Coyote
Salish · demigod · myth age (animal people / sptákwelh time) · Recorded classification
Culture-hero/transformer trickster classed 'demigod' per schema. Okanagan orthography sn̓k̓lip; Secwépemc/Nlaka'pamux Snčĺé; popular 'sen'klip', pronounced SIN-kleep. No standardized attested gear, hence materialCulture [].
Domains
- trickery
- transformation
Powers
- transform the land and its monsters
- release the salmon up the rivers
- lose his children to the sky as the Pleiades
Epithets
- sn̓k̓lip Coyote (the trickster-transformer)Teit & Boas, Folk-Tales of Salishan and Sahaptin Tribes (secondary)
Relations
- student: Old-OneCoyote-transformer commissioned and instructed by Old-One to set the world right; Old-One carries the reciprocal 'mentor' edge.J. Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia (1900); Mythology of the Thompson Indians (1912) (secondary)
Sources
- Coyote (Sǝnk'lip) is the principal trickster-transformer and culture-hero of the Interior Salish, sent by the Old-One to prepare the world and famed for freeing the salmon.: James Teit, 'The Salishan Tribes of the Western Plateaus,' ed. Franz Boas (BAE 45th Annual Report, 1930). (ethnography); Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket), 'Coyote Stories' (Caxton, 1933). (literary)
- Plateau star/sky myths (including the Pleiades as Coyote's abandoned children) are recorded by Teit in Boas's Salishan and Sahaptin folk-tales.: James Teit, in Boas (ed.), 'Folk-Tales of Salishan and Sahaptin Tribes' (1917). (ethnography)