An Approach to Teaching Indigenous Creation Stories

I.

In the 1970s, when I was trained in American Studies, little attention was paid to Native

American cultures or literature. But once established in an English department in the late 1980s,

I designed a course in Native American literature to fill a gap in the curriculum. My course

began with two creation stories: the Seneca “Tale of the Sky World” (in two quite different

versions) and “The Origin Story of Acoma.” To put these native stories in context, I had my

students read them alongside a creation story familiar to nearly all of them: the first three

chapters of Genesis, which end with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.

Unlike some of my right-wing compatriots, I do not regard the Old Testament--or any

sacred texts, for that matter--as literally true, much less divinely inspired. My approach is

entirely secular and analytical; I regard creation stories as crucial cultural narratives that explain

or justify “the way things are.” That is, I understand them as expressions of the world view and

deep values of a community. Of course, as oral stories, they evolve as a culture changes over

time. As accounts of events that are literally immemorial—beyond memory—they are especially

fluid texts.

My goal in teaching indigenous stories alongside Genesis was to challenge my students’

“native” (i.e., Western) perspective: to enable them to see that (and perhaps why) other cultures

have significantly different world views and values. I regard this as an inherently decolonizing

project, for the creation story most familiar to them—the ur-narrative of the Judeo-Christian

tradition—reflects the world view of a culture that, beginning in the Renaissance, spread around

the world, displacing, colonizing, or exterminating the indigenous peoples it came into contact

with. Insofar as Genesis tacitly justifies and rationalizes that historical process, it is implicated in

the colonial project.

My first step was to get my students to compare common features of the genre—such as

the process of “creation” itself—across cultures in order to defamiliarize certain features of the

Biblical story. One of these is the phenomenon of “creation ex nihilo,” the creation of the

universe literally from nothing—no preexisting matter, let alone life—by a single, all-powerful

divine being.

In this regard, “A Tale of The Sky World” differs radically from Genesis. It opens this

way:

A long time ago human beings lived high up in what is now called heaven.

They had a great and illustrious chief. It so happened that this chief’s daughter

was taken very ill with a strange affection. All the people were very anxious as to

the outcome of her illness. Every known remedy was tried in an attempt to cure

her, but none had any effect.

Near the lodge of this chief stood a great tree, which every year bore corn

used for food. One of the friends of the chief had a dream, in which he was

advised to tell the chief that in order to cure his daughter he must lay her beside

this tree, and that he must have the tree dug up. This advice was carried out to the

letter. While the people were at work and the young woman lay there, a young

man came along. He was very angry and said: “It is not at all right to destroy this

tree. Its fruit is all that we have to live on.” With this remark he gave the young

2

woman who lay there ill a shove with his foot, causing her to fall into the hole that

had been dug.i

Now, that hole opened into this world, which was then all water, on which

floated waterfowl of many kinds. There was no land at that time. It came to pass

that as these waterfowl saw this young woman falling they shouted, “Let us

receive her,” whereupon they, at least some of them, joined their bodies together,

and the young woman fell on this platform of bodies. When these were wearied

they asked, “Who will volunteer to care for this woman?” The great Turtle then

took her, and when he got tired of holding her, he in turn asked who would take

his place. At last the question arose as to what they should do to provide her with

a permanent resting place in this world. Finally it was decided to prepare the

earth, on which she would live in the future. To do this it was determined that soil

from the bottom of the primal sea should be brought up and placed on the broad,

firm carapace of the Turtle, where it would increase in size to such an extent that

it would accommodate all the creatures that should be produced thereafter. After

much discussion the toad was finally persuaded to dive to the bottom of the

waters in search of soil. Bravely making the attempt, he succeeded in bringing up

the soil from the depths of the sea. This was carefully spread over the carapace of

the Turtle, and at once began to grow in size and depth.ii

As this excerpt reveals, “Sky World” is not exactly a “creation” story. Toward the end of

the excerpt, the tale begins to describe the creation of the world the tribe inhabits, but at the

beginning of the narrative, there is already a world in existence. Indeed, the story opens with the

end of one world (to which it never returns) as well as the beginning of another. My students,

most of whom were steeped in the world view reflected in Genesis, were quick to read this

episode as the story of a “fall” similar to that in Genesis. After all, it involves a very literal

physical descent from an upper realm to a lower one. And, according to the text, the upper world

is “now called heaven.”

