Pocahontas (1995 film) character flowered into the idea of a grandmotherly spiritual adviser to Pocahontas. Because of Katzenberg's opposition to having Grandmother Willow in the story, Joe Grant assisted fellow veteran story artist Burny Mattinson with coming up tree puns such as "My bark is worse than my bite", "The roots of all problems", and "They're barking up the wrong tree." Mattinson reluctantly added them to his pitch for the next morning, and during the story meeting, he exclaimed, "Everybody loved it! All of a sudden: 'Oh, I want her in!' 'Let's build her part bigger!'" In September 1992, Disney began casting actors
Spider Grandmother charms. In Lakota tradition, the (male) trickster spirit Iktomi appears in the form of a spider. In the Northwest, the Coos people of Oregon have their version of a Spider Grandmother traditional tale. The Choctaw people of Tennessee and Mississippi tell the story of Grandmother Spider stealing fire, then after animals refused it, bringing fire to humans. Susan Hazen-Hammond (1997, 1999) compiled numerous tales collected from various tribes. Murray Mednick wrote seven one-act plays called "The Coyote Cycle" with the same four characters: Coyote, Coyote trickster, Spider Grandmother and Mute Girl. These same characters come from traditional Native American stories