Veeho was blind now. He didn’t know what to do. He groped through the forest. He stumbled. He ran into trees. He sat down by a stone and cried. He heard a squeaking sound. It was a mouse calling other mice. “Mouse, little mouse,” cried Veeho, “I am blind. Please lend me one of your eyes so that I can see again.”
“My eyes are tiny,” answered the mouse, “much too tiny. What good would one of them do you? It wouldn’t fit.” But Veeho begged so pitifully that the mouse finally gave him an eye, saying: “I guess I can get along with the other one.”
So Veeho had one eye, but it was very small indeed. What he saw was just a tiny speck of light. Still, it was better than nothing.
Veeho staggered on and met a buffalo. “Buffalo brother,” he begged, “I have to get along with just this one tiny mouse eye. How can a big man like me make do with that? Have pity on me, brother, and lend me one of your big, beautiful eyes.”
“What good would one of my eyes do you?” asked the buffalo. “It’s much too big for your eye hole.” But Veeho begged and wept and wheedled until the buffalo said: “Well, all right, I’ll let you have one. I can’t stand listening to you carrying on like that. I guess I can get by with one eye.”
And so Veeho had his second eye. The buffalo bull’s eye was much too big. It stuck out of its socket like a shinny ball boys like to play with. It made everything look twice as big as his own eyes had. And since the mouse eye saw everything ten times smaller, Veeho got a bad headache. But what could he do? It was better than being blind. “It’s a bad mess, though,” said Veeho.
Veeho went back to his wife and lodge. His wife looked at him. “I believe your eyes are a little mismatched,” she told him. And he described all that had happened to him. “You know,” she said, “I think you should stop fooling around, trying to impress people with your tricks.”
“I guess so,” said Veeho.
—Told by Rachel Strange Owl in Birney, Montana, 1971, and recorded by Richard Erdoes.
[BRULE SIOUX]
Once in the middle of the night, Iktome woke up in a cold sweat after a bad dream. His friend Coyote, who was visiting, noticed something wrong. “Friend, what’s the matter,” he asked.
“I had a very bad dream,” said Iktome.
“What did you dream of?”
“I dreamed I saw a very pretty winchinchala about to take a bath in the stream.”
“It doesn’t sound like a very bad dream,” said Coyote. “This girl was taking her clothes off. I saw her naked. She had a very fine body.”
“My friend, decidedly, this is not a bad dream.”
“I dreamed I was hiding behind some bush at quite a distance from her. As I watched her, my penis began to grow. It grew exceedingly long. It was winding toward her like a long snake.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this dream.”
“My penis was like a long, long rope. It went all the way over to that girl. It went into the water. It touched her.”
“Kanji, cousin, let me tell you, I wish I had such a dream.”
“Now, my friend, the tip of my penis entered that girl. She didn’t even notice it at first.”
“Kola, I’m telling you, this is a fine dream.”
“Then my penis entered the girl all the way. She seemed to like it.”
“This is as good a dream as I ever heard of, my friend.”
“Just at that moment I heard a great noise. I had been so excited in my dream that I hadn’t noticed a team of horses pulling a big wagon. It was right on top of me, a wasichu’s—a white man’s—wagon. It was coming at a dead run, and the white man was whipping his horses. This wagon was very heavy, my friend, it had heavy wheels of iron. It was going between me and that girl …”
“Friend, you were right. This is indeed a very bad dream,” said Coyote.
—Told in a bar at Winner, South Dakota, 1969, and recorded by Richard Erdoes.
HOW COYOTE GOT HIS CUNNING
[KAROK]
Kareya was the god who in the very beginning created the world. First he made the fishes in the ocean; then he made the animals on land; and last of all he made a man. He had, however, given all the animals the same amount of rank and power.
So he went to the man he had created and said, “Make as many bows and arrows as there are animals. I am going to call all the animals together, and you are to give the longest bow and arrow to the one that should have the most power, and the shortest to the one that should have the least.”
So the man set to work making bows and arrows, and at the end of nine days he had turned out enough for all the animals created by Kareya. Then Kareya called them all together and told them that the man would come to them the next day with the bows, and the one to whom he gave the longest would have the most power.
Each animal wanted to be the one to get the longest bow. Coyote schemed to outwit the others by staying awake all night. He thought that if he was the first to meet the man in the morning, he could get the longest bow for himself. So when the animals went to sleep, Coyote lay down and only pretended to sleep. About midnight, however, he began to feel genuinely sleepy. He got up and walked around, scratching his eyes to keep them open. As time passed, he grew sleepier. He resorted to skipping and jumping to keep awake, but the noise waked some of the other animals, so he had to stop.
About the time the morning star came up, Coyote was so sleepy that he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. So he took two little sticks and sharpened them at the ends, and with these he propped his eyelids open. Then he felt it was safe to sleep, since his eyes could watch the morning star rising. He planned to get up before the star was completely up, for by then all the other animals would be stirring. In a few minutes, however, Coyote was fast asleep. The sharp sticks pierced right through his eyelids, and instead of keeping them open, they pinned them shut. When the rest of the animals got up, Coyote lay in a deep sleep.
