A Caddo tale: How Coyote kept death for the people

Coyote, there at the Beginning. … Coyote, there at the making of the rules…. Coyote, there and here and now.

In the early days, when the rules of the world were still being set up, the people of power held a council meeting. And at that meeting was Coyote, the trickster, the thinker.

“Why should there be death?” pondered the people that day. “Let us do away with it.”

“Death is already a law,” Coyote reminded them. “You cannot cancel it so easily.”

“Then we shall change the law!” the people cried. “Folk will still die, yes—but they shall not stay dead forever.”

Quickly the growing plan flew from one person to the next.

“We shall build a great lodge,” their chief medicine man said at last. “It shall be a place of great power. Into it the spirits of the newly dead shall fly. And out of it they shall walk, living folk once more.”

“How very nice it sounds,” Coyote drawled. “But you forget one thing, oh wise ones. If folk keep right on being born, yet no one stays dead, the world will be a crowded place pretty soon. How are you going to feed all those people, oh wise ones? Where are you going to put them?”

No, no, the people would not listen to Coyote. They chased him away with angry shouts. They would build the lodge of Power, and that was that!