Reflections on seeing a coyote cross the path

Coyote looks back

Tsoska Dzidze Whisky Jack's Berries

Yesterday afternoon as I walked in the ravine, a sleek grey and white coyote ran across the meadow in front of me and disappeared into the trees. Coyotes are beautiful animals, but are caricatured in Western cartoons (Wile E. Coyote versus the Roadrunner), made ridiculous, stupid and ugly. In Indigenous narratives, coyote is a trickster, who is smart but often outsmarts him [or even her-] self. I think of the wonderful coyote stories of Native American author Thomas King, and the allusions to coyote found in Hunn’s Nichi Wana, the Big River. Coyote’s opportunism is seen as both intelligent and competent, and self serving at the same time. Coyotes are nothing if not adaptable. living easily on the peripheries of human settlement, elusive and quick witted. Coyotes are predators, feeding on rabbits and other smaller animals, and also take advantage of berries. I saw a lot of saskatoon berry filled scat in the ravine this summer.

In Western thought the concepts of “predator” and “vermin” [aka “varmint”] carry negative connotations....the big bad wolf and the sweet innocent defenseless deer. Carnivores (other than us) are bad, and herbivores [unless rodents] are good. The rodent thing is an interesting one; we are generally fine with squirrels and chipmunks in Western culture [which typically live in the woods and not in our homes or outbuildings, and don’t spoil our food stores or crops]. Beavers are fine too (unless they are blocking culverts or damming fishing streams or cutting down fruit trees along the creek). Rats and mice, however are not fine. Rats carry the plague, and are depicted as evil “underworld” creatures in cartoons. Rats are the target of extermination programs in poor urban neighbourhoods in places like New York. [In the mid 1990’s in Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori biologist Mere Roberts roused a remarkable amount of negative attention trying to defend the kiori, a small rat which was a traditional Maori food. The label “rat” carried the day, and programs to eliminate this endangered cultural animal from protected areas continued.] And in less urban settings, gophers are definitely not fine. Reading the draft of a book on environmental history by my Athabasca University colleague Donald Wetherall a few weeks ago, I was startled to find that in Alberta there had been a bounty on gophers as a “predator” in the early 20th century. In my biology classes I learned that a predator preys on other animals, usually herbivores. Apparently in Alberta a predator can prey on roots, if people take exception to its foraging habits.

I was also distressed to find that there was a bounty on magpies, intelligent and beautiful cousins of jays and of crows, birds with lovely black and white markings, and iridescent blues and greens, with long graceful tails. They too were “predators” because they include the eggs and young of other species of birds in their diet, and are scavengers of carrion and well as eating a wide range of other foods. The bounty was paid per pair of magpie legs, and thousands of pairs were collected. Enough to sicken me....but it helped me understand why the people of Alberta today continue to denigrate magpies, often calling them “aerial rats”. (The contrast with the beautiful song celebrating magpies written by Donovan Leach in the mid ’60’s is noteworthy; it goes---
The magpie is a most illustrious bird
black and blue and white-
I would that I had feathers three
black and blue and white

The magpie is a most royal bird
dwells in a diamond tree
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
sorrow and joy for me

I saw the gentle magpie birds
in a dusky yestereve
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
and sooner than soon did leave

I have known this song, and sung it, since I was a teenager. I was thrilled to come to Alberta where these beautiful and intelligent birds are common place). Crows too were bountied and persecuted. Their depredations on grain were balanced by their consumption of rodents that also preyed on grain, as some farmers tried to point out, but the anti-crow and magpie faction prevailed.

The history of discomfort with crows and ravens is an ancient one in Europe. The birds are black, like night, intelligent, unfathomable, quintessentially adaptable, and associated with carrion, thus with death and with the despoilation of corpses. The Norse God Odin had two ravens, wisdom and thought...and they were also associated with death in battle. Edgar Allen Poe’s uncanny poem the raven evokes a creepy aura of death and fate. The fantasy author JRR Tolkien similarly casts crows and wolves with an aura of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Yet in the Northwest Coast, Raven is a powerful being, laughable but also recognized as a creative force, the trickster creator who liberated daylight along with many other adventures. Raven is one of the two moieties of the Haida and the Tlingit, and one of four Clans of the Nisga’a on the Nass River. Txeemsim, the raven, lived along the Nass River which is also Txeemsim, and many of his stories are localized there. Raven is frequently depicted on Crest items and blankets and on totem poles in that region.

