While there are many similarities in style between Harry Robinson’s Coyote Meets the King of England and Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water – the rhythm of the prose, the use of repetition, the narration that speaks directly to the audience – I was much more interested to see the differences. The character and voice of Coyote and God varies greatly in these two stories, with Robinson placing Coyote into a Christian power structure, and King showing the same power structures to be ridiculous. These different tactics accomplish a similar goal, however, of rejecting the place Aboriginals occupy in Western religion.

Let’s start with Robinson’s Coyote, who wields a great deal of power in his story. He is sent on a mission from God to make a deal with the King of England, and he wastes no time in using his trickster powers to assert himself over the King. He speaks with confidence and authority, commanding respect and awe from the Westerners he addresses:

“You write it all down.
Then it can be that way ’til the end of the world…
Reserve at all time.
Can never be sold.
Can never be changed…
All right, that is if you say ‘all right, we’ll have a war,’
All right we will have a war. I can let them know.
And they’ll come in,
And they’ll be the one that going to kill first.” (Robinson, 74-75)

The anthropomorphic Coyote described by Robinson differs greatly from King’s “scraggly dog… spinning in the rain.” (King, 289) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_%28mythology%29 Image circa 1914

Before starting this course I had never encountered Coyote, and I was unsure how to envision him – is he anthropomorphic, or simply an animal? Robinson’s story suggests the former, when the Americans comment the figure on the water “Looks like a person.” (Robinson, 64) King takes the opposite approach in order to undermine Coyote’s authority. Compare Robinson’s Coyote to how he appears to the characters of Green Grass:

“…a scraggly dog dashed back and forth, chasing its tail, spinning in the rain, as if it were trying to dance.” (King, 289)

Coyote clearly wields great power – his dancing is what caused the storm – but the images King conjures of him are ridiculous, commanding none of the power or authority Robinson’s Coyote does during its meeting with the King of England.

Let’s explore these two Coyotes through a framework I am more comfortable using: D&D alignments. Robinson’s Coyote is Neutral Good: he acts out of a sense of duty towards God and his people. He tells the angel that “whatever he says I will,” (Robinson, 67) and he prevents a war with England to try and end his people’s suffering. He seems somehow more… respectable than King’s Coyote, who leans heavily towards Chaotic Neutral. While Robinson’s Coyote used his powers for practical purposes, King’s embraces his role as a trickster, and seems to delight in making mischief:

‘”Look out! Look out!” shouts Coyote. “It’s Moby-Jane, the Great Black Whale. Run for your lives.”
“That wasn’t very nice,” I says. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“Hee-hee, hee-hee,” says Coyote.’ (King, 197)

‘”I didn’t do anything,” says Coyote. “I just sang a little.”
“Oh, boy,” said the Lone Ranger.
“I just danced a little, too,” says Coyote.
“Oh boy,” said Ishmael.’ (King, 416)

King’s Coyote clearly has a great deal of power, changing history by interjecting into stories and causing earthquakes with a song and dance. But, unlike Robinson’s Coyote, he does not use his power to become a figure of authority. (The story’s narrator seems to imply that he could become a similar figure to Robinson’s Coyote, saying “You are one silly Coyote… No wonder this world is a mess.” [King, 238])

These characterizations suggest hugely different power structures in the cosmologies of King’s and Robinson’s worlds. Robinson’s world suggests a linear power structure: God (speaking through an angel) gives orders to Coyote, and Coyote exerts his power over the King of England to get his way. Interestingly, based on what King identifies in The Truth About Stories as “power… vested in a single deity who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent,” (King, 24) Robinson is actually inserting Coyote into a world of Christian creation. This is subversive – God does not speak directly to a Western authority, as one might expect, but to a Native representative. Coyote supplants the role of religious authority a Western pope or bishop to hold would traditionally hold.

While Robinson’s Coyote finds himself a more comfortable place in the Western canon, The Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye deny it altogether. The four characters first reject a religious character’s attempt to subjugate them, and later a literary character’s attempt to make them play their assigned “part.” King presents these characters as uniformly ridiculous – look at Noah chasing poor Changing Woman around the island when it’s “time for procreating” (King, 147) – undermining the authority they suppose over the women. The four Indians become free from the constraints Western society would impose on them; they choose a name for themselves, and band together in order to “fix the world.” Along with Coyote, who rejects the mantle of authority Robinson’s Coyote accepts, they make their own creation story. The group chooses to exist not in the Christian world, but “a world that… moves toward harmony… a world determined by co-operation.” (ibid, 25)

[in response to Prompt 5]

Works cited:

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1993. Print.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003. Print.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.