Russell Ultan recorded oral histories, stories about the mythical trickster Coyote and other infamous characters, as well as elicited vocabulary. During his work with Elmer Smith, Leland Scott and Lena Martin, Russell Ultan collected roughly 50 audio sessions, 40 of them stories. Leland Scott is the storyteller. Listen to hear the cadence of the language.
The stories range from just a few minutes to roughly a half hour.

The Story of Coyote and the Humming Bird

This is a random selection from the stories collection.

The entire audio collection is available HERE.

As part of the work on this project, we analyzed two of these stories from transcription to translation.
We use references to these two stories throughout the lessons.
You will be able to choose to view the story at the sentence, word or component level. They have been parsed and glossed so that users can see the meanings and compare Konkow and English words and sentences.

Click the buttons below to see the analysis of these stories.
Coyote and the Two Turtle Girls takes place in and by the river. It tells the story of Coyote, who is not a great swimmer and his interaction with the Turtle Girls. The story is roughly 3 minutes long and has 65 sentences. The audio file for each sentence can be listened to as you look at the component, word or sentence level analysis. You can also listen to the story in its entirety on the audio stories page.
The story of the Lost Swimmer
is a little over 6 minutes long and contains 110 sentences.
It takes place under the bridge at Chico Creek.
A man is lost while swimming and eventually gets out, goes home and becomes a shaman.
We have just begun analysis work with The Fire Myth.
We are working on an interactive version for the web,
and a storybook version.