Coyote started on again. He came to a camp. He inquired about the location of the chief's camp. Someone told him, "See that tipi over there with the reddish smoke flap? That's where the chief lives."
Coyote went over there. He entered the tipi. A woman was in there. He said, "Your husband sent me over to fuck you."
"No, my husband wouldn't do that."
Coyote repeated it. So she went to bed with him. The husband was playing hoop and pole. When Coyote finished, he came out and yelled, "Do the cunts of all women look like those of the chief's wife?"
All the women in the camp heard him. They chased him around. Antelope Woman could run fast. She smelled pretty bad too. She could run fast, but she held herself back. Peccary Woman smelled bad too. She was big and fat. They chased Coyote and tired him out. Finally they caught him by the hair.
They dragged him back. All the women came. They took him under a tree and held his arms and legs. Each of the women crawled over him, pressing their cunts against him from his feet to his head. They made him smell. The Antelope Woman and the Peccary Woman came last.
When they started in, Coyote said, "I don't like to smell that stuff!" But they made him smell it. Those last two finished with Coyote, then they killed him.
His cock was sticking up. They all sat on him and fucked him. Pretty soon he had had enough. He begged to be let up. His penis went down. But they hit it on the end with a stick and it swelled up at the tip again and got large enough so they could fuck him again. They kept it up till they killed him. Then they threw him away.
That is why coyotes and dogs are that way now, and get stuck together when they have intercourse.
Happy 4th of July! I wanted to publish a Native story for a little relief.
This Coyote legend is one of hundreds of stories collected in the 1930s in a book called Myths and Legends of the Lipan Apache Indians, by Morris Edward Opler. I found it in my late father's library collection, where he indexed thousands and thousands of Coyote stories, from tribes all over the Americas.
Bill, my dad, was such a Coyote fan that he did his own book, A Coyote Reader, a collection of translations and contemporary takes on what Coyote is all about. He included authors like Leslie Silko, Gary Snyder, Wendy Rose, Peter Blue Cloud, and Simon Ortiz— even Mark Twain has something wonderful to say about Coyote.
I remember Bill was happy to say his was the first book from the University of California Press with the word "asshole" on the back cover copy. The reason Coyote is so unavoidably scatological and sexual is that... that's just the way he's been for the past four million years. The original stories are frequently involved with his shit, or his cock, or both. These stories weren't hidden from any age or temperament— they were like family jokes. Coyote is always horny and greedy, always making a mess of it, and always coming back from the dead. Remind you of anyone you know? ;-)
Photo: Coyote hits up Quiznos in Chicago.
