Coyote Tales of the Shasta Nation
The Coyote tales come from the Shasta people who originally inhabited the regions of modern-day northern California and southern Oregon. Coyote is a popular trickster figure among many Native peoples of North America, including the Shasta, and their Coyote tales are among the most popular. Two of the best-known are Why Mount Shasta Erupted and Land of the Ghost Dance.
Coyote in the Snow, Yosemite, California, USA
Yathin S. Krishnappa (CC BY-SA)
The Shasta came into contact with Euro-Americans in 1826, and soon after, their traditional lifestyle and culture suffered enormously. Scholar Adele Nozedar comments on their ancestral lands and culture and the challenges they faced after 1826:
Originally, the Shasta lived in California, and are remembered in the names of the Shasta River and Mount Shasta. The tribe lived in permanent villages rather than being nomadic or semi-nomadic, living in plank houses, using dugout canoes, and having acorns as a staple food. The Shasta divided up their territory into areas in which certain families had the right to hunt, a privilege that was handed down the father’s line…A peaceful people, the Shasta suffered when the California Gold Rush started in the 1820’s, some of them poisoned, for no reason, by settlers…, in common with others, in an attempt to reclaim a sense of identity, the Shasta embraced the Ghost Dance Movement.
Like the Pawnee, the rituals of the Ghost Dance (which naturally included songs, chants, and prayers in one’s native language) helped the Shasta preserve their culture, their language, and the stories handed down through oral transmission for centuries; the Coyote tales among them. In June 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom of California gave back 2,800 acres of ancestral homeland to the Shasta in an initiative to right past injustices. Today, the Shasta continue to rebuild their language and culture and a significant aspect of that effort is their stories.
Coyote Tales of the Shasta
The Coyote tales, like the Iktomi tales of the Lakota Sioux or the Wihio tales of the Cheyenne, feature a central trickster character – who may appear in many different forms and roles but always teaches a lesson and is involved in some sort of transformative event – and, in this case, that main character is Coyote. Scholar Bobby Lake-Thom comments:
Coyote is one of the most ancient mythic symbols for most Native tribes. He is often portrayed as either the creator or the trickster. He is full of magic, special powers, and teachings. We learn from the lessons that Coyote gives us about the mistakes and/or accomplishments he has made in life.
As with other tricksters, the Coyote of the Shasta people may appear as a hero, a villain, a fool, a wise man, a Creator God, or a con artist depending on the tale. In Why Mount Shasta Erupted and Land of the Ghost Dance, he plays the role of the novice who fails to grasp a given situation; not necessarily a fool, but one lacking in experience and so prone to mistakes. In this role, Coyote is made accessible to an audience who may identify, and sympathize, with his errors and are given the opportunity to learn from them.
Why Mount Shasta Erupted is an origin tale explaining why Mount Shasta of the Cascade Range of modern-day Siskiyou County, California, looks the way it does. The story may also reference the historical event of the volcanic eruption of Mount Shasta c. 1250 and provide an explanation for that. The Shasta – along with other nations including the Klamath and Modoc – inhabited the region around Mount Shasta for approximately 14,000 years before the arrival of Euro-Americans, and the Shasta tale of the c. 1250 eruption could well date to shortly after that event. As the tale was passed down through oral transmission, however, its date of composition is unknown.
Mount Shasta in the Siskiyou Mountains, California
Land of the Ghost Dance shares similarities with death-origin myths of other Native American nations, including How Death Came into the World (Modoc legend) and the Kiowa death-origin myth: two versions - How Death Came into the World and Why the Ant is Almost Cut in Two. In the Shasta story, Coyote decrees death as a necessity but regrets this when his son dies. Land of the Ghost Dance references the vision of the Ghost Dance Movement of 1889 – that the souls of the dead lived on in another, better realm – but stands as a cautionary tale on the dangers of refusing to accept loss and clinging to the past. This theme is common to ghost stories of many different nations, notably The Ghost Wife of the Pawnee.
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