Coyote
Miwok · deity · primordial / myth age · Recorded classification
Creator-trickster classed 'deity'. Miwok (Merriam's 'Mewan') neighbor the Pomo and share the central-California Coyote-creator and Kuksu complex; the Miwok personal name is not uniformly transcribed in the cited sources, hence term empty.
Children
Domains
- creation
- trickery
Powers
- create the first people
- decide the coming of death
Epithets
- Coyote The creator-trickster who shaped the people and the world at the dawn of thingsC. Hart Merriam, The Dawn of the World (Miwok) (secondary)
Relations
- ancestor of: FalconCoyote the creator and Wek'-wek (Prairie Falcon) are the paired central-Californian creator and animal-person culture-hero; Falcon already registers descent from Coyote, mirrored here as ancestor-of.Merriam, C. H., 'The Dawn of the World: Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan Indians of California' (1910) (secondary)
Sources
- Coyote is the principal creator-trickster of the Miwok of central California, maker of the first people and orderer of the early world.: C. Hart Merriam, 'The Dawn of the World: Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan (Miwok) Indians of California' (1910). (ethnography); Edward W. Gifford, 'Miwok Myths,' UC Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology vol. 12 (1917). (ethnography)