Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self and Country

How Coyote Brought Fire to the People

Here is the other story from the July Roundtable, one with obvious connections to the myth of Prometheus---and some provocative differences. This story is my paraphrase of the version in Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With Daughter by Barry Lopez. This version is from the Karok tribe, from the Mt. Shasta area in northern California.

Way back in the early days the animal people did not have fire. Only the skookums had fire. The skookums  were kind of like Big Foot, very strong and brave and ancient. They lived on the top of a snowy mountain, and this is the only place in the world where one could find fire.

The animal people were often cold and had to eat their food raw. One day Coyote came through the animal village and the people said "Brother Coyote, you need to help us before we die of cold." Coyote knew where the fire was, and he also knew who was guarding it. So he wasn't exactly sure how he was going to approach this project but he said "Okay, Coyote makes things right. I will get you fire." So he made his way up to the top of the snowy peak and he found the lodge of three skookum sisters who were guardians of the fire. And he laid down behind some bushes in the snow, off a little ways from the lodge and the fire, to watch.

What he saw were three old, wrinkled sisters who took turns guarding the fire. One sister would sit outside and feed the flames while the other two were in the lodge, eating and sleeping and doing whatever else they needed to do. When it was time to change places, the sister by the fire would get up, walk slowly to the door of the lodge, open it and call inside, "Sister, come out to tend the fire!" And one of the other skookum sisters would emerge to take her place.

Well, Coyote laid there for awhile and watched this routine and he noticed that the sister who had the night watch was especially stiff and creaky and cold at dawn and took especially long to walk to the lodge door. So he thought, this is the time to take the fire. While she's making her way soooo slowly back to the lodge, I should have plenty of time to grab some fire and take off. So the getting it is not a problem. Holding onto it though, that's another story, because these ladies might be old but they are fast and they are strong and there's no way I can outrun them all the way back to the animal village.

Coyote felt that he'd done all the reconnaissance he could do and headed back down the mountain. All the way down he thought and he thought and he thought about how he was going to get fire back to the animal people. He couldn't figure it out. So, Coyote decided to ask his sisters, who were three huckleberries who were always with him. They were very wise. So Coyote pooped and there were his sisters. Coyote bent down and said " Hey sisters, I have a problem. I need to get some fire. I need to steal some fire from the skookums for the animal people and you need to help me."

Now, the huckleberry sisters didn't want to help Coyote. He was a troublesome pain. So they said, "You know Coyote, as soon as we tell you what to do, you'll just say 'Oh I knew that,' so why don't you spare us the trouble and figure it out for yourself?" Coyote knew that his huckleberry sisters were afraid of hail. So he called up the sky "Hail. Come on down my friend. Hail now!" and a few pieces of hail fell from the sky and the huckleberry sisters said " All right, all right, make it stop and we'll give you a plan." So Coyote did, and they did. Coyote bent down close and the sisters told him what to do. When they were done he said "I already thought of that" and went back to the animal village.

Coyote gathered all of the animal people together and told them the plan. So the following day, the animals came together behind Coyote and they started out for the mountain and along the way Coyote had this one stop here, and that one stop there, and that one stop there, until they made a chain of animals almost all the way up to the top of the mountain. When all of the animals were in place, Coyote himself went back up to the skookums lodge and took his place once again behind the bushes in the snow and watched the fire and the skookums and waited for dawn.

The sister who was guarding the fire had pretty good eyesight and she saw him over there, but figured it was just an animal looking for scraps. Since the skookums sisters had fire and cooked food, they sometimes had such visitors. So she didn't think about it much and sat and stared into the flames and now and then she threw another long onto the fire until her time was up. At dawn she got up very creakily and slowly made her way to the lodge door. Just at the moment that she opened the door and called her sister, Coyote leaped up, ran to the fire, grabbed a burning brand, and took off.

The second that he was gone the sisters in the doorway saw him and the three sisters were after him in a flash. Coyote ran and ran and ran and he ran faster than he ever had before in his life. He even rolled part of the way like a giant snowball but the three skookum sisters were hot on his tail, kicking up snow and ice. So he ran and ran and just as he got to the treeline, there was Cougar. Coyote handed Cougar the burning brand and off went the feline brother, sleek and quick, with the three skookum sisters right behind him. Coyote fell face first into the snow exhausted.

