Turtle answered, “If you will tie a rock about my left arm, I’ll dive for some.” Earth-Initiate did as Turtle asked, and then, reaching around, took the end of a rope from somewhere, and tied it to Turtle. When Earth-Initiate came to the raft, there was no rope there: he just reached out and found one. Turtle said, “If the rope is not long enough, I’ll jerk it once, and you must haul me up; if it is long enough, I’ll give two jerks, and then you must pull me up quickly, as I shall have all the earth that I can carry.” Just as Turtle went over the side of the boat, Father-of-the-Secret-Society began to shout loudly.
Turtle was gone a long time. He was gone six years; and when he came up, he was covered with green slime, he had been down so long. When he reached the top of the water, the only earth he had was a very little under his nails: the rest had all washed away. Earth-Initiate took with his right hand a stone knife from under his left armpit, and carefully scraped the earth out from under Turtle’s nails. He put the earth in the palm of his hand, and rolled it about till it was round; it was as large as a small pebble. He laid it on the stern of the raft. By and by he went to look at it: it had not grown at all. The third time that he went to look at it, it had grown so that it could be spanned by the arms. The fourth time he looked, it was as big as the world, the raft was aground, and all around were mountains as far as he could see. The raft came ashore at Ta’doiko, and the place can be seen to-day.
When the raft had come to land, Turtle said, “I can’t stay in the dark all the time. Can’t you make a light, so that I can see?” Earth-Initiate replied, “Let us get out of the raft, and then we will see what we can do.” So all three got out. Then Earth-Initiate said, “Look that way, to the east! I am going to tell my sister to come up.” Then it began to grow light, and day began to break; then Father-of-the-Secret-Society began to shout loudly, and the sun came up. Turtle said, “Which way is the sun going to travel?” Earth-Initiate answered, “I’ll tell her to go this way, and go down there.” After the sun went down, Father-of-the-Secret-Society began to cry and shout again, and it grew very dark. Earth-Initiate said, “I’ll tell my brother to come up.” Then the moon rose. Then Earth-Initiate asked Turtle and Father-of-the-Secret-Society, “How do you like it?” and they both answered, “It is very good.” Then Turtle asked, “Is that all you are going to do for us?” and Earth-Initiate answered, “No, I am going to do more yet.” Then he called the stars each by its name, and they came out. When this was done, Turtle asked, “Now what shall we do?” Earth-Initiate replied, “Wait, and I’ll show you.” Then he made a tree grow at Ta’doiko—the tree called Hu’kimtsa; and Earth-Initiate and Turtle and Father-of-the-Secret-Society sat in its shade for two days. The tree was very large, and had twelve different kinds of acorns growing on it.
After they had sat for two days under the tree, they all went off to see the world that Earth-Initiate had made. They started at sunrise, and were back by sunset. Earth-Initiate travelled so fast that all they could see was a ball of fire flashing about under the ground and the water. While they were gone, Coyote and his dog Rattlesnake came up out of the ground. It is said that Coyote could see Earth-Initiate’s face. When Earth-Initiate and the others came back, they found Coyote at Ta’doiko. All five of them then built huts for themselves, and lived there at Ta’doiko, but no one could go inside of Earth-Initiate’s house. Soon after the travellers came back, Earth-Initiate called the birds from the air, and made the trees and then the animals. He took some mud, and of this made first a deer; after that, he made all the other animals. Sometimes Turtle would say, “That does not look well: can’t you make it some other way?”