My first intervention in their interpretation was to ask them how, and when, they thought

the sky world came to be called heaven. That is, why was it not called heaven all along, and

when did “now” begin? Some suspected that the new term for the upper world might reflect

contact with Christian Europeans. After all, native origin stories are available to non-tribal

members only as collected, transcribed, and translated after contact with Europeans. Often, the

first to do this were clergymen who were attempting to convert the natives to their own religion

(and culture) and whose world view and values were different from, and in many ways opposed

to, those of the natives.

So, while as oral texts these stories must have evolved with historical change before

contact, adjustments made after European contact might be quite drastic, whether the result of

covert influence or merely bad translation (which is always transcultural as well as

translinguistic). At the time of contact and after it, textual changes may be less “organic” than

earlier--functions of conquest and colonization, imposed from without, rather than developing

from within the native culture. Such changes produce texts that are culturally, if not

linguistically, hybrid. Significantly, the phrase “it came to pass” occurs frequently in the King

James Version of the New Testament. And just as the phrase “carried out to the letter” clumsily

interjects a concept dependent on literacy into an oral story, so the term “heaven” may project a

Christian concept onto an animistic tale. Renamed “heaven,” the “upper world,” an abandoned

3

regime, might acquire Christian overtones in the process of transcription and translation. Textual

details like “what is now called heaven” reveal how easily cultural contact can obscure or even

erase significant differences; how easily the Western can override, and overwrite, the native.

Because this tale does not begin at the very beginning of the universe, much less with

creation ex nihilo, it is perhaps better to refer to it as an origin story. However, insofar as it tells

how the continent was formed to provide a home for Sky Woman, it is a creation story. The most

striking departure from the Biblical paradigm, then, may be that the creation of the world the

Seneca inhabit is not the work of a single, superhuman, omnipotent being who simply speaks

things into existence but rather the collaborative project of nonhuman creatures: not just

mammals but, notably, a reptile--the turtle (which explains why the world, or at least the

continent, is referred to by some natives as Turtle Island).

How strange, from a Christian, European perspective: the Sky Woman, the original

Seneca (or at least the culture hero/mother of her tribe) is not created by God, much less in his

image. Moreover, she is at first utterly dependent for her survival on beings of a lower order. In

this version, only two generations later do her descendants (twin grandsons) expand and alter this

creature-created world on their own--and then, not altogether for the better.

II.

At this point in the unit, I introduce excerpts from Jared Diamond’s Gun, Germs, and

Steel, which proposes a non-racist answer to the important question: Why did Europeans

colonize the rest of the world, and not the other way around? The key, according to Diamond,

was the spread of agriculture to Europe from the “fertile crescent” after its invention around

10,000 BCE (Chapter Four, “Farmer Power”). Once humans learned to cultivate plants and

animals—to produce food, rather than to hunt and gather it--they could feed more people on less

land and develop stable food surpluses. This had profound ramifications for all aspects of their

culture. Once humans no longer had to spend much time and effort every day seeking food, they

could put their talents and energies to other tasks:

Plant and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser

human populations. The resulting food surpluses . . . were a prerequisite for the

development of settled, politically centralized, socially stratified, economically

complex, technologically innovative societies. Hence the availability of domestic

plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons

developed earliest in Eurasia and later, or not at all, on other continents. (92)

According to Diamond, then, agriculture leads to cities, centralized government

(necessary to manage surplus food and its allocation), the development of specialized roles such

as priest, artist, and warrior, and so on. Food producers may also develop territorial ambitions,

seeking to dominate and enslave others. At the very least, their technology supports expansion,

exploration, organized expeditions, and professional armies. And when the Europeans

encountered the Aztecs and Incas—who were themselves food-producers--the Europeans’ guns

and germs gave them decisive advantages over the indigenous Americans.

Following Diamond, I became intent on having students think about how peoples’ world-

views and cultural values, as encoded in their creation stories, might reflect their methods of

providing food, whether by hunting and gathering or by the domestication of plants and animals.

