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Updated: June 22, 2025
Back to his lonely wigwam he hastened. Beneath the tree in front of his teepee he sat upon the ground with chin between his drawn-up knees. His keen eyes scanned the wide plain. He was watching for the avenger. "'He is coming! said the people," muttered old Iktomi. All of a sudden he raised an open palm to his brow and peered afar into the west.
When Patkasa stumbled upon the deer in his path, he exclaimed: "Good spirits have pushed me hither!" Thus he leaned long over the gift of the friendly ghosts. "How, my friend!" said a voice behind his ear, and a hand fell on his shoulder. It was not a spirit this time. It was old Iktomi. "How, Iktomi!" answered Patkasa, still stooping over the deer.
From his heels were scattered a shower of red coals upon Iktomi's bare arms and shoulders. Dumbfounded, Iktomi thought he saw a spirit walk out of his fire. His jaws fell apart. He thrust a palm to his face, hard over his mouth! He could scarce keep from shrieking. Rolling over and over on the grass and rubbing the sides of his head against the ground, the coyote soon put out the fire on his fur.
"I have the magic arrow! I have the beaded buckskins of the great avenger!" Hooting and dancing beneath the tree, he said: "I shall kill the red eagle; I shall wed the chieftain's beautiful daughter!" "Oh, Iktomi, set me free!" begged the tree-bound Dakota brave. But Iktomi's ears were like the fungus on a tree. He did not hear with them.
"Now, grandfather, accept my offering; 'tis all I have," said Iktomi as he spread his half-worn blanket upon Inyan's cold shoulders. Then Iktomi, happy with the smile of the sunset sky, followed a footpath leading toward a thicketed ravine. He had not gone many paces into the shrubbery when before him lay a freshly wounded deer!
IKTOMI is a spider fairy. He wears brown deerskin leggins with long soft fringes on either side, and tiny beaded moccasins on his feet. His long black hair is parted in the middle and wrapped with red, red bands. Each round braid hangs over a small brown ear and falls forward over his shoulders. He even paints his funny face with red and yellow, and draws big black rings around his eyes.
Iktomi's eyes were almost ready to jump out of his head as he stood cooling a burn on his brown arm with his breath. Sitting on his haunches, on the opposite side of the fire from where Iktomi stood, the coyote began to laugh at him. "Another day, my friend, do not take too much for granted. Make sure the enemy is stone dead before you make a fire!"
The coyote felt drowsy no longer, for in the next instant he was slipping out of Iktomi's hands. He was falling, falling through space, and then he struck the ground with such a bump he did not wish to breathe for a while. He wondered what Iktomi would do, thus he lay still where he fell.
A sleek gray-faced prairie wolf! his pointed black nose tucked in between his four feet drawn snugly together; his handsome bushy tail wound over his nose and feet; a coyote fast asleep in the shadow of a bunch of grass! this is what Iktomi spied. Carefully he raised one foot and cautiously reached out with his toes. Gently, gently he lifted the foot behind and placed it before the other.
Hereupon the slender arrow tapped him gently with his sharp flint beak. There was no Iktomi, but two arrows stood ready to fly. "Now, young arrow, this is the one condition. Your flight must always be in a straight line. Never turn a curve nor jump about like a young fawn," said the arrow magician. He spoke slowly and sternly.
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