The ways that people relate to and conceive of animals, are shaped by culture and means of livelihood. Hunters, herders, and farmers all see things differently. Those who separate humans, and culture, from animals, and nature, are less tolerant of fellow travellers. In European folk-lore and contemporary popular culture such as cartoons, predators and raptors get bad press for the most part. Reynard the Fox is a sly and cunning animal who grabs the grey goose, and the wolf is a leering evil creature who poses a risk to benighted travellers, or to Sonya the duck in “Peter and the Wolf”. “Chicken hawks” were formerly reviled, and shot on sight. (Our attitude toward “chicken hawks” has shifted somewhat now that many of us in North America are no longer farmers; we made substantial efforts as a society to help the peregrine falcon recover from the brink of extinction due to pesticide use).

While staying with my Gwich’in teachers on the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers, I witnessed very different attitudes and senses of the same species. Although the town ravens in Inuvik ravage unprotected garbage bags and wake one with their croaking and scuffling, on the land people leave food for the ravens, and recognize their role in cleaning the land. The intelligence and inherently comical character of the raven are both recognized in traditional narratives throughout the North. Raven is another trickster, like coyote, shaping the world almost by mistake, and often being brought up short by his own scheming.

In the Northwest Coast region as I noted above, raven is widely credited with bringing daylight to human kind. Versions of this story are found in Raven Steals the Sun by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst (Haida) and Wii Gyet Wanders On (Bookbuilders of Ksan; Gitksan). Other stories of raven highlight his foolish greed, as in the Witsuwit’en story of Estes (their name for this trickster figure) and the swans; he tries to trap too many at once by tying their legs together, and they lift him into the air....ultimately he falls, embedding himself in a rock near Francois Lake, and he has to rely on lynx’s rough tongue to wear away the rock to free him. Lynx’s lovely ear tufts are hair pulled out by Estes in payment. (Stories of the Carrier Indians 1977). At times Raven (‘Wii Gyet with his tattered old Gwiis Gaak or raven blanket) is outsmarted by his hubris, as when he taunts a stump while his bear meat is roasting, and wakes to find the anticipated feast under the spreading rootwad of the stump, which has slipped down to cover Wii Gyet’s bounty.

The wolf is seen as a good hunter in northern Dene cultures, human-like in its skill and as provider for its family. Their emnity to dogs is not appreciated, but my teacher Mary’s Auntie Mary was scolded for shooting a wolf for no reason when she was a young woman. That inappropriate behaviour is likely to have consequences.

Gwich’in and Kaska leave food out for ravens and whisky-jacks (also known as Canada or Grey Jays; whisky-jack is derived from the Cree name for the bird). They have a proscription on harming these birds or gulls; I was told if you harmed a raven or a gull, it would make bad weather come. I watched while Mary Teya painstakingly freed a whisky-jack from fish netting she had placed over her drying fish to keep the gulls from spoiling it. I also watched her leave out the skull of a moose on top of a shed, after the meat had been cut off it, so the whisky-jacks and ravens could clean off the last of the meat. Auntie Alice, one of my Kaska teachers speaks fondly of “uskacha”, the whisky jack, and the fruits of Arctous rubra, the red bear berry, are whisky jack’s berries.

Gulls, I was told, help to clean the land....they are emblematic of summer for Gwich’in, and I was told were more significant locally than eagles. I was told to spill the fish offal on the sandbar for the gulls to eat, not put it in the water. The gulls cleanse the land, and also remove the guts and wastes that might tempt a bear to frequent the camp. Various lakes are named for the gull Tidigeh Van. (Once the gulls return southward, raven takes over clean-up duty for fall fisheries.)

When I was growing up, gulls were associated with garbage dumps, and though beautiful, were not especially valued. To the Mormons, however, gulls saved them from a plague of Mormon crickets which locust like threatened their first grain crops, and there is a statue to the seagull in Salt Lake City.

Our own culture has some ambivalence about wolves and raptors in the present, as magnificent emblems of wildness, beauty and freedom. This plays out in the complexities of endangered species restoration of wolves in Wyoming and Montana, and the immediate re-institution of a hunting season on wolves once their population has recovered....and the immediate response of the Natural Resource Defense Committee to rally wilderness and nature lovers to the defense of the wolves through political means. Whether we can respect other beings on their own terms and leave them space to live is yet an unanswered question.

