Chapter IV: Introduction (3)

93. They went north. Tšese'ilye had also had a boy.[83] That boy said, "I am wise too. I have dreamed well: I know everything." He called himself Ahta-kwasume.[84] He gave himself that name: no one else gave it to him. Around his neck he wore cane, and he wore it on his belt and in his ears. When he walked, the cane in front and behind him rattled. Now he went east: He came to Hatšakwanakwe. There he burned the grass[85] and stayed, wanting to see his half-brother from the south. Then that one from the south came. Ahta-kwasume had a little fire over which he was stooping and did not see him. Then when he saw him he did not know him: he thought he was of some other tribe and not his brother. He was afraid and ran off east, and the other chased him, saying, "You do not know who I am: I am your brother." That one continued to run; at last he stood and waited; he saw it was his brother, and they talked. He went back with him to where the women were. (The one from the south) said; "You are my brother. I did not think I should see you. You did not expect to see me, did you? I met you on the desert. How do you live?" (1 song.)

[83] Here the woman, not her father, is again called Tšese'ilye.
This boy would of course be our hero's half-brother.

[84] Ahta is cane.

[85] Perhaps as a signal?

94. "Who are you? Whose boy are you?" he said. Ahta-kwasume did not say, but asked him the same. He also would not tell. Then Ahta-kwasume sang. In the song he mentioned his father's (_sic_) name. Then the one who had come from the south said, "I stand on Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše" (circumlocution for: he is kin of my father).[86] (1 song by each of them.)

[86] Names of the dead are not mentioned. Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše was
his father's older kinsman and still alive.

95. Then Ahta-hane,[87] who had come from the south, said, "We met here. We will cry together for a little while." Then they took hotū paint;[88] with that they painted. Then they cried. They burned their clothes and their baskets and all they had;[89] but Ahta-hane did not burn the cane he had got from the lightning hole. (1 song.)

[87] Here at last we have the name of our boy hero. The narrator
gave it when he was asked it at this point. When asked
previously, in the part of the story where the boy is coming
near Yuma tribal territory in his southward travels, the
narrator said that as yet he had no name.

[88] Not ordinary black paint, but micaceous, and glittering
when ground. Perhaps a mourning paint.

[89] In mourning. The reunion, recognition of kinship, and
reference to their dead father finally brings on this expression
of emotion.

96. He sprinkled water on the ashes and walked on the ashes and made the ground open wide in four places. Their father was deep down and they wanted him to come up. They heard him come. He continued to come and they heard him nearer. Soon he emerged. He had no bones, only flesh.[90] The two boys embraced him and cried. Ahta-kwasume sat to the west of him, Ahta-hane to the east. (2 songs.)

[90] A curious expression of unsubstantiality. This whole Witch
of Endor episode seems strange in Mohave culture.

_J. Revenge on Father's Foes_

97. Ahta-hane said, "You cannot walk. You cannot come with me. I wanted to see you, to see your face and your body. That is all. I am going north." Their father said, "It is well. I have seen you both." Soon he went back (down), he who had been Tšitšuvare. Then the two brothers and the women went north. They went north until they came to Selye'aya-kumītše.[91] They stood there. Then Ahta-hane saw dust in the north, and his father's scalp tied on a pole, and the wind raising the dust.[92] (1 song.)

[91] Near Fort Mohave, to the east of it.

[92] Presumably from people dancing about it.

98. Then word was brought to Pukehane and Nume-peta and Kwatša-kwatša and Tinya-kwaθpi, who were living at Avikwame with many people. Then Pukehane and Nume-peta sent Kwatša-kwatša to the two boys to say that they wanted to meet them: he came southward and met them at Qara'êrve.[93] They said, "Tell them that we shall be there. We will see them: we are going there." (2 songs.)

[93] A mile or so northeast of Fort Mohave.

99. Kwatša-kwatša said, "All have heard that you are coming. All know it: the news was brought to them. When you arrive they want to try something with you. There is a large rock with roots far down in the ground. Takse[94] has dug under the rock and broken the roots. He is to roll it, pick it up in his hand, and put it back where it belongs. There is another: Halye'anekītše:[95] he will obey you. Your father's scalp is on the pole: he will climb up to get it. If he can bring it down, we shall lose, but if he cannot bring it we shall win." The two boys said, "The people who live in the north do not think as we do. They ridicule me because they have killed my father. We shall arrive about noon." Then Kwatša-kwatša went back. (2 songs.)

[94] A ground-squirrel or large rat.

