despised and abused by themselves, and, more than all, the possession of
such a beautiful wife, wrought fierce jealousy in the breasts of the
many jilted lovers; making those who had looked askance at one another
before, true friends and firm brothers in a single cause--the undoing of
this lucky vagabond youth. Nor were they alone in this desire, for
behold! copying their lucky sister, all the pretty maidens in Moki
declared that they would marry no one who did not show himself at least
in some degree heroic, like the youth of the dog-holes who had married
their pretty sister. It therefore came about that the whole tribe of
Moki, so far as the young men were concerned, became a company of jilted
lovers, and all the maidens became confirmed in their resolutions of
virgin maidenhood.
The jilted lovers got together one night in a cautious sort of way (for
they were all afraid of this hero) and held a council. But the fools
didn’t think of the Dogs lying around outside, who heard what they said.
They concluded the best way to get even with this youth was to kill him;
but how to kill him was the problem, for they were cowards. “We will get
up a hunt,” said one; “and make friends with him and ask him to go,
paying him all sorts of attention, and ask him to instruct us in the
arts of war, the wretch! He will readily join us in our hunting
excursion, and some of us will sling a throwing-stick at him and finish
the conceited fellow’s days!”
Now, the Dogs scrambled off immediately and informed their friend and
brother what was going on.
He said: “All right! I will accept their advances and go with them on
the hunt.”
He went off that night to a cave, where he had often sought shelter from
the wind when driven out of the town of Walpi, and thus had made
acquaintance with those most unerring travellers in crooked places--the
Cave-swallows. He went to one of them, an elderly, wise bird, and,
addressing him as “Grandfather,” told him what was going on.
“Very well,” said the old bird; “I will help you.” And he made a
boomerang for the youth which had the power to fly around bushes and
down into gullies; and if well thrown, of course, it could not be dodged
by any rabbit, however swift of foot or sly in hiding. Having finished
this boomerang, he told the youth to take it and use it freely in
hunting. The youth thanked him, and returning to his town passed a
peaceful night.
When he appeared the next morning, the others greeted him
pleasantly--those who happened to see him--to which greetings he replied
with equal cordiality. They were so importunate with the priest-chiefs
to be allowed to undertake a grand rabbit-hunt that these fathers of the
people, always desirous of contributing to the happiness of their
children, ordered a grand hunt for the very next day. So everybody was
busy forthwith in making throwing-sticks and boomerangs.
The next day all the able-bodied youth of the town, selecting the hero
of whom we have told as their leader, took their way to the great plain
south of Moki, and there, spreading out into an enormous circle, they
drove hundreds of rabbits closer and closer together among the sagebrush
in the center of the valley. Some of them succeeded in striking down
one--some of them three or four--but ere long every one observed that
each time the youth threw his stick he struck a rabbit and secured it,
until he had so many that he was forced to call some boys who had
followed along to carry them for him.
Already inflamed by their jealousies to great anger, what was the
chagrin of this crowd of dandies, now that this youth whom they so
heartily despised actually surpassed them even in hunting rabbits! They
gnashed their teeth with rage, and one of them in a moment of
excitement, when two or three rabbits were trying to escape, took
deliberate aim at the youth and threw his boomerang at him. The youth,
who was wily, sprang into the air so high, pretending meanwhile to throw
his boomerang, that the missile missed his vital parts, but struck his
leg and apparently broke it, so that he fell down senseless in the midst
of the crowd; and the people set up a great shout--some of lamentation,
some of exultation.
“Let him lie there and rot!” said the angry suitors, catching up their
own rabbits and making off for the pueblo. But some of the old men, who
deplored this seeming accident of the youth, ran as fast as they could
toward the town--fearing to raise him lest they should make his hurt
worse--for medicine.
When the youth had been left alone, he opened his eyes and smiled. Then,
taking from his pouch a medicine unfailing in its effects, applied it to
the bruised spot and quickly became relieved of pain, if not even of
injury. Rising, he looked about and found the rabbits where,
panic-stricken, the boys had dropped them and fled away. He made up a
huge bundle, and not long before sunset, behold! singing merrily, he
came marching, though limping somewhat, through the plain before the
foot-hills of Moki, bearing an enormous burden of rabbits. He climbed
the mesa, greeted every one pleasantly as though nothing had occurred,
took his way to his home, and became admired of all the women of Moki,
young and old, as a paragon of valor and manhood.