Some time after this, Earth-Initiate and Coyote were at Marysville Buttes. Earth-Initiate said, “I am going to make people.” In the middle of the afternoon he began, for he had returned to Ta’doiko. He took dark red earth, mixed it with water, and made two figures—one a man, and one a woman. He laid the man on his right side, and the woman on his left, inside his house. Then he lay down himself, flat on his back, with his arms stretched out. He lay thus and sweated all the afternoon and night. Early in the morning the woman began to tickle him in the side. He kept very still, did not laugh. By and by he got up, thrust a piece of pitch-wood into the ground, and fire burst out. The two people were very white. No one to-day is as white as they were. Their eyes were pink, their hair was black, their teeth shone brightly, and they were very handsome. It is said that Earth-Initiate did not finish the hands of the people, as he did not know how it would be best to do it. Coyote saw the people, and suggested that they ought to have hands like his. Earth-Initiate said, “No, their hands shall be like mine.” Then he finished them. When Coyote asked why their hands were to be like that, Earth-Initiate answered, “So that, if they are chased by bears, they can climb trees.” This first man was called Ku’ksu; and the woman, Morning-Star Woman.
When Coyote had seen the two people, he asked Earth-Initiate how he had made them. When he was told, he thought, “That is not difficult. I’ll do it myself.” He did just as Earth-Initiate had told him, but could not help laughing, when, early in the morning, the woman poked him in the ribs. As a result of his failing to keep still, the people were glass-eyed. Earth-Initiate said, “I told you not to laugh,” but Coyote declared he had not. This was the first lie.
By and by there came to be a good many people. Earth-Initiate had wanted to have everything comfortable and easy for people, so that none of them should have to work. All fruits were easy to obtain, no one was ever to get sick and die. As the people grew numerous, Earth-Initiate did not come as often as formerly, he only came to see Ku’ksu in the night. One night he said to him, “Tomorrow morning you must go to the little lake near here. Take all the people with you. I’ll make you a very old man before you get to the lake.” So in the morning Ku’ksu collected all the people, and went to the lake. By the time he had reached it, he was a very old man. He fell into the lake, and sank down out of sight. Pretty soon the ground began to shake, the waves overflowed the shore, and there was a great roaring under the water, like thunder. By and by Ku’ksu came up out of the water, but young again, just like a young man. Then Earth-Initiate came and spoke to the people, and said, “If you do as I tell you, everything will be well. When any of you grow old, so old that you cannot walk, come to this lake, or get some one to bring you here. You must then go down into the water as you have seen Ku’ksu do, and you will come out young again.” When he had said this, he went away. He left in the night, and went up above.
All this time food had been easy to get, as Earth-Initiate had wished. The women set out baskets at night, and in the morning they found them full of food, all ready to eat, and lukewarm. One day Coyote came along. He asked the people how they lived, and they told him that all they had to do was to eat and sleep. Coyote replied, “That is no way to do: I can show you something better.” Then he told them how he and Earth-Initiate had had a discussion before men had been made; how Earth-Initiate wanted everything easy, and that there should be no sickness or death, but how he had thought it would be better to have people work get sick, and die. He said, “We’ll have a burning.” The people did not know what he meant; but Coyote said, “I’ll show you. It is better to have a burning, for then the widows can be free.” So he took all the baskets and things that the people had, hung them up on poles, made everything all ready. When all was prepared, Coyote said, “At this time you must always have games.” So he fixed the moon during which these games were to be played.
Coyote told them to start the games with a foot-race, and every one got ready to run. Ku’ksu did not come, however. He sat in his hut alone, and was sad, for he knew what was going to occur. Just at this moment Rattlesnake came to Ku’ksu, and said, “What shall we do now? Everything is spoiled!” Ku’ksu did not answer, so Rattlesnake said, “Well, I’ll do what I think is best.” Then he went out and along the course that the racers were to go over, and hid himself, leaving his head just sticking out of a hole. By this time
all the racers had started, and among them Coyote’s son. He was Coyote’s only child, and was very quick. He soon began to outstrip all the runners, and was in the lead. As he passed the spot where Rattlesnake had hidden himself, however, Rattlesnake raised his head and bit the boy in the ankle. In a minute the boy was dead.
