THE TALE OF THE FIRST SAGUARO

THE STORYTELLER'S TALE A Legend of the Tohono O'odham

In a few weeks, rattlesnakes would slither out of their subterranean hiding places. Scorpions and black widows would creep across the desert hardpan. But as long as they remained underground, winter abided, the only season when custom allows Tohono O'odham storytellers to recount ancestral tales.

A storyteller from an outlying village had agreed to let me attend a storytelling session. The man had a reputation for being able to "walk in both worlds" - mainstream American culture and ancient O'odham values.

The Tohono O'odham creation story recounts that long, long ago, l'itoi, the Creator, brought the people up to the surface of the Earth to a place where a dry wind blew. Water was so scarce there, every drop tasted sweet.

l'itoi named the people Tohono O'odham, "desert people." Then he returned to his home on Baboquivari Peak.

One gray January day eons later, I drove into Sells, population 2,000, on the Tohono O'odham (Papago) reservation. In the traditional O'odham calendar, it was Gakimdag Masad, the "time when animals lose their fat." Farther north, snow drifted down. Farther west, rain fell. But in Sells, capital of the Tohono O'odham Nation, the air felt warm and dry. Darkhaired children slung their jackets over their shoulders as they walked home from school, probably talking about "Klismas" and what "Sanda Klos" had brought them.

The storyteller stood waiting on a curb, a sixtyish man with gray hair, a square face, and bushy eyebrows.

He avoided looking me in the eye. "You won't write my name, will you?" he asked.

"Not if you don't want me to."

"There's a lot of jealousy around here," he said. "One reason storytelling has gone down is, we doubt each other. People say, 'Oh, that's not the way the story goes,' or 'He's telling a lie.' But of course our stories won't be exactly the same because we heard them from different people."

We drove past Basha's supermarket. Cows meandered through the parking lot. "Us village people, we think of Sells as a town," he said, pushing his silverrimmed glasses up. "If you go to a village, you don't see things like Basha's or a post office."

We passed fences made of saguaro ribs and the desert's own barbed wire: ocotillo stalks. From a government building emerged a woman with hair so long it touched the backs of her knees as she walked. In a vacant lot, a group of girls played toka, a traditional women's game similar to hockey. Players hit the 'ola, a puck made of mesquite roots, with an 'usaga, a mesquite stick.

Behind us rose Baboquivari, still sacred to the O'odham. Near most homes stood a watto, an open-air shelter made of four corner posts and a brush-covered roof. In yards and on hillsides, saguaros held their pleats together tightly after months without rain.

I was the only milgan, "white person,"

in sight. Someone waved to the storyteller. He cringed and shifted so that his back faced the car's side window.

"There are people older than I am," he said, "and some people say I'm giving away my culture. They say, 'Who gave him permission to release information?'"

We arrived at a watto where three O'odham children sat on a blanket, waiting: Thomas and Oshiana, both seven, and Heather, eight. The girls arranged their brightly colored skirts around them. Oshiana held two feathers tied with yarn.

The storyteller moved his hands as he spoke. "A long time ago, they told stories at night. If you fell asleep, they put black stuff from the fire on your face so that next time you would stay awake. Sometimes everybody else left, and you would wake up and be all by yourself. You would have to walk home all alone, and there might be ghosts out. It was scary."

The children scooted forward on the blanket, closer to the storyteller.

"This story is about the first saguaro cactus," he said. "It starts here, where this young lady played toka a lot. She had a little baby, but she always ran off and left the baby with her mother and said, 'I'm going to play toka.' The ladies played, the girls played. They knocked that little 'ola around."

Heather interrupted, "We played toka at school."

The storyteller nodded. "This woman was a good toka player and a good runner because she played toka all the time. But she was always gone with her 'usaga."

The storyteller continued his tale: The baby grew older. One day her mother took her to the grandmother and said, "Here are four gourds with food if she gets hungry." Then the mother went off to play toka.

The grandmother hung the gourds from the roof of the watto so the animals couldn't reach them. She said to the little girl, "You stay here. I'm going to the other side of the hills to get cholla buds. Don't try to follow me. Just play."

The storyteller stopped the narrative and addressed the children: "In those days," he said, "children didn't have toys like you do now. They played with sticks and stones."

Thomas stood up. "They made things with sticks," he said.

The storyteller made a wavy outline of a human in the air. "O'odham figures. They made them by poking sticks in the buds of the barrel cactus."

The story continued: At first the girl played quietly under the watto. "After a while she began to miss her mother. She became sad, and she started crying."

The girl said, "I'm going to follow my mom. I'm going to find where she's at." She put the gourds around her neck and set out.

In a little while, she met Coyote. "Coyote, have you seen my momma?" she asked.

"What have you got in those gourds?" he replied.

"My food, so I won't go hungry."

"Give me one, and then I'll tell you where your momma went."

She handed him a gourd, and he said, "Go that way, behind that mountain, way over there."

The girl walked and walked, until she met a crow.

"What are you doing, little kid?" the crow asked.

"I'm looking for my mother. Can you tell me where she's at?"

