Part 0—
Prelude, the Font Text
This short, no doubt truncated, two-part mythology was recorded at a Pima village near today's Casa Grande National Monument by Pedro Font in 1775. The village name was registered as Uturituc, possibly [T]u[k] Tu:dagi, an old way to say the name of today's village of Cuk Su:dagi[*] , 'Black Water'. The text is important because its first part gives a nonconquest version of the end of the great-houses and the second, a non-death-and-revival biography of the figure called Siuuhu in the Smith-Allison text. Those and a fragment from 1694 are all that we have in writing from the long period between the end of the Hohokam and the mid-nineteenth century. As I will explain, the old texts illuminate much in Smith-Allison, that is, much pertaining to the imagination and symbolism of power, especially powers over wetness and heat. As I will also explain, we should be doubtful about what the texts teach on the substance of Hohokam life, which is what they wish to represent. The year 1775 is not halfway between us and the Hohokam, and 1694 is just a bit more than half. We will take the Font stories in sequence, placing the temporally earlier fragment in between them.
The first Font story was given in explanation of Casa Grande Ruin, the great-house later excavated by Fewkes. To the Spanish, the Mexicans, and early Anglo-Americans, this place stood preeminent among the clay-walled Hohokam ruins of the region. It was the Casa Grande, which means "Great House" in Spanish. It retains that Spanish name and status in present-day Arizona, although as we saw, by Fewkes's time American archaeologists applied the English term "great-house" to all clay-walled ruins.
The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Pima
language on great-houses was as follows. They called most or all of the clay-walled ruins wa:paki in the plural or wa'aki in the singular. The word does not literally mean "great house" as does the Spanish casa grande . ("Great house" in Pima would be ge 'e ki :). It is not clear what wa 'aki means etymologically.[1] I translate the word simply as "great-house," that is, I equate it with the Spanish-inspired English term for these structures.
One way that the nineteenth-century Pimas named these wa:paki/great-houses was in reference to the Hohokam "chief" (siwañ ) who they thought lived there. Thus, the great-house that Font visited was called Morning Green Chief Great-house (Si'al Cehedag Siwañ Wa'aki) by nineteenth-century Pimas. Another way that they named them was in reference to geographic features, for example, Gravel Great-house (O'odkam Wa'aki). Whichever the naming practice, the wa:paki /great-houses were several, and one thinks of each as having its chief, whether remembered or not, and its distinct geographic setting. Accordingly, nothing in the name "Morning Green Chief Great-house" marks this place as special. In fact, the textual record on great-house naming is spotty and puzzling. Of the two long conquest narratives, by Thin Leather and Smith-Allison, only Thin Leather uses differentiating names like "Morning Green Chief Great-house." Smith and Allison appear to be wedded to the unmodified words "Chief" and "Great-house." I do not think this is accidental. As stated in the introduction, there is a Papago text that reduces the conquest to a single battle at none other than Chief Great-house (Siwañ Wa'aki); and as was also stated earlier and we will now see, the Font text implies that the present-day status name siwañ, 'chief', was originally the personal name of one character, that is, the name of a man called "Bitter" (recorded as Siba), the chief at the Casa Grande, the place excavated by Fewkes. Possibly then, the Pimas of Font's time called this place "Siba Wa'aki," that is, they called it by the same term used in the single-battle conquest text. The implications are that the proliferation of specially named chiefs and great-houses was a latter-day phenomenon and that the idea of a march to all these places is also recent.
The Font text states that the great-house chief's name
was Bitter Man (Siw O'odham in present-day Pima-Papago), but the text does not give the actual Pima expression. Luckily, a 1694 journal report written by Juan Manje does give the Pima, as Siba. Manje, we should note, is generally considered to be the first European to see Casa Grande Ruin (Fewkes 1912: 33, 54–56). Accordingly, he was the first person to write Pima.[2] His spelling of the name could represent Pima words pronounced as "siba," "siwa," or "siva"; the Spanish letter "b" could cover that range of sound. Note that "siba" is about equidistant from present-day Pima-Papago siw , 'bitter,' and siwañ , 'chief.' In my view, the old Siba is ancestral to both of those words: the present-day status term siwañ derives from the mythic personal name Siw/Siba.[3]
Here is the text.
Prelude 1—
The Bitter Man (Governor of Uturituc)
In a very distant time there came to that land a man who, because of his evil disposition and harsh way, was called the Bitter Man; and that this man was old and had a young daughter; that in his company there came another man who was young, who was not his relative nor anything, and that he [Bitter] gave him in marriage his daughter, who was very pretty, the young man being handsome also, and that the said old man had with him as servants the Wind and the Storm-cloud.
