Native American Myths and Beliefs

by Tom Lowenstein

  Below on Earth, in the early time when people and animals were one and spoke the same language, tempests were perpetually wrecking houses and canoes and making everyone miserable. So Blue Jay said: “We will sing the sky down.” He sang for five years, but nothing happened. “Call all the people!’’ Blue Jay ordered. They all sang incessantly, but the sky did not move. At last Snow Bird began singing. The sky began to tilt. It tilted until it touched the earth. They fastened it to Earth, and all the people climbed up into the sky.

  Once in the sky, the animals began to wage war against the sky folk. By cutting the bowstrings of their enemy, they routed the sky warriors. Then, headed by Eagle, the birds of prey attacked the southwest winds. The four elder winds were killed by the birds, but the youngest, the wind of the southwest, escaped—the only survivor. Their mission accomplished, most of the invaders returned home, and the sky sprang back into place. But some of those who had ascended remained in the sky: Woodpecker, Skate, Elk and Deer stayed there and became stars.

  This richly carved and painted pole, the work of a Northwest Coast haida sculptor, depicts Thunderbird. A skydweller imbued with great power, Thunderbird was widely believed to have been instrumental in creation.

  For the Cherokee, the skyvault was not only solid, but came down to the ground at “the sunrise place,” where it could be touched. Once, a party of young men decided to visit this place and gain access to the sky. They travelled east for a long time and eventually reached the spot where the sky meets the ground. There they found that the sky was a dome of solid rock that was suspended above the Earth and swung up and down. Each time it swung up, an opening appeared, which promptly closed as the dome swung down again. At sunrise, the sun appeared through this gap and proceeded to rise up the inside of the dome. The young men had waited for this moment to climb up onto the outside of the dome. But the first to attempt the feat was crushed by a falling rock. The others gave up and began their long trek home.

  Watery Realms

  In the mythologies of Native America any great body of water—be it the sea, a lake, or a river—is likely to be imbued with spiritual power. This power may belong to the water itself or to the life-giving fish or sea mammals it contains.

  According to a number of stories about the creation of the world, terra firma arose from primal waters (see page 21). Other myths describe later floods, like the flood that faced Noah in Judeo-Christian tradition, which are visited upon the earth by vengeful deities or spirits. The Caddo people of the southeastern Plains speak of a mythical time when the waters of the Earth dried up. On seeing this, the people said: “The river animals and fish have made this drought happen.” Crazed by thirst, they picked dead fish and turtles from the riverbeds, cut them into pieces and threw them around. This foolish behavior incurred the wrath of a sky spirit, who came down to Earth and punished them by causing a flood. Then the spirit led a small group of people up to the summit of a high mountain, and these survivors were joined, when the waters receded, by other people whom the great flood had transformed into alligators.

  The spirit of the octopus is invoked in this spectacular Tlingit mask. it was found in the grave of an Alaskan shaman.

  The Salmon People

  The waters of the Northwest Coast teem with an abundance of fish and sea mammals, and the traditions of the coastal peoples acknowledge a host of marine spirits. The Haida’s mythical account of their own origins begins on the seashore. One day, when the trickster deity, Raven, was scavenging on the shore, he saw a human face peeking out of a partly opened clamshell. Curious and eager for company, he pecked it open and the first Haida clambered onto dry land.

  No marine creature was more important than the salmon, which, during the summer months, makes spawning runs up every inlet of the Northwest Coast. The five types of salmon—chin -ook, sockeye, humpback, coho and dog salmon— were perceived as five distinct clans of salmon “people.” For most of the year these salmon folk looked human, and they lived in underwater communities beyond the horizon. Each spring, the salmon clans left their underwater lodges and sailed up inlets and rivers to their summer spawning grounds, where they allowed themselves to be caught as fish. Although all of the salmon clans set out together, the troublesome dog salmon were inclined to capsize the canoes of the coho; this myth explains why this particular species of salmon arrives later than the others. The generosity of the salmon people, in allowing their bodies to be caught and eaten by humans, was appreciated in the harvest rituals of the peoples of the Northwest Coast. If the spirits of the salmon people were suitably honored, they would be willing to be born again as fish. The Tsimshian performed salmon-welcoming ceremonies, and the Nootka reverently returned the bones of the first salmon catch to the water.

