Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [213]
An Earth Mother. Source of all fertility, the Earth Mother is a popular deity in the Americas, who is nearly always a nurturing force. In the myth of the Cherokee—originally from the southeastern United States and forced west to Oklahoma in the notorious “removals” of the 1830s—their Earth Mother is the goddess known as Grandmother Sun. To the Hopi of the Southwest, she is Spider Woman or Kokyanwuuti, the goddess of Creation who teaches the people how to weave and make pottery.
Often these Earth Mothers or great goddesses have twin children or grandchildren—another common Native American theme—who are frequently tricksters. One Earth Mother of twins is the main goddess of the Navajos of the Southwest, who call themselves Diné (“the people”). Born from a piece of turquoise and made pregnant by the sun god, their Earth Mother is known as Changing Woman, or Estsanatlehi. She is a miraculous birth-giver, whose twin children—Monster Slayer and Born for Water—make the world safe for the Navajos. Changing Woman creates people from a mixture of corn dust and skin from her breasts. Growing old and young in a never-ending cycle, Changing Woman lives on an island in the west, from which she sends life-giving rain and fresh winds to keep the people alive. One of the most important rites among the Navajo is the female puberty ritual, a four-day ceremony in which a girl becomes a woman and gains the healing power granted by Changing Woman.
“Earth Diver” Creation Stories. Probably the most prevalent and archetypal Native American Creation story, especially in North America, features an animal—typically a beaver, beetle, duck, or turtle—who plunges into the waters covering the earth and returns to the surface with bits of mud or soil, from which the Creator then makes the earth.
To the Yuchi and Creek of Alabama and Georgia, the earth diver is Crawfish, who goes to the bottom of the water where the Mud People live. Angry that Crawfish comes and goes, stealing their mud and constantly stirring up the water, the Mud People try to stop him, but he moves too fast. Buzzard soars over the mud and dries it out with his wings, making the mountains and valleys. Finally, great mother (the Sun) gives light to the world and drips her menstrual blood on earth, giving birth to the first people.
For the Seneca of the Northeast, the earth divers Toad and Turtle work together to create land. They do this after Star Woman, the daughter of the Sky Chief, falls through a hole in the sky. Caught by birds, she rests on Turtle’s back until Toad brings up enough soil from beneath the water to create the earth for her to live on.
Tricksters. Like Africa’s mythology, Native American traditions show a special fondness for the malevolent and often aggressively oversexed trickster—animal gods such as Coyote and Hare, or a man-animal like Iktomi, the Spiderman of the Lakota Sioux. The Aztecs of Mexico have a lusty collection of tricksters called Centzon Totochtin, or “Four Hundred Rabbits.” And classic Maya pottery also depicts a rabbit stealing—in true trickster fashion—an unidentified old god’s hat and clothes. Some of these tricksters were the inspiration for two modern American cartoon icons—Wile E. Coyote of Road Runner fame and a “wabbit” named Bugs, whose animated antics are far less malicious and X-rated than those of their ancient ancestors.
Sometimes the tricksters are cunning “culture heroes,” like the Mayan twins of the Popol Vuh who confound death with their amazing abilities. Many scholars believe that the now-ubiquitous Kokopelli—the hunchbacked flute player depicted on prehistoric Anasazi rock art in the Southwest—was a combination trickster-fertility god, similar in many respects to the Greek Pan. Kokopelli may have even been based