Why the North Star Stands Still, and Other Indian Legends

Look up into to-omp-pi-av, the sky, and there stand poot-see, the stars, when they are not hiding behind the clouds. Look up and find a family of seven with no great one- no father - among them. They are pe-ats, the mother, to-at-sen, the son, and manage pats, five daughters. Once they were Indians and lived on the Earth. And the narro-gwe-nap, the Pahute storyteller, would tell how the star group we know as the Pleiades came to be, and why the coyote looks up when he howls. He would tell how the father, Tu-re-ris, was very angry because his family disobeyed him: how his wife and children went up into the sky to escape his rage, and how he tried to shoot them down-and, failing that, made them stay up there forever. He would tell how To-at-sen, the son, answered back, "If you make us into starts we can never come down, we will make you into tear-a-sin-ah, the wild coyote, and you can never come up. You will run around in the brush all night, and when the morning daylights begins to come and we fade out of sight, you will be very lonesome. You will be very sad. You will look up and cry and yelp and howl." It was even so. Despite his anger, Tu-re-ris loved his family and mounds for them. Then you are awakened at the first streak of dawn by the soul-piercing cry of the coyote, you will remember that it is the soul of Tu-re-ris crying for his lost loved ones.