70 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



ordinary shooting-star, but such as carry a train of 

 sparks. If an explosion is heard (the sound of the 

 meteor striking), it is said that Tahquitz has caught 

 a victim: otherwise he is supposed to have failed in 

 his attempt. The Tahquitz meteor seen in daytime 

 is called Tahm-ya-su'-wet. It also tries to catch the 

 spirits of men. There is a certain rock on Palomar 

 Mountain, many miles to the south of San Jacinto 

 Mountain (where Tahquitz has his home), to which 

 this methodical demon is said to carry his prey, 

 there to pound the flesh and prepare it for his maw! 

 (My criticism that spirits have no flesh was thought 

 irrelevant. "I tell you what we say," was the take-it- 

 or-leave-it reply.) The Diegueno Indians — that is, 

 those formeriy tributary to the Mission of San Diego 

 — recognize the same evil spirit, having his haunt 

 on the same mountain at a spot they call Awik' 

 Kai-yai', but they name him Chowk.^ The curious 

 rumblings sometimes heard to proceed from this 

 mountain, and which I have noticed myself, are, of 

 course,^ attributed to Tahquitz's operations. 



A Diegueno Indian with whom I camped, point- 

 ing one night to the Pleiades, said, "We call them 

 Siete Cahrillas'' (seven buzzards). He went on to 

 explain that when the First People — that is, the 

 original inhabitants of the earth — were seeking to 

 escape from death, they were taken up into the sky 

 and became the stars. There were seven sisters, with 

 one of whom Coyote (who figures largely in Western 



' It is seldom one finds anything like agreement on any point of 

 belief between the various tribes, or even between villages of the same 

 iVf .1 '.-K p!"^5!^^ble diversities of language that occur among these 

 little tnbal divisions make another source of confusion. 



