When at last the Mohave were ready, it was announced that they would once for all destroy the Halchidhoma. The entire nation was to move and appropriate the enemy land. Soon they started, most of the men in advance, weaponed and unburdened save for gourds of maize meal at their hips; water they did not have to carry since they followed the river. Behind tramped the women, children, and old men, under loads. Foods, blankets of bark and rabbit fur, fish nets, metates, household property, and the most necessary pottery vessels were taken. The remainder of their belongings and stored provisions were buried or hidden away: every house in the valley stood empty.
For five days they walked. Then the men suddenly surrounded a group of settlements. These were the houses of the Kohuana, a far down-stream tribe, wasted by wars with their neighbors, until the pressed remnant had sought refuge half a day’s journey above the Halchidhoma to whom they were united, less by positive friendship than by common foes and parallel fortunes. For the Halchidhoma, too, remembered having once lived populously among the welter of tribes in the broad bottom lands below the mouth of the Gila. With the Kohuana the Mohave had no direct quarrel; and though they arrived armed and overpowering, they proclaimed themselves kinsmen, and announced that they had come as guests. By night the Kohuana houses overflowed with the mob of Mohave families. Kohuana messengers were dispatched to summon the Halchidhoma to battle at White-spread-rock-place, if they were not afraid. Such challenge the outnumbered people could not find it in their manhood to evade. So the next day saw them in line at the appointed field, barely a hundred strong, against perhaps four hundred that the Mohave mustered after setting a guard over their families.
Earth-tongue went into battle with much inward excitement, but little fear, and listened obediently to the admonitions of his seasoned kinsmen. Even before arrows could reach, the shooting began. Before long, arrows flew feebly by, and then it became necessary to twist sharply sidewise to avoid them. At this distance the two lines shot at each other, taunting and leaping, while, in the rear, half-grown boys and a few old men helped to gather up and replenish bundles of arrows. What the Halchidhoma lacked in frequency of shots, they partly made up in greater openness of target; and before long, struck men began to withdraw temporarily on each side. The Mohave could have made short work by charging in a body with their clubs; but they had asked for an open stand-up fight, and besides found pleasure in the game, which fell increasingly to their advantage. For hours they sweated in the sun, gradually and irregularly forcing the Halchidhoma line back, and shouting whenever one of the foe was carried off.