Some people believe strongly in finding and combining multiple versions of a story. Others believe just as strongly you should find a story and stick to it without changes, especially using the oldest version available.
Many stories are "retold" and the story of Coyote bringing fire to Native Americans seems appropriate to show variations in telling. (Another story from the area has Raven spilling languages all over the Pacific Northwest to explain the linguistic variety.) There are many groups in the Pacific Northwest telling this story and the variations are minor.. The most common credit goes to the Karuk, but it is also told by others.
Teachers can find a kit to use the story at TPT or Teachers Pay Teachers. With all the cold around most of our continent, it seems like a great idea to explore the story of how people received heat.
I notice Mary Antrim's The Basket Woman doesn't name the nation whose version she is retelling. To my mind she further messes it up as the book uses a "frame" to tell the stories to a child. Nowadays that is rarely done, but many anthologies now in Public Domain used frames.
Retelling stories, however, continues to this day. I'm going to give both Antrim's version and follow it with a highly abridged version found in World Stories Retold for Modern Boys and Girls by William James Sly.
THE FIRE BRINGER
This is one of the stories that Alan had from
the Basket Woman after she came to understand
that the boy really loved her tales and
believed them. She would sit by the spring
with her hands clasped across her knees while
the clothes boiled and Alan fed the fire with
broken brush, and tell him wonder stories as
long as the time allowed, which was never so
long as the boy liked to hear them. The story
of the Fire Bringer gave him the greatest delight,
and he made a game of it to play with
little Indian boys from the campoodie who
sometimes strayed in the direction of the homesteader's
cabin. It was the story that came
oftenest to his mind when he lay in his bed at
night, and saw the stars in the windy sky shine
through the cabin window.
He heard of it so often and thought of it so
much that at last it seemed to him that he had been part of the story himself, but his mother
said he must have dreamed it. The experience
came to him in this way: He had gone with
his father to the mountains for a load of wood,
a two days' journey from home, and they had
taken their blankets to sleep upon the ground,
which was the first time of Alan's doing so.
It was the time of year when white gilias,
which the children call "evening snow," were
in bloom, and their musky scent was mingled
with the warm air in the soft dark all about
him.
He heard the camp-fire snap and whisper,
and saw the flicker of it brighten and die on
the lower branches of the pines. He looked
up and saw the stars in the deep velvet void,
and now and then one fell from it, trailing
all across the sky. Small winds moved in the
tops of the sage and trod lightly in the dark,
blossomy grass. Near by them ran a flooding
creek, the sound of it among the stones
like low-toned, cheerful talk. Familiar voices
seemed to rise through it and approach distinctness.
The boy lay in his blanket harking
to one recurring note, until quite suddenly
it separated itself from the babble and called
to him in the Basket Woman's voice. He was
sure it was she who spoke his name, though
he could not see her; and got up on his feet
at once. He knew, too, that he was Alan, and
yet it seemed, without seeming strange, that
he was the boy of the story who was afterward
to be called the Fire Bringer. The skin of his
body was dark and shining, with straight,
black locks cropped at his shoulders, and he
wore no clothing but a scrap of deerskin belted
with a wisp of bark. He ran free on the mesa
and mountain where he would, and carried
in his hand a cleft stick that had a longish
rounded stone caught in the cleft and held by
strips of skin. By this he knew he had waked
up into the time of which the Basket Woman
had told him, before fire was brought to the
tribes, when men and beasts talked together
with understanding, and the Coyote was the
Friend and Counselor of man. They ranged
together by wood and open swale, the boy who
was to be called Fire Bringer and the keen, the wilderness, and saw the tribesmen
catching fish in the creeks with their
hands and the women digging roots with sharp
stones. This they did in summer and fared
well, but when winter came they ran nakedly
in the snow or huddled in caves of the rocks
and were very miserable. When the boy saw
this he was very unhappy, and brooded over
it until the Coyote noticed it.
"It is because my people suffer and have no
way to escape the cold," said the boy.
"I do not feel it," said the Coyote.
"That is because of your coat of good fur,
which my people have not, except they take it
in the chase, and it is hard to come by."
"Let them run about, then," said the Counselor,
"and keep warm."
"They run till they are weary," said the
boy, "and there are the young children and
the very old. Is there no way for them?"
"Come," said the Coyote, "let us go to the
hunt."
"I will hunt no more," the boy answered
him, "until I have found a way to save my people from the cold. Help me, O Counselor!"
But the Coyote had run away. After a time
he came back and found the boy still troubled
in his mind.
"There is a way, O Man Friend," said the
Coyote, "and you and I must take it together,
but it is very hard."