Cougar ran and ran and he couldn't shake the skookums either. Cougar ran all the way to the low trees, to where there started to be some bushes, and he passed the fire off to Fox. And Fox ran and ran with the skookums at the tip of his bushy tail until he got to the dense underbrush. Fox tossed the fire up to Squirrel who snatched it and went off leaping nimbly from limb to limb. The three skookum sisters knew they couldn't travel that way. But they were big and they were strong and they were fast so they just barreled right on through all of those scratchy bushes and they were on the other end waiting for Squirrel. Squirrel had just one split second and he tossed the fire to Antelope. Antelope was the fastest animal hands down and he bounded off across the meadow.

And so it goes. From animal to animal, paw to claw, the relay continues and the three skookum sisters match the animal people step for step and breath for breath.

Now the fire has made its way down the mountain and the animal village is not too far away. The fire is no longer a burning brand. All that is left is one tiny glowing ember which gets passed to Frog, who swallows it. Frog hops, hops, hops and dives into the deep river and the youngest sister saw what he was about and leaps over to the far bank and is waiting for him. Frog hopped right between her legs and for a second it looked like he was going to get away when suddenly all three sisters were there and Frog was so tired, he couldn't jump any more. So he just pssht spit the ember into wood.

The three skookum sisters gather around the wood and they are perplexed. They don't know how to get the fire out of the wood. They talk it over and scratch their heads but finally they have to admit defeat. They made their way back up to their lodge on top of the snowy mountain peak.

By now all of the animals are recovering from their races and slowly making their way back down the mountain and they gather around Frog. There doesn't seem to be any fire. The last one down is Coyote, since he was way up at the top, and he finds the animals all sitting around Frog and the wood. Coyote says "Hey Brother Frog, how did it go?" and Frog says, "Well, there it is" and points at wood. Coyote says "Well, good."

Coyote gets a couple of twigs and rubs them together until he raises a few sparks and he shows the animal people how to add a little dry moss and some bigger sticks to build a fire. Coyote knew how to get the fire out of wood. From that day forward, the animals could cook their food and they weren't cold anymore.

who invented this moonlit land

who invented this moonlit land filled with
work which changes nature, but not life &
never the nature of man? this immutable nature
of man as work & the anthropology of work or dream.
body art quicksilver medication, restless
nights filled with roosting crows, frustrated
by reality he turns to his dreams.
This whole land is void of laughter. the
drear fog of winter settled in from the people’s
eyes. she had had the last laugh back somewhere
in late August, perhaps early September, when
the salmon, when the blue backs look up the creek.
that was the last time they had laughed
& he couldn’t remember why or how their world
had gone so serious. where had it gone? where
was the glint of the fish? the warmth of the
fire? the changing of the tide? get back to work.
that is our only advice — & the last laugh still
won’t return. we begin to think that this
last laugh thing is pretty serious. we never
really expected to witness the last laugh—-
to see it spent so frivolously, so lightly.
just who is it has the last laugh? we could
use it back (you know). kind of like a hair ball
or bad food, coyote’s pretty sure
whoever has it should just cough it up.

---David Lloyd Whited

For more information about David Lloyd Whited and some other interesting work, check out The Raven Chronicles here or click on the image above.

Trickster

Participating with trickster stories from Native American sources is tricky for a number of reasons. Many of these stories follow a different plot progression--they seem not to have a punchline--though Coyote Keeps His Name is one that satisfies our expectations about what constitutes a story. The stories contain a different sense and use of humor, and they reflect a different consciousness. Animals are "people," conscious beings with a mission to perform, for example. And as the prominence of Coyote/tricksters in these cultures indicates, there is a recognizable and valuable, even sacred place, reserved for a force of creation via the ridiculous and profane, not just the wisely orchestrated. The stories I will tell at the round table and post here will illustrate these points over time.

The story Coyote Keeps His Name raises the question: who is this guy? Coyote seems kind of a buffoon, a boaster, but is he harmless? He gets this important job, especially as it relates to us, the "New People,"  and is that good news given the fiasco of the naming, the falling asleep with eyes propped wide open with twigs? There are many Coyote stories and reading a group of them imparts some more information (he is not always harmless and may have brought death into the world), but bottom-line what you learn about Coyote as you tend to Coyote tales is his character, his way of being. Not his motivation. Not his plan. Not his point. The absence of comprehensible information about these topics and our desire for it is interesting in itself. We often want to know "why?" something happens when the point is simply that it does. And we often reject the implicit "why" of motivation the story carries because we can't reconcile seeming opposites (generosity and greed, wisdom and stupidity) that we insist must be separate--in the world, in others, and most crucially, in ourselves.

