Tyler Morgan

English 343

September 23, 2011

The Iroquois Creation Story

Recently I read three different creation stories from three different cultures,

and although they are all very different I found two to be very similar in several

ways. When diving into religions other than Christianity I find myself most of the

time extremely confused, and it is usually difficult to wrap the mind around the fact

that people really do believe some of these things and base their lives around it.

Reading the Iroquois Creation Story was no different, but it also lead me to the

question, “If I grew up in these cultures, is this something I would believe?” Being a

strong Christian believer, and as mentioned in class, at times being more of a

“western thinker” when it comes to religion, sometimes thinking that the only thing

that is correct is what I believe in, has sometimes hampered my ability to be open to

new beliefs that may be different.

In the Iroquois Creation Story, there is a roller coaster of emotions for myself

as a reader who has never really read anything other than Christianity. While

discovering that a turtle is believed to have been involved in the creation of the

Great Island which is now North America and a virgin woman gave birth to twins. I

found myself very confused, wondering how someone believes this. This woman

was a virgin who was saved and comforted by a turtle after a long fall from the

“upper world” and gave birth to twins, one of which decided to come out her side?

No way. But right then I realized I was guilty of judging too quickly, so I attempted to

draw comparisons to the Christian story and was stopped in my thoughts. Jesus was

born from the Virgin Mary, so how can I possibly believe that and turn around and

say or think that the Iroquois story is not believable? If this story is looked at with

an open mind, it is incredibly similar to the Christian story.

“The good mind” (good twin) created the heavens, brought the sun, moon

and stars to the earth, just as God is believed to have done. The good mind formed

two images of the dust of the ground, which were male and female, and gave them

living souls by breathing in their nostrils and they were real people. Which can be

considered to be similar to the way God created man. Meanwhile the “bad

mind”(evil twin) is making the earth dangerous by creating mountains, cliffs,

waterfalls, reptiles and, in failing to create humans, apes and is attempting to

confine all the animals the good twin makes by depriving them from mankind

before the good mind releases them from confinement. This can be related to the

work of the devil with Adam and Eve causing them to sin in the garden and eat from

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In a last battle of the twins the good twin gained victory by using deer horns,

which the bad mind admitted that’s the only thing that would cause his body to

expire, and then the good mind crushed his brother in the earth. This leads to

possibly the most shocking and obvious comparison from this story in the last few

lines when the bad mind uses his last words to utter “that he would have equal

power over the souls of mankind after death. (p.21)” This is clearly the same

concept as God and the Devil in the Christian faith, because they were and are

always battling and God has won battles before and will continue to win, but the

Devil is believed to live below the earth and is the “Evil Spirit” just as is the bad

mind.

Reading this story and trying to draw comparisons between the Iroquois and

Christian Creation Stories did not make life any easier. Usually when I discover

other religions it is easy to scoff and be amazed simply that someone believes them,

but in this case when I sat down and actually compared the two stories, they were

almost so similar it was scary. Another strange fact is that the Iroquois’ are from

North America, I know that there are other beliefs in North America besides

Christianity, but for some reason this is strange to me, because it originated in North

America. Some believe this story is a myth and others call it a history, and if

somebody were to pick up both the Iroquois Creation Story and the King James

Version from the Bible, with no prior knowledge or beliefs in religion, which would

they believe? Or would they laugh at both and not believe either? That, to me, is the

beauty of religion and the world altogether is the ability to have a choice and believe

whatever you want to. Somebody out there, dead, alive, god or a human, has the

answer to what is correct and how everything was created, but I sure don’t, I can

only rest at the end of the day on my beliefs.