[95] The blue-tailed lizard. Cf. note 40.

100. That day they went up the river and came near the others. Halye'anekītše went to meet them. He said, "I will climb up to get the scalp. If you win you will get everything, their clothes, the men and women, the boys and the girls. But if I climb and cannot bring down the scalp, you will lose your bodies and everything you have. Then again, if Takse can dig under the large rock and cut its roots and carry it and throw it, you will lose, but if he cannot move the rock, you will win. You will win the houses, the dishes, and all the property of those people." Now Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše wanted to see the two boys. He said, "I want to see my two nephews." He met them, embraced them, and felt them over.[96] (1 song.)

[96] Tactifying his emotion, as it were. He did not cry, the
narrator said.

101. Now the two boys came there.[97] Then they argued what they should do first. The two boys wanted Halye'anekītše to make his trial first. The people who lived there wanted Takse to be first. Then Takse tried first. He took the rock, but could not throw it and it fell down just where he stood. So the people who lived there lost. Now Halye'anekītše was ready to climb: they told him to try. He climbed and brought down the scalp. So the two boys won again. The people there had lost everything. But they did not give up everything that they had lost; they gave up only part. They gave up their clothes and dishes and property but they did not give up their bodies. (1 song.)

[97] Where the others lived "at Avikwame" or Avi-mota (note 98).
Subsequently, the narrator said that when he threw his fire, the
hero stood at Tšohatave and δokupīta-tuδūmpe, two spots at the
east end of Avi-mota. Presumably this is where the contest took
place. It is not clear why the localization of this important
scene was not given spontaneously.

102. Then they said they wanted to bet again. They wanted to bet their bodies. They too had lightning. Ahta-hane's lightning (horrave) was not like theirs. They said to him, "Show yours." He said, "No, show yours." Then they showed it. It was only light and did no harm. Then he showed his: it was brighter than theirs, and quick, and struck the ground, and entered it. So he won everything that they had bet. Then he started to go away. But before that he had sent the five women back, his four wives and his mother; and Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše and Axta-hane (_sic_, for Ahta-kwasume); seven people in all. Now, when he went, he took one of his four pieces of cane and threw it west over Avi-mota.[98] It burned up everything and killed every one: Pukehane, Nume-peta, Kwatša-kwatša, Tinya-kwaθpi, and their people. Then he ran to the south. The fire had nearly overtaken his seven people. Only a plant like bulrushes, nyaveδi-ny-ipa, ghost arrow, did not burn. It stopped the fire at I ō-kuva'ire and saved those seven people. (2 songs.)

[98] It was on Avi-mota, not on Avikwame, that these people
lived, the narrator said later, in explanation. Cf. note 97.

_K. Transformation_

103. Ahta-hane had made this plant grow. Now his brother stood by him, and Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše, and the five women in a row. They wanted to know what he would do. He took off the covering of his cane, showed it to them, put the pieces of cane together between his hands, and it thundered. He wanted to turn them into something. Then the five women flew up to the sky. They stayed there and were the Pleiades, hatša. Then he wanted to do something for his brother. "I think it will be best if I take him to a little lake full of mud and throw him in to be a bird and he will shake his head, and we shall call him teristeris."[99] Then he did that, and now Ahta-kwasume was that sort of a bird. Then he wanted to do something with the old man, Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše. He thought, "I will throw him into the same place. I want him to be called soθêrqe."[100] Then he did that with the old man. (10 songs.)

[99] With a banded neck, in flocks. Elsewhere recorded as
mīn-turīs-turīs. Perhaps a snipe.

[100] Probably the snowy owl; with "gray" feathers.

104. Now he alone was left. No one was there. He thought, "What am I going to be? I think I will fly up and go through the air. I will be a meteor, kwayū,[101] and fly into the sea." Then he changed his mind. He thought, "No, I will not go into the sea. When I fly up I will go south." Then he went south. Just below Mukiampeve is Kway-ū-namau,[102] where Kwayū's father's mother had turned to rock. He went by there southward a little, jumped into the water, and sank to the bottom, to stay there. But, "I do not think it is good here," he said, came out, and went to the east side of the river. There he sat down. He is sticking up there now. He has been there forever, turned to rock. We call it Mêkoaṭa. (2 songs.)

[101] A checked start toward another doublet name.

[102] The name means meteor's paternal grandmother.

SONG SCHEME AND NARRATIVE OUTLINE

As usual for Mohave myths, a list of song topics also provides a sort of skeleton or framework of the story, and, although somewhat imperfectly, it serves conveniently as an outline of the plot.

