Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/618

 2 jo Journal of American Folk-Lore.

a pair of eyes of them. When he had done this, he found that he had lost his tail. So he picked up a bit of a branch that was lying on the ground near by, and stuck it on for a tail. As he went off, he said, " People can call me Coyote."

HOW THE COYOTE MARRIED HIS DAUGHTER.

One of the Coyote's daughters was a very beautiful girl. The Coyote was very fond of her, and was always scheming as to how he might succeed in marrying her. One day a plan occurred to him. He made believe that he was sick, and lay there, groaning. He told his family that he was going to die, and instructed them to prepare a scaffold three or four feet high of boughs, etc., to burn his body on. The Coyote's wife and daughters prepared everything accord- ing to directions, and gathered a great quantity of sage-brush to put under the scaffold when the time came to burn the body. The Coyote told them that when they had once started the fire, they were to go away at once, and not look back. Soon after telling them this, the Coyote made believe he was dead. His family carried out his orders, and having lit the fire under his body, went away, crying. As soon as they were gone, the Coyote jumped down from the scaf- fold, and went off. Two or three days after he came back, and meet- ing his daughter, made love to her. After a while he married her. A week or two after they were married, the old woman who had been the Coyote's wife before suspected that there was something wrong. She suspected that the man who had married her daughter was really her own husband whom they had thought dead. One day, when the Coyote had gone out hunting, the old woman said to her daughter, " I think that you have married your father." The old woman knew that the Coyote had a scar on the back of his head, which was due to an old wound. So she told her daughter to try to get her husband to let her hunt for lice on his head, when she would have an opportunity to see if he had a scar. After several days the young girl succeeded in getting her husband to let her hunt for lice on his head, and in a minute she found the scar. She said, " Now I have found you out ; you are my father." The Coyote jumped up and laughed till his sides ached, then he said, " People can call me Coyote."

Roland B. Dixon.

�� �