It became absolutely necessary after that, of course,--for these
faint-hearted dandies tried no more tricks with the youth,--for anyone
who would marry a Moki maiden to show himself a man in some way or
other; and, as the ugliest and most neglected of children generally turn
out sharpest because they have to look out for themselves, so it happens
that to this day the husbands of Moki are generally very ugly; but one
thing is certain--they are men.
Reflect on these things, ye young ones and youths.
Thus shortens my story.
HOW THE COYOTE JOINED THE DANCE OF THE BURROWING-OWLS
You may know the country that lies south of the valley in which our town
stands. You travel along the trail which winds round the hill our
ancients called _Ishana-tak’yapon_,--which means the Hill of Grease, for
the rocks sometimes shine in the light of the sun at evening, and it is
said that strange things occurred there in the days of the ancients,
which makes them thus to shine, while rocks of the kind in other places
do not,--you travel on up this trail, crossing over the arroyos and
foot-hills of the great mesa called Middle Mountain, until you come to
the foot of the cliffs. Then you climb up back and forth, winding round
and round, until you reach the top of the mountain, which is as flat as
the floor of a house, merely being here and there traversed by small
valleys covered with piñon and cedar, and threaded by trails made not
only by the feet of our people but by deer and other animals. And so you
go on and on, until, hardly knowing it, you have descended from the top
of Middle Mountain, and found yourself in a wide plain covered with
grass, and here and there clumps of trees. Beyond this valley is an
elevated sandy plain, rather sunken in the middle, so that when it rains
the water filters down into the soil of the depressed portion (which is
wide enough to be a country in itself) and nourishes the grasses there;
so that most of the year they grow green and sweet.
Now, a long, long time ago, in this valley or basin there lived a
village of Prairie-dogs, on fairly peaceable terms with Rattlesnakes,
Adders, Chameleons, Horned-toads, and Burrowing-owls. With the Owls they
were especially friendly, looking at them as creatures of great gravity
and sanctity. For this reason these Prairie-dogs and their companions
never disturbed the councils or ceremonies of the Burrowing-owls, but
treated them most respectfully, keeping at a distance from them when
their dances were going on.
It chanced one day that the Burrowing-owls were having a great dance all
to themselves, rather early in the morning. The dance they were engaged
in was one peculiarly prized by them, requiring no little dexterity in
its execution. Each dancer, young man or maiden, carried upon his or her
head a bowl of foam, and though their legs were crooked and their
motions disjointed, they danced to the whistling of some and the
clapping beaks of others, in perfect unison, and with such dexterity
that they never spilled a speck of the foam on their sleek mantles of
dun-black feather-work.
It chanced this morning of the Foam-dance that a Coyote was nosing about
for Grasshoppers and Prairie-dogs. So quite naturally he was prowling
around the by-streets in the borders of the Prairie-dog town. His house
where he lived with his old grandmother stood back to the westward, just
over the elevations that bounded Sunken Country, among the rocks. He
heard the click-clack of the musicians and their shrill, funny little
song:
“I yami hota utchu tchapikya,
Tokos! tokos! tokos! tokos!”
So he pricked up his ears, and lifting his tail, trotted forward toward
the level place between the hillocks and doorways of the village, where
the Owls were dancing in a row. He looked at them with great curiosity,
squatting on his haunches, the more composedly to observe them. Indeed,
he became so much interested and amused by their shambling motions and
clever evolutions, that he could no longer contain his curiosity. So he
stepped forward, with a smirk and a nod toward the old master of
ceremonies, and said: “My father, how are you and your children these
many days?”
“Contented and happy,” replied the old Owl, turning his attention to the
dancing again.
“Yes, but I observe you are dancing,” said the Coyote. “A very fine
dance, upon my word! Charming! Charming! And why should you be dancing
if you were not contented and happy, to be sure?”
“We are dancing,” responded the Owl, “both for our pleasure and for the
good of the town.”
“True, true,” replied the Coyote; “but what’s that which looks like foam
these dancers are carrying on their heads, and why do they dance in so
limping a fashion?”
“You see, my friend,” said the Owl, turning toward the Coyote, “we hold
this to be a very sacred performance--very sacred indeed. Being such,
these my children are initiated and so trained in the mysteries of the
sacred society of which this is a custom that they can do very strange
things in the observance of our ceremonies. You ask what it is that
looks like foam they are balancing on their heads. Look more closely,
friend. Do you not observe that it is their own grandmothers’ heads they
have on, the feathers turned white with age?”
