by Dan Flores
As coyotes have moved in to live among us, denigration of their survivability has become common in conversation: “When the world ends, only cockroaches, rats, and coyotes will be left.” What I’m about to say next will not fall sweetly on the ears of those who subscribe to that view. But here it is: few animals in the world come closer to mimicking us and our own unique abilities. I think the Indians’ grasp of that is the reason, perhaps as distantly as 10,000 years ago, they designated an avatar form of the coyote as a principal deity, responsible for creating all of North America and for instructing them about the human condition. The resulting Old Man Coyote character is not only one of the oldest gods of which we have record but one of the most intriguing in all history.
In Far Eastern religions the term “avatar” refers to the earthly representation of a deity, but here I intend it to mean something closer to its use in modern computing, where an avatar is the graphic representation of the user in the cyber world, an alter ego or stand-in. To understand how coyote history mirrors human history enough that this use of “avatar” seems appropriate, one needs a grasp of the outlines of both human evolutionary history and the history of coyotes in America. Providing an account of those intersections is one goal of this book. There are more of them than you think.
It is human hubris to think of coyotes as instinct writ on the world. In fact, exactly like ours, their personalities are the products of culture and genes and how environmental influences turn those genes on and off. Despite our being social species, these influences spin off markedly different individuals among both coyotes and us. Yet one important similarity we and coyotes share across our long histories is a reliance on problem-solving intelligence for success, a badge of real distinction, it seems to me. Perhaps most tellingly, we two species share the trait of being successful across times of great change, an uncommon situation for many other forms of life on Earth.
What conclusions might we draw from the coyote as stand-in avatar for our own deep time history? I spin off one or two of my own ruminations about that elsewhere in the book, but I think I would rather readers form their own impressions as they track through the coyote’s story. Suffice it to say here that as we humans head off into an uncertain and probably dangerous future of our own making, it might be wise to keep an eye on them. I, for one, am going to be very interested in how coyotes cope with the twenty-first century and what insights we might draw about our own circumstances from a coyote history that so often seems to mirror ours.
This book is in most respects a coyote biography. More than half a century ago, Texas literary giant J. Frank Dobie wrote a wonderful volume of coyote folklore, and about the same time legendary federal coyote nemesis Stanley Young characterized the animal as the Biological Survey’s most frustrating opponent, an enemy members of the agency actually lumped in with fascism as a threat to the American way. Several contemporary writers, among them Barry Lopez, have written books redacting the fascinating literature of the Old Man Coyote stories into modern prose, a strategy I employ here in a more limited way. But I attempt something different from all these: to tell the story of this American original from the evolution of the canid family in North America 5 million years ago down to the coyote’s present incarnation as the wolf we tried to erase but that instead ended up in our backyards. That story follows a long and winding road from then till now.
In our time it is difficult to imagine an American politician invoking a native North American animal to describe the American character. Totem animals—despite the Pacific Northwest’s embrace of the salmon as a kind of regional icon—are not exactly de rigueur in the modern world. But the truth is, the coyote’s unique history and similarities to us do appear to make it, by this point in US history, a damned fine candidate as a national totem. Many contemporary Americans may be too far gone into the Anthropocene to learn much from an animal nowadays, but Marc Bekoff, a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado who has worked extensively on coyotes himself, believes modern Americans “are really craving to be ‘re-wilded.’ They’re craving to be reconnected to nature.”
Coyotes have played this role before, after all, once for western Indians, more recently for West Coast bohemians in the twentieth century. In twenty-first-century America there are certainly enough of us immersed in science, evolution, and the natural world to comprise a likely group of national coyote acolytes. So I hope at least that seeing coyotes regularly in the world and knowing something about the trajectory of their zigs and zags through history and how their story jibes with our own may move some to see something connate and sympathetic in this small wolf, which at this very moment is taking up residence within a mile of every person in the United States whether he or she understands its biography or not.
That said, I will borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, who turns out to be a central figure in the story to come. I am about to tell you a tale that has in it a touch of pathos.
CHAPTER 1
Old Man America
In the remotest time of early North America, after he had molded mud from the ocean bottom into mountains, plains, and forests to create the essential topography of the continent, Coyote was going along. He had placed stars in the sky, some as pictures, some as a latticed road across the night, some tossed willy-nilly into the inky black. He had arranged the year into four seasons, and he had populated the world with humans. As the special helper of the Creator, who seemed not especially interested in any of this hands-on creation work himself, Coyote had killed monster after monster on behalf of his human charges, whom he’d then located in good, monster-free spots across America. He had released animals like buffalo from underground and—admittedly, with a few unlucky mistakes—placed salmon and other fish in many of the rivers. He had invented penises and vaginas and taught humans what to do with them. The first technology, in the form of fire, came from Coyote. Then, not without some remorse, he had introduced death into the world.
