Content Warning: Canyons explores concepts such as racism, colonialism, and violence against children.

Coyote Runs and Brennan are depicted as having characteristics in common despite their lifetimes being more than a century apart. Throughout Canyons, the two protagonists exhibit both cultural and spiritual behaviors, as well as ritualized behaviors, that connect the two characters. The parallels in their lifestyles, as well as the differences, are highlighted as Brennan connects with Coyote Runs through the skull. When Coyote Runs’s life deviates greatly from Brennan’s contemporary lifestyle, Brennan is still able to empathize and connect through the skull. Brennan doesn’t reject or criticize Coyote Runs because of this cultural divide, but instead, he chooses to learn about and appreciate his experience with his 19th-century Apache “friend.”

As Brennan and the reader learn, many of the described behaviors of Coyote Runs stem from his cultural and social milieu as a member of the Apache tribe. Most of these rituals relate to the spirits, guiding them and requesting their help. For instance, when Coyote Runs receives a horse from a friend as a gift, he paints “the pony with one circle around one eye so that it could see well if they had to run at night and put tobacco on its hooves to make them fast, to show the spirits where he needed help” (16).