“By my eyes!” exclaimed the Coyote, blinking and twitching his whiskers;
“it seems so.”
“And you ask also why they limp as they dance,” said the Owl. “Now, this
limp is essential to the proper performance of our dance--so essential,
in fact, that in order to attain to it these my children go through the
pain of having their legs broken. Instead of losing by this, they gain
in a great many ways. Good luck always follows them. They are quite as
spry as they were before, and enjoy, moreover, the distinction of
performing a dance which no other people or creatures in the world are
capable of!”
“Dust and devils!” ejaculated the Coyote. “This is passing strange. A
most admirable dance, upon my word! Why, every bristle on my body keeps
time to the music and their steps! Look here, my friend, don’t you think
that I could learn that dance?”
“Well,” replied the old Owl; “it is rather hard to learn, and you
haven’t been initiated, you know; but, still, if you are determined that
you would like to join the dance--by the way, have you a grandmother?”
“Yes, and a fine old woman she is,” said he, twitching his mouth in the
direction of his house. “She lives there with me. I dare say she is
looking after my breakfast now.”
“Very well,” continued the old Owl, “if you care to join in our dance,
fulfill the conditions, and I think we can receive you into our order.”
And he added, aside: “The silly fool; the sneaking, impertinent wretch!
I will teach him to be sticking that sharp nose of his into other
people’s affairs!”
“All right! All right!” cried the Coyote, excitedly. “Will it last
long?”
“Until the sun is so bright that it hurts our eyes,” said the Owl; “a
long time yet.”
“All right! All right! I’ll be back in a little while,” said the Coyote;
and, switching his tail into the air, away he ran toward his home. When
he came to the house, he saw his old grandmother on the roof, which was
a rock beside his hole, gathering fur from some skins which he had
brought home, to make up a bed for the Coyote’s family.
“Ha, my blessed grandmother!” said the Coyote, “by means of your aid,
what a fine thing I shall be able to do!”
The old woman was singing to herself when the Coyote dashed up to the
roof where she was sitting, and, catching up a convenient leg-bone,
whacked her over the pate and sawed her head off with the teeth of a
deer. All bloody and soft as it was, he clapped it on his own head and
raised himself on his hindlegs, bracing his tail against the ground,
and letting his paws drop with the toes outspread, to imitate as nearly
as possible the drooping wings of the dancing Owls. He found that it
worked very well; so, descending with the head in one paw and a stone in
the other, he found a convenient sharp-edged rock, and, laying his legs
across it, hit them a tremendous crack with the stone, which broke them,
to be sure, into splinters.
“Beloved Powers! Oh!” howled the Coyote. “Oh-o-o-o-o! the dance may be a
fine thing, but the initiation is anything else!”
However, with his faith unabated, he shook himself together and got up
to walk. But he could walk only with his paws; his hindlegs dragged
helplessly behind him. Nevertheless, with great pain, and getting weaker
and weaker every step of the way, he made what haste he could back to
the Prairie-dog town, his poor old grandmother’s head slung over his
shoulders.
When he approached the dancers,--for they were still dancing,--they
pretended to be greatly delighted with their proselyte, and greeted him,
notwithstanding his rueful countenance, with many congratulatory
epithets, mingled with very proper and warm expressions of welcome. The
Coyote looked sick and groaned occasionally and kept looking around at
his feet, as though he would like to lick them. But the old Owl extended
his wing and cautioned him not to interfere with the working power of
faith in this essential observance, and invited him (with a _hem_ that
very much resembled a suppressed giggle), to join in their dance. The
Coyote smirked and bowed and tried to stand up gracefully on his stumps,
but fell over, his grandmother’s head rolling around in the dirt. He
picked up the grisly head, clapped it on his crown again and raised
himself, and with many a howl, which he tried in vain to check, began to
prance around; but ere long tumbled over again. The Burrowing-owls were
filled with such merriment at his discomfiture that they laughed until
they spilled the foam all down their backs and bosoms; and, with a
parting fling at the Coyote which gave him to understand that he had
made a fine fool of himself, and would know better than to pry into
other people’s business next time, skipped away to a safe distance from
him.
Then, seeing how he had been tricked, the Coyote fell to howling and
clapping his thighs; and, catching sight of his poor grandmother’s head,
all bloody and begrimed with dirt, he cried out in grief and anger:
“Alas! alas! that it should have come to this! You little devils! I’ll
be even with you! I’ll smoke you out of your holes.”
