Part 0— Prelude, the Font Text
1. It is a nice thought that the - ki element of the word could be related to ki :, 'house', but I cannot defend this. It does seem likely that the wa'a - element has to do etymologically with moisture or water. Sometimes these places are poetically called "rain-houses" in English, for which the above analysis is a justification. [BACK]
2. There was earlier Spanish contact with Pimas hundreds of miles to the south of these people. The southerners were called "Lower Pimas," while these to the north (including the Papagos) were called "Upper Pimas." Thus, Manje would be the first person to write Upper Pima. [BACK]
3. It is important to note that the present status term siwañ (chief) is not used with a contemporary reference. It refers exclusively to mythical Hohokam "chiefs." My argument, then, is that a term that is already of narrow application, namely, "[Hohokam] chief," is based on something even narrower, that is, the name of a single such chief.
Two additional comments. First, Ruth Underhill has implied in her excellent Papago ethnography that "Siwañ" was a Papago status term ("The rain shaman is called Sivanyi" [1939: 46]). This is not so. The shamans or medicine men who divine for rain at "wine ceremonies" (see story 7) are not called by this term. But the term is used by people who give speeches prior to serving wine at the ceremonies. The speeches (discussed in connection with story 7 and illustrated with a text from Thin Leather given in part 3) tell of journeys to mythical siwañs to obtain rain. They are delivered during wine ceremonies to individuals who sit before baskets of wine, which they are about to serve. One could say that the wine servers impersonate siwañs, but they are not shamans, at least not during the ceremony. The shamans are others, and they are not called "siwañ."
Second, Underhill and others have noted that the Pima-Papago word "siwañ" is similar to a Zuni word spelled, for instance, as shiwanni . The Zuni word designates rain priests or priesthoods. (Here I am following the spelling and summary given in Teague and Deaver [1989]: 161, 165.) Thus, the Pima-Papago may have borrowed the Zuni word or vice versa. I have just proposed that the Pima-Papago word comes from their word for "bitter," but this could be a false or partial etymology. We need an etymology of the Zuni word shiwanni , but I do not know if one is available. [BACK]
4. One can understand this. The rains were unpredictable, and perhaps the rivers were not; and as some anthropologists have supposed, people tend to ceremonialize more that which is unpredictable. I do not wish to dispute that idea, but I do suspect that peoples who were truly dependent on river irrigation—for ex- soft
ample, the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, the Harappans (India) and Mochica (Peru)—may have had more river lore, ceremony, and magic than the Pimas. [BACK]
5. We need evidence of ideology from the great-houses, from architecture or pottery decoration or pictographs or whatever. We cannot know their spoken myths, but we may be able to read ideologically coded physical artifacts, and we may find discontinuities with the present Pima-Papago encoded in them. The Hohokam "ball courts" are one such possibility, but I know of no substantive readings of what the ball court details meant to the Hohokam. There are only interesting speculations on what ball games could have meant to Hohokam trade politics (Wilcox 1991: 101-125). Wilcox believes that ball games enabled trade and gift giving (and betting, I would add) between "home" groups and visitors. The ball game-like betting game discussed in note 7, part 3, below, also served those purposes. [BACK]
6. The full roster of variant names for this character is the following: S-e'ehe (and variants: Siuuhu, Soho, and many others), 'Elder-brother' (actually elder-brother-sister-or-cousin, as the word does not limit itself to sex or even full siblingship); Si:s Ma:kai, 'Elder-brother Medicine-man', or 'Elder-brother Shaman'; I'itoi, 'Drink-it-all-up'; and Mondisuma, 'Montezuma'. These four variants are mixed through Pima and Papago mythologies. For example, the Pima Thin Leather uses both names for this character and implies that the god was called I'itoi up to a certain point in the story and then took on the name S-e'ehe (Russell 1908: 209). The text is not explicit, and the Pima language is lacking, so one cannot see exactly where that change happened. Logically, it would have been when this god and two others met after surviving a flood. At that point there was a dispute over seniority (i.e., who had come to ground first), and the other gods averred to I'itoi's/S-e'ehe's insistence that he had been first.
I confess that no Pima-Papago has told me that I'itoi means "Drink-it-all-up." I have told this to them, and they have agreed, but they seem to think that the god's name merely sounds like it means "Drink-it-all-up" in their language—exactly like that, I believe. The reason for their reticence may be that there is nothing obvious in the story of I'itoi/S-e'ehe to earn him that name. He has no penchant for drinking anything in particular.
On the strength of the Font text, I think the reason for his name is his solar properties (discussed below). By drying things out, he seems to drink them up. Thus, his involvement with the mythical flood is a false lead into his name "Drinker." He does not drink the flood but takes refuge from it. Finally, I suspect that the Drinker name links him to the Aztec sun who "drank" human blood. break
The sun, the earth, the moon, and the gods of vegetation and animal life all need annual rejuvenation by draughts of human blood. Without human sacrifices the earth's fruits wither and men perish, so that the continuation of the universe depends on the payment of a blood debt. (Kubler 1984: 92)
There is no human sacrifice in known Pima-Papago religion or mythology (except Jesus), but the "Drinker" name ties them to the system of thought that supported human sacrifice in pre-Columbian central and northern Mexico. [BACK]
7. Beyond the friendly Opas, I assume the governor knew of unfriendly Yumas, Mojaves, and so on. [BACK]