Genesis reflects the values of a food-producing people in several ways. For starters,

Adam and Eve are placed not in a jungle or forest but in a garden--a site not imaginable as the

4

starting point in the creation story of a food-gathering people. Equally importantly, Genesis

distinguishes three orders of beings in a clear hierarchy. God clearly rules over mankind, and He

explicitly gives Adam “dominion” over the animals. Europeans take this sense of entitlement

quite for granted, and may think of it as “universally human,” but in fact it is a characteristic only

of people who have learned to domesticate animals and plants. Such people have passed a

tipping point in their relation to the natural world: they can assert dominion (which is not the

same as control) in a way that food-gathering people cannot. And they justify this sense of

entitlement, ironically, by having it granted to them by God.

In sharp contrast, the account of creation in “Sky World” reflects the world view of a

food-gathering people. First, Sky Woman and her descendants depend on animals to form the

very ground on they live on; after that, their survival depends on the chancy process of stalking

or trapping animals and gathering indigenous plants. No dominion here. Quite the contrary. It is

the animals who decide the humans’ fate.

In Genesis, even when Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden, they do not have to

gather food. They just have to do the work of cultivation and domestication. And why are they

banned in the first place? As I see it, what Christians regard as Original Sin involves a double—

indeed, redundant—infraction. First, as disobedience of a divine commandment, it violates the

ordained hierarchy; God is not to be questioned, must less defied. Second, the specific act of

disobedience—the tasting of the forbidden fruit—involves an illegitimate aspiration to divine

status. The “subtle” serpent assures Adam and Eve that, contrary to what God has decreed, they

will not die if they eat the apple; rather, “your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,

knowing good and evil.”

Again, in contrast to Genesis, in the Seneca world not only are humans dependent on

animals; the animals are sentient and intelligent, capable of planning and collaboration. They

have traits that in Genesis would be limited to humans (aside from the serpent, who is no mere

snake and not to be trusted). Whereas Genesis establishes and polices clear borders between

distinct orders of beings, “Sky World” does not. There is no single divine Creator; the world as

the Seneca people know it arises literally from the benevolence and generosity of humble water

creatures.

My intention in juxtaposing these two radically different origin stories was to undermine

my students’ “native” perspective—to denaturalize and defamiliarize Genesis—and thus to

enable them to see how the world might look from the perspective of indigenous food-producers.

For reasons that should be obvious by now, I see this as a decolonializing move.

III.

When time permitted, I also had students read an alternative version of the Sky World

story that seems heavily influenced by contact with European settlers. This text, titled—

significantly--“The Creation,” begins this way:

In the faraway days of this floating island there grew one stately tree that

branched beyond the range of vision. Perpetually laden with fruit and blossoms,

the air was fragrant with it is perfume, and the people gathered to its shade where

councils were held.

One day the Great Ruler said to his people: “We will make a new place

where another people may grow. Under our council tree is a great cloud sea which

5

calls for our help. It is lonesome. It knows no rest and calls for light. We will talk

to it. The roots of our council tree point to it and will show the way.”

Having commanded that the tree be uprooted , the Great Ruler peered into

the depths where the roots had guided, and summoning Ata-en-sic, who was with

child, bade her look down. Ata-en-sic saw nothing, but the Great Ruler knew that

the sea voice was calling, and bidding her carry its [sic] life, wrapped around her

a great ray of light and sent her down to the cloud sea.

One of the striking features of the first version of this tale, “Sky World,” is the apparently

accidental nature of the transition from the upper world to the lower. Because it has no apparent

purpose, it seems to lack meaning, to resist interpretation. I will venture an interpretation of it

later; at this point, I want merely to point out how the lack of purpose has been repaired here. In

this version, “The Creation,” the transition is ordained and executed by the (male) Great Ruler;

this version thus introduces an element notably missing from the other: teleology. It seems clear

that this second version of the story has been heavily affected by Western values. For one thing,

it strives (rather clumsily) for a literary tone: e.g., “faraway days,” “stately tree,” “laden with

fruit.” More important, the upper world is idealized, and its colonization of the lower world is

not a function of a crisis but rather of the benevolent extension of a seed culture (rather the way

Europeans liked to regard their own settler colonies: consider “Plimoth Plantation”). While here,

too, the woman’s survival depends on the animals’ collaboration, Ata-en-sic soon “knew that her

mission to people the island was nearing.” And the tale ends with the assurance that “the

prophesy of the Great Ruler of the floating island, that the earth should be peopled” had been

carried out. The story hews much closer to the world-view of Genesis insofar as the creation and

procreation of the lower world is attributed ultimately to god-like agency; everything that

happens is part of a divine plan. Here I think we can see quite dramatically how contact as a

result of colonization results in a hybrid text.iii

IV.

