CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE RECORDING
This group of narratives was told chiefly by an old woman of the clan which names its daughters Māha. Her more specific name was Mah-tšitnyumêve. She was a doctor for eyes that had been made sore from being struck by mesquite leaves or by a rushlike plant called hatelypo. In curing, she breathed against the palm of her hand held near her mouth, then laid the hand on the eye. She got this power from Coyote in her dream, as told in this story. She had a son called Lahoka, who was also a doctor, for the sickness caused by contact with foreign tribes. He was alleged to have also the power to make people sick, and at the time I knew his mother, he had gone from Needles to live at the reservation in Parker because of this accusation of witchcraft.
I secured the Coyote material from Mah-tšitnyumêve near Needles on March 22, 1903, as the result of an endeavor to learn more about the place of Coyote in Mohave mythology. Coyote is always mentioned in connection with the death of Matavilya, as in the beginning of the Mastamho myth ([VII], [1-6]), but beyond that there were mostly allusions only. This old lady said she had dreamed a Coyote story which she was ready to tell. It proved that she told it very badly. She did not pursue a consistent thread and she left contradictions which remained unresolved after questioning. The fault is undoubtedly hers, not my interpreter's, for Jack Jones was by this time well trained. She said nothing of songs belonging to the story, and I failed to enter in my notes whether I asked her.
I do not know how far the narrator's deficiencies were the result of her being a woman. She was my only Mohave woman informant on matters of myth and religion. I suspect she was unaccustomed to narrating and therefore inexpert at it. A number of people were listening in, some probably members of the household and others casual visitors. Several of these, including a man older than the narrator and one younger, protested when she concluded her main narrative (given as "A" below). They declared that she had told not a Coyote narrative, but a (private) dream, and that it was not the sort of thing to tell. Their disapproval seemed fairly strong. After this controversy had subsided, she resumed and told the briefer section given as "[B]," but this again evoked protest from an old man who was listening, who said it was not a genuine Coyote story, but a dream about killing people. All the Mohave listeners seemed to take for granted that Mah-tšitnyumêve had dreamed what she alleged. Their objection was to her dreaming the wrong sort of thing.
Possibly these protests had their effect, or the old lady ran out of what she had dreamed, because she then dropped into telling conventional Coyote tale episodes such as are told children—"[C], [D], [E]." These in turn stimulated the interpreter into telling several that he had heard—"[F], [G], [H]."
THE TALES
A: Dreamed
Coyote was a person like these Indians. There were two Coyote brothers,[1] little boys.[2] They started going from this country.[3] They had bows and arrows, and as they went along they shot at a mark, betting their arrows. They would throw up a bundle of arrowweeds to shoot at. The older won all the younger brother's arrows. Then he took one, wiped it on his anus, shot it up into a cottonwood tree, and said: "Will you go get it for yourself?" The little boy said: "No," and cried because the arrow was soiled. So he was going to leave that place and, crying, went north to θawêve, a place on Cottonwood Island. Now I was following him.[4] When he got to θawêve, I did not see him any longer, so I came back to this country here. Then I dreamed of him again at Avi-hamoka, near Tehachapi.
[1] She later denied that they were brothers. See footnote [6].
[2] The heroes as little boys is a favorite Mohave motif.