Coyote Walks on Two Legs

Book Review:

The book Coyote Walks on Two Legs is a collection of Navajo myths and legends on how things came to be in the Navajo culture. According to Navajo tradition, Coyote is seen as being a trickster and being mischievous. These traits bring change--sometimes bad, sometimes good--to the Navajo people. In the author's note, Gerald Hausman speaks with his Navajo friend about the Coyote and his mischievous ways "...But always his mischief causes us to experience new ways of doing things, new ways of knowing. This is his great gift to The People."

The first legend is "The Great Flood" and it talks about how the Coyote causes the great flood and how the Navajo moved up into a different world. In "First Angry", we learn how the Coyote got his Navajo name, First Angry, and why he is called by his present name today. In "The Day Magpie Tricked Coyote", Magpie is playing a game of Throw Away Eyes. This game is just what it sounds like. The Magpie shakes his head and his eyes pop out of his head. He catches them and puts them back in. Coyote wants to play, too, and when his eyes roll out, they roll away from him. Bluejay gives him a new pair of eyes which melted when Coyote looked up at the sun. This melting of his "yellow pine-sap" eyes is what has given the Coyote his characteristic soot marks on either side of his face. In "Coyote's New Coat", Coyote wants to have the spots of a fawn. When he asked the fawn's mother how to do it, she said he had to make a fire and when Wind came to play, the sparks would make white spots on his coat, just like the fawn. The Coyote, being played for a fool, followed these directions and was burned. He now gets a new coat every winter instead of the white spots he wanted. In the last legend, "The Guardian of the Corn", Coyote swallows the Guardian of the Corn, Horned Toad, and then eats a lot of corn. He gets very sick because he ate too much. Horned Toad pokes Coyote from inside his stomach and makes Coyote burp him back up out of his stomach.

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