The list that follows is in a sense the informant's. Wherever he said: "one song," or "four songs here," a paragraph has been terminated. The sections thus indicated by him normally deal with a single episode or thought, and are presented as consecutively numbered paragraphs. The only departure I have made from this procedure has been to break a paragraph into "a" and "b" when its first part consists of the conclusion of an incident without songs, and its second part deals with a new incident to which there are songs; as, 1a, 1b, 7a, 7b, etc. This minor formal device in the interest of clarity in the outline of the tale makes it that there are 111 actual paragraphs of narrative as against 104 numbered ones.

The informant listed 182 songs as due to be sung at the 104 stations or stages of incident: an average of less than two per station. This is low for Mohave song-narratives. There was only a single song for 54 stations, or more than half of them. He sang two songs at 38 stations, three at five, four and five at three each, and ten songs only once, at the next to final incident of the story.

The narrative breaks naturally into sections or chapters of unequal length. To these I have given titles, and have entered these captions, for convenience of orientation, both in the text of the narrative and in the song scheme outline. The latter follows.

_The Cane Song Scheme_

_Paragraph_ _Songs_

A. Placement in the Cosmogony

1a .. Kamaiavêta killed

B. Two Brothers Go Off

1b 4 At Avikwame: parts of the house
2 3 To North: Ground-squirrel
3 2 A little north. Rat
4 3 Rat eaten; house built
5 1 Uncle "Yellow-Pima" joins the brothers
6 1 Betting arrows
7a .. Corn and wheat from east

C. They Get Wives

7b 1 Girl in west has hwetše-hwetše bird
8 1 Quarrel over the girl
9 1 Tšitšuvare gets her
10 1 Bring her to uncle
11a .. He sends them to Sun in east
11b 2 Cock sings in cage
12a .. Tšitšuvare gets Sun's daughter
12b 2 About her house
13 2 About the stars
14 1 She grinds corn
15 2 Uncle sends them north for a third wife;
yellowhammer in cage
16 1 Pukehane gets her
17a .. Uncle sends them south
17b 1 Hotokoro in cage
18a .. Bring fourth wife

D. Quarrel over Cane: Elder Kills Younger

18b 1 Go for cane
19 1 Find cane
20 1 Quarrel for butt
21 2 Elder makes knife to cut cane
22 2 They fight over it
23 1 Return home
24 1 Elder makes younger ill
25 1 Elder spoils younger's birds
26 1 Nume-peta arrives for the death
27 1 Younger tells of his bones
28 1 Killed by elder and Nume-peta

E. Birth of the Hero Ahta-hane

29 1 Younger brother's son sings inside his mother
30 1 The unborn child makes rain
31 1 He emerges
32 1 Spared because disguised as girl
33 1 Suckled as if a girl

F. Shinny Game with Father's Foes

34 2 Shinny played with his father's kneecap
35 2 Boy grieves, sends his mother away
36 1 Steals the shinny ball
37 2 Knocks it west as meteor into mountains

G. Journey South to Sea

38 1 Crosses river on four sand piles
39 2 Sleeping at Qara'êrve, wakened by birds
40 1 South to Selye'aya-kumītše
41 2 Frightened by rattlesnake at Hanyo-kumasθeve
42 5 Wears snake as belt, sees wildcats at
Kamahnūlye
43 1 Met by horsefly at Aha-kuminye
44 1 Hummingbird nest at Hotūrveve
45 1 On southward to Sampulya-kwuvare
46 1 Wants cooling clouds as he goes east up
Sacramento Wash
47 1 Cloudy as he goes south to Gourd Mountain
48 1 Proceeding south
49 5 To Screw-mesquite spring at Akokehumī mountain
50 2 To petrified dancers at Ahwaṭa-kwimātše
51 2 Finds wild grapes at Kuhultoṭve
52 1 Eastward up Bill Williams Fork, meets badger
53 1 South again to Avi-su'ukwilye, watches jack
rabbit
54 3 South along sand ridge to Avi-melyehwêke
55 2 After sleeping, north to Avi-hupo
56 1 Northerly to river at Selye'aya-'ita
57 3 Crosses on sand piles to Kuvukwīlye
58 1 South to Aha-kumiθe spring
59 1 On south to Earth-Mouth gap
60 1 On to Tôske
61 1 On to Goosefoot mesa
62 2 Near Yuma land, sees cane in bottoms
63 1 Breaks off cane, travels on down past Cocopa
Mountains
64 3 To Gulf of California, sees surf and crane
65 2 Plays with sea shells
66 2 East along shore, sees ducks
67 2 Sees Hatōmpa'auve monster in lagoon
68 1 Turns inland northeast to catsclaw acacias

