“The Mohave Heroic Epic of Inyo-Kutavêre”

The Mohave Heroic Epic, the study of Inyo-kutavêre’s Great Telling of how the Mohave regained their Given, then Lost Valley, belongs to the discipline of Ethnopoetics, one that has progressed by leaps and bounds since Alfred Kroeber chanced to record the tale as it was translated live into English for him in 1902, and with a rare wealth of ethnographic comment published it in 1951. The time has now come to re-assess and re-interpret this narrative as a true member of what we term ‘the Heroic Epic meta-Genre’, the only North American Indian specimen so far recognized and indeed the only pre-Metal Age Heroic Epic known currently to scholars.

FF Communications 269