So what is Coyote's way? Here's a partial answer, a few glimmers and slim gleanings from my acquaintance with him (and he is always a he). The Trickster is a creator but he doesn't set out with a grand plan, there's no first day and second day until he rests. Coyote responds to the moment and acts with the cunning and cleverness borne of circumstance and contingency. Trickster energy is the energy of the road, particularly the ambiguity represented by the crossroads (think Jack Kerouac). Tricksters are intimately connected with language and communication and that is one slippery device. Tricksters can spin great, enchanting rhetoric and weave a spell of enthusiasm. Later we reflect on their speeches and realize that actually, they didn't say much.

One thing that puzzles is the connection between his ingenuity and boldness and his innate foolishness. Coyote does a lot of things that go wrong--which is why he needs more than one life to fulfill his mission. This calls to mind the pairing of Prometheus (foresight) with Epimetheus, his foolhardy brother. Why does Prometheus let his reckless brother hand out the divine gifts? Epimetheus screws up, he gives everything away and keeps nothing back for humankind, hence the corrective act, a crime against Zeus, the theft of fire. Inexplicable but this pairing tells us something about the relationship between plans and order and chaos and impulsiveness. Transgression of some sort, lying and stealing and competitiveness push the boundaries and reset them, and this an important form of creativity albeit one with costs, a method without guaranteed success which is what creativity requires, is it not?

In our round table discussion, someone asked about Trickster energy in our culture and I think it's everywhere but it's largely unconscious in our goal oriented, plan driven, control freak culture in which we think that we decide things and make them happen on our own without the participation, assistance or interference, of the psychic and cosmic forces that contain us and the world. Bernie Madoff acted with Trickster energy and he hurt a lot of people because the flipside of unconscious Trickster action is unconscious trickster enabling, that is, gullibilty and a desire to satisfy our own inner Trickster (maybe get something for nothing). Could someone like Bernie Madoff succeed on such a grand scale if we were culturally clued in to the existence of the Trickster in ourselves? I don't know. But it's something to ponder and a thread we'll keep alive as our engagement with the Trickster Coyote continues.

Skyline

Take a break from your internet investigations, info-gathering, and other web-based diversions and check out the current issue of Skyline Magazine, an online collection of poetry, fiction, and artwork beautifully coordinated by Victoria Valentine. Victoria is also editor of the Hudson View Poetry Digest and a handful of other literary journals dedicated to "bringing the world together through the arts."

The Hudson View has included work by several poets featured on this blog: Stephanie Pope, Dennis Slattery, and Phillip Rosenberg. I'm the featured artist in the current online edition of Skyline.

Click here for the latest issue of Skyline.

Coyote Keeps His Name

The theme of the High Desert Mythological RoundTable is change and stories about change, big changes, creative changes, shifts in cosmic order. After several months with the Greeks, Titans, and Prometheus, we're introducing stories of the Trickster, which is certainly one way to view Prometheus and his theft of fire.

Here is the first story told last Tuesday, my paraphrase of the version Barry Lopez shares in Giving Birth to Thunder. The story originates with the Okanagon from northern Washington and British Columbia.

One day, a long time ago, the Great Spirit called all of the Animal People together. "There is going to be a change, "he said. "New People are coming and when they arrive, you will all need names." Some Animal People had names at that point and some did not. "Set up your lodges here around mine"," the Great Spirit said, "and we'll start in the morning. The first to arrive can choose any name and so forth until all have been named. When you get your name, I will also give you a job to do. The name and the task will belong to you and your descendants always."

All of the animals wanted power names. Coyote especially, wanted a new name, a warrior name, because he was called Trickster and Imitator and the others sometimes ridiculed him and he didn't like it. Coyote decided that he would get the name Bear, and be chief of the four-leggeds, or Eagle, and be chief of the birds, or Salmon, and be chief of the fish. These were good, power names.

