Notes on how Nooee Killed Ee-ee-toy
The hot arrows of Ee-ee-toy, that withered the crops, remind us of Apollo.
The idea often comes up in these stories that a person possessing the powers of a mahkai was hard to kill, having as many lives as a cat. It would also appear that there was a confusion as to what constituted killing, anyway. They perhaps regarded mere unconsciousness as death. Both Ee-ee-toy and Nooee are “killed,” but after an interval are alive again. And Whittemore relates: “An Apache, seeing Louis, the Pima interpreter, came to him in high glee. Taking his hand, he said: ‘You are the Pima who killed me years ago.’ Louis then recognized him as the man to whom he had dealt a heavy blow with a warclub, and then left him for dead on the battle-field.”
Is there any connection between the the fact that when Nooee wore a nose-ring of turquoise the earth looked green, and that when he wore a nose-ring of glittering shell the earth looked dry to him?
Could this whole story have been a myth of some great drouth?
[1] The reference to the “gun” shows clearly that this song was made after the advent of the white man.