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Source: Based on a tale reported by Grenville Goodwin in 1939
Long ago when all the animals talked like people, Turkey overheard a boy
begging his sister for food. "What does your little brother want_" he
asked the girl.
"He's
hungry, but we
have nothing to eat," she said.
When Turkey heard this, he shook himself all over. Many kinds of fruits
and wild food dropped out of his body, and the brother and sister ate
these up.
Turkey shook himself again, and a variety of corn that is very large
dropped out of his feathers. He shook himself a third time, and
yellow corn dropped out.
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And when he shook himself
for the fourth time, white corn dropped out.
Bear came over, and Turkey told him, "I'm helping to feed my sister and my
brother, over there."
Bear said, "You can shake only four times to make food come
out of you, but I have every kind of food on me, from my feet to my
head."
Bear shook himself, and out of his fur dropped juniper berries. He shook
himself again, and
out dropped a cactus that is good to eat. Then he shook out acorns, then
another kind of
cactus, then gambel oak acorns, then blue oak acorns, then pinion nuts,
then a species of
sumac, then manzanita berries, then wild mulberries, then saguaro fruit.
Turkey said to the boy and girl, "I have four kinds of corn seeds here
for you, and this
is a good place to plant them."
The sister and brother cut digging
sticks and made
holes with them. In the holes they planted all their corn seeds. The
next day the corn
had already come up and was about a foot and a half high.
The girl said,
"we still
have some squash seeds here," so they planted them too.
The boy and girl asked Turkey for more corn seed. "The corn is coming up
nicely," they said,
"so we want to make another farm and plant more corn there." Turkey gave
them the seed,
and they left him to look after their first fields while they started
off to make the
other farm.
When they came back, they heard Turkey hollering at the corn field. They
ran down there
and saw him dragging one wing along the ground on the side toward them.
There were
snakes on the other side of him, and he pretended to have a broken wing
to lure the
snakes away and shield the boy and girl.
The squash plants had young
squash on them,
and the corn had grown tall and formed ears and tassels. The tassels had
pollen in them,
and the snakes had come to gather the pollen out of the corn plants.
Turkey told the boy
and the girl to stay away from the corn for four days, when the snakes
would be finished.
At the end of the four days, the corn was ripe.
Turkey told them, "This
will be the only
time when the corn will come up in four days. From now on it will take
quite a while."
And it does.
By now, the brother and sister had planted corn three times, and they
gave seeds to other
people. Then Slim Coyote came and asked for some.
"The corn you planted
is growing well,
and the ears are coming out on it," he said. "I'd like to have some
seeds to plant
for myself."
Coyote would have to do lots of work if he wanted to raise his corn, but
that wasn't his
plan. "These other people here plant their corn, and after it's grown
they have to
cook it. Me, I am not going to do it that way. I'll cook my corn first,
and then plant
it, so I won't have to bother to cook it when it's ripe."
Here's where
Coyote made a
big mistake. He cooked his corn, ate some, planted quite a patch of the
rest. He felt
pretty good about it. "Now I've done well for myself. You people have to
cook your corn
after you plant it, but mine will be already cooked," he said.
After planting, he went off with the rest of the people to gather
acorns, but when they
returned to their fields, Coyote's had nothing growing on it at all.
He
said angrily,
"You people must have taken the hearts out of the corn seeds you gave to
me."
"No, we
didn't do that," they told him, "but you cooked the heart out of them
before you planted."
Coyote asked for more seeds and planted them the right way this time. So
his corn grew :the day after he planted it, it was up about a foot and a half. He felt
good.
The people who had planted their corn at the beginning were harvesting now and tying
it up into bundles. Coyote saw these and wanted some. People got mad at Coyote because
he was always asking them for corn.
"I just want some green ears to feed my children,"
he would say. "As soon as my corn is ripe, I'll pay you back."
The other people had all their corn in and stripped now, but their
squashes were still
growing in the field. Coyote stole their squash, and the people all came
to his camp.
They wanted to know if he was the one who was stealing their squash.
Coyote pretended to
get angry. "You're always blaming me for stealing everything. There are
lots of camps
over there. Why do you choose mine to come to with your accusations_"
But the people
knew about Coyote's thieving ways.
"From now on, don't make your farm near us. Move away and live someplace
else!" they said.
"All right. There are several of you that I was going to repay with
corn, but I won't
do it now that you've treated me this way," he said. So Coyote's family
lived poorly,
and they never bothered to cook anything before they ate it.
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