• Every people of the world appears to have had a creation account that describes the way the world and the people within it came to be. These are excerpts from the accounts of the Maya people, as recorded in the sixteenth century in the Popul Vuh, and of the Okanogan people of the Pacific Northwest, as recorded in the twentieth century from oral traditions.

Popul Vuh

“Heart of Sky arrived here with Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent [three creator gods] in the darkness, in the night. . . . They thought and they pondered. They reached an accord, bringing together their words and their thoughts. . . . Then the earth was created by them. Merely their word brought about the creation of it. In order to create the earth, they said, “Earth,” and immediately it was created. . . . Then were conceived the animals of the mountains, the guardians of the forest, and all that populate the mountains — the deer and the birds, the puma and the jaguar, the serpent and the rattlesnake. . . . This, then, is the beginning of the conception of humanity, when that which would become the flesh of mankind was sought. Then spoke they who are called She Who Has Borne Children and He Who Has Begotten Sons, the Framer and the Shaper [four other gods associated with creation], Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent: “The dawn approaches, and our work is not completed. A provider and a sustainer have yet to appear — a child of light, a son of light. Humanity has yet to appear to populate the face of the earth,” they said. Thus they gathered together and joined their thoughts in the darkness, in the night. They searched and they sifted. Here they thought and they pondered. Their thoughts came forth bright and clear. They discovered and established that which would become the flesh of humanity. . . . Thus their frame and shape were given expression by our first Mother and our first Father. Their flesh was merely yellow ears of maize and white ears of maize. . . . And so there were four who were made, and mere food was their flesh. . . . Then their companions, their wives, also came to be. It was the gods who conceived them as well.”

Okanogan Tradition

“The earth was once a human being: Old One made her out of a woman. “You will be the mother of all people,” he said.

Earth is alive yet, but she has been changed. The soil is her flesh, the rocks are her bones, the wind is her breath, trees and grass are her hair. She lives spread out, and we live on her. When she moves, we have an earthquake.

After taking the woman and changing her to earth, Old One gathered some of her flesh and rolled it into balls, as people do with mud or clay. He made the first group of these balls into the ancients, the beings of the early world. . . .

Besides the ancients, real people and real animals lived on the earth at that time. Old One made the people out of the last balls of mud he took from the earth. He rolled them over and over, shaped them like Indians, and blew on them to bring them alive. They were so ignorant that they were the most helpless of all the creatures Old One had made.

Old One made people and animals into males and females so that they might breed and multiply. Thus all living things came from the earth. When we look around, we see part of our mother everywhere.”

Sources: Allen Christensen, trans , Popul Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya. Reproduced with permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS in the format Republish in a book via Copyright Clearance Center; “Creation of the Animal People” from Ella C. Clark, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. Reproduced with permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS in the format Book via Copyright Clearance Center. Reproduced in electronic form by permission of the Association of American Indian Affairs.

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