Creation Stories

The dramas of Native American stories about how it began to exist are represented by characters in contexts that fit the environment in which they developed. Creation accounts include humans, animals, and supernatural beings in human or animal form. Human experiences, such as sexual union, separation, great strength tests, and long and difficult journeys, serve as the basis for cosmic events.

The narratives are transmitted through oral tradition and sacred persons, narrators and aboriginal scholars recreate them in each narrative and often incorporate new elements acquired through dreams, visions and current experiences. The teachings of Christianity and the pan-Indian religious movements have influenced them over the last five centuries, presenting powerful metaphors about the beginnings of the world.

Some stories say that the gods created the world in an empty report. In the Apache stories, the Black Wind created the earth, the Yellow Wind gave it light and other deities collaborated to create landscapes and life forms. Other groups of people believe that the world has always existed and that at first it was a plain without characteristics and submerged in darkness until a great spirit intervened. For the Californian shasts, Chareya (the old man from above) lived in the heavenly world, but made a hole in the sky and fell to the ground on a pile of ice and snow. The sun came out of the hole, melted the ice and formed the sea, the lakes and the rivers. Chareya planted trees and created birds from their leaves. The Iroquois myth of creation also mentions the fall of the sky.

Sex intervenes in some stories about the origins. According to an Inuit creation account, two men escaped the great universal flood and married. The "wife" man's penis broke when she became pregnant, which turned her into a woman and gave birth to her first child.

Many Native Americans today see Mother Earth as a living essence. It is likely that for most tribes it is a relatively new idea (i.e., after the encounter with the Europeans), but for others it goes back to a rather old tradition. For example, according to the people of the Salish linguistic family, who live in the interior of British Columbia, the great Old Spirit created the earth from a woman. The woman in question is mouth-up and people live on her. The trees and the grass are his hair, the ground is his flesh, the rocks are his bones, and the wind is his breath. Winter is when it's cold and summer is when the weather is hot. Every time it moves, there's an earthquake.

Traditionally, Indians have sought sacred images, voices and facts from the time when things began to exist in the landscape and animals. They often claim that known animals play an important role in the process of creation, as in the accounts that include the "diver of the earth". This myth is present all over the world and corresponds to a heroic narrative of creation. In several indigenous cultures of the United States, the earth is in a state of infinite, watery chaos in which there is no firm ground. One being asks several animals to collect mud and dive to the bottom of the ocean. In the end, someone succeeds and with the recovered soil forms a solid soil. These living beings are known as "land divers" and are sometimes considered small and humble heroes. The scuba diver in the cherokee tale is a water scabbard, while for the chickasaw it is a river crab and for the cheyenes it's a foul.

The narratives of land divers are more common among the hunting and gathering peoples due to the rich and profound relationships they maintain with the animals of the forests, deserts and meadows. Other agricultural groups, such as the Iroquois, also share this tradition, indicating that the history goes back to before the adoption of the agricultural lifestyle.

According to other creation accounts, the first humans sprang up from the ground, as did crops. These versions are more common in agricultural tribes, such as rural communities in the southwest. In these myths, the struggle for survival generally takes the form of a large migration across several worlds to the present. According to the caddo narrative of the origins, Luna, the first man, created thousands of people in a single village from a world dominated by darkness and, with the help of Timer Coyote, led them through a hole to the present world. Many people lost their way to the fatherland of the caddies and became the ancestors of other tribes. Those who stayed with the Moon settled in a place called Highwood on the Top of the Hill and, along with the first man, Coyote and other beings, gradually became the tribe of the Caddies. Over time, the people who separated during the journey spoke different languages, although in the origins all spoke Caddo.

For most North American Indians, the landscape preserves the memory of important events so that they can always identify. For example, the tewa world is surrounded by four mountains and four sacred hills, in the center of which is the hole from which humans are believed to have come out. The sacred place of exit is represented by a hole in the floor of the kiwa (ceremonial chamber).

In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, there is the great canyon of Chetro Keti, one of the settlements of the ancient Anasazi. The Kivas remain the center of the traditional ritual life of the Hopis and other Southwest Indian peoples. The ceremonial cameras of the hopis use a soil depression called sipapu to recall the hole through which the first humans came to the world in the history of hopis creation.