earth-tongue’s earliest recollection was of the dim, cool house, where he picked bits of charcoal out of the soft sand and crumbled it against his hand. once a cricket appeared on the wattled wall, suddenly went back in when he thrust at it, and only a stream of dry soil sifted forth. and then there was the terrifying time when voices burst loudly into his sleep, people crowded in but stood helplessly awkward, while his father’s brother shot insults of stolid hate into the ceaseless flood of his wife’s vituperation. as the woman turned to beat a girl lurking in the corner and the man interposed and flung her off, earth-tongue burst into bawling and clung to his mother. he saw the angry woman stamp on pot after pot, tear open her coils of shredded bark and strew them into the fire, and then, suddenly silent, load her belongings into a carrying-frame and stagger out. the frame caught in the door: as she tore it through, the contents crashed, and a laugh rose in the house; but earth-tongue sobbed long.
he was larger when he paddled with other children at the edge of the slough; but still very small as he first remembered himself seeing the great, stretching river that drew by with mysterious, swirling noises in its red eddies. he and his little brother were put into a huge pot which his father and another man pushed before them across stream: their hair as it coiled high on their heads was just visible over the edge as they swam. and then followed an interminable trudge somewhere through the dust, relieved only by rides on his father’s back, and on his grandmother.
he was older when he shot his first bow; when at dusk he caught a woodpecker in its hole and would not let go though it hacked desperately at his clasped hands, until a half-grown cousin took it from him to imprison under a turned jar for the night. his father wove a cage the next day, and the captive was installed, but remained wild, and one morning was dead. and then came the time when the boys of mesquite-water challenged those of his settlement on a hot, 190 summer day after the inundation had half dried, and they slung lumps of mud at each other from the ends of long willow poles.
there were other events that must have fallen soon after this period, but which he did not remember: when he rolled his hair into long, slim cylinders, began to measure how nearly it reached his hip, and made his first advances to girls.
even before this he had dreamed of mastamho, gigantic on the peak avikwa’me in the great, dark, round house full of peoples; of the two ravens singing of dust whirls and war and of the far away clumps of cane waiting to be cut into flutes; and of the river, drawn from its source to wash away the ashes and bones of matavilya where the pinnacles stand in the gorge at house-post-water. he knew later that he had dreamed these things as a little boy, even while he was still in his mother; he did not yet think about them, except when the old man his grandfather, and his father and uncles, sang of them.
one day a runner came up the valley and shouted pantingly that strangers had appeared from the east at dawn and killed a woman and two children at sand-back, besides wounding a man and his younger brother. the men leaped for their weapons; the women called in their children, loaded themselves with property, and soon began to track northward in a straggling, excited stream. earth-tongue pulled down his bow and raked among the roof thatch for such arrows as he could assemble. then he joined his kinsmen and male neighbors who stood in a group in front of one of the shades, exclaiming and pointing at a smoke that rose down the valley. bundles of crude, blunt arrows projected behind their hips, shoved under cord belts; and many had clubs dangling from their wrists. earth-tongue did not own a club: he had never seen battle; and he hung about the outside of the cluster of seasoned men.
soon, refugees from the nearer settlements began to arrive; and then a body of fighting men from up the valley, bedaubed for war. earth-tongue’s kinsmen merged with them; and as they proceeded south, growing in numbers, they met ever more women and children, and finally those from the point of attack, until, not far away in the cotton-woods, they came upon the men of sand-back. the enemy were halchidhoma from far down-stream, they were now informed, not walapai as at first conjectured. they had avoided the river, 191 traversing the desert to hide in the walapai mountains and descend at night upon the nearer tip of the mohave land. they had long since gone off—sixty they were said to number, as they were seen to file over the rocks far above the stream at pinnacles. they had looted and burnt only the group of houses at sand-back, killed the woman, and lightly wounded with an arrow one of the men who fought back from a distance: the other reported casualties turned up safe. but the enemy had carried off the woman’s head, and would dance about its skin. earth-tongue gazed at the collapsed houses, their charred posts smoking on the mass of sand; and that night he watched the beheaded woman’s cremation. there was much talk of retaliation, but an immediate attack would have found the halchidhoma prepared or perhaps removed.
