Coyote’s
Wife gets Jealous
Once, when the weather was mild and
the animals were bored with hunting, fishing, and farming, they decided to
create something new. Frog suggested
that they all go for a swim. Many of the
animals agreed, but Coyote shouted over them to disagree. “Wait!” he said. “I cannot swim very well. We should do something we can all enjoy.”
“But
what can we all do?” Hawk asked Coyote.
All the animals cried out their ideas.
Coyote disagreed with each and every one. Some of them would have worked, but Coyote
was too lazy to do them. “Let’s fly!”
mosquito said.
“I have no wings,” Coyote countered.
“We
will dig holes,” Mole proposed.
“My claws are too small for that,”
Coyote complained. “I know what we can
all do.” All the animals leaned in to
hear his suggestion. “We can all
copulate,” he said. “We will pick
partners so that we always have someone to do it with!” The animals immediately agreed and started to
pair up. All of their feet kicked up a
cloud of dust that obscured the crowd.
Coyote could not see anything, so he walked slowly forward and reached
out with his hands to grab any animal that came by. “Wait!” he shouted pointlessly. “This was my idea, I should pick first,” he
pleaded, but the animals were too busy running around and picking the
attractive partners.
By the time the dust cleared,
everyone except Coyote had a partner and was leaving towards their huts for
privacy. “Is there nobody left?” Coyote
howled. He saw the Moon and even though
it wasn’t an animal he asked it if it would be his partner. The Moon was so repulsed that it fled to the
highest part of the sky, so from then on Moon’s light was much weaker than the
Sun’s.
“I do not want to be alone,” Coyote
whimpered.
“I
will be your partner,” a voice said from behind him. Coyote smiled and turned around. The voice had come from a female Coyote who
was very ugly. She had a long nose
covered in fur, yellow teeth, and pointy ears.
Coyote’s smile withered.
“You are too ugly,” Coyote said
smugly. “I cannot copulate with someone
so ugly.” Suddenly the Moon’s laughter
fell down from the sky like warm rain.
“You do not have a choice,” the Moon
said. It turns out Moon had been
watching the other animals and noticed that after they copulated, they decided
to stay with each other for the rest of their lives. “The other animals are calling it marriage,”
Moon said. “This female Coyote is now
your wife and you can’t copulate with anyone else!” Hawk overheard this and told all the other
animals to add roofs to their huts so that Moon could not watch them in their
private moments. That is why all good
shelters have tops.
“I promise to love you for my entire
life,” Coyote’s new wife said, quivering with joy.
“No,”
Coyote said. “Just because I’m stuck
with you doesn’t mean we have to copulate.
I will never be with someone so ugly.
I will instead look at everyone else’s wives and pretend they are
mine. For a pretend beautiful woman is
better than a real one like you.”
So some time passed, with Coyote’s
wife growing sadder and sadder. Even
though he was hateful, she loved him.
Instead of getting angry at him, she chose to be mad at every woman Coyote
looked at with lust. She was mad at
Beaver’s wife for her thin body, Turtle’s wife for her beautiful hair, and
Rabbit’s wife for her bright smile. She
spent many nights thinking of ways to make Coyote love her. One day she was washing Coyote’s clothes in
the river when she noticed what the ripples did to her reflection. Whenever a ripple went by her face looked
strange and twisted.
“I can use these!” she realized out
loud. Coyote’s wife picked up the ripples
and put them in her bag. Then she ran
around the village and threw them in the face over wife in the village. She threw ripples at Beaver and when they
passed over her they stretched her teeth out and made her look fat. She threw some at Turtle’s wife and made her
look like she had small beady eyes and no hair at all. She threw them at Rabbit’s wife, which
stretched her ears out quite far. Now
all the animals in the village had ugly wives and there was no one for Coyote
to imagine himself with. Defeated,
Coyote copulated with his wife that night.
The animals soon learned that they
could make children this way and they did.
Every child inherited its mother’s ripples, which is why all the animals
look so different.
The
Four Ways to Scare Buffalo
A long time ago, Coyote’s wife
yelled at him because there was no meat in their home. She told him four times each morning, four
times after each meal, and four times whenever he tried to go to sleep. She kept doing this until Coyote finally
agreed to go on a hunt. He wanted it to
be the greatest hunt ever so his wife would never again ask him to go out. So he went to Wolf to learn how to hunt.
Wolf is the greatest hunter in the
whole world and he hates Coyote for being so lazy and stealing food. When Coyote approached him, Wolf growled a
warning. “Stay away from me,” he
said. “If you do not, I will bite you
and turn you the color of blood. Then
everyone will be able to see you coming and run from you.”
“Please,” Coyote crooned. “I want to learn to hunt so I can catch my
own food. I want to go on the greatest
hunt ever.” Wolf did not believe him, so
he told Coyote of the rarest prey he could think of: buffalo.
“There is an animal,” Wolf said,
“rarer than all the others. It is called
the buffalo, and there are only four of them.”
“How do I find them?” Coyote asked,
hopping up and down with excitement.
Wolf was certain Coyote would get himself he killed if he tried to find
the buffalo, was happy to tell him.
“One hides in a cave at the bottom
of the river. He spends all day drawing
pictures of fire on the wall to keep warm.
You can only kill him by biting his nose. The second one lives in a thunder cloud and
runs in circles, his hooves hitting the cloud and making the thunder. He can only be killed by clawing at his
throat. Another one sleeps high up on a
salt lick. It is so high and so salty
that it burned Snake’s feet off when he tried to climb it. The buffalo rests at the top, licking salt
all day. You can only kill him by
pulling his tail.” Wolf took a deep
breath. “The last one is the mother of
Horse, and Horse protects her all the time.
The only way to kill that one is to trick Horse to leave and then gnaw
on her stomach.”
