How O'-ye the Coyote-man discovered his Wife

The world was made by O'-ye the Coyote-man. The earth was covered with water. The only thing that showed above the water was the very top of Oon'-nah-pi's [Sonoma Peak, about forty miles north of San Francisco].

In the beginning O'-ye came on a raft from the west, from across the ocean. His raft was a mat of tules and split sticks; it was long and narrow. O'-ye landed on the top of Oon'-nah-pi's and threw his raft-mat out over the water -- the long way north and south, the narrow way east and west; the middle rested on the rock on top of the peak. This was the beginning of the world and the world is still long and narrow like the mat -- the long way north and south, the narrow way east and west.

When O'-ye was sitting alone on top of Oon'-nah-pi's, and all the rest of the world was covered with water, he saw a feather floating toward him, blown by the wind from the west -- the direction from which he himself had come. He asked the feather, "Who are you?"

The feather made no reply.

He then told the feather about his family and all his relatives. When he came to mention Wek'-wek, his grandson, the feather leaped up out of the water and said, "I am Wek'-wek, your grandson."

O'-ye the Coyote-man was glad, and they talked together.

Every day, O'-ye noticed Ko-to'-lah the Frog-woman sitting hear him. Every time he saw her he reached out his hand and tried to catch her, but she always jumped into the water and escaped.

After four days the water began to go down, leaving more land on top of the mountain, so that Ko-to'-lah had to make several leaps to reach the water. This gave O'-ye the advantage and he ran after her and caught her. When he had caught her he was surprised to find that she was his own wife from over the ocean. Then he was glad.

When the water went down and the land was dry O'-ye planted the buckeye and elderberry and oak tress, and all the other kinds of trees, and also bushes and grasses, all at the same time. But there were no people and he and Wek'-wek wanted people. Then O'-ye took a quantity of feathers of different kinds, and packed them up to the top of Oon'-nah-pi's and threw them up in the air and the wind carried them off and scattered them over all the country and they turned into people, and the next day there were people all over the land.

Creation story of the Hookooeko group of the Coast Miwok people, whose homeland included southern Sonoma and Marin Counties. It was told to ethnographer C. Hart Merriam prior to 1910 "at Tomales Bay by an aged Hookooeko woman ... who lived her early life at Nicasio." Published in The Dawn of the World: Myths and Tales of the Miwok Indians of California, collected and edited by C. Hart Merriam, University of Nebraska Press, 1993.