The Pima and Iwo Jima

While looking for videos of the Pima songs from the creation stories (see older posts) I came upon a man by the name of Ira Hayes, an American Native Indian from the Arizona Pima Indian Reservation who fought in World War II on the island of Iwo Jima in 1945. Hayes has since been immortalized and honored for his duty as he was famously one of the men seen in the iconic photograph of soldiers raising the American flag in Iwo Jima.

In 1954 after becoming an American hero, Ira reluctantly attended the dedication of the Iwo Jima monument in Washington. After a ceremony where he was lauded by President Eisenhower as a hero once again, a reporter rushed up to Ira and asked him, “How do you like the pomp & circumstances?” Ira is famously quoted as simply saying, “I don’t.” Hayes died three months later due to his struggle with alcoholism after returning from the war.

Below is a cover by Johnny Cash of the original song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” by Peter LaFarge.

Songs of the Pima: Creation Stories

Juhwertamahkai’s Song of Creation

Juhwertamahkai made the world–

Come and see it and make it useful!

He made it round–

Come and see it and make it useful!

Juhwertamahkai’s Song before the Flood

My poor people

Who will see,

Who will see

This water which will moisten the earth!

The Song of Superstition Mountain

We are destroyed!

By my stone we are destroyed!

We are rightly turned into stone!

Eeeetoy’s Song When He Made the World Serpents

I know what to do;

I am going to move the water

both ways.

Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World: The Story of the Flood

Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World: The Story of the Creation

Selections from Awawtam, Indian Nights, Being the Myths and Legends of the Primas of Arizona (1911)

Included in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Fifth Edition

The Story of the Flood

Like Juhwertamahkai, Seeurhuh was very powerful and after doing many marvelous things, also made a man. The man was the most beautiful one made yet and to him he gave a bow and arrows. He told the man to find any young girl in the villages that would suit him and should her parents consent, to marry her. As the man sought to find wives he found agreeable, Seeurhuh seeing what would happen then began collecting gum of the greasewood tree to make a great vessel which could be closed up and keep back water. It was after his brothers questioned his actions that Seeurhuh announced a flood was approaching. He told them he would escape using the vessel he was crafting from the gum.

A doctor that lived down toward sunset had a beautiful daughter. One day after finding her crying she confessed to be afraid of the young man looking for wives. He told her she ought not to be afraid, for there is happiness for a woman in marriage and the mothering of children. The young girl kept crying, fearing the young man and finally out of pity for her fear, her father sent her to get him little tuffs of the finest thorns on the top of the white cactus, and bring them to him. Once she had them, taking a hair from her head he wound about one end of it and told her if she wore it it would protect her. He told her when the man came to make him broth of corn for dinner but warned her that if the young man ate all the broth, their plan would fail. But if he managed to leave any remaining, she was to eat it and they would succeed. Shortly before the man arrived her father told her this, “if the young man is wounded by the thorns you wear, in that moment he will become a woman and a mother and you will become a man.”

By daybreak the child was crying and the young man that had been, but who is now a woman and a mother, made a walkote, or cradle for the baby and took the trail back home. The young man-woman came back and by the time of his return Seeurhuh had finished the vessel and placed therein seeds and everything that is in the world. The man-woman placed the child in some brush and left it there, entering the vessel without it. Seeurhuh immediately knew it was the man he had given life to. He lamented foreseeing the shame brought upon his creation and asked the man to bring him the child. The young man-woman found the child crying, its tears littering the ground and upon bending to pick the child up was turned into a sand-snipe, and the baby turned into a little teetersnipe.

Water began gushing from beneath each tree and mountain. Seeing this, the people ran to Juhwertamahkai who, using his staff, made a hole in the earth and let all those through that had come to him. The others were left to drown. The flood reached higher until it reached the woodpecker’s tail, where you can still see the marks to this day. And the little birds sang, for they had the power to make the water go down by singing and as they sang the waters gradually receded. When the land began to appear Juhwertamahkai and Toehahvs got out while Seeurhuh had to waited for more land to appear to safely exit the vessel. Juhwertamahkai went south, Toehahvs went west, and Seeurhuh went north. They had passed eachother unseen, but seeing the tracks of one another doubled back. This happened four times before they finally met. And when they met, Seeurhuh greeted them as his younger brothers and after much debate, though Juhwertamahai knew he himself came first, gave into Seeurhuh’s insistence that he was the eldest.

They then set about finding the “navel of the earth,” sending the little birds each in a different direction to search for it until on the fourth try it was discovered it sat where they had been all along. Seeurhuh rubbed his breast, and from it, created ants that threw up hills and dried the earth. But the water was still running in the valleys and so he plucked two hairs from his head, creating snakes to push the waters north and south.

