Identifying Bird Species in River Yuman Oral Traditions

Abstract

Identifying Bird Species in River Yuman Oral Traditions Jonathan A. Geary (bio) 1. Introduction Nearly 400 bird species occur along the lower Colorado River (Rosenberg et al. 1991), and Yuman communities that have historically lived along the lower Colorado surely knew and named many of them. However, judging from modern sources, this knowledge has been fading over time. For example, the ~6,700-entry Mojave dictionary (Munro et al. 1992; also spelled "Mohave") lists 105 unique bird names, and past speakers likely knew specific species referents for many of these, yet 53 are glossed as a "type of" something while many others are given generic definitions that preclude identifying an exact species referent (e.g., 'big bird', 'chickenhawk', 'eagle'). Studying such knowledge today is complicated by at least three factors: (1) changes to traditional ecological knowledge that have accompanied man-made changes to the lower Colorado River ecosystem, which has caused many species to decline while allowing other formerly-rare or new species to expand their use of the lower Colorado (Rosenberg et al. 1991: 14–28); (2) historical migrations away from the lower Colorado River and toward the Gila and Salt Rivers in central Arizona by the Piipaash (also spelled "Pee Posh", a.k.a. "Maricopa"; see Rea 1983, 2007 for changes to the Gila River ecosystem); and (3) the general decline in the intergenerational transmission of linguistic and cultural knowledge that Yuman communities have experienced. However, we can turn to the information that past speakers of these languages shared with early linguists and anthropologists about these birds, especially through their oral traditions, to identify exact referents for many such names, and thus reconstruct a small part of the rich ecological knowledge that they possessed. [End Page 538] In this paper, I analyze three bird names that recur in the oral traditions of the River Yuman languages: Mojave, Piipaash, and Quechan (a.k.a. "Yuma"). These bird names include (1) Mojave yaːlák, Piipaash yalák, and Quechan yaːlák; (2) Mojave humaθéː and Piipaash xomasé; and (3) Mojave hanavčíːp, Piipaash xnvčíːp, and Quechan xanavcíːp, which have been glossed as a range of different bird species across Yuman sources. I show that Yuman speakers maintained rich knowledge of these birds (e.g., about their appearance, hunting behaviors, and nests) which they incorporated into their traditions, and based on this information I identify these species as (1) Snow Goose (Anser caerulescens), (2) Ferruginous Hawk (Buteo regalis), and (3) Verdin (Auriparus flaviceps). To my knowledge, these names have not been identified as referring to these species in past sources. Further, the range of glosses that these names have received in more modern sources suggests that much of the ornithological knowledge contained in past sources has faded over time. This research stems from a larger effort to identify the bird species named in Piipaash and other Yuman languages (e.g., Geary 2022).1 Underpinning this work is the assumption that Yuman oral narratives contain valuable descriptive information about birds and bird characters that reflect the appearance and behavior of their natural-world counterparts, which I have found to be well supported in my work. Yuman oral traditions often explain how birds and other animal characters received their names as well as salient physical and behavioral characteristics during mythic times that their natural-world counterparts have exhibited since then until now. For example, versions of the creation story that were recorded in Mojave (Bourke 1889; Kroeber 1972: 9) and Havasupai (Smithson and Euler 1994: 38) describe how rising floodwaters stained the Red-shafted Northern Flicker's (Colaptes auratus) tail feathers, whose undersides are red with black tips, accounting for their current appearance. A Quechan version of the creation story (Halpern 1984: 322) similarly explains how floodwaters stained the tail of Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura), which became white when the waters receded, explaining their current appearance. Mojave (Bourke 1889: 187) and Piipaash versions of the same story (Spier 1933: 391) further describe how Northern Flicker drank the blood of a murdered pair of twin brothers, staining its feathers and so accounting for the red malar stripes that are visible on male Red-shafted Northern Flickers. Finally, a Mojave...