Native American Myths and Beliefs

by Tom Lowenstein

  Suddenly they heard a small voice from the grass. “You have done the best a man can do, but perhaps a woman can do better.” “Who is that speaking?” the animals shouted. “I am your Grandmother Spider,” replied the voice. “Perhaps I was put in the world to bring you light.”

  Then Spider rolled some clay into a bowl and started towards the sun, leaving a trail of thread behind her. When she was near the sun, she was so little that she wasn’t noticed. She reached out gently and took a tiny piece of the sun. Placing it in her bowl, and following the thread she had spun, Spider returned from east to west. And as she travelled, the sun’s rays grew and spread before her, across the world.

  To this day, spiders’ webs are shaped like the sun and its rays. And spiders always spin them in the morning, as if to remind people of their divine ancestor.

  Made of buckskin in the shape of a rising sun, this hopi shield was worn on his back by a priest during a ritual.

  The Details of the Universe

  While a few stories describe the creation of major celestial bodies, Native American myths more commonly focus on the minutiae of the universe. Thus, one Lillooet story explains the moon’s irregular surface in terms of the presence of three squatting frog sisters. Similarly, the star cluster known as the Pleiades is seen in an Iroquois myth as a band of children dancing at night.

  “In the beginning the Great Medicine created the Earth, and the waters upon the Earth, and the sun, moon and stars.” The creation story of the Cheyenne from the Plains, which opens with these words, proceeds to human beginnings without further mention of the origin of the cosmos. In some Indian cultures, this treatment of the celestial lights is preceded by a quiet, poetic vision of how things were at the beginning of time. Once the origins of sun and moon have been mentioned, the narrative often hurries on to a description of life on Earth and legends of the first people. The Lenape of Dela ware have one such story: a deity known as Kishel -amakank, at the very beginning of time, existed alone in space and silence. Suddenly he had a vision: he saw space filled with stars, sun, moon and Earth. Then, in keeping with his vision, the Earth sprang to life, followed by human existence in all its variety. But one god’s thought was not enough to create the universe. The lonely creator therefore summoned help for his great task. He brought into being four Keepers of Creation and with these four spirits he conspired to produce the stars, sun, moon and Earth. Gathering strength, as if by chain reaction, the sun with its heat and the moon with her powers of fertility then brought life to the world. Once this had been accomplished, the Lenape creation story moves on to a description of “things as they are and have always been.” The world of people and nature takes over.

  Morning star, a deity who was associated with the wellbeing of humanity, decorates the headrest of this 19thcentury cradleboard from the Plains. The board would have served as the frame for a buckskin baby carrier.

  If large cosmological events are sometimes passed over, what may seem minor aspects of creation are often explained in rather elaborate detail. Thus, a myth of the Lillooet of the Northwest Coast describes how three Frog Sisters refused the advances of the Beaver and Snake who came to court them. Beaver’s disappointed weeping brought on rain. Threatened with a flood, the sisters escaped to the house of the moon. When the moon invited them to warm themselves by the fire, they insisted on sitting on his head. Jumping onto the moon’s face, they spoiled his then unblemished beauty, and they are still there to this day.

  Similarly, the precise position of the sun is the subject of a Navajo creation myth. When “the first people” have arrived at their final home, the Sun Man and Moon Man that have accompanied them on their ascent to the “fifth world” are hurled by the first people into the sky. The sun, which at first burns too hot, gradually withdraws as the people make sacrifices to the power of heat and light. Thereafter, the sun moves in an orderly way from east to west every day, and the moon reigns over the night sky.

  The board around the “face” of this 19th-century inuit dance mask represents the air; the hoops are the different levels, or layers, of the cosmos; and the feathers are the stars.

  Perhaps because stars appear to be arranged in orderly groups, Native American myths sometimes describe particular groups of them as families or little societies. The seven stars that make up the Pleiades have inspired many origin myths. One story, told by the Onondaga, an Iroquoian society of New York State, relates how a group of people settled in a favorite hunting area. The place was particularly pleasant, game was plentiful, and while the adults constructed their lodges, the children organized some dances of their own.

  Time passed, and the children continued to dance every day. One day, however, a strange old man appeared and ordered them to stop. But they did not obey his instruction and kept on dancing. Then a small boy suggested that, next time they met, they should bring food from their parents’ lodges and enjoy a feast together. But their parents refused their request. Undaunted, the children continued their merry-making, still happy though hungry. Then one day as they danced, light-headed with hunger, they found themselves rising up into the sky. “Don’t look back,” their leader warned them. As they floated up, their parents ran out of their lodges laden with food to tempt the children back to earth. But it was too late. One child who glanced down became a shooting star. The others, when they had ascended to the heavens, became the Pleiades star cluster—a band of happy children dancing through the night.

  The Peopling of the Earth

  Often, the first people are essentially no different from animals. Both share the same food and land and speak the same language. Some myths tell of this early time as an age without sickness and death when life is perfect, until a Trickster like Raven or Coyote changes things and makes life as later humans have always known it.

