In those days there was lots to eat, but they destroyed it. They used to get game easily, but Coyote and Wolf made it hard to get food. Wolf went hunting. He was going to hunt groundhogs. He went and stood under a rock cliff. He said, "Rocks, come after me,’ and all groundhogs came down to him. Then he killed what he thought would be enough for a meal and went home. Coyote was his brother. He was home, and he asked him, “How do you kill so many like that? Then Wolf told him how he did it. Coyote thought he would try. He did what his brother had told him and got many groundhogs. Then he ate them, and afterwards he stood there and said the same thing again. Then all rocks rolled down after him. That's how Coyote spoiled easy hunting.
—Daisy Brown, told in her Northern Paiute language, Summer 1930, Fort Bidwell, Surprise Valley, CA. Interpreter: Nora Henderson. [1] [2]
In the Northern Great Basin, Groundhog seeing Shadow is not a concern. Survival — and the good life — compel action and hibernation. Basic, yes? A lot like Human — and Wolf and Coyote. Yet, an ontological issue complicates. One of identity. Is Groundhog actually a groundhog? Wildlife biologists say no, there are no groundhogs (Marmota monax) in the Great Basin. Oh yes, they concede, there is a cousin — Yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris).
Have Wolf and Coyote been let astray? No, it's common out-West for these high-rock marmots to be called groundhogs. Something to do with whites from the East occupying country and translating Gidü or Kidü to how they remembered. Yet, I believe Groundhog and a groundhog hold close in the mythic realm of the real. As Coyote is ever-greater-than-and-the-same-as a coyote.
At times, when I am studying rock rims in high country for petroglyphs, a small furry head and nose will pop up over the edge, curious. Stare at me, an intruder, quickly disappear. Yellow-bellied marmot prefer to be near rocks. Rocks shelter burrows. Wolf and Coyote know this. Too, I’ve seen Coyote out there, loping along, hungry, going somewhere. Above photo: Marmot top center, dot petroglyph far right.
Shadow? Yellow-bellied marmot has Shadow, as do we all, however until emerging from hibernation in late Spring it lingers in dreams.
Rock-dreaming
NOTESPhotos by this blog's author at a rock-rim-place in the Warner basin watershed, SE Oregon. Click to enlarge.
[1] An excerpt from a longer story about two brothers, Coyote and Wolf, going hunting. This story is one of six variations of this theme each by a different Northern Paiute speaker. Five contain a groundhog sequence. In some versions Coyote is killed by the rocks (and of course comes out alive); in some his tail is cut-off. The stories were solicited and transcribed, with some grammatical corrections, by UC Berkeley graduate student Isabel T. Kelly and published in Northern Paiute Tales, The Journal of American Folklore Vol. 51, Oct-Dec 1938.
[2] Daisy (Limpy) Brown was born in the Warner Valley about 1870 according to Kelly. She provided many stories in Kelly’s Tales and was an important source of knowledge in Kelly’s 1932 Ethnography of the Surprise Valley Paiute. Brown was the aunt of Nora Henderson of Alturas who served as her interpreter.
[3] Gray wolves living in North American today came from Eurasia between 70,000 and 24,000 years ago; https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.12765. Wolves were extirpated in the Northern Great Basin by the 1920s; efforts to repopulate remain contentious.
