The Iroquois Creation Myth

Over 4,000 years ago the Iroquois tribes began to inhabit North America (“The Iroquois Tribes”). Just as every other community that inhabited the earth, the Iroquois had elaborate stories and myths of how different phenomenon occurred. Their creation myth tells of how the earth came about and how the stars, moon, sun, rivers, and plants came along. The Iroquois tell their creation myth using the earth-diver archetype. According to the online article The Iroquois Creation Myth, long before the world was created, there was an island in the sky where the sky people lived. There were not any deaths nor births. The people lived happily and did not experience sadness. One day, one of the women told her husband that she was going to give birth to twins. He got angry and tore up the tree

The myth says that mud was brought from the bottom of the water and that mud grew into North America, and it goes on to say that the twins that the woman birthed created the rivers, fish, and a volcano (“The Iroquois Creation Myth”). Throughout the whole story, different creations are brought to light. It states that the woman created the moon, sun, and stars, and also says her twins created good and evil (“The Iroquois Creation Myth”). The way that the myth tells us how the earth was created is how we know that it is an earth-diver creation myth. Earth-diver myths tell a story of how some being dives into the water that covers the earth, retrieves some of it and brings it back to the surface to create the lands (“Diver-Myths.”). The Iroquois creation myth states that many animals tried to dive into the water and grab some mud to bring back, but only the toad succeeded. From this mud that the toad brought up, North America was created (“The Iroquois Creation Myth”). That could not state any clearer what kind of myth this story