"The moon and the coyote wrought together in creating all things that
exist. The moon was good, but the coyote was bad. In making men and
women the moon wished to so fashion their souls that when they died
they should return to the earth after two or three days, as he himself
does when he dies. But the coyote was evil disposed, and said this
should not be, but that when men died their friends should burn their
bodies, and once a year make a great mourning for them, and the coyote
prevailed. So, presently when a deer died, they burned his body, as
the coyote had decreed, and after a year they made a great mourning
for him. But the moon created the rattlesnake and caused it to bite
the coyote's son, so that he died. Now, though the coyote had been
willing to burn the deer's relations, he refused to burn his own son.
Then the moon said unto him, 'This is your own rule. You would have it
so, and now your son shall be burned like the others.' So he was
burned, and after a year the coyote mourned for him. Thus the law was
established over the coyote also, and, as he had dominion over men, it
prevailed over men likewise.

"This story is utterly worthless for itself, but it has its value in
that it shows there was a time when the California Indians did not
practice cremation, which is also established by other traditions. It
hints at the additional fact that the Nishinams to this day set great
store by the moon; consider it their benefactor in a hundred ways, and
observe its changes for a hundred purposes."

Another myth regarding cremation is given by Adam Johnston, in
Schoolcraft [Footnote: Hist. Indian tribes of the United Stales, 1854,
part IV, p. 224] and relates to the Bonaks, or root-diggers:

"The first Indians that lived were coyotes. When one of their number