"What have you got in those gourds?" the crow asked.

Before the storyteller could continue, Thomas answered. "My food, so I won't go hungry."

The storyteller smiled. "Next she met a hawk, that gray bird that's not quite as big as an eagle.

Again the animal asked for a gourd, and again he said that her mother was way beyond the mountain.

The girl walked and walked.

"She's getting close to the mountain,"

The storyteller continued. "She sees an iron-wood tree. There was an eagle standing up there. An eagle can turn his head all around to the back."

On the blanket, Thomas twisted his head.

The eagle said, "Where are you going, little girl?"

Again Thomas answered for the storyteller. "I'm looking for my momma."

The little girl gave the eagle her last gourd and walked over the mountains. A group of women were playing toka. One was her mother. "Momma, Momma," she called, but her mother was so busy chasing the 'ola with her 'usaga that she didn't notice.

The little girl was hungry and tired. When her mother ignored her, she grew so sad she kept walking out into the desert.

Thomas, Heather, and Oshiana left the blanket and crowded around the storyteller.

"Some people say she found an anthill," he told them. "Some people say she found a tarantula hole. But everyone says she began to sink into the ground."

"You forgot something," Thomas said. "Everyone tells this story differently," the storyteller replied. He continued, "The kids in the village, they asked, 'Who is that girl who walked off into the desert? Let's go follow her.' They started running, but by the time they reached the girl, she was halfway into the ground, up to her waist, and she was singing this song."

He sang fluid words in the O'odham language. I tried to press them into my memory, but when he stopped, I couldn't recall a single ancient syllable, a single primeval tone. He continued. "The kids said, 'Let's go tell the ladies.' They were racing back to the village, screaming and yelling."

But soon he stopped digging because his hands hurt. Badger appeared. "Badger, this is where she went down," the women said. "Find her, get her." Badger dug until he reached her hair. He grabbed it and held on tight. But then her hair came off. He brought it up and said, "This is all I could hold onto." Nothing more could be done. The storyteller motioned toward the hills. "The mother walked all the way home alone. She never picked up another 'usaga. She never played toka again." "Was the little girl dead?" Oshiana asked, planting her feathers in the dirt.

THE STORYTELLER'S TALE

"That wasn't the whole story," he said. "There's a lot more about how the people learned to make a brew that got them drunk, and how Rabbit was supposed to take all the seeds and throw them in the Big Water so no more saguaros would grow. But the seeds spilled, and that's how saguaros began to grow everywhere." The sky had cleared. The storyteller squinted at the sun. "Years ago it would take four nights to tell a story." We reached a scattering of adobe homes, block houses, and wattos. As the storyteller said good-bye, he told me he knew I wasn't the first milgan to hear this story, but he still wasn't sure he'd done the right thing.

The game had ended. The players were getting drinks of water from the olla and washing the sweat off their faces. As the children talked, the mother remembered seeing a little girl who resembled her daughter. She dropped her 'usaga and ran toward the place where the girl was sinking. But only her daughter's long black hair remained above ground, resting on the sand. "The mother grabbed her daughter's hair and pulled it like this," the storyteller said, tugging on Oshiana's long black hair. She giggled. The story continued: By now the other toka players had caught up with the mother. "Do something, do something," she pleaded. "Get my daughter out." But the ground was hard, and the people had nothing to dig with except their hands. Coyote heard the women crying. "Dig, Coyote, dig," they said. "A girl is sinking down." By now even her hair had disappeared. "Oh, ladies, move back," Coyote said.

"Years later they say something came out of the ground where the little girl sank in. It took many years for the plant to grow. It was tall, and it had stickers sticking out. Someplace in that time the mother died. But the plant kept growing." After many years, the plant the world's first saguaro cactussprouted flowers. They became fruits. "From that day on, the fruit became the food of the O'odham people," the storyteller said. I closed my eyes, remembering the taste of saguaro fruit, juicy and sweet, like watermelon combined with fig. The storyteller's quiet voice stopped. The children looked startled, as if coming out of a trance. Nearby, a raven squawked. The storyteller stood. "I hope one of you will become a storyteller one day," he said. The children ran off to play. The storyteller and I drove west, past saguaros that stood with arms twisted in all directions.

"Some people will say, 'What right did he have to give that away?'" he said. "But I keep thinking that someday, 50 years from now, a little Tohono O'odham kid will read this story, and that will make it all worthwhile."

He threw his jacket over his shoulder and walked into the village. Behind him the last light glinted on Baboquivari, home of l'itoi.

Editor's Note: For an excellent introduction to Tohono O'odham culture and American Indian storytelling, visit the Arizona State Museum on the campus of the University of Arizona, Tucson. For more information, call (520) 621-6281.

Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Susan Hazen-Hammond's books include Timelines of Native American History and the forthcoming Spider Woman's Web, a collection of Native American tales. Her photography books include The Great Saguaro Book.

Mike Chiago's works have been exhibited throughout this country and in London. Chiago, whose lineage is Tohono O'odham, Pima, and Maricopa, lives in Sells on the Tohono O'odham (Papago) reservation.