Coyote (racial category)

Coyote (fem.

Coyota) (from the Nahuatl word coyotl, coyote) is a colonial Spanish American racial term for a mixed-race person casta that usually refers to a person born of parents, one of whom a Mestizo (mixed Spanish + Indigenous) and the other indigenous (indio).

The casta paintings by Miguel Cabrera (1763) show the place of the coyote in the idealized colonial racial hierarchy (sistema de castas).

[1] In colonial Mexico, the term varied regionally, with "regional differences determin[ing] just how much native ancestry qualified a person to be a coyote.

"[2]

De Mestizo y de India; Coyote . Miguel Cabrera , 1763, oil on canvas, Waldo-Dentzel Art Center.
De mestizo e india, sale coiote . Anonymous, 18th century (From a Mestizo man and an Amerindian woman, a coyote is begotten).
De Castizo y India , Coyota. Anonymous, 18th century Mexico.