When Grizzlies Walked Upright Summary

Native American Myths & Culture
Storytelling and myths have been a tradition in all cultures since the beginning of time. One well-known myth is “When Grizzlies Walked Upright” by the Modoc tribe, which is about the creation of Earth. Another myth is “The Earth on Turtle’s Back” by the Onondaga tribe, which is about how a muskrat and a turtle create the world. The two stories are similar because they both are about the creation of the Earth and rely heavily on animals, but they are different because of the importance of gods in the stories. Although the stories are very unalike, they both show that the creation of Earth and its population was mainly because of animals. One way “When Grizzlies Walked Upright” and “The Earth on Turtle’s Back” are related is because they both center around how the Earth began. In “When Grizzlies Walked Upright”, the Sky Spirit was bored in the Above World, so he cut a hole in the sky and created Earth from the magic in his fingertips (Erdoes and Ortiz 19). In “The Earth on

In “When Grizzlies Walked Upright”, the Sky Spirit is the most important factor in the creation of the world, because he literally created the Earth from the magic in his fingertips. Everything on Earth is completely because of him (Erdoes and Ortiz 19). Whereas in “The Earth on Turtle’s Back”, there is nearly no reliance or importance of gods in the story. The only mention of gods and their importance in the creation of Earth is that the Sky Woman fell out of the sky, which gave the animals the idea to create Earth for her, and that she placed some seeds to create trees on Earth. But in the actual creation of the soil and the world, there was little to no importance of her being in the story (Caduto and Bruchac 18). So even though the two stories are similar in many ways, they are different when it comes to the importance of gods and spirits in the creation of the