A. L. Kroeber

“ The mountains will always be here; but I cannot live forever. Darkness is here forever and day is here forever, but I cannot live like the sun and like the mountains: I must die. I could tell you about that, but I will not tell you tonight, because you must sleep. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The man said, "Nume-peta sent me to see this child." Hatpa-'aqwaoθtše said, "Yes, it was born this morning." So the man went back and told Nume-peta. Nume-peta said, "Did I not know it? The child is wise and will be a doctor. It made rain so that no one would know it was being born; but I knew it, for I am a doctor too." Then Nume-peta took his people and Pukehane, and they all came to see the child. They said, "We will look at it. If it is a boy, we will kill him, because he will be a doctor and will kill us; when he is grown he will make us sick. But if it is a girl, we will not kill her. ”

“ A myth might be characterized as a web loaded with a heavy embroidery of songs which carry an emotional stimulus of their own, and at the same time endow the plot with a peculiar decorative quality and charge it with a feeling tone which renders of secondary importance the sort of consistency of character, motivation, and action which we expect in a narrative. ”

“ 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. ”

“ However, the war itself resolves into the killing by magic of a single leader: Homeric battles are not a usual part of the story pattern of the Mohave, in spite of their preoccupation with war. With a magic ball Nyohaiva puts the enemy settlement to sleep, enters Otšôuta's house, cuts off his head. This she carries upriver to Samo'okusa or Amaṭ-ya'ama near Parker, where people are living under the leadership of four transvestites! She institutes the scalp dance for them; throws Otšôuta's skull far south to become a rock at Picacho in Yuma land ”

“ You can go, you Walapai, and scatter in the mountains there. You need not go into one place. You can go all about, for I have made springs everywhere. You can live in one spot, and when you want to live in another you can do so. You Chemehuevi can do the same, and you Yavapai too. But I will do differently for the Mohave. They will have everything along the river: whatever grows there will be theirs. ”

“ The scalp celebration seems to have been the principal Mohave occasion for dancing.
Nyohaiva, as a woman, herself reflects this peculiar relation between women and war: her hair, her skirt, her bashfulness are specified. But there is also the opposite attitude: she incites, she wants revenge, she kills. Here she is almost the embodiment of the hwami, the occasional female active homosexual whom the Yuman river tribes recognize as the counterpart of the more frequent male passive invert or alyha. ”

“ When a woman dreams of you, she will be loose. [120] You, Ikinye-istum-kwamitše, will be dreamed of by some men. Those men will be ugly, but they will be successful with women; [121] they will always be marrying. When you turn into birds, you, Ikinye-istum-kwamitše, will be Curve-billed Thrasher. [122] You, Hatšinye-kunuya, will be called thus while you are a girl, but after you are a woman, you will be called Kuvuδinye. When you have said everything that I have told you, and have become a bird, you will be Mockingbird: Sakwaθa'alya is how people will call you."
[119] Near Fort Mohave. ”

“ With part E, dealing with the posthumous birth of the hero, the main narrative begins. The hero evidences prenatal magic power, but this is a faculty often attributed by the Mohave to shamans, so that the manifestation is mythically expectable, rather than miraculous in our sense.
In the next section, F, the baby, grown to boyhood, steals his father's bone with which his foes are playing—compare the incident in Nyohaiva, 15—and sends it flying to break the western mountains and kill their inhabitants. It does not appear that these people are his foes: rather is he trying out his growing powers ”

“ Those narratives which the Mohave evidently consider historical, and they are the longest of all, the Great Tales, come unaccompanied by singing. The story of the actual first beginnings of the world seems also to be without songs; and so is the prolix account of the origins of culture, of which I give a version herewith under the title of Mastamho, the culture hero. Matters of "history" are in the Mohave mind related to matters of war, and are therefore clean and honorable. Cosmic origins, however, seem to be felt as allied to shamanism and doctoring. ”

