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Chemehuevi Indians -
Ethnography & Ethnohistory
Religion
According to the creation story as told by George Laird, Ocean Woman, also known as
Body Louse, created the earth by dropping a little mud into the ocean, where it floated.
She kept spreading it out, and presently created Coyote from the mugre, or scrapings,
from her crotch. He kept traveling to see how wide the earth was, and when it took all
day to go and return to its edges, he told Ocean Woman it was large enough. She then
created Wolf and
Mountain Lion
as brothers to
Coyote,
Wolf being the considered the oldest because Coyote had so little sense (Laird 1984:32-33).
Coyote and Ocean Woman, who had a toothed vagina, mated, after Coyote-by inserting the
neckbone of a female mountain sheep into her vagina-made that possible, and created a
basketful of children whom Coyote carried across the ocean. The basket was tied shut at
the top, and Coyote was told not to open it until he got to his house. Once he got across
the ocean, it was so heavy that he untied it, and the coastal Indians escaped. He tied it
up again, and took it home, where Wolf opened it and released and brought to life the
Chemehuevi, the Shoshoni, the Panamints, the
Cahuilla,
the
Mohave,
the Walapai, the Supai, the Quechan, the Maricopa, the Papago or Pima, and the Apache, naming
them in the Chemehuevi language as they escaped. Those that were left were the
Europeans.
Wolf's use of the Chemehuevi language suggested a special relationship between Wolf and
the Chemehuevi (Laird 1984:39-48).
Further Chemehuevi myths included various patterns for human behavior, and explained how
the patterns came to be (Laird 1984).
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