FABLES OF ANIMALS. 341 
ORIGIN OF INCREMATION. 
The moon and the coyote wrought together in creating all things that 
exist. The moon was good, but the coyote was bad. In making men and 
women, the moon wished to so fashion their souls that when they died they 
should return to the earth after two or three days, as he himself does when 
he dies. But the coyote was evil disposed, and he said that this should not 
_be, but that when men died their friends should burn their bodies, and once 
a year make a great mourning for them. And the coyote prevailed. So, 
_ presently when a deer died, they burned his body, as the coyote had 
decreed, and after a year they made a great mourning for him. But the 
moon creat2d the rattlesnake, and caused it to bite the coyote’s son, so that 
he died. Now, though the coyote had been willing to burn the deer’s rela- 
tions, he refused to burn his own son. Then the moon said unto him: 
“This is your own rule. You would have it so, and now your son shall be 
burned like the others.” So he was burned, and after a year the coyote 
mourned for him. Thus the law was established over the coyote also, and, 
as he had dominion over men, it prevailed over men likewise. 
This story is utterly worthless for itself, but it has its value, in that it 
shows there was a time when the California Indians did not practice crema- 
tion, which is also established by other traditions. It hints at the additional 
fact that the Nishinam to this day set great store by the moon, consider it 
their benefactor in a hundred ways, and observe its changes for a hundred 
purposes. 
THE BEAR AND THE DEER. 
At first all the animals ate only earth, but afterward the clover grew, 
and then they ate that also. There were no men yet, or rather all men 
were yet in the forms of animals. One day the bear and the deer went out 
together to pick clover. The bear pretended to see a louse on the deer’s 
neck, and the deer bent down her head to let the bear catch it, but the bear 
cut her head off, scratched out her eyes, and threw them into her basket 
among the clover. When she went home and emptied her basket, the 
deer’s children saw the eyes, and knew they were their mother’s. So they 
studied revenge. 
On another day, when the bear was pounding earth in a mortar for 
