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iroquois and navajo creation stories
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The Creation Story - An Iroquois Legend
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When the modern person ponders the formation of human beings, our mind automatically goes to Adam and Eve, whom were the first man and woman created by God according to the Book of Genesis. Before there was Adam and Eve, diverse cultures came up with myths about the construction of humans. These myths included: “The Song of Creation” from the Rig Veda, An African Creation Tale, From the Popol Vuh, and A Native American Creation Tale “How Man Was Created” Each one of these legends gives a diverse perspective on the creation of human beings.
A Native American Creation Tale “How Man Was Created” tells a story of a Mohawk Indian known as Sat-kon-se-ri-io or the “Good Spirit.” The Mohawks believed that he produced all of the creatures and placed them on earth to live and burgeon. It was said that he felt something was still missing and decide to make a creäture that resembled him. He did this by going to the river, gathering some clay and crafting a man out of it. He then placed the clay into the fire but eventually fell asleep. When he finally woke up, he found the clay man scorched black, which is said to be the first African. This did not gratify the Good Spirit so he repeated the process a second time going to sleep again. When he awoke this instance, the clay man was insipid and under cooked; this was the first white man. Still not pleased with the outcome, he did it one more time. For the third endeavor, the Good Spirit made sure he didn’t fall asleep. When he removed the third man from the fire he was said to be “just right” he was red a man, he was the first Mohawk Indian.
This fable, created by the Mohawk Indians proposes that they believed in one higher power that created the world. It also implies they beli...
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...h and its people.
Unlike “The Song of Creation” from the Rig Veda, the Popol Vuh thought the earth and humanity were birthed from spiritual gods. The Mayans believed in several higher powers and lionized them all. Both cultures had their individual views on how the earth was formed, who were the first humans, and who created them. This contradiction builds on the many aspects of today’s reality and how did it all begin.
All in all, every culture and religion has their personal beliefs on human civilization and how the earth was produced. The most frequent belief modern day of the first humans, is the story of Adam and Eve. There is a plethora of theories, but none that are one hundred percent accurate. If you ask me, scientist will never know how earth came about and they will never identify who the first humans were. Every “story of creation” is a myth.
People have faith in many things. Some believe in many gods, one god, or that their is no god. All those people have their opinions on how the world was made and each of these stories from different people have some similarities. Those stories are the Navajo, Inca, and Zulu creation stories. All three made by different people in different continents and at different times but they all have some wide ranges of similarities in them.
The Mohawk Indians believe that the Good Spirit created all animals and other creatures on Earth first. Nevertheless, he felt that something was missing. Therefore, he took a piece of clay he found near the river and created a little clay human figure. Then, he built fire and put the little man in the fire until it baked. However, songs of the birds and the river make him fell asleep next to the fire and let the little man burn. The Mohawks believe that he was the first black man. Unsatisfied with the result, he decided to make another man. This time he determined to stay awake but unfortunately, the river sang its song and made him feel asleep again. He woke up and realized that the second little man was half-baked. The Mohawks say that this was the first white man. Once again, the Good Spirit was unsatisfied with the result so he chose red clay and modeled the third little man carefully. He stood next to the fire waiting the whole time the little man was baked. He took it out of the fire when it was done and the little red man became the first Mohawk Indian. The second tale is from the Hebrew Bible. It is the story of “Paradise, and the
The Native American people have great respect and reverence for nature, in fact the animal spirits and other elemental spirits represent important roles in their daily life (Taylor). They view the world as an interconnected fabric of harmonious and inharmonious interaction between people and nature. One tribe in particular, the Miwok, consider the Coyote as an ancestor and creator of man; additionally, they consider Coyote as a trickster god (Godchecker). A Miwok myth recount a story from long ago in which animals were like people. In this tale, the Coyote and Falcon decided to create man. Coyote pretended to be dead, and permitted the buzzards and crows to eat his posterior (Bastian and Mitchell). As they dug in, he trapped them inside, and
Myths – as they are known to most of the world – give insight into the pasts of various countries and religions as the people saw them. They have been used to explain phenomenons in nature or describe the tales of courageous and important men and women throughout history. Creation myths in particular define how the Earth itself was created, along with the universe, heavens, hell, people, and creatures that exist today. Genesis of Christian mythology, for instance, tells the story of how the single deity God spoke and formed everything from day and night to man and woman. Various African creation myths, such as with the Yoruba, explain the creation of the Earth through at least a couple gods working together and all life sprouting from a seed. But all share a common themes, such as a form of chaos or nothingness before life is created. Joseph Campbell notes that “... the idea of an absolute ontological distinction between God and man – or between gods and men, divinity and nature - first became an important social and psychological force in the near East, specifically Akkad, in the period of the first Semetic Kings, c. 2500 B.C.,” showing another similar trait – a god or set of gods exists to create in each story (626). Joseph Campbell makes a comparison of how both Genesis and the Book of the Dead of Egypt share the same idea of their bodies belonging to their god in some way, or being reabsorbed into them at death (630-631). Others, like the Japanese and Iroquois creation myths, claim the Earth was once covered entirely of water before land was formed. Adam and Eve of Genesis and Izanagi and sister Izanami of Shintoism provide examples of myths that share both a passive and active pair of people who eventually create the Earth's population. In any case, certain popular creation myths, some closely tied to prominent religions, share more common characteristics than others. An entire sub-study, called comparative mythology, gives insight into this subject.