Now, with all these fundamental creations in place, Coyote had no intention of stepping into the background or hiding himself. He wanted to enjoy how much humans appreciated his creativity. And he especially wanted to see how quick-witted they might be when he offered them up some grand illustration of their own nature.
One morning Coyote was going along and spotted a handsome young warrior who told Coyote he was embarking on a journey of war against his enemies. Although Coyote was actually a peaceful sort who thought war and battles to the death were very bad ideas, he told his new companion that he was a famous warrior and would be indispensable on the quest.
That first night, the warrior said, they would camp at a place called Scalped Man by the Fire. Coyote did not like the sound of that, but he went along. At the camp Coyote relaxed while the warrior cooked and did all the chores. Then Coyote took the best pieces of the meal for himself, even laying extra meat over his chest and legs in case he awoke hungry during the night. Sometime in the night Coyote heard a sound, and when he looked, there was Scalped Man standing over him. Quick as he could, Coyote swung his club, but somehow he hit his own knee, which caused him to yowl in pain, waking the warrior. “I have taken care of Scalped Man,” Coyote told him, and they both went back to sleep.
Having clubbed his knee badly, Coyote limped through much of the next day but made it OK to a camp called Cooked Meat Flying All Around, which sounded more like it. But that evening, dining on the chunks of meat whizzing all around, Coyote heard the warrior describe the next night’s camp, Where the Arrows Fly Around. Suddenly his knee took a turn for the worse. Coyote lagged far behind that next day, hoping to camp somewhere else, but the warrior led them on. That night arrows began to fly from every direction. The warrior stood and caught one after another, while Coyote twisted and twirled and crawled on the ground trying to avoid them, until one arrow grazed his arm. I have been killed, Coyote shouted. But when the warrior pulled him to his feet and he found himself still alive, Coyote asserted that actually his hu
rt knee had caused him to fall asleep, and he had been dreaming.
The next night they would camp at Where the Women Visit the Men. This sounded like an excellent camp to Coyote. His knee improved so remarkably that day that he got far ahead in their march. That night, after much fidgeting and anticipation on Coyote’s part, a woman did come to him, but in the darkness he decided she was an old crone. Hoping for a much younger woman, he sent her away, only to see in the firelight as she turned from him that in fact she was young and very beautiful. Coyote cried out for her to return, claiming it had been some spirit who had told her to leave, but she vanished into the night.
The next camp was called War Clubs Flying Around. All that day Coyote’s knee hurt so much that he barely managed to arrive at the spot. Sure enough, that night clubs hurled at them from every direction. The warrior caught two, one for each of them, but Coyote dodged and weaved so much that a club finally beaned him. When he came to, Coyote told the warrior that in his boredom he had actually fallen asleep. That’s why he had been lying so flat and still.
Then the warrior told Coyote that their next camp would be at a place called Vaginas Flying Around. Coyote’s knee at once felt entirely well, and he was ready to depart then and there. He pleaded for more details, but the warrior fell asleep. Coyote sat by the fire all night thinking of vaginas and how many he might be able to carry with him. His knee now stronger than ever before in his life, Coyote left early and ranged far ahead the next day.
That night, as promised, vaginas began to sail into camp, and Coyote could tell they were just the kind he liked, very young and very plump. For most of the night, juicy vaginas sailed by, maddeningly out of reach, with Coyote flailing and chasing and panting until he was near collapse. Finally, near dawn, Coyote caught one. But exhausted as he was, when he finally pinned and mounted it, his organ refused to rise to the occasion.
The next night they would reach their final camp, and the warrior told Coyote this one was called Where the Enemy Attacks. Without delay Coyote’s knee began to throb, and all day he hung back on the trail, crying piteously. And sure enough, when the next morning came, enemies attacked from all sides. Coyote at once ran for far horizons but was overtaken, clubbed, and scalped. Meanwhile the warrior subdued all his enemies, then looked for Coyote.
When he knew all was clear, Coyote stood and announced that he was going along now, but the warrior should consider himself lucky that he had happened upon Coyote. Otherwise he would have had to engage in this adventure with no help at all from a famous warrior.
Indian rock art in Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, showing Coyote (left) and other characters from an Old Man Coyote story. Courtesy Dan Flores.
Stories about Coyote or sometimes Old Man Coyote—and rarely about Old Woman Coyote, although they are present in the canon—are the oldest preserved human stories from North America. The truth is that Coyote (capitalized to distinguish the deity from the ordinary coyote trotting by while you read) is the most ancient god figure of which we have record on this continent. When Siberian hunters first started crossing Beringia or boating down the coastline 15,000 years or more ago, at some point in their entry of northwestern America they began to encounter coyotes for the first time. Wolves they knew from Asia, and well enough that at some point in their migration, these first Americans arrived with domesticated ones, wolflike dogs whose wild ancestors in those times were recent. But at least by the time of the Clovis people, who spread across the grasslands of interior America from Canada to Texas more than 13,000 years ago, continental coyotes were familiar creatures, and something about them resonated.
