Yosemite Pohono Falls Legend and the movie Lady in the Water - the Similarities.

Yosemite Bridal Veil Falls' Pohono Legend and the Movie Lady in the Water

Water Sprite, coming out the of the water.

This weekend I went and saw the movie Lady in the Water by M. Night Shyamalan. I was surprised by the similarities to my culture and the movie. In Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiute Legends we also have tales of a lady of the water, water babies, giant birds, hairy big foots and evil coyote like creatures.

Great Basin Spiral and wolf/coyote petrogyph. Like the type of rock art the ancient Uto-Aztecan people used to create. The Paiute ancestors.

I started to notice the similarities right at the begining of the movie when the credits showed a spiral design that we Paiutes had in our ancient pictographs and petroglyphs. That style of petroglyphs are common in our Great Basin society. The story was also similar to our Yosemite Paiute and other Paiute tales about special spirit people that live in the water.

The story goes back to our ancient Uto-Aztecan roots, which we Yosemite Indians are related to. If you are a Mexican-American person you would see the similiarities to this legend to the La Llorona legends that are rooted in the same culture. Pohono is a variation of the Paiute name for Yosemite's Bridal Veil Falls. Which its blowing misty waters reminded the Paiutes of the Lady of the Water. Poohe'yoo, is to blow. Pooha'a is to curse.

Yosemite's Bridal Veil Falls or Pohono Falls.

We Paiutes had many names for the lady in the water who was like a mermaid, water nymph or like a spirit of the blowing mist all rolled into one. In one Paiute dialect we called Pohono Pogonah which means a white fog, a blowing misty death.

One old Paiute tale is similiar to the movie, Lady of the Water, of creatures that appeared from the water to tell humans special messages. The story went that in olden times when the Paiutes were camped on the western side, possibly around Yosemite, a young hunter had returned to the camp with a beautiful mysterious young woman. He professed his love for her, but told the camp that she had appeared from the water. The people were reluctant to accept her because they feared she was evil, but accepted her because of the young Paiutes love for her.

From a 1891 book the Legends of Yosemite about the young Indian man falling in love with the Pohono Spirit or Lady of the Blowing Misty Waters once he gazed upon her beauty.

The next day when the people awoke they noticed that water had come closer and was starting to surround them. Where ever they went to camp along the way the water followed them and was creeping closer and closer. The people said to leave her for they feared she would drown them all, but the young man refused, because his love for her was strong. After awhile the chief of the people refused the couple to live in their camp because they feared that they would be drowned by the water that she brought in her dreams.

So the distraught couple moved outside of the camp and when his relatives went to visit him they noticed that the strange woman was spending more and more time in the water. After awhile the relatives stopped visiting them all together for they did not accept her. There are tales that Lake Tahoe was created when the couple camp up there and the Truckee River was created by one of their journeys around the sierras. Their trail turned into the Truckee.

Water baby sitting by the shores in the moonlight.

The couple had children and they were called Pahoha, water babies, who spent most of their time in the water. Because they were not accepted by the Numa (Paiutes), out of spite the Lady of the Misty Water cast a spell over her babies and her watery abode. If any person came across her children that they heard weeping it was sometimes a very bad encounter. If any person sees the water babies they may become very ill and even die. You can hear the Pahoha sometimes crying like babies at night by the water and sometimes people see their little foot prints along the sandy beaches. Many people have seen them, but to their own peril. In fact one of the Islands located in Mono Lake is called Pahoha Island, named after these Water Babies spirits.

This artwork reminds me of the Water Babies or Water Spirits, Pahohas, at Mono Lake. They may seem harmless, but they can be very impish and dangerous.

There was this tale of a young Yosemite Indian girl who was drawn by the beauty of a rainbow by Bridalveil Falls. She wanted to get close to the rainbow and when she got near to the mist of the falls, a gust of mist came up, she was suddenly taken by the Pohono Spirit and dragged into the water. The girl who was with her gathering, ran hurridly to the Indian camp and all the people came to the waters edge to rescue her, but she was no where to be found. They believed the Lady in the Water had taken her and that the Lady of the Water is in the blowing mist.

So remember the next time you see a beautiful rainbow at the Bridalveil falls, even thought it might be a wonderful sight to see, it is best not to get to close...or the Lady in the blowing misty waters just might take you on a trip to her deep watery world. A trip you might not ever return from.

Rainbow at Bridal Veil Falls...like the one that lured the young Indian girl to the edge of the waters at the Falls. She was then taken by the Pohono Spirit.

The movie the Lady of the Water brought back a lot of memories to this Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiute of our own Yosemite Paiute legends. It is amazing how many of the worlds myths are similiar to each other and how their tales are almost the same as ours. The tale of Mermaids, water imps, sprites, and sirens, but also a cautionary tale of getting to close to beauty that might not appear all it seems to be.

Water Spirit

*The non-Indian "official" Yosemite National Park Service Indian ethnologist discounts these legends because they were not part of the Miwok myths. Maybe because the Miwoks were not the original Indians of Yosemite, The Paiutes were.