The image above is of a Coyote in Rocky Mountain National Park. Coyotes have long persisted in the Mountain West despite relentless persecution.

Episode 7 Synopsis - In this episode, Emily and Michelle invite listeners to engage with the oft maligned Coyote. Trickster in Native traditions, danger in rancher lore, nuisance in urban imaginations, the Coyote shows how the morethanhuman is differently understood but always experienced as present and even ubiquitous. The hosts then welcome the foremost authority on the history of Coyote, Dan Flores.

Postscript. Click here to listen to our Postscript on the sources that most inspired the stories we share in this episode. Coming soon!

meme via: San Jose State University Writing center

Links and Citations for Learning MORE THAN you already know!

The highlight of this episode is our interview with Dan Flores. Dr. Flores is Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana- Missoula where he spent much of his career writing 10 books and teaching and advocating for the environmental history of the American West. We invited him for this episode to talk about the animals that inspired his book Coyote America.

The image is borrowed from Project Coyote, a nonprofit that promotes co-existence between "wild carnivores" and humans.

The story of Zu Zu the chihuahua and its relationship with Coyote can be read in full here. To see a somewhat dated example of metropolitan government agencies trying to "control" the "problem" of coyotes see this publication from from Los Angeles County. For a municipality that discusses the persistence of Coyote with a bit more of a progressive tone, check out the Jefferson County's Sheriff's page here. The maps linked at the bottom of the page that are a type of citizen science reporting feature on the site are worth perusing to see which Coyotes seem to get noticed. Also of note is the "history" in these maps. The picture below is a screenshot of the map from 2025. From these maps, it appears that over the last decade the number of sitings is going down...as a historian using these maps, what conclusions might you be able to draw?

As Emily explains, the name Coyote likely come from the Aztec word, coyotl. Images of coyotes and humans dressed a Coyotes appear in colonial sources from the Spanish period in Mexico. An excellent example is this drawing from the Codex Mendoza folio 65r. The source was created by a Spanish scribe sometime in the mid 16th century (there is disagreement about when exactly).

In this episode, Michelle mentions the number of coyotes killed due to government-sponsored "predator control" bounty programs throughout the history of the Mountain West. These programs paid hunters to hunt for predators who were, in the estimation of government officials and many constituents, dangerous. Millions of animals have been killed each year by the US Fish and Wildlife Service over the long 20th century, but lest we think this is a thing of the past, in July of 2012, the Utah legislature passed the Mule Deer Protection Act (a fascinating name that could be unpacked). The law allows the state to pay hunters bounties of $50/coyote. The program is run by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (we assume that means resources about wildlife not resources for wildlife. The program's website also contains some interesting historical sources showing Coyote at the center of a great deal of effort (legal, physical, and ideological). Particularly intriguing are the annual reports of the program. Note in the graph to the right that "only" 60 participants in the program reported killing 25 or MORE coyotes in the 2013 report found here. And yet - coyotes persist.

One of the most iconic pop culture depictions of Coyote came in 1949 with the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes introduction of Wile E. Coyote and his nemesis Roadrunner.

Image of early adverstisment in public domain.

CMarie Furhman, a professor at Western State University in Colorado, Indigenous woman, and a poet who writes with the Mountain West, has written a moving (and, beware, heartbreaking essay about an encounter she had with a Coyote in Montana. Her questions in the excerpt to the right are worth considering as Coyote is more than we may think.

Photo from the National Park Service.

Furhman is also host of the Terra Firma podcast.

"Traditional stories about Coyote are about a trickster. Mocking stories. Moral stories. Coyote made human. Anthropomorphic. In other stories Coyote is protector. His antics a way to keep the other animals safe. We don’t tell Coyote stories in summer, so I will not go on, but you should know that, at least in my grandmother’s stories, magic surrounds Coyote. Is there a reverse process for anthropomorphizing? Do animals give animal traits to humans in an effort to live better? To understand us? Would the coyotes on the riverbank tell stories about the humans lounging on the rock? What would the moral or lesson be? Would the coyote see the two people in me? My elders would say that Coyote and human are one. The same."

From Emergence Magazine

What should be most obvious from this episode is that Coyote inspires stories. One of the southwestern storytellers (a lifelong educator) that captured Emily's imagination as a young person was Joe Hayes. Watch the video below to hear one of the many stories Hayes tells of Coyote.

Thank you for tuning in and for wanting to learn MORE THAN you did before!

Join us for the next episode where Emily and Michelle tweet and chirp about some of the most obvious morethanhumans in the Mountain West. Episode 8 is on birds.