This origin story is a classic example of an “earthdiver” myth in which the world rose from the primal waters with the magical help of birds or animals. Other stories tell how people emerged from a gloomy underworld. These primal days are seen as a time when people and animals shared thoughts and language; when vast, often vague, creative powers could achieve anything and when creators like Raven, Coyote or Old Man walked the earth and made natural features, animals and people as they are today.
There are innumerable Native American creation myths. But common to most of them is the sense that human beings were created as the companions, not the masters, of all other creatures. In the mythical time of the Native American imagination, people, animals, all things that grow and the rocks and earth of the world itself are created equal. And among all the people that know of this mythical time this equality is cherished.
Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains by the german artist Albert bierstadt (1830–1902). This landscape was sacred for the local maidu people.
The face of Nassshaki-yeil, creator god of the Northwest Coast. he was the hoarder of light and the grandfather of the Trickster raven. This frontlet was made c. 1850 by a Tsimshian craftsman.
Earthdivers
A duck, a grebe, a beetle or a crayfish: these were the intrepid divers of early creation. They plunged into the murky depths of Earth’s primal waters to bring up grains of sand or mud, which then grew vast and became the terrestrial world.
Up in the sky, before the world was made, people lived in a village at whose center grew a tree with huge white flowers. These blossoms gave light to the people in the sky, and when they fell, the sky grew darker. In the course of time a woman had a dream. In it she received a message: “The tree must be uprooted!” After some discussion in the village, the sky folk agreed to pull the tree up, but as they did so, the tree sank and disappeared. Angrily, the chief called the woman into his presence, and, as she app roached the hole left by the tree, the chief pushed her through it.
This 19th-century beaded, buckskin purse is in the form of a turtle, the earthholding animal of many Native origin stories. Turtles have female associations, and this one probably contained a girl baby’s umbilical cord. from the cradle to the grave such purses served as protective charms or amulets.
The woman fell and fell, and as she looked down, she saw the lower world, the world as we know it. But the form of the lower world had not been finished. The earth was not made. All she could see was water. Swimming on the water and flying above it were enormous numbers of birds. As the woman continued to plummet through the sky towards the water, a duck raised its head.
“How shall we make a resting place for this falling being?” cried the duck. And one after another, the birds began diving to see if the water had a bottom. Eventually the hell-diver bird went deep enough and brought up some earth.
The chief of the birds said: “Put the earth on the turtle’s back!” So the beaver pounded the earth onto the turtle’s back, and when the woman arrived through the air, they laid her on it. Here, mysteriously, she gave birth, and from her children came all human beings.
This Seneca story from New York State describes the creation of the world in ways characteristic of many Native Americans myths. First, at the beginning of time, there are the “sky people.” These are neither real people, nor spirits, nor gods. The sky folk are vague beings, ancestors of that “first mother” who falls to the lower world, and are similar to the later people on Earth. Next, the lower world itself is a vast mass of water, populated by birds and animals. As in most stories from Native American hunting societies, these creatures can think and speak. Typical, too, is the animals’ desire to complete the world, which is still only partially created.
In this Seneca story, as in the Mono story (see page 21), a diving bird achieves the task. Sounding the depths of the primal waters, the diver brings up earth which is then plastered on the back of the turtle. And the whole world is thus understood to be an island resting on the back of that original turtle and surrounded by the original waters.
In some Native American earthdiver stories there is competition between the diving birds and the animals. The strongest and most skillful divers, such as the loon (Great Northern Diver) or the duck, often win the day, but in other tales it is a small and insignificant animal who succeeds. Among the midwestern Cherokee, the victorious earthdiver is a water beetle, while the diver in the creation story of another midwestern people, the Chickasaw, is a crayfish. In these myths, existence begins with animals who are at home in water and air. The first project for these creatures is the creation of the earth so that terrestrial beings, humans, can join them in a new world. As soon as there is dry land, there are people to walk upon it.
Native American stories explaining creation usually account only for the territory known by the particular society that owns the myth. Indeed, sometimes creation myths narrate only the origin of limited, albeit significant, parts of a tribal homeland. In northwest Alaska, for example, there is a thin, sandy peninsula called Tikigaq, which projects 25 miles (40 kilometers) into the Arctic Ocean. This low-lying and fragile-looking land was slowly formed before the last Ice Age out of sandstone deposits from local sea cliffs. The Tikigaq Inuit, who have inhabited the peninsula for more than a thousand years, have a story about the origin of their ancestral homeland that accounts for its geological structure.
According to this myth, the existing but incomplete world was inhabited by people and by beings who were half human and half animal. One of these beings was Tulungigraq (“someone like a raven”), a magically created man with the head of a raven (tulugaq, “raven”). Tulungigraq’s creation work consisted of two main tasks. He was to bring alternating periods of night and day to a world still plunged in darkness, but before doing that he had to hunt down a whale-like beast that lived in the dark primal waters off the yet unformed Alaska. So Tulungigraq set out with his harpoon and travelled by kayak until he heard the great beast breathing through the night. Singing magical songs, the Raven Man came alongside the animal and harpooned it. The sea beast sank, and as Tulungigraq secured it with his harpoon line, the animal rose again and transformed into land. This new stretch of earth became Tikigaq nuna (land); the peninsula which has since been the home of the Tikigaq people.
