Na'yang-Wit'e, The First Rabbit Drive

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Title:     Na'yang-Wit'e, The First Rabbit Drive
Author: Mary Hunter Austin [More Titles by Austin]

The Basket Woman was walking over the mesa with the great carrier at her back. Behind her straggled the children and the other women of the campoodie, each with a cone-shaped basket slung between her shoulders. Alan clapped his hands when he saw them coming, and ran out along the path.

"You come see rabbit drive," she said, twinkling her shrewd black eyes under the border of her basket cap. Alan took hold of a fold of her dress as he walked beside her, for he was still a little afraid of the other Indians, but since the time of his going out to see the buzzards making a merry-go-round, he knew he should never be afraid of the Basket Woman again. The other women laughed a great deal as they looked at him, showing their white teeth and putting back the black coarse hair out of their eyes, and Alan felt that the things they said to each other were about him, though they could hardly have been unpleasant with so much smiling. Now he could see the men swarm out of the huts under the hill, all afoot but a dozen of the old men, who rode small kicking ponies at a tremendous pace, digging their heels into the horses' ribs. They passed up the mesa in a blur of golden dust; westward they dwindled to a speck, something ran between them from man to man, now thick like a cord, then shaken out and vanishing in air. Then the riders dropped from their horses and fumbled on the ground. Alan plucked at the Basket Woman's dress.

"Tell me what it is they do," he said.

"It is the net which they set with forked stakes of willow," answered the Basket Woman. Now the young men and the middle-aged began to form a line across the mesa, standing three man's lengths apart in the sage. Some of them were armed with guns and others had only clubs; all were merry, laughing and calling to one another. They began to move forward evenly with a marching movement, beating the brush as they went. Presently up popped a rabbit from the sage and ran before them in long flying leaps; far down the line another bounded from a stony wash, his lean flanks turned broadside to the sun.

Then the hunters broke into shouts of laughter and clapping, then one began to sing and the song passed from man to man along the line; then the men crouched a little as Indians do in singing, then their bodies swayed and they stamped with each staccato note as they moved forward. Rabbits sprang up in the scrub and went before them like the wind, and as each one leaped into view and laid back his ears in flight, the cries and laughter grew and the singing rose louder. The wind blew it back to the women and children straggling far behind, who took it up, and the burden of it was this,--

But every man sang it for himself, beginning when he liked and leaving off, and when a rabbit started up under foot or one over-leaped himself and went sprawling to the sand the refrain broke out again, but the words, when there were any, seemed not to have anything to do with the hunt, and sounded to Alan like a game.

"He-yah-hi, hi! he has it; he has it, he has the white, he has it!"

"Na'ÿang-wit'e!" chuckled the Basket Woman. "Na'ÿang-wit'e, na'ÿang-wit'e! It is as it was of old time, look now and you shall see."

Alan looked at the hunters again, and whether it was because of the blown dust of the mesa, or the quiver of heat that rose up from the sand, or because the Basket Woman had laid her hand upon him, he saw that they were not as they had been a moment since. Now they wore no hats and were naked from the waist up, clothed below with deerskin garments. Quivers of the skin of cougars with the tails hanging down were slung between their shoulders, and the arrows in them were pointed with tips of obsidian and winged with eagle feathers. Every man carried his bow or his spear in his hand. Bright beads and bits of many-colored shell hung and glittered in their hair. Rabbits went before them like grasshoppers for number, and the song and the shouting were fierce and wild. "But what is it all about?" asked Alan.

"Na'ÿang-wit'e, na'ÿang-wit'e," laughed the Basket Woman. "Wait and I will tell you the story of that song, for it is so that every song has its story, without which no one may understand it. It is not well to go too near the guns; sit you here and I will tell."

So Alan bent down the sagebrush to make him a springy seat and the Basket Woman sat upon the ground with her hands clasped about her knees.

"Long and long ago," said the Basket Woman, "when men and beasts talked together, there were none so friendly and none so much about the wickiups as the rabbit people, and some of our fathers have told that it was they who taught my people the game of na'ÿang-wit'e. I know not if that be true, but there were none so cunning as they to play it. And this is the manner of the game: there should be two sticks, or better, two bits of bone of the fore leg of a deer, made smooth and small to fit the palm. One of them is all white and the other has sinew of deer stained black and wound about it. These the players pass from hand to hand, and another will guess where is the place of the white, and he who guesses best shall win all the other's goods. It is good sport playing, and between man and man it comes even in the end, for sometimes one has the goods and sometimes another, but when my people played with the rabbit people it was not good, for the rabbits won every time. Then my people drew together, all the Indians of every sort, and made a great game against the rabbit people. There were two long rows across the mesa, and between them were all the goods piled high, all the beads and ornaments of shell, all the feather work and fine dressed deerskin, all the worked moccasins, the quivers, the bows, all the blankets, the baskets, and the woven mats. So they played at sunrise, so at noon, so when it was night and the fires were lit. So on into the night, and when it was morning the game was done, for the Indians had no more goods. Ay-aiy!" said the Basket Woman, "long will the rabbit people sorrow for that day, for it was then that the Indians first contrived together how they might be rid of them. Then they gathered up the milkweed," and she reached out and plucked a tall stem of it growing beside her, white flowered and slender, with fine leaves like grass. "Then they broke it so," and she laid it across a stone and beat it lightly with a stick, "then they drew out the threads soft and white, and so they rolled it into string."

