ABSTRACT
Many trickster figures, such as Coyote and Maui, are demiurges or culture heroes who provide human beings with necessities such as the sun; fire; and tools for procuring food, such as fishing nets and fish hooks. Although the trickster is an important concept in The Motif-Index of Folk Literature, there is no specific trickster motif. Instead, there are many motifs that describe either who the trickster is or what he does. The Motif-Index was compiled before Paul Radin wrote his important study The Trickster and therefore presents a fairly one-dimensional view of the trickster; in fact, when one looks up "trickster" in the index to the Motif-Index, one encounters the phrase "Trickster, see also clever person". Jung and others equate the trickster with the collective shadow, the dark part of a people's psyche. Radin's The Trickster contains a Winnebago tale about the trickster Wakdjunkaga. Maui is the trickster in Polynesia and parts of Melanesia.