so some months elapsed without a move being made; and meanwhile earth-tongue became married. in the turmoil of the halchidhoma invasion, as party after party trooped by, he had been attracted by the sight of a girl, barely but definitely passed out of childhood, and only a little younger than himself, who halted, leaning under her laden carrying-frame, behind her mother, as their group paused for an excited colloquy. he saw that the girl noted his eyes on her and glanced away, and he knew, from the people she was with, that her name was kata. not long after, he began to find errands or companions that took him to her settlement. soon a mutual familiarity of each other’s presence was established, the purport of which was manifest even though direct speech between the two young people was infrequent and brief. both were shy; until one afternoon a blind old man, the girl’s father’s uncle, who knew of earth-tongue’s repeated presence from the references of the family, addressed him and her directly. “why do you not marry?” he said. “persons do not live long. soon you will be old like myself, unable to please yourselves. it is good that you sleep and play together. you, young man, should stay here the night.” neither earth-tongue nor the girl answered. but he remained through the evening meal and after; and when the house was dark, went silently to where she lay. the next day, he stayed on; the day after, returned briefly to his home; and from then on, spent increasing time at his new abode, where, without a word having been spoken, he slipped into a more and more recognized status. he did not work, unless special 192 occasion called, such as assisting with a seine-net; and kata only occasionally helped her relatives farm. instead, they spent much time together, lolling under the shade, toying or teasing each other, or listening to their elders. sometimes he sang softly as he lay by her, or she bent over him searching his head or untangling his clustered locks, or tried to draw the occasional hairs from his face with her teeth; and ever she laughed more freely. so the days followed one another.
when at last the mohave were ready, it was announced that they would once for all destroy the halchidhoma. the entire nation was to move and appropriate the enemy land. soon they started, most of the men in advance, weaponed and unburdened save for gourds of maize meal at their hips; water they did not have to carry since they followed the river. behind tramped the women, children, and old men, under loads. foods, blankets of bark and rabbit fur, fish nets, metates, household property, and the most necessary pottery vessels were taken. the remainder of their belongings and stored provisions were buried or hidden away: every house in the valley stood empty.
for five days they walked. then the men suddenly surrounded a group of settlements. these were the houses of the kohuana, a far down-stream tribe, wasted by wars with their neighbors, until the pressed remnant had sought refuge half a day’s journey above the halchidhoma to whom they were united, less by positive friendship than by common foes and parallel fortunes. for the halchidhoma, too, remembered having once lived populously among the welter of tribes in the broad bottom lands below the mouth of the gila. with the kohuana the mohave had no direct quarrel; and though they arrived armed and overpowering, they proclaimed themselves kinsmen, and announced that they had come as guests. by night the kohuana houses overflowed with the mob of mohave families. kohuana messengers were dispatched to summon the halchidhoma to battle at white-spread-rock-place, if they were not afraid. such challenge the outnumbered people could not find it in their manhood to evade. so the next day saw them in line at the appointed field, barely a hundred strong, against perhaps four hundred that the mohave mustered after setting a guard over their families.
earth-tongue went into battle with much inward excitement, but 193 little fear, and listened obediently to the admonitions of his seasoned kinsmen. even before arrows could reach, the shooting began. before long, arrows flew feebly by, and then it became necessary to twist sharply sidewise to avoid them. at this distance the two lines shot at each other, taunting and leaping, while, in the rear, half-grown boys and a few old men helped to gather up and replenish bundles of arrows. what the halchidhoma lacked in frequency of shots, they partly made up in greater openness of target; and before long, struck men began to withdraw temporarily on each side. the mohave could have made short work by charging in a body with their clubs; but they had asked for an open stand-up fight, and besides found pleasure in the game, which fell increasingly to their advantage. for hours they sweated in the sun, gradually and irregularly forcing the halchidhoma line back, and shouting whenever one of the foe was carried off.
at last the leaders called that it was time to cease, and defied the foe to resume in the same spot on the fourth day. then they trooped victoriously home, without a fatality, though a few, weakened from bleeding or with parts of shafts broken off in them, were carried on the backs of companions. earth-tongue had been struck twice. one arrow had grazed the skin of his flank when he became over-confident and failed to bend his body with sudden enough vigor. then, one of three shafts that came toward him almost at once had imbedded itself a finger-joint’s depth in the front of his thigh, and hung there until he hastily plucked it out. neither wound bled profusely, especially after a bit of charcoal was reached him to rub in for stanching; and he returned stiff, tired, and proud. the halchidhoma losses were severer. none of them appeared to have fallen dead on the field; but at least half had been struck, and a number so vitally or often that they would die.
