THE STORY OF THE OLD COYOTE.
Doctor West says by way of introduction: Of Nez Perces folk lore I had heard only detached bits, but enough to learn that Coyote—"Old Coyote"—was the medium through which their flights of imagination found vent. Old Coyote was all that the subject of imaginative tales should be; at one time endowed with power almost godlike, at other times, the butt for some merry jest, or even ridicule. He could change form at will, and also produce rivers, canyon, or plain, by a simple motion. Yet at times he would walk into a predicament so palpable that a child would have shown surprise. I often asked Ilitamkat (James Grant) for Coyote stories, but he put me off with a laughing "some time.' One evening, however, as the log fire crackled and roared in the fireplace, and the pipe of peace had gone the rounds, he said, "Well, I tell you the story of Old Coyote."
He did, and I inscribe it here with all the Indian idioms and terseness of phraseology, but I. can not transmit the gestures and sign language which made it so realistic.
He continued: "It is a beautiful story—the best story ever told,—a story that has been handed down among my people for hundreds of years, yet we have no written record as has the white man. The old men tell it to their children around the camp fire in the evening, and these in their turn transmit it to their children, and thus it has come from long, long ago, to the present day.
"Well, a long time ago, before there were any human beings, a monster stood by Kamiah—Iltswowich, Indian name. It faced south. This monster was B-I-G,—so big that when it breathe all living animals near by were drawn in, and go down its throat; when monster stand
