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Agricultural Motifs in Southem California Indian Mythology

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Agricultural Motifs in Southem California Indian Mythology UC Merced The Journal of California Anthropology Title Agricultural Motifs In Southem California Indian Mythology Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3ns327m5 Journal The Journal of California Anthropology, 1(1) Author Lawton, Harry W. Publication Date 1974-07-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Agricultural Motifs In Southem California Indian Mythology HARRY W. LAWTON HE creation myth of the Cahuilla by Mukat and his twin brother, Temayawet. T Indians of southern Cahfornia is one of After a power struggle between these broth­ the great works of oral literature of the ers, Temayawet was vanquished beneath the American Indian. This eloquent epic-like nar­ earth. At first, Mukat was a teacher and rative, which survives only in fragmented benefactor to his people, but gradually he also form, required four nights in the rendering. became a tyrant. The decisive event which Each year or every other year at the winter gave rise to the present order of the Cahuilla nukil ceremony, Cahuilla gathered for a week- world was a conspiracy among the primal long religious festival which culminated in the beings to slay Mukat. Several attempts were burning of images representing those who had made to murder the creator-god, but Mukat died in the interval between observances. This cleverly eluded them. Finally, the Blue Frog seasonal event was not solely a "mourning (Hyla regilla) succeeded in bewitching Mukat. ceremony," but a sacral event of profound As Mukat lay dying, the first people gathered complexity. The ceremony made manifest to around him, pretending to show concem as all participants the natural order of the they awaited his death. Before dying, Mukat Cahuiha universe and served as a rite of world established the future order of Cahuilla soci­ renewal through the recapitulation of tribal ety by passing on his knowledge and instruct­ history. The central focus of the nukil was a ing his people in ah of the rites they must recitation in song by different lineage groups thenceforth observe, including the cremation of the Cahuilla creation myth accompanied of their dead and an annual burning of effigies by interpretive comment, dance, and the in memory of the dead. After Mukat's death. ritual enactment of various parts of the Coyote C^isil) leaped over the heads of the narrative. people gathered around the funeral pyre and stole Mukat's heart, thus acquiring much of The myth relates the origins of the world his power. out of chaos and describes a mythic primal past in which the world was very different. In The death of Mukat and his subsequent that ancient time, man lived and conversed cremation did not, however, mark the end of with nukatem, spiritual beings who sometimes primal history. Instead, the narrative con­ appeared in human form and sometimes in tinues until the fohowing year when Coyote the form of plants and animals. Originally, served as the first net or ceremonial leader, everything in the universe had been created faithfully making an image of Mukat in 56 THE JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA ANTHROPOLOGY accordance with the creator's dying instruc­ disturbs you while you rest, but we your tions. The people then assembled for the first creatures do not know what the strange nukil rites. With the bummg of Mukat's things are that grow where your body was burned." Mukat's spirit answered him, "Yes, effigy, grief entered the universe and ah that was the last thing I wanted to tell you, creation wept for the slain father. Primal but you killed me before I could do so." innocence was shattered, sacral time ceased, Then he continued, "You need not be afraid and the present order of the world began. of those things. They are from my body." One specific portion of the narrative has He asked Palmitcawut to describe them and when he had finished the spirit of Mukat long puzzled ethnographers, giving rise to the said, "That big tree is tobacco. It is my question of whether it was originally part of heart. It can be cleaned with white clay, and the Cahuilla cosmogony or whether it is a smoked in the big house to drive away evil post-Spanish contact intmsion. The incident spirits. The vines with the yellow squashes is the account of Mukat's last gift to his are from my stomach, watermelons are from the pupil of my eye, corn is from my teeth, people and of the journey of a shaman, wheat is my lice eggs, beans are from my Palmitcawut, into the land of spirits (Telme- semen, and ah other vegetables are from kish) to learn the meaning of the gift. In the other parts of my body." (Thus when any cosmogony, this episode occurs immediately vegetables are gathered and brought to the after the death of Mukat and prior to the "big house" aU of the people must pray to calling of the first nukil by Coyote. Although the creator.) [Strong 