Coyote and Raven as Trickster Figures

Two figures dominate the trickster tradition of North America: the Coyote of the Southwest and the Plains, and the Raven of the Pacific Northwest and the Inuit. Both are tricksters, both are shape-shifters, both are creators of the world as we know it. But they are not the same kind of figure. Coyote is a southwestern trickster, often foolish and lustful, who creates by accident as often as by design. Raven is a Pacific Northwestern creator-trickster who steals the sun, the moon, and the fresh water from a miserly old chief and sets them in the sky. The two figures are an instructive case study in how the same basic type can be developed in strikingly different directions by different cultures.

This article is part of the wider survey of the Trickster Figures of world myth and of the larger survey of Folk Heroes and Legendary Figures. It compares Coyote and Raven as trickster figures, and it connects to the wider currents of Native American Folklore, the Loki of Scandinavia, the Anansi of West Africa, and the Kitsune of Japan.

Coyote of the Southwest and Plains

The Coyote of the American Southwest is, in his earliest appearances, a culture-bringer and a creator. In the Navajo tradition, Coyote (in Navajo, Mą’ii) helped the Holy People to set the world in order. In the Hopi tradition, Coyote is the helper of the culture hero Kokopelli, the humpbacked flute-player who led the ancestors of the Hopi out of the underworld. In the Zuni tradition, Coyote is one of the animal-children of the Sun, and he is the one who, by his foolishness, brings death into the world.

The Coyote of the Great Plains is a more obviously comic figure. The Blackfoot, the Crow, the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho all have great cycles of Coyote stories in which the hero is, on the whole, a fool: a lecher, a glutton, a braggart, outwitted by his own children, by his wife, by the duck, by the prairie dog. The most famous stories are the trickster cycle in the strict sense — the Coyote who tries to make a deal with the buzzard, the Coyote who tries to swim across the river and is eaten by the fish, the Coyote who climbs the cliff to escape the dogs and is stuck there forever. The stories are short, comic, and have a moral bite.

Raven of the Pacific Northwest and the Inuit

The Raven of the Pacific Northwest is a creator-trickster of a different kind. In the Haida tradition of the Queen Charlotte Islands, in the Tlingit tradition of the Alaskan coast, in the Tsimshian tradition of the British Columbian interior, Raven is the great trickster and the great creator. The most famous of the Raven stories is how he stole the sun, the moon, and the fresh water. In the Haida version, a great chief in the sky kept the three lights in cedar boxes, and the world below was dark and cold. Raven transformed himself into a hemlock needle, was swallowed by the chief’s daughter, was born as her human baby, and demanded the boxes of light as playthings. He then transformed back into Raven, flew up through the smoke hole, and set the moon, the sun, and the fresh water in the sky.

The Raven of the Inuit tradition, of the Arctic, is a creator of a different kind: he is associated with the creation of daylight. In one widely told version, Raven heard of a man in a distant village who kept the daylight in a bag, transformed himself into a hemlock needle, was born as the man’s grandson, and demanded the bag as a plaything. He flew up through the smoke hole and tore the bag, and the daylight spread out across the world.

The Cultural Differences

The contrast between Coyote and Raven is striking. Coyote is a southwestern figure, often foolish and lustful, who creates by accident. Raven is a northwestern figure, often clever and dignified, who creates by plan. The differences are partly geographic and partly cultural. The Southwest and the Plains are dry, open, and difficult environments, in which the life of a small hunting-and-gathering community was a constant struggle. The trickster of such a community is a figure of small victories and small defeats, a figure who is as often the victim as the victor. The Northwest Coast is a rich environment, full of salmon and cedar, and the trickster of such a community is a figure of grand gestures, of major transformations, of cosmic thefts.

The Universal Function of the Trickster

The comparison of Coyote and Raven is one of the clearest cases in the world of a single folkloric type being developed in two strikingly different ways. Whether he is Coyote of the Plains, Raven of the Northwest, Loki of the Norse, Anansi of the Akan, or the Kitsune of Japan, the trickster is the figure who brings disorder into the world, who exposes the pretensions of the powerful, and who, by the very act of breaking the rules, shows the world what the rules are for. The trickster is also, almost always, the bringer of the essential things — Anansi brought the stories, Raven brought the sun, Coyote brought death, the Greek Prometheus brought the fire.

The Modern Literary Retellings

The Coyote and Raven of the modern literary imagination are the inheritors of a long tradition. The Blackfoot writer Gerald Vizenor, in works such as The Heirs of Columbus of 1991, has made the trickster central to his writing. The Cherokee writer Thomas King, in Green Grass, Running Water of 1993 and The Inconvenient Indian of 2012, has used the Coyote figure to undermine the Western narrative of the conquest of North America. The Blackfeet writer Stephen Graham Jones has used the trickster as a model of the Native American writer in a hostile literary world. The recent revival of the Raven of the Northwest Coast has been part of a wider cultural revival among the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian peoples. The trickster of the modern literary imagination is, in this sense, both a traditional figure and a modern figure, and the two are inseparable.

Sources and Further Reading

Hultkrantz, Åke. Native Religions of North America: The Power of Visions and Fertility. Harper & Row, 1987.
Vizenor, Gerald. Fury Bear and the Heirs of Columbus. Wesleyan, 1991.
Bringhurst, Robert. A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World. Douglas & McIntyre, 1999.
Toelken, Barre. The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. University of Utah Press, 2003.