Trickster

Wakdjąkaga, 'Trickster', is the great trickster of the Winnebago Trickster Cycle, the forty-nine-episode narrative that is the centerpiece of Radin's *The Trickster* (1956). The first spirit Earthmaker created to rescue humankind and sent forth to teach people how to live, he is driven entirely by his own appetites: he wanders the world, dismembers and reattaches his own body, transforms his shape and sex, and lurches from one self-inflicted disaster to another, serving as a model of what not to do. Because his foolishness defeated his civilizing mission he was recalled, and the task passed in turn to Bladder, Turtle, Redhorn, and Hare. The Winnebago themselves carefully distinguish Trickster from the culture-hero Hare.

Domains

• trickery
• transformation

Powers

• Shape- and sex-shifting

Epithets

• Wakdjąkaga Ho-Chunk · Wakdjunkaga · namethe tricky onePaul Radin, The Trickster (1956) (secondary)

Relations

• created by: EarthmakerThe first of the saving spirits fashioned and sent down by Earthmaker.Dieterle, Encyclopedia of Hočąk Mythology, 'Trickster'; Radin, The Trickster (1956) (secondary)

Sources

• existence: Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (1956) (secondary); Richard L. Dieterle, Encyclopedia of Hočąk Mythology, 'Trickster' (secondary)