Sacred Texts Native American California Index Previous
As soon as they found that Tu-chai-pai was dead, all living things came together from the mountains and the valleys, all men and all animals to mourn for him. The dove that lives here went away to seek her mate upon a high white mountain, and when she came back there was blood on her wings, the blood of her father. Then they went on a high mountain, and set up two tablets, one to the East, and another to the West, and on these tablets were written the number of the days of the fiesta of the death of Tu-chai-pai.
So the men wanted to bury him, and they made a great funeral pyre, and were going to set fire to it, but the coyote would not agree to this, and the men were afraid of him. So the men sent him very far to the East; and when he was far away he saw the plume of smoke rising up, and came hurrying back.
"What are you burning?"
"We are burning nothing."
Then they sent him away again, far towards the sunset; but when he looked back again he saw the smoke. By that time the body was burned, all but the heart. And now the coyote came back.
So the men stood close together, shoulder to shoulder, about the heart of Tu-chai-pai. The coyote said, "I see what you are burning;" and he sprang over the heads of the men, seized the heart, fled to the mountain, and devoured it. For this reason men hate the coyote.
Then Yo-ko-mat-is, the brother, went far away to the West, but when men pray to him for rain, he comes back and answers their prayers.
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Since the Mission Indians were long ago converted and civilized by the early Spanish friars, one is tempted at first to emphasize in this mythology certain resemblances to Christian teachings; but if the reader is sufficiently interested in the subject to give it further study, he will find that such resemblances are for the most part misleading. Let him consult, in this connection, Brinton's "Myths of the New World," pp. 67, 132, 171, 194, 226, and 255; and "American Hero Myths," by the same author, pp. 55, 75, 103, and 125. The latter references will convince him that the correlated ideas of the death of the Maker, the frog, the moon, the coyote, the funeral
pyre, and the unconsumed heart are genuine fragments of Aztec folk-lore. To compare this story in its resemblances and differences with the folk-lore of the Indians of Northern California, he should refer to Powers's monograph in the "U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region," vol. iii.
Constance Goddard Du Bois.