A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
Boas’s Kamloops Coyote sequence opens with the animals seeking a replacement for a scorching sun. Coyote rises as a candidate but talks incessantly about everything he sees below, so the animals reject him. A red-marked climbing bird succeeds instead. In the next episode, Coyote tries to end the terrible cold issuing from a glacier house and freezes to death there. His cousin Fox follows after four days, melts the ice with fire-producing steps and revives him. The warmth-making action belongs to Fox, not to Coyote.
Fox’s tail and feathered mantle also expose Coyote’s limitations. He borrows the tail, admires its rattling dentalium ornaments despite an explicit warning not to look, and suffers a bodily collapse that Fox repairs. He then steals Fox’s eagle-feather mantle; as he runs, the wind strengthens and lifts him into the air. After his fall, Fox takes the mantle back. These episodes combine a desire for borrowed splendour with dependence on the person he tries to outwit.
In a longer buffalo episode, Coyote escapes pursuit by making trees arise from his excrement, then rejuvenates the buffalo by stretching its horns and body. Buffalo reshapes Coyote in return, accounting for his long muzzle and other features in this telling. Coyote creates concealing mist while they recover Buffalo’s two wives from wolves. Given one wife, he first follows the conditions under which her flesh can feed him and she will revive. When he abandons the required vigil, a fox in old-woman form repeatedly steals the flesh, marrow and fat. The woman eventually rises and returns to Buffalo.
Coyote maliciously seals young birds’ eyes with resin. Their mother arranges a sequence of sudden flights along a precipice, causing him to fall; he survives and is left to escape without their help. In another episode he throws his eyes into the air for amusement, loses them to a bird, substitutes rose hips, and later recovers the original eyes during a dance. Throwing them upward again returns them to his sockets. These are narrated bodily transformations, not remedies or human practices.
The remaining episodes resist a single continuous biography. After finding a speaking hair and comb, he drinks four salmon skins of oil and then so much water that he bursts. A separate account gives him a pot that repeatedly returns after removal until one theft finally succeeds. In the last, he swaps vomited grass for an owl’s human flesh, convincing the dangerous owl that Coyote is the more formidable eater. Both become rocks with open mouths. The text supplies neither a revival after the bursting nor a return from the final stones.
These ten German-rendered episodes belong to the collection explicitly headed Shuswap stories gathered at Kamloops. Boas identifies an unnamed French-Indigenous intermediary for that collection in his preface. They are retained as a local source sequence, without transferring Fox’s actions, bodily endings or details of transmission into another community’s Coyote cycle.
Origins & earliest records
Boas1895, Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas, I no2 Coyote,5–9, ten numbered episodes collected at Kamloops; narrator not individually named, collection intermediary described in preface.
Records & interpretation
All ten episodes and their boundaries read in German; original printed5 and9 inspected. Fox’s glacier rescue, successive incompatible bodily endings and regional collection framing remain explicit.
In the literature
“Beide wurden in Felsen verwandelt, die noch heute zu sehen sind.”
I. Shushwap, Kamloops; 2. Coyote, complete ten numbered episodes pp.5–9; episode10 p.9 · German witness by Boas; Shushwap recording mediated through an unnamed French-Indigenous intermediary; no independent translation claimed
Coyote and Buffalo transform each other’s appearance and rescue Buffalo’s two abducted wives. Coyote receives one wife, loses her after violating a condition and suffering repeated theft by Fox in old-woman guise; she revives and returns to Buffalo. After harming a bird mother’s children, Coyote survives their cliff retaliation. His stolen eyes are temporarily replaced by rose hips, then recovered by deception. Another episode ends when he bursts from excessive drinking. A returning kettle is finally stolen permanently. In the last episode Coyote exchanges the contents of his and Owl’s vomit to feign being the human-eater; both become open-mouthed rocks.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas
I no2 Coyote,5–9, complete ten numbered episodes; preface gives the unnamed intermediary for the Shuswap collection. Original5/9 inspected.
- 02
Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas — I. Shushwap, Kamloops; 2. Coyote, complete ten numbered episodes pp.5–9
Berlin: A. Asher & Co.,1895; actual title-page imprint visually checked in retained original microform PDF. German collected narrative, not an independent modern translation.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas — I. Shushwap, Kamloops; 2. Coyote, complete ten numbered episodes pp.5–9
Berlin: A. Asher & Co.,1895; actual title-page imprint visually checked in retained original microform PDF. German collected narrative, not an independent modern translation.
- Coyote is rejected as a replacement Sun for revealing everything he sees. In the freezing episode he dies; Fox melts the ice and Coyote explicitly revives, with the others restored afterward. Borrowing Fox’s forbidden-to-look-at tail exposes Coyote’s entrails; Fox repairs him and retrieves it. Stealing Fox’s feather mantle produces a wind that lifts and drops Coyote, who is left half-dead.
I. Shushwap, Kamloops; 2. Coyote, complete ten numbered episodes pp.5–9; Episodes1–4, pp.5–6
- Coyote and Buffalo transform each other’s appearance and rescue Buffalo’s two abducted wives. Coyote receives one wife, loses her after violating a condition and suffering repeated theft by Fox in old-woman guise; she revives and returns to Buffalo. After harming a bird mother’s children, Coyote survives their cliff retaliation. His stolen eyes are temporarily replaced by rose hips, then recovered by deception. Another episode ends when he bursts from excessive drinking. A returning kettle is finally stolen permanently. In the last episode Coyote exchanges the contents of his and Owl’s vomit to feign being the human-eater; both become open-mouthed rocks.
I. Shushwap, Kamloops; 2. Coyote, complete ten numbered episodes pp.5–9; Episodes5–10, pp.6–9
No complete book, original performance or original-language transcript inspected; no direct Shushwap-to-German translation claimed. Preface mentions earlier publications that were not separately inspected.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textOriginal Boas1895 collected volumeResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