The other native creation story I included in this unit of my course is “The Origin Story

of Acoma.” Whereas the Seneca (and the other four original Iroquois nations --the Cayuga,

Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk) are “woodlands” tribes of the Northeastern United States, the

Acoma are a pueblo people of the Southwest. Tthat very term—which of course means “village”

in Spanish—reflects the Spanish colonizers’ acknowledgment that in tribes like the Acoma they

were encountering relatively “civilized” people: sedentary, not nomadic or migratory; food-

producers, not food-gatherers. As we might expect, the Acoma story is quite different from the

Seneca story—and much more like Genesis. It begins like this:

In the beginning two female human beings were born. These two children

were born underground at a place called Shipapu. As they grew up, they began to

be aware of each other. There was no light and they could only feel each other.

Being in the dark they grew slowly.

This story opens with the two original human females already created and gestating

underground. Soon, however, they are addressed and coached by a tutelary spirit, Tsichtinako.

When they are deemed ready, this spirit relates to them how they were created:

“Your father, Uchtsiti made you, and it is he who has made the world, the

sun which you have seen, the sky, and many other things which you will see. But

Uchtsiti says the world is not yet completed, not yet satisfactory, as he wants it.

6

This is the reason he has made you. You will rule and bring to life the rest of the

things he has given you in the baskets.” The sisters then asked how they

themselves had come into being. Tsichtinako answered saying “Uchtsiti first

made the world. He threw a clod [sic] of his own blood into space and by his

power it grew and grew until it became earth. Then Uchtsiti planted you in this

and by it you were nourished as you developed. [emphasis mine]

As in Genesis, here we have an all-powerful, male Creator who is solely responsible for

the creation of the universe. Also as in Genesis, the story is obviously that of a food-producing

culture, specifically a culture profoundly dependent on agriculture (more than animal husbandry,

although the two sisters are granted dominion over the creatures, which they bring into existence

according to instructions from Tsichtinako). This is clear in the prominent role ascribed to the

sun and sky (each associated with one of the sisters and her clan) and the reverence shown to the

key crop, corn. More interestingly, like the two female culture heroes, the various animal species

begin their existences underground, where they are planted, like seeds, and grow slowly until

they penetrate the surface of the earth and take on independent life. Such is the Acoma

investment in agriculture that even animals and humans are characterized as coming into

existence in the manner of plants.

Later, the Acoma story recounts “the origin of the evil spirit”: in their haste to create

more life, the sisters accidentally drop a snake, which takes on a power of its own as a “serpent.”

With the encouragement of the serpent--in an incident reminiscent of what Christians call the

Fall--Nautsiti disobeys a divine injunction not to get pregnant until ordered by Uchtsiti and

instructed by Tsichtinako. She bears twin sons, and Iatiku adopts one, whom Nautsiti dislikes. As

in Genesis, the penalty for disobedience is a rupture in the human relationship with the Creator.

Rather than expelling them from their homeland, however, “their father called Tsichtinako away

from them” “because they had committed a sin.”

It is impossible to tell to what degree the close parallels between Genesis and the Acoma

story reflect similar but independent cultural developments (primarily, the acquisition of the

ability to produce food) and to what degree they reflect direct influence by the Spanish

Christians who conquered and forcibly converted them. But it seems clear that the story as

transcribed in the early twentieth century is a trans-cultural hybrid, the byproduct of contact,

conquest, and colonization. Perhaps, because the Acoma were already village-dwelling food-

producers, their culture was less radically altered by the introduction of Western tropes than if

they had been nomadic food-gatherers. In any case, the crucial determinant of world views and

cultural views seems to be whether a population produces or gathers its food, rather than whether

it is Western or indigenous.

V.

For me, the most interesting moment in the Acoma story comes late in the narrative, after

the commission of original sin. As the story continues, like many native creation stories it

distinguishes between twins who have different relations to the culture’s core values and welfare.

