How Coyote Created the Milky-Way

When the sky was only darkness, Black God (Haashch’eezhini) sat atop a lofty mesa, viewing a panorama of the void. His own face was empty, because he was the deity of fire, which consumes all. His eyes smoldered and he bore a crescent on his forehead.

Standing on the obscure mesa with him, was Talking God (Bikʼeh Hozho), deity of speech and reason who was forming plans and blessing them in each of the four directions, bringing color to the landscape as he delivered messages from above and below, even in darkness. They were planning the placement of constellations in the night-time sky, to be of help to humankind in their travels. They wanted everything to be rigidly ordered and in perfect harmony.

One by one they took out stars, imbued with Black God's fire, and placed them carefully in the heavens.

Coyote, that old primeval trickster named Ma'ii came trotting along and smelling the place up with his Coyote stench. He panted eagerly when he saw what the gods were doing, wagging his tail and pounding his paws, drooling all over the dust of the mesa.

"Oh please please please, what you're doing is so beautiful and so serious and mysterious--can I do it too, oh please please please! I am older than the earth or the sky; can't I put the stars in their place too?"

But the gods knew that Ma'ii was a mischievous sort who had no self-control, and refused him his request to "join in the play."

Coyote, however, knew they could not refuse him if he asked three more times, because four was a sacred number.

"You must let me participate in placing your stars, you owe it to me!" Coyote whinnied and whined like a little whelp.

"We will not let you," Black God continued drawing individual stars from his hide medicine bag and constellating them onto the blackground. Living Fire of spectral radiance. Coyote turned,

"Talking God! you know I was always friend to the four directions, let me place some stars."

"Never, Ma'ii, you would ruin their formations!" Coyote changed direction again.

"Black God, you know what I am, and that neither one of you can stop me from setting a star or two up there with the others, all neat and orderly just like you like it!" A growl undertoned Coyote's response now, as the deity of Speech lectured him,

"Ma'ii, you should have stopped your begging. You are such a canine pest. Why do you want a part in such work?"

"Fine then!" and Coyote howled and yelped, snatching the hide medicine bag from Black God; with a graceful and gangling flick of his Coyote jaws and neck, he flung carelessly the remainder of the stellar stones across the horizon. From these were formed the Milky Way stars in a swath against the sky, and other seemingly random and chaotic structures in nebulous swirl. He had to step back and admire his own work.

Ma'ii licked his paws, self-satisfied as a well-fed pup, as the gods looked on in dismay.

"What, don't you see it must be this way, you beings of order and design? No power can stop things from going their own way. You seek to create purpose, and so there are your beacon fires of constellation for humankind.

"But the stars are self-satisfied, like myself, and want to be their own purpose. I will lose my hide because of what I am. I will lose my eyes because of what I am. I will take on the suffering of the universe because I am the self-absorbed egotist that I am. The pieces of my body torn asunder will be scattered in the four direction by my bride. I will pay the price for my impulsiveness and lack of self-control as you put it, my hide the prize of every hunter. But there will always be another Coyote: like the stars that periodically die, others to be born--Ma'ii the Trickster can never truly be gone."

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