Tag Archives: ?antap

Coyote and Centipede

One of the most fascinating, and charming, of the Chumash myths collected in “Decembers Child,” is that of ‘Coyote and Centipede.’

Centipede images are all over Chumash rock art, so I was delighted to learn what they meant in their mythology. It turns out ‘Coyote and Centipede’ was a central shamanic death-and-transfiguration myth, a tale nurtured by the aristocratic ?antap cult that ran each village’s traditional religious ceremonies. The creepy-crawly character who is the plucky protagonist was a hero, thus, probably, a popular choice for young peoples’ spirit animal, and consequently a hit, too, on the cave walls. The Centipede cartoons range from simple and naturalistic, to elaborate stylized, polychrome designs. Some have white rib-like bands representing the “bony” legs and exoskeleton of the insect. Part human skeleton, part mythic animal, part goofy kid, part abstract cartouche, the Centipede drawings seem like a common visual shorthand, an emblem for those preparing for the exciting but scary experience of the datura-drinking ritual itself.

COYOTE AND CENTIPEDE
“When animals were still people, the boys would spend all their time trying to climb a smooth pole in order to see who could do it best, and Centipede always won for he was very good at it. Finally the other boys began to get angry because Centipede was always the winner, and one day they complained to old man Coyote. He agreed to remedy the situation, and after it had gotten dark and everybody in the village was asleep, he went and placed his takulsoxinas, his downy cord, around the base of the pole. [This was a shaman’s magical string, woven with precious puffs of fluffy woodpecker down, like a feather boa.]

The next morning the paxa cried, “Boys, now it’s time to amuse ourselves with this pole.” All the boys tried to climb the slick pole, but only Centipede could do it. He started climbing up the pole to the top, but the higher he went, the taller the pole grew, for Coyote was bewitching it. When Centipede finally stopped and looked down, it was already dark underneath him. He said to himself, ‘What should I do, I guess I might as well keep going up!’ He continued climbing and came eventually to a place where it was terribly hot. When he passed this, he came to another spot where there were very strong winds that almost made him lose his grip on the pole. He looked up then and saw a light far above him — it was the door into the Sky. He said to himself, ‘I’d better reach that place pretty soon!’ for his limbs were getting tired. He reached the door into the sky at last and jumped through it, but as soon as he did the pole shrank so that he could no longer reach it. ‘I guess I’m stuck here.’ And as he sat there, he heard a buzzing sound that came nearer and nearer. He turned around and looked in all directions. ‘What can this be?’ he thought. Just then a swarm of mosquitoes arrived, but they weren’t little like they are here on earth, they were gigantic. They began to sting him and suck his blood, and soon there was nothing left of him but bones, just bones, and nothing else.

Now back on earth, Coyote was beginning to regret what he had done to Centipede, and he was sad and unhappy. Finally he told everyone that he was going to go look for Centipede, who had disappeared into the Sky and must surely be dead by now. An so Coyote started up the pole, and he passed through the same places of heat and wind that Centipede had traversed earlier. He reached the door into the Sky and jumped through; and as before the pole shrank until it was out of reach. He had only gone a little way when he heard someone crying and singing to himself, ‘Here I sit singing, nothing but bones.’ Coyote came up to where Centipede was sitting and said, ‘Ah, son, how are you?’ ‘Just as I shall always be!’ replied Centipede. ‘Look at me, little Uncle!’ Coyote said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll cure you at once.’ Now, in times past, they had medicine with which to resurrect people, and so Coyote revived him, although he was now a very ugly color…”
[The two travelers have several adventures trying to get back onto the pole; finally, in trying to jump onto the swaying pole from Slo?w the Eagle’s wing, Centipede leapt on and was safe, but…] …”Coyote fell clear to the ground and was dashed to pieces. Centipede climbed down the pole to the ground and told everyone what happened. Centipede said, it isn’t right to leave him like this, on the ground in pieces. He collected all of the bones and pieces of Coyote and joined them together, and the people said, ‘He isn’t dead, he will revive!’ And he did — all by himself. And Centipede stayed just the way he was [Just So!] — sparkling and shiny, but ugly in color.”
— Chumash informant Maria Solares, interviewed by J. P. Harrington; annotated by Thomas Blackburn in “Decembers Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives.”