The animals went to meet the man and receive their bows. Cougar was given the longest, Bear the next-longest, and so on until the next-to-last bow was given to Frog.
The shortest bow was still left, however.
“What animal have I missed?” the man cried.
The animals began to look about, and they soon spied Coyote lying fast asleep. They all laughed heartily and danced around him. Then they led him to the man, for Coyote’s eyes were pinned together by the sticks and he could not see. The man pulled the sticks out of Coyote’s eyes and gave him the shortest bow. The animals laughed so hard that the man began to pity Coyote, who would be the weakest of them all. So he prayed to Kareya about Coyote, and Kareya responded by giving Coyote more cunning than any other animal. And that’s how Coyote got his cunning.
—A tale reported by E. W. Gifford in 1930.
[ALSEA]
Coyote had no wife, and nobody wanted him. So one day he decided that he would go to the coast to look for dried salmon to buy.
He wasn’t gone long when he came upon two frog women who were digging in the ground for camas. They called, “Where are you going?” He acted as if he didn’t hear. When they had yelled at him for a third time, he seemed to pay attention. “What do you want?” “Nothing. We’ve just been trying to ask you a question.” “What is it?” “Where are you going?” “I’m going to the coast to look for salmon.” “All right; are you going to leave us some on your way back?” “Certainly,” said Coyote. So he went on.
Now he was thinking, “I wonder how I’m going to play a trick on those two?” He hadn’t gone far when he saw some yellow-jacket wasps hanging on a branch. He went to their nest, took it off the tree, and closed it so that the yellow jackets could not fly out. Then, slipping it into his basket, he opened the nest again and tied the basket so that the wasps could fly around inside but not come out.
Coyote put the basket on like a pack and went back to the women digging for camas. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to them, so they shouted, “Hey, are you on your way home?” “Yes, I am on my way home.” �
�How much salmon are you bringing back?” “Not very much.” “You promised to leave some behind for us two.” “All right, come and get it.”
They came up, and he began to untie his pack. “You two put your heads inside this basket!” They did, whereupon he kicked the pack. The yellow jackets came out so angry that they stung the two frog women to death.
After the women had died, Coyote took off their vulvas and went on. Now whenever he felt like intercourse, he dug a hole in the ground, put those vulvas there, and then did it.
Pretty soon the two women came to life again. One began to examine herself and cried, “My vulva is gone! How about you?” The other looked, and hers was gone too! They agreed that it was Coyote who played the trick on them.
For this reason frogs, they say, have no female organs.
—Based on a tale from 1901.
COYOTE DANCES WITH A STAR
[CHEYENNE]
Because the Great Mystery Power had given Coyote much of his medicine, Coyote himself grew very powerful and very conceited. There was nothing, he believed, that he couldn’t do. He even thought he was more powerful than the Great Mystery, for Coyote was sometimes wise but also a fool. One day long ago, it came into his mind to dance with a star. “I really feel like doing this,” he said. He saw a bright star coming up from behind a mountain, and called out: “Hoh, you star, wait and come down! I want to dance with you.”
The star descended until Coyote could get hold of him, and then soared up into the sky, with Coyote hanging on for dear life. Round and round the sky went the star. Coyote became very tired, and the arm that was holding onto the star grew numb, as if it were coming out of its socket.
“Star,” he said, “I believe I’ve done enough dancing for now. I’ll let go and be getting back home.”
“No, wait; we’re too high up,” said the star. “Wait until I come lower over the mountain where I picked you up.”
Coyote looked down at the earth. He thought it seemed quite near. “I’m tired, star; I think I’ll leave now; we’re low enough,” he said, and let go.
Coyote had made a bad mistake. He dropped down, down, down. He fell for a full ten winters. He plopped through the earth clouds at last, and when he finally hit ground, he was flattened out like a tanned, stretched deerskin. So he died right there.
Now, the Great Mystery Power had amused himself by giving Coyote several lives. It took Coyote quite a few winters, however, to puff himself up again into his old shape. He had grown quite a bit older in all that time, but he had not grown less foolish. He boasted: “Who besides me could dance with stars, and fall out of the sky for ten long winters, and be flattened out like a deer hide, and live to tell the tale? I am Coyote. I am powerful. I can do anything!”
Coyote was sitting in front of his lodge one night, when from behind the mountain there rose a strange kind of star, a very fast one, trailing a long, shining tail. Coyote said to himself: “Look at that fast star; what fun to dance with him!” He called out: “Ho, strange star with the long tail! Wait for me; come down; let’s dance!”
The strange, fast star shot down, and Coyote grabbed hold. The star whirled off into the vastness of the universe. Again Coyote had made a bad mistake. Looking up from his lodge into the sky, he had had no idea of that star’s real speed. It was the fastest thing in the universe. It whirled Coyote around so swiftly that first one and then the other of his legs dropped off. Bit by bit, small pieces of Coyote were torn off in this mad race through the skies, until at last only Coyote’s right hand was holding onto that fast star.