Hallowe’en, Samhain and the Day of the Dead

Besides Thanksgiving, the other holiday in modern North America in which pumpkins figure is Halloween. Pumpkins have become iconic of Halloween. Carved, hollowed out pumpkins with faces and candles inside gleam on many porches and window sills on the night of October 31. These days you can buy tiny orange decorative gourds that look like miniature pumpkins for table decorations, and strings of orange pumpkin lights to trim your hedge or house front. The orange colour of the pumpkins is paired with the black of night time to make the emblematic black-and-orange of Halloween of 20th and early 21st century America. Black cats and bats are other ethnobiological elements of Halloween.
The night is configured as scary, a time of evil forces- witches, ghosts and a host of more recent evils like vampires- but contained by play-acting. We pretend to be scary/scared, and enjoy the pretense. It becomes a time for children, a way perhaps of taming fears of death and darkness by turning them into fantasy and games. Halloween is an excuse to have fun. It is a time of inversion, where people dress in costumes even at places of work, indulging in fantasy and collectively evading the norms of humdrum respectable daily roles. Children go house to house and are given candy...something that happens on no other day of the year.

Why are pumpkins, cats and bats associated with Halloween? For years I had heard vaguely that jack-o-lanterns were originally hollowed out turnip lanterns, but in North America, people switched to using pumpkins, which were readily available and already hollow if you cleaned out the seeds. Finally my partner and I were able to track a reliable source that actually documents turnip lanterns: The Hallowed Eve: Dimensions of Culture in a Calendar Festival in Northern Ireland by Jack Santino, 1998, University Press of Kentucky, which discusses turnip lanterns on pp. 49-50:
“Rough lanterns hollowed out of turnips, having a lighted candle inside, and holes cut in the turnip for eyes, nose and mouth, and carried by a string handle was deemed sufficient to scare people out of their wits.” (Santino 1998: 49, quotation from a fieldwork notebook, of a collector for the Irish Folklore Commission.)
A black and white photograph of such a turnip lantern labelled “turnip lantern, Bangor, 1991,” is found on page 50 of the book, and can be viewed by following the link below to the Amazon.com preview and scrolling to page 50
http://books.google.ca/books?id=6RvKav1WFmgC&lpg=PP11&ots=8qJ4UwvQqw&dq=turnip%20jack-o'lantern&lr=&pg=PA50#v=onepage&q=&f=false

In Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past (Pictorial America) (Lantos 2009) the author asserts “The tradition of carving pumpkins originated from the legend of ‘Stingy Jack’. Jack was doomed to wander endlessly in the dark nights with only a burning coal ember in a turnip [that had been hollowed out] for light.” [No. 7, page 9]
This source also asserts that people carved scary faces into turnips and potatoes in Ireland to keep “jack-o-the-lantern” away. [No. 8. page 10]

This source is : Lantos, James 2009. Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past, Applewood’s Pictorial America, Vintage Images of America’s Living Past. Bedford, Mass: Applewood books

http://books.google.ca/books?id=JfFGdhilmKUC&lpg=PA4&ots=faDZnl4mko&dq=turnip%20jack-o'lantern&lr=&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=&f=false

