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The Moon-Callers
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18369 |
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BOOK WORLD
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9 / 1990 |
1,887 Words |
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Audrey D. Foote
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Some Plains Indians regarded the coyote as a kind of god, or rather as a canine Prometheus. In their creation myths, the coyote was the first living creature; it invented the world the other animals, and finally mankind. The Navajo, emphasizing the coyote's capacity for affection, its playfulness, and its handsome head and fur, baptized it “God's dog.” The Crow delighted in the resourcefulness and trickster qualities of “Old Man Coyote” (THE WORLD & I, April, 1990)
All Indian tribes seem to have agreed on the intelligence of Canis latrans, and on this one quality there is still unanimity. Even the coyote's worst enemies - especially his worst enemy - swear to his brainpower. But as always, when attributed to an opponent, whether animal or human, this virtue of intelligence is denigrated, progressively, to “smart,” “clever,” “crafty,” “wily,” “sly,” and “sneaky.”
Perhaps this acknowledgment of wit is meant to justify and aggrandize the hunter or trapper as a conqueror of a truly formidable, viciously devious opponent. But even more often such claims for coyote intelligence are put forward by ranchers, and sometimes politicians, as a reason to escalate the attempts to exterminate them. It seems now that those Native Americans who deified the coyote as a creator god were in fact the only human beings ever to underestimate its intelligence: Surely no wise animal would have created for itself such an implacable and ruthless enemy as man.
Although increasingly threatened in its natural habitat by advanced technologies and regressive policies, the coyote is again taking on mythic significance, emerging as a kind of totem animal for our urban civilized society. A popular line of greeting cards in a local bookstore has charming, bright, spiky drawings of “Coyote and his friends” (including rabbits!) telling tales by the fireside, trimming Christmas trees, and so on. The shop also sells brooches, bookmarks, and other paraphernalia with these designs. They represent a peaceable Kingdom paradigm for the 1990s, with the prince of western deserts replacing the king of African jungles. Photographs and sketches of coyotes adorn postcards and posters. Articles about them appear regularly in newspapers and magazines, often pegged to sightings of coyotes in new locales. In recent decades a larger, darker eastern variant of the original western coyote has appeared all over New England. We can soon expect a report of one loping through Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park or crouching behind a rosebush in the bishop's garden at the National Cathedral.
This year, several publishers are bringing out books with the charismatic word coyote in the title, though at least three are detective stores. No doubt there will be new nonfiction studies, through it would be hard to find a better one for the general reader than the recently updated and reissued God's Dog by Hope Ryden; she is a kind of Jane Goodall of coyotes, and fortunately a professional photographer as well. But probably the book that will most captivate, convert, and even, one hopes, soften hearts and toughen protective legislation, is this novel by Melinda Worth Popham, Skywater. Appropriately published Graywolf Press, it already has won high praise from novelists Thomas McGuane and Wallace Stegner. It was selected for B. Dalton's Discover New Writers Program and is the winner of the first Edward Abbey Award for ecofiction.
Popham tells us that for early versions of the book
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