Free American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) by Richard Erdoes Page A

back with the spoon, the lake of soup was cleaned.
    Coyote tracked his partner by following the grease spots and found him asleep under a big shade tree with his rectum protruding. Old Man Coyote took a sharp pointed stick and pushed it through his partner’s rectum into the ground. Then he took some sticks and built a prairie fire to the windward of his sleeping partner. Old Man Coyote shouted that the prairie was on fire and the sleeping partner was quickly aroused, and dashed away to avoid being destroyed by the fire. As he ran, his intestines became unraveled and stretched out across the country. Old Man Coyote took the end of the rectum which was pinned to the ground and began to suck out the soup. He kept on sucking until all the soup had been taken, but he insisted that there must be more of it, and continued sucking, which caused Old Man Coyote to vomit all the soup.

DON’T BE TOO CURIOUS
    {Lakota}

    Shunka Manitou, Coyote, came walking along, scrounging, as usual. He met Mastincala, Rabbit, who was carrying a leather pouch on his back. “Hau, kola,” Coyote said, “toniktuka hwo? How are you?”
    “Middling well,” said Mastincala.
    Coyote wanted to know what was in the pouch. He guessed: “Oh, you have chanshasha [tobacco] in that pouch on your back. I sure would like something to smoke. Give me some. You’ve got more than you need for your size. You are small, I am big.”
    Rabbit did not answer. “Come on, you greedy, no good Hlete, don’t be stingy.” Rabbit walked on.
    “Hey, you long-eared fellow, let me see what you got there on your back!”
    “Nothing you would want,” Rabbit finally answered.
    “Well, let me see that nothing.”
    “No, you would be sorry. You would be angry with me.”
    Coyote was dying with curiosity. “If it’s not tobacco, what, then?” he insisted.
    “I said already that you would not want what is in this pouch,” said Rabbit.
    Then, in a big rage, Coyote tore the pouch from Rabbit’s back and opened it. The pouch was full of fleas, so many nobody could count them. They all went on Coyote. He ran off in a frenzy, scratching himself, howling.
    Rabbit yelled after him: “I told you so!” Ever since that time you can hear Coyotes howling all over the place. They howl because the fleas are biting and make them itch. That’s why they howl.

PART THREE
    COYOTE’S AMOROUS ADVENTURES

COYOTE’S AMOROUS ADVENTURES
    { Shasta }

    Once Coyote perceived two girls walking along the road; and he said to himself, “I should like to have these girls. I wonder how I can get them.” A small creek ran parallel to the road.
    “I will go into the creek and turn into a salmon,” said Coyote. He did so, and pretty soon the girls came to the creek. Upon seeing the salmon darting to and fro, one girl exclaimed, “Oh, here is a salmon! Let us catch it!” So the girls sat down on opposite banks of the river, and the salmon swam back and forth, entering their bodies.
    The elder girl said to her sister, “Do you feel anything queer?”
    And her sister answered: “Yes, I feel fine.”
    Thereupon Coyote came out of the creek in his true form, and laughed at the girls, saying, “You thought it was a salmon, but I fooled you.”

    The girls were angry, and cursed him.
    He kept on going downstream, and after a while he saw two girls digging camas on the other side of the river. He began to wonder how to get possession of them. He made his penis grow into a stalk going under the river and coming up on the other side like a plant. While the girls were bending over digging camas, the stalk entered between their legs. One of the girls then found a strange object on the ground and wanted to find out what the object was. So she looked around and saw a little stalk, which she tapped with her camas-digger.
    Thereupon Coyote began to yell from across the creek, because the stalk was part of his own body, and it hurt him when it was struck. He pulled it back.
    The girls, perceiving the