H. Marriage, and Contests with Meteor and Sun

69 5 Tracks of four women in desert
70 2 Reaches their empty house, hides as piece
of cane
71 2 Returning, the sisters are warned of him by
the eldest
72 2 Youngest sister finds him, rotten
73 2 Eldest revives him
74 1 Feeds him tobacco
75 4 Women go gathering, warn him of their
husband Meteor
76 2 Meteor comes, fails to kill him, gives
tobacco
77 2 Meteor leaves, Sun comes, wants to gamble
78 1 Sun loses belongings, then body, escapes to
sky
79 2 Boy inspects his winnings
80 2 His mirror shows him he is ugly
81 4 Beautiful from diving, he is found and wanted
by the four women
82a .. Selects the eldest

I. Return to Mother, Half-Brother, and
Father's Ghost

82b 2 Going homeward, he wishes rain to get rid of
wives
83 1 Repents, brings out sun
84 1 Laughs at mud in wives' sandals
85 1 The wives wear frog-shaped shell-gorgets
86 2 Mother's masohwat bird flies to meet him
87 2 Reunion with his mother
88 1 He tells her what happened
89 1 She calls the wives daughters-in-law
90 2 Boy questions his mother's father (another
Sun)
91 2 Goes east to get lightning cane
92 1 Travels east to war on father's relatives
93 1 Meets his half-brother
94 2 They identify their relationship
95 1 Mourn together
96 2 Call up their dead father

J. Revenge on Father's Foes

97 1 Traveling north again to father's killers
98 2 Foe sends messenger to meet at Qara'êrve
99 2 Conditions of contest arranged
100 1 Old man Yellow-Pima embraces both boys
101 1 Hero boy wins the contest
102 2 Destroys foes with his cane lightning

K. Transformation

103 10 Transforms wives and mother into Pleiades,
brother and old man into birds
104 2 Flies south as meteor, turns into rock Mêkoaṭa
by river

MOVEMENT OF THE NARRATIVE

Bluebird was a competent narrator in making his story move while retaining concrete and vivid detail. There is not the actionlessness of Raven, the bald outline manner of Vinimulye-pātše, the constant self-communing of Deer, or the deliberate repetitive prolixity of Mastamho. The tale always progresses. Either there are incidents crowding into a situation of emotional interest; or, when this flags, as in a long journey, the stages of travel are passed through with conciseness. The direct story appeal of Cane seems to me greater than that of the other Mohave narratives here presented.

APPARENT INCONSISTENCIES

There are a number of internal inconsistencies or contradictions. Some of these are almost certainly due to misunderstandings by either the interpreter or myself; for others I strongly suspect the narrator to be responsible; but in any given case it is almost impossible to be sure. After all, the story is so long that it took three days to tell and English it, and these three days were interrupted by a fourth. There was thus much provocation for the narrator to change his plot in spots through forgetting what he had said before.

One of these doubts concerns whether Tšese'ilye is the name of Tšitšuvare's first wife from the west or of her father (cf. n. 14); also that Tšitšuvare also married Sun's daughter in the east; that this woman went home after Tšitšuvare died, whereas Tšese'ilye gave birth to the hero Ahta-hane (29-31), who in 35 sends her off to the west; but in 82b following, he travels _eastward_ (after having gone south and east!) to meet his mother, whose father is Sun (90): which would make her the second wife. See footnotes 14, 35, 36, 52, 54, 58, 63, 68, 75, 78, 79, 83, 87.

There are two Suns (11a, 90; 77, 78). Analogous is the fact that the hero strikes his shinny ball away as a meteor (37), overcomes Kwayū, the cannibal Meteor (75, 76), and flies off as a meteor himself on his way to his final transformation, 104.

Relationship terms are not always used consistently. See especially 75-77, footnotes 58, 60, 62-64. However, we do not know how strict and consistent Mohave usage in daily life is. In 11b, Sun's daughter, Tšitšuvare's second wife, has a tame cock, kwaluyauve, as her pet, but in 86 it is a masohwaṭ bird; or, if in 86 the woman is Tšese'ilye, Tšitšuvare's first wife, the change is from a hwetše-hwetše bird in 7b to a masohwat.

