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by Tamara Kazakova

According to Crow (and other Plains) tradition, Old Man Coyote impersonates the Creator, "Old Man Coyote took up a handful of mud and out of it made people" 1. His creative power is also spread onto words, "Old Man Coyote named buffalo, deer, elk, antelopes, and bear. And all these came into being" 2. In such myths Coyote-Creator is never mentioned as an animal, more, he can meet his animal counterpart, the coyote: they address each other as "elder brother" and "younger brother", and walk and talk together 3. According to A. Hultkranz, the impersonation of Coyote as Creator is a result of a taboo, a mythic substitute to the religious notion of the Great Spirit whose name was too dangerous and/or sacred to use apart from a special ceremony 4.



More often than not Coyote is a trickster, but he is always different. In some stories, he is a noble trickster, "Coyote takes water from the Frog people... because it is not right that one people have all the water." 9. In others, he is mean, "Coyote determined to bring harm to Duck. He took Duck's wife and children, whom he treated badly." 10.

1. American Indian Myths and Legends, 89.
2. American Indian Myths and Legends, 90.
3. American Indian Myths and Legends, 89.
4. Belief and Worship in North America, 29-30.
5. Voices of the Winds, 5.
6. Voices of the Winds, 26-27.
7. Voices of the Winds, 27.
8. Voices of the Winds, 45-46.
9. American Indian Myths and Legends, 356.
10. Voices of the Winds, 234.

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