Coyote Anthropology: A Conversation in Words and Drawings

<p>There once was a trader, a white man at the store back on the Rez, who was so good at tricking Indians they were a little bit proud of him. One day an Indian came up to the counter and said to the trader, “Now you are the cheatin’ wonder of the whole civilized world, but that one over there, he’s even better than you are.”<br /> “Why him? He’s only a scrawny critter!”<br /> “Yep, that’s the one. So why don’t you let him prove it?”<br /> So the white man ambled over to Coyote and said, “Let’s you and me have us a tricking contest and see who is the better cheater.”<br /> “Won’t work,” said <em>canis latrans</em>, “’cause I left my tricking magic back home, and that’s two days away.”<br /> “No problem,” said <em>homo not exactly sapiens</em>, “because I can lend you my hoss, and you can go and fetch your magic quicker’n a Noo Yawk minute.”<br /> “No way,” said the candid canid, “because I am basically a predator, and all your nag’s got to do is snuff my scent, and he’ll buck me off in a <em>Lubbock nanosecond</em>.”<br /> “Well, dawgnabbit,” said the trader, “I’ll just lend you my <em>clothes</em>, too, and when the hoss takes a whiff of the scent, it’ll snuff <em>me</em> instead of <em>you</em>.”<br /> Now that is just exactly what happened, dawgnabbit and all; Coyote took the trader’s hoss, put on his clothes, and <em>blithely</em> rode away…</p>