Coyote

Coyote is a mythological character common to many cultures of the indigenous peoples of North America, based on the coyote (Canis latrans) animal.

The word "coyote" was originally a Spanish corruption of the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for the animal, coyotl. Coyote mythlore is one of the most popular among Native American people. Coyote is in some lore said to be a trickster.

Myths & Legends
The myths and legends which include Coyote vary widely from culture to culture. In many of these stories he is a major sacred character with divine creative powers; in others he is a malevolent and often comical trickster. In some stories he combines both roles.

A common theme is of Coyote benefitting the human community by organising the theft of fire, or of the sun, from the supernatural beings who have been keeping it for themselves; in these myths he is portrayed as a benefactor of the people. In a Shasta myth, Coyote saves the world from ten evil moons which have inflicted it with everlasting winter.

One story from the Chinookan describes Coyote's attempts to catch salmon. After repeated failures, Coyote defecates and his own feces begin to insult him. Eventually, his feces stop insulting him and offer detailed advice not only for catching the salmon, but also for preparing the fish once he has them. Coyote enjoys success for awhile before he begins to fail once again. Coyote stops and, as before, defecates again. This batch of feces tells Coyote that there are even more aspects he has to take into consideration when fishing including specific instructions for specific geographic location. The story concludes with Coyote finally understanding how to fish properly but thoroughly exhausted. Coyote also appears in the traditions of the Tohono O'odham people of Arizona, as an associate of the culture-hero Montezuma.

He also appears in a legend of the White Mountain Apache, "Coyote fights a lump of pitch" (a variant of the Tar-Baby theme), and in similar legends of the Zapotec and Popoluca of Mexico.

Appearance
This character is usually male and is generally anthropomorphic, although he may have some coyote-like physical features such as fur, pointed ears, yellow eyes, a tail and claws.

Behavior
Some stories depict Coyote as the embodiment of evil lechery: a serial rapist who uses trickery to attack a variety of victims including, for example, his own mother-in-law and his sister. Such tales may have served to reinforce the community moral code, by using outrageous humour to portray examples of intolerable behaviour. However, there are some echoes of his divine role as expressed in the myths of California, in particular when Coyote obtains fire for the people.

Coyoteway
Coyote is the tutelary spirit of "Coyoteway", one of the Navajo curing ceremonies which feature masked impersonators of divinities. The ceremony is necessary if someone in the tribe catches "coyote illness", which can result from killing a coyote or even seeing its dead body. During the ritual, the patient takes the part of the hero of a ceremonial myth and sits on a sandpainting depicting an episode from the myth. He or she "meets" Coyote, who appears in the form of a masked impersonator. The ceremony restores the patient's harmonious relationship with Coyote and the world and thus ensures a return to good health.

Origin of the Horse
One such myth from the Chemehuevi involves Coyote enlisting the help of other animals in order to achieve his goals. In the later half of a myth called "Coyote Went to get Basketry Material" Coyote enlists the help of the Black Spider and Parotsok^^itapitsi, an unknown bird species, to take revenge on the Sky-Down-feather-Brothers for killing his grandson. This myth also involves Coyote discovering the first horse, who happens to be his own grandson.

It begins with Coyote's grandson being sent by his mother to go see Coyote and before the grandson leaves he is explicitly told not to enter a cave that lies between his mother's house and Coyote's house. However, after the grandson had traveled for some time it began to get dark and rain began to fall. Deciding to disobey his mother's instruction, the grandson spends the night and the subsequent morning in the cave.

When the youth awakens, he finds that his head feels heavy, his hands now look completely different, and he is covered in hair. As he leaves the cave, he is approached by some mountain sheep who accompany him on his journey to his grandfather's house. When he reaches Coyote's home, Coyote sees them coming and notices that one of the mountain sheep is much bigger than the rest. He plans on killing the big one before Wolf tells him that that mountain sheep is actually his own grandson and urges him to not only not kill it, but also to feed the big mountain sheep bunchgrass. Coyote obliges and decides to settle for killing some of the smaller mountain sheep instead. After eating, his grandson goes off to spend the night with the other mountain sheep before returning in the morning. Once again, Coyote kills some of the smaller sheep and feeds the biggest one some bunchgrass. This same process repeats itself several times with Coyote gaining an enormous amount of meat.

One morning, however, the big mountain sheep is spied by the two Sky-Down-feather-Brothers. The eldest, knowing who the big mountain sheep really is, plans on leaving him alone but the younger brother ignores his older brother's warning and decides to kill the big mountain sheep. After shooting the big mountain sheep the younger brother finds that his big catch has suddenly turned into a boy wearing moccasins. The two brothers then butcher the body and fly away. The following morning Wolf mourns the loss of their grandson and devises a plan for revenge. Wolf tells Coyote to hide almost all the water, have the Black Spider spin a web to fill the sky's hole, and to hide near the little water still uncovered with Parotsok^^itapitsi with a hot rock from a fire pit. Coyote agrees to this plan but before he sets it in motion, he goes to the spot where his grandson was killed where he finds some blood and a little bit of hair which he packs in a basket before leaving.