  An Alaskan Inuit story begins: “Raven man harpooned the land. It came up from the water. And there was a small dwelling there with a man and woman in it.” People, the story suggests, were simply there all the time, from the beginning of creation. A similar view is expressed in stories of the northeastern Winnebago Indians. In many such origin tales, people, animals and a semidivine Trickster all live together at the beginning of time. And while people and animals may take on different roles in particular stories, human and animal natures are not essentially different from each other. At the dawn of time, the beings who existed combined human nature with that of the creatures that later Native Americans knew and often hunted. This vision of the first people is sometimes set in a blank and featureless landscape, such as the one that the Alaskan Raven created, and sometimes in a primeval world presided over by a god-like creator. In this world, often half water and half land, the creator thinks, dreams or sings the people into existence.

  Many Native American cultures portray a world in which people are made before anything else comes into being; in others, human beings are made at the end of a long process involving the creation of plants, animals and natural features. The early people described by the Cheyenne of the Plains are placed by their creator, Great Medicine, in a “beautiful country” where people, animals and birds “who were all friends and had a common language” came into being at more or less the same time. The people went naked and were never hungry until the Earth was struck by floods and earthquakes. The ancestors were then forced to dress in skins and hunt for their food. Great Medicine eventually took pity and brought them corn to plant and buffalo to hunt. This paradisal Cheyenne dream time is, however, a type rare in Native American myth, and may have been influenced by Christian ideas.

  Many origin stories describe the first people as helpless beings, physically deficient or technologically naïve. In some myths an all-powerful creator brings people to perfection; in others, the people have to sort themselves out, or their survival depends on the outcome of a struggle between rival spirits.

  The origin myths of the Blackfeet of the Plains describe how people were made by Old Man, the master spirit who “travelled around making t
hings as he went.” The first people he created were a woman and child, whom he fashioned from clay. They were poor and naked. Old Man had to teach them how to gather food and hunt. However, the people had no arms, and the buffalo would chase them. Scornful of the people’s timidity, Old Man gave them arms and taught them to make weapons. From this time on, they were able to hunt the buffalo for food and leather.

  The shape of early people was not finally determined. A story from the Yana of northern California says that the gender of the first people was changeable. There were just thirty women and thirty men. The men went out deer hunting, while the women pounded acorns for bread. The men returned home from hunting with nothing. “What shall we do?” the women said. “There is no meat. Let us make women from men, and men from women.” So it happened. The new men went out hunting and killed many deer, while the new women stayed at home and pounded acorns. In that way they prospered. Their numbers grew. But Coyote, the Trickster, did not like it. “There are too many women and too many men!”

  This ancient inuit comb (c. 500 BCE) is incised with an image of an archer standing over a prostrate man and a variety of animals. The archer may represent a mythical creator god.

  The Giver and the Watcher

  According to this Tututni myth from southwest Oregon, two creative beings, the Giver and the Watcher, emerged from the purifying steam of their sweat lodge to collaborate in the making of humanity.

  In the beginning there was no land. The Giver and the Watcher sat outside their sweat lodge. One day the Watcher saw land beginning to emerge from the waters that surrounded them. The Giver took some tobacco. He smoked, and the land became solid. Five times the Giver smoked and discussed how the world and people might be made. He worked for days. Then day and night came, trees and grass appeared and the ocean withdrew.

  Now it was time to make the first people. The Giver took some grass, mixed it with mud and rubbed it in his hands and made two figures. After four days two dogs, one male and one female, appeared, and the dogs bore a litter. Then the Giver went to work again. He fashioned two figures out of sand. This time the Giver had made snakes.

  Soon the Giver thought, “How can I make people? I’ve failed twice!” The Watcher spoke, “Let me smoke tonight, and see if people emerge from smoke.” For three days he smoked, and from the smoke a house appeared with smoke coming from it. After a while, a beautiful woman emerged. The Giver was glad, and said: “Now we’ll have no trouble making people.” The woman could not see the Giver and Watcher. But after nine days she grew sad and wondered who her kinsfolk were.

  One day the Giver said to his companion: “Stay here and take this woman as wife. You shall have children and be father of all people. I’m leaving this world. Everything on it shall belong to you.” The woman became pregnant. Even then she still couldn’t see her husband, and when her son was born, she still did not know his father. So she wrapped up her child and went on a journey.

  The woman and her son travelled for ten years. At last the boy asked, “Mother, where is your husband?” She replied: “I’ve dreamed of my husband.” Then the Giver said to his companion: “The woman is home now.”

  At dusk the next day the Watcher, now a man, came in and the boy exclaimed: “My father has come!” The Watcher duly told them all that had happened. Meanwhile, the Giver brought order to the world and made the animals. He told the couple to have many children: “You, your wife and children shall speak many tongues. You’ll be the parents of all the tribes.”

  In the 1820s the artist george Catlin recorded buffalo hunting, a way of life that was all but extinct within another 50 years.

