Creation Myths of Primitive America: In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of MankindCurtin, Jeremiah
Religion
Creation Myths of Primitive America: In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind
Curtin, Jeremiah
Creation -- Mythology; Indian mythology -- North America; Indians of North America -- Folklore
When all dressed and ready, with the dog fastened in his hair, Tuina
became as full of light as he is in our time. Before he was dressed
and armed and had his dog on his head Tuina had no brightness, but
when he started he filled this whole world with light, as he does now
in the daytime.
Bohkuina had made a road for Tuina to travel on; he had made this
road in the sky, and Tuina went straight along to the west by it, till
he reached the great water. When he was ready to plunge into the
water, a hatenna (grizzly bear) of the water was coming out and saw
him. Tuina put his hands out and motioned with his arms as if they
were wings, motioned as if to jump in.
"Tuina is coming!" said the grizzly bear of the water. "It will be too
hot here if he comes. Let us make ready and go to high mountains. We
cannot stay here if Tuina comes."
A great crowd of water grizzlies came out of the ocean and went away
to the mountains. Tuina jumped into the water, and it rose on all
sides, boiled up, rolled away over the shore, every kind of shell of
the ocean went to land at the same time.
Tuina went far into the water, way down to the bottom; he went through
the bottom, deep under the water and the ground, and returned to the
east.
Long before that Jupka had made a road under the earth for Tuina to
travel on, a road back to the east. Jupka turned the earth bottom
upward, and made this road right through from west to east; and before
Tuina started Jupka said to him,--
"I have made a road, a straight road under the earth for you, a good
road; there are no rocks on it, all is smooth. Bohkuina made the road
on the sky, the road from east to west for you to run on; I made the
road down below, the road under the earth from west to east. When you
reach the east, you will rest a while, rise in the morning, come up
and go west again on the road which Bohkuina made; you will do this
every day without failing; you will do this all the time."
When Jupka stopped talking, Tuina went west, went back in the night on
Jupka's road; and so he does always.
The day after Jupka had talked with Tuina, given him his name and his
work, he said, "I will make Yana now, and I will give them a good
country to live in."
He took buckeye-sticks, broke off a large number; he wished to lay
them down on the top of Jigulmatu and make Yana. He put down the first
stick and said, "I will call this one Iwilau Yana" (Yana of the middle
place).
When he had said these words, a man rose up before him, a Yana.
"You will stay here in this middle country," said Jupka. "You will be
chief."
Jupka put down another buckeye-stick, and it became a Yana woman at
Jupka's word. He put down a third stick, which became a boy.
"This is an orphan without father or mother," said Jupka; and he
called the boy Hurskiyupa.
Jupka put other buckeye-sticks, a large number of them, around the
first Yana, the chief, and made common people. They all stood around
the chief and Jupka said to them,--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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