Shuffle Off to Buffalo #V
Fonseca began using the character Coyote in the late 1970s (the Denver Art Museum owns two from the series; Coyote #1 shows a Maidu dancer dressed as a coyote wearing a condor feather cape). Coyote appears in several traditional Native legends from different tribes and has many meanings, including, but not limited to, the trickster, the wise man, and the changer or transformer. He has a strong place in the Maidu creation story. Fonseca created a series of paintings that places Coyote in contemporary settings—as a biker, or a dancer in the ballet Swan Lake, for example.