Coyote, the Klamath wʼas, is the familiar trickster of the Plateau, appearing throughout the Klamath and Modoc narratives gathered by Gatschet and Curtin. He is the cunning figure whose actions, by turns benevolent and selfish, have lasting consequences for the shape of the world, and he stands close in character to the trickster-transformer K'mukamtch himself, with whom early observers sometimes compared him.
Domains
trickery and cunning
Powers
to scheme and deceive for his own ends
Epithets
wʼas
Sources
Curtin, Jeremiah, Myths of the Modocs, Boston: Little, Brown, 1912
Gatschet, Albert S., The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon (Contributions to North American Ethnology 2), 1890
Barker, M. A. R., Klamath Dictionary (University of California Publications in Linguistics 31), 1963