Creation stories deal with both how the physical world as we know it came to be and how the many features of specific cultures originated. The stories here grapple with those permanently vexing questions about the human condition. How and when did gods and humans become separated? Where did Native Americans get certain important elements in their daily life--foodstuffs, like salt or corn, animals like the buffalo or horse, and when did the separation take place? Where did the different races come from? How did evil enter the world? What is death and how does it move in and out of life?
These legends of human creation and the bringing of culture reflect in myriad ways a common belief that people are living part of a natural world, brother and sister to the grain and the trees, the buffalo and the bear. Some Great Lakes tribes recount how they were originally made by the Great Sun or (with the Ojibway) Great Mystery. According to numerous others, the first woman was impregnated by (in the Southwest) a sunbeam, (in the Northwest) a salmon, or as the Iroquois say, by the west wind, giving birth to twin heroes who perform famous deeds. The creation myth of the Great Lakes Algonquians focuses on the wanderings of the god Glooscap, who tames the winds, obtains food and water for the people, and fashions various features of the landscape. He eventually goes off to the west to live in another world, where he makes aarrows in preparation for the battle of the last day.
The first human child is often endowed with supernatural powers; it outshines and outwits adults, grows up overnight, or performs great magick likea full fledged medicine man. His mischief does good, too; disregarding his parents, he wanders away from the camp, perhaps meeets and slays a monster or two, receives a token of magick or power, and often encounters an old woman (perhaps his nurse) who puts an ogre in his path to rid herself of his powerful presence. The results of these adventures are significant watermarks in the creation of a culture; before Stone Boy was born, the Sioux had no sacred ceremonies or prayers to guide them. Their spiritual development began when a pile of rocks instructed Stone Boy to build a sweat lodge for purification, for life, for wichosani, health.
On the other hand, the Brule Sioux say it was an old woman who was chosen to show her people the way to Grandfather Peyote, the sacred medicine that bestows health and power. Another heroine, White Buffalo Calf Woman, was a spirit who took the form of a beautiful maiden in shining white buckskin. She gave the tribes great herds of buffalo and taught them how to worship, how to marry, and how to cook. Her task completed, she walked away, stopped and rolled over, and turned into a black buffalo, a brown one, a red one, and finally into the sacred white buffalo calf.
Other culture heroines include Changing Woman of the Navajo, Turquoise Woman, White Shell Woman, and the Cheyenne's Little Sister, who calls the buffalo and feeds the people. The attributes of these heroines are often associated with fertility, conception, pregnancy, and of birth. Corn maidens bring the all-nourishing maize and the knowledge of planting. They also invent pottery and basketry, as their association with seeds and grains is also with containers and storage. Women ae often in charge of the flint which sparks the first cooking fire.
The origins of the grand medicine lodge is a prominent part of the creation story of the Great Lakes region, which features (like many others) a central set of twins, children of the west wind. When Wolf Brotheris drowned by evil manitous as he crosses an icy lake, he is brought back to life by the lamentations of Manabozho, White Rabbit, which become the foundation of the lodge. This particular story has an important characteristic in common with creation stories from further west: the culture hero (or heroes) is at the same time a trickster and a fool. He may breathe life into humans and be responsible for giving lustful or thieving urges that give him his life. "All living things," one Sioux elder says, "are tied together with a common navel cord"--the tall mountains and streams, the corn and the grazing buffalo, the bravest hero and the deceitful Coyote.