“ A people starting out with preconceptions such as these would not be likely to be able to explain matters in terms of what we consider psychological reality. I suspect that many men, as they grow older and perhaps begin to sing song series with their kinsmen, begin also to brood about them in periods of inactivity. Their minds presumably run on the implications of the words of the songs, until, under the spell of the tribal theory, they come to believe that they have in their own person seen the events of the far past happen. ”

“ I do not think he can swallow me. I am wise; I have dreamed; I am a shaman, too. He cannot do that. Sun is my father's elder brother (navīk) . Now I have come to his house. [58] If he sees me he will not let Kwayū swallow me." Then he said to the house, "In the north I saw a house like this, a good house. A man who lives in a house like this does not eat people." [59] (4 songs.)
[57] Typical stylistic expression.
[58] The kinship is inextricable. His only uncle was Pukehane, who had killed his father, whose second wife was Sun's daughter. ”

“ It is normally treated meagerly in Mohave mythology, in spite of the endless sex talk and obscene humor of Mohave daily life. When it does appear in narrative, it is episodically. The plots as a whole show the love incidents to be subsidiary. Thus the Cane hero wishes a storm to rid himself of his wives, who are delaying the revenge for which he is traveling; and when his conscience makes him relent, it is because his wish strikes him as inhumane and bad in general, not because of tender sentiments toward the wives as love-objects. ”

“ Such mystically dreamed powers are what really count in human life, the Mohave firmly believed. Over most of native North America the acquisition of power by dreams or visions of spirits is the basis of shamanism; and where religion is simple, it is largely constituted of shamanism. The Yuman tribes, however, have evolved the special belief that the visions are not of the spirits of now, but of the spirits and great gods of the beginning of the world. This group of tribes in their philosophy transcend time and project their souls back to the origin of things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Umas-kwitšit-patše had a daughter, Ilya-owitš-maikohwere. He said: "Now that you are big enough, do not sleep near me. Sleep at a distance. Sleep in the corner of the house." [22] Then the girl was angry at his saying that and ran off. (4 songs.)
[22] He wanted her to have a lover and marry, and feared that no man would steal to her while she lay close to her parents. There is nothing disgraceful in this suggestion, to the Mohave, who scarcely make a distinction between lover and husband. The old people frequently exhort the young to enjoy themselves while they can. ”

“ The Mohave hero, Umas-kwitšit-patše, with his people, leaves his home in the northern part of Mohave valley, for the Providence mountains, off to the northwest in Chemehuevi territory, and lives there a year. There is no farming possible in this desert range, but the story is silent on subsistence. The chief wants to return to make war, and, after a brief visit home, leads his people to the river at the south end of Mohave valley, and then makes a long detour downstream to below Ehrenberg, in Halchidhoma land ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jaguar and Mountain Lion had given them good eyes: They could see well. Now they said: "Everything is finished, but it is dark. Do you hear a noise? When it is dark there is always a noise. Every one sleeps except two, Tinyam-hwarehware [15] and Tonaθaqwataye. [16] They are the ones that make noise at night." (8 songs.)
[14] Said to be now a railroad station in the San Bernardino mountains, perhaps Summit. Hoalye are yellow pines.
[15] An insect living in willows, and with wings like willow leaves. Its night call is hwar hwar hwar. It exercises the Mohave imagination. ”

“ Now that woman stood there, with long hair reaching to the middle of her thighs and white paint [128] on it. The two said: "Some of you go to her. If she does not like you, she will not have you; but if she likes you, she will marry you. Go and try to take this good-looking woman's hand. If she takes yours, it will be because she likes you; but if she does not like you, she will refuse to let you take her hand. In future there will be men who dream that they have taken her hand: such men will always be able to become married as they like. ”

“ They are not, strictly, rituals; but their telling and singing largely take the place of formal rituals in the culture. The songs which belong to the great majority of narratives can be sung with equal suitability for a dance at a festival or victory celebration; for the mere pleasure of singing; as an expansion of the spoken tale; or as a "gift" of lamentation for a dying or dead relative.
The Mohave validate what happens in their lives by referring it to their dreams. Success in life, the fortunes of a person or of a career, are believed to be the result of what one has dreamed. ”

