Preferred Citation: Bahr, Donald, Juan Smith, William Smith Allison, and Julian Hayden. The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth: The Hohokam Chronicles. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1994 1994. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5z09p0dh/

 
Part 10— The Conquest until Siwañ Wa'aki

Story 28—
Siuuhu's Revenge:
Guadalupe and Pueblo Grande

figure

They made camp there and asked another medicine man to work for them. He had the power of the bluebird, Huh wut jut nam kum.[n]

Namkum means that a person sleeps at night, and if he is very interested in something, such as birds and animals, and if the bird or animal knows that, then it comes to him in his dream and shows him how to act like the bird or animal. That's how medicine people get their power, by learning from different things [creatures] that they are interested in, in their dreams. That's what namkum means.

The bluebird man found out that ahead of them lived a chief with many people, at a mound that is somewhere a little north of Yaqui Village (Guadalupe, Ariz.). (The medicine man sang two songs, but Juan has forgotten them.) The house at this mound was destroyed.

The bluebird man worked some more and looked in the same direction and saw that it was raining very hard at a spot just across the river from where the previous enemy man was (Guadalupe). This spot

[m] Ku:jegi , 'mirage', 'heat wave' (as over a road) (Saxton, Saxton, and Enos 1983: 35).

[n] He:wacud Namkam, 'Bluejay Meeter'.

― 252 ―

was where Yellow Buzzard (Huam a nui)[o] used to live (Pueblo Grande).[12]

Every Hohokam village had a medicine man, called makai (doctor), as a leader.[p]

This man had made his house from solid rock, so it seemed impossible for the Wooshkam to hurt it. He had done this because he didn't want any of his people to run off and leave him. They must all stay in this house with this medicine man.

It wasn't really a stone house, but the leader made it look like solid rock.

At that time there was evil in the minds of the people who used to live here. They wanted to kill and destroy everything, which is like selfishness. This same evil has been carried on until today.

The bluebird man fooled himself by saying that the house was made of rock, and he couldn't do anything with it, so they asked another man who had the power of thunder to see what he could do (Chu din nam kum). He sang:

It is a hard house
It is a hard house
It is a hard house
Do you see the foundation

figure

It is made out of rock.

Then he told the people that it [destruction

figure
] would be easy for him, and he sang:

I saw that he is
Too light for me.

[o] Uam Ñu:wi , 'Yellow Buzzard'.

[p] Ma:kai , 'medicine man', 'shaman', 'doctor'. This is a different word from siwañ , 'chief'. Smith is not alone among narrators in holding that the Hohokam had "medicine men" as well as "chiefs." The contemporary Pima-Papago, however, and also those who emerged from the underworld, had only medicine men. They have no chiefs, that is, no sisiwañ.

― 253 ―

It is like a windbreak  (oksha, four walls, no roof,
     shelter for cooking)
Made out of these ocotillos.

It was true. The thunderman came down over the house and smashed it to pieces. When this happened, the earth quaked and it knocked down a house that was close to the city of Phoenix (La Ciudad

figure
).[13]

Part 10— The Conquest until Siwañ Wa'aki
 

Preferred Citation: Bahr, Donald, Juan Smith, William Smith Allison, and Julian Hayden. The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth: The Hohokam Chronicles. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1994 1994. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5z09p0dh/