Coyote
Also known as: Máʼii, First Scolder (Áłtsé Hashkéé), First Angry
Mythological Narrative
Coyote stands at the center of the oral traditions of dozens of peoples across the Plains, Plateau, Great Basin, California, and the Southwest. He usually walks the world as a talking coyote, sometimes as a man, and carries two faces at once: creator and buffoon. Many nations tell how he stole fire for human beings, taught the arts of fishing, and destroyed the monsters that plagued the land; in the same story cycles he ruins everything through gluttony, lust, or envy, dies scalded, crushed, or drowned, and is whole again by morning so the stories can go on.
The Navajo call him Mą'ii. In Navajo creation narrative, while the Holy People were setting the stars into the sky one by one, Coyote lost patience, seized the pouch of stars, and hurled it upward, scattering the Milky Way; one star he placed deliberately in the south, the Coyote Star. Plateau peoples such as the Nez Perce and Yakama tell how Coyote traveled up the Columbia River breaking the fish dam and freeing the salmon, an account of why the salmon run.
For many nations Coyote stories belong to winter nights by the fire, entertainment and instruction at once: children learn from his fates what greed and recklessness cost. Since the twentieth century Coyote has entered literary and anthropological discussion as the trickster archetype, and is often named an ancestor of cartoon figures like Wile E. Coyote.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## Told in winter
Coyote stories hold a special place in Diné tradition, and many Diné people teach that they should be told only in winter. This entry summarises Coyote's role in published accounts of the origin story; readers who follow the seasonal practice may prefer to read it in winter.
## Troublemaker in the lower worlds
In Matthews's and later tellings, Coyote is present from the lower worlds onward, curious, impatient, and unable to leave things alone. His most serious act is stealing the child of Tééhooltsódii, the Water Monster; in response the Water Monster floods the world, and the people must climb upward to escape. The theft is eventually discovered and the child returned.
## The scattered stars
In widely published tellings, when the stars are being carefully placed in the sky to make patterns that would teach the people, Coyote grows impatient, seizes what remains, and flings it across the sky, which is why so many stars lie scattered without order. Zolbrod calls Coyote "First Scolder".
## Death
In some tellings Coyote decides that death should be permanent, throwing a stone (or hide) into the water with the reasoning that if people did not die, the world would be too crowded. Tellings differ, and this site does not present one as definitive.
## Neither good nor evil
Coyote is a Holy Person, and his actions have consequences that shape the world. Diné tradition treats him as a figure to learn from, including by his mistakes, and Coyote stories carry lessons about conduct.
Cross-Pantheon Parallels & Archetypes
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Coyote.
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