Coyote ... mischief maker, child of chaos, creator-by-chance. Coyote ... the unpredictable whose pranks, somehow, tend to Set Things Right…Coyote, there at the very Beginning.
Trickster tales remind us that life isn't necessarily fair, but that nothing, no matter how unhappy, lasts forever. The amoral trickster, as befits his shape-shifting, unpredictable nature, can be a force of wild, primal power, acting on mere whim. He assumes many guises and roles: the Greek god of wine and chaos Dionysus; High John, the black slave who always gets the better of his master and is the breath of hope to an enslaved people; or folk heroes such as the German medieval Till Eulenspiegel, the English Robin Hood, and even modern cartoon characters who give us the relief of laughter and the vicarious triumph of "little" people over the pompous, bureaucratic, or tyrannical.
Coyote is the form of trickster common to the Native Americans of the West, Southwest, and Great Plains. Anyone who has followed the coyote's triumphs over those who have been trying for the last two hundred years to eradicate him with traps, poison, and guns can understand why he was chosen as a mythic symbol. The following stories are examples of the vast lore surrounding Coyote, whose offspring can even today be heard howling within an hour's drive of most major American metropolises.
A Zuni tale: The theft of Sun and Moon
Coyote, there at the Beginning,
creator-by-chance…
Coyote, there at the making
of the Rules of the World…
At the very beginning of things, neither sun nor moon were in the sky. The Kachinas, the spirit people, kept them, safe and secret, in a box that they opened whenever they wished some light. Without the sun, the world was always dark. Without the moon, there were no seasons; the world was never cold nor warm, never white with snow nor green with leaves.
Coyote thought this was a sorry state of affairs. He liked change, did sly Coyote - most certainly, since he was a clumsy hunter in the darkness shrouding the world.
"Ho, Eagle Chief," he called, "let us form a hunting partnership. Two hunters should do better than one."
Haughty Eagle looked down at Coyote and laughed. What, he, the keen of eye and might of wing, make a pact with a flightless ground crawler? But he remembered that Coyote, the sly one, could steal an eagle's meal, even in the darkness. Better to keep Coyote in the open, where he could play no pranks! So Eagle agreed to the partnership.
But even so, Coyote caught nothing but bugs. "Bah! How can anyone do any decent hunting in all this darkness? Tell me, Eagle, you who fly so high, have you ever seen any light in your traveling?"
"Why, yes, from time to time I have seen a flickering of light in the west, where the Kachinas
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