Coyote's Den

Coyote Creates Death

One of Several Stories where Coyote is credited with the invention of death.

In the beginning, when human people were still new in the world, nobody ever died. After a time, this got to be a problem, because new people were being born and it was getting crowded in some places.

Seeing a problem, the elders and wise men and women and chiefs got together to think of a solution before things got out of hand.

Coyote came to this big meeting. He said "Oh that's easy" (Coyote is always saying things are easy) "from now on, people will die, to make room for the new people, and someday they will die to make room for the ones after that.

Some of the people thought this was a good idea, but many more started talking about how they didn't want to have their loved ones die and be gone.

Someone came up with the idea that people should just die for a little time and then come back. Everyone thought that was really good. They decided to do that. They had Coyote invent death, and then they made a new ceremony for bringing people back.

The person's spirit would leave their body when they died, and roam around as a little breeze, or even a dust devil. In this way people knew their relatives were still close, waiting to be brought back. The dead person's body would be put in a special lodge until it was time to make them alive again.

Coyote did not like this. For one thing, there were spirits everywhere, and even though they didn't eat, it was still crowded. And the bodies were still there too... so it wasn't like they were saving a whole lot of space.

And they still were going to do the ceremony to bring people back from the dead, so they wouldn't even stay dead. They would come back and it would be just as before. Only now, people would be fussing around taking care of dead bodies.

Coyote argued this point before the council, but no-one listened. They didn't want their relatives to stay dead, and that was that.

It came time to do the bringing back ceremony. A special lodge was made. The first dead person's body was brought on, and they prayed over it. The door of the lodge was opened so that the spirit of the person could come back and enter the body and be alive again. When no-one was looking, Coyote closed the door. The spirit, which was in the form of a dust devil, whirled right past, and away. They finished the ceremony, and the person was still dead. They found out why.

"Coyote you wicked creature," the people cried. "You have ruined this ceremony, and now the spirit has gone away. Now death will be forever. We all voted to do it our way and you went against the decision."

They chased Coyote away. They would never let him have anything to eat. Coyote was always hungry after that.

And when someone sees a dust devil go by, sometimes they think "there goes someone's spirit".