By Gary Every
Special to the Crier
The Yavapai Apache tell a story about the first woman to walk upon the earth. It is a story about the world before this world. It was a world in which all the people were evil except for one sweet young woman whom the gods favored greatly. One day this beautiful young woman was getting ready to smoke a cigarette. As she hand rolled her cigarette, the young woman barely had enough tobacco to finish. She did not, as was customary, sprinkle a little tobacco on the earth as an offering to the gods. She would not have had enough tobacco to finish her cigarette if she had.
It was the last straw. The gods had been insulted for the last time. The last good person on earth had just offended the gods and they decided to destroy the world. They decided to destroy the world with a flood. It rained and rained and as the flood waters rose, the beautiful young girl revealed why she was special. She was clever and resourceful. She climbed inside a hollow log and used her chewing gum to seal up the hole. As the floodwaters rose, she floated safely inside her log. As the floodwaters rose and rose, covering even the tallest of mountains, all the animals of the earth drowned except the birds flying overhead. The birds circled and circled until one by one they succumbed to fatigue and crashed into the endless waters. It was a woodpecker who spied the floating log. The woodpecker landed on the floating log as the rain fell in torrents and the last of the birds drowned one by one.
Still the rain kept falling. The waters of the earth rose until they reached the ceiling of the sky. The woodpecker kept banging his head as the floating log bobbed in the endless waters, bashing against the ceiling of the sky. The woodpecker realized that if the waters rose anymore he would be unable to find any air to breathe.
The woodpecker banged his bill against the wooden log, begging the girl to open up the sealed opening before he drowned.
“But if I open the log,” the girl replied. ”The water will come rushing in and we will both die.”
“If you do not open the log and let me in then you will be the only creature left alive in the entire world.” The woodpecker said.
The beautiful girl thought that sounded awfully lonely. She removed her chewing gum just enough to let the woodpecker inside the dry hollow log as it bobbed atop the endless water as the continuous rain fell. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. The rain fell until the waters pushed so hard against the ceiling of the sky that the fallen log tore a hole. The water came pouring in from the world before the world and through the hole in the ceiling in the sky until it bubbled up into this a world.
Today we know this place as Montezuma’s Well, where a large spring fills a limestone sink and begins a small creek. Montezuma’s Well has a few Sinagua pueblos in the cliffs and many legends associated with it. In this legend, the beautiful girl rode the rough the hole in the ceiling of the sky and into this new world but found herself trapped inside a hollow log with no way to get out. Luckily she had a woodpecker with her.
Freed by the woodpecker, the beautiful young girl was now free to roam the earth. We would call her Eve but the Yavapai Apache know her as White Changing Woman. She made this world a beautiful place and the gods have never seen fit to destroy it. When Dr. Jesse Fewkes was in the Sedona area excavating the ruins at Palatki and Honanaki he made an amazing discovery. Fossilized in the red rocks of Boynton Canyon were human footprints. The Yavapai claimed these were the footprints of the first woman to walk the earth – White Changing Woman.
Fewkes dug up the footprints and had the rock slabs sent back to Washington DC. The footprints were stored inside the Smithsonian, locked away in some unknown closet or basement. No one is sure exactly where the footprints are.
White Changing Woman escaped from the museum. She made herself real tiny and slipped out the keyhole. Without any footprints she could no longer walk upon the earth. White Changing Woman floated down the museum hallway and caught a gust of wind which carried her out an open doorway. This was how she travelled back to Arizona, sailing the winds, but only at sunrise and sunset, and occasionally sliding along rainbows. Now she is back where she belongs and the government can keep their foolish red rocks.
I performed this story at a show where I shared the stage with Michael “Coyote” Peach author of The Facts Keep Getting In The Way Of The Story. After the show ended, Michael came up to me and said he had never heard that story before. He recalled one time when he was part of a team that included an archaeologist and some Yavapai elders. One of the elders looked the two white guys in the eye and said “I don’t care what your history books say. When I was a little boy my grandmother told me that all Native Americans for both North and South America originated from Boytnon Canyon.” Michael and I shared a smile, loving the way these ancient stories sometimes dovetail and I know that somewhere White Changing Woman is smiling too.