6 The Colonial and Revolutionary Periodsbrings together the two most recurrent elements in accounts of origin: the emergence
story, in which the people are led up from below the earth to find their place on the
surface, very often near the place of emergence, and the story that begins with the pri-
mal element of water. Here, “all the people” come up from the underworld once the
surface of the earth has become dry. “But the Jicarillas continued to circle around the
hole where they had come up from the underworld,” the tale reveals. “Three times they
went around it” before “the Ruler” of the universe took them to “the middle of the
earth,” “a place very near Taos,” where “the Jicarillas made their home.”
What the Jicarilla story does not have is the earth diver theme. In many stories that
begin with the primal element of water, a creature dives beneath the ocean to bring up
enough mud to create the world and its inhabitants. The creature may be a deity, like
“the Great Chief Above” in a Yakima tale. It may be an animal, such as the turtle in one
story told among the Caddo. Or it may be a figure familiar from many other narratives,
such as the trickster hero Coyote who, in one account of origins told by the Crow,
“took up a handful of mud, and out of it made people” – dropping his clowning to
become a creator. In a Yuma story, it is twins. Twins are common culture heroes in
Native American legend. Sometimes, the twins are female – as they are in, say, the story
of origins popular among the Acoma people of the Southwest, reflecting the matrilineal
nature of their society. More often, as in Yuma myth, they are male; and, in the case of
the Yuma myth as in many others, in order to account for the contraries and mysteries
of existence, one is good and one is evil – and both are coextensive with their father.
“This is how it all began,” the Yuma story announces. “There was only water – there was
no land, only nothingness.” “Deep down” in the waters was “Kokomaht – the Creator.”
“He was bodiless, nameless, breathless, motionless, and he was two beings – twins.”
In this densely symbolic tale, the beginning of creation is marked by the emergence of
Kokomaht, the Creator as “the first twin, the good twin”; Kokomaht, the Creator then
names himself “Kokomaht-All-Father.” Having assumed bodily form, he proceeds to
create the body of the earth and its inhabitants: “the four directions” of the north,
south, east, and west, six series of four tribes, the creatures of the earth and sky, and the
moon and stars. All that “Bakutahl, the Evil Blind One,” who emerges shortly after his
brother, creates are the symptoms of his own incompetence, “creatures without hands
or feet, toes or fingers”; “these were the fish and other water animals.”
There are touches of sly humor to some later versions of this legend. White people,
we are told, Kokomaht “left for last” as the least of his creations. When the white man
began to cry “because his hair was faded” and “his skin was pale and washed out,”
Kokomaht tried to shut him up with the gift of a horse; “so the greedy one was
satisfied – for a while.” More fundamental, and more characteristic of most tales of
emergence, the Yuma legend describes the beginnings of birth and death. “Without
help from a woman,” Kokomaht, the All-Father sires a son “Kumashtam’hu” and tells
men and women “to join together and rear children.” “I taught the people to live,”
Kokomaht, the All-Father declares. “Now I must teach them how to die, for without
death there will be too many people on the earth.” The lesson is one of example.
Kokomaht, the All-Father dies, and his son buries him, in the process teaching the
people the proper rituals that follow a man’s death: which are, of course, the YumaGGray_c01.indd 6ray_c 01 .indd 6 8 8/1/2011 7:54:53 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 53 AM