A Book for Winter Reading

There is a reoccurring entity in Native American storytelling that can take the shape of a crow or another animal like a spider, but usually the character is a coyote. Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter by Barry H. Lopez is an amalgam of tales based on the coyote that come from a number of different tribes. Part of the (oral) tradition of Native American storytelling was to tell these stories "only after the first killing frost and before the first thundersorm—that is, in wintertime as defined by nature itself." These were not meant to be "life lessons" of any kind, but rather for entertainment during the long, harsh season. The book contains 68 very short (1-3 page) stories about the coyote who is sometimes triumphant in his adventures, and sometimes really stupid. He is at every turn, however, pretty funny.

In books of this ilk the coyote is usually seen as a wise, hero type or if not that he is seen as a trickster. The interesting thing about Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter is that its probably truer to the culture of the Native Americans as they didn't see a need to recognize a distinct difference between "good and evil". These are stories from a people who didn't profess to know so much about their natural surroundings that they felt they had to dominant it in some way. These people simply lived in accordance with their environment.

You'd be surprised by the subject matter of these stories. In one tale the coyote is mad at his mother-in-law so he takes off his penis and throws it at her. In another he stops to talk to some onions who asks the coyote not to eat them. The coyote defiantly eats all of them and then suffers flatulence and diarrhea the rest of the day. In another he finds himself trapped inside a log he has hidden in and the only way he can get out is to take his body apart and stuff himself through a small hole piece by piece. When he puts his body back together he's missing his intestines because the Crow ate it, so now when he eats anything the food keeps falling out his anus. Its wacky like that.