Читать книгу Seven Mohave Myths - A. L. Kroeber - Страница 13

34. The child grew fast. In four, five, six days it smiled and laughed. In a year it was as high as that (gesture), and walked around and played. Now Nume-peta and Pukehane came again with all their people. They played shinny with the dead man's kneecap. Then the child, dressed as a girl, went out to watch, not knowing those bones. Some of them gave him a bone to make a doll of, for he wore a dress and looked like a girl. Every day he went to play where these people played, and at sunset came back to his house. So it was three nights: the next night it would be four. Then his mother told him, "That doll, the bone you play with, is from your father. Your father traveled to be married. And he traveled to get cane, he and his older brother. The younger was wise: he was superior to the older; but the older was a great doctor. He made his younger brother sicken and die. That bone is from your father, and so is the bone they play shinny with." (2 songs.)

35. Then the apparent little girl said, "I did not know that. If I had known that it was the bone of my kin I should not have played with it." So he said and cried. He cried all night and never suckled. In the morning when the sun was up he went under the shade; he was tired from crying, lay down and slept a little. Then he dreamed. The insect θonoθakwe'atai[34] sat on his lip while he slept and said, "All of them play with those bones. They think it is amusing but it is a bad thing. They are not the bones of an animal. If they were animal bones it would be well, but they are your father's bones." When the boy dreamed that he sat up. He went back into the house. That night he wanted to send his mother home: he did not want her to live there any longer.[35] He told her, "Go west.[36] These people here are my relatives but they do not treat me right. They said they would kill me. I will stay here. The old man, my (father's) uncle, will stay here too. He is wise: he saved me or I should have been dead long ago. I want him to stay: he can beg around the houses and get something to eat and water to drink. He can live in that way and be well; but I want you to go west." The woman took a little round dish[37] and put glowing coals into it. So she lit her way, to know where to go.[38] Then she went off westward, traveling by that light. When she was gone the boy thought about her. He thought, "Why have I sent my mother away like a bird? A bird's nest is on the desert; it sleeps on the desert, where no one lives." Then he was sorry for her and cried. (2 songs.)