Native American Legends
Creation of the Animal People
An Okanagon Legend
The Earth was once a human being: Old One made her out of a woman.
"You will the mother of all people," he said.
Earth is alive yet, but she has been changed. The soil is her flesh,
the rocks are her bones, the wind is her breath, trees and grass
are her hair. She lives spread out, and we live on her. When she
moves, we have an Earthquake.
After taking the woman and changing her to Earth, Old One gathered
some of her flesh and rolled it into balls, as people do with mud
or clay. He made the first group of these balls into the ancients,
the beings of the early world. The ancients were people, yet also
animals. In form some looked human while some walked on all fours
like animals. Some could fly like birds; others could swim like
fishes. All had the gift of speech, as well as greater powers and
cunning than either animals or people. But deer were never among
the ancients; they were always animals, even as they are today.
Besides the ancients, real people and real animals lived on the
Earth at that time. Old One made the people out of the last balls
of mud he took from the Earth. He rolled them over and over, shaped
them like Indians, and blew on them to bring them alive. They were
so ignorant that they were the most helpless of all the creatures
Old One had made. Old One made people and animals into males and
females so that they might breed and multiply. Thus all living things
came from the Earth. When we look around, we see part of our mother
everywhere.
The difficulty with the early world was that most of the ancients
were selfish and some were monsters, and there was much trouble
among them. They were also very stupid in some ways. Though they
knew they had to hunt in order to live, they did not know which
creatures were deer and which were people, and sometimes they ate
people by mistake.
At last Old One said, "There will soon be no people if I let
things go on like this." So he sent Coyote to kill all the
monsters and other evil beings among the ancients and teach the
Indians how to do things.
And Coyote began to travel on the Earth, teaching the Indians,
making life easier and better for them, and performing many wonderful
deeds.
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