"The Story of the Flood"

This blog post is comprised of the notes on the Pima "Story of the Flood" as found in the 7th edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Vol. A.

"The Story of the Flood"

• Juhwerta Mahkai likes to watch Seeurhuh/Eeeetoy (hereafter only referred to as Eeeetoy) create things, and one of Eeeetoy's creations is a man to whom he gives a bow and turquoise-looking earrings from the quah-wool weed (which is called a Squaberry shrub, the footnote informs the reader).
• Eeeetoy tells this man to propose marriage to a girl's family if he finds one he likes, and so the man does, and he is accepted by her family, so they are married.  Neither he nor his wife have names that have been remembered.
• The footnote mentions that the original story generally includes a long list of wives and children that Eeeetoy's creation had over the course of time, thus explaining the alarm that his actions create.  The unnatural number of children being born throw off the balance of nature.
• It is knowledge of this unnaturalness that leads Eeeetoy to gather gum from the greasewood tree to prepare himself for the coming flood.
• This young man's succession of marriages and children frightens the beautiful daughter of Vahk-lohv Mahkai (South Doctor) so that she cries and cries because she believes the man will come to marry her as well.
• Vahklohv Mahkai creates a magical element to protect his daughter by winding a lock of her hair around the thorn of a 'haht-sahn-kahm' (white cactus).  He then creates a plan in which his daughter finishes any corn broth that the man does not drink when he finally comes.  After this occurs, if the man injures himself on the thorn she wears, he will turn to a woman and mother and Vahklohv Mahkai's daughter will turn into a man.
• By morning, the young man is a woman and mother, so he is afterwords referred to as the 'young man-woman'.
• The young man-woman then returns to Eeeetoy's house but hides his baby before entering.  When the man-woman goes to retrieve the baby in order to show it to Eeeetoy, both he and the baby turn into birds.  At this time, the previously foreseen water begins to flood the world.
• In the midst of the Vahklohv Mahkai story line, there is a detail of what every creator-being is using to protect themselves during the flood.
• Eeeetoy is using a vessel of gum from grease bushes.
• Juhwerta Mahkai is going to float around in his walking stick.
• Toehahvs is going to float in a canetube.
• Nooee and all the birds plan to fly above the flood and hang onto the sky by their beaks.
• When the flood starts, people flee to Juhwerta Mahkai, and all those who flee to him are able to escape through a hole he creates with his staff.  He then gets into the staff and floats.  Eeeetoy's vessel takes the longest to begin to float because of its vast size.
• All of the people who did not flee to Juhwerta Mahkai flee to Gahkatekih (Superstition Mountain). On the mountain, a mahkai marks a place where the water will not pass four separate times, but each time his prediction fails.  Finally, he uses his doctor-stone to turn all the people to stone and thus prevent them from drowning (but not save them from death).
• The birds hang onto the sky by their bills, and Nooee flies about continuously over the great flooded world.  Woodpeckers' tails are striped because of where the water rose up on them hanging from the sky. 
• When the birds begin to sing, the waters begin to wane until the flood is over and all venture from their vessels in different places because they have floated all over the world.
• Once out of their vessels, Juhwerta Makai goes south, Toehahus goes west, Eeeetoy goes north, and they all pass one another four times before finally Eeeetoy and Juhwerta Makai meet and argue about who is the 'elder', and though Eeeetoy was the last to come from his vessel, Juhwerta Makai allows him to call himself Seeurhuh (the eldest).  
• The same argument about the eldest breaks out again when Toehahvs joins the two, and another time when the birds convene with them.  Eeeetoy wins each time.
• The next order of business for the group is to find the middle/naval of the world.  This is determined by sending the hummingbird and the woodpecker flying to the edge of the world and back.  On the fourth try, the two birds return at the same time, so they know they are in the middle of the earth.
• At this point, Eeeetoy creates ants to make dry ground to sit on. He then creates two snakes to part the remaining water into rivers.
• Next, the group agrees to make dolls in secret so that they can choose one to be the new people.  Of the dolls, Eeeetoy makes the best and Toehahvs makes the worst.  Juhwerta Makai chooses not to make good dolls because he does not want to make anything better than the men he saved from the flood. 
• Toehahv's dolls become ducks and beavers.
• Eeeetoy destroys Juhwerta Makai's dolls entirely, so they don't become anything.
•  The destruction of his dolls angers Juhwerta Makai, so he begins to sink into the ground.  When Eeeetoy tries to stop him, he is only able to keep the excretion and waste from Juhwerta Makai's skin, which becomes the reason for illness and death in the world.
• Toehahvs and Eeeetoy build a house for the dolls to keep an eye on them, and when the people begin to talk, it is the Apaches that speak first.  This is not what Eeeetoy intended, so he compensates by giving the Pimas extra strength because the Pimas and Apaches are natural enemies (but he clearly favors the Pimas).
• While all the people live together for a time, eventually - when they are playing a game in which they kick one another - the Apaches get mad and leave the naval of the earth in order to settle elsewhere, thus explaining various settlements around the earth.

Some Thoughts:

One of the things that strikes me most about the creation story and the flood story is the fact that they are translations of an oral tradition.  This accounts for the variance of this text versus a different translation or a different original story-teller.

Oral tradition also accounts for the fact that the stories seem a bit choppy in places.  For example, in the story of the flood, the plans that the creator-beings make for their preservation during the flood comes right in the middle of the story about the South Doctor and his daughter's distress at the thought of marrying the young man.  If one was hearing this story aloud, it might not seem so strange that the person telling it veered off into another part of the story.  Perhaps he remembered it in a different order one time than he did on a different occasion of telling the story.

The final thing to consider when discussing these tales is that they are translated by a Christian, so one must take pause and wonder how much of the tale has been tweaked to a purpose of aligning the Pima beliefs and traditions to the Christian beliefs and traditions of the translator and the intended audience of the time.