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/


 
Notes

Part 5— Origin of Wine and Irrigation

1. Examples of "wine drinks" speeches are published by Russell (1908: 347-352) from the Pima and by Saxton and Saxton (1973: 335-336, 338-339) and Underhill et al. (1979: 17-35) from the Papago. The Thin Leather corn myth speeches are different from the rain text published by Russell, and Russell's collection lacks those corn myth speeches.

2. It is quite likely that from Hohokam times on there was a local (Sonoran Desert-wide) distinction between River People, who tapped permanently flowing rivers for water, and Desert People, who could not and did not because they had no rivers to continue

tap. Thus, Smith and Allison may have felt that wine feasts are the only recourse of the Desert People, or of the rustics. True, but note the origin of wine feasts in the Pima Thin Leather's Tobacco and Corn myth. Now, one might take this as evidence that the Pimas were not fully acclimated to the rivers, that a people truly committed to river tapping would not have wine feasts or rain ceremonies at all, or that a truly river-acclimated people would not have the mythological "profile" on tobacco and rainfall that we observe for the Pima as well as the Papago. It is an interesting idea because it makes one wish to compare Pima-Papago mythology with the mythologies of other, perhaps more committed and centralized irrigation civilizations.

3. Ogali , the fathers of the ogali clan or sib. It is important to note that the first of these three sibs belongs to the Coyote moiety, the second belongs to the Buzzard moiety, and the third is considered to be "moietyless" (Underhill 1939: 30-34). Missing from this mythic wine ceremony is one additional sib name from each moiety, Apkigam from the Coyotes and Wawgam from the Buzzards. Later, in story 16, it will be said, somewhat ambiguously, that all or an important part of the Pima-Papago army was comprised of Coyote sib members. Had Smith identified the people of this myth as being entirely and exclusively Buzzards (comprised exclusively of vav and ma:m sib members), then the case could be made that an army comprised of "Coyotes" defeated and incorporated the Hohokam, who were all "Buzzards." Such an idea may have been at the back of Smith's mind, and Hayden (1970) considered it a novel and plausible solution to the longstanding archaeological riddle of what became of the prehistoric Hohokam people or culture, but I cannot say that Smith actually said that.

4. This does not resound with other Pima-Papago mythologies. There is a well-known myth about a threatened eruption of seawater from a hole near Santa Rosa, Ariz. (Saxton and Saxton [1973: 341-347] give a good bilingual version), but that is obviously not what this myth says. Smith and Allison use this episode of saltwater depletion to set the stage for the origin of irrigation: if Siuuhu could dig a hole to collect the ocean, humans could at least dig canals.

5. See the Appendix. The location would either be the site called Los Muertos or the one called Pueblo Grande. If the former, the canal had its tap into the Salt River near Granite Reef Dam, as Smith-Allison say. If the latter, the river tap was considerably downstream near today's Tempe.

6. Towa Kuadam Oks, 'White Eater Old-woman'. As Fewkes points out, there is little doubt that this is the Pima-Papago name for the same woman-god that Navajos and Hopis, for example, continue

call variously "White Shell Woman," "Woman of Hard Substance," and "Changing Woman." The Pimas locate her in the west. I am not sure about the other mythologies. But the Pimas, unlike those other peoples, do not really have myths about her. To them she is a true and important character of other peoples' mythologies, and she merely has a cameo walk-on role in their own. It is the same with another woman-god whom they call "Green Girl" (S-cehedagi Cehia): She figures prominently in Yuman (Maricopa, Yuman, Mojave, Cocopa) mythology, as a young woman who, as a frog, ate her father's feces after he almost tried to make love with her. Pima-Papago tell his story, but they tell it as a foreign, in that case Maricopa, myth. They tell the prose in Pima-Papago and sing the songs in Maricopa. I consider that these two women characters are different and are focal characters in two different but coordinate mythologies. Generally, a people who have one of the women do not have the other. And the Pima-Papago, as I said, have neither; they know about both but accept neither as pertaining directly to their history. They do have an equivalent for these women, however. She is the girl of the next story, of the next part, who gives birth to a witch.

7. See previous note.

8. This squares with the locational analysis in the introduction to this part. It implies that the engineering problems for the Hohokam canal system serving sites in today's Mesa and south Tempe area were greater than those for the canals serving today's central Phoenix. Clearly, the Mesa system originates upstream of the Phoenix system. It may in fact be the longer, more complex, and therefore politically more coordinated system.


Notes
 

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/