This paper brings a multi-disciplinary approach to bear on a consideration of motifs related to water as sacred in Yuman oral tradition, including the association of water with heaven, as well as the great oceandwelling serpent of the Delta-California and some River branches of Yuman, and various serpentine guardians of local water resources. As an anthropological linguist involved in documentating the languages and literature of Yuman groups in Baja California, who also teaches various courses in American Indian Studies, an inherently multi-disciplinary field, I draw on evidence from Yuman oral tradition, historical linguistics, rock art iconography, and archaeological work in support of the hypothesis that Yuman peoples brought these water-dwelling serpent deities with them when they migrated north and east out of their homeland in Baja California several thousand years ago. As discussed by Mathiowetz (2011), bringing together observations from multiple disciplines is crucial for understanding the history of nonliterate cultures:

中文翻译：

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圣水与水栖蛇：玉曼口述传统能告诉我们什么关于玉曼史前史？

本文采用多学科方法来考虑与玉曼口头传统中神圣的水有关的主题，包括水与天堂的联系，以及加利福尼亚州三角洲和一些河流支流的大海蛇。 Yuman，以及当地水资源的各种蛇形守护者。作为一名参与记录下加利福尼亚州 Yuman 群体语言和文学的人类学语言学家，他还教授美国印第安研究的各种课程，这是一个固有的多学科领域，我从 Yuman 口头传统、历史语言学、岩石艺术肖像学中汲取证据, 考古工作支持了这样一种假设：数千年前，尤曼人从他们位于下加利福尼亚州的家乡向北和向东迁移时带来了这些水栖蛇神。正如 Mathiowetz (2011) 所讨论的那样，将来自多个学科的观察结合起来对于理解非文学文化的历史至关重要：