12. COYOTE OF THE LOWER COUNTRY.
(cont.)Coyote said, "What if your parents refuse to pay me? If I cure you, I want you to marry me in payment." The girl agreed to this, so he began to treat her. He sang a song: -
Eke neke tatése. Eke neke tatése.
I will bite and pull it out, I will bite and pull it out.The horn was projecting just enough to offer a hold for his teeth. So Coyote took hold of it in this way, and easily pulled it out. Coyote gathered some roots and leaves, and pounded them up and put them on the wound. In a few days the girl was well. Then she married Coyote, and they followed up the camps till they came upon the rest of the people.
In that camp there was another Coyote, who made a speech to the people, relating how the girl that had been left behind was in camp again after having been cured by a strange Coyote. In reality, this affair was not to the liking of the Coyote who made the speech. While the strange Coyote and his wife were staying at the camp, preparations were under way to send out a war-party, and singing was taking place. So this Coyote told his wife that he too was going to war, but for her to continue with him until camp was broken. That night, however, she did not come back to him: she had eloped with another.
Coyote felt very badly over this, and said, "Well, I feel pretty badly. Still the thing cannot be helped. Others will feel as badly as I when they go to the Buffalo country and their wives run away from them." Sadly he went back to his former home, and since that time wives have often run away from their husbands in the Buffalo country.
The man used to go hunting, and the woman used to go digging for roots. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The woman came home in the evening tired out and thirsty; and she asked the children to fetch her some water, but they refused to go for it. Now, her husband had left some feathers hanging to a lodge-pole. She told the children she would become a raven if they did not fetch her water, but still they refused to go: so she stuck the feathers along her arms, and flew out of the smoke-hole of the lodge.
When the man came home, he asked the children where their mother was. At first they did not like to tell him, but after a while they decided to tell him the truth. He scolded them, and said, "You are wicked children, and I do not wish to live with you any longer." So he turned himself into an old flint-lock gun.
Now, these children had often heard their father talk about their grandfather, who lived not far away. They left their home and took the trail. On the way an Owl-Monster (Palxhotske)2 saw them. When they were aware that the Owl-Monster had seen them, they turned up a piece of moss, crawled under it, and became grubs. Then the Owl-Monster searched for them, and finally found the two grubs. He put them into his pack-bag, and carried them off upon his back.
The little girl said to the little boy, "Let us try something!" So they changed their voices, and shouted from afar off. They called out, "The Imnaha widow's children are on fire!" Then they changed themselves into real persons, and were heavy to carry. Pretty soon the Owl-Monster grew very tired, and she stopped and hung up the bag upon the limb of a tree. She wanted to get home at once to her children. When she was out of sight, the children kicked the bag to pieces, and obtained their freedom. Then they ran as fast as they could toward the place where their father had told them their grandfather lived. When they came to the side of the river opposite his lodge, they called out for him to come over and rescue them from a monster that pursued them. The first time he paid no attention to their cries; and the second time he told them that he had no grandchildren except those whose mother had become a raven, and whose father had become a flint-lock gun.
When the Owl-Monster found that her children were safe, she hastened back to her bag, and learned that the children had escaped. She tracked them down towards the river. But when the Owl Monster was almost there, the grandfather recognized his grandchildren, and stretched his leg out across the river, and then drew it back with the children upon it. He hid them under a canoe he was hewing out.
Then the Owl-Monster came to the river-bank and shouted to be taken across. The old man grew tired. So he asked Butterfly (xlapslap), Crawfish (tiila), Mussel (sewis), Bullhead (kusus), and Swallow (laulixtix) to go over and get the Owl-Monster. They had a canoe made of wild-parsnip (ais). When they asked her to step in, the boat was so unsteady that she was afraid, and stepped out again. So they told her the canoe would run steady if she tied rocks around her neck and body. She did this; and when she stepped aboard, the canoe was very steady. They pushed off; and about the middle of the river, Crawfish split the canoe, and the Owl-Monster went to the bottom and was drowned.
1 See p. 176.
2 The meaning of this word is "robber." This monster was a timber owl, who lived on the Imnaha River and called to persons from afar.
