Cultural Origins: The Cherokee and The Pima

Brett Schuering

Professor Fisher

LIT262

9 March 2011

Option 1:

(Stories of origin both preserve and offer explanations of how something came into being. Choose two origin stories from our reading list and explain the cultural work that each of these stories performs. What do they teach their audience about cultural values and habits? Why is such cultural work important?)

Cultural Origins: The Cherokee and the Pima

The story of How The World Was Made and The Story of Creation are interesting depictions of Indian culture through the Cherokee and Pima tribes. It is a rich taste of their oral culture through early stories and legends. The Cherokee's first documented story is about the natural world being created from their ancestral origins of how the world was created and how these stories might predict the end of humanity. The Story of Creation is different legend that follows a similar theme of The Pima oral culture. The two mythical backgrounds of how each culture originated provides explanations of how humans and animals created the land, their connection with each other and their connection to the land. These connections are based on a unified spiritual being that ties all beings together. The spiritual bond between all beings is expressed throughout Indian culture and in these two stories it is manifested through some creatures more than others, like the buzzard.

The Cherokee's believed that before the earth was created there was another world called "Galunlati." It was a world beyond the arch that was too crowded for animals. The earth below is hung by a sky vault made of solid rock that connected four cords to earth; a great island floating in sea water. The animals choose a water-beetle who descends from the "Galunlati" to bring up mud from under the water. This is inferring that arduous amounts of work had to be done to bring up enough mud to create land from the sea. The fact that the beetle, an insect could have been the creator of land for mankind demonstrates the Cherokee's societal view on all forms of life. They have much respect for even the smallest creatures and believe that all beings have a purpose on earth. The story of the water-beetle creating earth before humans also reveals that animals were first on the planet.

"Men came after the animals and plants."

The Cherokee view of all forms of life is an understanding of cultivated equality between humans, animals and the ownership of land. This is the type of relationship in Native American culture is demonstrated throughout this creation story.

The Cherokee land was created by a beetle then the valleys and the mountains of the land by the great buzzard and from that creation the Cherokee lived. The "Galunlati" sent down the great buzzard that flew low to the ground all over the earth. When the Buzzard came into Cherokee country it was tired, flapping its wings heavily. Where the buzzard's wings touched the ground there were valleys and when the wings turned up they created mountains. The animals eventually called the buzzard back in fear that the planet would be completely mountainous. Animals in our culture are seen as primal beings that are incapable of thinking and reasoning. The origins of the Native American culture refer to animals as source of creation that made decisions based on fear and judgment. The animals understood that by letting the buzzard travel to the land his mighty wings would create the Cherokee country. The animals used a form of thought process to create the Cherokee land demonstrating the tribes respect level for nature and its inhabitants. The Cherokee's land based religion links all stories to circulate around this connection, between land and people. The Cherokee Indians were settlers who were hunters, gatherers and agriculturists whose lives were written through their actions among the land. The great buzzard that formed their land is a mythological being that has much respect in their culture. It created massive valleys and mountains for the Cherokee people. The buzzard is the backbone of their land based religion.

Creation myths provide deeper explanations of why there are spiritual connections to the land. In the beginning great birds, insects and other animals created landscapes forming the world known to these inhabitants. They were formed by these creatures because they were seen as powerful, fearful or resilient in their interaction with the land, like the water-beetle who is also known as the water tiger. Nature and the animals worked together to create one other in the origins of the world. In Cherokee origins the night