Then the old woman, his father's mother, ha'auk,[10] found him and made a roof shade and a cradle for him and hung him up off the ground so nothing could touch him while she went out to look for inyeinye seeds for food.
[10] Father's mother is namau-(k). Ha'auk seems really to denote the reciprocal of father's mother, namely, woman's son's child, usually given as a'avak. This would fit in with my suggested explanation of the grandmother being an Easterner and the boy being born among the eastern tribe, although his mother was a Mohave. In answer to a question who the boy's father was, the informant said she did not know, except that he was a Coyote.
She was gone all day. The baby was intelligent and after she was gone, he made black balls (vanyeilk) from his own breath by magic. Before long many quail came to where he was hung up, and he snapped or filliped (harrêmk) the balls at them and killed them. Then he piled the birds into a heap and went back into his cradle.[11]
[11] The supernaturally precocious hero, who kills game from his cradle and then climbs back to it, is told of in other tales of Yuman tribes.
When his grandmother came, she said: "Who brought them here? Who did it? I am an old woman and I surely like to eat meat, but I did not think that someone would bring them under my shade roof." She was very angry and began to curse who did it. She said: "Kweva-namaue-napaue."[12]
[12] "That is how Indian women say son-of-a-bitch," the interpreter explained. The cursing consists of stringing together the names of three grandparents, who are presumably dead, and allusion to whom is therefore the height of shocking offense. The three terms are: (na)-kweu-(k), mother's father; namau-(k), father's mother; napau-(k), father's father.
The boy grew up. Then they returned to this country,[13] he and his grandmother. The Mohave Indians went to Phoenix to fight the people at Avi-kwa'ahāθa, and he went along. Patša-karrawa was his name.[14]
[13] "This country" can only mean Mohave valley. It is not clear why they should be "returning" if the old woman belonged to a tribe on the Gila River and the boy was born there, as suggested in note [10]. The whole story is involved in minor obscurities of telling.
[14] The baby is now supposed to be grown up. His name identifies him with the younger of the two Coyotes with whom the first paragraph deals. It would seem that the bulk of the story ought to precede in time, the first paragraph really being the end of the story; but the two sections are given in the order in which the informant told them.
Now he went ahead of the others, like a leader, to spy them out and see where the houses were. On the desert he found his mother. She was a slave there. He said to her: "Do not tell them when you go back home that I met you here. Take these birds and rabbits with you, but do not tell that I gave them to you. Say that you found them." She had on her back her pack basket.[15] Into this she put the game he gave her. He entered it too. He said: "Let me get into your basket. I will make myself into a bird so that they will not know me. Carry me back, but do not tell who I am. You may tell them tomorrow."