ONE TIME COYOTE WAS coming along and he saw a bunch of wild onions. To make them better he sat down over them and defecated. Then he looked them over very closely and said, “Whenever my aunts and uncles, the people, have nothing else to eat, they will eat these wild onions.”
This is how he worked.
He walked on a little farther and he heard a voice say, “Everybody eats me.”
He stopped and went back to some short grass growing by the river. “What did you say my little brother?” he asked. “Did you say everybody eats you?”
“Yes, everybody eats me.”
So, Coyote stooped down and dug up the root and ate it. In a while he began to break wind. At first he thought this was fun. He liked doing it. But every time he broke wind he was going up a little higher in the air. Finally he was going up so high he was grabbing the river willows to keep himself from blowing away. When he began to break the willows off he got frightened. He was going so high now he was grabbing the tops of the trees, but he couldn’t hold on to them either. He kept going up higher and higher then falling back to the ground. Every time he fell back he landed on his head.
Finally it was over. He lay down exhausted after he pulled his head out of the dirt. Now when he broke wind it was quiet, only a sound like this, “poo! poo!” When these noises got a little louder, Coyote got scared and ran into a hollow and lay down. He thought someone was shooting at him, but looking around he saw no one. Then he realized it was only himself. He got up and went on his way, breaking wind like that, “poo! poo!.”
At the edge of a creek he heard a voice like that other one. “They eat me.”
“What did you say, my little brother?”
“They eat me!”
“Well, let me try you.”
It was the white root, very sweet. Coyote forgot all about his other trouble and ate it. But the white root was a physic and soon Coyote began to defecate. He defecated until it almost killed him. He had to climb into the trees to get away from the mess he was making. Finally he got on top of a log that projected out over a hollow. He defecated there until he fainted and fell off. When he woke up he managed to crawl over to the river and wash himself off. He wasn’t defecating anymore now. He started home.
He had gone a long way and was now out on the plains. Suddenly someone took a shot at him. Bang! He jumped and looked all around. More shots followed. “I am Coyote!” he called, trying to guard himself. But he could see no enemy. He turned around every time he heard the shots, but he could see no one. This went on all afternoon until he had to lay down to rest. At last he guessed what the trouble was. He was breaking wind.
“Well, these little brothers of mine don’t agree with me after I eat them,” said Coyote. “Now everyone knows.”