Coyote, pronounced as Kaa-yo-tee, is the hero of many American Indian tales. His counterpart is Iktomi. Iktomi is a spider fairy and is also the hero of many tales told among Lakota tribe people of American Indians. He is a trickster, clever and very untrustworthy in those tales..

Coyote, also known as the American jackal or the prairies wolf, is found throughout the Northern and Central America, from Panama in the South to Canada in the North. Coyotes normally prefer to live in burrows of Groundhogs as large as 19 Kms in diameter around their den. They mark their territories by marking them with their own urine. They are difficult to tame.

In these folktales, Coyote usually appears as a clever, or a trickster or a mischievous or a cultural hero. It also often appears in creation myths and etiological myths. Although often appearing in stories as male, Coyote can be female, hermaphrodite, or gender changing, in traditional Aboriginal stories.

By far, the best known representation of the Coyote is the animated Wile E Coyote, Super Genius, from the Road Runner cartoons, whose popularity has spread the three-syllable Spanish pronunciation of the word coyote throughout English-speaking North America.

There are a few stories translated about him and Iktomi.