  Besides containing life-sustaining creatures such as salmon, seals and whales, the waters of the Northwest Coast were believed to harbor monstrous mythical beings who were responsible for storms and tides. One such beast is Sisiutl, the giant two-headed serpent of Kwakiutl lore. Sisiutl guards the underwater villages of other marine spirits and devours any human who dares to venture close to them. He is equally at home on land and in water, and he may sometimes take the form of a canoe that can propel itself along and devour seals. In many stories Sisiutl engages in battle with the Thunder bird (see pages 64–65)

  In seeking to manage the unpredictable power of the sea, inuit shamans relied on the friendly spirits of familiar animals. This carved walrus may have served as an amulet or charm for the protection of seafarers.

  The Power of the Sea

  Among the sea myths of Native America, those of the Canadian Inuit are unique in that they describe an all-powerful deity. Like the sea itself, this deity, personified as the goddess Nuliayuk, is both kind and forbidding, generous and destructive. Nulia -yuk’s story begins as a tragedy. As a marriageable young woman, she refused to take a husband and was banished by her father to an island. Her father eventually relented and went to bring her home. As they returned, however, a storm blew up. Her father blamed this misfortune on Nuliayuk and threw his daughter overboard. As she clung to the boat’s gunwale, he severed her fingers, which were transformed into the great sea mammals. Nuliayuk descended to the seabed where forevermore she exercised control over the sea creatures. Thereafter, the welfare of all coastal Inuit depended on Nuliayuk’s goodwill. When she was pleased with the way people were living, she provided ample game from the sea, but when people offended her by breaking taboos, she withheld the animals, and shamans had to travel to the seabed, to bargain for the release of game. Other versions of this myth refer to the sea goddess as Sedna or Takanakapsaluk (see page 117).

  There were, of course, many Native Amer ican societies that had no experience of the sea. Migration stories told by the desert peoples of the South west sometimes speak of the ocean as “the water with one shore.” This awareness of the sea was either transmitted by hearsay or came from distant generations that had migrated inland long before. Papago men of south- central Arizona used to make an annual pilgrimage to the Gulf of California to gather salt. Before they could return home with the salt deposits that they gathered on the beaches, the men had to enter the sea and offer prayer sticks and handfuls of corn to this alien power. To enter the sea at all was regarded by these nonswimmers as an act of heroism, and anything they gathered as they stood in the water, such as seaweed or drift-wood, became an amulet of special power. Those who returned from the ordeal enjoyed enhanced status and frequently became shamans. Special songs and orations were composed to commemorate their experience: “I sprinkled cornmeal as I ran into the wide-spreading water,” runs one song. “Though it crashed dangerously toward me, I did not heed it. But I walked near and cast the sacred meal. Dangerously it crashed, it rolled over me, it broke behind me, but firm I stood and sought what I might see.”

  The Sun, Moon and Stars

  According to their impact on diverse Native American cultures, the sun, moon and stars are assigned quite different personality tra
its. Thus, on the hot Plains, the sun is unquestionably male and predatory, while in the far north, where the spirit of the sun is shy and female, the moon is dominant and male. In Pawnee myth, the power of the sun spirit is tempered by the presence of the supreme creator, Tirawa. Another mythical creator, the Old Man of Blackfoot stories, is sometimes depicted as the sun’s friendly rival.

  In the mythic cosmogony of the Pawnee, all the celestial spirits ultimately owe their very existence and their powers to the Great Spirit, Tirawa. However, Tirawa arranged the sky spirits in such a way that there is a definite hierarchy. The most senior celestial spirit, after Tirawa, is the sun. This male sun spirit chased and seduced the spirit of the female moon, and their children, who rank immediately below them, are Great Star and Bright Star.