“ Havīkwek, of note 22.—Finding and playing with bones of kinsfolk who have been killed by people that are plotting to kill the hero also, is a stock episode in Mohave mythology, and a standard motive for fighting. Cf. the Cane myth. A game and bet are also a usual preliminary to war. There is a seeming contradiction in the fact that Nyohaiva, who grows from the ground while the earth is still new, should have parents killed long before. Most Mohave myths, however, begin with the growth or birth of the hero; and if fighting later occurs, it is motivated in the way just explained. ”

“ And there is rarely much sex feeling, and never a touch of ribaldry. For instance, the Tumanpa story is based on an incest motive, but the theme is treated with such restraint as scarcely to obtrude beyond the skeleton of the plot, and never with a trace of passion. The brother and sister are old people at the beginning of the tale! The fact that such sex element as enters into Nyohaiva is tinged with the quality of inversion, suggests a definite functional relation between inversion and war in Mohave culture. ”

“ Tasekyêlkye said, "We are going to gather kwinyo or what we can find. We are going off, but will come back. The man who lives in this house, Kwayū, hunts persons. The people who live near he does not kill: he kills those who live far away. [57] Sometimes he kills two or three men and carries them home. He cuts them up but does not cook them: he eats them raw. If he does not eat them all, he slices the meat and dries it on a tree. And he does not throw away their bones: he puts them away. When they are dry, he says, 'Grind the bones: I want to eat mush.' We grind and he eats it. ”

“ Stories like this are not dreamed, but are heard from other people and are told to children.
E
One Coyote said to another, "Let us set fire all around to this patch of thick brush. I think there must be deer, rats, and rabbits in it which we cannot get at. But if we set fire to the brush all around, they will burn up and we can just pick them up and eat them." Then they set fire to the patch, but one Coyote went inside first and stood in the middle. When the fire came near him, he had a song which would make him sink into the ground to his ankle. ”

“ If there are four or five men on the other side of where you have made it dusty and dark, you can dash across to the enemy. If people dream of you, they will kill enemies in battle; but if they dream that they are in the dark and cannot see, they will not be able to kill in battle. ”

“ All the people encountered in the story are treated as if they were Mohaves, or at least members of a still undifferentiated human race leading a specifically Mohave-type life; even though they dwell as far away as the Yuma habitat. (There is a partial exception in the incident when Nyohaiva detours east into the mountains, finds a man whose name refers to buckskin shirts, and gives him hunting arrows to live by: thus she institutes the Walapai more than she encounters them.) ”

“ Major inconsistencies are due to shifts in participation or identification of the narrator and hearer with the characters. He who seems to have been the hero, turns evil without warning and our sympathies are enlisted for a new personage. This is a quality which is also notable in southern California Shoshonean myth narratives. I suspect that the Mohave feel less need than we of participating with their personages, both the story and its setting being so formalized and stylized.
Where fighting is involved, motivation becomes particularly elusive. ”

“ When the sun goes down, we will enter the house. Now, when it is nearly down, the time is anya-havek-tšiemk. Call it: anya-havek-tšiemk!"
29. House entered.—When the sun went down, Mastamho entered and said: "Come in, all of you." Then all the Mohave entered the house. The Chemehuevi stayed outside on the west. On the east were the Walapai and Yavapai, the latter to the south. Mastamho sat down, leaning back against the southwestern one of the four middle posts. He was thinking about the people inside and those outside. He said: "There is a fire just within the door. ”

“ In November, 1905, my friend and interpreter Jack Jones came to San Francisco and the University, bringing with him an informant called Aspa-sakam, which means Eagle-sell. Aspa-sakam was a youngish middle-aged man, heavy-set and inclined to be fat, who worked pretty steadily for the Santa Fe railroad at Needles. He was, however, a good Mohave inwardly, and had dreamt and could sing two cycles, Yellaka or Goose, and Nyohaiva (Nyô'haiva) , which is a story of war but named after an insect. ”