THE COYOTE WHO KILLED THE DEMON SÍUIUKI:
OR WHY COYOTES RUN THEIR NOSES INTO DEADFALLS
IT was very long ago, in the days of the ancients. There stood a village in the cañon south of Thunder Mountain where the Gods of Prey all lived with their sisters and mothers: the Mountain Lion, the great Black Bear, the Wildcat, the Gray Wolf, the Eagle, and even the Mole—all the Gods of Prey lived there together with their mothers and sisters. Day after day they went out hunting, for hunting was their business of life, and they were great hunters.
Now, right up on the edge of Thunder Mountain there lived a spotted Demon, named Síuiuki, and whenever the people of the towns round about went hunting, he lay in wait for them and ate them up.
After a long while the Gods of Prey grew discontented, and they said to one another: “What in the world can we do? None of the children of men ever make sacrifices to us, for, whenever our children among men go out hunting, this Demon who lives on the top of Thunder Mountain destroys them and eats them up. What in the world can be done?”
“It would be a good thing if we could kill him,” said some of them.
Now, just down below the house of the Demon, in Wolf Cañon, lived a Coyote, and he had found out where the Gods of Prey lived, and whenever he wanted a feast of sinew and gristle, he went below their houses and gnawed at the bones that they had thrown away, and thus it happened that when the gods were talking together in this way he was near their doorway gnawing a bone, and he heard all they said.
“Yes,” said one or two of the others, “and if anybody will go and kill Síuiuki, we will give him our sister to marry.”
“Aha!” said the Coyote to himself. “Ha, ha!”—and he dropped the bone he was gnawing and cut off for home as fast as ever he could.
Next morning, bright and early, he began to dig into the side of the cañon below the Demon’s home, and after he had dug a great hollow in the side of the arroyo, he rolled a heavy stone into it, and found another, which he placed beside it. Then he brought a great many leg-bones of deer and antelope. Then he found a large bowl and put a lot of yellow medicine-fluid in it, and placed it beside the rock. He then sat down and began to crack the leg-bones with the two stones he had brought there.