Coyote

The English word coyote is one of a small but important number of words that derive from Nahuatl - in this case coyotl - via the Spanish coyote. The creature (Canis latrans) has an extensive natural range in North America and not surprisingly features widely in Mesoamerican folklore, though in Meso art and myth much less frequently than the dog.
To the Aztecs the coyote embodied the ferocity of a warrior plunging into battle. In the military career of a priest-warrior who had attended the élite calmécac school, the top rank - only attained after successfully capturing six enemy fighters - entitled the bearer to wear a complete all-yellow coyote costume (pic 1). As in the case of the jaguar, the tunic itself wasn’t an actual coyote skin, but a cotton outfit decorated with (in this case parrot) feathers, complete with matching animal-head helmet, with a crest of quetzal feathers. Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales depicts eight different styles of coyote warrior suits, all explicitly made of feathers.
Coyote warriors are also depicted in Teotihuacan murals (Benson 2001: 137) and in Mixtec codices (Seler 2004: 64).

Pic 1: An Aztec warrior sporting a full coyote uniform; Codex Mendoza fol. 65r (detail)

The coyote has a long pedigree as well in ancient Maya lore. in the sacred book of the Quiché Maya, the Popol Vuh, the coyote is one of four creatures tasked with bringing the first foods - particularly maize - to humans (the others were the fox, parakeet and raven) (Christenson 2003: 193). Indeed, one of the names of the creator grandfather, Hunahpu-Utiú, means ‘Hunter with blowgun-coyote’, whereas that of the grandmother carries the suffix ‘opossum’. ‘This seems to place the animals in a binary opposition, in which the coyote is the night sky, the masculine force; and the opossum is the feminine force, the god of dawn’ (López Austin 1996: 224).
Today the Quiché Maya see the coyote, like the fox, as cunning nocturnal animals, associated with discovering and digging up hidden or secret things (Christenson, op cit: 193), and there can be little doubt that the animal generally suffers from negative associations: in the Primeros Memoriales one of the auguries listed couldn’t be clearer: ‘When someone encountered a coyote or it crossed his path it was said that he would die soon’ (1997: 175).

Pic 3: Sculpture of a ‘feathered’ coyote, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City

Sources/references:-
• Christenson, Allen J. (2003) Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of the Maya, University of Oklahoma Press
• Dibble, Charles E. and Anderson, Arthur J.O., Florentine Codex (Sahagún), Book 11 - Earthly Things, School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe, 1963
• Ditto, Book 5 - The Omens, 1981
• Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D. Sullivan, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997
• The Codex Mendoza by Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, vol. II (Description, Bibliography, Index), University of California Press, Oxford, 1992
• Benson, Elizabeth P. (2001) ‘Coyote’, in Oxford Encylopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, Ed. David Carrasco, OUP
• Aztecs Royal Academy of Arts, London, exhibition catalogue, 2002
• López Austin, Alfredo (1996) The Rabbit on the Face of the Moon: Mythology in the Mesoamerican Tradition, University of Utah Press
• Ramírez, Elisa (2018) ‘Tradición Oral Indígena Mexicana: Cuentos de fechorías y engaños 2: Conejo y Coyote’, Arqueología Mexicana, July-August 2018, no. 152 pp. 18-19
• Seler, Eduard (2004) Las Imágenes de Animales en los Manuscritos Mexicanos y Mayas (original in German, 1909-10), Casa Juan Pablos, Mexico
• Mateos Higuera, Salvador (1992) Enciclopedia gráfica del México antiguo: Los Dioses Supremos, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Mexico City.

Pic 5: Last of the Six Sky Walkers, this deity bears a coyote helmet. Seler suggests he could represent the Milky Way; from Higuera, based on Codex Borgia pl. 55 (detail)