American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) (2 page)

Of all the characters in myths and legends told around the world through the centuries—courageous heroes, scary monsters, rapturous virgins—it’s the Trickster who provides the
real
spark in the action—always hungry for another meal swiped from someone else’s kitchen, always ready to lure someone else’s wife into bed, always trying to get something for nothing, shifting shapes (and even sex), getting caught in the act, ever scheming, never remorseful. Tales in which the lowly and apparently weak play pranks and outwit the high and mighty have delighted young and old all over the world for centuries. Each culture usually focuses on one or two characters who turn up in a myriad of disguises and situations. In Germany, it is Till Eulenspiegel; in France they are Reynard the Fox and Gargantua and Pantagruel; in Greece, Karagöz; and in Turkey it’s Nasr-eddin, the
hodja
(clown-priest), whose antics are passed on from generation to generation. Loki is the mischief-making sky traveler in Norse mythology, and the famous Punch and Judy puppet shows performed in French parks and country fairs were really Trickster tales played out in a domestic situation.

While in Old World legends and fairy tales the Trickster stories play only a minor part, in Native American folklore Trickster takes center stage. Unlike his European counterparts, who are almost always human males, the New World Trickster is usually the personification of an animal—though he’s known to assume human shape if it suits his purposes. The traditions of various tribes feature many different animal characters—Iktomi, the Sioux Spider-Man; Raven; Mink; Rabbit; or Blue Jay—but Coyote is the most popular prankster of all. Tales of Coyote’s wild and wicked adventures are told from the Arctic down to Mexico, and across the continent from ocean to ocean. There are probably more tales about Coyote than there are about all the other Native American Tricksters put together, and probably all the other characters, too.

Indian folklore also broadens the role of the Trickster character enormously. In European tales, the Trickster is a jokester and mischief maker, and usually little else. By contrast, Iktomi, the Sioux Spider-Man, and Rabbit Boy are complicated culture heroes. We certainly see them, in classic Trickster style, being clever and foolish at the same time, smart-asses who outsmart themselves. But they are much more than that. Iktomi is a supernatural character with broad powers; Rabbit Boy stars in important creation myths, as the creator. Iktomi is powerful as well as powerless; he is a prophet, a liar who sometimes tricks by using the truth. He is a spider but transforms himself into a man, bigger than life and smaller than a pea. He is a clown, often with a serious message. Like Coyote and Veeho, he has a strong amorous streak and at times seems completely driven by sex.

Coyote, part human and part animal, taking whichever shape he pleases, combines in his nature the sacredness and sinfulness, grand gestures and pettiness, strength and weakness, joy and misery, heroism and cowardice that together form the human character. The tales in this book star Coyote the godlike creator, the bringer of light, the monster-killer, the thief, the miserable little cheat, and, of course, the lecher. As a culture hero, Old Man Coyote makes the earth, animals, and humans. He is the Indian Prometheus, bringing fire and daylight to the people. He positions the sun, moon, and stars in their proper places. He teaches humans how to live. As Trickster, he is greedy, gluttonous, and thieving. During his numberless exploits he often teams up with other animal characters such as Fox, Badger, or Rabbit, usually competing with them for food or women, sometimes winning and sometimes losing.

When it comes to Coyote’s amorous adventures, keep in mind that he is no different from the gods of Greek and Roman mythology, who in many classic tales are depicted as philanderers, adulterers, rapists, and child abusers. Mighty Zeus has innumerable extramarital affairs, often with mortal women. Like Native American Tricksters, Zeus and others in the Pantheon are shape-shifters, taking on the form of animals to seduce maidens. With Europa, Zeus disguises himself as a gentle white bull. In the shape of a swan he makes love to Leda. He impregnates Danae in the form of a shower of gold. Assuming the shape of an eagle, he kidnaps Ganymede, a handsome little boy. Hera, wife of mighty Zeus, is often depicted—like Coyote’s wife—as a jealous shrew who has her husband tailed (without much success). Coyote also displays, at different times, Pandora’s curiosity, Prometheus’s daring, and even faces death as well as Orpheus—but all with his own style.

Just as in real life Coyote survives and thrives in spite of traps, poison, and a rancher’s bullets, so the Coyote of legend survives the onslaught of white American culture. As Henry Crow Dog, Rosebud Sioux wise man and traditionalist, put it, “Coyote stories will never die.”

Iktomi the Spider, Ikto for short, also known as Unktomi, or Wauncha, the mocker, is the principal Trickster of the Lakota and Dakota (Sioux) tribes. Sometimes a wise god, sometimes a fool, Iktomi, according to Lakota tradition, is responsible for the creation of time and space. He invented language and gave the animals their names. As a prophet he foretold the coming of the white man.

According to author James Walker, Iktomi has his roots in Ksa, the god of wisdom: “Because Ksa had used his wisdom to cause a goddess to hide her face in shame and a god to bow his head in grief, Skan, the god of motion, condemned him that he should sit at the feasts of the gods no more, and should sit on the world without a friend, and his wisdom should be only cunning that would entrap him in his own schemes. He named him Iktomi. So Iktomi is the imp of mischief whose delight is to make others ridiculous.”

According to various friends from Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux tribes:

Despite his bawdy, earthy nature, Iktomi is
wakan
—sacred. Some say you should never squash a spider. If you do, Iktomi will throw sand in your eyes and make them sore. On the other hand, if you make a tobacco offering to Ikto before you go hunting, he will lead you to the game.

