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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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.
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 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. 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. 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 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 and 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 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
reënforced 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.