“What will you smoke us out with?” tauntingly asked the Burrowing-owls.
“Ha! you’ll find out. With yucca!”
“O! O! ha! ha!” laughed the Owls. “That is our succotash!”
“Ah, well! I’ll smoke you out!” yelled the Coyote, stung by their
taunts.
“What with?” cried the Owls.
“Grease-weed.”
“He, ha! ho, ho! We make our mush-stew of that!”
“Ha! but I’ll smoke you out, nevertheless, you little beasts!”
“What with? What with?” shouted the Owls.
“Yellow-top weeds,” said he.
“Ha, ha! All right; smoke away! We make our sweet gruel with that, you
fool!”
“I’ll fix you! I’ll smoke you out! I’ll suffocate the very last one of
you!”
“What with? What with?” shouted the Owls, skipping around on their
crooked feet.
“Pitch-pine,” snarled the Coyote.
This frightened the Owls, for pitch-pine, even to this day, is sickening
to them. Away they plunged into their holes, pell-mell.
Then the Coyote looked at his poor old grandmother’s begrimed and bloody
head, and cried out--just as Coyotes do now at sunset, I suppose--“Oh,
my poor, poor grandmother! So this is what they have caused me to do to
you!” And, tormented both by his grief and his pain, he took up the head
of his grandmother and crawled back as best he could to his house.
When he arrived there he managed to climb up to the roof, where her body
lay stiff. He chafed her legs and sides, and washed the blood and dirt
from her head, and got a bit of sinew, and sewed her head to her body as
carefully as he could and as hastily. Then he opened her mouth, and,
putting his muzzle to it, blew into her throat, in the hope of
resuscitating her; but the wind only leaked out from the holes in her
neck, and she gave no signs of animation. Then the Coyote mixed some pap
of fine toasted meal and water and poured it down her throat, addressing
her with vehement expressions of regret at what he had done, and apology
and solicitation that she should not mind, as he didn’t mean it, and
imploring her to revive. But the pap only trickled out between the
stitches in her neck, and she grew colder and stiffer all the while; so
that at last the Coyote gave it up, and, moaning, he betook himself to a
near clump of piñon trees, intent upon vengeance and designing to gather
pitch with which to smoke the Owls to death. But, weakened by his
injuries, and filled with grief and shame and mortification, when he got
there he could only lie down.
He was so engrossed in howling and thinking of his woes and pains that a
Horned-toad, who saw him, and who hated him because of the insults he
had frequently suffered from him and his kind, crawled into the throat
of the beast without his noticing it. Presently the little creature
struck up a song:
“Tsakina muuu-ki
Iyami Kushina tsoiyakya
Aisiwaiki muki, muki,
Muuu ka!”
“Ah-a-a-a-a-a,” the Coyote was groaning. But when he heard this song,
apparently far off, and yet so near, he felt very strangely inside, so
he thought and no doubt wondered if it were the song of some musician.
At any rate, he lifted his head and looked all around, but hearing
nothing, lay down again and bemoaned his fate.
Then the Horned-toad sang again. This time the Coyote called out
immediately, and the Horned-toad answered: “Here I am.” But look as he
would, the Coyote could not find the Toad. So he listened for the song
again, and heard it, and asked who it was that was singing. The
Horned-toad replied that it was he. But still the Coyote could not find
him. A fourth time the Horned-toad sang, and the Coyote began to suspect
that it was under him. So he lifted himself to see; and one of the
spines on the Horned-toad’s neck pricked him, and at the same time the
little fellow called out: “Here I am, you idiot, inside of you! I came
upon you here, and being a medicine-man of some prominence, I thought I
would explore your vitals and see what was the matter.”
“By the souls of my ancestors!” exclaimed the Coyote, “be careful what
you do in there!”
The Horned-toad replied by laying his hand on the Coyote’s liver, and
exclaiming: “What is this I feel?”
“Where?” said the Coyote.
“Down here.”
“Merciful daylight! it is my liver, without which no one can have
solidity of any kind, or a proper vitality. Be very careful not to
injure that; if you do, I shall die at once, and what will become of my
poor wife and children?”
Then the Horned-toad climbed up to the stomach of the Coyote. “What is
this, my friend?” said he, feeling the sides of the Coyote’s food-bag.
