Coyote

The Trickster of the Desert

Domain: Cunning, Chaos & Creation
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Bag of Stars

Speak with Coyote

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

See PRO Get the app

The People

People

Native American peoples

Region

North America

Period

pre-colonial – present

These spirits and deities were worshipped by the many Native peoples of North America, from the Lakota to the Navajo and Iroquois. Their beliefs bind humans to the Great Spirit, to totem animals, and to balance with the land. Passed down orally, they survive in the Indigenous nations that endured colonization.

The Sun Dance gathered the Plains nations in fasting and sacrifice around the sacred tree. The Hopi dance with the kachinas, masked spirits of the rains, and the sacred pipe seals prayers and treaties — ceremonies still alive in today's nations.

At a glance

This entry brings together identified episodes from two collections: in Matthews’s Diné version, Coyote springs up in the fourth world, steals the water monster’s children, proposes a finite span of life, suggests where to lay the first dead person, snatches the tip of the ear of corn, fails at imitating his hosts, loses his eyes among birds, and tricks a giant; in Teit’s Cœur d’Alene tales, he releases the salmon and confronts the Sun. These historical editions are mediated records, not a single mythology of North American Indigenous peoples.

24 min read · Reviewed on October 13, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The coyote, the stolen fire, the scattered stars and the footprint in the sand

Family

Siblings

Badger; in Matthews’s version, Coyote springs up before him from the meeting of sky and earth and is thought to be his elder brother.

Coyote

Genealogy according to Washington Matthews, Navaho Legends (1897), The Story of the Emergence, §170, p. 71; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/60165/60165-h/60165-h.htm

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Matthews, Washington, Navaho Legends. translation: American Folk-Lore Society, 1897. read
Teit, James A. (in Boas, Franz, ed.), Cœur d’Alene Tales, in Folk-tales of Salishan and Sahaptin Tribes. translation: American Folk-Lore Society, 1917, pp. 119–128. read

Name and epithets

Coyote is the English name used by Washington Matthews in Navaho Legends and by James A. Teit in the Cœur d’Alene tales published in English.

In the ancient sources

Navaho Legends, 1897. Matthews’s edition contains the origin of Coyote and Badger, the theft of Tiéholtsodi’s children, the flood, the stone, the first death, the ear of corn, the visits to Porcupine and Wolf, the bird…

The myths

Tiéholtsodi’s children and the flood of the Emergence. In the fourth world, eight years after the people’s arrival, the sky stoops down and the earth rises up until they touch, and Coyote and Badger spring out of the po…

Worship and archaeology

The passages consulted are narratives and do not describe worship of Coyote or a calendar of ceremonies. In Navaho Legends, Coyote acts in episodes and is named Mai in a messenger’s warning, which calls him an idler and…

How the god was depicted

The passages consulted describe actions and narrative objects, and none describes a cult image of Coyote. In Matthews the objects are the robe always kept closed that hides Tiéholtsodi’s young, the shell bowls, the bloo…

What scholars debate

“Trickster” as a comparative category. The word “trickster” can group characters who break rules or transform situations, but it does not replace each people’s names, narrative genres, and concepts.

After antiquity

The reception documented here is the editorial history of the texts. In 1897 Matthews published Navaho Legends, with a translation of a Diné narrative, transcriptions, notes, and related material; in 1917 a collection e…

Did you know?

On the fifth night after the Emergence, Coyote proposes laying the first dead person among the rocks; two men who see her sitting in the lower world die four days later.

Codex relic

Bag of Stars. The pouch that Coyote opened too soon, scattering the stars at random across the night sky.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

The legends, the myth, the cult and relics are part of the full Codex. You can open 1 full entry for free every day; to open all 500 deities with no limits and no ads, subscribe to Codex PRO.

See Codex PRO Get it on Google Play