Comparing The Antiquois And The World On The Turtle's Back

Since the beginning of civilization, countless cultures, including the Cherokee and Iroquois, developed stories in order to explain their views on creation and reflect the values and traditions in their culture. The Iroquois developed a myth called “The World on the Turtle’s Back”, while the Cherokee recorded “The Story of Corn and Medicine”. Both myths reveal the importance of nature, including plants, in the Iroquois and Cherokee cultures, and they follow a similar path of creation that starts with water and darkness and the expanding of mud to form land. However, the Iroquois myth focuses on human harmony with nature and the disharmony between genders, while the Cherokee myth points out the disharmony with nature and the greater equality

First of all, the Iroquois myth describes how the two twins in the story “took clay and modeled it into animals, and they gave these animals life” (2). In this myth, the humans are responsible for creating many of the animals and permitting them to also have the gift of life, which shows the superiority and power of the humans over animals. However, the Cherokee myth’s order of life starts with the animals and mentions that “humans came after the animals”. Furthermore, the myth describes a little boy who “had arisen from the blood of the game washed by the stream”, which shows how humans actually came after, and sometimes from, the animals. In this way, the Cherokee emphasize the equality of the animals and humans by showing how the animals came before and are not in any way inferior to humans. Another difference between the Iroquois and the Cherokee beliefs is that the Iroquois think the animals exist to help and provide aid to humans, while the Cherokee understand the frustration and dislike of the animals towards the humans. The Iroquois state that as the woman fell from the sky, the the sea birds “immediately consulted with each other as to what they could do to help her” and the rest of the animals “came to her

For instance, the Iroquois myth describes the woman as a possession of the man when it states that “there was a man who had a wife”; this shows how the man supposedly owned the woman rather than being equal with her. The myth also shows the subordination of the wife when it describes her needs and cravings for food as a “distraction” and “wrong”. The woman in this myth is portrayed as lesser than her male counterpart because she is a possession that her husband is forced to deal with and care for. However, in the Cherokee myth, the woman and male are introduced into the story as “Kanáti and Selu, whose names meant ‘The Lucky Hunter’ and ‘Corn’”, which shows fairly equal importance and no any obvious ownership or superiority of the male. Also, the myth points out the importance of the man for hunting, but also emphasizes the value of the women to “return home with baskets of corn” and “make meal for bread.” Although the role woman is valued for agriculture and the man is valued for hunting game, both genders are depicted as being equally important and hard working to feed their family in their respective roles, which is not seen in the Iroquois myth. Furthermore, the woman in “The World on the Turtle’s Back” is blamed for everything that goes wrong, including falling from the