for four days the mohave treated their wounds, talked of the next battle, and ate their hosts’ provisions. then they set out. but the halchidhoma had sent their families down-stream and taken up a new stand farther back. here they joined once more, and the fight went on as before but with ever more preponderance to the mohave, until these, wearied by the noon sun, contemptuously drew off to the river to drink. the halchidhoma seized the occasion to run to their children and women, set these across the river, and strike east 194 over the desert. when the victors reappeared, the fugitives were far. the mohave thereupon decided to occupy their fields and houses until the dispossessed might come to drive them out; which the latter, by this time safely received among the maricopa far across the desert on the gila, had no intention of doing. however, the mohave lived nearly a year in the land of the halchidhoma, adjusting themselves as they could; and returned only as the next flood and planting time approached, taking the kohuana along to settle among themselves, where these enforced visitors remained for some years.
before the stay in the halchidhoma country was over, earth-tongue and kata had drifted apart. the derangement of accustomed residence, enforced with others, earth-tongue’s pride as an incipient warrior, the fact that no child was born, all contributed to separate them increasingly. each formed new interests while vaguely jealous of the other’s; and in the end earth-tongue brought not kata but another girl to his parents’ house.
soon after his first child was born,—a daughter, called owich like the sisters of himself, his father, and his father’s father,—earth-tongue grew restless for adventure, and, the time being one of peace, joined himself to those that would travel. ten or twenty in number, they would go out: too few to excite apprehension of treacherous intent, too many to be made away with safely. each carried maize, water, his weapons, and whatever he might wish to trade. on shorter journeys they prided themselves on being able to travel at a trot four days without food, and with only such drink as the desert might afford, chewing perhaps a bit of willow as a relief for the dryness of their mouths. but these hardships they underwent mostly in emulation, or toward the last of a return with mohave land before them. again and again earth-tongue went down the river, through yuma, kamia, halyikwamai, and cocopa settlements, to the flat shores of the salt sea; east into the walapai mountains and down into the chasm of the havasupai, where he saw strange-speaking and strangely dressed hopi and navaho, heard of their stone towns, and brought home their belts and, once, a blanket of white cotton.
to the northwest he visited the chemehuevi and other paiutes about their scattered springs, and ate their foods of seeds and wild fruits, some familiar, some strange; and mescal and sometimes deer. 195 theirs was a strange language too, but he had heard a little from the few chemehuevi who lived at the northern extreme of mohave valley and beyond it on cotton-wood island; and many of his companions could speak more. they went from paiute band to band, to where the river no longer flows from the north but from the east, beyond the muddy, and found each group like the last in customs, but of new foods. they listened to the stories of the paiute, who dreamed of the mountain nüvant as the mohave do of avikwa’me, and to whom they sang their songs, which the paiute wished to hear.
to the west were many tribes, all different tongued, but mostly easy to understand a little when one knew chemehuevi. there were the vanyume on their river that dried into nothing and left them always half-starved; the hanyuvecha in the range of great pines beyond; northward, about three-mountains, the kuvahye, adjoined by other mountaineers, little tribes, unwarlike, friendly to the visitors, some of whom they hailed as old friends. they offered no smoke, but gave tobacco crushed in a mortar with shells; which earth-tongue and his companions ate in courtesy, and were nearly all made to sweat and vomit violently thereby. from a crest near here they looked over a vast plain beyond, in which shimmered what one of his companions said were large lakes. he had been there and seen the people, who lived in long houses of rushes,—a hundred fires in line within one house,—and ate rush roots, and slept on rushes, and at night worms came up and troubled the sleepers. and in the tumbled range on which they stood, but beyond them, were the like-mohave, a very little like them in speech, but naked, unkempt, and poor. them earth-tongue saw, but not in their own houses.
and going out again, he traversed the land of the tribes to the southwest, unfriendly, half-sullen, and dangerous to small parties. the hakwicha dug wells and ate mesquite; beyond them were people in the mountains, about hot springs, who sang to turtle shells instead of gourds; and still farther, stretching down to the ocean that one could see from their peaks, lived the foreign-kamia, speaking almost like the real kamia, but knowing nothing of farmed foods, eating rattle-snakes, and a hostile lot to venture among. they had some grudges to pay off to the mohave for plundered settlements, but were not a people to travel far from their homes even for revenge.
