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This paper is an endeavor to make a beginning of payment on a scholarly debt long in arrears. Between 1900 and 1910, I spent considerable time with the Mohave Indians, both in the vicinity of Needles and with visitors from there to the University. Summaries of the data recorded, and some samples of concrete detail, have been published in one place or another, most coherently in two chapters of the Handbook of California Indians in 1925. But I kept deferring presentation of the fuller data, in particular of the mythological narratives, many of which run to unusual length. The tales offered herewith comprise in bulk about half of the Mohave narrative material in my notebooks. This is exclusive of the "Great Tale" of pseudo-historical moving about and fighting of clan-like groups, my unfinished recording of which runs to about the length of the seven tales presented herewith.[1]

[1] The fragmentary beginning of one of these clan or war legends is given in Handbook, pp. 772–775.

In quality the narratives of the Mohave resemble not only those of the other Yuman tribes of the Colorado River, but also, to a considerable extent, those of the Shoshonean Indians of southern California. The typical story of the region is not a relatively rapid narrative of plot, but a detailed elaboration still further expanded by the inclusion of a song series. 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. This is a paraphrase of how I expressed myself in regard to Gabrielino mythology in 1925. It holds probably even more forcibly for the Mohave. Many of their tales seem to appeal to them more in the manner of an ornamental pattern than as a portrayal of a related sequence of events. Essentially all Mohave myths are told in an almost ritualized style. 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. A Mohave dreams among other things—or perhaps above other things—of the beginnings of the world in the far distant past.

He dreams of being present at the creation and witnessing its events. Thereby he participates in them and gets certain knowledges: powers for war, for curing, for success in love or gambling. 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. This act they call dreaming. The basic and most significant dreams are not those of last night or of one's adolescence, but those which one had before birth—while still in the mother's belly, they say. It is these prenatal dreams which the newly born baby and the child may forget, but which come back to the growing boy and to the man when he hears others singing or telling similar experiences. As they see it, the tribal mythology is thus first learned by personal participation in it as an unborn soul. Secondarily, it is strengthened, clarified, and perhaps adjusted by what one learns from others. Some old Mohave of my acquaintance admitted that they "also heard" or learned their special lore, usually from blood kinsmen, in addition to dreaming it; but all denied having been "taught." The distinction may seem verbal to us, but I am sure that it is not verbal to them.

Now and then a person will admit having learned a story from others, apparently without any sense of inferiority therefor. Mostly, however, the old men claimed to have dreamed what they knew. This was without any very evident sense of pride about it—in fact, dreaming was so common that it would be only what one had dreamed, not the fact of dreaming, that could give distinction. I am sure that my informants believed they had dreamed in the way they said. 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.

At any rate, informants now and then mention in the midst of their mystical narrative, randomly and in the most matter-of-fact way, "Then I saw him doing so and so," or "I was there," or "Then he said to me."

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. Now the doctor can cure, but he can also kill; and there is consequently some reluctance to sing, or even to hear, series of doctoring songs, no doubt because of their associations with illness. The songs of a good many non-shamanistic narratives are danced to when there is a festival or gathering. Each story has its appropriate dance step, as it has its characteristically recognizable songs, and its prescribed rattle, struck basket, palm slap, resonating pot, or other accompanying beat. There are even one or two kinds of singings, notably Pleiades, for which I could never learn that there was a narrative and the two songs of which are simply sung over and over again for the dancers. The non-shamanistic song series are "given away" or "destroyed" (tšupilyk) at the death of a relative. If he dies gradually, they are sung during his last one or two days and nights. If he dies suddenly, they are sung from then until his cremation. This is considered equivalent to the destruction of property for the dead. But, as the Mohave say, after a time a man forgets his grief and begins to sing his songs again.

The songs accompanying any narrative seem to run from about a hundred to about four hundred. All the songs of any one series are variations on a basic theme, which most Mohave can recognize and name on hearing. Most of the variations presumably are improvised according to a pattern style. It seems impossible that hundreds of minute variations should be kept separately fixed in memory. An informant's listing of the localities or stages of his story at which he sings is usually fairly consistent from one listing to another. But the number of songs that he says he sings at each stage varies considerably more. Obviously, if his recollection is uncertain whether he sings three or four songs at a particular point, he is unlikely to carry precise minor variations of his melody fixed in his memory.

For convenient reference, I have followed the plan of putting into a single paragraph each section of a story which a narrator told as a unit until he said that here he sang so many songs about the episode. Informants fell of themselves into the habit of thus punctuating the narrative by mentioning the song numbers. These paragraphs I have then numbered consecutively for convenience in reference to episodes; and a list of captions corresponding to the paragraphs has usually been added to serve as an outline of the song scheme and guide to the story.

Most of the tales take a night to tell, or a night and part of the morning, or up to two nights, according to the narrators. If anything, they underestimate the time required, in my experience. It seems doubtful that they would keep an audience through periods as long as this; and I have the impression that many of them had never told their whole myth continuously through from beginning to end. They also found it difficult to make clear what sort of occasions prompted the telling. Theoretically, when it is not a matter of a dance or a funeral, a man both narrates and sings, telling an episode and then singing the songs that refer to it, until his audience drops off or falls asleep.

It remains to characterize the tales themselves and their style.

If the narratives are long, they almost inevitably show minor inconsistencies. The narrator may say that a thing is done four times, and then proceed to narrate six variations of it. Contradictions of plot may occur through lapses of memory or shifts of the narrator's interest. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether this has happened, or whether the interpreter or recorder misunderstood. This holds for a number of discrepancies in the first tale, that of Cane, which are noted in detail in the discussion and footnotes. Such inconsistencies proved difficult to clear up with informants: explanations had a way of introducing new discrepancies. On the other hand, most narrators keep pretty successfully to the main thread of their plot and proceed in its development in a rather prolix, step-by-step, orderly manner.

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. The main thing seems to be that there should be war and the happenings that go with war. Hence, in place of a definite sense of identification of the teller or hearer with one or the other of the personages, there is often a sense of foreboding or of the inevitability of what will happen. This is not confined to the tales which professedly deal with war, but recurs in the Cane myth, and, with reference to death instead of war, in that of Deer. In the latter, the identification is particularly obscure. Jaguar and Mountain Lion create a pair of Deer in order to kill them for the benefit of the future Walapai. But a full three-quarters of the story tells about the Deer, their thoughts and feelings; so that it is difficult not to feel them as what we would call the "heroes" of the plot. If so, they are unquestionably tragic heroes.

The tales are given their great length less by fundamental complications of plot than by expansion of detail. The most common expansion is geographical. There are long travels. If no events occur on the journey, many places are nevertheless enumerated, and the traveler's feelings or thoughts at each point, or what he sees growing or living there, are expatiated on. 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.

Another method of expansion is more stylistic. What is going to happen is discussed first, and then it is told over again as a happening. There are arguments between personages on whether to do this or that; whether to understand an event in one way or in another; or as to what is going to happen later.

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. 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. There is an evident feeling that the eras dealt with are those when everything in the world was fresh and young and formative.

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. The last is another tale unaccompanied by songs, the long one of Mastamho, which is essentially an account of the origin of human and tribal culture.