But Toehahvs said; “That is not right, to go and kill it at night. I am not like a jealous woman who goes and fights her rival in the darkness. I am not a woman, I am a man!”
And Toehahvs said to Geeahduk Seeven: “I will go in the morning to attack the pot and I want you to go on the other side, and if the pot throws its fluid at me, so that I cannot conquer it, then do you run up on the other side and smash it.”
Then Toehahvs took his shield and his club, in the morning, and went to attack the pot. But the pot saw him, and, altho he held up his shield, it boiled over, and threw the boiling choohookyuh so high and far that some of it fell on Toehahvs’ back and scalded it. And Toehahvs had to give back a little. But at that moment Geeahduk Seeven ran in on the other side and smashed the pot.
And there was an old man with an orphan grandson, living near there, and when the pot was smashed these came to the spot and ate up the choohookyuh. And at once they were turned into bears, the old man into a black bear, the boy into a brown bear.
And these bears also killed people, and tho the people tried to kill them, for a long time they could not do so. When they shot arrows at the bears, the bears would catch them and break them up. And so the people had to study out other ways to get the better of them. There is a kind of palm-tree, called o-nook, which has balls where the branches come out, and the people burned the trees to get these balls, and threw them at the bears. And the bears caught the balls, and fought and wrestled with them, and while their attention was taken by these balls the people shot arrows at them and killed them.
And thus ended forever the evil power of Hawawk.
Notes on the Story of Hawawk
The Story of Hawawk opens with an interesting reference to the favorite Pima game of football. The ball was about two and one half inches in diameter, merely a heavy pebble coated thick with black greasewood gum. Sometimes it was decorated with little inlays of shell. It was thrown by the lifting of the naked or sandaled foot, rather than kicked. Astonishing tales are told of the running power and endurance of the older Indians. White and red men agree in the testimony.
Emory says of the Maricopa interpreter, Thirsty Hawk, before alluded to, that he came running into their camp on foot and “appeared to keep pace with the fleetest horse.” Whittemore, the missionary, says: “Some young women could travel from forty to fifty miles in sixteen hours, and there were warriors who ran twenty miles, keeping a horse on a canter following them.” G. W. Mardis, the trader at Phoenix, told me he had known Indians to run all day, and my interpreter told me of Pimas running forty to seventy miles in a day, hunting horses on the mountains. Others ran races with horses and with a little handicap and for moderate distance often beat them. On these long runs after horses the men took their footballs and kept them going, saying it made the journey amusing and less tiresome. And undoubtedly it was, in the practice of this sport, that their powers were developed. Beside the usual foot-races, in which all Indians delight, it often happened that two champions would, on a set day, start in different directions and chase their footballs far out on the desert, perhaps ten miles and then return. The one who came in first was winner. The whole tribe, in two parties, on horseback as far as they could get mounts, followed the champions, as judges, assistants, critics and friends and there was profuse betting and picturesque excitement and display.