Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest | Page 4

touched by water, to nourish our children." And he
created the golden Seed-stuff of the corn.
It is around the beautiful Corn Maidens that perhaps the most delicate
of all imagery clings, Maidens offended when the dancers sought their
presence all too freely, no longer holding them so precious as in the
olden time, so that, in white garments, they became invisible in the
thickening white mists. Then sadly and noiselessly they stole in
amongst the people and laid their corn wands down amongst the trays,
and laid their white broidered garments thereon, as mothers lay soft
kilting over their babes. Even as the mists became they, and with the
mists drifting, fled away, to the south Summer-land.
They began the search for the Corn Maidens, found at last only by
Paiyatuma, the god of dawn, from whose flute came wonderful music,

as of liquid voices in caverns, or the echo of women's laughter in water
vases, heard only by men of nights as they wandered up and down the
river trail.
When he paused to rest on his journey, playing on his painted flute,
butterflies and birds sought him, and he sent them before to seek the
Maidens, even before they could hear the music of his song-sound. And
the Maidens filled their colored trays with seed-corn from their fields,
and over all spread broidered mantles, broidered with the bright colors
and the creature signs of the Summer-land, and thus following him,
journeyed only at night and dawn, as the dead do, and the stars also.
Back to the Seed People they came, but only to give to the ancients the
precious seed, and this having been given, the darkness of night fell
around them. As shadows in deep night, so these Maidens of the Seed
of Corn, the beloved and beautiful, were seen no more of men. But
Shutsuka walked behind the Maidens, whistling shrilly as they sped
southward, even as the frost wind whistles when the corn is gathered
away, among the lone canes and the dry leaves of a gleaned field.
The myths of California, in general, are of the same type as those given
in a preceding volume on the myths of the Pacific Northwest. Indeed
many of the myths of Northern Californian tribes are so obviously the
same as those of the Modocs and Klamath Indians that they have not
been repeated. Coyote and Fox reign supreme, as they do along the
entire coast, though the birds of the air take a greater part in the
creation of things. These stories are quaint and whimsical, but they lack
the beauty of the myths of the desert tribes. There is nothing in all
Californian myths, so far as I have studied them, which in any way
compares with the one of the Corn Maidens, referred to above, or the
Sia myths of the Cloud People. In the compilation of this volume, the
same idea has governed as in the two preceding volumesÑsimply the
preparation of a volume of the quainter, purer myths, suitable for
general reading, authentic, and with illustrations of the country
portrayed, but with no pretensions to being a purely scientific piece of
work. Scientific people know well the government documents and
reports of learned societies which contain myths of all kinds, good, bad,

and indifferent. But the volumes of this series are intended for popular
use. Changes have been made only in abridgments of long
conversations and of ceremonial details which detracted from the myth
as a myth, even though of great ethnological importance.
Especial credit is due in this volume to the work of the ethnologists
whose work has appeared in the publications of the Smithsonian
Institution, and the U. S. Geographical and Geological Surveys West of
the Rocky Mountains: to Mrs. Mathilda Cox Stevenson for the Sia
myths, and to the late James Stevenson for the Navajo myths and sand
painting; to the late Frank Hamilton Cushing for the Zuni myths, to the
late Frank Russell for the Pima myths, to the late Stephen Powers for
the Californian myths, and also to James Mooney and Cosmos
Mindeleff. The recent publications of the University of California on
the myths of the tribes of that State have not been included.
Thanks are also due to the Smithsonian Institution for the illustrations
accredited to them, to the Carnegie Institution of Washington for
illustrations from the Desert Botanical Laboratory at Tucson, Arizona,
and to Mr. Ferdinard Ellerman of the Mount Wilson Observatory and to
others.
K. B. J. Department of History, University of Washington.
Table of Contents
The Beginning of Newness - Zuni (New Mexico) The Men of the Early
Times - Zuni (New Mexico) Creation and Longevity - Achomawi (Pit
River, Cal.) Old Moles Creation - Shastika (Cal.) The Creation of the
World - Pima