1929:142.] several versions of the cosmogony exist. Strong probably provided the most complete account of the narrative and the most accu­ This account of the origins of crop plants rate paraphrase of the songs which make up from the body of the slain god, of course, this portion of the Mukat cycle.' represents a well-known type of vegetation myth motif. Similar myths were prevalent in early agricultural societies of the Old World, Then in the place where Mukat was burned and its presence m many cultures has been there began to grow all kinds of strange documented by numerous mythographers and plants, but no one knew what they were. folklorists. Sometimes it is referred to as the They were afraid to go near the place for a "dying god myth" or the Adonis-Tammuz- hot wind always blew there. One, Palmit­ Osiris archetype. Stith Thompson (1955, I: cawut, a great shaman, said, "Why do you not go and ask our father what they are?" 330) in a motif-index of world myth lists it as No one would go so he followed the trail of A.26I1 ("Plants from the body of a slain Mukat's spirit although whirlwinds had hid­ person or animal."). More recently, Jensen den the trail. In one place were thickets of (1951) in a highly speculative study of this prickly cactus and clumps of interlaced theme has given the label of "Hainuwele thorny vines, but at the touch of his mythologem" to such myths, taking as their ceremonial staff they opened up for him to pass. Far away on the horizon he saw a prototype a version found in eastern Indo­ bright glow where the spirit of Mukat was nesia, where the slaying of a deity known as leaning against a rock. The creator's spirit Hainuwele gives rise to the origin of crop spoke, "Who are you that follows me and plants. Claude Levi-Strauss (1969, 1:104, makes me move when I am lying still?" 165-169) has also dealt with the motif among When the creator's spirit spoke Palmitcawut was dumb and could not answer, though Amazonian Indians, suggesting that mortality Mukat asked him several times. Finally, he is forced upon humanity as the price to be was able to speak: "Yes, I am that one who paid for cultivated plants. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INDIAN MYTHOLOGY 57 THE PROBLEM POSED (1973:x-xi) challenged it by citing examples BY THE CREATION MYTH to show that maize-growing in Califomia in the early nineteenth century was not always The Cahuilla explanation of the origin of irrigation-dependent.^ crop plants presented in their cosmogony is in Since the beginning of the century, a direct conflict with the accepted view that number of researchers have questioned the agriculture in southem California was post- assumption that aboriginal agriculture failed contact (e.g., Kroeber 1925; Sauer 1936; to extend west of the Colorado River tribes. Driver 1961). Until recently, most anthropol­ Barrows (1900) beheved agriculture was ab­ ogists, historians, and geographers were agreed original with the Cahuilla, but presented no that all southem California Indian groups supporting data. Gifford (1931) assumed Ka­ west of the Colorado River were non-agricul­ mia agriculture was aboriginal on the basis of tural prior to the establishment of Mission interviews with elderly informants—aU born in San Diego in 1769, except possibly the Kamia the post-contact period. Rogers (1929:8; of Gifford (1931), who may have practiced 1933:119; 1941:1-6) theorized agriculture flood-water farming aboriginally in the Im­ was once practiced on the Mohave River. perial Valley along the New River, perhaps as Subsequently, Rogers (1945:174) reported far west as the eastern extension of Cahuilla finding com cobs in association with house territory near the edge of the present Salton floors in the Mohave Sink."* Treganza (1947) Sea.^ hypothesized that agriculture was aboriginal It has been generally accepted that after with the Southern Dieguefio-Kamia on the establishment of the Cahfomia missions by basis of a pottery cache of crop seeds stored the Spanish, knowledge of agriculture dif­ in the Jacumba area in the historic period.^ fused from coastal mission Indian groups Within the past few years, renewed attention trained in crop-growing by the Franciscans to has been given to the problem of aboriginal unmissionized Indian groups of the interior agriculture in southern Cahfomia by a num­ such as the Cahuilla. This view failed to ber of investigators, who have developed a consider the fact that agriculture was widely strong circumstantial case based largely on practiced by Indian groups east of the Cahuil­ ethnographic and ethnohistoric materials.* la along the Colorado River for possibly The author and Loweh John Bean recently centuries before European contact, and that published a review of this literature, briefly Indian ethnic and cultural ties could have summarizing some of the arguments and contributed even more readily to diffusion of issues involved (Bean and Lawton 1973: crop-growing westward into adjacent areas of vin-xvu).
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