That the old man began to build that Casa Grande and ordered his son-in-law to fetch beams for the
roof of the house [the house beams are cedar, which does not grow in the Pima desert]. That the young man went far off, and as he had no axe or anything else with which to cut the trees, he tarried for many days, and at the end he came back without bringing any beams.
That the old man was very angry and told him he was good for nothing; that he should see how he himself would bring beams. That the old man went very far off to a mountain range where there are many pines and, calling on God to help him, he cut many pines and brought many beams for the roof of the house.
That when the Bitter Man came, there were in that land neither trees nor plants, and he brought seeds of all, and he reaped very large harvests with his two servants, the Wind and the Storm-cloud, who served him.
That by reason of his evil disposition he grew angry with the two servants and turned them away and they went very far off; and as he could no longer harvest any crops through lack of the servants, he ate what he had gathered and came near dying of hunger. That he sent his son-in-law to call the two servants and bring them back and he could not find them, seek as he might. That thereupon the old man went to seek them and, having found them, he brought them once more into his service, and with
their aid he had once more large crops, and thus he continued for many years in that land; and after a long time they went away and nothing more was heard of them. (Quoted in Fewkes 1912: 43)
The Bitter Man appears as a harassed small-scale chief. He fetches his own rafters when his son-in-law assistant cannot get them for him. He is chief in a farming community with resident wind and rain. Assuming that this is one community among several, although perhaps the preeminent one (this is stated in Manje), we can imagine a scene more or less as the archaeologists envisioned, of river valleys with a sprinkling of small great-houses, each with its own rain and each attended by its own chief.
What might surprise the archaeologists is that the text does not mention irrigation. In fact, the actual prehistoric Casa Grande and the other great-houses were served by irrigation canals, and the historic (post-1694) Pimas practiced irrigation from some of the same rivers (but principally the Gila). We will find a myth about the origin of Hohokam irrigation in Smith-Allison (story 8), but we will also find Smith-Allison's Hohokam history to be more fundamentally concerned with rain than with irrigation. I will be explicit on the rain side of this issue after the next Font text is given. But for now let us simply note that, like Siba, the principal characters of later Pima-Papago myth seem to care more for rain than for irrigation.
Note then the following possibilities. The actual Pimas of 1900 and 1694 appear to have been diligent irrigators. Anthropologists have observed that their opportunity and ability to tap rivers liberated them from the fickle rains of their region (Russell 1908: 86–89; Ezell 1983: 151). However, it is possible—in fact, it is evidently true—that the Pimas, like their riverless relatives the Papagos, were more fascinated by rain than by rivers. Thus, they ceremonialized rain making more than they did river tapping, the former considerably (Russell 1908: 331–334, 347–352) and the latter apparently not at all.[4] It is also evidently true that they believed the Hohokam shared this fascination with rain. Finally, it is possible, although there is no evidence for
this, that the Hohokam shared this fascination. If that were true, the Hohokam may not have been as dedicated to river tapping as the archaeologists suppose; or rather, if they were dedicated in practice, they may have neglected the subject in myth.
The other possibility is that the Pimas have gotten the Hohokam wrong, that they would be surprised if they could hear what the Pimas have said about them. I will return to this. By the end of this prelude we will understand the seventeenth- through twentieth-century Pima and Papago ideas on rain, but we will not know if the Hohokam had the same ideas.
Let us resume with Font's story and note the reason that Siba abandoned his house and farm: there is none. He suffered a weather reversal, but he set it right again and then left. This may be hard to believe, but it could symbolize what some archaeologists have thought about the end of the great-houses, that as a result of the salting of the soil or changes in rainfall—rainfall on the mountain watershed, according to the archaeologists—the Hohokams' farming became too lean to support the great-house life-style. Surely that may have been a real factor or at least a nagging anxiety. As it happens, however, a brief mention of the Siba myth by Juan Manje in 1694 gives another often-cited archaeological explanation, warfare. In this oldest of written documents on Pima myth, the war is not fratricidal or rebellious as in the later versions. Rather, the war is in the form of raids by the east-living, Athabascan-speaking Apaches. Such raiders were surely a factor in the lives of the Pimas of 1694. It is a moot point whether they were or would have been a factor in the actual end of the great-houses, ca. 1400.
Here is the Manje textlet.
