Coyote

“Coyote lived in the Village of Darkness, on one side of a mountain range. On the other side was the Village of Light. No one had ever gone over the mountains to the other side. They were afraid of what they might find there.

Coyote said to himself: “I want to find out what it is like on the far side. It might be dangerous, but I am curious. Curiosity is always getting the better of me.” So Coyote went up one side of the mountains and came down on the other. The land there was bright. It almost blinded him. He was not used to it. There were people there. They were different from the kind of people Coyote knew. They had wondrous things that the people in the Village of Darkness lacked. The people Coyote knew had never heard of such things.

Coyote crept up to the strange people’s camp. This was the Village of Light. Coyote crept unseen into the home of a chief. The chief took something out of a basket. It was Sun. At once everything was bright. The chief sent Sun on its path. After a while Sun came back. The chief put Sun back in its basket. Then, at once, everything was dark. The chief took something out of another basket. It was Moon. At once everything was bright again, but not as bright as when Sun was out of its basket. Moon made things much less bright. Moon went on its path and came back.

Then Sun came out again. Coyote watched it all with astonishment. He had never believed that such things could be. Coyote went back to his own Village of Darkness. He told the chief what he had seen. The chief would not believe him. He called Coyote a liar. Coyote said: “They have two wonderful things over there. They call them Sun and Moon. They make things bright.” “You are dreaming,” said the chief. “You have lost your senses.” “I will steal Sun and Moon from those strangers on the other side,” said Coyote.

The chief mocked Coyote: “We do not need those things. They are of no use to us.” “I will find some use for them,” said Coyote. Coyote again walked over the mountains to the Village of Light. He laid himself across the path that he knew the chief of that village would take whenever he went hunting. Then Coyote transformed himself into a dry branch. The village chief came walking along, just as Coyote had expected. He stumbled over the branch. He looked at what had tripped him. “Ah, this will go on my woodpile,” said the chief as he picked up the branch. He took it to his village.

Back at his home, the chief made a fire. He threw the dry branch into it, the branch that was Coyote. At once the branch jumped out of the fire. The chief put it back. The branch formed itself into a hoop going around the fire so that it could not be burned. The chief grabbed the branch a third time and threw it across the fire. The branch quickly stood itself on end at the side of the fire to save itself. “This is a very strange piece of wood,” said the chief. “It will not burn. We will see about that.”

Coyote used his powerful magic to make the chief drowsy. The chief had just put Sun back into its basket, but had not yet taken Moon out for its nightly journey. The chief fell asleep. He snored. His eyes were shut fast. Coyote quickly assumed his natural form. He seized both baskets and ran away with them. The chief awoke and raised the alarm. Then all his people ran after Coyote to get Sun and Moon back. Coyote is a fast runner. He managed to keep just ahead of his pursuers in spite of his heavy burden. He ran up the mountain slope and over the crest. Then he ran down to his own side. When his pursuers reached the crest and looked down, they stopped.

Before them spread the Land of Darkness. It made them afraid. “This blackness is frightful,” they said. “This land is darker than dark. How can one see in such a country? The people there must all be blind. No, we are not used to that kind of thing. We will not go down there.” So they gave up. Coyote came back to his Village of Darkness. He went to the chief’s home. All the people followed him. He put the two baskets down in front of the chief. The chief poked them with his feet. He kicked them around a little bit. He said: “I do not trust anything coming from the other side. Everything there is bad.”

Coyote opened one bag and let Sun come out. Then everything was bright. The chief said: “I don’t like this strange thing. It is bad for the eyes. It could make us blind. We have no use for this.” But nobody paid any attention to him. All the people were happy to have light. Then Coyote took out Moon from its bag. “This will shine in the night,” he told the people. The chief kept grumbling: “This useless thing is also bad, though not quite as bad as the thing called ‘Sun.’ This will make people go out at night making love instead of sleeping. Then they will be too lazy to hunt or to gather food.” But nobody listened to him. “You have done well,” the people told Coyote. Then they made him the chief.”

~ Richard Erdoes, COYOTE STEALS THE SUN {Miwok}, American Indian Trickster Tales

“Tales of Coyote’s wild and wicked adventures are told from the Arctic down to Mexico, and across the continent from ocean to ocean. There are probably more tales about Coyote than there are about all the other Native American Tricksters put together, and probably all the other characters, too. Indian folklore also broadens the role of the Trickster character enormously...

Coyote, part human and part animal, taking whichever shape he pleases, combines in his nature the sacredness and sinfulness, grand gestures and pettiness, strength and weakness, joy and misery, heroism and cowardice that together form the human character… Just as in real life Coyote survives and thrives in spite of traps, poison, and a rancher’s bullets, so the Coyote of legend survives the onslaught of white American culture. As Henry Crow Dog, Rosebud Sioux wise man and traditionalist, put it, “Coyote stories will never die.”

Indian Tricksters are undeniably amorous... An earthy innocence surrounds these kinds of stories. Women and children enjoy them as well as men. As Lame Deer used to say, “We are not Christian missionaries. We think differently.” In the book Stories of Maasaw, a Hopi God, coauthor Ekkehart Malotki comments, The Hopi does not give a second thought when referring to sex and related subjects, and will openly talk of these things in the presence of his children. He will also do many things that may be considered repulsive in the eyes of a cultural outsider, but these are not so to him.

The authors of this book can bear witness to this fact. We have often seen the sacred clowns—Kosa, Koshare, Koyemshi, Chiffonetti—doing things that upset the occasional missionary or make an elderly lady tourist blush. These antics are all part of old traditions. In many tribes, during certain dances, modest old grandmothers will say things they would never dare to utter on any other day.

Says Howard Norman of the Trickster, “His presence demands, cries out for, compassion and generosity toward existence itself. Trickster is a celebrator of life, a celebration of life, because by rallying against him a community discovers its own resilience and protective skills.” John Fire Lame Deer, traditional Sioux holy man, used to say, “Coyote, Iktomi, and all their kind are sacred. A people that have so much to weep about as we Indians also need their laughter to survive.”