Coyote the trickster is an almost universal presence in all Native American spiritual traditions. He created the world, taught human beings survival skills, and brought fire to warm up cold nights. Death came by his hand. He gave the humans the Milky Way into the night sky quite by chance when he threw a box and opened the contents that spilled into the sky. At the end of time, Coyote will return and bring all things to completion. His explosive personality, unquenchable appetites for food and women, self-absorption, and love of mischief--cruel and vividly silly--make him both unpredictable and potentially dangerous. At the opposite end of the spectrum, his endless foolishness catches him in one disastrous trap after another, making him a laughingstock before all, humans and deities.
There is a repeating theme in which Coyote isn't happy with his status among the beings. In one story Coyote believes that Creator is going to change his name in the morning. He goes around bragging that he's going to be renamed Grizzly, chief of the mountain people. To another he brags he's going to be first at the Creator's lodge and he'll be named Salmon, chief of the fish people. Coyote tries to stay up all night, even puttiing sticks in his eyelids to try and keep his eyes open. Of course, he falls asleep, and when he wakes up, he arrives at Creator's too late. All the names are gone, but his. Creator tells him the Coyote is a good name for him, "Soon the human beings, the two-leggeds, will be coming. Coyote, you must make the world ready for them. To do this, I give you two powers. You have the power to create whatever you can imagine . . . and you have the power to come back to life after you die." (Strauss)
In a pourquoi story Coyote covets Crow's wings and his ability to fly. He talks the crows into giving him some of their feathers and tries to follow them into the sky. He says he's perfect now and the crows resent his arrogance and pluck the feathers from his body. He tumbles to the ground so fast that his tail catches fire, and that's why Coyote's tail has a burnt, black tip.
In Native American myth, as in other cultures, a distinction is made between the original mythic figure of an animal and the everyday animal encountered in the ordinary world. Mythic Coyote often appears in human form. Where the mythic figure is portrayed, writers generally capitalize the word: Coyote may have created the world, but coyote steals the chickens. The everyday animal possesses only a small spark of the archetype's fire--but one must also keep in mind that Coyote (or Deer, Hawk, Buffalo, etc.) may appear at any time in the person of coyote. This is a common aspect of nature-centered spiritual traditions.