“I can do that,” Coyote boasted
before setting off to kill the buffalo.
Coyote spent the next month swimming.
He searched the bottom of every river looking for a cave. When he found it he swam inside and looked
for Buffalo. The pictures of fire on the
wall dried his fur. The pictures
delighted Coyote, so he picked up a piece of flint to draw his own. Coyote focused and very carefully drew a
flame on the wall. He was looking at the
drawing so hard he did not notice that he was actually drawing on the buffalo’s
flank! The buffalo turned around and was
frightened to see someone in his home, so he ran away before Coyote could bite
him on the nose. The buffalo ran to the
plains so it could be safe. The flame
Coyote drew on its side set the grass on fire.
Now that fire isn’t trapped underwater, it can spread wherever it wants.
Coyote tried not to lose hope, so he
climbed a tree and jumped onto the thundercloud to get the second buffalo. The buffalo was so busy stomping and making
thunder that it did not hear Coyote sneak up behind it. The buffalo looked so delicious that Coyote
started to drool. A drop of drool fell
from his tongue and hit the cloud, making the loudest thunder ever. The huge sound scared the buffalo, who
quickly jumped down and joined the first buffalo on the plains. Coyote stomped around, mad at himself for
failing again. His stomps were full of
anger, so now thunder always sounds angry.
Coyote still did not give up. He jumped from the cloud to the salt
lick. That way he did not have to climb
it and burn his feet. The buffalo saw
this and became terrified that the sky was falling. He rolled down the salt lick and joined the
others on the plains. Coyote bawled at
this, his tears melting the salt beneath him.
After many tears, he was back on the ground. The salty water became the ocean.
Coyote
was very lazy, but he could be tricky.
So when he found Horse protecting his mother buffalo, he pretended to be
weak of thirst. He lied on the ground
and whined like a diseased wind.
“Oh I am so weak,” he cried out.
“Can
I help you?” horse asked out of concern.
“Oh my son is so kind,” the buffalo
praised.
“Yes!”
Coyote said. “I am very thirsty. Will
you please get me some water from over there?” Coyote pointed at the ocean he
had made. “You can have some if you help me.”
“My mother has taught me to always
help the weak,” Horse said. He ran over
to the ocean with a jar on his back so he could collect some water. Horse took a big gulp so he would have the
energy to run back. The water was so
salty that it made him thirstier than before.
Horse had to keep drinking. He
drank, and drank, and drank until he could not hold anymore. Horse fell down dead. When Coyote saw that his plan worked, he
jumped up and tried to kill the last buffalo.
The buffalo was scared because her son was no longer there to protect
her, so she ran to the plains and joined the others. Coyote cried a new river and gave up on his
hunt. His wife would just have to yell
at him every day.
Now that all the buffalo are
together, they have learned how to make more buffalo. They aren’t rare anymore, and live on the
plains in huge groups. Since none of the
wolves can tell which weak spot each buffalo has, they have to bite them all
over in order to kill them.
Rabbit
and his French Gun
When guns came to their home, they
caused the animals trouble. Coyote
thought he had it the worst out of everyone.
Whenever he stole a kill and took a big bite, there would always be a
little metal ball in it that hurt his teeth.
Every piece of meat he found tasted like metal.
“I need to get one of these guns,”
Coyote reasoned. “That way I can kill
the people that are making my meat taste bad.”
So he set off to find a gun. Coyote
asked every animal if they knew how to get a gun. Most of them ran away every time they heard
the word ‘gun’.
Eventually, Coyote noticed that
rabbit had a gun of his own. He was
using it to shoot apples off the tree so he could eat them. The trees got so tired of this that they
started dropping apples themselves so they wouldn’t have to hear the loud
noises.
“Rabbit, my friend,” Coyote
said. “Where can I get a gun like
yours?” Rabbit did not think they were
friends, since Coyote always chased Rabbit and tried to eat his children, so he
decided to play a trick on Coyote.
“Well you have to get them from the
French people,” rabbit said. The French
trappers have the greatest guns. Once
you get one from them you will be able to kill anything you want. You can kill a whole herd of buffalo with one
bullet. You can shoot a hole in the sun
and get some shade. You can even shoot
someone and there whole family will die at the same time.”
“Thank you rabbit, I will go get a
French gun.” So Coyote went to the spot
where he knew French trappers tried to catch beavers. He waited there until one of them showed
up. Then he offered to trade four piles
of buffalo hump meat for the trapper’s gun.
The trapper agreed and handed over the weapon and four bullets.
“I only have four bullets,” Coyote
said. “I should use them wisely.” So Coyote picked up the gun and started
choosing what to shoot. Little did he
know, French guns were the worst guns in the world. Coyote’s first target was the sun. He was going to shoot a hole in it so he
could lie in the shade. He aimed up and
fired. The bullet didn’t go very high
before it fell back down. Disappointed,
Coyote thought he hadn’t aimed right.
Next he wanted to shoot some fish out of the river. Coyote aimed very carefully this time and
fired into the water. The bullet bounced
off the river’s surface. All of the fish
laughed, so now Coyote leaves the fishing to the bears. Next he tried to shoot a buffalo so he could
get some more hump meat, but the bullet got scared halfway there and turned
around.
Very angry, Coyote decided to use
his last bullet on Rabbit. He snuck up
behind Rabbit and got very close so the bullet could not miss. He remembered that Rabbit said the gun could
kill a whole family, so he snickered at the idea of killing all the
rabbits.
He pulled the trigger. This time, the bullet worked. Rabbit died.
Unfortunately, Coyote did not know that Rabbit had married his sister while
he was gone. This made them brothers, so
Coyote died too. Now the other animals
stay away from guns even more, because they kill so many.
