There are tons of similarities in the myths of the Native Americans and the West Africans............the Cherokee have many trickster myths....................as do the cultures of the Pacific Northwest..........around the Columbia river............Washington state................etc...................as well as the Indians of South and Central America.................and the Carribean................

West Africa

Much of West Africa is Mande - the culture inherited from the Manding Empire of Mali, but the term refers also to their family of languages and the areas that they occupy. Therefore most countries of West Africa share certain storytelling traditions, though there is much local variation.

“The Mande people are very magical in nature. This can be mostly attributed to the nyamakalaw subgroup; an endogamous people who are born with the inherent ability to control nature. The power they are able to wield so well is called nyama. In fact, their name nyama-kala could be translated as handlers (kala) of nyama. The Mande see nyama as a hot, wild energy that is the animating force of nature. Nyama is present in all the rocks, trees, people and animals that inhabit the Earth. It is similar to the Western notion of the soul but is more complete than that. It controls nature, the stars and the motions of the sea. Nyama is truly the sculptor of the universe.
While nyama molds nature into its many forms, the nyamakalaw can shape nyama into art. The nyamakalaw spend their entire lives perfecting special secret skills that are passed down from generation to generation. The nyamakalaw are the only people in Mande that can use magic and are often skilled as sorcerers, blacksmiths, leather workers or bards.”
“The Yoruba [mainly in southwest Nigeria] have a slightly different understanding about magic which they call ase. Ase is also present in all things and can be either good or evil. [...] Ase is most closely related to the griots (bards) of the Mande and their ability to make their nyama flow directly out of their body rather than into a sculpture or sword.”

Prof. Misty Bastian & students, Magic and Art in West Africa

“Mande society consists of two main groups: the Horonw and the Nyamakalaw. The Horonw, people of earth and agriculture, are the aristocracy, the warriors and the commoners. [...] These two groups often look upon each other with considerable disfavor and abhorence.
...Historically, the Horonw are the kings and rulers of Mande and comprise the majority of the population who live at the center of the villiage. The Nyamakalaw live in the bush on the outskirts of the town beyond the fields. This duality of the mundane and the magical, the calm and the wild, the cold and the hot, is directly a result of the Mande cosmogony or creation myth.”

Prof. Misty Bastian & students, History, Art and Ritual In the Mande Culture

“In the African countries where Islam has had a powerful influence and where chiefs exert considerable authority, much of the music-making is the province of the griots. These are traditional musicians who are employed as individuals, or in pairs, or even in very large groups and orchestras. In many savannah societies the griots are professional musicians, but in some --as in Senegal-- they are part-time entertainers and may also be farmers, fishermen or follow some other occupation. The latter may be attached to a village and may have only a small, local reputation as song-makers and instrumentalists, but in many regions the griots are employed by sultans, emirs, chiefs or headmen. Others --the most famous-- are free-ranging groups of professional musicians, unattached to any employer, who hire their services out to families, groups of workers or others who wish to hear and temporarily employ them.”
“A griot is required to sing on demand the history of a tribe or family for seven generations and, in particular areas, to be totally familiar with the songs of ritual necessary to summon spirits and gain the sympathy of the ancestors.”
“As Curt Sachs has noted, 'they importune the rich with either glorification or insults depending on whether their victims are open-handed or stingy. They often roam from village to village in gangs of about a dozen under a chief who is at the same time a seasoned historian and genealogist and knows to the last details the alliances, hostilities and conflicts that unite or oppose the families and villages of the country.' This puts the griots in a position of some power; they blackmail their listeners with their ridicule and are feared and despised for it, while being admired for their skill. The attitude of their audiences is ambivalent, for while they fear being the butt of their humour they want to hear the gossip and news they purvey, and listen to their music.”

Paul Oliver, Savannah Syncopators: African retentions in the blues, 1970.