Saynday, also written Sendeh or Sainday, is the great trickster and culture-hero of the Kiowa. Unlike the animal tricksters of most Plains peoples (Coyote, Old Man, Iktomi), Saynday is consistently imagined as a human man. The Kiowa tales told of him invariably begin with the formula 'Saynday was coming along...', expressing the sense that he is everywhere and always present. He is at once benefactor and buffoon: he leads the underground Kiowa up into the daylight through a hollow cottonwood, secures the sun for the world, and in a celebrated story diverts Death away from his own people toward their enemies. Because he stands apart from the genealogy of the Sun and the medicine-twins, he is treated in Kiowa narrative as a self-existing being rather than the child of named parents.