Coyote asks the Black Spider to make a web out of cooked sinew and the spider agrees to help him. He then asks Parotsok^^itapitsi to accompany him at the edge of the water and shout when the Sky-Down-feather brothers try to fly away in order to keep them in place and he also agrees to do this. Eventually, both of the Sky-Down-feather-brothers get thirsty and search for some water to drink. The younger brother quickly spots the water where Coyote is hiding and suggests they land there to drink but the elder brother knows better and tells his brother that that is where Coyote is hiding, waiting for them. The brothers then try to trick Coyote multiple times by flying close to the water and saying, "Oh, Coyote, sitting by a roasting pit heating a stone!" Each time, Coyote almost reveals himself thinking he has been discovered but each time Parotsok^^itapitsi stops him telling him that the brothers are trying to trick him. Finally, the two brothers stop to drink and in that moment, Coyote throws the hot stone at them and Parotsok^^itapitsi shouts as they try to fly away and the brothers become trapped in the web blocking the sky's hole. Then, Black Spider climbs down the web and bites the brothers on their necks and they both fall back down to the ground.

The story concludes with Coyote going to where he had left his grandson's remains only to find that his grandson had been revived and was gone. Coyote deduces that his grandson has become a horse due to the fact that all the grass in the surrounding area had been eaten.

Various Creation Myths
A good example of Coyote's dual attributes is a Maidu myth that says that at the beginning of time, a primal being called Earth Maker is floating on the infinite waters, when Coyote calls out to him. Together they sing to create the world. After it is completed, and Earth Maker has created the people, Coyote vows to spoil the word and introduce evil to it. Earth Maker orders the people to destroy Coyote, but despite their best efforts, Coyote uses supernatural trickery to outwit them. In the end, Earth Maker is forced to recognise that Coyote's power is equal to his own.

In a Miwok myth, Coyote creates all animals, then calls them to a council to discuss the creation of human beings. Each animal wants people to be imbued with its own best qualities, causing an argument. Coyote mocks them all, vowing that human beings should have his own wit and cunning. Each animal makes a human model in its own likeness; but overnight Coyote destroys the other models, so that only his own model comes to life.

A Maidu myth says that as the Creator was fashioning various creatures out of clay, Coyote tried to do the same. However, as he kept laughing, his efforts did not turn out well. The Creator suggested that if he stopped laughing, he might do better. Coyote denied laughing - thus telling the world's first lie.

Other Native American tricksters
There are many Native American trickster characters, or many faces for the same archetypal figure. Kumokums is a trickster of the Modoc Indians of California. Nanabozho is an Algonquian trickster. Among tribes of the Midwest the trickster is sometimes the Great Hare. For many Plains Indians he is Ikotme the Spider. In the Pacific Northwest he is Raven. Great hare, Nanabush or Glooskap in the woodlands, Rabbit in the Southeast, Coyote on the Plains in the West, and Raven, Blue Jay or Mink on the Northwest coast. And in many parts of the country we find the trickster Coyote, Raven, and Iktome are particularly popular figures.

Comparisons to other Mythos
Coyote is compared to both the Scandinavian Loki, and also Prometheus, who shared with Coyote the trick of having stolen fire from the gods as a gift for mankind, and Anansi, a mythological culture hero from Western African mythology. In Eurasia, rather than a coyote, a fox is often featured as a trickster hero, ranging from kitsune (fox) tales in Japan to the Reynard cycle in Western Europe. It is also very similar to the Aztec Huehuecoyotl.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, French anthropologist proposed a structuralist theory that suggests that Coyote and Crow obtained mythic status because they are mediator animals between life and death.

Modern Depictions
Coyote figures prominently in current efforts to educate young people about indigenous languages and cultures in North America. For example, the Secwepemc people of the Kamloops Indian Band in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, have designated their recently opened native elementary school the Sk'elep (Coyote) School of Excellence, while educational websites such as one co-sponsored by the Neskonlith Indian Band of Chase, British Columbia prominently feature stories about Sk'elep. The Mobooks include two collections of contemporary Coyote tales, Elderberry Flute Song and The Other Side of Nowhere, which place Coyote in a number of different hawk Nation.

Coyote also features as a character in the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court, written by Tom Siddell, where he is portrayed with his trickster characteristics in full force and his status as a god and the implications not left forgotten. Coyote is also an important character in C. Robert Cargill's Dreams and Shadows series, playing a focal role in the manipulation of the storyline. He is presented as a manitou.

One character of the Native American Tricksters that has survived into modern times is that of the Southeast version of the Coyote trickster. Usually called the Great Hare passed into modern American folklore as Brer Rabbit after West African slaves fused him with their own Hare trickster.