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the yavapai, too, earth-tongue came to know, though theirs was not an attractive country to visit. they dreamed and sang like the mohave, but of other animals; and some of their stories were the same. their neighbors and friends were the roaming-yavapai, a small-statured, sharp-eyed people, wearing their hair flowing, fierce lance fighters, taciturn, violent, untrustworthy; but inclined favorably to the mohave in spite of the utter unintelligibility of their speech because they knew them through the yavapai as traditionally hostile, like themselves, against the maricopa and that people of innumerable houses, the pima. these last earth-tongue never came to know save on the field of battle.
one early summer, as the river was flooding, its rise suddenly stopped. the inundation being wont to grow in interrupted stages the people waited quietly for its resumption. but the water fell back and back. then some began to declare that it might not rise again, and advised planting at once before the moist ground should dry: but others pointed out that high water was yet due, and had often come late, and that present planting in that case would cause the seed to wash out and be lost. so nearly all waited with concern and much discussing; until finally the river was wholly back within its banks and dropping decisively. then they knew that nothing more was to be hoped for that season, and men and women hastened to save what they might of the crop. but many of the fields had remained untouched by water, and most of the others were already half dry. in some, the maize and beans never sprouted; in some they came up indeed, but soon wilted; and though the women carried water in jars, only small patches could be effectively served in this hand fashion.
soon, every one knew that famine impended, and that so few houses would grow even enough harvest for another seeding, that the year after would also be hard to survive. they gathered every wisp of wild seed plants in the uncultivated bottoms; but these wild seeds, too, had come up thin, and the crop of mesquite pods was pitiful. the women labored faithfully, and the children watched over the scattered maize; yet though the grain ripened, the scattered stalks were too few to keep any house through the winter. some families did not pick even an ear. a moon after harvest time, the crop was consumed; by winter, the last of the other stores. the men fished 197 daily, but the sloughs and ponds had never filled and were soon seined out, and the river’s yield was uncertain and far insufficient. every one was gaunt; the children lay listlessly about; sickness grew.
earth-tongue’s wife, and his older brother’s, had planted with his mother in his father’s ancestral field, which lay low and was long-proved rich. so they fared better than many. nevertheless, before spring the emaciated bodies of two children and an old woman had been burnt and earth-tongue had three times sung himself hoarse as they lay dying.
the young men went out with their bows, and now and then returned with a bird or gopher or badger, but oftener empty-handed. people who had new belongings went to the walapai to trade for mescal and deer meat. whole families trudged to visit the chemehuevi, until they brought back word that these hosts too were eaten out. at last not a day passed without columns of smoke from pyres visible somewhere in the valley. it was a terrible year and long remembered before the end of another summer brought partial abatement.
so numerous had been the deaths from bowel flux and cough, that shaman after shaman fell a victim to the anger of the kin of those he had attempted to save. yellow-thigh, a powerful man and not very old, had lost two patients during the famine, and three more at intervals since. mutterings were frequent; but no one had found opportunity, or dared, to work vengeance on him. one morning, earth-tongue and a friend, sauntering up valley on some errand, turned to a house before which yellow-thigh lay, for those there were kinsmen of his. no men were about; and as the two visitors stood in the door, his friend on sudden impulse whispered to earth-tongue, “let us kill him.” so they sat down for a little and passed the news of the day, then arose, earth-tongue reaching for his bow and four cross-pointed arrows, with the remark that they were going to shoot doves. the shaman grunted assent and the pair passed out.