This 19th-century Tlingit shaman’s rattle takes the form of a grebe with two smaller birds resting on its back. grebes and other waterbirds are often cast as the heroes of earthdiver creation stories. They dive into the primal waters to bring up the first fragments of earth, the terra firma that makes the creation of people possible.
Like the Seneca earthdiver story, this Tikigaq tale explains how the Earth arose from the primal depths, but this time the agent of creation is a bird-man. These mythical agents of creation work their own magic. No mention is made of a supreme, omnipotent creator.
Raven, the trickster hero of Northwest Coast creation myths, who brought daylight and fire to the world, forms the handle of this 19thcentury Tlingit ladle. Like other birds and the sea animals, raven was generally thought to have existed before the first people. made of horn, bone, copper and abalone shell, the ladle may have been used in ceremonies.
Of Seasons, Seals and Cereals
The huge variety of natural phenomena, the four elements and the rhythms of the days and the changing seasons provide themes for a wealth of origin stories. In some myths, creation is a side effect, arising from a conflict between animals; in others, trickster animals such as the keen-eyed Raven of the Inuit or the subversive Coyote of the Comanches come to the aid of struggling primordial humans.
Throughout Native American myth, large-scale phenomena, such as day and night, the seasons, water, buffalo and whales, frequently emerge from something tiny and inconsequential. Not only that, but in the process of creating the larger phenomena, the tiny creators themselves sometimes change. One Iroquois tale explains how Chipmunk and Bear quarrelled over the question of daylight. Chipmunk, wanting day and night to
alternate, sang: “The light must come. We must have light!” Bear, on the other hand, sang: “Night is best. We must have darkness!” When day began to dawn in response to Chipmunk’s song, Bear was angry and chased his rival up into a tree. His paw grazed Chip -munk’s back, leaving an imprint, the two black stripes that stand out on the chipmunk’s fur to this day. But he had es caped, and his wish that night and day should follow one other had prevailed for all time.
A story of the Northwest Coast Tahltan people describes a quarrel between two other animals, Porcupine and Beaver, over the length of the seasons. To indicate the numbers of winter months he wanted, Porcupine held up five claws. But Beaver held up his tail and said: “Let there be many winter months like the many scratches on my tail!” Angry at being contradicted, Porcupine bit off his own thumb and holding up his hand, cried: “Let it be four months!” Beaver gave in, and since that time the winter in that region has lasted four months, and porcupines have four claws on each foot.
In many Native American stories animals simply exist from the beginning of time. But among the central Inuit of Arctic Canada, sea mammals, such as the seal, walrus and whale, were created from the dismembered finger joints of the mythical woman Nuliayuk, who was to become the major sea deity (see page 55).
A story from the Comanche people of the Plains explains how the great herds of buffalo came into being. Back in myth time, all the buffalo were owned by an old woman and a little boy. The animals were kept penned up in the mountains, and none of the people could reach them. Trickster Coyote, an animal credited with many mythical interventions (see page 43), held a council with the Indians, and together they decided to send a tiny animal into the buffalo keepers’ hideout. The boy, they reasoned, would adopt the animal, and the animal would in turn help release the buffalo. Twice the plan failed; but the third time, despite the old woman’s objections, the child managed to hold on to his new pet. That night the creature escaped from him and, making its way to the buffalo enclosure, started howling. Terrified, the buffalo broke through their gate and rushed onto the plains.
The emergence myths of the southwestern Pueblo peoples mirror their traditional lives as farmers. Like the first people, corn emerged from a dark underground realm into the light. in this 19th-century Navajo blanket the spirit of corn is flanked by two holy persons.
The notion that some powerful being, back in mythical time, was hoarding something that people needed occurs also in stories about natural phenomena. The peoples of the Northwest Coast and the Alaskan Inuit describe how the “keeper of the daylight” kept light in a bag that the trickster animal, Raven, stole. When Raven pecked the leather bag, daylight streamed forth. The Tlingit and Haida also describe how Raven stole water and sprinkled it over the Earth as he escaped, thus creating the great rivers and lakes of the region.
This snuff box from western Alaska mimics two seals. The first seals were believed to have been formed from the fingers of the sea deity, Nuliayuk. men smoked tobacco, but women chewed it or took it as snuff.
A widespread myth among the southern farming peoples attributes the origin of corn and beans to a magical woman. The Natchez told how Corn Woman lived with twin girls. Whenever their supplies ran out, Corn Woman went into the corn house and came out with two full baskets. One day, the twins spied on her. Disgusted by the sight of Corn Woman making their food by shaking and rubbing her body, they ran away. Then Corn Woman told them: “From now on you must help yourselves. Kill me and burn my body. When summer comes, plants will come up where you have burned me. These you must cultivate; and when they have grown to maturity, they will be your food.”