  The “father” sun of Pawnee myth is identified as the provider both of game animals and of all the edible plants and fruits of the Earth. In one tale, the generous and protective father sun goes to the aid of a poor boy and his grandmother, providing the boy with a robe that has the power to create buffalo. As a result of his alliance with the sun, the orphan, who formerly was treated as an outcast, is able to provide game and wild vegetables for a starving village. In a different Pawnee tale, another orphan is similarly blessed by the sun with a magnificent, supernatural elk. The elk provides the orphan with meat and skin, after which it rises from Earth and reenters the sun’s disk from where it had originally come.

  This 19th-century rawhide sioux warrior’s shield is decorated with the protective spirits of the sky. even after the coming of guns, such shields were thought to offer spiritual protection.

  The Triumph of the Sun

  The Blackfeet of Montana tell a story which eloquently expresses the remorseless and invincible power of the sun. The creator, Old Man, was out hunting with this celestial body. The sun took down a bag from his sky home and pulled out a pair of embroidered leggings. “These are great medicine,” he said. “All I have to do is put them on and walk around a patch of brush, and they set it on fire and drive out the deer for me to shoot.”

  The Sun Snarer

  In a story told by the Menomini people of Wisconsin, an unsympathetic sun is humbled by a resourceful young hunter. As he struggles to free himself from a magical, hair-spun snare, the mighty sun relies on the services of a puny mouse.

  Two men went out to hunt in the forest but refused to take their younger brother with them. Angry and upset to be left alone, and covering his body with his beaver skin robe, the young boy lay down to weep. The morning sun rose and at midday sent down a ray that shrank his robe and exposed the boy. “You have treated me cruelly and burned my robe,” he shouted at the sun. “Why have you punished me? I do not deserve it!” The sun merely smiled and held its peace.

  The boy gathered his burned robe and his bow and arrows and returned to the camp site. When his sister came into the tent and asked him why he was crying so bitterly, he told her of the sun’s cruel treatment.

  The next morning when the boy woke up, he said to her, “My sister, give me a thread!” She handed him sinew, but the boy returned it, saying, “No, I want a hair thread.” So his sister plucked a hair from her head, and as the boy took the ends between his fingers, the hair began to lengthen. Then the boy returned to the place where he had first lain, and making a noose from his sister’s hair, stretched it across the path. At the moment the sun touched it, the snare caught the sun around the neck and choked him. The cord was hot and became embedded in his neck. The sky grew dark, and the sun cried out for his spirits to help him. He implored a mouse to gnaw the thread, and after much labor, the mouse succeeded.

  At the center of this mask from the bella Coola people of the Northwest Coast is an awe-inspiring sun.

  The boy then said to the sun: “For your cruelty I’ve punished you. You may go now.” He returned to his sister, delighted with what he had done. And the sun rose once again and daylight returned.

  Old Man determined to steal the leggings, and that night, when the sun had retired, he snatched them and made off. He travelled a long way and then lay down, using the leggings as a pillow. In the morning he woke to the sun’s voice. “Old Man, what are you doing with my leggings under your head?” “Oh,” replied Old Man, “I just needed a pillow, so I used your leggings!” The next night, the same thing happened. Old Man ran till morning, but, fool that he was, he did not know that the whole world was the sun’s domain. He could never hide from its allseeing eyes.

  The Sexing of the Sun

  The Pawnee sun, and the sun of other Plains myths, is an unquestionably male character, while for the Inuit people of the Arctic, the sun is a female and somewhat tragic persona. The Inuit spirit of the sun was originally a young woman. Abused by her brother, she mutilated herself in anger and grief and then fled to the sky where she became siqinim inua, “the sun person.” The Arctic sun, often spotted with moltenlooking orange and red when it briefly appears in midwinter, is identified by the Inuit as the sun sister rising up to display her terrible wounds. Although she only plays a relatively minor role in Inuit myth, she was, in Alaska, regarded as the provider of energy to children. Women who were nursing infants used to stand on the tops of their igloos on winter mornings and expose their children’s legs to the rising sun. This was in-tended to let them absorb the sun’s rays, so giving them strength and making them fast runners and good hunters.

