Nichols 1

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 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,

Nichols 2
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.
The Mohawk (or Kanienkehaka) 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. Hertberg,
"The woman asked for the help of the water animals. She told them if they

Nichols 3
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 muskrats 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 Turtes 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.
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 related 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): Binaysih the Thunderbird, Ina-kaki the Frog, Wee-sa-hay-jac the shapeshifting trickster, and Ma-

Nichols 4
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.
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.

Nichols 5
The Kanien'kehaka (Mohawk) name means "Flint Stone Place", and their stock-intrade 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 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 instrmental 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.
The relation of the Cree myth to the others, is non-existant. Their tale is so similar to

Nichols 6
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.