Coyote was dancing about the home-stake. He was very happy, and was shouting at his son and praising him. When Rattlesnake bit the boy, and he fell dead, every one laughed at Coyote, and said, “Your son has fallen down, and is so ashamed that he does not dare to get up.” Coyote said, “No, that is not it. He is dead.” This was the first death. The people, however, did not understand, and picked the boy up, and brought him to Coyote. Then Coyote began to cry, and every one did the same. These were the first tears. Then Coyote took his son’s body and carried it to the lake of which Earth-Initiate had told them, and threw the body in. But there was no noise, and nothing happened, and the body drifted about for four days on the surface, like a log. On the fifth day Coyote took four sacks of beads and brought them to Ku’ksu, begging him to restore his son to life. Ku’ksu did not answer. For five days Coyote begged, then Ku’ksu came out of his house bringing all his bead and bear-skins, and calling to all the people to come and watch him. He laid the body on a bear-skin, dressed it, and wrapped it up carefully. Then he dug a grave, put the body into it, and covered it up. Then he told the people, “From now on, this is what you must do. This is the way you must do till the world shall be made over.”
About a year after this, in the spring, all was changed. Up to this time everybody spoke the same language. The people were having a burning, everything was ready for the next day, when in the night everybody suddenly began to speak a different language. Each man and his wife, however, spoke the same. Earth-Initiate had come in the night to Ku’ksu; and had told him about it all, and given him instructions for the next day. So, when morning came, Ku’ksu called all the people together, for he was able to speak all the languages. He told them each the names of the different animals, etc., in their languages, taught them how to cook and to hunt, gave them all their laws, and set the time for all their dances and festivals. Then he called each tribe by name, and sent them off in different directions, telling them where they were to live. He sent the warriors to the north, the singers to the west, the flute-players to the east, and the dancers to the south. So all the people went away, and left Ku’ksu and his wife alone at Ta’doiko. By and by his wife went away, leaving in the night, and going first to Marysville Buttes. Ku’ksu staid a little while longer, and then he also left. He too went to the Buttes, went into the spirit house, and sat down on the south side. He found Coyote’s son there, sitting on the north side. The door was on the west.
Coyote had been trying to find out where Ku’ksu had gone, and where his own son had gone, and at last found the tracks, and followed them to the spirit house. Here we saw Ku’ksu and his son, the latter eating spirit food. Coyote wanted to go in, but Ku’ksu said, “No, wait there. You have just what you wanted, it is your own fault. Every man will now have all kinds of troubles and accidents, will have to work to get his food, and will die and be buried. This must go on till the time is out, and Earth-Initiate comes again, and everything will be made over. You must go home, and tell all the people that you have seen your son, that he is not dead.” Coyote said he would go, but that he was hungry, and wanted some of the food. Ku’ksu replied, “You cannot eat that. Only ghosts may eat that food.” Then Coyote went away and told all the people, “I saw my son and Ku’ksu, and he told me to kill myself.” So he climbed up to the top of a tall tree, jumped off, and was killed. Then he went to the spirit house, thinking he could now have some of the food; but there was no one there, nothing at all, and so he went out, and walked away to the west, and was never seen again. Ku’ksu and Coyote’s son, however, had gone up above.
—Roland B. Dixon. “The Maidu Creation Myth.” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xvii, 39, no. 1.—Quoted in Stith Thompson (ed.). Tales of the North American Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968 (originally published 1929), pp. 24–30.
CUPENO
A Bag Hung in Space In a second, fragmentary California myth—this one from the Cupeno tribe—Coyote has a more elevated origin. Both temporally (he is one of the first creatures) and spacially (he emerges from a bag suspended in space), the myth shows him to be most proximate to the creator. Even Coyote’s language is special: emanating from a creature of the middle realm between the earth and the sky, it serves shamans from the lower world to transcend their muddy origin and communicate with the high gods.