Religious explanations for the world and how it works are at least 40,000 to 50,000 years old, so these former Siberians no doubt arrived with intact religions, mythologies, and deities. But as these first Americans settled the part of the continent that would stretch from today’s California all the way to the Mississippi River, from the Pacific Northwest to the future New Mexico and Arizona, Coyote emerged as the deity of the ancient continent. No one knows when this happened or exactly how Coyote became a principal figure in so many different peoples’ creation stories and ruminations on the human condition. We know only, based on the oral Coyote stories collected among American Indians and set down by nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnographers, that over the centuries the various tribes fashioned many hundreds of Coyote tales. No other native deity in America came anywhere close to inspiring such a vast body of oral literature. The story “Coyote and His Knee” is from the Wichitas of the Southern Plains, but I distilled the opening paragraphs of this chapter from groups as geographically separated as the Navajos (Southwest), Crows (Northern Plains), Karok and Wasco (California), Menominee (Great Lakes), Colville and Klamath (Pacific Northwest), and Salish and Blackfeet (Northern Rockies).
West of the Mississippi, across the last 10,000 years, Coyote has been America’s universal deity, surviving as a Paleolithic god among agricultural peoples like the Wichitas and ultimately reaching as far south as the Aztecs, who knew him as Huehuecoyotl, Old Man Coyote. Or Old Man America.
For millions of years the grand expanse of the American Great Plains, extending northward to the boreal forests of Canada and southward to the deserts of the Southwest, was the biological Eden of North America, the continental version of Africa’s Serengeti or Maasai Mara. Today, if you can find a piece of native prairie somewhere on the Great Plains that’s away from the sounds of interstate traffic and beyond the stench of hog farms—anywhere will do, from Montana to West Texas—and if you’re good at opening your mind to the possibilities of deep history, a few moments of imagining can bring this landscape back to life. A hundred centuries ago, elephants and camels and lions could have been in view. For thousands of years after that, herds of buffalo and horses—likely trailed by wolf packs and bands of native hunters tacking across the grass ocean and navigating by the Pole Star—would have grunted and grazed past your spot like wildebeests and zebras on the African veld.
And right in the mix of this wild, Africa-like bestiary of the Pleistocene were ancient coyotes, trotting in the midst of the ungulate herds, competing with other predators—and scavengers—for a living in the kind of world that would, indeed, have been familiar to our own ancestors on another continent halfway around the world.
As a singular animal emerging from earlier evolutionary canid ancestors, the coyote is a relative youth. Coyotes share evolutionary youthfulness with us. We are also young, our genus, Homo, emerging between 2.8 and 3 million years ago and our species coming out of its own “hominin soup” in Africa fewer than 200,000 years ago. The Canidae family appeared at about the same time, 5 to 6 million years ago, but halfway around the world, in North America, with some of its species beginning to spread out across the globe soon after. The ancestors of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), as we will see, became cosmopolitan and eventually colonized almost the entire planet, continuing to evolve before returning, group after group, to their natal American homeland.
Coyotes, it turns out, are also a kind of wolf. They shared a common ancestor with gray wolves down to about 3.2 million years ago, when coyote and gray wolf ancestors began to separate, first geographically, then, as distance increased, genetically. Genetic research indicates that today there is about a 4 percent genetic difference between coyotes and gray wolves. For perspective, that’s roughly the same genetic distance as between modern humans and orangutans.
The histories of coyotes and humans have many parallels, but one difference is that across our own evolutionary history, we humans have created thousands of philosophies of meaning we call religions, while coyotes, so far as we can tell, embrace no religious tradition beyond being alive, sacred existence. Religions that feature animals as deities are probably the oldest forms of our own religious explanations; they are a type of religion called “animism,” fashioned by humans living their lives as hunters or hunter-gatherers. What we might call “Coyotism” is, in other words, a Paleolithic religion. The famed psycholo
gist Carl Jung is only one among hundreds of individuals, from scientists to poets, who have found the Coyote deity enduringly fascinating in part because of how fundamental he is in human thought. In Jung’s view, Coyote is “a faithful copy of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness… a forerunner of the savior, and like him, God, man, and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being.”
The Western religious traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity sprang from later periods of human history following the domestication of plants and animals, which anthropologists call the Neolithic Revolution. Early Neolithic religions could feature animals—particularly the sacred bull—as deities. But over time, herding and agricultural cultures gradually replaced animal gods (along with gods of special places in the landscape, another feature of animism) with deities that assumed human form. The Greek gods, so foundational in Western cultures, are classic examples of this evolution. The Greeks replaced animal and plant deities with anthropomorphized gods and goddesses 4,000 years ago: Artemis became a “mistress of the animals” as goddess of the hunt, and Demeter evolved into a human-form goddess of wheat and crops. Coyote himself, it turns out, made at least a partial transmogrification toward human form.
