For the week of January 2 - 8, 2002

Coyote/coyote: trickster, teacher, survivor, fool

Commentary by DICK DORWORTH

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The European refugees who started showing up around 500 years ago and who now act as if they own the place, do not pay as much attention to Coyote as do their indigenous predecessors.

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The beginning of a new year is a period of renewal, always a good time to remember coyote and Old Man Coyote.

Trickster, teacher, survivor and fool, coyote has inhabited this land we call America much longer than the later arriving humans from Asia, who have only been here about 10,000 years or so. The European refugees who started showing up around 500 years ago and who now act as if they own the place, do not pay as much attention to Coyote as do their indigenous predecessors. The small prairie wolf known as coyote mostly attracts their interest in a long standing, unsuccessful effort at extermination; but this creature with a perpetual bounty on its hide resembling a medium-size dog with a narrow face, tawny fur and a bushy tail, is only one aspect of what native American peoples have called Coyote, Coyote Man and Old Man Coyote.

In some Native American traditions, Coyote impersonates the Creator, making humans out of mud and bringing into being the buffalo, elk, deer, antelope and bear. In these myths, Coyote-Creator is never mentioned as an animal, though he can and does meet his animal counterpart, coyote; and they walk and talk together, addressing the other as "elder brother" and "younger brother." In these traditions the spiritual and corporeal are brothers who always walk and talk together.

While coyotes (the animal) are certainly responsible for destroying some domestic livestock, they are important to the larger environment as scavengers and destroyers of rodents. They are omnivorous feeders; they prey on small animals, eat plant matter, carrion and garbage, and they sometimes though not regularly team up to hunt larger animals. They are an invaluable part of a healthy ecology and environment, which sustains all life, including that of domestic livestock. That the livestock industry has waged a brutal, unrelenting and environmentally irresponsible slaughter (most of it at taxpayer, not industry, expense) of coyote for more than 100 years is as shameful and scandalous as it is unsuccessful, unnecessary and expensive. That coyote has persisted, prospered and expanded, both in numbers and range, since the livestock industry put a price on his head is an indication of why Old Man Coyote continues to live in the mythology and dreams of native America and in the literature and imagination of its more recent arrivals. Coyote Man is the primordial trickster/teacher of American lore.

The creature coyote has managed to survive and thrive in the American West in the same (murderous) environment that drove the wolf to the edge of extinction. The coyote learned quickly not to eat the strychnine-laced cow carcasses that ranchers put out to kill predators, but the wolf did not learn. The wolf, despite its recent re-introduction in small populations and limited areas, is mostly gone from the vast territory over which it roamed just 200 years ago. The coyote, equally persecuted and slaughtered in that same time period, has expanded its territory from the plains of central and western America so that now it is found as far north as Alaska, as far south as central America, and from the Pacific Coast to New England. They have been seen in New York City’s Central Park and are currently thriving in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Coyote/coyote is ubiquitous.

There are many stories told of Old Man Coyote—trickster, teacher, survivor and fool: he is a hero, always traveling, stupid and awful, outrageous and cunning, foolish and wise, mischievous and often doing good despite himself.

In many ways, Old Man Coyote, as well as the flesh and blood creature coyote, act remarkably like human beings. American cultures, both native and European derived, have created mythologies and literature out of him, murdered him, admired him, learned from him and made of him a villain and a fool, just as humans tend to do with each other.

There are many stories of Old Man Coyote’s sheer foolishness, all of them anthropocentric projections when one thinks about them. For instance, once Coyote Man was struck by the beauty of the gold colored cottonwood leaves as they floated to the ground. Instead of appreciating them for what they are, Coyote Man wanted to be beautiful like them. "Now, how do you do that?" he asked the leaves. "That’s so pretty the way you come down." "That’s easy," the leaves replied, "all you have to do is get up in a tree and fall off." Coyote Man climbed up the nearest tree and jumped off, filled with the vain and impossible desire to be as lovely as a falling cottonwood leaf. Of course he isn’t a cottonwood leaf. Coyote Man is killed, crashing to the ground just like a coyote falling out of a tree. The sight is neither beautiful nor inspiring, only grotesque and really, really foolish.

In myth and lore, Coyote Man never dies; he just gets back up and comes to life again. In real present time life, coyote still dies in traps and from poison and from being run over and shot by humans; but coyote continues to flourish. Sometimes you can hear the song of coyote howling in the night. The sound of this song is as lovely and full of lessons about the world and how to live in it as the sight of cottonwood leaves falling to the ground.

Only a fool would jump out of a tree hoping to look like a cottonwood leaf.

Coyote Man/coyote and man have a lot in common. It is a mystery how they continue to survive and thrive.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.