In “Sky World”, Sky Woman, pregnant when she falls, has a single daughter on Turtle Island

(significantly, no male seems to be involved in her conception); the daughter becomes pregnant

in turn (like her mother, without male participation) and bears twin sons. One is born vaginally;

the other through her armpit. And--no surprise--when the sons begin to expand the creature-

created world they inherit, they have contrary impulses and impacts. The vaginally born twin

7

alters the world in a way that makes life easier. For example—my favorite detail--he creates

rivers that flow both ways, both up- and downstream, like liquid escalators: how convenient for a

people whose only mode of transportation was canoes. And he creates animals of prey that are

large, meaty, and slow afoot—easy and rewarding to hunt. His brother alters the world in ways

that make life difficult. For example, he creates mosquitoes so big their proboscises can penetrate

saplings. (Though the two brothers are often labelled “evil” and “good,” their “issues” seem

matters of natural rather than moral evil—concerns perhaps more significant among food-

gathering people, who have little property and are relatively egalitarian, according to Diamond

[90].)

In the Acoma story, the first twins are the sisters, and they are far harder to distinguish

than the Seneca brothers. Nautsiti is associated with the sun, Iatiku with corn. Nautsiti is paler,

Iatiku darker. Nautsiti’s mind is fast, Iatiku’s slow. Nautsiti handles corn roughly, Iatiku gently.

My students are inclined to see the Nautsiti, paler faster thinker, as the preferred sister and her

sister Iatiku as “retarded.” But consistent with the clue that she handles the fundamental food

crop gently, Iatiku proves truer to Acoma values. For an agricultural people, patience is a virtue:

the corn matures slowly, crops must not be rushed to harvest. In any case, as the tale develops,

the distinction between them becomes clearer.

At a decisive moment the sisters decide they should part. Nautsiti says to Iatiku:

We are not happy together. Let us share what we have in our baskets and

separate. I still have many things [because she was a selfish hoarder (11)]. These

animals in my basket, these sheep and cattle I will share with you, but it is

understood that these animals will demand much care. Iatiku answered that it

would be too hard a task to care for them and that she did not want her children to

have them. Nautsiti also pointed out some seeds and told Iatiku to take some of

them. They were seeds of wheat and vegetables. Nautsiti knew also that these

were going to be hard to raise, but she wanted to share them with Iatiku. But

Iatiku again did not want them for her children. In Nautsiti’s basket, too, there

were many metals. . . .[Iatiku declined these, as well] When Nautsiti had looked

this far into her basket she found something written. Nautsiti also offered this, but

Iatiku did not want it. (13-14)

At that point, her sister having spurned these gifts, Nautsiti departs, with this speech: “I

am going to leave you. We both understand that we are to increase our kind, and in a long time to

come we shall meet again and then you will be wearing clothes. We shall still be sisters, for we

have the same father, but I shall have the better of you again. I am going away into the East”

(14).

This episode anticipates--and preemptively explains--the arrival of Europeans, who come

bearing metals (both hard--steel weapons used to defeat the natives—and soft--silver the natives

learned to work into jewelry), sheep (which the natives adopted and used for wool and for food),

writing, and wheat. In historical terms, then, what Nautsiti offers Iatiku are things the Europeans

eventually brought to the New World and which might be regarded as evidence of European

cultural superiority. The effect of this episode, however, is to suggest that at some previous

historical juncture these things had been available to the Acoma, who spurned them as

inconsistent with their culture. Rather than granting the Europeans’ cultural advantages, then, the

Acoma here deploy a double strategy. They characterize those traits, on the one hand, as having

been rejected earlier; on the other, as having ancient tribal origins, which could justify

8

incorporating them at the right time. It’s a complex gesture that acknowledges, but also

neutralizes, the Europeans’ domination of the Acoma. Even as the story registers contact and

colonization, it characterizes Europeans as a wandering tribe descended from a misguided

foremother, come home like prodigal cousins.

As was the case with “The Creation,” the story’s hybridity is not a matter of the sheer

overwriting of the earlier oral versions by Western influence, but in this instance the indigenous

response it more obvious and creative—a kind of narrative rejoinder to contact. Indeed, one

could argue that the Acoma story “colonizes” European culture by characterizing its path, in a

master narrative, as a road deliberately not taken. In any case, it nicely illustrates how such

stories can function. While they purport to reveal how immemorial events shaped the present

state of a culture, what really happens is that a culture continually (re)shapes its history to keep it

consistent with its current state. Origin stories serve to maintain a sort of cultural homeostasis,

subtly reconciling past and present.

VI.

Over the years during which I taught this unit, I came to suspect that “Sky World” might

be more “historical” than it seems.

