Because of the Serpent...

In the mythic traditions of the Yuman peoples — the Mohave and Quechan of the lower Colorado and the Kumeyaay who ranged westward through the Lagunas, Cuyamacas, and Volcan to the estuaries of San Diego and Tijuana — an episode involving a serpent figures prominently.

As in Hebrew tradition, the serpent of the Yuma brought death into the world — not, in this case, through trickery, but by the simple expedient of biting someone's ankle.

Having become an outcast thereby, he fled away into the night and the ocean, where he lay long years submerged.

But the power to destroy life carries also the power to heal it. So the serpent was a great healer, and when the Creator was dying, the people went to the ocean for the serpent to save him.

He came in answer to their summons; a true healer cannot refuse. Yet foreboding darkened his thought, and the foreknowledge of his own death. He came to the place of the original creation, to the mountain Avikwame, eastward where the great river glides through the desert, hissing softly over the hot sands. His head entered the doorway of the wickiup where Mastamho lay dying, and his body began coiling about the village.

The people had not realized that, living in the boundless ocean, under near weightless conditions, the serpent's body had grown enormous. Coil after coiled looped around the village, yet the serpent's body still stretched over the mountains, and unguessed lengths lay hidden beneath the waves. On and on he came, still rising from the sea, drawing himself over the mountains, coiling his great length around the village.

After a little while, the people became frightened and decided to kill this creature which had grown so monstrous, and so the serpent's foreboding that he would die was fulfilled.

When the people chopped off his head with a hatchet, his body burst asunder and was scattered throughout the land. In this way, the serpent's great store of wisdom was spread among all the people.

One person received a song, another the art of basketry, yet another received a pottery, and someone else the storyteller's art. And so it happened that the songs and stories and crafts, elements of culture that characterize each of the various peoples were distributed at that time from the body of the serpent.

Even the white race received something, for as the serpent dragged his body across the mountains, the jagged rocks and sharp peaks tore his flesh, and his blood stained the ground where he passed. The white blood is silver, the red is gold, minerals which the white man craves.

The mere sight of these minerals will send white men into a frenzy. For the sake of such metals, they kill the Indian and take away his homeland. The Indian does not understand this, but he knows it comes of old, from the serpent.

Robin Hewitt, 1989