Tricksters. Mourning Dove's Coyote Stories

Finishing up this week of stories about Coyote (and don't worry: there will be many more Coyote weeks in the future: SO. MUCH. COYOTE.), I wanted to share this important book by Mourning Dove, a.k.a. Christine Quintasket: Coyote Stories.

Quintasket was an enrolled member of the Colville Reservation in Washington; she published under the name "Mourning Dove," Humishuma, a Colville-Okanogan name. Her novel Cogewea was published in 1927, which means it will be entering the public domain soon (on January 1 2023); her book of traditional Coyote stories was published in 1933. Here is a photograph circa 1915 from the Wikipedia article about her.

Willis Regier included this book in his anthology of five Masterpieces of American Indian Literature, which is also available at the Internet Archive, and the introduction to Coyote Stories in Regier's book is provided by Jay Miller, who provides a detailed, and deeply moving, account of Quintasket's life and work. He also includes information about Salishan storytelling traditions, especially with regard to Coyote stories.

Regier also included American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Ša in this book; later on I'll be writing a post about another one of Zitkala-Ša's books, Old Indian Legends, which is an important early written source for stories about Iktomi, the Sioux Spider trickster.

Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy reading Mourning Dove's stories, and also learning about her life; she was a remarkable person and deserves to better known IMO. Thanks to the Internet Archive, these resources are just a click away, with the power of Controlled Digital Lending... and let's hope we can get a positive ruling on the lawsuit about that coming in 2023!

Coyote Stories

by Mourning Dove

Masterpieces of American Indian Literature

edited by Willis Regier

Tricksters. Tricky Coyote Tales

Sometime fun today for the week of Coyote stories: this is one of those choose-your-own-adventure books which weaves together six different Coyote stories, and you chooes which path you are going to follow. Just a click away at the Internet Archive (although this type of book works far better as a physical book in hand so you really can flip actual pages as needed): Tricky Coyote Tales by Chris Sweizer.

Here's what a typical page looks like; the illustrations are by Chad Thomas:

This is just part of a series of trickster choose-your-own-adventure books that Schweizer has written, and you can find them all at the Archive: Tricky Tales, featuring Coyote, plus Fox, Spider, Monkey, Raven, and Rabbit (with double copies of Spider and Raven!).

These books contain only vague information about Schweizer's sources for the stories, so they are not really useful for research, but they certainly are fun to read. You can find cheap used copies at Better World Books and other used booksellers online too. :-)

Tricky Coyote Tales

by Chris Sweizer

Tricksters. Mother Fox and Mr. Coyote

Continuing with this week of stories about coyote, today's book is a lovely bilingual Spanish-English story about how a mother fox uses the coyote's greed against him: Mother Fox and Mr. Coyote / Mamá Zorra y Don Coyote.

The author, Victor Villaseñor, grew up hearing this story, and you can find out more about his life and work as a writer at Wikipedia, and the Internet Archive has several more of his books, including another bilingual children's book: The Stranger and the Red Rooster / El forastero y el gallo rojo.

The beautiful illustrations for the story of the mother fox and the coyote are by Felipe Ugalde Alcántara. Here you can see the moment when the coyote confronts the foxes, and also how the English and Spanish versions are presented together side by side:

Notice the moon there in the sky? The moon plays an important role in the story, and there's an aetiology here too: instead of a man in the moon or a rabbit in the moon (as in other traditions), this story explains why you can see a fox in the moon!

So, if you enjoy fox stories and/or if you enjoy seeing the coyote being outwitted, this a delightful book to read, in Spanish or in English or both!

Mother Fox and Mr. Coyote / Mamá Zorra y Don Coyote

by Victor Villaseñor

Tricksters. Once There Was a Coyote

For today's contribution to this week of coyote stories, I wanted to share this Dolch reader: Once There Was a Coyote which is by Marguerite Dolch.

Long before there were "leveled readers," Edward Dolch (1889-1961) devised this system for teaching reading with very limited vocabulary; you can read about the Dolch Word List at Wikipedia. Marguerite Dolch was Edward Dolch's wife, and together they wrote over 100 educational readers for children based on this vocabulary-driven system.

I really appreciate the use of folktales as part of the Dolch reading approach. This Coyote book is part of a series of Once There Was... books about different animals in folktale traditions. At the Internet Archive, you can also find Once There Was a Dog, but they don't have the other books in the series; there are seven of these books total, in addition to the many other Dolch series.

You will find 8 Native American stories about Coyote here, but no indications are given as to sources or specific storytelling traditions. After I finish my trickster indexing project, I will return to this book to see if I can provide some source conjectures for the books that Marguerite Dolch consulted.

The illustrations are by Carl and Mary Hauge. Here is Coyote with Rattlesnake, and look at Coyote: he's put a rattle on his tail too! 

As you can probably guess, things do not turn out well for Coyote in this attempt to imitate Rattlensnake! 

So, without bibliography and notes, these Coyote stories are not good for research, but if you want to share something with a very young reader, that is who they are written for!

Tricksters. Coyote Walks on Two Legs

For today's addition to the week of trickster coyote stories, here is a book of Navajo coyote stories as told by Gerald Hausman, one of my favorite writers on Native American traditions: Coyote Walks on Two Legs: A Book of Navajo Myths and Legends.

In the introduction Hausman explains how he heard these four stories from his Navajo college friend, Bluejay DeGroat, who went on to become an artist. He designed the Navajo Nation flag!

The illustrations for the stories are by Floyd Cooper, a Muscogee artist originally from Oklahoma. Here are the other animals making fun of Coyote when he tries to get spots on his fur coat like deer's fawns have: 

You can find many more books by Gerald Hausman at the Internet Archive, and you can read more about his work at Wikipedia.

And I'll be back with more Coyote stories tomorrow!

Coyote Walks on Two Legs:

A Book of Navajo Myths and Legends

by Gerald Hausman

Trickster. Coyote Stories for Children

For yesterday's blog post about trickster turtles, I actually shared two Hopi stories featuring Coyote, so I decided to dedicate this new week of trickster books to stories about Coyote, starting with this lovely book of stories by Susan Strauss: Coyote Stories for Children.

There are four stories here, all of them nicely told, along with a helpful introduction about some of the many meanings of Coyote in different Native American traditions. As Strauss explains, she has adapted the stories from stories recorded by anthropologists in the late 19th century. So, unlike the Hopi stories in yesterday's books, these are stories from books, not stories that are themselves part of a living Native storytelling tradition. With that in mind, I think the stories in this book can incite curiosity among readers to learn more about Coyote stories and traditions.

The illustrations are by Gary Lund, and you can find out more at his website. Here's an illustration from my favorite of the four stories: Coyote and the Grass People, a story told by the Assiniboin people, who call themselves Hohe Nakota ("Assiniboin" is an Ojibwe name).

Strauss and Lund also collaborated on this book of stories about wolves: Wolf Stories : Myths and True-life Tales From Around the World, and that book is also available at the Internet Archive; it contains six legends and four true-life tales:

So, both of these books are just a click away for your enjoyment, and I'll be back tomorrow with more coyote stories.

Coyote Stories for Children

by Susan Strauss