Coyote is a trickster – a “transformer, vagabond, imitator, prankstor, first creator, seducer, fool” (Robinson 8). Coyote is a being that is able to shift at will. Coyote is not bound by time – Coyote is everywhere, yet Coyote is nowhere. 

In terms of First Peoples stories, Wendy Wickwire allows us a wonderful glimpse into the world of Coyote through both her introduction to Harry Robinson’s stories, and by transcribing them. Wickwire acknowledges that over the course of her interactions with various transcribed West Coast stories, Coyote was rarely mentioned. This is supported by John Lutz’s survey of stories, where Coyote is only mentioned within one (Paterson).

Yet, within the stories Robinson tells, Coyote is a central figure. So why is this?

Within the introduction to Robinson’s collection of stories, Wickwire wonders this same question: why is it that Robinson’s Coyote is so very different from the “quaint and timeless mythological accounts in the published collections” (10)?.

These previously published stories were short, edited, and “lifeless” (8), and “disrupted the integrity of the original narrative” (8). The transcribers had effectively “erased all sense of variation in the local storytelling tradition” (8).

They fit with “the pattern [of Levi-Strauss’ assigned zone]” (11); Robinson’s did not.

Within his book The Savage Mind, Claude Levi-Strauss details his theory regarding varying societies:

I have suggested elsewhere that the clumsy distinction between ‘peoples without history’ and others could with advantage be replaced by a distinction between what for convenience I called ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ societies: the former seeking, by the institutions they give themselves, to annul the possible effects of historical factors on their equilibrium and continuity in a quasi-automatic fashion; the latter resolutely internalizing the historical process and making it the moving power of their development (233-234)

As Wickwire summarizes: his view was that Indigenous – ‘cold’ societies’ -stories are static and timeless (10).

This theory, later criticised by Wickwire, is limited, lacking, and backwards.

However, this was a representation of the viewpoint at the time when many transcribers were aiming to “document some overarching, static, ideal type of culture, detached from its pragmatic and socially positioned moorings” (Robinson 22).

Wickwire theorizes, and I find myself agreeing with her, that prior documentation of stories were intentionally recorded outside of historical time, to fit more with the idea of the “romanticized, mythical Other” (Dion, “Braiding” 8); to fit more the framework of the “‘authentic’ mythological accounts” (Robinson 15) Western society associates with pre-contact societies. The voices, in a way were silenced; “limited to a single genre: the so-called ‘legends’, ‘folk tales’, and ‘myths’ set in prehistorical times” (22)

No longer timeless, Robinson brings coyote into the historical and away from the mythical; he places first peoples stories as just that – stories. He breaks away from the narrative of the “dead Indian” (Chamberlin) and we begin to see a culture full of meaning.

Wickwire writes that Robinson’s stories were more than their surface; “you can hear that again […] once or twice more” (Robinson, as quoted by Wickwire, 18). Robinson’s storytelling – stories of Coyote throughout history -was intentional, not an ‘anomaly’ from other published collections of tales. They “contained hidden messages and connections that would take time to decipher” (19).

Finding meaning, revisiting the deeper connotations of a story. This is what Robinson’s stories provide. Mythical stories provide deep meaning as well, but Robinson’s stories tell the human connection, which the others lack (Lutz, “Myth”).

As mentioned in lesson 2:2, the transcribers who were interpreting the Indigenous stories they encountered had their own motives (Paterson). These, we will never know, but it gives us a starting point for understanding why there is such a small example of Coyote within Lutz than Robinson: Coyote – the trickster and time-jumper – does not fit the narrative.

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Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. “Eleven – Ceremonies”. If This Is Your Land,          

        Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Kindle ed. Toronto: 

        Vintage Canada, 2004, loc. 2882 – 3193 of 3425.

Dion, Susan. Braiding Histories: Learning from Aboriginal Peoples

Experiences and Perspectives. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.

Print.

Dion, Susan. “(Re)telling to Disrupt: Aboriginal People and Stories of

Canadian History”. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum

Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003, pp. 55-76.

King, Thomas. “Dead Indians: Too Heavy to Lift”. Hazlit. 30 November 2012.

https://hazlitt.net/feature/dead-indians-too-heavy-lift. Accessed on 21

February 2021.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,

1966.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as Spiritual Performance”. Myth and Memory:

Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact, ed. Lutz,

University of British Columbia Press, 2007, pp. 30-45. 

Lutz, John. “Myth Understandings: First Contact Over, and Over Again”.

Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact,

ed. Lutz, University of British Columbia Press, 2007, pp 1-15.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2”. Canadian Literature, University of British

Columbia, February 2021. Lecture notes.

Robinson, Harry. “Introduction”. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape

and Memory, compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire, Talon Books,

2005, pp. 1-30.