Traditions of the Arikara

Chapter 107: FOOTNOTES:

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About This Book

A collection of Arikara myths and oral narratives gathers creation accounts, emergence variants, and a long series of transformer legends that explain origins of people, animals, dances, and sacred objects. Stories recount land brought into being by animal and culture figures, people fashioned by spiders, visits of a corn spirit, escapes from buffalo, marriages between humans and celestial or animal beings, and the deeds of trickster figures alongside a recurrent culture-hero poor boy. Many tales also serve as etiologies for ceremonies, dances, medicine societies, and ritual powers, often linking human life with animal and cosmic forces.

52. THE COYOTE RIDES THE BEAR.[53]

The Coyote was going along through the timber, and he met a Bear. The Coyote made all kinds of threats against the Bear, and finally got on his back and rode him. All at once the Coyote jumped off and said, “You can go your way, and I will go mine!” The Coyote went up on the top of a hill, to see if the Bear was still going, but he did not see him. Then the Coyote yelled, and said, “You Bear, you claim to be a fierce animal, and here I have ridden upon your back!” The Bear, hearing this, became mad. He turned around, and said: “I will kill that being, whoever he is. No matter where he goes, I will follow him.” So the Bear ran up the hill, and when the Coyote saw the Bear coming he ran. The Bear caught up with the Coyote on the next hill, and killed the Coyote and tore him up.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Told by Antelope.