Legends of Our Nation

Continued from last week.

The Coyote’s proposal seemed sensible enough. A little too pat, the Great Shaman said to himself; but think as he might, he could find no objection. Even the most doubting among them approved of the idea. The coyote was smiling friendly. If only they knew. In the meantime, the Indians had run off to fetch their bows and arrows, bringing as many as they could carry. Then the best marksmen prepared to shoot. Whizz, the first arrow whistled over their heads and pierced a low cloud. It was immediately followed by another, which split the first arrow all the way up to its feather ornament and stuck fast.

The animals looked on in admiration as the Indians displayed their marksmanship. Not a single arrow went astray. The coyote ran about under the bowmen’s legs, getting in the way and giving advice as if it had been he who had taught them to shoot.

Now the long line of arrows reached down as far as the Sacred Rock. The Great Shaman rose from his tree stump, and he pulled at the arrows to test their strength. They held firm, strong enough to take even a bear’s weight.

By this time dusk had set in, and the Great Shaman motioned with his hand for the crowd to break up and go home.

“Go to sleep now, but as from this day, death will be here with us; it is you who have to decide so. I shall now open a door in the Sacred Rock for death to come through, and those whom it chooses will climb up to heaven to stay for a certain time.”

Night settled over the countryside – the first night in which death walked the Indian country, the first night during which an old badger died in his den, a lonely hunter in his cabin, and an eagle in his nest high up among the rocks.

The dead walked in the dark to the Sacred Rock, and before dawn the last of them had vanished inside the hole in the star-filled sky.

Time passed. Soon the weeping of the saddened could be heard everywhere, and many went to the Great Shaman for advice. But even he was powerless to help for the time being.

“We must wait for the stars to sink a little lower.” He told all comers. “As they are now, they cannot hear us calling.”

Night after night, therefore, people as well as animals fixed their eyes on the sky, waiting for the return of those who had left them. Only the coyote was nowhere to be seen. He had taken to his hiding place and those who passed by it heard strange grating noises coming from inside. They wondered what the old rascal might be doing, but mostly they were convinced that he was afraid to come out in case they wanted to punish him for his little prank that had caused all the trouble.

However, a new and even more cowardly plan had taken shape in that crooked skull of his. The coyote had brought sharp-edged stones to his lair and now spent long days sharpening his teeth on them, making his fangs sharper than the Indian tomahawk. It was this that produced those strange sounds that could be heard coming from his lair.

Continued next week.