetings and pray to Mustam-ho for rain upon parched crops. If they don’t succeed in getting it at first, they try again in four days. The rattlesnake doctors are the rain doctors. (As they are among the Moquis.) The Mojaves have a feast every spring about May. They used to dance round the top of a pole to the top of which a scalp was fixed; they have had no scalp of late years, and have been obliged to sub- stitute a simulacrum of bark. There is a great feast and dance which lasts all day, one of the objects being to bring all the tribe together and give the young peo- ple a chance to select their future mates. The old practice was that the Northern Mojaves should one year entertain the Southern Mo- javes, and next year, vice versa. Cathena is the Mojave Venus ; she introduced promiscuity in the sexual relation ; according to my informant, before her time there was no intercourse between the sexes, but she taught it not only to human beings, but to them and animals, she herself setting the example. She invited all the animals to have carnal knowledge of her. The gopher then lived over on the other side of the earth; he came last and had knowledge of her at a certain time of the month, the result of the conjunction being twin sons, who were spotted like the gopher, their father. Their names were Satakot-parak and Satakot- pahana. They married the daughters of Pathrax-satta and Pacuchi respectively. (In reply to a question from me, Merryman said that the Mojaves do not kill twins; they regard them as of supernatural origin; the Apaches were formerly said to make away with them, possibly Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 187 because of the difficulty a woman would experience in rearing two babies at once while running about in the mountains as they used to do.) Kilkusiyuma was Pacuchi’s daughter; Kilkusipayba was Pathrax- satta’s. Cathena brought about the marriage. She said to her sons, “I am getting too old to work: I can’t grind meal; I can’t pack water any more ; you had better marry those two girls and make them work for you. I have made for you this reed flute. Play on it; the music will reach them ; they can’t resist your suit and will marry you.” “But when the young maidens came she was jealous of them, and wished to keep her sons from marrying; but her malice was frus- trated by one of her sons who gave her a potion which set her to sleep.” (Merryman could not tell what this was ; he said that it was all same klokyfum (chloroform). The next morning, Cathena discovered her sons and their wives lying asleep, alongside of each other. As a piece of spite she reversed the position of the twins, so that the one who had hitherto been the most successful in hunting should henceforth yield in prowess to his brother. This suggests the Biblical story of Esau and Jacob. Well, the two brothers soon started out to hunt meat, they hung a quiver up by the fire, and each tied a long hair across the door-way. “ If you see that quiver fall,” they said to their wives, “ that is a sign we are dead, and if the hairs break we die.” Now the fathers of the young girls followed them up, not knowing whither they had gone ; they saw the twin-brothers kissing them farewell. That made them very angry ; they followed the twins and killed them. The woodpecker saw the crime committed; he drank of the blood of the victims, and hurried back home with the news ; and you can still see the blood on the woodpecker’s beak. Cathena and the young wives looked up; the quiver had fallen, the hairs were broken, and the woodpecker came flying in with the dreadful news. Cathena burnt down the house (this is the general usage among the tribes of the Southwest), and started for the western horizon ; the young widows were taken back home by their parents. Kilkusipayba, the widow of Satakot-pahana, bore a son; his name was Yehumara; he was spotted like his father. He first obtained rain. In this he was helped by Therabiyuba, who was a son of Matyavela. Therabiyuba, after they got the rain, went off to the moon to live, taking with him a mountain and some other things he needed. “You can see them in the moon yet.” Pathrax-satta did not like his little grandchild, because he was a boy 188 Journal of American Folk-Lore. and spotted. He wanted to kill him. The mother said, “No, it’s a girl; let it live ; when it grows up, it can work for us.” The boy’s aunt had no children. She, Kilkusiyuma, was anxious to save the child. She told the boy that his grandfather wanted to kill him. Yehumara, for this, held the rain back, and the crops failed. Pathrax-satta and Pacuchi died, but the two women were saved. Then Yehumara determined to take his aunt and mother over to where his grandmother lived, “away off in the ocean,” to use Merry- man’s exact words. But when he reached the shore there was no boat. That made no difference, however, so far as he was concerned. He could cross. He could shoot an arrow across, and hold on to the end of it, but he could not get the women over. (This sounds very much like the story of the translation of a prophet.) So he turned them into curlews (Ok-og) and Yehumara made his way over to his grandmother. THE FIRE MYTH. When Matyavela died, Mustam-ho, by his direction, started in to cremate him. The