Wishram texts / by Edward Sapir ; together with Wasco tales and myths, collected by Jeremiah Curtin and edited by Edward Sapir.

  • Edward Sapir
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Wishram texts / by Edward Sapir ; together with Wasco tales and myths, collected by Jeremiah Curtin and edited by Edward Sapir. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    III. COYOTE STORIES.' j. Coyote deceives Eagle, and stocks the Columbia WITH Fish.- I. Eagle’s grandfather was Coyote. Eagle was hunting most of the time in the mountains, and when he came home one day, Coyote said to him, “I have found some- thing for you, — a nest of eagles on a rock. They have nice feathers for arrows.” Next day they went out to a rock, and Coyote said, “Take off your clothes.” Eagle was handsomely dressed in beads, had long shells all over his leggings and robe. He took off his clothes and went up the rock. He pulled the feathers out, tied them in a bundle, put the bundle on his back, then looked down and saw that he was very high up; the rock had gone up nearly to the sky. Then ' In these myths Coyote appears in his dual capacity of culture-hero and un- successful trickster. With them are to be compared Chinook Texts, pp. 101-106, 110-112; Kathlamet Texts, pp. 45-49, 79-89, 148-154; Wishram, pp. 3-49, 49-5L 67-75, 95-99, 99-i03, 105-107, 107-117, 123-127, 133-139, 145-147, 149-153, 161, of this volume. It will be seen that the mythological importance of Coyote increases as we ascend the Columbia and approach the Great Basin area, his place on the coast (Chinook and Quinault) being largely taken by Bluejay. A few of the incidents that in Wishram appear woven into a loosely jointed culture- hero composite are here found as separate myths or amalgamated with quite differ- ent elements; compare Wishram, pp. 3-7 and 41-43 of this volume, with the second part of this story and with Story 2, p. 267. 2 Two absolutely distinct myths have here been welded into one. For the first part, compare Gatschet, The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon, Con- tributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. 2, Pt. i, pp. 94-97 (Eagle and his grandfather Coyote respectively correspond to A'ishish and his father K’mukamtch of the Klamath myth); Teit, Traditions of the Thompson River Indians, p. 21; Teit, The Shuswap (Publications of the Jesup Expedition, Vol. II, pp. 622, 737). This is distinctly a myth of the Plateau region, and presumably adapted by the Wasco to the Coyote and Eagle cycle. For the second part, compare Wishram, PP- 3-7 of this volume; Spinden, Myths of the Nez Perce Indians (Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XXI, pp. 15, i6)- [264]