Scholars of religion place Coyote among the tricksters, a widespread type that also includes the raven, the hare and the spider in other traditions, whose stories break rules and cross boundaries in order, often, to establish them. These tales belong to living peoples, and many are tied to season, place and ceremony, told in particular ways at particular times; they are described here from the published record and in general terms, without claiming any closed, sacred or initiatory knowledge, and set apart from the modern popular notion of a personal spirit-animal, which is not what these traditions mean. Creator and clown, wise and foolish, Coyote carries the trickster's double truth: that the world is made and unmade by the same unruly force.
The English word itself preserves the animal's Mesoamerican standing: coyote comes from the Nahuatl coyotl by way of Spanish, one of a substantial number of English loanwords, alongside chocolate, tomato and avocado, that trace back to the Aztec language, a linguistic trace of how thoroughly Nahua ideas about this particular animal travelled north with the word for it. The coyote's range has itself performed a kind of trickster's reversal since European colonisation: originally confined chiefly to the western and central plains, it has since spread across virtually the whole of North America, including major eastern cities, interbreeding with wolves and dogs along the way to produce the larger hybrid populations some call coywolves.