Coyote spent the rest of the day going around telling the other animals that he was going to get a super-powerful name. Coyote ran into his brother Fox and Fox just laughed. "Trickster is trickster," he said. "You can't change that and besides, you know that no one will try to steal your name because nobody wants to be Coyote." They argued about it a bit and Coyote insisted that Fox would be laughing out of his hat come tomorrow morning and set off down the road.

Coyote came upon other animals and asked them questions. Whenever they answered he said, "Oh, I already know that," because that's just his way. On the road home, he stopped to play a game of stick and hoop and lost badly.

When Coyote got home he talked to his wife (who would be called Mole after the naming day) and told her of his plan to get a power name. "I will be Bear," he said, " or maybe Eagle, or maybe Salmon." Coyote told his wife to make him some dinner and a big fire because he was going to stay up all night, to be sure and be the very first one at the Great Spirit's lodge the next morning.

Mole built a fire and she sat with Coyote for awhile. Then she tossed on a couple more logs and went to bed. Coyote sat and watched the flames. He started to get sleepy and his eyes drooped. He got a couple of twigs and propped up his eyelids to get them open but eventually, finally, Coyote fell dead asleep and sat before the fire in a deep snore with his eyes wide open.

The sun was well up in the sky the following morning when Mole made a sound and woke up her husband. She didn't wake him up before this because she was afraid that if he did get a power name, he would leave her. Coyote leaped up and ran over to the Great Spirit's lodge. It was very quiet. There didn't seem to be anyone else around so Coyote thought that he was probably the first to arrive.

He went in and loudly announced, "I will be Bear!" "That name has been taken," said the Great Spirit. "Well, I will be Eagle then" said Coyote. "That name has already been taken as well" answered the Great Spirit. In a rather subdued tone Coyote ventured, "How about Salmon?" and the Great Spirit said that name had also been claimed. "The only name left is yours, Trickster," said the Great Spirit, "so you will again be called Coyote."

Coyote was sad at this news and sat forlornly by the fire with his head hung low. The Great Spirit felt sympathy for him. "I wanted you to keep the name Trickster," he said, "and it's my fault you overslept. I wanted you to be last. Trickster is a good name for you and I have a special job for you to do."

"You will be chief of the New People," the Great Spirit said. "When they come, they won't know how to do anything, not how to dance, or dress, or laugh, or shoot a bow. You will teach them all of these things. There are dreadful monsters on earth too, who will try to eat the new people and you will protect them. For this you will be honored. But you will also do foolish things and people will laugh at you and that will just be your way."

This was clearly an important job. The Great Spirit continued. "Because this is a big job, I will give you three special powers. One, you can change into any thing that you want. Two, you can understand and communicate with every being except water. Three, when you die, you will come back to life."

Coyote thought about this. He got up from the fire, brushed himself off, and went to make things right.

Salmon Creek

Hello---it occurs to me that I could provide the link to the Promised Land art album for those of you who don't get these posts on the website. So here it is.

We're just back from four days of camping on Salmon Creek, which empties into the north fork of the Kern River in the southern Sierras. Truly lovely. A place to make or rediscover faith.

In his insipid book All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum offers some prescriptions for a better world, like imagine if we all, everyone in the world, laid down in the afternoon with our blankies and then got to have cookies and milk when we got up. Please. Reading books like this was the chief downside of writing a dissertation about self-help books.

But employing the method, if not the spirit of Fulghum, here's my suggestion: imagine a world in which everyone had access to a clear cold creek and could strip down and jump in and get chilled down to the bones and lay naked on a warm rock in the breeze afterwards every single day that hypothermia was not a distinct possibility. Success is not being too timid to dunk your head too. And then we eat a cookie.

New Photo Album: Promised Land

I've posted a new photo album of art work and some poetry that traces a few lines through my life and my relationship with the desert, a place that holds special significance for me and is often source, muse, and conversation partner in my experiments with visual art. The link is in the left sidebar.

Art is many things for me. At the most basic level, making art is fun. The engagement with the materials, be they paint or paper, cast away pieces of wood, feathers or seeds, is always rich. The material world is true to itself and behaves in its own fashion. You have to understand the properties of what you are working with and let them draw you into what is possible. What is initially imagined is rarely realized but the reward is often something much more interesting.

