mysteries, was dedicated the nocturnal and crafty coyote. Among the central Mexicans the animal was held in so high honor that it had a temple of its own, a congregation of priests devoted to its services, statues carved in stone, and an elaborate tomb at death. Religious significance attached to dogs and wolves in many ways throughout all tropical America, generally through some connection with the moon. On this side of the Mexican line (that is, in the United States) we find the coyote personified in the mythology of the red men as the Creator himself, or as his foremost agent; while here and there it is identified with the sun (which was the visible incarnation of the Creator to the minds of many), or associating with it and representing its demiurgic force.
This was the ancient coyote—the agile-brained and fleet-footed hill-dog of that old mythologic time, and in that wonderful “land of lost gods and godlike men.” The wolf of to-day is a howling pest, but that wolf's ancestor—the first of the line—was divine!
Among the Indians of the Great Basin speaking Shoshonee in any of its many dialects, the belief in animal-gods—a long list of them in varied relations and ranks—as the creators of the world, is at the foundation of religious belief. “By these animal-gods,” says Major Powell, “all things were established. The heavenly bodies were created and their ways appointed; and when the powers and phenomena of Nature are personified the personages are beasts, and all human institutions also were established by the ancient animal-gods.” In this theism the ancient rattlesnake, To-go-av, is the chief of the council, but Cin-aú-av, the coyote (or perhaps, there are two brothers of them as happens in so many myths the world over[1]), comes next in rank, and arranges mundane affairs. In one story the two discuss the matter of food, and decide that it is better that the Uinkareets shall work for a living than that they should be given a self-renewing store of fruits and roots, with honey-dew falling as the snow. In another the elder decided, against the younger brother's wish, that the dead could not return again; whereupon the younger Cin-aú-av killed the son of his brother, and long after taunted him with being the first to suffer by this cruel law. “Then the elder knew that the younger had killed his child; . . . and, as his wrath increased, the earth rocked, subterraneous groanings were heard, darkness came on, fierce storms raged, lightnings flashed, thunder reverberated through the heavens, and the younger brother fled in great terror to his father, Ta-vwots, for protection.”
An almost exact parallel to this story is to be found among the once powerful Nishinam Indians of Central California; but there the two brothers are represented by the coyote and the moon. The moon was good, but the coyote was bad. In making men the moon wished to fashion their souls so that when they died they should return to
- ↑ See Brinton's “Hero Myths,” and many other authorities in comparative mythology.