"I will not fail of my part," said the boy.
"We will need a hundred men and women,
strong and swift runners."
"I will find them," the boy insisted, "only
tell me."
"We must go," said the Coyote, "to the
Burning Mountain by the Big Water and bring
fire to your people."
Said the boy, "What is fire?"
Then the Coyote considered a long time how
he should tell the boy what fire is. "It is,"
said he, "red like a flower, yet it is no flower;
neither is it a beast, though it runs in the grass
and rages in the wood and devours all. It is
very fierce and hurtful and stays not for asking,
yet if it is kept among stones and fed with small sticks, it will serve the people well and
keep them warm."
"How is it to be come at?"
"It has its lair in the Burning Mountain,
and the Fire Spirits guard it night and day.
It is a hundred days' journey from this place,
and because of the jealousy of the Fire Spirits
no man dare go near it. But I, because
all beasts are known to fear it much, may
approach it without hurt and, it may be, bring
you a brand from the burning. Then you
must have strong runners for every one of the
hundred days to bring it safely home."
"I will go and get them," said the boy; but
it was not so easily done as said. Many there
were who were slothful and many were afraid,
but the most disbelieved it wholly, for, they
said, "How should this boy tell us of a thing
of which we have never heard!" But at the
last the boy and their own misery persuaded
them.
The Coyote advised them how the march
should begin. The boy and the Counselor
went foremost, next to them the swiftest runners,
with the others following in the order of
their strength and speed. They left the place
of their home and went over the high mountains
where great jagged peaks stand up above
the snow, and down the way the streams led
through a long stretch of giant wood where
the sombre shade and the sound of the wind in
the branches made them afraid. At nightfall
where they rested one stayed in that place, and
the next night another dropped behind, and so
it was at the end of each day's journey. They
crossed a great plain where waters of mirage
rolled over a cracked and parching earth and
the rim of the world was hidden in a bluish
mist; so they came at last to another range of
hills, not so high but tumbled thickly together,
and beyond these, at the end of the hundred
days, to the Big Water quaking along the sand
at the foot of the Burning Mountain.
It stood up in a high and peaked cone, and
the smoke of its burning rolled out and broke
along the sky. By night the glare of it reddened
the waves far out on the Big Water
when the Fire Spirits began their dance.[
Then said the Counselor to the boy who
was soon to be called the Fire Bringer, "Do
you stay here until I bring you a brand from
the burning; be ready and right for running,
and lose no time, for I shall be far spent
when I come again, and the Fire Spirits will
pursue me." Then he went up the mountain,
and the Fire Spirits when they saw him come
were laughing and very merry, for his appearance
was much against him. Lean he was,
and his coat much the worse for the long
way he had come. Slinking he looked, inconsiderable,
scurvy, and mean, as he has always
looked, and it served him as well then as it
serves him now. So the Fire Spirits only
laughed, and paid him no farther heed. Along
in the night, when they came out to begin their
dance about the mountain, the Coyote stole
the fire and began to run away with it down
the slope of the Burning Mountain. When
the Fire Spirits saw what he had done, they
streamed out after him red and angry in pursuit,
with a sound like a swarm of bees.
The boy saw them come, and stood up in his place clean limbed and taut for running.
He saw the sparks of the brand stream
back along the Coyote's flanks as he carried
it in his mouth and stretched forward
on the trail, bright against the dark bulk of
the mountain like a falling star. He heard
the singing sound of the Fire Spirits behind
and the labored breath of the Counselor
nearing through the dark. Then the good
beast panted down beside him, and the brand
dropped from his jaws. The boy caught it
up, standing bent for the running as a bow
to speeding the arrow; out he shot on the
homeward path, and the Fire Spirits snapped
and sung behind him. Fast as they pursued
he fled faster, until he saw the next runner
stand up in his place to receive the brand.
So it passed from hand to hand, and the Fire
Spirits tore after it through the scrub until
they came to the mountains of the snows.
These they could not pass, and the dark,
sleek runners with the backward-streaming
brand bore it forward, shining star-like in
the night, glowing red through sultry noons, violet pale in twilight glooms, until they came
in safety to their own land. Here they kept
it among stones, and fed it with small sticks,
as the Coyote had advised, until it warmed
them and cooked their food. As for the boy
by whom fire came to the tribes, he was
called the Fire Bringer while he lived, and
after that, since there was no other with so
good a right to the name, it fell to the
Coyote; and this is the sign that the tale is
true, for all along his lean flanks the fur is
singed and yellow as it was by the flames
that blew backward from the brand when he
brought it down from the Burning Mountain.
