Garth relates that “Atsugewi mythology tells of the successive creation of two former worlds, the first of which was destroyed by a great flood and the second by a fire which Coyote instigated in an attempt to kill his rival, Grey Fox. After this both Coyote and Grey Fox descended from the heavens on a long rope to the primeval sea below. Here Grey Fox took combings from his fur (in some accounts a piece of sod) and proceeded to make land of it, stretching it to all sides until the present earth was made, in concept a large island floating in the sea. Grey Fox then created trees, animals, and finally people. The sun and moon were two brothers whom Grey Fox told to mount into the sky to light the world, the one during the day and the other at night.... Grey Fox first wanted to create two moons and two suns, but Coyote objected saying that it would be too hot. Grey Fox then made only the sun and one moon.”
In a somewhat different version, Dixon has recorded that the Atsugewi “... recount how, in the beginning, there was only the illimitable sea and the cloudless sky. Slowly in the sky a tiny cloud began to form, and grew till it reached considerable proportions. Then gradually it condensed, and, becoming solid, became the Silver-Gray Fox, the Creator. Then arose immediately a fog; and from this, as it condensed, and coagulated as it were, arose Coyote. By a process of long-continued and intense thought, the Creator created a canoe into which both he and Coyote descended, and for long years floated and drifted aimlessly therein, till, the canoe having become moss-grown and decayed, they had, perforce, to consider the necessity of creating a world whereon they might take refuge.”
The Yana legends quoted below from Gifford and Klimek (first) and from Sapir and Spier are from the northern and central tribes, of that people. These legends are given in lieu of those of southern Yana and Yahi, with which this book should be concerned, because of the similarity of the culture of these four tribes. It is extremely unlikely that there would be very great differences in their legends and beliefs of creation. Obviously each tribe had its own unique details.
North Yana: “Coyote, assistant creator, was marplot (the evil schemer) who brought death into the world as follows: Coyote, his two sons, and other people went down-stream to get clamshells. The people played. Coyote’s sons seized the clamshells and ran off with them. One escaped with the stolen shells, but the other was killed. The Coyote boy who escaped shouted to Old Man Coyote, who sat in his assembly house and observed daily what transpired. Coyote boy told the old man his brother was dead. Old Coyote then mourned for his son. Silver Fox told him not to cry, but to clean the assembly house and bring in the dead boy. They strewed the floor with straw and built fire. Silver Fox told old Coyote to lie down and pretend to sleep. ‘Do not move,’ said Silver Fox. This was to cause dead boy to revive. They started to cut old Coyote’s belly to get back the spirit of his dead son. Old Coyote shouted with pain and said: ‘Let him stay dead. The dead shall remain dead.’ Thus he spoiled Silver Fox’s plan for resurrection.”
Central Yana: “... the creation of people took place at Wama-riwi, a village at the cove north of Battle Creek and several miles west of the present Shingletown, that is, roughly at the center of Yana territory. Here in the beginning were Lizard and Cottontail (in Dixon’s version, Lizard, Gray Squirrel, and Coyote; in Curtin’s, Silkworm) who had no predecessors. Discussing how people shall be made, Lizard lays down sticks which they carry to the four directions to become neighboring Indian tribes. Realizing that they have omitted those at the center, they put down bad (short) sticks there. Hence the Yana are shorter than any of their neighbors: a view held by the Yana and repeated by Powers as fact. In Dixon’s version (from the same informant) Lizard carefully prepares three sticks for Atsugewi, Wintun, and Achomawi, and as an afterthought, short sticks for the Yana. The first three are placed to the east, west, and north; the others are boiled to transform them into humans. Coyote refuses to recognize them until they speak properly, that is, the Yana tongue. Curtin’s version is quite different, although still the Yana are created from sticks: his presumably Northern Yana informant, himself a chief, placed the locale in his own country, at Round Mountain. Here Silkworm puts down three sticks, for the Yana chief, a woman, and an orphan, and a large number around the first for common people; he instructs them how to procure food and admonishes that they obey the chief.
“The origin of sex, or rather its proper attribution rests in the circumstance that in the beginning, women were men; men were women. The women were such poor hunters that people starved. To remedy this, Cottontail placed stones in a fire; when the women were seated, the stones burst, cutting their proper organs, and the women became men. Hands were then webbed like Lizard’s. In order that they might handle bows and pestles, Lizard, experimenting, cut his fingers apart. With this as a model, he separated those of humans. (In Curtin’s version, Water Lizard remedies the defect for himself alone.) In the beginning when people died, they rose from their graves again. Coyote, who objected to these improvements of human affairs, not only proposes that they shall stay dead but stamps down a dead man who would rise. When his own son dies, he changes his mind, but Lizard, Cottontail, and Gray Squirrel will have none of it, so that death and mourning were established forever.”
Again Garth is here quoted on Atsugewi beliefs: “As in most of northern California there are numerous natural phenomena in Atsugewi territory which marked some mythological event. A low cone-like rock in Dixie Valley was said to be a basket belonging to Coyote. About four miles south of Pittville on the old village site of Mawakasui was an oblong rock ten feet or so in length which was said to be the petrified remains of a lizard whom Butterfly had killed. The extremely rough tongue of lava-covered land extending down the center of Hat Creek Valley was created by Porcupine to impede Coyote with whom Porcupine was running a race. Eagle Lake was said to have been formerly in Atsuge territory, but Coyote tired of the manzanita berries and camass roots which the people fed to him here, so he moved the lake to the Apwaruge country. Here the people fed him epos roots and treated him better.”
