But the fine old athletic games seem to have all died out now.
Stories of miraculous conception are not uncommon in Indian tradition, and this story of the bewitching of the young girl into motherhood thru the agency of the football is an instance.
This gruesome and graphic tale is full of insight into Indian thought and fancy. In reading it we are reminded of many familiar old nursery tales of kidnapped child, pig or fowl (“the little red hin” of Irish legend for instance) and of Were-Wolf and Loup-Garou.
And here reappears the old myth of some god’s or hero’s footstep printed in solid rock.
Here is a hint, too, of transmigration in the various adventures of the soul of Hawawk.
My Indian hosts cooked me a pot of choohookyuh greens, and I found them very palatable.
The reference to the pottery making reminds me of Pima arts. Today the Maricopas have almost a monopoly of pottery making, tho the Quohatas make some good pottery too. It is shaped by the hands (no potters wheel being known) and smoothed and polished by stones, painted red with a mineral and black with mezquite gum and baked in a common fire. It is often very artistic in a rude way, in form and decoration.
The Papagoes do most of the horse-hair work, chiefly bridles, halters and lariat ropes, and make mats and fans from rushes.
The Pimas make the famous black and white, watertight baskets, which are too well known to need description. The black in these is shreds of the dead-black seed pod of the devil-claw and not some fibre dyed black, as some suppose.
There seems to have been no original bead work among Pima Indians.