Iroquois Creation Story Summary

For the Native Americans to explain their existence, they created stories that described how things came to be. These stories are much like the ones that you would find in the Bible, and are very insightful in getting a better understanding of the Native Americans religious viewings. The Native Americans strongly believed in spirits and beings of another world. In the Iroquois Creation Story, these believes are strongly represented by telling the story of two brothers. This story is a representation of how the world was created. There is a good minded brother and a bad minded brother, which are not just brothers but twins. These unborn brothers and their mother were sent to the back of a turtle that in order to secure them from the dangers of the dark world she fell to. In a hurry to be born, the bad minded brother murders

He even created an orb out of his deceased mother's head, which became the sun and the moon. The bad minded brother, or the antagonist, creates horrible things in defiance of his brother. He tries to make man out of clay that turns into apes. He also creates other things that could be harmful to man such as reptiles, mountains, and great steeps. Like most stories, they have a final battle and the good minded brother overcomes the bad minded brother, sending him to the underworld where he is now the Evil Spirit.

The mother in this passage would be the minor character. Although she is departed from the brothers, she often has influence on the good minded brother. He never met his mother and he still created the sun and the moon out of her orb. This means that the good minded brother had respect for his dead mother and cared for her deeply, while the bad minded brother is the one who brought death upon her. This is just one heartless action of the bad minded brother. He has no care for others which is expressed throughout this