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Chad Nichols

Professor K. Worley

ANTH 334

11 November 2015

Thoughts on the Creation Myths of the Cree, the Mohawk, and the Cherokee

The Native peoples of North America are many and varied, and so too are their

beliefs about the creation of the earth and the people: the Dine believe that the first

people climbed up from an underworld, one of many, into the light and plenty of this

world; the Inuit believe that the trickster Raven pinned the land in place with his beak,

then accidentally put a hole in his father's bladder of light and created day and night; The

Apache believe that the earth was created from the sweat of the Creator. As the creation

tales of all the North American Native peoples would (and probably have) fill a large

book, I will focus only on those of the three Native American groups I have any

connection to – the Cherokee, the Cree, and the Mohawk. My wife has Mohawk and

Moose Cree ancestry, while my own bloodline contains Cherokee.

The Cree turned out to be the most elusive to find, as there are few online sources

for their mythology. The Cherokee legends are all over the Internet, and the Mohawk

tales are scarcely less prevalent. I have found a couple of examples for each, which will

be compiled and detailed below, and then I will address the similarities and differences

between the myths of each people.

The Cherokee legend was the most detailed of the three, focusing mainly on the

details of creating the physical world. In the tale, the Earth was once only water,

underneath a sky-vault of solid rock. There was a land above the sky-vault called
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Galun'lati, where all the animals lived. It so happened that Galun'lati was becoming

crowded, so Beaver's grandchild, the water-beetle Dayunisi, volunteered to search the

water to find out what was beneath it. According to one legend, he "repeatedly dived to

the bottom and came up with soft mud eventually forming the island we call earth"

(Mooney). One of the animals, although it isn't clear who, then fastened the Earth to the

sky-vault with four cords as they all waited for it to dry. Several times, birds were sent

from Galun'lati to ascertain if the mud had dried, but there was no dry land for them yet.

Finally, the animals sent Buzzard to prepare the land. According to Katharine Berry

Judson,

"This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see

now. He flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and it

was still soft. When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very

tired; his wings began to flap and strike the ground. Wherever they

struck the earth there was a valley; whenever the wings turned

upwards again, there was a mountain. When the animals above saw

this, they were afraid that the whole world would be mountains, so

they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of

mountains to this day." (Judson)

After the formation of the Earth, the animals all moved down to the ground. However,

there was no light, so they got the sun and set it in a track to take it east to west. They set

it too close to the Earth, and it was too hot there, so the medicine men raised it, a

handsbreadth at a time, until it was in the seventh track. This was just right. Thus the

world was created.

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The Mohawk (or Kanien’kehaka) creation myth also begins in a land beyond the

sky, inhabited by man-like beings called "Onkweshana." Less detailed than the

Cherokee, the story nonetheless gives an account of how the world was made: the

Onkweshana's land held a large tree in the center, and one day a woman walking nearby

fell through a hole under its roots. The birds in the Land Below saw her falling, and

flocked together to fly under the woman and slow her descent. The being known as the

Great Turtle saw this, and offered his back to set the woman down on. The sky-woman

was grateful, but since her people chose to leave her to her fate, she needed the animals to

find dirt to grow crops in. In Shelley Goodleaf-McComber's relation of Hazel W.

Hertzberg,

"The woman asked for the help of the water animals. She told them

if they could get dirt she would be able to plant some of the roots

she had brought from the Sky-World. Many animals tried; finally it

was the muskrat’s turn. He dove into the water and they all waited.

After a while his body floated to the top. But he had a crumb of

earth in each paw." (Hertzberg)

The Sky-Woman (in some versions called Aientsik, or "Fertile Earth") sang and danced

her way counter-clockwise around the Great Turtles back, and by her magic made the

earth grow and cover the shell. Corn, beans, and squash, the "Three Sisters," grew from

the roots planted by Sky-Woman on the Turtle's back, and became the staple food for her

and her descendants the Kanien'kehaka. Some also say that when Sky-Woman passed

away, her head was flung into the night sky to become Grandmother Moon, where she is

the leader and symbol of all womanly endeavours.

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The Cree creation myth was the most difficult to find, as most of the versions I

could locate proved to operate under the assumption that the world was always there. In

light of this, and the sketchiness of the one account I did find, I'll combine the creation of

the world and the creation of people in my analysis.

In my opinion, Joachim Fromhold recorded the most evocative opening for the

Cree creation story:

"In the beginning there was nothing. There was Emptiness, and

Darkness filled the emptiness. And then there was a spark in that

darkness, and that spark was Thought. And with that Thought the

Creator came into being." (Fromhold)

The tale goes on to describe the Great Spirit speaking the heavens and the earth into

being, and that He created Mother Earth to care for it all. In the Canadian version, O-ma-

ma-ma, the Earth Mother, gave birth to all the spirits of the world, beginning with what

Fromhold had described as the "Four Grandfathers, to watch over and protect the earth"

(Fromhold): Binay-sih the Thunderbird, Ina-kaki the Frog, Wee-sa-hay-jac the

shapeshifting trickster, and Ma-heegun the Wolf (Native Creation Myths). O-ma-ma-ma

gave birth to all other beings as well: "Fish, rocks, grasses, and trees all came from the

womb of O-ma-ma-ma" (Native Creation Myths). Eventually, the Great Spirit decides

something is missing, something between the animals and the spirits. According to

