A GREAT trickster was Manabozho. He loved to play jokes upon his friends of the forest.
One day he invited them all to a feast in his wigwam. And every one came, from the woodpecker and the tiny mouse, to the great moose with branching horns.
It was a time of scarcity of food, and all were glad to be asked to a banquet.
But the meat that Manabozho had ready for his guests, he had prepared by magic—though of that no one knew except himself.
When all had assembled, Manabozho gave to each a portion of meat. The woodpecker was the first to taste of his, and as he took the delicious looking morsel in his mouth, it turned to ashes on his tongue, so that he was choked and began to cough. But the meat looked so good, and he was so hungry that he tasted again, and again it turned to ashes and choked him.
Every guest had the same experience. The little mouse, the otter, the badger, the fox, the wolf, and even the moose tasted his portion and it turned to ashes on his tongue.
In vain the guests tried to be courteous and to stifle their coughing, but it grew worse and worse as first one and then another ate of the meat.
At length there was such a deafening noise in the wigwam, caused by the chorus of coughing and strangling from so many throats great and small, that Manabozho picked up a club in pretended anger. Threatening them with it, he drove them out of doors, where he changed them all to squirrels.
And that, the Indians tell us, is the reason that the squirrel coughs.