Iroquois creation story

This myth puts a lot of focus on the theme of birth as being the beginning of creation .it represents the few stories of creation originating from cultures where birth is an indication of new life or even the genesis of life on this earth. In addition, a relationship is between animals and human is seen in the Iroquois myth, where role animals had a key role to play, and were perceived to be equal with humans. The story seems to tell an idea of a time when men and animals were living together with no social or economic tension existing. The water animals – turtle – in this story save the woman from falling into the water which had covered the earth and then built an island for her (Murtagh, 1). In this story, the theme of a supreme being does not appear and such there is no elaboration of the onset of creation. In addition, the story considers the creation of humans as having been from above and was only brought to the earth in their mother’s womb and was later born.

In many well known creation stories, there is an appearance of a supreme being who was always omnipresent.  Infact, the stories involves many supernatural beings who were either gods or goddesses. While the woman in the Iroquois is seen as a Sky Woman, she is not presented as a supernatural being. Unlike the Iroquois myth, animals were just creatures like human in other stories like in Greek and played no role in creation. While the Iroquois story the world is shown to have existed prior to human life, the biblical creation story indicates the earth as having been formless (Kennedy, Leland and Person, 24).

References

Murtagh, L.Elements in Creation Myths. (n.d).1. Available at: http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths.html

Kennedy, J G, and Leland S. Person. The American Novel to 1870. , 2014.23-24 Print.