Fromhold, the Creator then creates "...a living creature, that comes from the animal but

can become of the spirits, and I will call it Man" (Fromhold). The Fromhold version of

this tale is unusually similar to the Biblical creation story, which I will address during

analysis.
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In order to successfully analyze these myths, one should understand the context

within which these peoples lived. Each group has their own take on creation, and as we

know, all myths were designed to explain otherwise unexplainable natural phenomenon

or to transmit the particular culture's history from one generation to the next. Accounts

passed orally, however, have been proven to change in the retelling (anyone who has

played "telephone" can attest to that!) even from one day to the next, let alone over

several hundreds or even thousands of years. In the analyses below, I will posit potential

occurrences to which the myths could refer, thereby offering one interpretation of the

events that generated each story. According to their oral history, the Cherokee migrated

south from the Great Lakes region (as evidenced by the Iroquoian origin of their native

language) and settled in the American Southeast many years before contact with

Europeans. The word "Cherokee" may be derived from an Iroquoian or Choctaw word

meaning "those who live in cave country" ("Cherokee"), indicating that at least for part of

their history the Aniyunwiya people lived in the aforementioned caves. This would in

part explain their belief that the sky-vault was solid rock, and as water action is the most

common method of cave formation, the flooded earth is also explained. The ground

being formed bit by bit describes the gradual drying of such caves well, and a torch or

lamp hoisted on high is represented by the placement of the sun in track after track until

the right amount of light and heat is reached. Overall, the myth does a fine job of

describing the ancestral lands and homes of the Cherokee.

The Kanien'kehaka (Mohawk) name means "Flint Stone Place", and their stock-

in-trade during the precontact era was flint for stone tools. They hail from the Mohawk

Valley in what is now upstate New York, and have ranged from present-day
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Pennsylvania, through Vermont, and into what is now Quebec. For hundreds of years, the

Kanien'kehaka have been the "Keepers of the Eastern Door" for the Iroquois

Confederacy, protecting the Eastern flank of their alliance ("Mohawk people"). They

believe that the continent of North America is where Sky Woman fell from the sky, and

therefore it is called Turtle Island in memory of the Great Turtle who provided Sky

Woman his back upon which to rest. Unlike the Cherokee, the Mohawk myth isn't as

detailed about the origin of the Earth: the Mohawk creation stories seem to focus more on

the origin of the people than on the creation of the physical world.

The Moose Cree come from the southern area of St. James Bay, in the middle of

the lands the Cree call home. Divided into several separate clans, the Cree were

instrumental in the early fur trade. As a people, they stretched from Eastern Quebec as

far as Montana, belonging to the Algonquin language group. In contrast to the others, the

Cree myth barely touches on the physical world, preferring to focus on the creation and

early lives of people and animals, and the relationship between them, indicating that they

were more accepting of where they lived and more concerned about who they interacted

with. This is backed up by their clans' historical habits of remaining independent from

one another, but allying against outsiders when necessary.

The similarities between the Cherokee and the Mohawk legends is clear: the

world was water, and there was a land beyond a sky; someone from the sky-world came

to the Earth and eventually dry land was created, requiring a significant amount of effort

to fully realize; and the land was subsequently shaped by another expenditure of effort.

The similarity surprised me, until I learned through this research that the Cherokee are an

Iroquoian nation, like the Kanien'kehaka.

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The relation of the Cree myth to the others, is non-existant. Their tale is so

similar to the Biblical creation that Joaquin Fromhold claims "The question therefore

exists, is the Cree myth indiginous (sic), or was it influenced by Christian Stories"

(Fromhold)? Given the proximity with which the Cree and the Mohawk existed, one

would reasonably expect similarities in the myths if they were based solely on the

ancestral homes of each, as I posited the Cherokee legend was. Belonging to a different

language group, however, provides a reason for the disparity: tales cannot be shared

between groups if the groups cannot understand one another.

In conclusion, the research I performed indicates that the only true point of

comparison is between the Mohawk and the Cherokee, both of Iroquoian ancestry. The

differences between them seem to be of relatively recent incorporation – within the last

six millennia, roughly speaking – which can be attributed to the distance between the

nations. While disappointing, this result was not entirely unexpected once I discovered

the link between the Cherokee and the Mohawk nations: sharing a creation myth is a

logical inference from sharing the Iroquoian language family, as language has been long

hypothesized to influence, if not outright shape, thought.

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Works Cited

Carr, Karen Eva, PhD. "Cherokee Creation Myth." Cherokee Creation Myth - Native

American Stories. Quatr.us, Sept. 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

"THE CREATION." Rootsweb. Ed. Kathleen Mazil. Ancestry.com, 24 Aug. 1998.

Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Fromhold, Joachim. "Appendix 54." The Western Cree (Pakisimotan Wi Iniwak):

Ethnography. N.p.: Lulu.com, 2010. 337. Print.

Hertzberg, Hazel W. "Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) Creation Story." Trans. Shelley

Goodleaf-McComber. (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

John, Sharron. "Grandmother's Creation Story." Totem Talk. Terri Benning, 1 Sept.

2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Judson, Katharine Berry. "How the World Was Made." NATIVE AMERICAN

LEGENDS Cherokee Legend. Ed. Kathy Weiser. Legends of America,

Nov. 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Mooney, James. James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the

Cherokees: Containing the Full Texts of Myths of the Cherokee (1900) and

the Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891) as Published by the Bureau

of American Ethnology: With a New Biographical Introduction, James

Mooney and the Eastern Cherokees. Comp. TheCherokeeLady. Asheville,

NC: Historical Images, 1992. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

"Native Creation Myths." Creation Stories: Canadian First Nations. Ed. Mrs.

French. Sinkutview School, 12 Sept. 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.