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Nez Perce - Calling the Chinook
Long ago when Itsayaya, the coyote, ruled the animal kingdom, there was a hard cold winter. Snow fell over the land, covering grass and bushes, weighting trees to the ground. There were no leaves and twigs for the deer and elk to eat. Dried fruits and nuts were covered with snow. Starvation hung like a cloud over the little valleys and steep mountains.
One icy morning Satsas, the porcupine, went to the lodge of Itsayaya. "Great king of Siminikum," he called. "The animals need your help. All our food is under the snow and we are starving."
Itsayaya looked out from his door flap and said, "Yes, Satsas, I am hungry, too. I shall call a great council in the meadow and we will make a plan to melt the snow."
"Good. I'll tell everyone I see to come to Siminikum." And the porcupine waddled clumsily through the drifts to announce the meeting. Itsayaya, the coyote, left his lodge and ran through his kingdom, shouting, "Come to Siminikum. A great council will be held in the meadow. Tell everyone. Hurry!"
From the hills and valleys came the animals. Tawisin, the deer, brought all his family, and Hemeen, the wolf, came with his pack of brothers and cousins. The deer ran round and round in the meadow with the wolves at their heels. They trampled the snow so that the smaller animals could sit and stand in an open space for the council meeting. Itsayaya, the coyote, stood in the center of a great circle of his animal subjects and called out, "Animal people of Siminikum. We have come to decide how to melt the snow. Does anyone have an idea?" "If it would only chinook," wailed Satsas, the porcupine. "Yes, yes," shouted the other animals.
"Indeed, yes," agreed Itsayaya. "A warm chinook wind from the west would melt the snow." Then he sat very still, thinking.
At last the great coyote rose, bade the other animals wait for a little while, and trotted away and up a little hill at the side of the meadow. There he stood for a very long time, sniffing the wind, looking first in one direction, then another. Finally he came back to the circle of animals. "I have a plan," he said.
"Yes, yes, tell us," shouted the animals.
"We shall call the chinook," said Itsayaya, looking very wise. "But how can we do that?" asked Tawisin, the deer.
"First of all, we must gather all the wood we can find and make a great fire, a pile so high that the flames shoot up into the sky to make a rushing wind."
So the animal people hurried away to get fuel for the fire. It took all day, for it was hard to find wood under the snow. But by nightfall they had collected a huge tower of sticks and logs.
Then Itsayaya, the coyote, brought the big fire sticks from his lodge and lighted the wood. It sputtered wetly, then burned into bright flames. All the animals gathered around to watch as Itsayaya said the magic words: "Burn, burn, burn to make a great wind. Bring the chinook to melt the snow in our mountains and valleys."
Around and around the fire danced the coyote king, calling, "Come, chinook, warm west wind, come to the land of Siminikum. Melt the snow. Melt, melt, melt!"
Itsayaya grabbed burning sticks from the bonfire and put them into his mouth, running faster and faster in a fiery circle around the blazing pile of wood. Hotter and hotter burned the fire, melting a great circle of snow from the floor of the meadow.
Itsayaya danced on and on. Some of the other animal people joined him: Tawisin, the deer, Hemeen, the wolf, and Tilipah, the fox.
Around and around they circled until they fell down exhausted and slept in the heat of the roaring fire. The other animals slept, too.
Morning came, gray and windy. Itsayaya sat up and rubbed his eyes. He shook himself and sniffed the air. Then he leaped to his feet.
"The chinook!" he shouted. "The chinook has come."
The other animals awoke, chattering, excited. "Now the snow will go quickly," said wise old Tawisin.
"The time of new grass will come," added Tiska, the skunk.
"Itsayaya is a wise king. He called the chinook," said Hemeen, the wolf.
Then Itsayaya, the coyote, stood beside the smoldering embers of the great fire, sniffed the warm west wind, and said, "Someday mankind will come to live in this land. We shall give him our knowledge of how to call the chinook. For he, too, may suffer from the long cold winter."
So it is that when the snow lies deep on the mountains and the months of cold go on and on, the people of the Nimipoo gather with their medicine men to call the chinook, the warm west wind.
Taken from Tales of the Nimipoo - From the Land of the Nez Perce Indians, Eleanor B. Heady, 1969
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