Coyote Marries His Own Daughter

Coyote had a family; I don’t know how many children he did have. The oldest daughter was a very pretty girl. Coyote and his family were in a camp in one place, and he was figuring out how he was going to get a chance to marry his own daughter. Finally he had it planned, the way he was going to work it. He told his wife and children, “I’ve got lung trouble.” But he wasn’t sick. Nothing was wrong with him. He said, “This is a very contagious disease, and I don’t want to spread it among my children. You see that tree over there. You make me a bed up in that tree and feed me, and I’ll stay there.”

So right away his wife got busy and made that bed up there, and when the bed was ready she told him. He managed some way to get hold of a piece of spoiled liver, and one time when they weren’t looking he carried it up there. Now he was up there on his bed. And his wife came under the tree once in a while. Then he told his wife and children to sweep under the tree very thoroughly.

“Remember, I have a bad disease. If worms drop on the ground, don’t look for me. You must all go away and leave me up here.” He told his wife to come every day and watch for those worms to drop. That would mean he was dead, he said. Before he dropped any worms he told his wife what to do. He said, “If the worms happen to drop, that’s a sign that I’m gone. Then you can go your way with the children. Then the first man you meet who has four reeds and is carrying four prairie-dogs must be given the oldest girl.” That’s the advice he gave to his wife.

All his children and his wife knew that on the right side of his head he had a big black wart. Sure enough, one day the worms began to drop, and the woman came and found them. She went back to her children and said, “The old man is gone.” They were crying. Right away they left the place.

Just as their home was almost out of sight, the smallest child looked back over there by that tree and saw his father run off. He looked again and saw his father trying to run ahead of them. The little boy said, “Mother, wait!” They stopped. He said, “I saw my father jump off that tree over there.” But he was too small to be believed.

Before they had left the place, the mother had told the children not to say, “My father.” She had said, “Never call the dead. The ones that are gone, never to come again, never call them.” That’s what the mother had told the children just before they left. She said she would slap the first one that did. So she slapped the little boy now. “I told you not to say that,” she said.

“But it was my father. I saw him jump off that tree and run over there.”

Then she whipped him. But that little coyote was right.

They went on their way. They all cut their hair. They were going along there crying.

Coyote had jumped off the tree and now he went and got those things he had mentioned to his wife. He was all dressed up, and he went to meet his family. So there they came. He met them. The woman and children looked very sad. He asked, “What is all this about?”

The woman said, “The old man is dead. He told us when the worms dropped, we must leave. Now he’s gone.”

Coyote said, “Oh, my dear uncle! He’s gone!” He began to cry.

Before he got through he said, “That man used to be wise. Perhaps he said something before he died?”

The woman answered, “Yes, he said something before he died.”

Then Coyote was eager to know what it was he did say and asked the woman, “What did he say?”

She told him, “ ‘The first man that you meet carrying four of those reeds and four prairie-dogs must be given our oldest daughter.’ That’s what he said.”

And he told that woman, “You see, I knew he must have said some-thing before he died, he was so wise.” He said, “You all go ahead and wait there for me. I’m going to see whether I can kill some rabbits or something for you.”

And they camped there. He showed them the four reeds and the prairie-dogs he had and he married the girl.

Then they got where they wanted to stop. They made their brush hut. Coyote already had his place, and his mother-in-law was nearby. He went to his camp. His wife was there with him. And he lay down with his head on his wife’s lap on the sunny side of the camp. His wife was looking for lice. He had his head over to one side, hiding the wart. Every time she wanted to look on that side he would say, “The lice have gone on the other side.”

The girl thought, “What’s the matter that he won’t let me feel on that side?”

Having someone go through your hair makes you sleepy. He almost fell asleep several times. Finally he went sound asleep. Then she turned his head a little and found that big wart. She knew it was her father. She quietly got away from him and went toward her mother’s place.

She cried, “It’s he! It’s he!” She said it several times, and he heard it and woke up.

He called, “What ‘he’? What ‘he’? Come back here, come back!” She ran to her mother and said, “Mother, he’s got a big wart on the side of his head. That’s my father.”

Her mother ran and got a big rock to drop on his head. Before she got to him he ran away.

This was known already, that he had played that trick and married his own daughter. He went to two or three camps. Every time he came they would say, “That’s the fellow that married his own daughter.” Everybody seemed to know about it. Coyote didn’t like it. He went off and sat down and thought, “How do they all know? All the little bushes, the rocks, and trees are notified,” he said. He was out there by himself. He went away from there and found just one camp. He went to it. He said, “I went to all the camps, and as I came through I heard of a man who married his own daughter.” Then he went on. Tuberculosis is thought by the Chiricahua to be caused by worms which consume the lungs.

The desertion of the place of death, the restriction against calling the name of the dead, the hair cutting, and the wailing are all Chiricahua death customs. A Chiricahua who sees a funeral party or a newly bereaved family may either avoid the encounter or “help wail for the deceased.” To simply act as a curious bystander is considered an insult. Here the informant exclaimed, “That’s just the way it is! Man does just like Coyote. Ever since Coyote did it, man does those things. He even marries his own daughter sometimes.” Then followed the details of two alleged cases of father-daughter incest.

The Chiricahua practice mother-in-law avoidance, and so Coyote’s former wife had to have a separate dwelling. In the version collected by Hoijer… Coyote’s former wife kills him with this rock. A second version differs in these details: Coyote instructs his wife to give his daughter to a man whose face is painted white and who carries four prairie-dogs. The daughter sees her father jump from the tree after his “death” and is rebuked by the mother for saying so. Coyote hides from the woman who was formerly his wife. He is discovered by a scar on one side of his head. In a third version Coyote bids his wife give the daughter to the first prairie-dog they meet after his death. He changes himself to a prairie-dog but is exposed when a characteristic sore on his head is found.