Coyote wanted to eat the corpse. At that time there was no Fire on earth. The Blue Fly put a star in the sky, “ Go over there, and get me some of that fire,” he said to the Coyote. The Coyote was fooled, and scampered off to bring in the star; he did n’t know that the Blue Fly had learned the art of rubbing sticks together and making fire. While he was gone, the Blue Fly made a big fire and Matyavela was burnt up. The Coyote happened to look back ; he saw the 'blaze and knew that something was up. He came back on the full run. All the animals were present at the funeral; they saw the Coyote returning, and formed a ring round the fire to keep him away from the corpse. The Coyote ran round the ring until he came to the Badger, who was very short. The Coyote jumped over him, seized the heart of Matyavela, which was the only part not burnt up, and made off with it. He burnt his mouth in doing this and it’s black to this day. The Mojave dead never turn into bears or coyotes. The Mojaves never eat the beaver; they say that they would never have any children if they did. They marry a brother’s widow, if they happen to be single at the time of his death. This completed the sum of my conversations with Merryman. The next day Lieutenant Phister and I drove to the Needles, on our way to the Grand Canon of the Colorado, which we were able to see at a point were the vertical depth is somewhat over a mile. Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojave Indians. 189 The Mojave Indians at the Needles were managing to extract a trifle of fun from their dreary surroundings by tying tin cans to the tails of their mangy pups and seeing them run wild with excitement through the sage-brush. These Indians would also take lard cans and cut two diagonal slits in the top, and place a piece of meat in the bottom of the can. A coyote would come along during the night, smell the meat, insert his nose and be unable to withdraw it against the tooth-like projections of tin. The miserable animal, thus muzzled and half-blinded, would run aimlessly about and often wander over the bank into the current of the Colorado and be drowned. I may here say that when the railroad first reached Holbrook, Arizona, numbers of the Moquis came down from their pueblos in the north to trade. They soon learned to enjoy the fun of seeing their dogs scurrying before the breeze with the tin pendents dangling from their tails ; more than this, the Moquis, with praiseworthy thrift, when tired of the sport themselves, rented their canines for twenty-five cents a head to the Americans who wished to try their hand. On an unlucky day an American suggested to a party of Moquis who had just come in to Holbrook with five burros that the fun would be simply immense were the donkeys to be utilized in the same manner at the same price. No sooner said than done. The largest tin cans to be found were promptly fastened on to the caudal appendages of the meek and humble donkeys. For one brief second, all was well, — Then, with a yell that was more eloquent and convincing than any- thing ever uttered by the animal Balaam rode, the donkeys broke for the mountains, and never drew breath until they reached the Moqui villages, sixty miles to the north. Their owners walked home, but never smiled at the situation, although the Americans roared. John G. Bourke. 190 Journal of American Folk-Lore. OMAHA FOLK-LORE NOTES. I was told the following in 1878, when at the Omaha agency: — Some time ago the brother of Wacuce (Brave or Generous) was driving a two-horse wagon, a boy being with him. Suddenly the man and one horse were killed by lightning, and the wagon was knocked over on one side. It is the custom to bury such a person in the very place where he has been killed ; but as, in this case, it was in the public road, they rolled the body aside, and made the grave beside the road. On the return home of Wacuce he was told all the particulars of his brother’s death. He reproved his wife for ignoring the old customs. The dead man should have had the soles of his feet slit, and he ought to have been buried face downward. Then he would have gone at once to the happy hunting grounds, without giving further trouble to the living. As it is, he zvalks (!) and he will not rest in peace till another person is slain by lightning and laid beside him. The wagon, too, was accursed, and not an Omaha would dare use it from that day. Should a person be struck by lightning while in a house, the build- ing must be deserted immediately. Myths must not be told during the day, nor in summer, as the violation of this rule will cause snakes to come. When a sick person dreams of a dead person whom he formerly knew, it is a sign of approaching death. The name of a deceased father must not be mentioned. Rocky Mountain beans, which are scarlet (ma-kan ji-de, or red medicine), confer good luck on their owners. If the beans like their owners, they will never be lost; even if dropped accidentally they can be found again. Ni-k’u'-mi, an aged Oto woman,1 told her granddaughter of her own experience with one of these beans. She had dropped it in the grass, but she found it on retracing her steps. J. Owen Dorsey. 1 She lived with the Omahas, being the mother of Mary La FLche, the mother of Bright Eyes.