Coyote Places the Stars

Wasco Tribe

One time there were five wolves, all brothers, who traveled together.  Whatever meat they got when they were hunting they would share with Coyote. But one evening coyote saw the wolves looking up at the sky.
"What are you looking at up there, my brothers?" asked Coyote. "Oh, nothing," said the oldest wolf.
The next evening Coyote saw they were all looking up in the sky at something. He asked the oldest wolf what they were looking at, but he wouldn't say. It went on like this for three or four nights. No one wanted to tell Coyote what they were looking at because they thought that he would want to interfere. Yet one night, Coyote asked the youngest wolf brother to tell him, and the youngest  wolf said to the other wolves, "Let's tell Coyote what we see up there. He won't do anything."
And so, they told him. "We see animals up there. Way up there, where we cannot reach them."
Coyote thought for a moment. "Let's go up and see them," said Coyote.
"Well, how can we do that?"
"Oh, I can do that easily," said Coyote. "I can show you how to get up there without any trouble at all."
Coyote gathered a great number or arrows and then began shooting them into the sky. The first arrow struck the sky and stuck there, and the second arrow stuck in the first. Each arrow stuck the end of the one before until a long trail of arrows formed.
"We can climb up now," said Coyote. The oldest wolf took his dog with him, and then the other four wolf brothers came, and the then Coyote followed. They climbed for many days until they finally met the sky. They stood in the sky and looked over at the two animals the wolves had seen from down below. They were two grizzly bears.
"Don't go near them," said Coyote. "They will tear you apart." But the two youngest wolves followed them. Only the oldest wolf stayed with Coyote. When the wolves neared the grizzlies, nothing happened at all. The wolves sat down and looked at the bears, and the bears sat there looking at the wolves. The oldest wolf, when he saw it was safe, came over with his dog and sat down with them. They were happy with the bears, and the bears were pleased with them. They shared many long conversations about the sky and earth.
But Coyote would not come over. He didn't trust the bears at all. "That makes a nice picture though," thought Coyote. "They all look very pretty sitting there like that. I think I'll leave it that way for everyone to see. Then when people look at them in the sky they will say, 'There's a story about that picture,' and they will tell a story about me."
So Coyote left it that way. He took the arrows as he descended so there was no way for anyone to get back. From down on the earth Coyote admired the arrangement he had left up there. Today they still look the same. They call those stars Big Dipper now. If you look up there you'll see that three wolves make up the handle and the oldest wolf, theone in the middle, still has his dog with him. The two youngest wolves make up the part of the bowl under the handle, and the two grizzlies make up the other side, the one that points toward the North Star.
When Coyote saw how they looked, he wanted to put up a lot of stars. He arranged stars all over the sky in pictures and then made the Big Road across the sky with the stars he had left over.
When Coyote was finished he called Meadowlark over. "My brother," he said, "When I am gone, tell everyone that when they look up into the sky and see the stars arranged this way, I was the one who did that. That is my work."