“What is it like?” asked the Coyote.
“Wrinkled,” said the Horned-toad, “and filled with a fearful mess of
stuff!”
“Oh! mercy! mercy! good daylight! My precious friend, be very careful!
That is the very source of my being--my stomach itself!”
“Very well,” said the Horned-toad. Then he moved on somewhat farther and
touched the heart of the Coyote, which startled him fearfully. “What is
this?” cried the Horned-toad.
“Mercy, mercy! what are you doing?” exclaimed the Coyote.
“Nothing--feeling of your vitals,” was the reply. “What is it?”
“Oh, what is it like?” said the Coyote.
“Shaped like a pine-nut,” said the Horned-toad, “as nearly as I can make
out; it keeps leaping so.”
“Leaping, is it?” howled the Coyote. “Mercy! my friend, get away from
there! That is the very heart of my being, the thread that ties my
existence, the home of my emotions, and my knowledge of daylight. Go
away from there, do, I pray you! If you should scratch it ever so
little, it would be the death of me, and what would my wife and children
do?”
“Hey!” said the Horned-toad, “you wouldn’t be apt to insult me and my
people any more if I touched you up there a little, would you?” And he
hooked one of his horns into the Coyote’s heart. The Coyote gave one
gasp, straightened out his limbs, and expired.
“Ha, ha! you villain! Thus would you have done to me, had you found the
chance; thus unto you”--saying which he found his way out and sought the
nearest water-pocket he could find.
* * * * *
So you see from this, which took place in the days of the ancients, it
may be inferred that the instinct of meddling with everything that did
not concern him, and making a universal nuisance of himself, and
desiring to imitate everything that he sees, ready to jump into any trap
that is laid for him, is a confirmed instinct with the Coyote, for those
are precisely his characteristics today.
Furthermore, Coyotes never insult Horned-toads nowadays, and they keep
clear of Burrowing-owls. And ever since then the Burrowing-owls have
been speckled with gray and white all over their backs and bosoms,
because their ancestors spilled foam over themselves in laughing at the
silliness of the Coyote.
Thus shortens my story.
THE COYOTE WHO KILLED THE DEMON SÍUIUKI:
OR WHY COYOTES RUN THEIR NOSES INTO DEADFALLS
It was very long ago, in the days of the ancients. There stood a village
in the cañon south of Thunder Mountain where the Gods of Prey all lived
with their sisters and mothers: the Mountain Lion, the great Black Bear,
the Wildcat, the Gray Wolf, the Eagle, and even the Mole--all the Gods
of Prey lived there together with their mothers and sisters. Day after
day they went out hunting, for hunting was their business of life, and
they were great hunters.
Now, right up on the edge of Thunder Mountain there lived a spotted
Demon, named Síuiuki, and whenever the people of the towns round about
went hunting, he lay in wait for them and ate them up.
After a long while the Gods of Prey grew discontented, and they said to
one another: “What in the world can we do? None of the children of men
ever make sacrifices to us, for, whenever our children among men go out
hunting, this Demon who lives on the top of Thunder Mountain destroys
them and eats them up. What in the world can be done?”
“It would be a good thing if we could kill him,” said some of them.
Now, just down below the house of the Demon, in Wolf Cañon, lived a
Coyote, and he had found out where the Gods of Prey lived, and whenever
he wanted a feast of sinew and gristle, he went below their houses and
gnawed at the bones that they had thrown away, and thus it happened that
when the gods were talking together in this way he was near their
doorway gnawing a bone, and he heard all they said.
“Yes,” said one or two of the others, “and if anybody will go and kill
Síuiuki, we will give him our sister to marry.”
“Aha!” said the Coyote to himself. “Ha, ha!”--and he dropped the bone he
was gnawing and cut off for home as fast as ever he could.
Next morning, bright and early, he began to dig into the side of the
cañon below the Demon’s home, and after he had dug a great hollow in the
side of the arroyo, he rolled a heavy stone into it, and found another,
which he placed beside it. Then he brought a great many leg-bones of
deer and antelope. Then he found a large bowl and put a lot of yellow
medicine-fluid in it, and placed it beside the rock. He then sat down
and began to crack the leg-bones with the two stones he had brought
there.
The old Demon was not in the habit of rising very early, but when he
arose that morning he came out and sat down on the edge of the cliff;
there the Coyote was, battering away at the bones and pretending to
bathe his own lips with the medicine-fluid.