A Coyote Reader

Coyote, the great North American trickster figure, is the star of linguist William Bright's fine collection of traditional Native American stories and modern poems and meditations. Bright has been studying Coyote's role in California Indian societies for four decades. Their stories tell of Coyote as a perennial loser and a figure who plays by no rules: he impregnates his own daughter, steals from his friends, and causes the world endless trouble. Bright links the biological to the cultural Coyote, and he introduces some fascinating ecological arcana, such as the fact that "Old Man Coyote"--as he's often called in traditional stories--hasn't changed much over the last 4 million years. Evolving alongside the saber-toothed tiger and the giant cave bear, Coyote somehow resisted specialization; Canis latrans eats almost anything and lives almost anywhere from southern Mexico to the Canadian sub-Arctic. No generation understands Coyote fully, the anthropologist Paul Radin once remarked, but no generation can live without him. Bright's affection for Coyote has yielded a necessary book about a necessary creature.