Scholars (Vastokas, Georgia Lee) describe ‘Coyote and Centipede’ as a shaman tale par excellence, one in which the “tricky” but ultimately trustworthy psychopomp (Coyote) sends the initiate (Centipede), into processes of ascension, quest, and striving, through a death-like trance and a plethora of monstrous hallucinations. Finally Coyote climbs up himself to rescue the boy, leading to an ultimate rebirth on earth for them both.

Pink-flowered Ravine Plant at El Escorpion ID’d! Meet Prickly Phlox.

2 Replies

Linanthus californicus (formerly classified as Leptodactylon californicum).

A tap-rooted annual, common in Coastal Sage Scrub and Coastal Chapparal. It grows on the craggy slopes of Kas-ele-wu, the Chumash home-place in the West Valley.

So check this out…last week I was obsessed with finding the identity of this ravishing spring beauty. But petering out on my research, I gave up. Then yesterday I picked up a book I’d ordered at the library: December’s Child, by Thomas Blackburn (1975). This is, I glean, a collection of Chumash folklore based on the unpublished notes of John Peabody Harrington Himself. Today I opened the book and on Chapter One, Page One, I found this sketch of a detail of Chumash rock art. My curiosity was immediately re-kindled, and I dogged down the species.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that this is an initiate’s psychedelic anthropomorphic vision of/identification with, a prickly phlox flower, a being that, I now know, would have been frequently encountered across the Chumash territory.

I can’t wait to read this book.

Rancho El Escorpion — The Las Virgenes Preserve — Castle Peak, or “Kas-ele-wu” — Munits’s Cave — Juan Baptista de Anza Trail — Yowza! — Hellzapoppin!

Leave a reply

Follow Van Owen Boulevard to its western terminus, the bland Castle Peak Estates neighborhood of West Hills. Park outside somebody’s house, then cross the street to the trailhead, and discover this…fantastic place…

A last remnant of the old square-league Rancho El Escorpion de Salinas, the park is just a three-acre postage-stamp, consisting of a secluded canada in the Simi Hills, entered along a creek bed. There is a two-mile loop trail with a steep ascent to the top of the ridge and down again.

The site of Rancho El Escorpion, straddling Bell Creek, at the foot of the Simi Hills. Only the upper left corner is preserved today. The yellow line is the route of El Camino Real. Where it enters the Simi Hills, lies Calabasas, where the rancho’s adobe was built.

The history of El Escorpion Ranch reads like a Garcia-Marquez novel. It was a grazing concession rather than a land-grant, which led to all kinds of later complications with Yankee law. Also, El Escorpion was one of the very few land-reform acts of Gov. Pio Pico (1845) that actually benefitted Indians, in this case a group of three or four Chumash who had been acculturated at Mission San Fernando.

One of their descendants, Espiritu Chujilla, inherited use of the land in 1856. She married a brusque Basque sheepherder in 1871, raising him considerably in the world by allowing him to take possession of El Escorpion. His name was Miguel Leonis, and he was a sonofabitch, who ran almost everybody else off the West Valley, exploited his wife and her Indian relatives, and ruled by a gang of ruffians that was almost a private army. He built his adobe headquarters right down at the crossroads of El Camino Real, possibly to intimidate arriving travelers. That hacienda grew into the town of Calabasas.

An illiterate, litigious louse, Leonis got drunk one night in 1881 returning from the LA Courthouse, and somehow got run over by his own wagon while driving over Cahuenga Pass. His widow, Espirtu, lived on at Calabasas until 1906, fighting spiritedly as over 100 Yankee lawsuits chipped away at her inheritance. Her rights were finally affirmed by a U.S. court when there was no land left and she had months to live.

