Coyote encounters Rabbit, Fawn's Stars, Crow, Snake, Skunk Woman, and Horned Toad in these 6 delightful, English-language adaptations of traditional Navajo Coyote stories collected by anthropologist William Morgan and translated by him and linguist Robert W. Young.

Coyote is easily the most popular character in the stories of Indian tribes from Canada to Mexico. This volume contains seventeen coyote tales collected and translated by Father Berard Haile, O.F.M., more than half a century ago. The original Navajo transcriptions are included, along with notes. The tales show Coyote as a warrior, a shaman, a trickster; a lecher, a thief; a sacrificial victim, and always as the indomitable force of life. He is the paradoxical hero and scamp whose adventures inspire laughter or awe, depending upon what shape he takes in a given story. In his introduction to Navajo Coyote Tales, Karl W. Luckert considers Coyote mythology in a theoretical and historical framework.

Fourteen traditional Navajo legends featuring the cunning Coyote and his continual efforts to trick his fellow animals.

These tales feature Mole, Coyote's wife, Chipmunk, Owl-Woman, Fox, and others

This volume brings together twenty-one traditional tales recently retold by Hopi narrators. Complete with English translations and original Hopi transcriptions on facing pages and a bilingual glossary. Hopi Coyote Tales is important to an understanding of the Hopi language and folklore. To nomadic hunters such as the Navajo, who competed with him on the open range, Coyote was by turns a formidable trickster, a demonic witchperson, and a god. As sedentary planters, the Hopis tended to reduce Coyote to the level of a laughable fool. In these tales Coyote is a friendly bumbler whose mistakes teach listeners what tricks to avoid. Time after time he is hurt or killed for failing to understand a situation correctly. The collection is as amusing as animal fables should be, as simply told, and as instructive. Published as a companion volume to Father Berard Haile's Navajo Coyote Tales, Hopi Coyote Tales is a valuable contribution to cross-cultural studies.

A retelling of the Navaho legend that explains the patterns of the stars in the sky.

This is the most complete version of the Navajo creation story to appear in English since Washington Matthews' Navajo Legends of 1847. Zolbrod's new translation renders the power and delicacy of the oral storytelling performance on the page through a poetic idiom appropriate to the Navajo oral tradition. Zolbrod's book offers the general reader a vivid introduction to Navajo culture. For students of literature this book proposes a new way of looking at our literary heritage.