Lévi-Strauss and other structuralists have used characters like Coyote to explain the function of myths as a reconciliation of opposites. They point out that while the primary opposition is that existing between the sacred and profane (heaven and earth, immortality and mortality, life and death), it is often expressed at a more mundane level as the distinction between farmers (those who do not kill what they eat) and hunters (those who do kill what they eat). Because Coyote and other scavengers (such as Raven, his more northern mythological counterpart) eat meat but do not kill it, they act to reconcile these opposites and, by extension, the grand oppositions life and death and heaven and earth.
IN THE BEGINNING all was dark and void. A bag hung in space. In time it opened out into two halves. From one half came coyote (isil), from the other came wild cat (tukut). They immediately fell to arguing as to which was the older. Coyote was the older because he spoke first. People had been created, but they could not see. They were in mud and darkness. They heard coyote call first and they knew that he was older. The people were not in the bag with coyote and wild cat. They arose from the mud and started to sing. Shamans today understand coyote, because people heard him first.
—E.W. Gifford. “Clans and Minorities of Southern California.” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 1918, 14 (2). 192.
OKANAGON
Origin of the Earth and People The Okanagon Tribe from the northern forests (in the northwestern United States and British Columbia) is part of the Salishan subdivision of the Algonquin language family. Once paleolithic hunters and fishermen, the Okanagon developed a new mythology when they turned to farming under the influence of white settlers.
White influence is recognizable in this creation myth, where earlier belief in the earth as a divine mother is shadowy and adapted to a rather Christian framework. It is now the Chief who made the earth and then fashioned people from her soil, and it is he who established the significance of the directions.
The Okanagon informant assumes his people’s primacy even in this largely borrowed myth, and concludes that Indians are the finest of races, closest to the true, pure color of earth.
THE CHIEF (or God) made seven worlds, of which the earth is the central one. There are three worlds above, and three below. Maybe the first priests or white people told us this, but some of us believe it now. When the Chief made the earth, he stretched it out with its head to the west, therefore the west is the head of the earth. Heaven, or the place of the dead, is in that direction, and the great rivers all flow westward. West is the direction the souls take. Some say they follow the course the waters take. Perhaps in the beginning the earth was a woman. Some Indians say so, and state that the Chief stretched her body across the world (probably the water), and that she lay with her feet east and her head west. He transformed her into the earth we live on, and he made the first Indians out of her flesh (which is the soil). Thus the first Indians were made by him from balls of red earth or mud, and this is why we are reddish-colored. Other races were made from soil of different colors. Afterwards some of these different races met at certain points and intermingled, and thus the intermediate shades of color have arisen. As red earth is more nearly related to gold and copper than other kinds of earth, therefore the Indians are nearer to gold, and finer than other races.
—James A. Teit. Folk-Ta
les of the Salishan and Sahaptin Tribes. Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, 1917, II, 84. New York: G. E. Stechert, for the American Folk-Lore Society.
SALISHAN-SAHAPTIN
Making the World and People Foreign influence is also evident in this Salishan-Sahaptin myth from Similkameen, but the merging of Judeo-Christian and native Indian features is more subtle here than in the Okanagon myth. While one great Chief still makes the earth, he does so in typical earth-diver fashion, rolling it out from a single small ball and connecting the realms of the world by an axis mundi. Even the “Adam and Eve” motif of derivative feminine creation is modified here: the first people are wolves, kin to all animals, and the first wolf-woman is made from the wolf-man’s tail. The Old Testament assertions of separate animal and human creations and of the superiority of people over all other creatures is hard to maintain in this Indian myth where all creatures are finally related. Although the form of this myth may be Judeo-Christian, the message is still Indian.
THE CHIEF ABOVE made the earth. It was small at first, and he let it increase in size. He continued to enlarge it, and rolled it out until it was very large. Then he covered it with a white dust, which became the soil. He made three worlds, one above another, the sky world, the earth we live on, and the underworld. All are connected by a pole or tree which passes through the middle of each. Then he created the animals. At last he made a man, who, however, was also a wolf. From this man’s tail he made a woman. These were the first people. They were called “Tai’en” by the old people, who knew the story well, and they were the ancestors of all the Indians.
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