Prelude 2—
The Bitter Man (Manje's Guides)
The guides said that they [Casa Grande and several other great-houses] were built by a people who came from the region of the north, their chief being El Siba, which according to their language means "the bitter or cruel man," and that through the bloody war which the Apache waged against them and the 20 tribes allied with them, killing many on both sides, they laid waste to the settlements, and part of them, discouraged, went off and returned north-ward, whence they had started years before, and the majority went east and south. (Quoted in Fewkes 1912: 55–56 )
What matters to us in both of these texts on Siba is the absence of a Pima-to-Pima conquest. Before taking up the second of the Font myths, which has a figure equivalent to the conquering Siuuhu of the later texts, I will connect the concern of Font's Siba with wind and rain to later texts from Pimas and Papagos. These form a series of variants of the same myth that Font recorded about Siba. The first in the series (ibid., 48–49), replaces Siba with a Siwañ chief at Casa Grande Ruin. The second carries the same myth into the Papago desert, with no mention of a great-house or siwañ (Saxton and Saxton 1973: 317–340). Finally are texts that replace wind and rain with corn and tobacco. All these will be given and discussed later, for the Smith-Allison mythology has versions of the final step, on corn and tobacco (part 3).
The series as a whole underscores the point made above on the Pima imagination of the Hohokam. We can see how the Siba of 1775 fits into the mythology of the later Pimas,
but we cannot know if Siba was a man who walked the Hohokam earth or if the Hohokam had a myth of a man or god like Siba. I do not regret this. If we never learn what the Hohokam thought of Siba, at least we know what we are missing. We have not lost anything, but we have gained awareness of a city that we cannot visit, the city of the Hohokams' myths.[5]
We come now to Font's second myth, which establishes a discontinuity between the eighteenth- and late nineteenth-century Pima-Papago relative to the Hohokam chiefs and the man-god who walked among them. If we were granted the opportunity to hear just one myth from the Hohokam city, I would not choose a myth on irrigation directly but on the problem of a creator god who either does or does not take vengeance on the chiefs of his people. In the discussion that follows, I will show how this god opposes the chiefs (sisiwañ ) imagined by the nineteenth-century Pimas and also the earlier character of Siba. He is an anti-rain chief but not in a way that places him in charge of rivers. Rather, he is a sun-heat god.
The second Fond myth centers on the character cognate with Smith and Allison's Siuuhu, but it gives this character a different name. The name of the Font character is "the Drinker" (El Bebedor), a well-attested variant name—actually an alternative—for Smith-Allison's Siuuhu. The Pima language for this alternative name is I'itoi, 'Drink-it-all-up'.[6] What matters from the Font myth, given below, is that the Drinker/I'itoi never dies, is never revived, and never leads a conquest against the Hohokam. In this myth he castigates people, presumably Pima-Papago and not Siba's great-house people, by turning them into saguaro cacti and by causing them to be scorched by the sun. But he never conducts a vengeful war, and he exterminates no one.
Prelude 3—
The Drinker (Governor of Uturituc)
He [the village governor] said also, that after the old man [Siba] there came to that land a man called the Drinker, and he grew very angry with the people of that place and he sent much water so that the whole country was covered with water, and he went to a very high mountain range which is to be seen from here, and which is called the Mountain of the Foam (Sierra de la Espuma), and he took with him a little dog and a coyote. . . . That the Drinker went up, and left the dog below that he might notify him when the water came too far, and when the water had touched the brow of the foam [marked today on the mountain] the dog notified the Drinker, because at that time the animals talked, and the latter [the Drinker] carried him up.
That after some days the Drinker Man sent the rose-sucker [hummingbird] to Coyote to bring him mud; they brought some to him of the mud he made men of different kinds, and some turned out good and others bad. That these men scattered over the land, upstream and downstream; after some time he sent some men of his to see if the men upstream talked; these went and returned saying that although they talked, they had not understood what they said, and that the Drinker Man was very angry because these
men talked without his having given them leave. That next he sent other men downstream to see those who had gone that way and they returned saying that they had received them well, that they spoke another tongue but that they had understood them. Then the Drinker Man told them that these men downstream were good men and there were such as far as the Opa, with whom they are friendly, and there were the Apache [upstream], who are their enemies.
He [the governor] also said that at one time the Drinker Man was angry with the people and killed many and transformed them into saguaros [cacti], and on this account there are so many saguaros in that country. . . . Furthermore, he said that at another time the Drinker Man was very angry with the men and caused the sun to come down and burn them, and was making an end of them; that he [they 
] now begged him much not to burn them, and therefore the Drinker Man said that he would no longer burn them and then he told the sun to go up, but not as much as before, and he told them that he had left it lower in order to burn them by means of it, if they ever made him angry again, and for this reason it is so hot in that country in summer.
