Coyote Races Buffalo



The story of Coyote Races Buffalo is a tale told by Calvin Grinnell of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation. It was uploaded to YouTube.com on September 11, 2007. It's YouTube description labels it as "A cautionary tale from the oral tradition of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation." During an interview of Calvin Grinnell, he explained to me that the video was made in his spare time at his office in New Town, North Dakota. He made the video out of personal interested in producing a video version of the story, and also uses it to entertain his grandson.

Mr. Grinnell explained that while this specific story may be widespread, he found this version of the story in a book of transcriptions of Mandan stories collected by professors Wesley Jones and Dr. Robert Hollow for their "Earthlodge Tales" project conducted at the University of Mary by Bismark. The stories were collected in English, Mandan, and Hidasta languages. Mr. Grinnell used his experience working at the radio station KMHA and the illustrations to create the video. The original transcription of the stories can be classified as "written oral poetry", while Mr. Grinnel's video is a "reperformance" of the original story. Although the video is not a direct artifact from the Hollow and Jones collection, Grinnell postulates that he told the story as it would have been told originally. "Adding dramatic effect is as relevant today as it was 150 plus years ago," he said in a telephone interview.

Calvin Grinnell, a historian of the Mandan and Hidatsa peoples, states that the story would have been passed along as children's stories, and that the indigenous Oral Tradition used the story and similar stories to illustrate proper behavior and consequences for failing to act properly. These stories were generally told by grandparents (in some cases parents) or elders to grandchildren with a form of "transaction" occurring. The transaction consists of the child asking to be told a story, and the elder asking for a favor such as cooking a meal or doing a chore. Grinnell suggests that because the story does not come free to the children, they are more likely to remember it, and in essence remember the spirit of their elder through the story.
 * See Source:Calvin Grinnell for more information on Mandan and Hidasta stories.

Approach : Ethnopoetics
The Ethnopoetic approach to Oral Tradition asks the observer to read the performance's non textual elements, represent them in a written form which allows either the transcriber or another "reader" to re perform the story. For the story of Coyote Races Buffalo, the script provides a great way to map the inflection of the storyteller's voice, as well as when he gets louder. A simple text transcription will fail to show how Calvin characterizes both Coyote and Buffalo based on the way the speak. Due to the limitations of the production, only the audio is provided. If accompanying video were provided, margin notes or other annotations would be made to explain to the reader even more aspects of the original performance.

Try reading the script before watching the video to experience how an ethnopoetic transcription helps convey more than just the words. Reading it out loud is the suggested method, as you yourself will become a reperformer of this story, even if the audience is just yourself.

Synopsis
Hungry Coyote tricks a buffalo into a deadly race. After cooking buffalo, he falls asleep before eating. While he is sleeping, Fox sneaks in and eats all the meat. Coyote resumes wandering, which explains why coyotes always wander around.

Further Analysis
While reading along with the performance of Coyote Races Buffalo, it is important to read it as a selection of oral tradition from the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, rather than reading it to fit conventional storytelling standards. The story has several traditional aspects, or keys to performance of Native American stories: stock characters, a focus on nature, anthropomorphic animals, and a lesson. These lessons are often told by showing the inverse of what is expected. The story of Coyote Races Buffalo has many possible lessons, such as retaining awareness (shown by Buffalo's death when he submits his awareness for a simple race), not leaving food out (shown by Fox stealing the meat), and to have a backup plan (Coyote wasted his only chance of tricking the buffalo off the cliff).

Native American stories also provide some explanation for "they way things are". In this story, the species of coyotes' tendency to wander around is explained. It is highly likely that the explanation of the wandering and the lesson provided go hand-in-hand as a sort of warning and possible consequence teaching. Oral traditions do not exist if they do not serve a social function. Entertaining as the story is, it exists also to teach and warn.

Further Thought

 * See Talk:Coyote Races Buffalo for questions to think about and discuss.