Comparing The Iroquois Nation's Creation Myth In Coyote And Buffalo

Since the beginning of civilization, countless cultures, including the Cherokee and Iroquois, developed stories in order to explain their views on creation and reflect the values and traditions in their culture. The Iroquois developed a myth called “The World on the Turtle’s Back”, while the Cherokee recorded “The Story of Corn and Medicine”. Both myths reveal the importance of nature, including plants, in the Iroquois and Cherokee cultures, and they follow a similar path of creation that starts with water and darkness and the expanding of mud to form land. However, the Iroquois myth focuses on human harmony with nature and the disharmony between genders, while the Cherokee myth points out the disharmony with nature and the greater equality

There were, without a doubt, myriads of Native American tribes before America was discovered, explored, and eventually colonized. Although their numbers were great, each with a separate set of languages and traditions, one prominent custom they had in common was oral tradition, and like every other culture, Native Americans made sense of their world through storytelling. Many of these stories are creation myths or origin tales where the primary theme is nature, and among these unique stories are “Changing Woman and the Hero Twins” and “Origin of the Sun Shower,” with the first from the Navajo and the latter from the Huron-Wendat. In order to have a better understanding of Native Americans and their general view of nature, one can compare them

The Native American origin myth "The Earth on Turtle's Back", retold by Michael Cuduto and Joseph Bruchac, displays how connected the Onondaga individuals are with the spiritual world and their inner self. They rely deeply on their instincts and thoughts related to them to lead them to make important decisions within their lives about the future. their culture has many compelling attributes as well as a strict cultural system and ritualistic bahaviors. The Onondaga individuals adhere to a lifestyle that creates happiness on a level that far surpasses what we, in the modern age, see as acceptable.

In the short story titled The Earth on Turtle’s Back, the author Onondaga explains how the Native Americans feel about other living things sustaining unique power against each other. Onondaga supports his explaining about the source of all life. The author’s purpose is to point out that beliefs are reflected in Native American myths, such as the stories that will be listed in the rest of this essay. The author writes in a reflective tone for the readers. All the water animals were sitting around and they noticed something strange.

Myths have existed throughout all of human history, explaining how we came to be, why we exist, and how our actions exist to teach lessons. Both myths, “The Story of Corn and Medicine” and “The World on the Turtle’s Back”, explain that humans will make good and bad choices, but these experiences will teach lessons about evil and the choices we must make to change our ways, and to expand our knowledge and advance the world. The first lesson taught but the myths is evil and greed have inherited the earth, and will continue to if humans do not change their actions. The World on the Turtle’s Back uses the wife to explain the root of greed in the world.

Through the two stories, Coyote and the Buffalo by Christine Quintasket and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards, we learn that Native Americans and Puritans believed that people were ultimately bad. In the beginning of Coyote and the Buffalo, Quintasket explains to the reader that “No buffalo ever lived in the Swah-netk’-qhu country. That was Coyote’s fault. If he had not been so foolish and greedy…”. In this myth, Native Americans teach an important lesson on how humans can be bad through coyotes actions.

There are many pieces of literature that describe the creation of the Universe. In the following paragraphs one will find that there will be two in particular we will be looking at. The first is The Iroquois Creation Story, and the second will be chapters 1-3 out of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. By the end of this essay hopefully one will be able to see most of the similarities and differences between the two works of literature. There are various similarities between the two works of literature, for example in the Bible in chapter 1 verse 1 of Genesis it states that “in the beginning God created the Heavens and Earth”.

According to the online article The Iroquois Creation Myth, long before the world was created, there was an island in the sky where the sky people lived. There were not any deaths nor births. The people lived happily and did not experience sadness. One day, one of the women told her husband that she was going to give birth to twins. He got angry and tore up the tree

“The World on the Turtle’s Back” is the Iroquois story of creation. “Odin and Ymir” is the Norse story of creation. Even though both stories originated in different places, they have some similar aspects. The stories also have many differing views on how things came to be. “The World on the Turtle’s Back” is about two twin brothers.

There are many different creation stories, but I will be focusing mainly on the similarities and differences of the Iroquois creation story and the Hebrew creation story. The Iroquois Creation Story and the Hebrew Creation Story are similar in many ways. On the contrary, they are also dissimilar in many ways as well. Although they are both different stories, they still are important to many people and will continue to be future The Iroquois creation story was how the Iroquois believed how things were created. There was the Sky-World where people inhabited the place.

Both the Iroquois and African Bushman creation myths have some differences, but they also have strong similarities. Before the land was created on earth in the two-creation myth both the animals and human’s relationship was very strong and peaceful and caring, the start of the bushman creation myth states that “In this place people and animals lived together peacefully. They understood each other”, and at the start of the Iroquois creation myth before the land was created the caring relationship of the humans and animals is shown by how hard the animals work to save the sky woman and help her build the land, in the myth it says “Just before she reached the waters they caught her on their backs and brought her to the other animals”. Another similarity

In the Iroquois creation myth it says that the animals helped the woman who would have died from the fall and starvation among other things if they hadn’t helped her. As the woman was falling two birds caught her and put her on a turtle's back. the passage says “. Determined to help the woman they dove into the water to get mud from the bottom of the seas” ( Iroquois Creation myth) These animals who don’t know her, aren't even human are helping her.

The native american religion combined elements of Christianity with Native beliefs. It rejected white-American culture, which made it difficult to control the “tribes” by the United States. Many of these groups had their own beliefs though many of them were similar in the major aspects. At the time of Europe contact, all but the simplest indigenous cultures in North America developed religious systems that included “cosmologies”, which explains how those societies had come into being. The members of most tribes believed in the immortality of the human soul and an afterlife, the main feature of which was the abundance of every good thing that made earthly life secure and pleasant.

The loquacious Roy E. Disney once said, “When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” Throughout the stories that we read in this module, native american values that we use to this day were displayed. Consequently, there were three values within these stories that truly affect our lives. Firstly, there is respect, which was displayed in the story “The Coyote and the Buffalo” when Coyote disrespects Buffalo Bull and it brings him an enormous amount of anger. Furthermore, there was perseverance, which was exhibited in the myth “The World on a Turtle’s Back” when the pregnant woman falls through the cracks of the Sky World and still makes a life for her and her daughter.

Introduction Native American stories are a critical component of the American society. The stories and particularly those that involve animal characters have enriched not only the American literature but also the entertainment space. Animal characters are an integral component of these kinds of stories. The characters play a specific role in the stories one of which is to characterize the behavior of human beings from which the readers can then draw important life lessons. The purpose of this paper is to help interrogate the nexus between the native stories in America and the entertainment and literal space.