I had long been curious about the ancient mound-builders of North America when, on a

cross-country automobile trip in the 1990s, my wife and I stopped at the UNESCO World

Heritage Site in East St. Louis, Missouri, that documents the ancient city of Cahokia. There I

learned that Cahokia was in many ways comparable to contemporary cities of medieval Europe.

It was the center of a vast trading network--the capital, as it were, of the Mississippian culture,

which occupied much of the vast river basin. Later North Americans took a long time to reckon

with this civilization because, unlike the Maya, Aztecs, and Inca, the Cahokians built with earth,

not stone. After their civilization collapsed and Cahokia was abandoned in the thirteenth century,

the mounds eroded; by the time Europeans came across them, their ruins could be, and were,

mistaken for natural features of the landscape.

My long-delayed recognition of the mound-builders had a profound effect on my

understanding of American history and culture: I came to see all of “American history” as post-

apocalyptic insofar as it followed the collapse of an ancient, civilized regime. As a result, I began

my course in Native American literature, and sometimes my Introduction to American Studies,

with a brief unit on Cahokia. One of the mysteries of the mound-builders, of course, is what

became of them after the mysterious collapse of the culture. Presumably, many died of

starvation. But presumably, many also survived and dispersed, reverting to hunting and

gathering. The obvious way for them to migrate to hunting grounds would have been by water.

Cahokia is located, not by accident, near the Mississippi River, which gives access to the entire

river basin, which occupies most of the continental United States east of the Rocky Mountains.

According to a recent book on Cahokia, “The odd thing is that . . . the epic stories of a

founding city seem to be missing in the eastern Woodlands. It should have been commemorated

in tales and songs . . . .” (Pauketat 159). I came to suspect that the Seneca story offers a

condensed, coded record of this diaspora.

How so? Well, I thought my hypothesis could account for several features of the tale. It

could explain why the earliest inhabits of Turtle Island are characterized as so helpless, so

dependent on creatures, especially on water creatures. If the ancestors of the Seneca reached their

homelands in what is now upstate New York by canoe, it would have been a laborious upstream

9

trip (hence the appeal of those rivers that flowed both ways), and during that transition, their

survival would have depended entirely on their ability to trap, catch, or shoot creatures living in,

on, or near the water.

Moreover, my hypothesis could explain why the first, abandoned, world is a “sky world.”

The distinctive feature of the mound-builders culture would have been, after all, height of the

mounds rising from, and dominating, a vast largely deforested landscape. In this strictly

hierarchical culture, the tops of the mounds were apparently sacred spaces reserved for those of

high rank, priests and kings (who were rich and powerful enough to be buried with servants).

When I first taught “Sky World,” I was puzzled as to why the upper world seemed to be

inhabited by a food-producing people (the uprooted tree is the sole source of their food) while

the lower world was inhabited by a food-gathering people (who distinguish sharply between

animals that are predators and those that are prey). But my hypothesis could also explain that: the

story recounts the collapse (for whatever reasons) of the mound-builders system of producing

food. Remember that the transition from the upper world to the lower is a consequence of a clash

over how to respond to the mysterious illness of the chief’s daughter.

It so happened that this chief’s daughter was taken very ill with a strange

affection. All the people were very anxious as to the outcome of her illness. Every

known remedy was tried in an attempt to cure her, but none had any effect.

Near the lodge of this chief stood a great tree, which every year bore corn

used for food. One of the friends of the chief had a dream, in which he was

advised to tell the chief that in order to cure his daughter he must lay her beside

this tree, and that he must have the tree dug up. This advice was carried out to the

letter. While the people were at work and the young woman lay there, a young

man came along. He was very angry and said: “It is not at all right to destroy this

tree. Its fruit is all that we have to live on.” With this remark he gave the young

woman who lay there ill a shove with his foot, causing her to fall into the hole that

had been dug.

The chief is willing to sacrifice the entire tribe’s food supply to “cure” the princess. Only in a

highly stratified culture would it be thought appropriate to sacrifice the tribe’s sole source of

food for the scion of a ruling elite.

