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The iroquois creation story
The iroquois creation story
Other stories that compare to The Iroquois Creation Story
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As we looked at other creation stories specifically from native Americans creation there are many similarities found between them. Both the bible and native American creation stories tells about a creator that shape beautiful and complicated things. The creators of both stories live in the heavens one called God and the other referred to as the great spirit but could go by many names depending on the tribe. They both value humans came to be into this world and their surroundings. But they differ on some things for example, the bible focuses on man as a superior being to animals and nature, while native Americans put mother nature above all. Most of the native American stories begin with man being born from the earth or an animal back. An example
Most cultures have a creation myth, a story of how humans came to exist in the world. Often, they involve Gods of some capacity who exist without much question or explanation. Many myths have a common idea for the origin of the world, like Earth being born from water, a golden egg, or a great monster. The Mayan creation myth and the Babylonian creation myth are similar in that they both begin with water, and account the creation and purpose of man. They also differ, as the Mayan Popol Vuh chronicles a peaceful tale of trials to forge the Earth and sentient beings to worship the gods, while the Babylonian Enuma Elish tells of wars between gods that lead to the creation of Earth and of man as a servant to the gods.
Creation stories tell of how the world was created based on the Indians. In my home state of Washington State, Makah Indians told the story of the-Two-Men-Who-Changed-Things creation story. Chelan Indians told the story of a Great Chief above that created the Indians. Both have different cultural backgrounds and live in different places in Washington.
When I was a child I had been told a Christian creation story is different from the one that I had read in the book ? Iroquois. The differences between these two creation stories are: at the beginning of creation of the world, the type of people, and the meaning of the story.
The historical context of the documents complicate the narrative of the United States' "colonial beginnings" because it shows that the original treatment of the Native Americans shaped the United States' beginning, much more than what most are lead to believe. This is shown through the timing of certain events, the issues that caused the events, and the people who helped make many of the events happen or end.
Considering historical evidence, the notion: Native –Americans was not the first inhabitant of America is a complete false. For centuries, history kept accurate and vivid accounts of the first set of people who domiciled the western hemisphere. Judging by those records, below are the first set of Native-American people who inhabited America before the arrival of another human race; the Iroquois: The Iroquois of Native Americans was one of the tribes that lived in America before other people came. Based on historical evidence, it is believed that the Native Americans came from Asia way back during the Ice Age through a land bridge of the Bering Strait. When the Europeans first set foot in America, there were about 10 million Native Americans
In her book American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa's central role as both an activist and writer surfaces, which uniquely combines autobiography and fiction and represents an attempt to merge cultural critique with aesthetic form, especially surrounding such fundamental matters as religion. In the tradition of sentimental, autobiographical fiction, this work addresses keen issues for American Indians' dilemmas with assimilation. In Parts IV and V of "School Days," for example, she vividly describes a little girl's nightmares of paleface devils and delineates her bitterness when her classmate died with an open Bible on her bed. In this groundbreaking scene, she inverts the allegation of Indian religion as superstition by labeling Christianity.
The creation myths that I have studied are similar in many ways. They also have differences that show an inherently different way of thinking about the world. All have creators-gods that make the world into what is now. There are conflicts within their world, and these conflicts change the face world. God to god or human to god maybe be involved in these conflicts. Their bloody struggles prove who is more powerful, causing change in the control of the world. Some gods are beneficial to man and others are self-serving, using man only as a tool.
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
In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will discuss the major themes of the book and why the author wrote it, it will describe Native American society, its values and its beliefs and how they changed and it will show how Native Americans views other non-Natives.
Just look at two creation stories side-by-side and you should easily see their similarities. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to take one unknown creation story and compare it to one from one’s own culture. Below is an example of a Mongolian creation myth:
The two world creation stories from the Judeo-christian and the Iroquois do have quite different perspectives how the world has been created. But, are they some similar parts as well in the stories? And do you see these similar parts even in the culture too? Where are these differences and similarities?
The Navajo creation Myth story deals with the topics of story telling that are quite familiar to
Both the Theogony and the Creation in Genesis show nature as a blessing for humans but with negative affects, However the myths differ in the ways that the Earth and humans were created and how humans interact with the deities of the creation stories. These differences include how Gods treat humans and why the Gods/God created Earth. These stories are still being passed on in today’s world and are two of the most influential creation stories to have ever been written. The similarities and differences in the creation stories show that different cultures and religions throughout the world really aren’t that far off from each other.
Why do you think people develop creation stories? I believe that people develop creation stories because they wanted something to believe in. when the first humans were created they wanted to know how they got there so they made up stories to explain how the universe works and who is in charge of it.
There are many interpretations of the Indian creation myth. They are all representations of the main principle of Brahman, which is described as being "everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing." (A Dictionary of Creation Myths, p.139, David Leeming and Margaret Leeming) Creation came from Brahman's thought, or the actions of the god Brahma, who is the representation of Brahman as a man. One version is taken from fragments found in the first and tenth hymn books in the Rig Veda. Heaven reached out to his daughter Earth, and with the passion created by the god of fire Agni, Heaven's seed spilled onto earth. From this seed came words and rituals. Angirases also emerged from the seed They were arbitrators between the gods and humans, and distributed gifts from the gods. Heaven and Earth are our parents. Another myth from the tenth book of the Rig Veda concerns the dismemberment of a being out of which the world emerges. Purusa, a primal man with a thousand heads and a thousand feet, covered earth. He was "the universe, the here and the there, the now and the always." (A Dictionary of Creation Myths,p.140, David Leeming and Margaret Leeming) When the primal man was dismembered, his bottom quarter became our world, his mouth spewed words and became the god Indra, his arms turned into the warrior caste, his thighs became the common people, and his feet became "the lowest of the low". From the dismemberment came also the animals, plants, rituals, sacred words and the Vedas. The moon was born from his mind, the sun from his eye, the wind from his breath, the sky from his head, earth from his feet and the atmosphere from his belly button. One more hymn of creation is found in the tenth book of the Rig Veda. It explains that opposites are needed - without Non-Being there cannot be Being and vice versa. Wise people say Being must have come before Non-Being, because how could something come from nothing? It also says that perhaps not even the creator knows what came first in the very beginning. Other Indian creation myths are found in sacred texts called the Brahmanas which date back to 1000 BC. This myth, from the Satapatha Brahmana, explains that in the beginning there was nothing but the primeval sea.