III — Pima Puberty Song

The third poem included in Zalamea’s collection comes from the Pima people of what is now known as Arizona, in the United States, and Sonora, in Mexico.

They call themselves “Akimel O’odham,” or “river people.” According to Wikipedia, that is no coincidence:

Their way of life (himdagĭ, sometimes rendered in English as Him-dag) was and is centered on the river, which is considered holy. The term Him-dag should be clarified, as it does not have a direct translation into the English language, and is not limited to reverence of the river. It encompasses a great deal because O’odham him-dag intertwines religion, morals, values, philosophy, and general world view which are all interconnected. Their world view/religious beliefs are centered on the natural world, and this is pervasive throughout their culture.

In the original Spanish of the book, the poem is:

¡Sal pronto, sal pronto!
Ya descienden los ecos esta noche.
Mujer virgen, mujer virgen no duerme:
vela toda la noche.

Allí yace roto un cacto gigante,
pero mis abatidas plumas se yerguen
más alto que el monte de la Mesa.

El mozo movió las piedras tronantes;
la muchacha oyó y no pudo dormir.
Y están rotas las uñas de mis pies.

Las ramas de la noche cayeron,
cortando mis plumas cuando yo pasaba.

In his 1918 book The Path on the Rainbow (an anthology of songs and chants from Native North Americans), George W. Cronyn provides this English translation:

Come, hurry forth, hurry forth.
Already the echoing sounds
Of darkness are heard around.

The Virgin is not sleepy,
She is wakeful through the night.

The Saguaro lies there broken;
And my fallen feathers rise
O’er the top of Table Mountain.

The boy stirred the rumbling stones;
The woman heard and could not sleep.
And my toe nails are broken.

The branches of darkness fell,
Cutting my feathers as I passed.

About the poem, Zalamea says:

[the Pima poem] refers to the living being’s most immediate urgencies. There is a damsel who, unable to sleep, stalks the night and questions herself. There is a young man that removes the obstacles. There is the loving expectation of one and the other. And the magic words which conjure up that which is opposed to their love.

Many sources point out to the fact that the O’odham extensive archive of “poems” consists of many songs that were sung during various ceremonies. One particular ceremony where this poem would fit would be the girls’ puberty ceremony. This ceremony is called wuaga in Tohono O’odham, a word that also means “easterly direction.”

In A Prehistory of Western North America: The Impact of Uto-Aztecan Languages Shaul and Ortman say that this refers “to the notion that the dead O’odham people go to the east to sing and dance underneath the dawn. The term is related to a Northern [Uto-Aztec] root referring to supernatural power.”

I have not been able to find a transcription of the original words, but I managed to track a recording (done in 1938) of the Akimel O’odham “Girl’s Puberty Song,” which I believe might be the original version of this poem. It is in this cached page (does anybody know how to grab the audio before it disappears from the internet?)