Traditions of the Arikara

37. THE MAN WHO MARRIED A COYOTE.[38]

A long time ago there was a war-party that started out from the Arikara country toward the south. They were found by the enemy and attacked. One man was killed and the others all returned home. After many years this man who was killed rose from where he was lying, for he had not really been killed, but was simply stunned by falling onto hard ground. He had not been scalped. After this man came to, he wandered over the prairies and fell in with the Coyotes. He finally married a Coyote, and lived with her for several years.

One day some men went hunting, and they saw a mysterious being crossing the Missouri River. The warriors went down and surrounded this mysterious being and caught him. He was not scalped, nor wounded, but he had changed his ways so that he could live with the Coyotes, and he was almost like an animal. The people begged him to go home, saying that his wife and children were well and that his wife was not married again. But he said: “I know; but I cannot, for I am married.” They took him notwithstanding, and they gave him medicines. He became well, and he entered the medicine-lodge. The man asked permission to do some sleight-of-hand, and the medicine-men gave him the privilege to do so. He took a man, went around the lodge and vomited up a lot of hair, white clay, and other things. After all this had come out of him he was cleansed from being a Coyote. He continued with the sleight-of-hand, and he told the people that he was going to call his wife; that his wife was the one that he was afraid of, and this was the reason he had not returned home. So he went up onto the top of the lodge and shouted and shouted; then he went around to the west and shouted; then to the north and to the east; then he came into the lodge, and said, “My wife is far away.” He went out again and shouted to the northwest, and after a while the people heard the Coyotes away off. They kept coming nearer and nearer, and the people ran away. The Coyotes kept on coming, and the people ran into the lodge. The Coyote whom the man had married came into the lodge. When she entered the lodge she went around to the northeast of the fireplace, by way of the south, west, and north, and then to the northeast, and there she took her place. “This,” said the man, “is my wife.” The men called her names, saying: “You long-nosed thing! Why did you not come? Why do you run off so far away?” The leading medicine-man now arose. A pipe was given to him filled with native tobacco. He made some smoke to the Coyote woman. After the smoke the Coyote woman left the lodge and went off to join the other Coyotes. The people saw this female Coyote, and now knew that this man did have a Coyote woman.

Many years afterwards this same man was roaming over the prairies, when a blizzard blew up. Just a little before sunset he came to a bank of snow, and there lay one of his baby Coyotes. He went to pick up the baby, but as he was so cold, he let the baby Coyote stay in the snow, and he went home. After he had warmed himself he went out to see if the baby was still in the snow, but when he got there, there was no baby at all.