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9

The Yumas believe in a Good and Bad Spirit.  The Good Spirit is always going about doing good.  The Bad Spirit is asleep in a mountain far up the Colorado called Av-vee-co may.  

When he is troubled in his sleep and moves slightly there is a little earthquake.  When he turns over, there is 'hell to play' and every thing rocks.  They believe the Good Spirits of the dead live in the River bottom near their old haunts, perpetually happy, living on the largest kind of pumpkin of perennial and spontaneous growth.  The Bad Spirits of the dead are driven out into the desert and labour eternally. Anything belonging to the dead is esteemed bad, and burned.  A lodge in which a person dies is deserted, or burned.  A murderer washes out his sin, by repeated ablutions, and abstaining from meat and salt for one moon.  A woman after child birth abstains in the like manner.  To some extent they deify their dead chief, one especially who died long ago is spoken of as being of great powers.  Nothing could resist him, singularly enough they describe his dress as exactly that of the Aztecs.  He occupies a mountain up the River.  They believe in the Evil Eye.  Last year