COYOTE WAS WALKING ALONG the edge of a river and he came on some ripe plums. Farther down the shore he saw a lodge with a little smoke coming out of the top. He picked a few red plums and went over there. There were four women inside with their children.
“Coyote, what brings you over here to see us?”
“Oh, my sisters and nieces, I have brought you some fine ripe plums. I found them up the river, just a little ways from here. I am surprised you didn’t see them. They are very good to eat.” He gave them some plums and the women thanked him. Coyote made himself at home.
The women were all nursing their children. “Sisters,” said Coyote, “make these children go to sleep and I will watch them while you go up and get some more of these plums.”
So the women made hammocks inside the lodge for the children to sleep in and put their babies there.
As soon as they had gone, Coyote took the big kettle down to the river and filled it with water and hung it up on a tripod over the fire to boil. While the babies slept he sneaked over and cut their heads off. He put the bodies in the kettle and put the heads back in the hammocks, just sticking out of the blankets a little.
The women came back, bringing many plums in big rawhide bags. “Sisters, while you were gone I went out a little way from here and found a den of gray wolves. I took them out and killed them all. They make very good eating. I have them boiling and they will be ready in just a minute.”
The women thanked him for supplying them with all this meat.
“Well,” he said, “this has been hard work. I am sweating with all this cooking. I think I’ll go outside and cool myself off a little. When the wolves are done you can help yourselves.”
Coyote went outside and sat down. He stuck the corner of his blanket back in the door so they could see he was still there.
When the meat was done the women spooned it out. They looked at each other in a funny way but finally began eating.
“Sisters,” said one woman, “this meat tastes like our children.”
“Oh! Don’t say a thing like that. It is a very bad idea to talk like that,” said another woman. “This meat tastes strange because it is from gray wolves.”
“Surely, Sisters, this meat tastes like our children,” said a second woman after a while.
Coyote cut off the corner of his blanket and left it sticking in the door of the lodge and ran off.
After he got a good distance away he shouted to the women, “I have fooled you. You have been eating your own children. I boiled them up and you ate them!”
The women ran to the hammocks but found only the heads of their children. They began to cry and cut their flesh with grief. But these women were bears, too, and they went right after Coyote.
Coyote was running but they were very close to him. He called on his power to make a tunnel he could run into. Just then a tunnel opened up and he ran in and came out the other side and turned around and closed the end up with rocks and brush. Then he put mud over one of his eyes and changed the way he was dressed and went around to the front of the tunnel just as the Bear Women were coming up.
“Hey, Sisters, what is the trouble. What is going on here?” He told them his name was One-eyed Sioux.
“Coyote has fooled us. While we were picking plums he cut our children’s heads off and cooked their bodies for us in a kettle. We’re after him. He went in this tunnel.”
The women were very angry but they were crying, too, and a little out of breath.
“You look tired. Let me go in that tunnel after him while you rest here. I’ll fetch him right out. He shouldn’t have done this.”
He went in but came right out and told the women that Coyote was in there and looked very strong. The women told him not to go in, but he said he would fight him anyway. He went back in the tunnel. The women heard a lot of yelling and howling inside. Finally he came out with his hands and face all scratched up and his clothing torn.
“Say, women, he is a terrible man, but I am going to try again for you.” But the women said no, that they had better go in themselves.
“All right,” said One-eyed Sioux. “I’ll watch right here.”
The women went into the tunnel. One-eyed Sioux gathered up a lot of sticks and started a fire at the entrance to the tunnel. Then he heard one of the women say, “I think there is a fire outside.”
“No,” said One-eyed Sioux, “that is just the crackling birds flying by.”
He then put more sticks on the fire which made it smoky in the tunnel.
“I guess there must be a fire outside because it is getting smoky in here,” said the women.
“No,” called out One-eyed Sioux, “the smoking birds have just gone by.”
He was still piling wood up on the fire. The smoke became so thick inside the tunnel that the Bear Women were smothered to death. After he heard no more sounds, he went in and found the four women dead. He brought them all out and cooked them up for himself.
“I was very lucky to find these bears like this,” he said to himself. “I like bear meat. You don’t find this kind of food laying around. It’s work.”