As I have acknowledged already (note 1), in other versions of the story, this incident is

presented differently: the woman is suspected of infidelity and her jealous husband nudges her

body into the hole with his foot. This is the case with the version featured by Anthony

Wonderley in Oneida Iroquois Folklore, Myth, and History. Wonderley argues for its

provenance and its consistency with other collected versions, but its highly literary language

makes me somewhat distrustful of its authenticity. Obviously, my hypothesis depends heavily on

a variant of this crucial episode. But whatever precipitates the descent of Sky Woman, most

versions characterize the upper world as abundant in food, including products of horticulture, so

even in other versions the fall of Sky Woman necessitates a temporary reversion to hunting and

gathering. What recommends the Curtin-Hewitt version to me is its attribution of the fall of Sky

Woman to a cultural, rather than a personal, crisis; that seems more worthy of the crucial role

this displacement has in the overall narrative--of removing the culture from one plane of

existence to another.

According to my hypothesis, then, this episode could be a condensed and encoded (you

might say encrypted) account of a political struggle over the allocation of dwindling resources

10

among the food-producing mound-builders. I am not suggesting that the story documents a

popular uprising as ending the mound-builders’ culture. Probably the collapse happened

gradually over an extended period. I suspect, rather, that the story condenses a longer conflict

over food allocation among the different ranks of a strictly hierarchical culture. As long as there

was ample food, the hierarchy was viable. But in a time of shortage, privilege would be harder to

defend. Dissension would have been inevitable.

Remarkably, the young man’s abuse of the chief’s ill daughter is not punished. Rather, it

is shown to lead to the creation of a very different social order—one in which people lack the

ability to produce their own food on a large scale and revert to hunting and gathering.

One problem with my hypothesis is that the narrative of the creation of the earth by water

creatures (known as the Earth Diver myth) predates the collapse of the mound-builders’ culture.

According to Wonderley, it did not originate with the Seneca and possibly not even in North

America (58). This means that it was not devised to encode this episode of indigenous history.

But a preexisting myth might have taken on added resonance in the wake of such a catastrophe.

Another consideration, of course, is whether there is evidence that the ancestors of the

Seneca were refugees, as it were, from Cahokia, or elsewhere in the mound-builder culture. On

the question of the origins of the Iroquois, my research turned up diverse opinions.

In Iroquoian Women, Barbara Alice Mann reports that “several traditions state that the

Alligewi (Mound Builders) were ancestors of the Iroquois, with some claiming that the Allgewi

had been adopted by the Iroquois after losing a war for Ohio. Although it is fashionable for

historian to sniff at these traditions, dismissing them as `myths,’ I have never seen any reasons

for slighting them, beyond European disdain” (34-35). (She is apparently referring to the Ohio

Mound Builders, rather than the Cahokians.)

Intriguingly, in Iroquois on Fire, Douglas M. George-Kanentiio says,

The origins of the Iroquois have been a matter of speculation for

anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists. Various theories as to where the

Iroquois came from have been suggested, but they are similar in one way: the

Iroquois are not from the northeast, having migrated to the region from another

place, most likely the southwest.

For the Iroquois, there is no doubt but that their identity as a distinct

people took form in the region south of the St. Lawrence River, north of the

Susquehanna , and east of the Niagara peninsula. But the ancestors of the Iroquois

originated in a place far from what would become their homelands, in an arid area

bordered by bare escarpments and hidden valleys.

The origin story of the Iroquois has been an oral tradition carried across

hundreds of generations. Those who are entrusted with the details are told of the

exodus of a small band of people from the southwestern regions of the North

American continent across the Great Plains. The band left the dry lands into

buffalo territory before arriving at the western banks of the Mississippi River

where it receives the waters of the Missouri and Ohio.

The oral tradition continues, describing the ecological prosperity of the

area and the alliance made with a particular nation whom the band referred to as

the Wolves, but are now known as the Pawnee. After living along the Mississippi

for some time the band traveled in canoes up the Ohio River before splitting into a

number of smaller groups.

