Native American Folklore & Traditions by Elsie Clews Parson

Author:Elsie Clews Parson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reference
ISBN: 9781839404382
Publisher: Arcturus Digital Limited

EARTH-TONGUE, A MOHAVE

Earth-tongue’s earliest recollection was of the dim, cool house, where he picked bits of charcoal out of the soft sand and crumbled it against his hand. Once a cricket appeared on the wattled wall, suddenly went back in when he thrust at it, and only a stream of dry soil sifted forth. And then there was the terrifying time when voices burst loudly into his sleep, people crowded in but stood helplessly awkward, while his father’s brother shot insults of stolid hate into the ceaseless flood of his wife’s vituperation. As the woman turned to beat a girl lurking in the corner and the man interposed and flung her off, Earth-tongue burst into bawling and clung to his mother. He saw the angry woman stamp on pot after pot, tear open her coils of shredded bark and strew them into the fire, and then, suddenly silent, load her belongings into a carrying-frame and stagger out. The frame caught in the door: as she tore it through, the contents crashed, and a laugh rose in the house; but Earth-tongue sobbed long.

He was larger when he paddled with other children at the edge of the slough; but still very small as he first remembered himself seeing the great, stretching river that drew by with mysterious, swirling noises in its red eddies. He and his little brother were put into a huge pot which his father and another man pushed before them across stream: their hair as it coiled high on their heads was just visible over the edge as they swam. And then followed an interminable trudge somewhere through the dust, relieved only by rides on his father’s back, and on his grandmother.

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