Where My Girls At? Searching For Coyote Woman

Coyote saunters across the myths, legends, and stories of the American west making mischief wherever he goes. In Din`e bahane`: The Navajo Creation Story, Paul G. Zolbrod explains that, "One of the most controversial characters among the Navajo is Coyote, prince of chaos, who is also the most notable catalyst. Transformer, troublemaker, trickster, deity Coyote is all of these, and more. He stole the stars laid out by First Man and scattered them, willy nilly, across the heavens. Yet, from Coyote's unruly behavior, changes came about that made life better. From Coyote's foolishness, mortals gained wisdom, learned what, and what not, to do. Coyote, as the forerunner of change, created ways of doing things so that customs new moral codes, ceremonies, designs for living came into being." Coyote shakes up the status quo to either make change or reaffirm the importance of tradition.

You can browse online and find pages of stories about how Coyote tampered with the stars, fell in love with a star, helped a young boy become a warrior, or established boundaries between life and death. However, you'll quickly notice that these are Old Man Coyote stories or stories about a sexually rambunctious Coyote whose dick is so long it frightens women away. Coyote loves women. He chases women. In some stories he helps them and in others tricks them into having sex.

One Blackfoot legend describes how Coyote created women from leftover buffalo bones.  The story ends with the declaration that, "And even to this day, if you have one group of men, and another of women, the men will want to sit by the fire and smoke. But the women talk. And whether it is because they were made out of the left-over bones that clicked and rattled, or whether it is because A-pe'si, the Coyote --who is a noisy creature himself--had a part in their making, no one can say." All women carry a bit of Coyote magic in their blood.

"Coyote Woman Dreaming" by Susan Seddon-Boulet

However, Franchot Ballinger  observes that stories about Coyote (and Trickster figures as a whole) almost invariably cast the protagonist as male. As a sexual creature, an object of satire, and a transgressor of social structures, Coyote occupied a traditionally male space. Even today, our social imagination typically casts men as the rovers, the wise fools, and shamans.

Coyote-Woman steps into this vacuum carrying a slightly different kind of medicine in the pockets of her crochet coat. Like Old Man Coyote, she is an Outsider. She saunters back and forth between wilderness and civilization learning the lessons that both worlds have to offer. She plays the fool, capering, clowning, and joking with the best. She is often called a fool because she rages against boundaries and breaks the rules that "only a fool would break". However, in reality, her foolishness is clever, wild, and irreverent.  As Ina Woolcott explains, "Coyote's medicine includes understanding that all things are sacred and that yet nothing is sacred."

This is Coyote-Woman's brilliant power. She sees the world as sacred, but not untouchable. She builds no churches and believes that old, mysterious, and holy objects belong to the world, not on high shelves and museum cases. She honors tradition and history as a living thread that is continually rewoven into new forms.

In fact, she is a new form herself. Coyote-Woman reclaims that traditionally male mythological space as she teaches women to reinvent themselves, test their limitations, discern worthwhile risks from danger, and sing ideas into being.

If First Mother gave women corn and men tobacco, it was Coyote Woman who evened out the deal later. 

How I Met Coyote

Coyote Madonna by Terri Windling

Once upon a time, this gal  brought home her second baby, looked around the house, and decided her life was a train wreck. She needed a few days alone in the Wild Country to pull her head together, but what with a baby, a toddler, and an essay on Euripides’s “Medea” due on Tuesday, her options were limited. She certainly didn't want to pull a Greek tragedy on her beautiful family, so she decided to pray.

While she was praying, Coyote-Woman sauntered up. She pulled two bundles of sweet herbs from the bottomless pockets of her crochet coat and offered them to the unsuspecting mother. “Smoke the first bundle,” instructed Coyote-Woman, “And I’ll patch you up with the other.”

As Coyote-Woman started nosing around under the bewildered mother’s skirts, the gal asked, “Are you a midwife? I thought Bear was the midwife.”

Coyote-Woman laughed, “Bear Medicine? Do you want to curl up in a cave with your babies for the next five years? You’re not the stuff attachment parenting is made of, girl. Smoke my sweet herbs and we’ll walk the long road with our feet in the Wild Country and our hands tending the Hearth.”

So she smoked the sweet herbs and welcomed a Coyote Spirit into her life.

Coyote is one part spirit guide, one part imaginary friend, and something like an alter ego. She’s a devilish co-pilot and always takes up too much space on the dance floor. She capers between the mundane and the ridiculous, teaching folks how to stay sane in a mind-boggling world.

5 years after slipping into my life disguised as a midwife, Coyote-Woman continues to offer advice on navigating the contradictory worlds of yoga, feminism, hoop dance, university, crochet, marital romance, community building, and part-time employment in public education.

For the next few days, with some randomness tossed in between, I'll be exploring the stories, symbols, and meditations that make Coyote-Woman a powerful ally.