The stretch of trail leading out of the Valley, which was the ranch road, also happens to be the Juan Baptista de Anza Trail, the pioneer land-route from Arizona to San Francisco, blazed by the Captain of Tubac in 1775. Here, following the Indians’ trail, as did Anza, one can view this lush canada more or less as the Spanish first trooped through it. One can imagine what Chumash eyes, up on the ridge, made of the clanking, glinting, creaky-wheeled, horsey-smelling procession marching through their front hallway, singing the ribald ditties of Old Spain.

A volunteer grove of naturalized fan palms, W. filibusta, making their own mini-Palm Springs.

The park fills in the last mile of the City and County of LA; soon the trail hits the Ventura County line. From there, one can turn right to stay in LA and climb the peak; or continue on with the creek, passing into the vast lands of another old rancho, the former Ahmanson Ranch. This is also now a park, called the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve. Nestled in all this, El Escorpion provides the illusion of being A World Away From LA.

The Anza Trail leads into the Las Virgenes Preserve.

Kas-ele-wu marks the eastern border of the Southern Chumash. The Chumash revere mountains as centers of astronomical observation; Kas-ele-wu, which the Yankees heard as “Castle,” was a resort especially around the winter solstice. There was a rancheria under the peak. I guess it was at the entrada, the sheltered glen where the subdivision now sprawls. The ridge looks over an unparalleled View of the San Fernando Plain.

Click to access hssc97-3_jjohnson.pdf

Click above for an article on how the Indians were reduced at Mission San Fernando.

You’d think it would be easy to identify these cute pink-and-white five-petaled chaparral flowers. It ain’t.

The ridge is Swiss-cheesey with caves and tunnels: the largest is Munits’s Cave, supposedly inhabited by resident shamans as a meeting place, audience chamber, or sanctuary. Momoy, the sacred plant of the ?antap religion, still grows at the site. Momoy doctors, most likely from here, brought preparations of the psychedelic to the Tongva and Tataviam rancherias on the Valley floor, integrating momoy consumption to the Chinigchinich cult down there. There are no glyphs or rock paintings in or around the caves, so whatever the site meant to the Chumash, it wasn’t a place for artistic expression.

Bats supposedly live here; and certainly a family of huge ravens who were ominously concerned about me, croaking and calling and gliding overhead. There were also big hawks (harriers?) patrolling; the south-facing slope rising from the cool creek bed must produce awesome thermals.

Momoy, the sacred moonflower, blooms around the caves.

[This sounds like a fishing story, but indulge me. As I was climbing up the chute to the cave, clinging to handholds and worrying about scorpions, I felt a large bird soar out of a cleft, maybe fifty feet overhead. Past the visor of my cap, I swear I saw — felt — a California condor. I later learned it is true that condors do range the Simi Hills. From the corner of my eye it seemed — looked — like a i$%ng huge turkey vulture, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of turkey vultures, and probably it was. But — again I swear — I believe — I felt the air cool about my head for a second or two, as the shadow, or downdraft, of its huge wings glided over me. I shivered and craned my neck to try to grasp a wingspan so immense, but my optics failed to click, failed to correlate how big it seemed, with how close it seemed — coordinates my brain could only add up as One Scary Bird. It wheeled off on a thermal and was out of sight over the ridge before I could breathe again. I was too awed to continue on with the dangerous work of scrambling up into the cave, so I took some quick snaps and levered myself back down the cliff. Maybe I just got some momoy juice on my hands.]

The place is pregnant with Big Medicine. The only other places in the Valley that I’ve “felt” the buzz of human pre-history this strongly, are in the Pacoima Hills, where the Tataviam had their crow’s nest Viewpoint; and the Cahuenga Pass, where the Tongva had their overlook of the Valley to the north. But those other places are developed to Hell; this one is close to how the Chumash themselves would have experienced it.