for a time they traversed the brush, planning the deed. at the mesa edge they broke two stones to sharp edges, and then returned. yellow-thigh lay under the shade-roof with closed eyes, breathing regularly. the friend went by him to look into the house, and finding it empty, nodded. earth-tongue, who had approached, bent suddenly down and struck with all his might at the sleeper’s head. 198 the shaman pushed himself to a sitting position as the blood began to pour from the mangled side of his face. the friend started back, then plunged forward to finish the man, and swung; but his excited arm brought the weapon down only on the victim’s knee. then he staggered off, scarcely able in fright and emotion to drag his own legs. earth-tongue, seeing the shaman still sitting, strode forward again and with both hands drove the point of the stone through the top of his skull. two women who had been going through each other’s hair in the shadow of the brush fence outside, half turned at the noise and shrieked, while earth-tongue dashed after his companion, seized his hand, and dragged him forward. they ran through the willows and at last lay down to pant in hiding; and here, after they had quieted, earth-tongue laughed at his friend’s faltering stroke and steps. then they went on, still keeping to cover, until around the second bend they swam the river.
on the other side, old men were gaming with poles and hoop, and others watched. the two sat down and looked on. three times, four times, until it was early afternoon, the players bet and threw their poles and one or the other finally took up the stakes. then earth-tongue said, “i have killed a shaman, the large man at sloping-gravel.”
“yes, kill him,” answered one of the old men, thinking he was boasting of an empty intent; and a spectator added, “indeed, it would be well. too many persons are dying.”
“i have killed him,” earth-tongue said again, and they began to believe him. so they went to the houses. soon word came that the shaman was dead; and then his kinsmen arrived, angry and threatening, and accusations flew back and forth, while earth-tongue stood unmoved and silent but wary. the kinsmen finally challenged to a stick fight the next day, and withdrew to burn the dead man.
the people of the settlement commended earth-tongue and promised to engage for him; and in the morning they and all his kin and the kin of those whom the shaman had brought to their death, gathered in the center of a large playing field. each man carried a willow as thick as his forearm and reaching to his neck; and in his left hand, a shorter parrying stick. the challengers appeared, somewhat fewer in number and with tear-marked faces, but enraging their opponents by crying the names of their dead parents and grandparents. 199 then the two bodies, spreading into irregular lines, rushed at each other. each man swung at an antagonist’s head, now with his staff held in one hand, now in both. blows beat down on heads through the guard, rained on shoulders, bruised knuckles, and the willows clashed amid the shouts. now and then a staff broke and a contestant ran back to seize a new one. the fighters sweated, panted, rubbed blood out of their eyes and staggered forward and back as the lines swayed in the clamor. once or twice a maddened fighter, running in under his opponent’s strokes, seized his hair to belabor him with his parry-club; whereupon shouts of “bad, bad! no! no! release!” arose and a multitude of rescuers’ blows drove him back. the shaman’s side were getting the worst of it, but rallied again and again without being driven wholly to their end of the field. strokes became fewer and feebler. weary arms could no longer rise. fighter after fighter leaned on his stick, or sat on the ground in the rear. each side taunted the other to come on again; and at last they drew apart, every man panting, bruised, and weary, but satisfied at the damage he had inflicted. no heads had been broken and no one died, though some were sick for a few days from maggots that had bred in the scalp under their clotted hair; and then talk died down and the enmity gradually subsided. earth-tongue won the praise of all the mohave who were not directly involved.
once, runners came from the yuma to invite to an attack on the cocopa at the mouth of the river. a hundred and twenty mohave went down. the kohota or play-chief of the northern mohave asked for captives, although he already had several; and earth-tongue was one of the men whom he requested to carry food and water for the prisoner’s return journey, and to guard against their escape.
the yuma contingent was even larger than the mohave one; and the attack was made at daybreak. it was not much of a fight. the first house entered gave the alarm and the settlement scattered amid yells. only two cocopa were killed by the yuma and two young women, sisters, called night-hawk, captured by the mohave. the latter stayed with the yuma four days to watch the scalp dance; but no one of them having touched the corpses, they were not in need of purification, and returned home.
the whole tribe came out to escort them to the kohota’s house. there the captives were made to sit down, while the kohota stood up 200 and sang pleiades. then men and women, facing each other, danced. when the sun was at its height, they stopped, ate what the kohota’s women brought out, then lay in the shade or gambled. in the afternoon the kohota called out a chutaha singer. soon the sounding jar began to boom, the people left off their play, and danced: three rows of young men with feathers tied in their hair, one row of old men, and two women standing separate. then at last, as the sun was coming low, the chief came with rattles in his hand and at the end of a song shouted: “let him sing who wishes to! let any woman sing! i appoint no one!” women grasped the rattles and carried them, one to a tumanpa singer, others to those who knew vinimulya and vinimulya-hapacha; and one was brought to earth-tongue to sing raven. soon all four of the dance series were in progress at different places, while those women who liked nyohaiva, having persuaded an old man to sing that, began to revolve about him standing shoulder to shoulder. as fast as one song ended, the singers took up another, for the sun had nearly set, and the sweating women clamored for more, while the crowd of people stood about.