He [the governor] added that he knew other stories; that he could not tell them because the time was up, and he agreed to tell them to us another day; but as we laughed a little at his tales, which he related with
a good deal of seriousness, we could not get him afterward to tell us anything more, saying he did not know any more. (Quoted in Fewkes 1912: 43–44)
The striking difference between this two-myth mythology and the later, conquest mythologies is that this 1775 version separates the Drinker/Siuuhu from the great-house people. These people were earlier than the god, who came on the scene, did not like what he found (presumably, the people who remained after Siba's departure), caused a flood, and created the Pima-Papago, Apaches, and a good downstream people who lived as far as the Opas, generally considered to be a Yuman language-speaking people who extended in 1775 from around Gila Bend, Arizona, along that river toward today's town of Yuma (Spier 1933: 25).
One wonders if Font and his interpreter were truly attentive to the governor on the dissociation between the Drinker and the Hohokam. I assume that they were because, as we will see later, there were mythologies in the 1850–1940 period, and there are still some today (see n. 1 for part 8) that make a little of the great-houses and the sisiwañ chiefs; and while war is certainly a factor in these mythologies, the relevant war is not against the Hohokam but against Apaches and Yumas, as it seems to have been also for Font's governor.[7]
Thus, the text should not be dismissed as poorly heard. In fact, in its brevity it expresses a theme that we will find in the conquest mythologies. This is the opposition between rain and sun. In the Font text, Siba is a rain god, or at least a man blessed by rain. He keeps rain as a retainer, a "servant" Font said. The Drinker, in contrast, chastises people with the sun.
The narratives of conquest say the same thing. One of the two greatest battles in the long accounts is against a man simply called "Chief" by Smith-Allison and "Black Sinew Chief" by Thin Leather. This man has an armory of water defenses—fogs, mists, and so on. Siuuhu evaporates them. The other great battle is with a solar figure, the Buzzard who the Hohokam had enlisted earlier to kill Siuuhu. Buzzard had killed him by borrowing the sun's bow or gun
for a day and shooting him with it. During the revenge battle, Buzzard does not have the bow, and Siuuhu's forces outfly him with their eagles and hawks.
In both great battles the invaders prevail, thanks to solar power. Curiously, the Hohokam have both rain and sun, but the invaders have only the one. Neither Siuuhu nor his army are ever said to cause water, the implication being that the last real water magician was a Hohokam siwañ, long ago.
If we cannot say why the Font text lacks irrigation, at least we have said what it has instead. I will now take a final look at how Font's myths are reflected in Smith-Allison, for the above remarks are limited to the last part of their text, that is, their narrative of the conquest. There is no loss of Rain and Wind (or Cloud) myth in Smith-Allison, but there is an equivalent one, on the loss of Corn and Tobacco. Like the story of Siba, this myth starts with a society blessed with the things about to be lost. The blessing is special: the primordial society includes those things as human members, that is, as men (Tobacco is a woman, however, in a variant by Thin Leather). In one way or another (this is complex and not perfectly clear), the people of the society eat of, smoke of, or are wafted and watered by the things while also having them as human companions. The eventual loss that the myths speak of is not at all of the non-human aspect of the things, for example, of corn and tobacco as material products. Rather the loss is of the human aspect, that is, of Corn and Tobacco as human companions. These humans leave and stay gone, although they may be approached from a distance. Also gone are the vague but unlimited pleasures and uses that the things yielded while they were humans.
These are stories of the loss of a certain kind of paradise, unfamiliar to the West, in which a useful material thing and a human person become separated. The very commonly heard Native American stories of animals that are like people suggest the same idea, except that these stories are usually not understood to entail a loss. They do not stress that humanity lost something when the species became itself, so to speak. Perhaps the Font text on Siba is also of this
type, but it was recast by or for the Spaniards. (In that story, Rain and Cloud resume their residence.)
In Smith-Allison and all the late nineteenth-century stories of the type, the persons who are lost to society always leave voluntarily, as do Font's Rain and Cloud ("Wind," in the later versions). But whereas the Font text characters leave because of unspecified dissatisfaction with their master, Siba (perhaps because of his overbearing character), the characters of the later stories all leave unmarried, and in some cases they leave because they would like to be married but cannot. And there are many hints that their provision of unlimited pleasures—Corn through his person, Tobacco through his person, and so on—is linked to their unmarried, virginal, and unsexually reproducing condition. They are presexed creators. We will consider these matters in discussing Smith-Allison's part 3.