In 2 and 3, the two brothers are said to have gone north only a short distance from their origin at Avikwame. They must however have proceeded farther, and then have turned to the south, as may be inferred from what follows. Thus, in 37, the younger brother's son goes north from where his father was killed and he was born, to Avi-kwutapārva, crosses the Colorado river there, and then goes downstream a little on the east side to Iδô-kuva'ire and Qara'êrve, all three places being in northern Mohave valley near Fort Mohave.--The evil older brother is at Avikwame, according to 5, 24, 28, 98, when his nephew hero returns, but is killed by him at Avi-mota in 102; cf. footnotes 97, 98.--The hero sends his mother away to the west in 35, though his father got her in the east; he starts on a long journey south in 38, then east along the seacoast, and inland northeast in 68 to find his wives and his adversaries. When he returns to his mother in 82b, he ought accordingly to be going north or northwestward, but is said to be traveling east. Is it a case of a slip of the narrator's mind, of the interpreter's tongue, or of my pencil? Or possibly did the hero follow an indirect course which escaped mention? An emendation might simplify the situation--such as assuming an intended "east" for recorded "west" when the mother was sent away in 35; but there would be no control of the guesses. And it may well be that as much contradiction as this is expectable in so long a narrative acquired supposedly by dreaming, retained without mnemonic device, and probably told only a very few times in a life.

In any event, none of these discrepancies of factual statement, if they are discrepancies, seriously affect the plot interest, the feeling tone, or the hearer's ability to participate in the story.

HANDLING OF THE PLOT

This section will examine the organization and treatment of the plot of the Cane narrative as a construct and specimen of literary endeavor. The discussion will be more easily followed by reference to an ultra-summary of the principal parts or sections of the story, as follows:

_Paragraph_ _Number of_
_Designation_ _Paragraphs_ _Songs_

A. Placement in Cosmogony 1a 1 ..
B. Two Brothers Go Off 1b-7a 7 14
C. They Get Wives 7b-18a 15 16
D. Quarreling over Cane,
Older Kills Younger 18b-28 11 12
E. Birth of the Hero Ahta-hane 29-33 5 5
F. Shinny Game with Father's
Foes 34-37 4 7
G. Journey South to Sea 38-68 31 54
H. Marriage, and Contests with
Meteor and Sun 69-82a 14 31
I. Return to Mother,
Half-Brother, and
Father's Ghost 82b-96 15 22
J. Revenge on Father's Foes 97-102 6 9
K. Transformation 103-104 2 12
--- ---
111 182

The main defect in the Cane plot, from our point of view, is the long preliminary, A to D. A full quarter of the tale--to be exact, three-tenths of its length, 28 out of 104 song groups or stages, and 42 of 182 songs--precedes the hero's birth. This makes a narrative long enough for interest to get well established in the hero's father, and it has then to be rebuilt around the son. However, the story can also be viewed as a sort of epic covering two lifetimes, with the second generation recuperating the losses of the first and revenging it. In a definitely sophisticated art, the reverses of the first life would presumably be only sketched, or suggested by implication, and the action could then be developed around the chief hero's career or its climax. The Cane situation is somewhat like that in the Nibelungenlied, where the story of Siegfried's exploits about balances that of the revenge for his death: as an introduction, the first half is too long and autonomous; as an epilogue to a life, the second half is much too long and heavily charged. The imbalance in the mediaeval German epic is obvious as a defect and has led to discussion of whether in its present form it is not a secondary joining of two poems originally distinct. Similarly, the history of the accretion of the Cane story might conceivably have been partly traceable from comparison of a series of versions. But these have not been recorded and are presumably no longer remembered, at least hardly in unmutilated form.

The very brief first section, A, with the reference to Kamaiavêta, is the normal Mohave way of giving the story its placement in the scheme of things by tying it into the cosmogony. Kamaiavêta or Sky-rattlesnake was killed for being thought to have caused the death by witchcraft of Matavilya, the child of Heaven and Earth and first great god. This dates the Cane story as happening right after the beginnings, ties it to the sacred spots Ha'avulypo and Avikwame, and endows it with weight and authenticity. That this is pure preliminary is shown by the fact that there are no songs.

In our next section B, the brothers drift off, discover things, build a house, find a living, and are joined by their uncle. In short, they grope and become partially established. This is good Mohave story pattern. The pairing, in place of a single hero, occurs again in Raven, in Coyote, in Deer; and in other myths. But so far there is nothing very eventful in the plot: it is only slowly getting started.