Creation Stories
VARIOUS
Salish:
The ancients all had greater powers and cunning than either animals or people. Besides the ancients, real people lived on the earth at that time. Old One made the people out of the last balls of mud he took from the earth. They were so ignorant that they were the most helpless of all the creatures Old One had made.The difficulty with the early world was that most of the ancients were selfish, and they were also very stupid in some ways. They did not know which creatures were deer and which were people, and sometimes they ate people by mistake.
At last Old One said, "There will soon be no people if I let things go on like this." So he sent Coyote to teach the Indians how to do things. And Coyote began to travel on the earth, teaching the Indians, making life easier and better for them, and performing many wonderful deeds.
Haudenosaunee - Iroquois:
The Iroquois trace the beginning of human life to a time when Skywoman fell to an island created by a giant turtle.
"In the beginning, people lived beyond the sky, because deep waters covered the entire earth. Then, a pregnant woman fell from the Sky World toward the water. Ducks and geese broke her fall with their wings and carried her to the Great Turtle, master of all animals, and set her on his back. The Turtle ordered the other animals to bring earth from the bottom of the water and cover his back that she might have land to live upon.
The island grew in shape and size and became North America. There, Skywoman gave birth to a daughter whose children propagated the human race."Penobscot:
When Kloskurbeh, the All-Maker, lived on earth, there were no people yet. But one day a youth appeared, born from the foam of the waves, and became his chief helper. After these two beings had created all manner of things, there came to them a beautiful girl. She was born of the wonderful earth plant, and of the dew, and of warmth.First Mother (as she was called) married the chief helper of Kloskurbeh. When their children multiplied until there was not enough game to feed them all, First Mother made her husband kill her. Then he and his children dragged her body back and forth across a barren plot of land, as she had ordered, and buried her bones in the center of the field. Seven months later they returned and found the field green with ripe corn and, in the center, fragrant tobacco.
Tewa/Hopi:
Way back in the distant past, the ancestors of humans were living down below in a world under the earth. They weren't humans yet, they lived in darkness, behaving like bugs.Now there was a Great Spirit watching over everything; some people say he was the sun. He saw how things were down under the earth, so he sent his messenger, Spider Old Woman, to talk to them. She said, "You creatures, the Sun Spirit doesn't want you living like this. He is going to transform you into something better, and I will lead you to another world."
When they came out on the surface of the earth, that's when they became humans. In the journeys that followed, they were looking for a place of harmony where they could follow good teachings and a good way of life.
Pawnee:
It is told, in the creation legend of the Pawnee, that a great council was held to which all the animals were invited. For a reason no one remembers, the brightest star in the southern sky, the Wolf Star, was not invited. He watched from a distance, silent and angry, while everyone else decided how to make the earth.In the time after the great council, the Wolf Star directed his resentment over this bad treatment at The Storm that Comes out of the West, who had been in charge by the others with going around the earth, seeing to it that things went well.
Storm carried a whirlwind bag with him as he traveled, inside of which were the first people. When he stopped to rest in the evening he would let people out and they would set up camp and hunt buffalo.
One time the Wolf Star sent a gray wolf down to follow Storm around. Storm fell asleep and the wolf stole his whirlwind bag, thinking that there might be something good to eat inside. He ran away with it. When he opened it, all the people ran out.
They set up camp but, suddenly looking around, they saw that there were no buffalo to hunt. When they realized it was a wolf and not Storm that had let them out of the bag they were very angry. They ran the wolf down and killed him.
When The Storm that Comes out of the West located the first people and saw what they had done he was very sad. He told them that by killing the wolf they had brought death into the world. That had not been the plan but now it was this way.
The Storm that Comes out of the West told them to skin the wolf and make a sacred bundle with the pelt, enclosing in it the things that would always bring back the memory of what had happened. Thereafter, he told them, they would be known as the wolf people, the Skidi Pawnee.
The Wolf Star watched all this from the southern sky. The Pawnee calls this star Fools the Wolves because it rises just before the morning star and tricks the wolves into howling before first light. In this way the Wolf Star continues to remind people that when it came time to build the earth, he was forgotten.
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