The Role Of Coyote In The Nez Perce

Before the Nez Perce Indians were created it was said that animals inhabited the world. Animals had qualities that made them act like humans. The main character in the Nez Perce story was a Coyote. “A trickster and transformer” The story is. “One day Coyote learned that all the animals were being devoured by a fearsome monster who dwelled near present-day Kamiah on the Clearwater River. Tricking the monster into swallowing him, Coyote started a fire inside the monster’s belly and slew him by severing his heart from his body with stone knives, setting free the imprisoned animals. Carving the dead monster’s body into pieces, Coyote flung them throughout the land where they became the different Indian tribes of today. But he had forgotten the region in which …show more content…
The tribes in this region had no resources of corn agriculture but primarily relied on hunting and fishing. Most of the social structures in this region would be on the lines of looking similar to this. “This descent group, which consisted of a chiefly descent line, lower-ranking nobles, and commoners, takes the form of a matrilineal clan over large parts of the region.” (Mauzé, Harkin, Kan, pg135, 2004). Brown says on page 23 from the book Indians in American History “Distinctions of social rank among these people were marked by control of wealth...” Now that we talked about the social rank I am going to talk about two important chiefs of the Nez Perce one was Chief Joseph and the other Chief Looking Glass both involved in the same war. I am going to start by talking about Looking Glass and how he was involved in the war. According to Markowitz, Looking Glass became the new chief when his father died on January 1863. That same year in 1877 war broke out for the Nez Perce. Towards the beginning of the war Looking Glass thought nothing was going to come from this war but fighting soon happened. “The Indians deserted their village, which was destroyed by the whites. Seething with hatred, Looking