Next, they attempted to create more people from the damp clay of the earth. Juhwertamahkai did not make good ones, as he did not want to create anything better than those he had saved and buried in the earth, and so he made the poorest of all that Seeurhuh threw away. He was so angered by this that he began sinking into the ground and even though Seeurhuh held on as tightly as he could he slipped through his hands and all that was left of earth of Juhwertamahkai was the waste and excretion of his skin. That is how death and sickness came to be among us. Seeurhuh cried and shook with anger, waving his arms about and scattering disease over the land until he washed himself off in a pool, the impurities remaining in the water the source of malaria and diseases of dampness.

Seeurhuh and Toehavs built a house for their dolls and carefully watched their creatures when the Apache spoke first. To this Seeurhuh said, “I never meant to have those Apaches talk first, I would rather have had the Awawtan, the Good People, speak first.” And all the different people that they had made talked, one after the other and the Awawtan spoke last. Eventually the people began to go their separate ways, the Apaches traveling into the mountains, some going west to the Rio Colorado. And those who built vahahkkee, or houses of adobe, lived in the valley of the Gila, between the mountains that are there now.

• How is this story of creation, or rebirth, similar to those of other cultures and religions?
• Did Juhwetamahkai leaving the earth and being the reason for death/disease surprise you at all? Why/why not?
• What do you think it means when Seeurhuh says, “I never meant to have those Apaches talk first.” Do you think it sheds him in a negative light or is meant to be humorous in the way of sayings like “If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans?” Does this hold any significance in terms of his character or the story? Does it matter?

Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World: The Story of Creation

Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World: The Story of the Creation

Selections from Awawtam, Indian Nights, Being the Myths and Legends of the Primas of Arizona (1911)

Included in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Fifth Edition

In the beginning there was no earth – no water, no sun, no light. There was only a man. A man left to drift through the darkness, which was darkness itself; Juhwertamahkai, Doctor of the Earth. He wandered through nowhere and nothing until he’d wandered enough. He rubbed on his breast until he had moahhahttack, perspiration, or greasy earth.This he held out on the palm of his hand, tipping over three times. On the fourth try it stayed still, hanging in the middle of the air. There it now remains as the world.

First he created the greasewood bush. Then he made ants, little tiny ants, to live on the bush. But the little ants did not do any good, so he created white ants which enlarged the earth, until at last it was big enough for he himself to rest on. Next came a person, forging him out of the shadow of his eye to assist him, to be like him and to help him in creating trees and human beings and everything that was to be on earth. He named this man Nooee (the Buzzard). Nooee was given all power, but did not like the work he was created for and did not care to help; so the Doctor of the Earth created it himself.

Next came water, placing it in a hollow vessel to harden into ice. He placed the hardened ball in the sky, first in the North, but it did not work; then he tried the West, but it did not work; next he tried the South, but it did not work; finally he placed it in the East, where it worked just as he wanted it to. He made the moon the same way, trying the same places with the same results. But when he made the stars he tried something different, and filling his mouth with water spit into the sky. But the stars did not shine bright enough. He took the Doctor-stone, the tonedumhawteh, and smashed it up. He collected the pieces and threw them into the sky to mix with the water. Finally, when all was settled he created the mountains and everything that has seed and is good to eat.

The first parents were perfect; there was no sickness and no death. But when the earth was full, and there was nothing left to eat, they killed and ate each other. Juhwertamahkai did not like what had become of his people and so he let the sky fall on them. When it dropped, he took a staff a broke a hole through. A hole through which he and Nooee escaped, leaving nothing but death behind them.

Seated upon the ruins of the world he had created, Juhwertamahkai created a second heaven and earth, but the people turned grey in old age and their children became grey until eventually the babies were grey in their cradles. He did not like his people becoming grey in their cradles, and so he let the sky fall on them as well. On top of his second, he crafted a third. But these people made a vice of smoking, until the infants wanted to smoke in their cradles. He let the sky fall on them as well and set about building another heaven and earth exactly as before. This time though, he decided to leave his creations to their own devices.

At first the slope of the world ran westward and had no true valleys to catch water for people to drink. Juhwertamahkai sent Nooee to fly among the mountains to cut valleys with his wings so water could be caught and distributed. Now, the sun was male and the moon was female and together they met once a month. The moon soon became a mother and went to the mountain of Tahsmyettahn Toeahk (sun striking mountain) to bear her child. Having to return to work, she made a place for the child to rest among trampled weeds and the child, having no milk, gained sustenance on the earth. This child was the coyote, and as he grew went out to walk, and in his walk came to the house of Juhwertamahkai and Nooee, where the Doctor of the Earth dubbed him “Toehahvs,” after the name of the weeds upon which he was laid.

Out of the North came another powerful figure named Eeeetoy (Creator/Doctor of the Earth) who was greeted by Juhwertamahkai and Nooee as their younger brother at which he insisted that he was the eldest among them. After much dispute, and because he felt so strongly they agreed to call him Seeurhuh, or elder brother.

• How does this compare with the other stories of creation you may have read?
• What if any themes do you notice between this creation story and others? Are there any? Speaking generally what themes come into play now?
• How does it compare to the Iroquois stories?
• Is there anything striking about the Pima’s creation story to you particularly reading it from a modern perspective? Have people changed much since the time of its origin and now?