It is a truism that certain mythological themes occur and reoccur and certain mythological episodes are endlessly repeated and variously combined, disguised at times almost beyond recognition as they are filtered through widely disparate cultures and adapted to widely differing environments. Apparently behind every god, demigod, or hero stands an archetypal figure, seen "through a glass darkly" but nonetheless present and indestructible.

This is especially true of the mythologies of Native Americans. I have neither the requisite scholarship nor time to undertake an in-depth study of so vast a subject—indeed, it is a subject which will engage armies of scholars for generations to come. However, I am familiar with Chemehuevi mythology. I shall therefore venture to point out a few of the correspondences between the Mythic Coyote (or Wolf and Coyote) Cycle of the Chemehuevi and the Trickster and Hare Cycles of the Winnebago, as related by Radin (1956). These parallels would be interesting enough if found within the same culture area or the same linguistic stock; they are extraordinarily challenging when they occur in the sacred narratives of tribes separated by roughly two-thirds of a continent and speaking unrelated languages.

In a sense, all myths are teaching myths. Among peoples who have never developed a system of writing, beliefs about origins and cosmology, customs, social attitudes, and many other kinds of information are transmitted by the spoken word in tales both dramatic and humorous that are told and retold from generation to generation. However, certain stories are obviously designed to pass on specific knowledge. This is true of large segments of the myths to be considered in this paper.

The draft of this brief discussion of one aspect of Chemehuevi myth was recently discovered by Margaret Laird in some of her mother's papers. It covers some (though not all) of the same material discussed in Chapter 18 of Laird's Mirror and Pattern: George Laird's World of Chemehuevi Mythology (Malki Museum Press, 1984), but from a somewhat different perspective. We can only speculate as to why it was not included in the larger work. It has been lightly edited.

Since the pattern for all human behavior was believed to have been set in the mythic era, it follows that the paradigm for every type of magical practice, whether for curing or for cursing, for summoning the forces of nature, for protecting one's self, or for influencing others, must have been established by the Early People. There were indeed shamans in the time when the animals were people, and those who were shamans in that period became the helpers, the indispensable spirit-animal familiars (tutuguuvimi) of human shamans. Who or what, then, were the shamans' helpers in the storytime? Then as now the first step toward becoming a shaman was the acquisition of a song; but whom or what did the songs of the mythical shamans summon?

Chemehuevi Myth

In their far-flung peregrinations the Chemehuevi undoubtedly encountered the buffalo and came to know of tribes who lived by the buffalo. They had a name for buffalo (kutsu), and Chemehuevi men who had broad, heavy shoulders and slim hips were said to be "built like the buffalo." Yet the buffalo plays a very minor role in Chemehuevi mythology. Of the thirty-odd Chemehuevi texts of myths dictated between May 1919 and May 1920 by my informant, George Laird (who later became my husband), only two make mention of this animal.

One of these is a story of the travels of Southern Fox (Tantivaiyipatsi). George Laird entitled it "Southern Fox Went Across Fire Valley." He said frankly that he had constructed it out of four remembered fragments which he thought "belonged together." In the tale as he told it, Southern Fox travels in a semicircle from his home on Whipple Mountain south to Blythe Intake, northwest across the Mohave River, then north to and across Death Valley. The third episode only will be given here, for it is only in this section that a buffalo is mentioned.

We are told that in pre-contact times, when the stars in the heavens and the seasons on earth revolved changelessly and with no hint of coming destruction, the Chemehuevis sometimes held great gatherings. The knotted string was sent out, indicating the number of days that would elapse before the approaching festival; food was prepared in abundance; and the People came from near and far, to eat, to rejoice, to decide matters of consequence, and to hear the words of the High Chief. The lesser chiefs came with their families and spoke to each other in the language of chiefs, which was unintelligible to the common folk. And the great Chief himself, a man of such dignity that his words were generally conveyed through a spokesman, instructed the People in the way of life.

There is no way of knowing how much of this is legend and how much fact; and of the moral code which the Chief inculcated, there remains no single word. And yet there may be traces of this teaching discernible in certain fragments of the great mythic cycles which survive. These myths reach back to the youth of the world, to the beginnings of all things. Patterns set for human behavior by Mythic Coyote were often far from admirable, and of these we need say no more at present. Yet many tales had moral value, showing the dire results that followed impulsive and improper actions.