Eagle is a chiefly figure of the myth-age, keen-sighted and grave, often set as leader over the other animal-people. In the widely told mid-Columbia narrative he and Coyote journey together to the land of the dead to bring the departed home. Eagle's careful discipline nearly carries the recovery through, but Coyote's impatience breaks the condition on which it depends, and the dead are lost again, so that death becomes permanent for the human people who follow. The pairing casts Eagle as the wise elder against Coyote's restless folly, a recurrent structure in Chinookan storytelling.