My economic botany book (Economic Botany, Plants in Our World by Beryl Brintnall Simpson and Molly Conner-Ogorzaly, McGraw Hill Publishing 1986) informs me that turnips are the roots of Brassica campestris. Swede turnips or rutabagas are the roots of a related species Brassica napus. Simpson and Connor-Ogorzaly (1986:226-227) suggest that this species is a hybrid between cabbages (Brassica oleracea) and B. campestris, the white turnip. Neaps is a medieval word for this vegetable. I was surprised to find that Simpson and Connor-Ogorzaly also include a figure of two turnip lanterns, accompanied by the following caption (figure 8-17, p. 227):
“The first Jack O’Lantern was carved out of a turnip, The Irish, who started our Halloween tradition explain it this way. One night Satan came to a local pub to claim the soul of Jack, a drunken miserly fellow. Jack suggested that they “have one for the road,” but when the Devil turned himself into a sixpence to pay the barkeeper, Jack grabbed the coin and put it in his wallet. After some bickering, Jack agreed to set the Devil free with the promise that he be left alone for another year. Each year thereafter, Jack managed to outwit the Devil. Finally, Jack grew old and died of natural causes. Heaven refused to admit him, and the Devil was not about to offer his adversary a resting place so Jack’s soul was stuck between Heaven and Hell. Satan gave Jack a burning coal to light his way, and jack fashioned a lantern from a turnip he was eating to hold it.”
In Northern Irish Halloween customs, there was also apparently an association with cabbages, which doesn’t seem to have found its way to this side of the Atlantic :
“A piece of testimony from 1943 describes Halloween pranks as a means of social redistribution as well as a way of publicly calling attention to greedy and miserly individuals : “An old custom that still prevails was the stealing and throwing of cabbages at doors. The cabbages were generally taken from those who were most greedy for the goods of this world. It is suggested that these cabbages were thrown at the doors of those who had none and could not afford to get them.” (UCD)” (Santino p. 49)
It is generally held that the origin of the carved pumpkin jack-o-lantern in North America was an adaptation by Irish immigrants to newly available plant materials in the 19th century. The iconography of Halloween in America also includes stooks of dried corn stalks, again showing the association of Halloween, as Thanksgiving, to the harvest of the major crops of the Americas adopted by European settlers to New England. Apples are also a part of the Halloween tradition; I remember bobbing for apples as a girl.
Reading various references on Samhain and Halloween garnered through Google Scholar, I see one describing bobbing for apples as a remnant of a once serious water ordeal.... That quintessential European fruit, borrowed as the symbolic fruit consumed by Eve and Adam from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, which figures in various Greek myths [the Golden Apples of the Sun] and which is symbolic of all good “Mom and apple pie”. The author writes:
"There are two main apple rites that survive; one involves ordeal by water and the other ordeal by fire. The act of going through water to obtain apples could be the remnants of the Druidic rite symbolizing the passing through water to Emain Abhlach or Apple-Isle. Apple-Isle is where Manannan Mac Lir prepared the Otherworld feast for the eternal enjoyment of those who have passed on. The Ordeal by Water survives in Scotland in such Samhain traditions as “Dookin’ for Aipples.” A large wooden tub is filled with water and set in the middle of the floor into which apples are placed. The master of ceremonies has a porridge stick or some other equivalent of the Druidic wand, and with this he keeps the apples in motion. Each participant get three tries, and if unsuccessful, must wait until the others have had their turn. If a participant captures an apple, it is either eaten or kept for use in another of the divination rites.
The modern form of the Ordeal by Fire is known as “The Aipple and the Can’le.” A small rod of wood is taken and suspended horizontally from the ceiling by a cord. After it is fairly balanced, a lit candle is set on one end and an apple at the other. The rod is then set whirling around. Each of the company takes turns leaping up trying to bite the apple without singing his or her hair. Touching either the rod or apple with the hands is not permitted.” (Weinberger, Stacey. A Druid Missal-Any Samhain Y.R. XL, Vol. 18 Number 7 Oct. 29th, 2002 c.e.) S Weinberger - orgs.carleton.edu
When I was a girl, we simply filled a wash tub with water, and tried to bite an apple, generally resulting in lots of splashing and laughter (and few successfully bitten apples). I can’t really remember exactly where this occurred...possibly a Halloween party for girl scouts.
We learned in school that Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, and is the night before All Saints Day, November 1. November 2 is All Souls Day, or, in Mexico and Hispanic areas of North America, the Day of the Dead [el Día de los Muertos]. In Mexico when I was there as a university student in the late 1960’s, you could buy sugar skulls with names on them at the Sanborn’s restaurant, and there were festive gatherings of families in cemeteries, sharing food with their dead relatives...a communion of the living and dead.
I remembered marigold flowers as associated with the Day of the Dead. Floral offerings are very important in Mesoamerican cultures, deriving from indigenous religions traditions. Looking up confirming evidence for my memory, I found the following in a blog linked to a Mexican tourist site:
"While English North Americans celebrate Halloween with costumes and candy, ancient tradition in Mexico calls for family reunions with the dead. For three days, from October 31st to November 2nd, specific rites are observed faithfully. They occur in the home and in the cemetery amid bouquets of flowers, banquets of bread, and ghostly candies ornamented with skulls.
These candies are called Muertos, and are given out much the same as parents dispense candy bars and chewing gum to costumed children demanding trick or treat. But among Mexicans, the dead are considered supernatural guardians. Not only do the dead visit during this time, but they also enjoy their favorite food and drink, called "ofrendas," lavishly laid out on home altars and shrines.
In the mountains of Oaxaca, there is a much deeper meaning to the festivity, which begins weeks, perhaps months, before the ordained days, with the collecting of the special dishes and treats which the departed spirits loved most when alive: the best chocolate for mole: fresh eggs and flour for the bread, Pan de Muerto; fruits and vegetables; even cigarettes and mescal. Lux Perpetua votive candles flame day and night, illuminating the decorative wild marigold flowers, Flor de Muertos, which adorn the altars and the graves.
And everywhere, La Calaca, the skeleton carved from wood and dressed for a party, watches with amusement." ( from A journey with La Calaca- A Day of the Dead Experience by Bill Begalke)
Published on January 1, 2000 by Bill Begalke © 2000 To access the article and images, see
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/382-a-journey-with-la-calaca-a-day-of-the-dead-experience