She stretched the fibre with one hand and rolled it on her knee with the other, twisting and twining it. "Thus was the string made and afterward woven into nets. The mesh of the net was just enough to let a rabbit's head through, but not his body, and the net was a little wider than a rabbit's jump when he goes fast and fleeing, and long enough to stretch half across the world. So on a day the net was set and the drive was begun as you have seen it, and as the Indians went they remembered their anger and taunted the rabbit people. So the song of Na'ÿang-wit'e was made. Now let us go and see how it fares with the rabbit people, for as it was of old so will it be to-day."

All this time the line of men moved steadily across the mesa toward the net. Now and then a rabbit turned, made bold by fright, and passed between the men as they marched. Then the nearest turned to shoot him as he ran, but it was left to the women to pick up the game. Already the foremost rabbits were at the net, turned back by it, leaping toward the hunters and fleeing again to the net. The old men closed in the ends of the lane where the rabbits ran about distractedly with shrill squeals of anguished fear. Some got their heads through the mesh but never their bodies, and as it is not the nature of rabbits to go backward they struggled and cried, getting themselves the more entangled; some blind with their haste came against it in mid-leap, and were thrown back stunned upon the sand. The men sang no more, for they had work to do, serious work, for on the dried flesh of the rabbits and the blankets made of their skins the campoodie must largely count for food and warmth in the winter season. They closed in to the killing and made short work of it with clubs and the butt ends of their guns. Then the women came up with the children and heaped up the great carriers with the game while the men wrung the sweat from their foreheads and counted up the kill. Most of the rabbits were the kind Alan had learned to call jack rabbits, but the Basket Woman picked up a fat little cotton-tail.

"This is little Tavwots," said she, "and you shall have him for your supper." Alan's mind still ran on the story of the first drive. "But is it true?" he asked her, before he had given thanks for the gift.

"Now this is the sign I shall give you that the tale is true," said the Basket Woman. "Ever since that day if one of the rabbit people meets an Indian in the trail he flees before him as you saw them flee to-day, and that is because of na'ÿang-wit'e and the first rabbit drive." Then she laughed, but Alan took his share of the kill on his shoulder and went back across the mesa slowly, wondering.

Vocabulary of Indian Names and Words

CAMPOODIE (k[)a]mp'[=o]-dy). A group of Indian huts, from the Spanish campo, a field or prairie. In some localities written "campody."

HINONO (h[)i]-n[)o]-n[)o]). A legendary Indian hero.

MAHALA (m[.a]-h[:a]'l[)a]). An Indian woman, perhaps a corruption from the Spanish mujer, woman.

MESA (m[=a]'sä). A table-land, or plateau with a steeply sloping side or sides.

MESQUITE (m[)e]s-k[=e]t'). A thorny desert shrub, bearing edible pods, like the locust tree, which are ground into meal for food.

NA'[:Y]ANG-WIT'E. An Indian gambling game.

OPPAPAGO (op-p[)a]-p[=a]'g[=o]). A mountain peak near Mt. Whitney. The name signifies "The Weeper," in reference to the streams that run down from it continually like tears.

PAHRUMP (p[.a]h-r[)u]mp'). From the Indian words pah, water, and rump, corn, "corn-water," i. e. a place where there is water enough to grow corn.

PAIUTES (p[=i]'[=u]t). The name of a large tribe of Indians inhabiting middle California and Nevada. The name is derived from the Indian word pah, water, and is used to distinguish this tribe from the related tribe of Utes, who lived in the desert away from running water.

PENSTEMON (p[)e]ni-st[=e]'m[)o]n). A wild flower common to the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

PHARANAGAT (ph[)a]-r[)a]n-[)a]-g[)a]t'). An Indian name of a place. The meaning is uncertain.

PIÑON (p[.=e]-ny[=o]n'). The Spanish name for the one-leaved, nut pine.

PIPSISEWA (p[)i]p-s[)u]s'[=e]-w[.a]). A wild flower common to the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

QUERN (kw[^u]rn). A primitive mill for grinding corn. It consists of two circular stones, the upper being turned by hand.

SHOSHONE (sh[.=o]-sh[=o]'n[.=e]). An Indian tribe split in two by the Pintes, and living north and south of them. In this book the southern division only is referred to.

TABOOSE (t[.a]-b[)oo]s'). Small tubercles of the joint grass; they appear on the joints of the roots early in spring, and are an important item of food to the Indians.

TAVWOTS (t[)a]v-w[)o]ts'). The rabbit.

TINNEMAHA (tin-ny-m[.a]-hä'). A legendary Indian hero.

 
TOGOBAH (t[=o]-g[=o]-bä').           } Indian names of places. The
TOGONATEE (t[=o]-g[=o]-n[)a]-t[=e]').} meaning is uncertain.

TULARE (t[=oo]-lä're). A marshy place overgrown with the bulrushes known as tule.

VAQUERO (vä-k[=a]'r[=o]). The Spanish word for cowboy (from vaca, a cow).

WABAN (w[)a]-b[)a]n'). An Indian name of a place. The meaning is uncertain.

WICKIUP (w[)i]k'[)i]-[)u]p). An Indian hut of brush, or reeds. It is often pieced out with blankets and tin cans.

WINNEDUMAH (win-ny-d[=u]'m[)a]h). A legendary Indian hero.

[The end]
Mary Hunter Austin's short story: Na'yang-Wit'e, The First Rabbit Drive

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