When they were ready to throw the kints the young man said, "Your cane is looking at me very sharply; I would like to have it turned the other way."
Sandy Coyote replied, "No one can move it in any way. I can not, nor can you."
"Well, suppose I pull it out and turn it the other way, then I shall win the wager; and if I can not, then you shall win."
The other agreed; so he got up and moved the cane around as he wished, thus winning the final wager. Then the young man grasped Sandy Coyote by the hair and shook him until he dropped down dead. Taking all that he had won, the young man went home.
After a time his mother said she would like to go to where her people were living. After some preparation they started on their journey. At the end of the first day they camped. During the night the mother turned herself into a gray spider. The second day they went on again and camped in the evening. That night the elder wife turned herself into a black spider. At the end of the next day's journey they camped again, and that night the remaining wife turned herself into a yellow spider. The young man was left alone the next day, but he hoped to reach his mother's people, and so journeyed on until nightfall, when he camped. During the night he turned himself into a rough black lizard.
Even to this day Coyote is known as the wise one. It is dangerous to kill or harm him, for he will avenge himself by stealing or doing worse mischief. He knows well the house of the one who tries to injure him, no matter where the deed may have been performed. And yet he is not always unfriendly, for if he is heard to cry out as if jumping it is a warming that the Apaches are near and danger menaces.
ANOTHER VERSION OF THE CREATION MYTH[1]
before the earth was made nothing but darkness. It has been found only wind blows came rolling from one place to another, nothing but wind. at the time there was a man in the darkness alone. and has told that this man was wandering from point to point.
This has been for quite awhile. and no pleace for to rest on. So the man feel himself and know that he was a man by himself. and more of he found a push called (Shiquia)[2] and after he found this, and he call (Shiquia)
And also he made the earth. and so he call himself a God. now at the
- ↑ It seems worth while to present here the version of the cosmogonical myth which was written for the author by a young Pima who had learned to write English during the term of several years which he spent at a Government school. It illustrates the confusion existing in the minds of the younger generation; to some extent, also, the order of words in the Pima sentence, as well as the difficulties that must speedily beset the ethnological investigator as soon as the older people shall have gone.
- ↑ Rsukoi.