  The Arctic moon is prominent on long, clear winter nights so, unsurprisingly, it plays a prominent role in Inuit myth. Alingnaq, the guilty brother in the Inuit sun and moon myth, goes to the moon. There he lives in an immense igloo that he shares with the souls of the game animals. Caribou race around the inside walls of his lunar house. Outside, in an immense tub of sea water, Alingnaq keeps the souls of seals, whales and walruses. He has the power to give the bodies of these animals to humans. Alingnaq monitors people’s behavior closely. If they incur his displeasure, he withholds the animals on which people’s survival depends. At other times, as he wanders about the sky enjoying the carefree life of a celestial hunter, he provides earthly hunters with plenty of game. The fact that Aling naq, who had been exiled to the moon for violating the taboos against rape and incest, should also have a separate identity as a protective and productive deity is a paradox that is difficult for us to comprehend.

  The stars, crows and magpies on this Arapaho ghost Dance shirt, made c. 1890, represent spirits of ancestors and natural forces, whose support the dancer enlisted in trying to bring order back to the spiritual cosmos (see page 130).

  One explanation may be that Alingnaq, the guilty brother, is also a Trickster figure (see pages 76–77), and thus is both a creative and a de structive being.

  Other myths of the north see the moon as a benevolent force that comes to the aid of human beings. A story of the Gwich’in of Alaska describes how a poor boy, a shaman, who has magically provided his village with caribou, himself ascends to the moon. Before he disappears, he tells his mother: “I will go to the sky. There you will see me in the moon, holding a quarter of a caribou carcass. If there is going to be plenty of food on Earth, you will notice that I’m standing upright. But if there is going to be famine, I will be stooping over.” The image of the destitute and outcast boy who is aided by a guardian spirit and then transported to the heavens is common to many Native myths about the celestial bodies.

  The Boy Abducted by a Star

  Not all relations between people and the spirits of the sky are happy. The Tsimshian people of the Northwest Coast have a story that shows how the sky spirits can on occasion be cruel.

  One night a boy innocently talked to a star. “Poor fellow,” he said, “you must be cold!” The star heard the boy’s words and came down to take him up to the sky. The boy’s distraught parents searched everywhere for him. At last his father had news of his son. A woman who lived alone up a mountain said: “Your boy is tied to the smoke hole of the star man’s house. He cries all the time. The sparks of the fire are burning his body.”
Then she told the man to make several arrows and shoot them into the sky until one stuck at the edge of the hole of the sky. The man did as she advised, and he continued shooting until all of his arrows had stuck together, forming a line down to earth from the sky hole for him to climb up.

  Once in the sky, the father fetched wood and carved some figures resembling his child. Then he made a fire and scorched the images to test them; eventually he found one made of yellow cedar that cried like a child. The man then travelled further in the sky until he came to the star man’s house. The boy was, indeed, tied up near the edge of the smoke hole, and when the people inside stirred the fire in the house, the sparks made him cry. The father urged his son to be brave and bided his time.

  When the father knew that the people in the house were sleeping, he untied the boy and put the yellow cedar image in his place. Then they ran off. In the morning, when the fire was going, the cedar image cried, but after a while it stopped. The star people realized what had happened and gave chase. But the father and son had reached the sky hole in time. They descended to earth on the chain of arrows, then pulled the arrows down after them. That was how the parents got back their son who had been stolen by the star man.

  Spirits of Nature

  Spirits of nature in Native American belief vary considerably in their power and significance. Some are seen as vast and even universal potencies, while others may hold sway over more specific aspects of the world, such as the wind, the sea, the rain or the animals. Still other spirits may be minor ghosts or sprites, appearing infrequently and only in restricted localities.