Trickster Makes This World. Lewis Hyde
is called, “is a characteristic of all species that have not inherited a fixed repertory of behavior, but must learn how to survive … The neotenal coyote … meets change by learning new responses and is therefore capable of developing a whole new lifestyle.” As if by way of illustration, another naturalist, François Leydet, tells us that, in the early days of the American West, coyotes were much more social animals; they hunted in packs the way wolves do. But now
big gatherings of coyotes are seldom seen … Persecution forced the coyote to adopt more solitary ways, and since he subsists largely on small game that he can catch unassisted, he has been able to do so. This has allowed him to survive in regions where the big gray wolf has been exterminated: a hunter of large game, Canis lupus would not or could not abandon the pack organization which made him highly vulnerable to man.
Watching coyotes hunt in packs, the eighteenth-century wolf might well have said to them, “This is my way, not your way.” But two hundred years later the wolf, trapped in his “way,” is endangered, while coyotes are eating purebred poodles in Beverly Hills.
So this is one advantage a being, especially a predator, might have if it is not constrained to one way but has instead the ability to copy many ways. We can turn the conceit around, too, and find situations in which a being that is hunted might benefit from having no way, no instinctual knowledge. To set up this line of thought, let me begin with a question: Do animals lie?
The answer is both yes and no. Animals of course communicate with one another. Birds call from the trees, whales sing in the oceans, the deer gives its hoarse warning cry, or—to take the famous example—the honeybee dances to tell the hive how far away the flowers are, and in what direction. Moreover, in most cases these animals are telling the “truth” when they communicate with one another. Honeybees do not lie. Their “language” is constrained by instinct; no bee ever comes into the hive and says “The flowers are due west” when in fact they are northeast. The deer does not cry wolf when there is no wolf at hand.
Having granted all that, however, it is not hard to think of complications and exceptions. Surely there are deceptive animals. There are insects evolved to look as if they are twigs or dead leaves; there are flowers that eat insects by luring them with false advertising. In the Louisiana swamps, one finds the remarkable alligator snapping turtle, one of whose features is a “lure tongue,” a stubby white appendage which it sticks out until an unsuspecting fish checks to see if it’s edible. The frightened possum pretends to be dead, as does the pangolin. In the classic case, when the fox threatens the mother grouse, she pretends to have a broken wing so as to lead the fox away from her nest. Small birds feeding at ground level in the rain forests give a warning cry when danger is near, but one species can give a false warning cry, so as to have the ground to itself for a while.
So animals sometimes lie. But there is an important way in which these lying animals are just like animals that do not lie: both are constrained by instinct. The lying animal cannot lie creatively; it cannot vary its repertoire. The mother grouse never plays possum and the possum never plays grouse.
Such constraint makes lying animals vulnerable to any predator that gets wise to the ruse. Here we return to the first part of the chapter, for any animal bound by instinct is vulnerable to what I call “technicians of instinct.” As there are traps of appetite, so there are traps of instinct, traps that exploit an animal’s inborn methods, including the methods by which it otherwise eludes its enemies (as when Coyote turns the Buffalo’s fleetness against it). In short, an animal with one instinctual deception in its repertoire has some advantage over an animal with none, but that advantage is lost when it meets a predator who knows how to decipher the deception. Then it is stuck, trapped in its own defense.
So we have a second reason why it might be useful to have no way, no nature, no fixed instinctual responses. Having no way, trickster can have many ways. Having no way, he is dependent on others whose manner he exploits, but he is not confined to their manner and therefore in another sense he is more independent. Having no way, he is free of the trap of instinct, both “stupider than the animals” and more versatile than any. He stumbles around covered in his own filth, but by the same token he feeds in the house of Kingfisher, and the house of Bear, the house of Muskrat, the house of Bee. Moreover, if someone tries to trap him to bring him home for dinner, trickster can counter with a series of deceptions and slip from the trap. Bee and Bear, who cannot tell a lie, are easier to trap than Grouse, who has her single famous fib. But Grouse is easier to trap than trickster, whose fabulations never end.
In fact, we must now add creative lying to our list of trickster’s inventions. Trickster discovers creative fabulation, feigning, and fibbing, the playful construction of fictive worlds. It is trickster who invents the gratuitous untruth. In Northern California, the Maidu creation myth has several creators who collaborate to make the world, including a beneficent Earth-Initiate and a bungling Coyote. At one point Coyote laughs just when Earth-Initiate has warned him not to. Called to account, Coyote says, “Oh no, that wasn’t me who laughed.” This was the first lie.
HALLMARKS OF TRICKSTER'S MIND
The fish swims through its expansive, watery world and suddenly trickster blocks its passage, makes its world less expansive, less fluid. If the fish itself is tricky, if it has the wit to slip the trap, it will do so by finding a breach in the wickerwork, a rip in the net, an escape hatch its enemy has not noticed. Either way, we have a first mark of trickster’s cunning: it closes off a passage to capture its prey, or it finds a hole to elude its foe. It can seize an opportunity or block an opportunity.
I say “opportunity” because there is an old link between that word and the open passage a fish trap blocks. In The Origins of European Thought, Richard Onians explains that “opportunity” comes from the Latin porta, which is an “entrance” or “passage through.” The word is associated with doors and entranceways (portal, porch, portico), and an opportunus, then, is what offers an opening, or what stands before an opening, ready to go through. For the Romans, a porta fenestella was a special opening that allowed Fortune to enter. The Greek root is poros, which is a passageway for ships but also any passageway, including one through the skin, that is, a pore. Poroi are all the passages that allow fluids to flow in and out of the body. A pore, a portal, a doorway, a nick in time, a gap in the screen, a looseness in the weave—these are all opportunities in the ancient sense. Each being in the world must find the set of opportunities fitted to its nature. The giant’s pathway is often blocked, but bacterial landscapes are almost pure poroi. The briar patch is a wide-open field for Brer Rabbit. Darkness is opportunity to the owl and bat, water is opportunity to the fish—until some fish trap blocks the way.
But let us leave these etymological haunts and return to trickster’s opportunistic craft. A good example immediately follows “Raven Becomes Voracious” in the Tsimshian Raven cycle. Remember that before Raven acquires his appetite the world is covered in darkness, and that when he arrives in this world to distribute the fish and edible berries, he finds the people distressed by this endless night. He’s distressed, too—after all, how will he feed himself if it’s always dark? Remembering that there was light in the heaven from which he has come, Raven resolves to return and steal it.
Putting on his raven skin, he flies upward until he finds the hole in the sky. Entering it, he takes off his raven skin and goes to sit by a spring near the house of the chief of heaven. There he waits until the chief’s daughter comes to fetch water, whereupon Raven changes himself into a leaf from a cedar tree; the girl swallows him when she drinks the water. She becomes pregnant and bears a child. Her family is delighted; they wash the boy regularly and soon he has grown enough to crawl around the lodge. But all the time he cries. As he crawls he cries out, “Hama, hama!” and the great chief becomes troubled. He summons his wise men to help him quiet the child. One of them understands that the child wants the box that hangs on the wall of the chief’s lodge, the box where daylight is kept. They put it on the floor by the fire and the child stops crying. He rolls the Daylight-Box around the house for several days, occassionally carrying it to the door. One day, when the people have more or less forgotten about him, he shoulders the box and makes a dash for the hole in the sky. The family gives chase