Sacred Texts  Native American  Southwest 

YAQUI MYTHS AND LEGENDS

By Ruth Warner Giddings

[1959, Copyright not registered or renewed]

This is a delightful collection of Yaqui folklore, illustrated with line drawings which invest Mexican folk-art motifs with quaint atomic-age cheerfulness. The Yaqui are part of the Southwestern Native American culture-group, and live in the Sonoran desert on the west coast of northern Mexico, opposite Baja California. The stories here are a mixture of ancient folklore blended with Mexican Catholic themes. Coyote and other zoomorphs walk in the same cycle of tales with figures such as Jesuschristo (who figures in several comic stories) and Columbus (who appears briefly as a villan).

The Stories