The emergence myth differs greatly from the common western Christian way of thinking. In Christianity, humans were once in a perfect place until they disobeyed God and were sent into the current world, which is thought of as a punishment. In the Tewa Pueblo emergence myth, the people are stuck in a place of darkness until their friend, the Mole, helps lead them to a new world (Marriott, Rachlin 66-67). They do not view this world as their punishment but as a good place, improved from where they were before. Many of the things that appear in this myth are characteristic of other Native American myths as well. For example, Mole is an animal but talks and acts similarly to a human. This shows the great respect that the culture held for animals. They did not believe that they were superior to or dominant over the animals. They recognized their differences to th...
The Popol Vuh is a collection of early Mayan religion and history and is divided into three parts. The first part is their creation myth, and states the world was created by Gucumatz and Tepeu – Mayan dual gods. They created the earth, animals that were food for the humans, and finally created humans from maize to worship them. “This generation, which includes the present human race, is able to worship and nourish the gods.” (Nicoletta Maestri). The second part of the Popol Vuh is the story of the Hero Twins. Hunahpu and Xbalanque were twin brothers who became great ballplayers. They played a ball game with the Lords of Xibalba who killed their father and uncle. They defeated the Lords of Xibalba and revived their father and uncle, and soon after the twins became the moon and the sun. The third and final part of Popol Vuh are narratives and details of the Quiche noble dynasties up until the 16th century. When Gucumatz and Tepeu created humans from maize, those first humans would become part of the Quiche dynasties. “They were able to praise the gods, and wandered the world until they reached a mythical place where they could receive the gods into sacred bundles and take them home.” (Nicoletta
People of the ancient world often had questions about their existence and how life and people came to be on earth. Most ancient people answered these questions through religion. The Sumerians were the first important group of people to inhabit Mesopotamia and they were known to practice a form of worship called polytheism, which is the worship of several gods. Mesopotamians associated different gods with natural events, emotions, and other occurrences. Their main deities included An (the god of the heavens), Enlil (Lord Storm), Enki (god of wisdom), and Nihursaga (the mother of all living things)(p.22). The Mesopotamians believed that the gods controlled all of the events and occurrences in life. An ancient text called “Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess” (p.34) helps us understand how the M...
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are both myths that begin as creation myths, explaining how the universe and, later on, humans came to be. These types of myths exist in every culture and, while the account of creation in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Enuma Elish share many similarities, the two myths differ in many ways as well. Both myths begin creation from where the universe is a formless state, from which the primordial gods emerge. The idea of the earth and sky beginning as one and then being separated is also expressed in both myths.
Throughout the world there are various cultures with varying religions and creation stories to explain the creation of the Earth and it’s inhabitants. Of these creation stories two with similar and also different characteristics is the Creation story in the book of Genesis which is a part of the 1st Testament in the Hebrew Bible and explains the creation of Earth and humans, and the Theogony which is the greek creation story that describes the origins of the Earth and the Greek Gods. Both the Theogony and the Creation in Genesis show nature as a blessing for humans but it can also affect them negatively, However the myths differ in the ways that the Earth and humans were created and how humans interact with the deities of the creation stories.
Each culture has its own distinct origin myth, including the Hebrew and Cheyenne. Origin myths are most likely the first stories human beings told and they explain how we came to be. There are many similarities and differences between the Cheyenne origin myth, “How the World was Made,” and the Hebrew origin myth, “In the Beginning,” that tell how each culture views its god, nature, and humanity's relationship to each of these.
This varies from an ash and elm tree to pea-pod plants. In the Chinese creation myth, Nuwa went to the Yellow River and formed humans from clay after Ran-gu the dragon dies. Nuwa than realized how long it would take to make enough humans to inhabit over the very vast Earth so, she began flinging mud across the land. Mankind in the Inuit creation myth arose from a pea-pod plant placed by Raven. The offspring of the pea plant was believed to be the first creatures that the Earth possessed. The Norse believed the human race was initiated when Odin lifted an ash and elm tree which produced the human race. This tree was made from the cruel god Ymir’s hair after he was brutally killed. The concept of people being made from organic material is most likely the cause of early being’s dependence on nature. Many people during the time period of this belief used organic material to create shelter which was a long and difficult process. These ancient people believed that the process of creating mankind was lengthy, as the house, therefore, they must have been derived from the same product used to create their
other Native American tribes. Although first and foremost the Myth follows an emergence story of how
In this paper I will discuss three similarities and four differences between Enuma Elish-The Epic of Creation (King,1902) and Genesis 1:1-3:24 as described by Michael Fishbane (Fishbane, 1979). These writings are selected to describe the story of creation of the earth and the inhabitants of the earth. However, each author has a very different view and way of explaining what they have interpreted the sacred texts to mean.
Genesis is the first creation story. God creates, establishes, and puts everything into motion. After putting all of this in motion he then rests. He creates everything on earth in just seven days. Before creation Gods breath was hovering over a formless void. God made earth and all of the living creatures on earth out of nothing. There was not any pre-existent matter out of which the world was produced. Reading Genesis 1 discusses where living creatures came from and how the earth was formed. It’s fascinating to know how the world began and who created it all. In Genesis 1 God is the mighty Lord and has such strong power that he can create and banish whatever he would like. His powers are unlike any others. The beginning was created from one man only, God.
After wisdom is turned on, a lot of people start thinking about human origins. Many great people have tried to explain the origin of human, they also proposed a variety of unusual ideas and explains, but most people are not accepted their idea. However, the first part of the Bible have a good explanation of the origin of human. There are two different theory about the origins of humanity in the Bible. God according to his own image to create a human, designed to allow humans to communicate with him, to respond to his love, and to serve as managing the affairs responsibilities.