with darkness they stopped to bathe and eat and rest, then danced again, singing as before and new kinds too, while off on the side, by the light of a fire, groups of men played hiding game to the tudhulva songs through the night. in the morning the kohota had the assemblage bathe, fed them once more, and sent them home to return two days later.
this time they danced again all evening, all afternoon, and all night. as the sun rose, the kohota, still singing, took the two captives one by each hand, and walked toward the river. behind him came the tumanpa and vinimulya singers, each with his crowd, and then the mass of people in procession. the kohota, still holding the two girls, ran over the bank, and every one followed. this made mohaves of the captives, and people were no longer afraid of them. the kohota led them back to his house, where they were to live, and said, “perhaps these girls will marry and bear children, who, belonging to both tribes, will make peace when they grow up, and there will be no more war.” so it came in part. after two years, one of the sisters married, and soon had a child. the other continued without husband. in time, formal peace was made between the yuma and201 cocopa; whereupon the kohota announced, “since the tribes are friends now, let us not keep night-hawk longer.” so a party led her to the yuma, where her kinsmen met and escorted her home. her sister remained with her mohave husband.
earth-tongue was beginning to grow old. his oldest son and one daughter both had children, and his hair showed first streaks of gray. he thought more of his youth, and commenced to remember what he had dreamed then. he knew he had seen matavilya sick and gradually dying and burned, and his ashes washed away by the river that mastamho made to flow out of the ground. he remembered too mastamho’s house on avikwa’me, with the multitudes inside it in rows like little children, and mastamho instructing them; and how he repeated after him, correctly, until mastamho said to him, “that is right! you know it! you have it! i gave it to you!” then he had dreamed how sky-rattle-snake was at last inveigled from his house far in the south ocean, and his head cut off on avikwa’me. earth-tongue saw his joints and blood and sweat and juices turn into eggs. from these eggs hatched rattlesnake, spider, scorpion, and yellow-ant, who went off to three-mountains and remote places, deep in the earth or high in the sky, and from there built four roads to all tribes. when they wish a man for a friend, they bite him and take his shadow home with them. “but another road leads from their house to my heart,” earth-tongue would say, “and i know what they do. and i intercept the shadow before rattlesnake has led it wholly to three-mountains, and sing it back; i break the roads of spittle that spider has begun to wind four times around the man’s heart; and so he lives again.”
then earth-tongue commenced to be sent for when people were bitten—first his relatives, then others. he would stand up at once and sing to bring a cooling wind; and, reaching the sick person, sing over him from the north, west, south, and east, but not a fifth time, lest he die. then, sending every one away but a wife or mother, and forbidding all drink, he would sit by the patient all night, singing his four songs from time to time. in the morning the sick person used to get up well.
fighting interrupted these pursuits. it was a summons again from the yuma, this time against the maricopa; and two hundred of the mohave responded. the seventh night they were on maricopa 202 soil and met eighty yuma by appointment; and in the morning advanced to attack. but the maricopa had got wind of their presence, and when the fight opened were re?nforced by a vast number of the pima. the mohave and yuma exhorted one another, and though man after man fell, gave ground slowly, fighting back outnumbered.
at last the enemy ran all in a body against them. part of the mohave broke before the shock and fled to the north, ultimately escaping. but sixty of them formed with the yuma on a little knoll near the gila, where they stood in a dense mass. as the pima and maricopa dashed against them, they dragged man after man struggling into their midst, where he was dispatched with fierce club blows on his head or thrusts into his face. twice, earth-tongue leaped out to grasp an opponent and fling him over his back, thus protecting his own skull, while his companions beat the struggling foe to death. the fighting grew wilder. the pima no longer drew back to shoot but swirled incessantly around and into the dwindling cluster at bay. at last the shouts ceased; the dust began to settle; and all but two of the yuma, and every man of the sixty mohave, lay with crushed head or mangled body on foreign earth.
a. l. kroeber
