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The Iroquois Creation Story

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The Iroquois creation story is a renowned Native American myth written by a Tuscarora historian, David Cusick. He is also the author of David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations, which is known to be the first Indian-written history printed in the English language (Radus). The Iroquois creation myth exists in twenty-five other versions. It describes how the world was created from the Native American perspective. It begins with a sky woman who falls down into the dark world. She is pregnant with twins. Sky woman lands on a turtles back, which ends up growing and becomes a part of island with time. The sky woman gives birth to twin boys, the good mind, and the bad mind. She dies when the bad mind decides to come out of her …show more content…

The twins grow up and begin creating their earthly creations. The good mind is driven by good nature. He creates light, rivers, animals, and finally, humans. However, his twin, driven by an evil nature creates rocky-mountains, great steeps, waterfalls, and reptiles that are injurious to mankind. Native Americans are notorious for being savages and brutes. They are often labeled as uncivilized barbarians, which is a solely false accusation against them. This paper aims to address the similarities between Native American beliefs and the beliefs of other cultures based on The Iroquois Creation Story in order to defeat the stereotype that Natives are regularly defined by.
Native Americans are commonly considered uncivilized, savage, and barbarian. Nevertheless, in reality the Natives are not characterized by any of those negative traits, but rather they inhabit positive characteristics such as being wise, polite, tolerant, civilized, harmonious with nature, etc. They have had a prodigious impact on the Puritans …show more content…

They were often disregarded in society, and were believed to be corrupt, unwise, uncivil, etc. However, their history shows a generous amount of similarities in which they share with other cultures, which points out that they are not what they are generally understood to be. The creation story begins with a pregnant virgin woman, which draws similarity to the universally acknowledged story of Virgin Mary. This similarity shines light on how ideas of creation are universal. Natives are not an exception. They too share similar beliefs and stories with the rest of the world, which emphasizes that they don’t match the criteria of uncivilized savages. Another point in comparison is that, the story begins with a woman giving birth to twins. This is comparable to the events that occur in the story of Prophet Adam whose wife, Eve, gives birth to twins. This story is believed in by major religions such as Islam and Christianity. Two of the most followed religions have compatible ideas with the Indians; this proves that they are wise and civilized beings who share a natural sense of beliefs with the rest of the world. Furthermore, the point in the story in which the good mind creates humans from his image and blows into them to give them souls draws similarity to the idea of how humans are believed to be created in the creation story of Islam. In conclusion, Native Americans have frequently been

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