11

I was surprised to learn that the Iroquois may have originated in the southwest, but if

their ancestors were cliff-dwellers, that would be consistent with the notion of an earlier “sky

world”—another failed food-producing culture. And the Earth Diver myth would appeal for its

resonance with a migration by water through the Mississippi basin. I am certainly not competent

to adjudicate among stories of the historical origins and migrations of these tribes, and as a non-

tribe member, I have no standing. But if the first “Sky World” version is genuine, it seems to

point to descent from a food-producing people. And that is what intrigued me in the first place. If

that is true, at least, this tale is also a hybrid story. But here the hybrid—created well before

contact with Europeans--combines elements of successive indigenous cultures, grafting a

hunting-gathering culture onto its food-producing predecessor (which, interestingly, reverses an

earlier historical transition from food-gathering to food-producing). That is, in my interpretation,

the Tale of the Sky World tells how the first North Americans invented agriculture only to have

it fail them disastrously. After the collapse, the surviving remnant reverted to an earlier, more

sustainable way of getting food--until the arrival of European food-producers, who eventually

drove the natives off the land. In my interpretation, the story reinforces my earlier point that the a

more significant cultural divide exists between food-producing and food-gathering cultures--both

of which developed in North and South America—than between indigenous and European

culture.

I cannot refrain from suggesting, finally, that this tale resonates interestingly with the

Acoma Story. I take the Acoma story as depicting a hypothetical, rather than an actual, dismissal

of European culture (when the two sisters part); in my reading, the Seneca story documents the

actual renunciation of a regime with a similar basis in food-production. As I suggested above, in

the Seneca story large-scale agricultural food production is an experiment that failed—and from

which indigenous people learned to renegotiate a more sustainable relationship with the earth. In

my reading the Tale of the Sky World becomes newly relevant to the human predicament in the

Anthropocene era, when the future of mankind is seriously threatened by the consequences of

climate change.

Endnotes

i Other versions of the story account for the descent of Skywoman very differently. In a version collected

from an Oneida, Demus Elm, in 1971, the woman’s rich husband suspects her of infidelity after she offers water to a sweaty lacrosse player; he has his servants pull up a white pine and push her through the resulting hole (Elm and Antone, 11-12). This version has overt Christian influence, including a reference to the Garden of Eden.

ii This Seneca story was recorded by Jeremiah Curtin, a white man fluent in the Seneca language.

In 1883, 1886, and 1887, Curtin spent many hours talking with Seneca men and women on the

Cattaraugus reservation in New York state. Curtin recorded this tale in the Seneca language, and it was

subsequently translated into English by I. W. B. Hewitt (himself a Tuscarora). Jeremiah Curtin and I. W. B.

Hewitt, "Seneca Fiction, Legends and Myths, Part 1," Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 32

(1910–11 [1918]). iii By calling it “hybrid,” I do not mean to question its authenticity or its genuine indigeneity. When natives

convert to Christianity, or adopt Christian beliefs and values—whether spontaneously or as is more often the case, under political pressure—new values may become integral parts of their culture; the phenomenon of syncretism is, among other things, a survival tactic of resilient peoples, and it predates contact, of course. (A classic articulation of this idea can be found in Simon Ortiz’s essay “Towards a National Indian Literature.”)

12

But this process is different from the more gradual evolution of native cultures before or in the absence of

contact with Europeans. And the provenance of this version of the Iroquois story is such that I think it may have been crafted for a non-Indian audience. It is not a transcription but an outsider’s interpretation, of the story.

Works Cited

“Creation.” Myths and Legends of the New York State Iroquois. Ed. Harriet Maxwell Converse

and Arthur Caswell Parker. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1908. 31-36.

Print.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton,

1997. Print.

Elm, Demus, and Harvey Antone. “The Oneida Creation Story.” Trans. and ed. Floyd G.

Lounsbury and Bryan Glick. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000. Print.

Genesis. Chs. 1-3. Print.

George-Kanentiio, Douglas M. Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. Westport,

CT: Praeger, 2006. Print.

Mann, Barbara Alice. Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Print.

The Origin Myth of Acoma. The Origin Myth of Acoma and Other Legends. Ed. Matthew W.

Stirling.Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1942. Print.

Ortiz, Simon. “Towards a National Indian Literature.” In American Indian Literary Nationalism.

Ed. Jace Weaver, Craig S. Womack, and Robert Warrior. Albuquerque: U of New

Mexico P, 2006. 253-60. Print.

Pauketat, Timothy R. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. New York:

Viking, 2009. Print.

“A Tale of the Sky World.” Seneca Fiction, Legends, and Myths. Ed. and Collected by Jeremiah

Curtin and J.N.B. Hewitt. Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1910-11. 460-

62. Print.

Wonderley, Anthony. Oneida Iroquois Folklore, Myth, and History. New York Oral Narratives

from the Notes of H.E. Allen and Others. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2004. Print.