Native American Tribes and Creation Stories

There are hundreds of Native American tribes that still exist in America today and each of them have their own creation stories. In some ways, they are vastly different from each other and from European cultural stories, but in other ways, they are eerily familiar.

Who were the gods?

In the stream of Native American myths of creation, the gods are known by many names. The Great Spirit and simply The Creator are the most common. The Southwest Apache name for the creator is One Who Lives Above. Great Chief Above is a derivative of Great Spirit and used by the Chelan people, hunter gatherers from the Washington state area. The sun god of the Lakota (or Sioux) is referred to as Something that Moves. To the Michigan Chippewa, the earth was like a family: Father Creator, Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, and Grandfather Sun. The Tribes of the Creek Confederacy called god Master of Breath, drawing from the many stories of animating immortal breath. Grandfather of All Things is the name the Florida Seminoles use for the creator god, and the Navajo call him the Talking God. The Navajo also speak of the creator as the Holy Supreme Wind. They also tell a story of the Ever Changing Woman that had twins with a sun god. Those twins went on to perform great deeds of arms, reflecting the Greek story of Apollo and Artemis. The Lake Erie area Iroquois value the Woman who Dreamed Dreams.

How the world was created?

Among the stories of the Native American tribes, the themes of water and mud appear to be the strongest. For the Lakota, the world is wiped clean in a flood reminiscent of Noah’s Ark. After the flood, the Creator allows four animals to attempt to reach the bottom of the ocean. It is only the turtle who is able to bring the mud up from the bottom and reform the land. This creator also created things in the world by singing them, and his tears became the oceans and rivers. The South Appalachian Cherokee have a similar story, but the water beetle is the savior. It took a while for the mud to dry, and when a buzzard sent out to scout the land flapped his wings, the mountains and valleys formed where he struck. For the Iroquois, the helldiver - with the aide of the beaver and turtle - brings up the mud to support the Dreamer of Dreams after she is expelled from the Sky World.

The Apache offer a different slant. The gods are able to bring things into being by merely thinking of them. The Creator forms a ball of mud and this is hung by a string to create the earth. The heavenly bodies are created the same way but with different spheres. It is said that all of the earth was made from the sweat of all four gods together when they were kicking the ball of the earth around.

It is only the Southwestern Navajo whose world is created by people. The people are created by the gods, and they are responsible for making all of the things of the earth by agreement and then naming them.
How where humans created?

For the Navajo, people emerged from the underworld into this world or the Glittering World. The first man was created in the east by a mixture of black and white clouds. The first woman was created in the west with a mixture of yellow and blue clouds. It was this race of people that created and named all in the world. Current people are made from a mix of white and yellow corn. There is also a Navajo story about a group of insects who were doomed to stay that way until they did not quarrel with their neighbors. When they learned this lesson, they were turned into people.

There is much diversity among the stories of human origin. The Chelan believed that the Creator gave a beaver to the world’s animals with the instructions that it be cut into 12 pieces and distributed through the world. When that was done by the young wolf, the piece of the beaver were the origins for the 12 Native American tribes.

The Chippewa believe the Great Spirit breathed into a combination of mud and a shell to create people. They also had a story about a lone woman and a shape shifting dog who created a son that was the first Chippewa. The Choctaw and Creek tribes have a similar story about people being made from mud. These people had to climb through a long cave in order to reach the light of the land. The Great Lakes region Pottawatomie also have the idea of four sons born to a god and a firekeeper’s daughter. The sons were sent to the four cardinal points, echoing a Comanche story of how people were created from dust from the four corners of the earth.

The Iroquois Dreamer of Dreams lives in her new world of mud, but when the Supreme Spirit of the Sky World saw it, he thought it was beautiful and populated it with people. For the Apache, humans are an experiment that went through mud and wood prototypes before ending with this type. Cherokee women were able to have babies every four days in the beginning, but the Creator changed this to once a year to prevent overcrowding. The powerful west coast dwelling Chinook come from magical eggs made by the Creator and protected by the Thunderbird. A giantess broke some and was burned by the Bird. Those that hatched became the Chinook.

Lakotas have a story that resonates with the paradise lost theme. Spider the trickster convinced people of the underworld to seek out new lives in the over world. One man agreed, saw it was beautiful, and convinced his whole tribe to move. When they realized they would have to endure hardship and hunger, they tried to go back, but Spider already had sealed the doorway. Another popular myth states that people were made by red, white, yellow, and black earth that came from the Creator’s pipe bag.

What does it all mean?

A study of these cultures and their myths reveals many differences exist between Native American and European culture creation stories. However, the most striking point is how many similarities there are. Not only are the stories similar to each other, but they are similar to our Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark stories. This points to a spot in the collective unconscious that spans centuries and oceans. All people want to know how it first began. There is something about an All God, some mud, and divine breath that speaks to us. Though the stories may be different in the details, they are the same in the spirit.