Navajo Coyote Tales by Father Berard Haile O. F. M

Author:Father Berard Haile, O. F. M. [Haile, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8032-7473-0
Publisher: Nebraska
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

13 After starting out with a pack of venison, sitting down for a rest, was taboo. Curly

16

Changing Bear Maiden

115. Meanwhile the men, who had gone on the hunt and whom he had left to go home, returned from their hunt and, again, reached their sister’s home. But she, it seems, (said): “Where did he go who accompanied you?” asked the Maiden-who-becomes-a-bear. “What does that mean? Why! He started to return here with the pack long ago!” “You must have killed him that you say this. ‘He already started to return here’ you say, when the fact is (that) you have killed him! The fact is, you hate him, you despise him, I know it!” “He certainly did start to return, I tell you! He took a pack with him,” said the oldest of them. “No doubt you have killed him that you say this. Of course you hated him, of course you despised him, and (now) you say this!” she said. “He started to return, I tell you! He already started this way with a pack, he did, for a fact! For which reason should we have a grudge against him?” he said. After that she spoke wildly: “You do hate him, you do despise him, I know it,” she said. And so they left her and walked out.

116. On the east side stood a mountain, small in size. And here, when dawn appeared in the distance, her growling could be heard and at sunrise, she returned crawling out—with (hands) wooly from the wrists up, (much) like bear paws. Of her deer-bone awl, which (she used at home), she made teeth. What was her heart, her veins, her breath, her blood, she had buried somewhere in the ground. From here she dashed off over the surface of the earth, all day long, seeking in vain until sunset, they noticed. She had come to the Swift People, they learnt, and found trouble as they filled her with their arrows. But without her blood, without her breath, without her heart, without her nerves, and thus without her life breath, she was able to do (to survive) this. At the time she had made Coyote her husband, him who had come to life again after being killed four times, and who had swallowed his breath, his heart, his nerves, his blood, and had forced them to the tip of his tail, this whole (knowledge) was placed in her, and she had mastered it all. Now, I suppose, she was using it.

117. And so she reached home, fuzzy with the arrows of the Swift People. Here she stacked a big fire, around which she walked (and sang):

Those Monsters, those Monsters, to them I am going

I am now Changing Bear Maiden, as to them I am going

From her now the arrow points of the Swift People

are working loose

From them their very magic (powers) fall

From them their very magic falls in bunches

Those Monsters, those Monsters, to them I am going

Go-la-ga-ne

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