The most prominent and popular personage, generally speaking, in the varied oral traditions of the numerous Amerindian peoples living north of the Rio Grande is the figure known as the trickster. Although the trickster may be spoken of in the singular as a type, there are in fact many tricksters, of whom a great variety of stories is told across the North American continent. Some are purely tricksters, but the most significant and central mythic figure in many tribes is a trickster who is also the tribe's culture hero and the creator (usually by transformation) of the present world order. Sometimes he is the maker of the earth and its beings, or alternately the co-creator, often antagonistic to the principal creator.

With rare exceptions, North American tricksters are beings of the mythic age only; they are not believed to be...