Reading Notes W2: Coyote Cooks His Daughter, Part B

The Coyote was starving for no food were laid out for them.

He set out to hunt and brought his daughter with him.

His daughter was running slowly behind him, and at some point he became delirious because of hunger. He tried to reason himself. He was restless and panicky.

He wasn't able to hunt a different animal, and the thought of his wife gathering grass to cook something for him clouded his mind. He seem disgusted of eating grass, after all he is a carnivore, not a herbivore.

Killing his daughter for meal calmed him down. So he skinned his daughter so that his wife wouldn't know. He was so happy and excited because he's going to eat meat.

But then the water he's boiling his daughter in becomes green, as if saying that it was basically a poison.

The ghost of her emerged. She lets her mother know that her father had killed her, and desired to devour her.

The coyote mother, like every mother, protected and honored her child--even against her husband. So she burnt the house together with him.

Work Cited:

Hicks, Jack et al.  “Coyote Cooks His Daughter.” The Literature of California, vol. 1, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 52–55.