Long ago, even before the time of the Ancestors, Hewel became aware of his own existence. From his new form he made Mother Ge and Elder Brother, I'itoi. But his children fancied the idea of making, and so they made the Ta'atchul, the First People, and then created a world for them.
(SHORT STORY)
The Hohokam Indians of the Valley of the Sun (now Phoenix) built an irrigation empire in the desert, with hundreds of miles of canals, multistory buildings, and ceremonial mounds the size of our football fields. They smelted metals, developed advanced etching and dyeing processes, and wove cotton into cloth. They traded with peoples hundreds of miles away and even traveled to the ocean far to the west to collect exotic shells, coral, and salt.
For a thousand years they turned the sweltering Land of Two Rivers into a green oasis. Then they vanished. What happened to these technologically advanced people, so at-home in their cruel environment?
Some say they ruined their fields and farmland and sank into obscurity along the rivers; others think an environmental cataclysm struck and they died off or left; while still others believe they were invaded and conquered. And indeed, archaeological evidence survives to support each of these theories.
But there is another source from which to learn about this magnificent culture and try to understand the mystery of its collapse.
The Pima Indians who lived in the valley when the first Euro-American explorers and settlers arrived tell stories, "witch tales," about the people some called Hohokam (the name means "all used up," or Those Who Are Gone) and others called the Vipiset ("great-grandfathers," the Ancestors).
This is one of those witch tales.
Excerpt
Once, long ago, back in the time before time, there was nothing. Black, formless, endless nothingness.
But in this darkness there was a spirit, and he knew he existed because he felt . . . cold. This spirit took for his name Hewel, that is, he thought he was Hewel, and Hewel became the first name.
Hewel then became aware of another cold, dark feeling: lonely. He was lonely, because only he existed.
So he began to move, to look for something outside himself. As he moved in the formlessness, he began to acquire a form. Not a body, as we think of a body, with skin and bones and muscles and hair, but the first being.
He moved in the darkness and pressed against it for a very long time, but he could not make the nothingness outside himself take any form. At last he gave up, and he rested alone, wondering whether he was the only being who would ever exist, and if so, why.
While he was wondering, he began to explore his new form. He rubbed the part of himself that he decided was his breast, and it released a material that could be molded into a shape, and he called this thing earth.
He spoke to it, but it did not answer him, so he breathed upon it and warmed it, and then at last he was no longer the only being in the void.
“I am Ge,” said the earth, but she said no more for a time.
Hewel rubbed his breast again, but the stuff that he had used to create Ge was all used up, so nothing came forth. Again he spoke to his child, over and over, but she would not answer, though he could hear her breathing. Once more he tried rubbing his breast to make something new. Still nothing came forth.
But his form had more to it than just his breast, so he rubbed the top part, which he decided would be his head. Out flowed another kind of matter, cool and liquid. But it, unlike the earth, refused to remain in any one shape for long.
“You are water,” he told this new creation, lest it name itself, as Ge had done.
“I am I’itoi, drinker of water,” it contradicted him, then enveloped Ge, flowing around her. “What is this?”
“That is the one I made first. Her name is Ge.”
“But if you made her, and then me, we should be the same. And yet we are not. Why not?”
Hewel had no answer.
“We should make some more beings,” said I’itoi, “and see what they are like.”
Ge stirred then, and agreed with her brother. Hewel discovered another feeling, something hot and disturbing that he thought might be jealousy. “I will not make any more beings,” he told them, his two companions in the dark.
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