The trickster is a mythological figure dominant in creation and recreation stories birthed with stories themselves. The historical global omnipresence of this general character, who can shapeshift within the chosen animal or human embodiment, has given rise to much study and debate. This writing will specifically concern itself with tricksters within Native American storytelling.
Paul Radin wrote an initial trickster treatise in 1955 after studying particular Winnebago myths. The Winnebago Trickster cycle of forty-nine stories is central in his book, The Trickster and is the most referenced trickster figure of his writings by subsequent students of Native American tricksters. According to Radin the translation of the tricky one in a Siouan language of the Winnebago is wakdjunkaga; accordingly this specific trickster cycle is also known as the Wakdjunkaga Trickster cycle. Among the forty nine stories are the story of Wakdjunkaga taking his extremely large and weighty penis from the box off his back where he carries it to send it across the river to impregnate a chief's daughter and the story of the talking laxative bulb consumed by the trickster resulting in effluent scatological comedies. Radin also notes the translation of trickster in Ponca, ishtinike, and in Osage, itsike and in the Dakota-Soiux it is ikto-mi, the spider (132). He also relates and comments on other myths including a Winnebago Hare cycle and its cognates, noting an evolution from trickster to culture hero in the trickster figure among the Ojibwa and Menominee (131). Manabozho or Nanaboozoo (also known as Winabojo or Nanabush) is an example of this more controlled, benevolent culture hero among the Chippewa of the Algonquian tribes. In his book Radin preliminarily defines the North American Indian Trickster as follows:
Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being (xxiii).
He concludes his study with:
The overwhelming majority of all so-called trickster myths in North America give an account of the creation of the earth, or at least the transforming of the world, and have a hero who is always wandering, who is always hungry, who is not guided by normal conceptions of good or evil, who is either playing tricks on people of having them played on him and who is highly sexed. Almost everywhere he has some divine traits. These vary from tribe to tribe. In some instances he is regarded as an actual deity, in others as intimately connected with deities, in still others he is at best a generalized animal or human being subject to death (155).
This generalization is shared by many, including Carl Jung who archetypes the trickster. There are others who caution against too concrete a definition for the shiftiness, the flexibility of trickster makes his "belonging to individual societies…so culture-specific that no two of them articulate similar messages (Hynes 2). This generalization is also disputed on the grounds that it reflects the invading and intrusive domination of Eurocentric thinking that is still rounding up all the diverse Native American nations in one way or another. Trickster myths are found in nine of the eleven Native American Regions (Hynes 3). Koshare, Koyemshi, and Neweke are trickster clowns of the Pueblo people who display wanton voracity, sexual and otherwise, but are confined to ritual ceremonies (Leeming 46). Other common animal-person tricksters besides the Hare and Spider are the Raven and Coyote. "Coyote…easily the favorite…crosses tribal boundaries with as much ease as he crosses moral and social ones. He exists is the West from Alaska to the great deserts, he is everywhere on the Great Plains, and he ranges even to the East Coast"(Leeming 48). Coyote is often a teacher by counter-example as he employs base human traits including lying, cheating, and sexual misconduct. He is also a master at physical transformation. The frequently foiled Coyote, who interfaces with humans and transcendent deities, is often credited with human creation as well as human evolution consequent from his treachery.
Taking note of this is to underline a fundamental difference in the psyches of Native and non Native Americans. Inherent in Christian mythology is the concept of tragedy as one can fall from a rigidly defined sense of order. When there is no coherent order to fall from, rather a creation birthed from paradox that is inclusive of both sacred and profane, there is no tragedy. Tricksters bring instead comedy, a communal adhesive.
Oral stories were told for specific reasons within the separate cultures of Native Americans; the revered storyteller tailored the story while speaking to distinct people of the group being addressed. It is difficult to ascertain the full extent of the messages from these historic trickster stories as they were respectfully told to and altered for the people they were told to, which also accounts for the myths' mutability. However, the trickster is prevalent in contemporary Native American literature. The messages are apropos in light of the movement of Native Americans to deconstruct old stereotypes of American Indians and renew a vital consciousness about their identities and clearly accessible to the contemporary reader.
Cogewea is one of the first written narratives by an American Indian, notably a female author. Martha Viehmann sees the character of Alfred Densmore in Mourning Dove's, Cogewea modeled after the Salish Coyote in her essay, "My People…My Kind". " Alfred Densmore inherits the negative characteristics of Coyote. He is self-centered, greedy, and mendacious. Like Coyote, he conceals his true identity. But the lies are always uncovered, so Densmore [like] Coyote … lose the prizes they seek…[and] recognize the extent of [their] loss"(Viehmann 234).
Tosamah, the peyote priest in N. Scott Momaday's, House Made of Dawn, is a trickster who takes on the dominant society's impositions of "gospel truths" as he "mocks, ridicules, and challenges every fixed meaning or static definition….His antic posturing, his deconstruction of his own discourse, his hilarious code-switching, are all trickster signs….he is witty, gossipy, scatological, and implicitly self-critical"(Owens 109). Trickster mastery permeates the fictional and non-fictional writings of Gerald Vizenor, who is often referred to as a trickster himself. His premiere novel, Bearheart, unleashes a barrage of tricksters to specifically "challenge all of us, like all trickster tales, to wake up….[and correct] all false and externally imposed definitions of 'Indianess,' and in so doing to free Indian identity from the epic, absolute past that insists upon stasis and tragedy for Native Americans"(Owens 231). Vizenor throughout his writings defers to the Chippewa trickster wenebojo who in his challenge to us to reimagine our reality balances the world with laughter (Owens 239).
The trickster was jumping from oral tradition to written stories in the middle of the renaissance of Native American writings, a time of changing consciousness reflected by postmodernism and the science of chaos. Perhaps, with the force of his jump the trickster broke a wind that released postmoderism and the chaos theory into western consciousness that is in great need of deconstruction and renewal.
Works Cited and Other Recommended Reading