In his Zapotec Natural History, ethnobiologist Eugene Hunn also describes the floral offerings of wild marigold “Flor de Muerte” in San Juan Gbëë, a village in Oaxaca near the place Begalke had his 1999 Day of the Dead experience (Hunn 2008:201).
In neo-Pagan circles, Samhain [an ancient Celtic holy day usually pronounced Sowan, to rhyme with rowan], is the eve of the New Year, and a time of especial potency as the veils between the worlds of the living and dead, or of the mundane and faerie, are thin. In the Reclaiming Wiccan tradition, rituals are held to commemorate the dead and this is one focus of the Samhain rites.
It is clear that, whatever relationship contemporary neo-Pagan Samhain rituals may have with ancient cultural practices, the eve of All Saints Day has been conceived as a time of risk and potency in the Celtic world and I think this is how our contemporary Halloween came to be associated with ghosts [spirits of the dead] and malevolent witches...and their familiars, owls and black cats. The traditional Child Ballad “Tam Lin” narrates the story of a youth captured by the Faerie Queen and his rescue by a mortal lover...one verse goes...”For tonight is Halowe’en, and the faerie folk ride, those that would let true love win, at Miles Cross they must bide.” William Blake’s late18th century print of Hecate [ a witch or evil spirit] shows her with a large owl perched beside her (William Blake, Tate Gallery London, 1966, no. 9). [For modern Wiccans, Hecate is instead one of the manifestations of the Goddess or female divinity rather than a figure of evil].
Whether because of their nocturnal habits, their ghostly silent flight, their large staring eyes or their unnerving unseen calls, owls and their hooting are associated with death in many places. In northwest British Columbia, hearing an owl at night is a portent of death. The title of I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven (1973, Dell), is an reference to this belief and tells the story of a missionary to Kingcome Village on the British Columbia Coast and his death. In Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past (p. 12, image no 10), Lantos states that “nocturnal bats and owls, as well as black cats, are omens of bad luck. With the next image (No. 11) the text continues, “It was believed on Halloween night that owls would swoop down and eat the souls of the dying. (Lantos 2009, p. 12, see web link above) underscoring European Christian anxiety about owls and association with death as well. Bats are famously anomalous, with erratic seeming dusk or night time flight, and black or brown leathery wings and apparently grimacing fanged faces, unlike the colourful beauty of beaked (and toothless) diurnal birds, and more like the grotesque gargoyles of European cathedrals. They are neither bird, nor normal [quadrupedal, non-flying, fur covered potentially cuddly] mammals. (see Mary Douglas’ 1966 classic work Purity and Danger for a discussion of anomaly and un-cleanness, or Aldona Jonaitis 1986 Art of the Northern Tlingit for a discussion of anomaly in the symbolic associations of animals in Tlingit iconography). Bat wings are often associated with depictions of the diabolical in European iconography, as in Satan Smites Job with Sore Boils, another print by British poet and artist William Blake (William Blake, Tate Gallery, London, 1966 no. 23). So the animals symbolically associated with All Hallows’ Eve also reinforce its perception as a kind of inverted time, where the forces of darkness, the anomalous and the unnatural appear to have a transitory victory, followed, in the Christian calendar, immediately by the day of all hallows, All Saints Day, a day of holiness, in which right order is restored and risk has been averted. And now turned into a cultural fun day where adults and children masquerade, pranks are played, and candy is distributed and eaten while leering or smiling pumpkin lanterns grace front yards and porches.