' 37 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



drought parched the land, during which a famous coyote and his two 

 sons ate many grasshoppers — all the animal life there was left. The 

 only water was in Clear Lake, and thither they journeyed. The sons 

 died on the way, but the father reached the lake and drank it dry. 

 Then he lay down and fell asleep. As he slept, there came a man from 

 the south and pricked him with a spear, so that the waters flowed forth 

 from him and returned to the lake until it was full again, while the 

 grasshoppers he had eaten became fishes. There are other legends 

 accounting for this deep and beautiful piece of water in which the 

 coyote is made to exercise supreme functions. 



In the early days of the earth, as a Gallinomero philosopher will 

 teach you, all Nature was wrapped in darkness, and there was dire con- 

 fusion and endless collisions, one of which brought the coyote and 

 hawk together. Instead of indulging idle recriminations, they con- 

 sulted how they could improve this state of things. The coyote 

 groped his way into a swamp and gathered a quantity of dry tides 

 which he rolled into a large ball. This he gave to the hawk, with 

 some flints, and sent him up into heaven with it, where he touched it 

 off and sent it whirling round the earth. This was the sun. The 

 moon they made in the same way, only the tides happened to be 

 damp and did not burn so well. There is a legend current among the 

 Papagos on the Gila River, Arizona, of a deluge from which only their 

 great myth-hero Montezuma (not to be confounded with the veritable 

 Aztec emperor whom Cortes saw) and the coyote escaped. The coy- 

 ote had foretold this deluge, and Montezuma had hollowed out a 

 canoe, while the coyote prepared for himself an ark in a hollow cane. 



The Ashochimi preserve a legend of a flood which drowned all liv- 

 ing creatures except the coyote. Seeking out over all the world the 

 sites of the antediluvian villages, he gathered the floating tail-feathers 

 of hawks, owls, and buzzards, and planted one wherever a wigwam 

 had stood. In due time these feathers sprouted, branched, and finally 

 turned into men and women. 



The Pitt-River (California) Indians have a somewhat similar story. 

 Their coyote began the earth by scratching it up out of nothingness. 

 Then the eagle complained that he had no perch, whereupon the coyote 

 scratched up great ridges. When the eagle flew over them his feathers 

 dropped down, took root, and became trees, and the pin-feathers bushes 

 and plants. After men had been created, they were freezing for want 

 of fire, stole some of it, and kindled a fire in the mountains, to which 

 the Indians resorted. The Shastika say that originally the sun had 

 nine brothers flaming hot with fire, so that the world was likely to 

 perish, but the coyote slew them, and saved mankind from burning 

 up. There were ten moons also, all made of ice, so that in the night 

 people nearly froze to death. Nine of these the coyote slew with his 

 flint knife, carrying heated stones to keep his hands warm. 



The Miwok possess a very elaborate myth of the creation of man, in 



