APPARENT INCONSISTENCIES

There are a number of internal inconsistencies or contradictions. Some of these are almost certainly due to misunderstandings by either the interpreter or myself; for others I strongly suspect the narrator to be responsible; but in any given case it is almost impossible to be sure. After all, the story is so long that it took three days to tell and English it, and these three days were interrupted by a fourth. There was thus much provocation for the narrator to change his plot in spots through forgetting what he had said before.

One of these doubts concerns whether Tšese'ilye is the name of Tšitšuvare's first wife from the west or of her father (cf. n. [14]); also that Tšitšuvare also married Sun's daughter in the east; that this woman went home after Tšitšuvare died, whereas Tšese'ilye gave birth to the hero Ahta-hane ([29-31]), who in [35] sends her off to the west; but in [82b] following, he travels eastward (after having gone south and east!) to meet his mother, whose father is Sun ([90]): which would make her the second wife. See footnotes [14], [35], [36], [52], [54], [58], [63], [68], [75], [78], [79], [83], [87].

There are two Suns ([11a], [90]; [77], [78]). Analogous is the fact that the hero strikes his shinny ball away as a meteor ([37]), overcomes Kwayū, the cannibal Meteor ([75], [76]), and flies off as a meteor himself on his way to his final transformation, [104].

Relationship terms are not always used consistently. See especially [75-77], footnotes [58], [60], [62-64]. However, we do not know how strict and consistent Mohave usage in daily life is. In [11b], Sun's daughter, Tšitšuvare's second wife, has a tame cock, kwaluyauve, as her pet, but in [86] it is a masohwaṭ bird; or, if in [86] the woman is Tšese'ilye, Tšitšuvare's first wife, the change is from a hwetše-hwetše bird in [7b] to a masohwat.

In [2] and [3], the two brothers are said to have gone north only a short distance from their origin at Avikwame. They must however have proceeded farther, and then have turned to the south, as may be inferred from what follows. Thus, in [37], the younger brother's son goes north from where his father was killed and he was born, to Avi-kwutapārva, crosses the Colorado river there, and then goes downstream a little on the east side to Iδô-kuva'ire and Qara'êrve, all three places being in northern Mohave valley near Fort Mohave.—The evil older brother is at Avikwame, according to [5], [24], [28], [98], when his nephew hero returns, but is killed by him at Avi-mota in [102]; cf. footnotes [97], [98].—The hero sends his mother away to the west in [35], though his father got her in the east; he starts on a long journey south in [38], then east along the seacoast, and inland northeast in [68] to find his wives and his adversaries. When he returns to his mother in [82b], he ought accordingly to be going north or northwestward, but is said to be traveling east. Is it a case of a slip of the narrator's mind, of the interpreter's tongue, or of my pencil? Or possibly did the hero follow an indirect course which escaped mention? An emendation might simplify the situation—such as assuming an intended "east" for recorded "west" when the mother was sent away in [35]; but there would be no control of the guesses. And it may well be that as much contradiction as this is expectable in so long a narrative acquired supposedly by dreaming, retained without mnemonic device, and probably told only a very few times in a life.

In any event, none of these discrepancies of factual statement, if they are discrepancies, seriously affect the plot interest, the feeling tone, or the hearer's ability to participate in the story.

HANDLING OF THE PLOT

This section will examine the organization and treatment of the plot of the Cane narrative as a construct and specimen of literary endeavor. The discussion will be more easily followed by reference to an ultra-summary of the principal parts or sections of the story, as follows:

Paragraph Designation Number of ParagraphsSongs
A. Placement in Cosmogony[1a] 1..
B. Two Brothers Go Off[1b-7a] 7 14
C. They Get Wives[7b-18a] 15 16
D. Quarreling over Cane, Older Kills Younger[18b-28] 11 12
E. Birth of the Hero Ahta-hane[29-33] 5 5
F. Shinny Game with Father's Foes[34-37] 4 7
G. Journey South to Sea[38-68] 31 54
H. Marriage, and Contests with Meteor and Sun[69-82a] 14 31
I. Return to Mother, Half-Brother, and Father's Ghost[82b-96] 15 22
J. Revenge on Father's Foes[97-102] 6 9
K. Transformation[103-104] 2 12
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