CHILDREN OF CLOUD
[Told by Inasa]
When the Hohokam dwelt on the Gila and tilled their farms about the Great Temple that we call Casa Grande there was chagrin among the young men of that people, for the prettiest woman would not receive their attentions. She would accept no man as her husband, but Cloud came out of the east and saw her and determined to marry her. The maiden was a skillful mat maker, and one day she fell asleep when fatigued at her labor. Then Cloud sailed through the skies above and one large rain drop fell upon her; immediately twin boys were born.[1]
Now all the men of the pueblo claimed to be the father of these children. After enduring their clamors for a long time the woman told her people to gather in a council circle. When they had come she placed the children within the circle and said, "If they go to anyone it will prove that he is their father." The babies crawled about within the circle but climbed the knees of no one of them. And so it was that the woman silenced them, saying, "I wish to hear no one of you say, 'these are my children,' for they are not."
When the boys had reached the age of 10 they noticed that their comrades had fathers and they inquired of their mother, "Who can we call father? Who can we run to as he returns from the hunt and from war and call to as do our playmates?"
And the mother answered: "In the morning look toward the east and you will see white Cloud standing vertically, towering heavenward; he is your father."[2]
"Can we visit our father?" they inquired.
"If you wish to see him, my children, you may go, but you must journey without stopping. You will first reach Wind, who is your father's elder brother, and behind him you will find your father."
They traveled for four days and came to the home of Wind. "Are you our father?" they inquired.
"No; I am your uncle. Your father lives in the next house; go on to him." They went to Cloud, but he drove them back, saying: "Go to your uncle and he will tell you something." Again the uncle sent them to the father, and four times they were turned away from the home of each before their father would acknowledge them.
- ↑ Bourke mentions this myth in his notes upon the Mohaves: "This Earth is a woman; the Sky is a man. The Earth was sterile and barren and nothing grew upon it; but by conjunction with the Sky (here he repeated almost the very same myth that the Apaches and Pimas have to the effect that the Earth was asleep and a drop of rain fell upon her, causing conception) two gods were born in the west, thousands of miles away from here." Journal of American Folk-Lore, II, 178.
- ↑ Among the Navahos Sun is the father of the twins who grow to manhood in four days and then set out to find their parent. See Washington Matthews, Tho Navajo Mythology, in American Antiquarian, V, 216, 1883.
