“The origin of sex, or rather its proper attribution rests in the circumstance that in the beginning, women were men; men were women. The women were such poor hunters that people starved. To remedy this, Cottontail placed stones in a fire; when the women were seated, the stones burst, cutting their proper organs, and the women became men. Hands were then webbed like Lizard’s. In order that they might handle bows and pestles, Lizard, experimenting, cut his fingers apart. With this as a model, he separated those of humans. (In Curtin’s version, Water Lizard remedies the defect for himself alone.) In the beginning when people died, they rose from their graves again. Coyote, who objected to these improvements of human affairs, not only proposes that they shall stay dead but stamps down a dead man who would rise. When his own son dies, he changes his mind, but Lizard, Cottontail, and Gray Squirrel will have none of it, so that death and mourning were established forever.”
Again Garth is here quoted on Atsugewi beliefs: “As in most of northern California there are numerous natural phenomena in Atsugewi territory which marked some mythological event. A low cone-like rock in Dixie Valley was said to be a basket belonging to Coyote. About four miles south of Pittville on the old village site of Mawakasui was an oblong rock ten feet or so in length which was said to be the petrified remains of a lizard whom Butterfly had killed. The extremely rough tongue of lava-covered land extending down the center of Hat Creek Valley was created by Porcupine to impede Coyote with whom Porcupine was running a race. Eagle Lake was said to have been formerly in Atsuge territory, but Coyote tired of the manzanita berries and camass roots which the people fed to him here, so he moved the lake to the Apwaruge country. Here the people fed him epos roots and treated him better.”
The Maidu concept of the world according to Dixon is that of “... floating on the surface of a great sea, but anchored by five ropes stretched by the Creator, which hold the island steady, and prevent it from drifting about. Occasionally some being seizes these ropes and shakes them, and this causes earthquakes. The world was flat when first made from the bit of mud brought up from the depths of the primeval sea by the turtle (turtle does not appear in the northeast or mountain Maidu version) or from the robin’s nest floating in the sea. Later the Creator and the Coyote went about over the world, making the rivers and mountains. Coyote was in general responsible for the latter, and for the extreme roughness of the country....” The Creator’s stone canoe is said to be visible today on top of Keddie Peak just north of Indian Valley (Greenville); also his and Coyote’s dance houses may be seen as huge circular depressions at what is now Durham (near Chico).