Mr. Thiesmeyer’s
English III – American Literature
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Creation Stories
An Iroquois Creation Story
In the beginning there was
no world, no land, no creatures of the kind that are around us now, and there
were no men. But there was a great ocean which occupied space as far as anyone
could see. Above the ocean was a great void of air. And in the air lived the
birds of the sea; in the ocean lived the fish and the creatures of the deep.
Far above this unpeopled world, there was a Sky-World. Here lived gods who were
like people—like Iroquois.
In the Sky-World there was a man who
had a wife, and the wife was expecting a child. The woman became hungry for all
kinds of strange delicacies, as women do when they are with child. She kept her
husband busy almost to distraction finding delicious things for her to eat.
In the middle of the Sky-World there was a Great Tree which was not like any of
the trees we know. It was tremendous; it had grown there forever. It had
enormous roots that spread out from the floor of the Sky-World. . . . The tree
was not supposed to be marked or mutilated by any of the beings who dwelt in
the Sky-World. It was a sacred tree that stood at the center of the universe.
The woman decided that she wanted
some bark from one of the roots of the Great Tree—perhaps as a food or as a
medicine, we don’t know. She told her husband this. He didn’t like the idea. He
knew it was wrong. But she insisted, and he gave in. So he dug a hole among the
roots of this great sky tree, and he bared some of its roots. But the floor of
the Sky-World wasn’t very thick, and he broke a hole through it. He was
terrified, for he had never expected to find empty space underneath the world.
But his wife was filled with curiosity. He wouldn’t get any of the roots for
her, so she set out to do it herself. She bent over and she looked down, and
she saw the ocean far below. . . . No one knows just what happened next. Some
say she slipped. Some say her husband, fed up with all the demands she had made
on him, pushed her.
So she fell through the hole. As she fell, she frantically grabbed at its
edges, but her hands slipped. However, between her fingers there clung bits of
things that were growing on the floor of the Sky-World and bits of the root
tips of the Great Tree. And so she began to fall toward the great ocean far
below.
The birds of the sea saw the woman
falling, and they immediately consulted with each other as to what they could
do to help her. Flying wingtip to wingtip, they made a great feathery raft in
the sky to support her, and thus they broke her fall. . . . The great sea
turtle came and agreed to receive her on his back. The birds placed her gently
on the shell of the turtle, and now the turtle floated about on the huge ocean
with the woman safely on his back. . . .
And the woman said to herself that
she would die. But the creatures of the sea came to her and said that they
would try to help her and asked her what they could do. She told them that if
they could find some soil, she could plant the roots stuck between her fingers,
and from them plants would grow. The sea animals said perhaps there was dirt at
the bottom of the ocean, but no one had ever been down there so they could not
be sure. . . .
Finally, the muskrat said he would
try. He dived and disappeared. All the creatures held their breath, but he did
not return. After a long time, his little body floated up to the surface of the
ocean, a tiny crumb of earth clutched in his paw. . . . Thus it was the
muskrat, the Earth-Diver, who brought from the bottom of the ocean the soil
from which the earth was to grow.
The woman took the tiny clod of dirt and placed it on the middle of the great
sea turtle’s back. Then the woman began to walk in a circle around it, moving
in the direction that the sun goes. The earth began to grow. When the earth was
big enough, she planted the roots she had clutched between her fingers when she
fell from the Sky-World. Thus the plants grew on the earth.
. . . After a while, the woman’s
time came, and she was delivered of a daughter. The woman and her daughter kept
walking in a circle around the earth, so that the earth and plants would
continue to grow. They lived on the plants and roots they gathered.
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