Native American Creation Stories Analysis

Time is the ultimate test for the workings of man; time can destroy what is stone and obscure what is memory. Time affects all men, no matter how great the distance between their lands or how vast the expanse between their cultures. No matter the people, no matter the ideals, the wonder at creation is driven by curiosity; stories of creation exist in every culture you find, and even though each story varies greatly in characters and settings, they all revolve around an indescribable reason for their similarities. Creation stories hold within a veiled connection, and my belief is that they offer a strongly-willed understanding of the culture that they originate from; even in modern day religion, parallels can be made with other creation stories, …show more content…
The Northeast Native Americans, such as the Iroquois, bind themselves with the belief that to be honored beyond death is to have understood life’s true meaning, and with that meaning being enveloped within them, to sacrifice their personal matters for the good of the people. To such an honorable people, it would seem this sacrifice was in a strange form; instead of good deeds and faithfulness, all things revolved instead around the spirits of nature, delving into both the purest of waters and the darkest of shadows. This is not to say that being moral and having a strong faith were not paramount; this is simply stating that nature preceded and indeed centered beyond admirable qualities such as faith. In several tribes, and therefore the numerous legends told within them, a being that is unblemished and pure is sacrificed through the natural force that is being honored in countless stories of creation. A quote from a creation story that tells of the first people to walk the earth, told by the Penobscot Indians, embodies how devout the Native Americans were to nature: ‘Comfort also is mine, for though I am young, my strength shall be felt over all the earth. I was born of the beautiful plant of the earth. For the dew fell on the leaf, and the sun warmed the dew, and the warmth was life, and that life is I.’ In the Seneca tribe, one of the five tribes of the Iroquois linguistic family, there is a creation story for nearly every element of nature; water is revered above all, due to the fact that the Seneca live in proximity to Niagara Falls. Through the generations, this story was not only told by the fire pit, but more importantly adapted into a tradition of the people. Every year, the tribe would send a maiden, one of pureness and self-sacrificial