Coyote creates mischief

At a Glance

• Central figures: Coyote, the trickster who walks between the animal people and the shaping of the world; the ducks who swim on the lake; the prairie dogs whose village Coyote visits.
• Setting: Plains and Great Basin traditions, told widely among the Crow, Shoshone, and other peoples of the Northern Plains and intermountain West; the story takes place in the time when the animal people still spoke and the world’s arrangements were not yet fixed.
• The turn: Coyote, hungry and jealous, tricks the ducks into closing their eyes during a dance so he can kill and eat them, then falls asleep guarding his meal and loses it to the prairie dogs.
• The outcome: Coyote’s greed undoes itself at every step - he gains food through deception only to have it stolen by a lesser trick while he sleeps, and he is left with nothing but burned fur and an empty stomach.
• The legacy: The story accounts for why Coyote’s tail has a singed, ragged look and why the prairie dogs live underground - they went into their holes to hide from Coyote’s rage and never came back out.

Coyote was walking along the edge of a lake. He had not eaten in two days. His ribs showed. His tongue hung out and his eyes were flat and mean with hunger, the way they got when he started thinking.

On the lake, a group of ducks swam in a loose circle, dipping their heads, pulling up weeds, shaking water off their backs. Fat ducks. Their feathers were sleek and they moved slowly because they had been eating all morning. Coyote sat down on the bank and watched them. He licked his teeth. Then he stood up and walked into the willows to make his plan.

The Closed-Eye Dance

Coyote came out of the willows carrying a bundle of rushes on his back, tied up with bark string. He walked along the shore where the ducks could see him, whistling to himself, not looking at them.

One of the ducks called out. “Coyote, what is in that bundle?”

“Songs,” Coyote said. He kept walking.

“What kind of songs?”

Coyote stopped as if he had only just noticed them. “New songs,” he said. “I learned them from a people on the other side of the mountains. They are dance songs. Very powerful. But I need dancers.” He shrugged and started walking again.

The ducks looked at each other. They liked dancing. They paddled closer to shore.

“We could dance,” said the lead duck.

Coyote turned around slowly. “You would have to do exactly what I say. The song only works if the dancers keep their eyes shut. That is the rule. If anyone opens their eyes, the song breaks apart and something terrible happens.”

The ducks talked among themselves. They agreed. They came out of the water, waddling up onto the bank, and Coyote arranged them in a circle. He set down his bundle and began to sing. It was not a real song - it was just noise Coyote made up, a low droning chant that sounded ceremonial if you did not listen too carefully. The ducks closed their eyes and began to dance, shuffling in a circle, bobbing their heads.

Coyote danced behind them. As each duck passed him, he reached out and wrung its neck. He was quick and quiet. He laid the bodies in a row.

But one small duck - a mud hen, the kind that sits at the edge of things and watches - opened one eye. She saw the row of dead ducks. She saw Coyote’s hands.

She screamed. “He is killing us! Open your eyes! Fly!”

The remaining ducks opened their eyes and burst into the air, wings beating water and dirt. They were gone. Coyote threw a stone after them but missed. He looked at what he had. Seven ducks. It was enough.

The Fire and the Sleep

Coyote built a fire on the lakeshore. He plucked the ducks and buried them in the coals to roast, the way he liked - pushed down into the hot sand beneath the fire, where the heat would cook them slowly. He piled more wood on top.

Then he sat back. The fire was warm. His stomach hurt with wanting. The smell of roasting duck came up through the coals. Coyote’s eyes got heavy.

He told himself he would not sleep. He told his eyes to stay open. He told his tail to watch the fire - he said this out loud, speaking to his own tail as if it were a separate person. “Tail, you watch. If anyone comes, slap the ground and wake me.”

Then he slept.

He slept hard, the way only the truly hungry sleep when warmth finally reaches them.

The Prairie Dogs’ Theft

A village of prairie dogs lived in a network of burrows just beyond the lakeshore. They had smelled the cooking. They came out of their holes one at a time, standing on their hind legs, noses twitching. They saw Coyote asleep by the fire. They saw the coals and the shapes of the buried ducks underneath.

The prairie dogs crept forward. They were small and their feet made no sound. They dug into the hot sand carefully, pulling out the roasted ducks one by one. The meat was done. It came apart in their paws. They carried the ducks back to their burrows, piece by piece, passing the meat down into the dark where Coyote could not reach.

They left the bones. They pushed the bones back into the coals and covered them up again so the shapes looked right.

Coyote’s tail lay in the dirt. It did not move. The prairie dogs stepped over it.

The Bones in the Coals

Coyote woke up. The fire had burned low. The smell of duck was everywhere - on the ground, in the air, on him. His mouth watered. He pushed his hands into the coals and pulled out the first shape.

Bones. Nothing but bones, clean and dry, the meat stripped away.

He pulled out the second. Bones.

The third. Bones.

All seven. Nothing left but the skeleton frames with a little grease on them. Coyote sat in the ash holding a duck carcass in each hand, staring. Then he looked at his tail.

“I told you to watch!”

He grabbed his tail and shoved it into the coals. The fur singed and smoked and Coyote yelped and yanked it out, but the damage was done. The tip of his tail was blackened and ragged.

He looked toward the prairie dog village. The mounds of dirt were still. Every hole was empty - the prairie dogs had pulled themselves underground the moment they finished eating. Coyote ran to the nearest hole and shoved his nose in. Too small. He dug with his front paws, throwing dirt behind him, but the tunnels branched and twisted and the prairie dogs were deep in the earth where he could not follow.

Coyote sat back on his haunches. His stomach was empty. His tail hurt. The lakeshore was quiet. The ducks were not coming back and neither was the meat.

He stood up, shook the ash from his fur, and started walking. His tail dragged behind him - singed at the tip, ragged, the way it has looked ever since. The prairie dogs stayed underground. They stay underground still.