In his extensive collection of Maidu myths, Dixon observes that “Throughout the myths there is nowhere any suggestion that the Maidu had any knowledge of any other region, that they were immigrants in the land where they live. This complete absence of any migration tradition is a feature which is very characteristic, and serves to differentiate the mythology not only of the Maidu, but of most Californian tribes, from that of the Southwest, and much of the eastern portion of the continent.”
He further states: “here the creation is a real beginning: beyond it, there is nothing. In the beginning was only the great sea, calm and unlimited, to which, down from the clear sky, the Creator came, or on which he and Coyote were floating in a canoe. Of the origin of previous place of abode of either Creator or Coyote, the Maidu know nothing....”
“... the whole series of tales told by the stock ... appeared to follow one another in a more or less regular and recognized order. Beginning with the creation, a rather systematic chain of events leads up to the appearance of the ancestors of the present Indians, with whose coming the mythic cycle came to a close. This mythic era, the be-be-ito, seems to fall into a number of periods, with each of which a group or set of myths has to deal. First, we have the coming of Ko-do-yan-pe (Earth-Namer or Creator) and Coyote, their discovery of this world, and the preparation of it for the ‘first people’; next the creation of these first people, and the making and planting of the germs of the human race, the Indians, who were to come after; third, the long period during which the first people were in conflict, and were in the end changed to the various animals in the present world. In this period Earth-Maker tries to put an end to Coyote, whose evil ways and wishes are in direct contrast to his own.” Creator was always dignified and striving to make life easy, happy, and deathless for mankind, while Coyote, a trickster and amorous knave, worked with continued success to render life difficult for man with the result that man’s lot is to suffer and finally to die. This belief was generally uniform among the tribes of the Lassen area. “... During this period Earth-Maker strives for a last time in vain with Coyote, his defeat, and disappearance toward the East coincident with the appearance of the human race, which bursts forth from the spots where the original pairs had been buried long before.” These potential human beings had been made “... as tiny wooden figures by the Creator, and planted here and there in pairs, that they might grow in secret and safety during the time of monsters and great conflicts....”