Like Coyote, Iktomi is always thinking about sex. He fancies himself to be a great lover. He can transform himself into a handsome young man to court a pretty girl, and he sleeps with both human and animal women. He transgresses the most formidable tribal taboo by making love to his own daughters. He has a love medicine that makes him irresistible to women. He plays the flute beautifully, which makes young maidens come to him. A sexual athlete, he carries his huge penis in a box, and can make it a mile long, or sling it over a river to impregnate a girl on the far shore. He is married, but that certainly does not prevent him from fooling around!

The Cheyenne Trickster Veeho is in many ways the equivalent of Iktomi. He can be a creative genius with vast powers, or (more often) he can be an idiot. In one tale, he spies in the water’s reflection a figure curiously like his own, with a piece of meat in its mouth. Never satisfied with what he already has, Veeho tries to snatch the meat from the “stranger‘s” mouth—and ends up with nothing but a mouth full of water. As it so happens, the name “Veeho” is synonymous with “white man.”

Nixant, the Trickster of the Gros Ventre and related tribes, and Sitconski, of the Assiniboine, are strongly related to Iktomi and Veeho. Most of the stories about Nixant are erotic, or invoke his wild sexual adventures and, misadventures.

To white people, the idea of a rabbit being a powerful supernatural might seem strange. Not so to the Native American storyteller. Master Rabbit, or Rabbit Boy, stars in the legends of many different tribes. In one Lakota creation tale, Rabbit Boy finds a tiny blood clot and kicks it around until it becomes We Ota Wichasha—First Man. Cherokee legends depict Rabbit as sun-snarer or monster-killer. In Cree stories and in some of the stories in this volume, he is a lying and conniving prankster, an excellent companion to Coyote and Iktomi.

Glooskap, or Kuloskap, is the great supernatural being of the Abnaki, the coastal tribes of New England and eastern Canada, which include the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac, and Maliseet (Malecite). Glooskap tales, as you might expect from tribes living near the ocean, often take place on the water or reflect a close relationship with it. Howard Norman, in his collection
Northern Tales,
cites a description of Glooskap as a great giant who could swim with immense strokes. Norman’s description of the Northern Trickster can apply across the continent:

Although there is a good deal of Trickster in his nature, Glooskap is more properly a godlike figure. Glooskap represents the good in man; his twin brother, Malsumsis, is evil.

Nanabozho, also known as Winabojo, Manabush, and Manabozho, is the great culture hero of the Algonquian tribes of the northern Midwest and the Great Lakes areas. Sometimes referred to as the Great Hare, he appears in the tales of such tribes as the Menomini, Ojibway (Anishinabe), Winnebago, and Potawatomi. Nanabozho is a full-fledged Trickster—not just the fool or lecher like Veeho or Iktomi, but a much more serious and formidable figure. The Utes tell a story about Ta-wats, the Great Hare, who fights the Sun and shatters him with his arrows; the red-hot splinters set the world on fire. Like Glooskap of the Abnaki, Nanabozho is “the incarnation of vital energy: creator or restorer of the earth, the author of life, giver of animal food, lord of bird and beast,” according to author Louis Herbert Gray.

Wesakaychak is the Trickster figure of the Cree and Métis tribes of Canada.
Métis
is the French name for a group of people who are of part French Canadian and part Native American ancestry. Wesakaychak appears often under the Anglicized name of Whiskey Jack, and many of the tales in which he appears have a distinctly European flavor.

Old Man Napi is the featured Trickster of the Blackfoot, Piegan, and related tribes.
Napi
is the term for old man, but its real meaning, according to James Willard Schulz, who lived with a Blackfoot tribe at the beginning of this century, is the dawn, “or the first faint, white light that gives birth to the day,” and thus they worshipped the light personified. However, George Bird Grinnell, who lived with the Blackfoot in the nineteenth century, felt that two characters had been accidentally fused into one. “The Sun, the creator of the universe, giver of light, heat, and life, and revered by everyone, is often called Old Man, but there is another personality who bears the same name, but who is different in his character. This last Na‘pi is a mixture of wisdom and foolishness; he is malicious, selfish, childish, and weak.”
Napi,
like
Veeho,
is also the term for “white man.”

The Hopi god Masau‘u, the Skeleton Man, is a creator, a germinator, the protector of travelers, the god of life and of death, the peacemaker, and the granter of fertility. But he’s also a lecher, a thief, a liar, and sometimes a cross-dresser. Masau’u, also known as Masaaw or Masauwu, is probably the strangest and most multifarious of all Native American Trickster gods. He can assume any shape—human or animal—to lure a maiden to share his blanket. Ruler of the underworld, he is often shown as a skeleton but can also be depicted as a normal, handsome young man bedecked in turquoise. He is said to live in poverty, but he is lord of the land. As Hamilton Tyler recounts in
PuebloGods and Myths,
he is said to have brought to the Hopi “a stone tablet which contains the instructions and on which was written all the life plan of the Hopi people.... He said, ‘The whole earth is mine. As long as you keep this, it all belongs to you.’ ” This dual character, god and trickster, is a common complication in the tales in this book.

Masau‘u is also the boundary maker and the god of planting and agriculture. During Hopi planting ceremonies, a Masau’u impersonator is the center of the action. Ekkehart Malotki and Michael Lomatuway’ ma, in their book of Masau‘u stories, describe a scene out of a clown act in the circus, as Masau’u takes on any number of “challengers” dressed like cowboys, rival tribespeople, or other characters. He chases the opponent and subdues him with a sack, then robs him of his clothes and puts them on himself, but in a style that’s clearly all wrong—moccasins on the wrong feet, sash tied on the wrong side, and so on.