162 THE POMO. 
LEGEND OF THE COYOTE. 
Once upon a time there lived a man among the Yuki of the Black 
Chief’s tribe, fierce and terrible, with two sons like to himself, bloody- 
minded and evil men. For their great wickedness he and his two sons 
were turned into coyotes. Then they started from Rice’s Fork and jour- 
neyed southward, biting and slaying all the beasts they came upon. As 
they passed over the defile to come into Potter Valley, one of the coyote’s 
sons drank so much water from the spring near the summit that he died, 
and his father buried him, and heaped over him a cairn of stones, and wept 
‘for his son. Then they journeyed on through Potter Valley and went 
down to Clear Lake, and there the other son drank so much water that he 
. died also, and his father buried him and wept sore. Then the father turned 
back and went on alone to a place called White Buttes, and came unto it, 
and discovered there much red alabaster, of which the Pomo make beads 
to this day, which, among them, are to the shell-beads as gold to silver. 
And when he had discovered the red alabaster at White Buttes his hair and 
his tail dropped off his body, he stood up on his hind legs and became a 
man again. 
In this silly fable I can discern no other significance than the super- 
stitious belief of its inventors, that for an evil action a human being may 
be punished by transmutation into a beast, and that for a good one he may 
be restored. 