From Darkness to Light
Many of the creation myths that are related by the farming societies of the Southwest tell of the emergence of the first people from a dark subterranean realm out into the sunlight of the Earth’s surface. Frequently, this epic upward trail is blazed for human beings by friendly animals and plants. These pioneers are burrowers, climbers and wily strategists such as Coyote and Spider Woman.
“In the Underworld all the people were fools.” Thus begins a creation story of the Hopi people from the mesas of the Arizona desert. Like almost all of the Pueblo (village) societies of the Southwest, the Hopi relate origin myths that describe realms, prior to the present world, where people lived before they arrived at their historical homelands. In Hopi myth, as in tales of the neighboring Zuni, Navajo and Tewa, these earlier realms lay underground: they were places of suffering and darkness in which life became ever more uncomfortable. Most Pueblo creation stories deal with the process of emergence—the long and difficult journey through three or four dark and unsatisfactory underworlds into the sunlight and abundance of the present world’s surface.
The earliest Pueblo people were farmers. Before the Spanish arrived in the first half of the sixteenth century, the Zuni and Hopi cultivated beans, corn and squash, in addition to gathering wild plants, and hunting deer and small game. Their necessary preoccupation with the life-giving crops that pushed up through the aridity of the southwestern scrub gave a vivid plausibility to mythical images of the first people “coming up” from a deep and dark underworld. So compelling was the symbolism of this magical process that it endured and continued in the belief systems of the Athabascanspeaking Navajo and Apache, who traditionally were pastoralists or nomadic hunters and who arrived in the region somewhat later than the crop-raising Pueblo societies.
In this sandpainting the Navajo homeland is a square flanked by ovals representing the four sacred mountains. inside the square are Changing woman (top), who represents fertility, and white shell woman, who represents water. The central circle is the Navajo mythical place of emergence. The line running from the yellow oval represents the reed by which the first people climbed up to the earth.
Like the ceremonies and beliefs of the Pueblo people, these emergence myths are highly complex and detailed. The main participants in the stories are human beings, who seek emergence from the underworld, and deities, including the primal creator, the sun god and the twin children of the sun. In addition, two semidivine beings come to the aid of emerging people: Spider Woman, whose ingenuity, or even her own silk thread, provides a path on the upward journey, and Coyote, a trick ster whose energy and skill help the travellers to overcome obstacles. Animals such as moles, badgers and locusts also play a part in facilitating the epic journey, burrowing through the earth or climbing the plants that rise from the lower to the upper realms.
In the Hopi creation story, “the people were fools” because men and women could not refrain from quarrelling with one another. And when the feuding sexes decided to separate onto opposite banks of a river, their society became sterile. Further -more, this lower world was unpleasant: it had become contracted; the horizon curved in on it disagreeably; it was dark; and finally it began to flood. Faced with such adversities, the chief of the underworld people did all that he could to find an escape route, a doorway to the sky. He made a prayer stick for Spider Woman, and by this religious act of connection with her, his people earned their ascent to “a good place to go, the good houses.”
Spider Woman’s role was to facilitate the emergence itself. She did this by breaking down the barrier that existed between the world of darkness and water below and the world of light above. First she planted a spruce tree, but when that failed to penetrate through to the sky, she planted a reed, which finally reached the upper world.
Various animals then set out on an ex plor atory ascent. Eventually the locust, carrying his flute, was the first to emerge into the open. There he was immediately attacked by the “Cloud Chiefs” of the four directions. After testing his courage by bombarding him with lightning, the chiefs finally relented, as they had been completely unable to distract him from calmly playing his flute. “You are a good and brave man!” they cried. “Your heart and those of your people must be good. Go tell them to come, and all this land shall be theirs.” So the people began their ascent, which took them eight days. When t
hey finally emerged into the upper world, they rejoiced.
Alone with the Past, a photograph taken by roland reed in the second decade of the 20th century. Two Navajos gaze across the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona at the ruins of an ancient pueblo. its builders were the Anasazi, prehistoric Pueblo peoples whose surviving dwellings seem to be a part of the landscape.
The story expresses the Hopi people’s religious beliefs: hopi itself means “peace” and, in accordance with this, all action within the Hopi world should properly lead to balance, harmony and integration. Their ideal is to live peacefully in a sacramental relationship with all the living things —humans and animals as well as plants—within creation. Thus it is after an act of reverence—the offering of a prayer stick—that the chief and his people come to the upper world.
The Search for Home
Emergence myths are common among the Hopi and other Pueblo peoples. However, creation does not end there: no sooner had the first humans emerged than they were faced with another journey. The myths that record their tireless search for a suitable settlement affirm the bond that Pueblo people feel with their ancestral homelands.
The origin myths of the Southwestern Pueblo peoples describe a journey upward through several levels of the underworld to the present sunlit world. Some societies, among them the Hopi, then relate the story of a further migration on earth.
Native American Myths and Beliefs Page 3