Making art is also an exercise in seeing, really looking at something closely and allowing myself to be influenced by it. I have made a lot of art out of natural objects like seeds and wood and rocks to develop an aesthetic appreciation for what occurs naturally. The world expresses itself in tremendous diversity and complexity. We often attribute this to rather dry and mechanical reasons of adaptation and survival of the fittest and all that, and overlook the possibility that this beautiful diversity, the red patch on a black bird’s wing for example, or the waxy diamonds on the shell of a desert tortoise, reflect a cosmic impulse towards the beautiful as well as the useful. A roadrunner has red, white, and blue stripes over its eyes! And what story lies behind the knots and stains in a common piece of plywood, a tree turned into a commodity (an inexpensive one at that) that retains its unique character despite the glues and formaldehyde?

Making art is also a way into, as well as beyond, myself. I started painting and taking my interest in art seriously when my life was a shambles. Making art is one of the most healing activities that I know, besides taking a long walk far away from the sounds of traffic, petting a cat, or sleeping between clean sheets. If you let go of the desire to make something “good,” a valuable conversation may begin that continues long after the project is formally completed. Which leads me to my next point...

Making art is an exercise in taking my interests seriously, beginning with the discovery of them. Interests are not the equivalent of concerns. I have many concerns ---intolerance and world peace, global warming, justice, consumerism, the shaky economy, my financial situation, the pain in my arms, and the possibility of too many rattlesnakes in my yard this summer. These concerns can consume all of my energy and lead me to forget my connection to the world itself. Then I lose enthusiasm; I find it hard to care or keep going. My interests flow from what I love and these sustain me. In an essay about writing, Annie Dillard says that the task is not to write about what you love, but to write about what only you love. I think this speaks to any creative act because the greatest gift we have is our attention. That opens all the doors.

Finally, making art is an attempt to enter into and appreciate beauty, and to make something beautiful myself. My efforts are primitive but essential to my experience of love of self and Other.

Please check out the album (subscribers, that means you have to visit the site). Hope you enjoy it.

High Desert Mythological Roundtable Meets Tuesday June 30th

7-9PM, Friendship Hall, Joshua Tree Retreat Center (Mentalphysics, Hwy. 62)

                                                                            "Trickster Tales”

Along time ago, near the very beginning from our human point of view, there was no earth, only water. Coyote was floating around on a small raft when he met the ducks. "My brothers," he said, "I think it's just you and me. No one else around. That's not good." The ducks considered his words. Coyote said," My brothers, you must get me some earth so I can make things right."

Come hear the rest of this story and other trickster tales about lying, stealing, cheating, and creativity. Free. Donation for the room suggested. Cookies and other goodies appreciated.

The High Desert Mythological RoundTable is instigated by the mythic influence of the high desert, with assistance from the Joseph Campbell Foundation. We meet the last Tuesday of every month at the JTRC. Email me for more information.

Honey Moon

Today is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year, the day the "sun stands still." The significance of this event for people in many cultures, as far as we know, precedes and far outweighs that of more familiar holidays. If you're looking for something to celebrate, or a moment to reflect or connect to the larger powers and patterns that contain and support this human enterprise, the solstice is a good opportunity for both. The veil between the worlds, as the Celts say, is very thin. We can communicate with the unseen, however you define it.

The Celts called the solstice Midsummer or Litha. They celebrated the fertility of the earth and power of the cosmos, the fruit of the wedding of Heaven and Earth under the Honey Moon, an event reinforced this year by the conjunction of the planets Venus and Mars. Think Aphrodite and Ares, Love and War, the Feminine and the Masculine, the powers of relatedness and the powers of discrimination or discernment. These themes can be imagined in the context of a relationship with another person or between the aspects of self. It's a good time to ask "What do I want to bring into the world?"

The summer solstice begins (began) at 1:45AM but don't be dismayed if you're a bit late in calling the powers that be. Happy honey moon!

Prickly Pear

I've been working on a "photo" album of artwork to post for a couple of weeks now. Don't ask me why this notion is so compelling, but the idea wouldn't let me rest until I agreed and now it refuses to be finished.

This may be the same muse who inspired me to paint this image on the unfinished east wall of our cabin last week. Here's to crazy enthusiasms and the freedom to follow where they lead, even though they make you a bit nuts.

Prickly Pear

A heart can be a prickly pear
in a shroud of grief,
And it is easily broken if
you wear it on your sleeve.
But try too hard
to keep it safe
and it will lose its beat,
And all you'll have,
for life and love
is just a piece
of meat.

---Catherine Svehla