A Coyote Reader
Coyote, the great North American trickster figure, is the star of linguist William Bright's fine  collection of traditional Native American stories and modern poems and meditations.  Bright has been  studying Coyote's role in California Indian societies for four decades. Their stories tell of Coyote as a  perennial loser and a figure who plays by no rules: he impregnates his own daughter, steals from his  friends, and causes the world endless trouble. Bright links the biological to the cultural Coyote, and he  introduces some fascinating ecological arcana, such as the fact that "Old Man Coyote"--as he's  often called in traditional stories--hasn't changed much over the last 4 million years. Evolving alongside  the saber-toothed tiger and the giant cave bear, Coyote somehow resisted specialization;Canis latranseats almost anything and lives almost anywhere from southern Mexico to the Canadian sub-Arctic. No generation understands Coyote fully, the anthropologist Paul Radin once remarked, but no  generation can live without him. Bright's affection for Coyote has yielded a necessary book about a  necessary creature.