As for the fire, that went on broadening and
brightening and giving out a cheery sound
until it broadened into the light of day, and
Alan sat up to hear it crackling under the
coffee-pot, where his father was cooking their
breakfast.
***
and now Sly's very abridged version.
THE COYOTE AND THE INDIAN FIRE-BRINGER
One cold winter’s day, long, long ago, when the Coyote
was the friend and the counselor of the Indian, a Boy of
one of the tribes was ranging through a mountain forest
with a big, gray Coyote. The poor Indians ran naked in
the snow or huddled in caves in the rocks, and were suffering
terribly in the cold. The Boy said, “I am sorry
for the misery of my people.” “I do not feel the cold,”
said the Coyote. “You have a coat of fur,” said the Boy,
“and my people have not. I will hunt with you no more
until I have found a way to make my people warm in the
winter’s cold. Help me, O counselor.” The Coyote ran
away, and when he came back, after a long time, he said,
“I have a way, but it’s a hard way.” “No way is too
hard,” said the Boy. So the Coyote told him they must
go to the Burning Mountain to bring fire to the people.
“What is fire?” asked the Boy. “Fire is red like a flower,
yet not a flower; swift to run in the grass and destroy,
like a beast, yet not a beast; fierce and beautiful, yet a
good servant to keep one warm, if kept among stones
and fed with sticks.”
“We will get the fire,” said the Boy. So the Boy and
the Coyote started off with one hundred swift runners
for the far-away Burning Mountain. At the end of the
first day’s trail they left the weakest of the runners to
wait; at the end of the second day the next stronger,
and so for each of the hundred days; and the Boy was
the strongest runner and went to the last trail with the
Coyote. At last the two stood at the foot of the Burning
Mountain, from which smoke rolled out. Then the
Coyote said to the Boy, “Stay here till I bring you a
brand from the burning. Be ready for running, for I
shall be faint when I reach you, and the Fire-spirits will
pursue me.” Up the mountainside he went. He looked so slinking and so small and so mean, the Fire-spirits
laughed at him. But in the night, as the Fire-spirits were
dancing about the mountain, the Coyote stole the fire and
ran with it fast away from the Fire-spirits who, red and
angry, gave chase after him, but could not overtake him.
The Boy saw him coming, like a falling star against the
mountain, with the fire in his mouth, the sparks of which
streamed out along his sides. As soon as the Coyote got
near, the Boy took the brand from his jaws and was off,
like an arrow from a bent bow, till he reached the next
runner, who stood with his head bent for running. To
him he passed it, and he was off and away, and the spiteful
Fire-spirits were hot in chase. So the brand passed
from hand to hand and the Fire-spirits tore after each
runner through the country, but they came to the mountains
of the snows ahead and could not pass. Then the
swift runners, one after the other bore it forward, shining
starlight in the night, glowing red in the sultry noons,
pale in the twilight, until they came safely to their own
land. There they kept the fire among the stones and
fed it with sticks, as the Coyote had said, and it kept the
people warm.
Ever after, the Boy was called the Fire-bringer, and
the Indians said the Coyote still bears the mark of fire,
because his flanks are singed and yellow from the flames
that streamed backward from the firebrand that night
in the long ago.—Adapted from “The Basket Woman,”
by Mary Antrim.
***
While I have no idea who Ellsworth might be, I love Sly's dedication to the book:
TO
Ellsworth
AND
THE HOSTS OF BOYS AND GIRLS SCATTERED
EVERYWHERE TO WHOM I HAVE TOLD
MANY OF THESE STORIES AND FROM
WHOM I HAVE RECEIVED WARM
APPRECIATION AND LOVE
Like Sly, I love telling stories and just thinking about telling this to a group makes me a slight bit warmer. The story has been loved by many including a variety of illustrators for book versions. My favorite is the version where I first found the story. I discovered this is not the first time I mentioned that book in an earlier article here without the story, but telling about the Karuk. It's also definitely not the first time I talked about fire as there are many stories about it on this blog.
 |
It was retold by Jonathan London and illustrated by Sylvia Long |
****************
This is part of a
series of postings of stories under the category, “Keeping the
Public in Public Domain.” The idea behind Public Domain was to
preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate
heirs were compensated. I feel strongly current copyright law delays
this intent on works of the 20th century. My own library
of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided
to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy discovering them.
At
the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates
projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an
audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the
publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.
This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.
(Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared
towards future storytelling to an audience.) Response has
convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain"
should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage
it.
See the sidebar for other Public
Domain story resources I recommend on the page “Public Domain Story Resources."
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