Coyote fell back down to earth in little pieces, a bit here and a bit there. But soon the pieces started looking for each other, slowly coming together, forming up into Coyote again. It took a long time—several winters. At last Coyote was whole again except for his right hand, which was still whirling around in space with the star. Coyote called out: “Great Mystery! I was wrong. I’m not as powerful as you. I’m not as powerful as I thought. Have pity on me!”
Then the Great Mystery Power spoke: “Friend Coyote. I have given you four lives. Two you have already wasted foolishly. Better watch out!”
“Have pity on me,” wailed Coyote. “Give me back my right hand.”
“That’s up to the star with the long tail, my friend. You must have patience. Wait until the star appears to you, rising from behind the mountain again. Then maybe he will shake your hand off.”
“How often does this star come over the mountain?”
“Once in a hundred lifetimes,” said the Great Mystery.
—Retold from several North Californian fragments.
Animals are a swarming, talkative presence in the folklore of every Indian tribe. The number of tales in which they figure should not be surprising, given their major role in Indian mythology and religion. Their medicines are powerful, as are the emblems and tokens associated with them. We have seen a number of animals depicted as the creators of the universe and of the human race, and they freely move in and out of stories now as tricksters, now as culture bringers. In the Indian imagination there is no division between the animal and human spheres; each takes the other’s clothing, shifting appearances at will. Animals of different species speak freely not only to one another, but to humans as well. Some of today’s medicine men still claim to understand the language of certain animals. When a television interviewer laughed at Lame Deer’s suggestion that he could understand birds, he replied: “In your Good Book a lady talks to a snake. I, at least, speak to eagles.”
In the effort to merge the human and animal realms, marriages between the two are the natural result. All cultures across the continent depict bear spouses, and in addition to the buffalo (in the southwest and Plains) and the whale (in the northwest), the dog husband is also popular. In one story he is canine by day and human by night. When his wife has dog children, her tribe deserts her, but they return when it appears that these dog-boys are prospering far better than the starving humans. Such marriages are regarded with varying degrees of sympathy by the new human and animal in-laws, and don’t necessarily fare better or worse than normal ones.
Even though animals were essentially sacred, they still provided an important food source. Folklore supplies vivid emblematic links between nourishment and the relations of humans and animals. In British Columbia there is a story of a young man who marries a deer, magically becomes one himself, and provides venison to feed his people. Hunting was a solemn, ritual-laden undertaking. Before starting out, men of many tribes observed careful rules requiring fasts and sexual abstinence, and they performed elaborate ceremonies to secure a successful hunt. Among the Pueblos, further rituals were performed after a deer was slain, to thank the deer for letting itself be caught and to ensure future luck in the hunt. Thus animals and humans find themselves bound together in a living web of mutual aid and respect.
THE GREAT RACE
[CHEYENNE]
When the Great Mystery created the earth and all living things upon it, the people and the animals lived in peace. None, neither people nor animals, ate flesh. Now it happened in the course of many seasons that the buffalo began to think they were the most powerful beings in the world. They came to believe that this gave them the right to kill and eat other animals, and people as well. Then the people said: “This isn’t fair; we humans and the buffalo were created equal. But if it happens that one or the other must be the most powerful, then it should be us!”
The buffalo said. “Let’s get this settled. We should have a contest to see whether we eat you or you eat us. How about a race?”
The people said: “But in a race you have an unfair advantage; two legs can’t compete with four. Suppose we let the birds race for us. They have wings, you have four legs, that makes it more even.”
The buffalo said: “Agreed. We’ll choose our fastest runner, and you choose some birds to race for you.”
Then some of the other animals said: “We should have a chance to race too.”
“That�
��s right, it’s only fair,” said the buffalo and the people. So all living things went to a place at the edge of the Black Hills called Buffalo Gap. There they lined up for the race.
As their contestant the buffalo had chosen Running Slim Buffalo Woman, a young cow who was the fastest of all animals and had never been beaten in a footrace.
To race for them the human beings had chosen four birds: a hummingbird, a meadowlark, a hawk, and a magpie.
In those early days of the world, the birds and animals had no color. Now for the race they all painted themselves carefully, each creature according to its own medicine, its own vision. For example, the skunk painted a white stripe on its back, the black-tailed deer painted its tail black, the antelope took some red-brown earth and, mixing it with water, painted its whole hide. And as all the creatures painted themselves for this great race, so they have looked ever since.
Then the signal to race was given, and the crowd of runners started toward a hill which was the halfway point. Running Slim took off in a flash, with the buffalo cheering her on. For a while Hummingbird flew along with her, but soon he fell back exhausted and Meadowlark took over. Still, Running Slim kept far ahead, leading the great mass of racers with their thundering hooves. Though they had already covered a great distance, Running Slim was fresh.
AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS Page 45