  Opposed to Coyote were Cottontail Rabbit, Gray Squirrel and Lizard. They knew about death but did not want it to be final, and they argued (see page 43) with Coyote about whether it should be allowed to claim people. The animals then had another disagreement with Coyote about hands. In those days people’s hands were round and fingerless, like Coyote’s. “Let us cut through their hands,” said Lizard. “They need fingers to shoot arrows and to pound sunflower seeds and acorns.” “They can use their elbows,” said Coyote. “Why do you talk about changing things?”

  “We don’t like them as they are,” said Lizard and Rabbit. Then Lizard went off and sat in the sun. He leaned against a rock and, picking up a flint, he cut through his hands, making fingers. “Well, well!” whispered everyone when Lizard showed them his hands. Then he fixed their hands too. Now they could hunt deer with arrows of flint; they could fish for salmon and pound acorns. “When women have children,” Lizard said, “they’ll all have fingers.” Only Coyote had no fingers. He sat by the sweat lodge hanging his head.

  The First People of Northern California

  The Californian Kato people believed that the creator named Nagaitcho did not rest from his labors until he was sure that the Earth had resources enough to sustain the first people.

  Two creative spirits, Nagaitcho and Thunder, presided over an aging cosmos that was devoid both of people and of all the living and growing things on which they depend. Even the sandstone rock that formed the sky was old. Thunder raged in the four directions. “The rock is old,” Nagaitcho said to him, “we will fix it.”

  They stretched out the sky and walked on it. Then gates and trails were put in place. They made a hole in the sky to let the clouds and fog through. They made the clouds so that the heads of the people to come wouldn’t ache from bright sun.

  Nagaitcho made a man out of earth. He made a left leg and a right leg, and then a left arm and a right arm. Then he pulled up some grass and, forming it into a wad, he made the belly. Then he slapped some grass together and made the heart. He molded a round piece of clay into a liver. With more clay he made lungs and kidneys. He pushed in a reed for the trachea. “What will the blood be?” he then asked himself. He pounded some ochre and mixed it with water. Next he made the mouth, nose and eyes. “Now the genitals,” he said. And having made the male genitals, he took one of the legs, split it and made a woman from it.

  The story continues with a detailed description of the creation of the things that the new people needed for existence in their country. Edible seaweeds and mussels came from the sea. “What will be salt?” Nagaitcho wondered. The ocean foam was turned into salt. The Indians tried it and decided to use it on their food in the future.

  Next, Nagaitcho began a tour of the land with his dog. They surveyed the beautiful landscape of redwood, oak and chestnut trees, springs, creeks, hills and valleys. Animals, large and small, quenched their thirst in the waters that they shared with people. “I have made a good earth, my dog,” said the creator. The nuts and berries and grasses were ripe. Fish for people swam in the streams. All kinds of edible things had grown in abundance. Nagaitcho’s first people had found their home and lived there in harmony.

  This basket was made by a Native artisan of northern California in the 19th century. it could have been used for gathering the abundant marine produce of this coastal region.

  How Old Age and Death Began

  While many Native American creation stories take the cycle of life, from birth to death, as a given fact, not all of them accept that, from the beginning, mortality was inevitable. A story told by the Modoc people of northern California describes how five brothers who went on a killing spree were responsible for bringing old age to the world.

  Rampaging across the land, five brothers murdered everyone they met. Eventually their reputation spread so far that people fled to the wilderness at the news of their approach. The brothers therefore found no one in the north, the south and west, but when they arrived in the eastern quarter, they came upon an old man and an old woman. “We have come to fight you,” the brothers said. “But we don’t want to fight,” said the old people. “Go away and leave us alone.”

  The brothers refused to listen and started to attack. They shot the old man with arrows and beat him with clubs. They built a fire and tried to burn him. But when they found that they could not kill him, the brothe
rs grew frightened and ran off, with the two old people in pursuit. “Stop!” shouted the old man. The brothers did not heed his warning, so the old man and woman ran faster and caught up with them.

  Right away, the oldest brother grew old and weak. He stumbled on a little way farther and then fell dead. This happened to each of the five brothers in turn. “And that,” according to this Modoc story, “is how old age came into our world. If those brothers had left the old people alone, there would be no such thing as old age.”

  Roland reed’s 1912 photograph of a blackfoot burial platform. The body is raised up to protect it from scavengers and to bring it near the spirits of the sky.

  In other Native American stories, death comes not at the very beginning of creation, but a little later—though still in mythical time. At the outset, all of the people and all of the animals are immortal. But then some accident happens: someone does something wrong without knowing it, and then death arrives. One tale from the Tahltan people of the Northwest Coast describes a Tree Woman and a Rock Woman, both of whom are pregnant. Rock Woman does not follow the correct child-bearing procedure, and her baby, half-born, turns completely to rock and then dies. Afterwards, although Tree Woman successfully gives birth to her child, the mortality of people is a fact of life: “People are like trees. Some will live long, and some will die young. Thus death comes to people of all ages, just as among trees, and none can live very long.”

  Coyote and the Origin of Death

  According to this tale, which is told by the Caddo people of Arkansas, death would have been only a temporary interlude if the Trickster, Coyote, had not decided that it should be final. He came to this decision in order to protect those living from scarcity.