When Coyote visited Beaver, he had no food. Beaver took his bow, shot up in the air, the arrow fell down and entered his rectum. Beaver turned it around and then pulled it out with fat on the end. This he cooked and fed to Coyote. This he did for four days then Coyote went home.
Beaver came to see Coyote. Being without food, Coyote took his bow, shot up in the air, the arrow came down, hit him in the rectum—but he fell down dead.
VII. MASTAMHO
THE INFORMANT
This story of the institution of culture differs from most of the preceding in that it is a pure myth unaccompanied by songs. It was told to me at the University's Museum of Anthropology, then in San Francisco, between November 16 and 24, 1903, by Jo Nelson, also called Baby's Head in Mohave; with Jack Jones the interpreter as usual.
Jo Nelson, aged about sixty, is pictured in Handbook of California Indians, plate 64, top right, and in our frontispiece. Like many Mohave, he was interested in travel and in new lands and peoples. He had visited widely among Indian tribes both east and west of the Mohave and had asked questions both abroad and at home. He gave me, on the whole, the best information which I secured from the Mohave about other tribes, and which has been published in part in the Handbook, though considerable detail remains unpublished. Jo Nelson was in many ways an ideal informant for matters of fact. His memory was excellent both for what he had seen and heard. His mind was orderly, his procedure methodical. He distinguished between hearsay and actual observation; and he would exhaust one topic before proceeding to the next. These same qualities show in his myth as presented here.
CONTENT OF THE MYTH
The narrative may be described as dealing essentially with the institution of culture by Mastamho, the second of the two great myth heroes of the Mohave. The story assumes the cosmogony as such as already known. I obtained one such Mohave account of the origin of the world. This has been abstracted in the Handbook, pages 770-771, and also in the American Journal of Folklore, 19:314-316, 1906. That was one of the first narratives which I recorded from this tribe, and its quality and my rendition are not of the best; but it is confirmed by innumerable allusions to world origins in other Mohave myths and in their discussions of their culture.
The present Mastamho narrative begins after Matavilya is dead, and its first chapter, so to speak ([A:1-6]) deals with the disposal of his body. Thereafter the tale is concerned with the planning, trials, and execution of his plans by Mastamho, especially with reference to the way of living of the Mohave, but first for the desert tribes nearest them ([B:7-19]). Essentially Mastamho thinks of what will be good for one or more of these tribes, causes it to come into existence, and then explains it to the people or has them practice it. One long section ([C:20-35]) is devoted to the institution of night and sleep, to the building of houses and shade roofs, and the setting aside of playing fields. The relation of sections like this to the remainder will be clearer by reference to the outline of the whole narrative given a few paragraphs below. The total story is so prolix that this summary will be useful as a conspectus for orientation.