Explore "How the Coyotes Tried to Steal the Children of the Sacred Dance" by Frank Hamilton Cushing on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the times of the ancients, when our people lived in various places about the valley of Zuni where ruins now stand, it is said that an old Coyote lived in Cedar Canyon with his family, which included a fine litter of pups. It is also said that at this time there lived on the crest of Thunder Mountain, back of the broad rock column or pinnacle which guards its western portion, one of the gods of the Sacred Drama Dance (Kâkâ),13 named Kʻyámakwe, with his children, many in number and altogether like himself.
One day the old Coyote of Cedar Canyon went out hunting, and as he was prowling around among the sage-bushes below Thunder Mountain, he heard the clang and rattle and the shrill cries of the Kʻyámakwe. He pricked up his ears, stuck his nose into the air, sniffed about and looked all around, and presently discovered the Kʻyámakwe children running rapidly back and forth on the very edge of the mountain.