The Maidu concept of the world according to Dixon is that of “... floating on the surface of a great sea, but anchored by five ropes stretched by the Creator, which hold the island steady, and prevent it from drifting about. Occasionally some being seizes these ropes and shakes them, and this causes earthquakes. The world was flat when first made from the bit of mud brought up from the depths of the primeval sea by the turtle (turtle does not appear in the northeast or mountain Maidu version) or from the robin’s nest floating in the sea. Later the Creator and the Coyote went about over the world, making the rivers and mountains. Coyote was in general responsible for the latter, and for the extreme roughness of the country....” The Creator’s stone canoe is said to be visible today on top of Keddie Peak just north of Indian Valley (Greenville); also his and Coyote’s dance houses may be seen as huge circular depressions at what is now Durham (near Chico).
In his extensive collection of Maidu myths, Dixon observes that “Throughout the myths there is nowhere any suggestion that the Maidu had any knowledge of any other region, that they were immigrants in the land where they live. This complete absence of any migration tradition is a feature which is very characteristic, and serves to differentiate the mythology not only of the Maidu, but of most Californian tribes, from that of the Southwest, and much of the eastern portion of the continent.”
He further states: “here the creation is a real beginning: beyond it, there is nothing. In the beginning was only the great sea, calm and unlimited, to which, down from the clear sky, the Creator came, or on which he and Coyote were floating in a canoe. Of the origin of previous place of abode of either Creator or Coyote, the Maidu know nothing....”
“... the whole series of tales told by the stock ... appeared to follow one another in a more or less regular and recognized order. Beginning with the creation, a rather systematic chain of events leads up to the appearance of the ancestors of the present Indians, with whose coming the mythic cycle came to a close. This mythic era, the be-be-ito, seems to fall into a number of periods, with each of which a group or set of myths has to deal. First, we have the coming of Ko-do-yan-pe (Earth-Namer or Creator) and Coyote, their discovery of this world, and the preparation of it for the ‘first people’; next the creation of these first people, and the making and planting of the germs of the human race, the Indians, who were to come after; third, the long period during which the first people were in conflict, and were in the end changed to the various animals in the present world. In this period Earth-Maker tries to put an end to Coyote, whose evil ways and wishes are in direct contrast to his own.” Creator was always dignified and striving to make life easy, happy, and deathless for mankind, while Coyote, a trickster and amorous knave, worked with continued success to render life difficult for man with the result that man’s lot is to suffer and finally to die. This belief was generally uniform among the tribes of the Lassen area. “... During this period Earth-Maker strives for a last time in vain with Coyote, his defeat, and disappearance toward the East coincident with the appearance of the human race, which bursts forth from the spots where the original pairs had been buried long before.” These potential human beings had been made “... as tiny wooden figures by the Creator, and planted here and there in pairs, that they might grow in secret and safety during the time of monsters and great conflicts....”
In other myths also there is great similarity among the Maidu, Atsugewi, Yana, and Yahi. Dixon says concerning “... The theft of fire, for instance.... In all, the fire is held by a man and his daughters, and is discovered largely through the agency of the Lizard; the fire is watched and guarded by a sentinel bird, is stolen in consequence of his sleeping while on guard, and pursuit by the women is hindered by the strings of their skirts being cut as they sleep. The fire is brought back by a group of animals, among whom the fire is divided for safety; and the pursuers, who are usually Thunder, and his two daughters Rain and Hail, are put to flight.”
Chapter XXXIV
MEDICAL TREATMENT
The bulk of the important doctoring was done by shamans or medicine men. This was all based on supernatural faith and fear. As we know from advances of our modern civilization in the field of psychosomatic medicine, such “in the mind” cures were highly effective in practice. With all due respect to the modern medical profession, it is a foregone conclusion that from 50% to 75% of the patients of today’s general medical doctor are going to get well eventually without any bonafide medical treatment anyway. This percentage favored the shamans too.
Besides shamans there were secondary Indian doctors called herbalists. Among Atsugewi, these persons did not have the power of shamans, and could not cure disease, but only check or weaken it. However, this class of doctor did administer various medicines internally and externally, and gave treatments which may actually have been—in some cases—of benefit beyond mere faith healing. These remedies were handed down, as was all Indian knowledge, by word of mouth from generation to generation. Old men taught the young.
Herbalists were able to make snake bite victims recover; treatment included sucking the wound. Cauterization or burning of affected parts was practiced. Atsugewi treated rheumatism in patients with vapor baths in a trench of hot coals on which pine needles and yerba santa or mountain balm branches were placed, with a robe over all.
Mountain Maidu smoked wild parsnip for headaches, colds, and wounds. Mountain Maidu and Atsugewi believed that toothaches were caused by the presence of worms in the teeth. Corrective poultices were placed on the cheek. Yana did this too, but placed a hot stone on the poultice, and also bit on a mole’s front foot, dried, to relieve the pain. Atsugewi often set the poultice on fire which might leave permanent scars.
The seeds of rosinweed, a member of the sunflower family, were collected, then shelled, cooked, dried, and finally pounded. This medicine was taken for chills. Wild iris roots were chewed raw for coughing.
Decoctions, that is, water in which plants had been boiled to extract their medicinal juices, were drunk. California angelica, a member of the parsley family, was used in this way for colds, diarrhea, headache, et cetera. This medication was popular with all local tribes for treating many ills.