And then the fog dammed up the river and the water ran thru the canal.
Then the old woman did not go near the people, but went home, and in the morning, when one of the people went to see why the old woman did not come, he saw the canal full of water and he yelled to everybody to come and see it.
And in this way these people got water for their crops and were as prosperous as the others below them.
Notes on the Story of Tawquahdahmawks
In this story we find proof that the oldest digging utensil was a sharpened stake.
Before these people became agricultural they must have subsisted mainly on the game and wild fruits of the desert. They showed me several seed-bearing bushes and weeds which in old time had helped to eke out for them an existence.
Starvation must have often stared them in the face, and the references to hunger, and the prophecies of plenty, and of visits to relatives whose crops were good, are scattered pathetically all thru these legends.
And indeed, until very recently, mezquite beans and the fruit of various cactus plants were staple articles of food.
Mezquite beans grow in a pod on the thorny mezquite trees. The gathering of them was quite a tribal event, large parties going out. The beans when brought home were pounded in the chee-o-pah, or mortar, which was made by burning a hollow in the end of a short mezquite log, set in the ground like a low post. A long round stone pestle, or vee-it-kote, was used to beat with, and sometimes the cheeopah itself was of stone. But stone mortars were usually ancient and dug from out the vahahkkee ruins.