Coyote Trickster Tales

Coyote, the great trickster of the American Southwest and the Great Plains, is one of the most important and most loved figures in Native American folklore. He is the small, sly, hungry animal who is at once a creator, a transformer, a thief, a teacher, and a fool. He is the one who steals fire from the people who are hoarding it and gives it to the human beings, who steals the sun from the people who are keeping it in a box, who is killed by his own children and resurrected by the careful work of his sister. He is, in the words of one of his favourite sayings, the one who has been everywhere, who has done everything, who has seen everything, and who has been fooled by everything.

The trickster is a figure who appears, in one form or another, in nearly every traditional culture in the world. The Coyote of the American Southwest and the Plains is the great parallel of the Anansi of West Africa and the Loki of Norse myth, all of them figures of cleverness, misrule, and the great joke of the cosmos. The Coyote is also the great parallel of the Raven of the Pacific Northwest, the Iktomi of the Northern Plains, the Nanabush of the Great Lakes, the Manabozho of the Ojibwe — all of them the same basic figure, the clever one who breaks the rules of the world and remakes it.

Coyote in the Southwest

In the Navajo (Diné) tradition of the Southwest, Coyote is called Mą’ii, and he is one of the central figures of the older stories. He is the one who steals the fire from the Spider Old Woman and the Spider Old Man, who are hoarding it, and who gives it to the human beings, at the cost of being burned and losing his beautiful tail. He is the one who walks along the path of the first people and who shapes the world as he goes, throwing rocks into rivers to make the rapids, kicking up the earth to make the mountains, biting off a piece of the sun to make the moon. He is the one who is killed by his own children, who tear him into pieces, and who is brought back to life by the careful work of his sister, First Woman or White Shell Woman.

The Hopi of northern Arizona have a related Coyote tradition, in which Koyangwuti (the kachina of the spider) is sometimes blended with Coyote, and in which Coyote is one of the clowns of the ceremonies, the one who breaks the rules of the village and is beaten out of the kiva at the end of the dance. The Hopi Coyote is more of a clown than a creator, and his role in the ceremonies is to make the people laugh and to remind them of the older ways of the world.

The Zuni of western New Mexico have a Coyote tradition in which Coyote is the bringer of the sun, the one who makes the world safe for the people, and the one who is the grandfather of the witches, the one who knows the secret medicine. The Apache of the Southwest, including the Mescalero, the Jicarilla, the Lipan, and the Western Apache, have a Coyote tradition in which Coyote is the Culture Hero who gives the people their medicine and their ceremonies.

Coyote on the Plains

In the Plains tradition, the Coyote of the western and southern Plains is a comic figure, the small animal who talks too much, who is always hungry, and who is always getting into trouble. The great Lakota trickster is Iktomi, the spider, who is the principal cultural hero of the western Lakota, but Coyote is also present in many stories, and the two are sometimes blended.

The Lame Deer stories, told by the Lakota medicine man John Fire Lame Deer (1903–1976) to the folklorist Richard Erdoes and published in the book Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions (1972), are some of the most important modern tellings of the Plains tradition. Lame Deer’s voice is quiet, ironic, and sometimes sad, and the Coyote of his telling is a creature of great depth, the one who suffers as well as the one who laughs.

The Hyemeyohsts Storm stories, told by the Northern Cheyenne writer Hyemeyohsts Storm (born 1935) and published in the book Seven Arrows (1972), are another major modern telling. Storm’s voice is more elaborate than Lame Deer’s, and his stories are told in a more literary style, but the Coyote of his telling is the same basic figure — the small, sly animal who is the teacher, the fool, and the bringer of the medicine.

The Cycle of Stories

The Coyote trickster cycle is one of the great bodies of Native American folklore. The principal stories in the cycle are the following.

In the fire-stealing story, Coyote notices that the people are cold and that they have no fire, while the Spider Old Woman and the Spider Old Man are keeping the fire in a box at the foot of a great tree. Coyote, with the help of a small bird or a small animal, climbs the tree, distracts the spiders, and steals a piece of the fire. He runs away with it, but the fire burns him, and he loses his beautiful tail in the process.

In the sun-stealing story, the people are in the dark, and the Sun is being kept in a box by a wealthy chief. Coyote plays a trick on the chief and gets the sun out of the box. The people are given the sun, but the chief tries to take it back.

In the killing and resurrection story, Coyote is killed by his own children, who are tired of his pranks. They cut him into pieces, but Coyote’s sister, or the Spider Old Woman, comes and carefully puts the pieces back together. Coyote comes back to life, but he is never quite the same as before.

In the first-people story, Coyote walks along the path of the first people as they emerge into the Fifth World, and he shapes the world as he goes. He throws rocks into the rivers to make the rapids, he kicks up the earth to make the mountains, he sings the songs that call the animals into being.

Coyote and Raven

The Coyote of the Southwest and the Plains and the Raven of the Pacific Northwest are the two great trickster figures of the older North American tradition, and they are often treated as parallel figures. The Raven of the Haida, the Tlingit, the Tsimshian, and the other nations of the Pacific Northwest is a great black bird who is at once a creator, a transformer, and a buffoon. The Raven is a being of the sky, while Coyote is a being of the ground, and the two figures are often treated as the two great tricksters of the indigenous Americas, one for the coastal people and one for the inland people.

The Trickster in Modern American Life

The Coyote of the older Native American tradition has survived into the modern era in many forms. The Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote, who has been chasing the Road Runner across the cartoon desert since 1949, is a direct descendant of the older Coyote, and the cartoons have been read as a modern re-telling of the older story. The Chuck Jones cartoons of the 1950s and 1960s, with the elaborate contraptions that the Coyote builds and that always fail at the critical moment, are a modern version of the older moral that the trickster is the one who has to learn the lesson the hard way.

The Coyote of the older tradition has also been carried into the modern literature in the work of writers like N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko, who draw on the older trickster cycle in their fiction and poetry. The Sherman Alexie of the modern Spokanetribe, and the Tomson Highway of the modern Cree, are among the modern writers who have carried the trickster tradition into the contemporary era.

Sources and Further Reading

Lame Deer, John Fire, and Erdoes, Richard. Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. Simon & Schuster, 1972.
Storm, Hyemeyohsts. Seven Arrows. Harper & Row, 1972.
Bastian, Dawn E., and Mitchell, Judy K. Handbook of Native American Mythology. ABC-CLIO, 2004.
Slobodin, Richard. W. H. R. Rivers Prize Essay: The Ghost Songs of the Rimrock Navaho. Wiley, 1967.