Reading Notes: Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes, Part A

Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes unit from the UN-Textbook
(http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/mslakes-creation-chitimacha.html)

Depiction of The Earth-Maker

The first tale in this unit covers the creation story where it begins with a being referred to as the "The Earth-Maker," who came to and noticed that all around him was nothing but a void. This caused much pain leading The Earth-maker to cry and then instantly took action by taking a small amount of matter from where he was sitting and threw it down from his place, but nothing seemed to grow on it and it just simply turning. The Earth-Maker tried to add grass by doing the same thing and taking it from where he sat and throwing it down onto his creation, but still it was not effective. Next, The Earth-Maker created a man, who was known as Tortoise, to be this place's first inhabitant that would coexist with the men he also created for this new planet. When The Earth-Maker sent Tortoise down to his creation he gave him only one task which was to "bring order into the world," as their were malicious spirits trying to destroy The Earth-Maker's delicate creation. He sent Tortoise down with only a knife, but Tortoise began to instead cause war, so after a short time The Earth-Maker sent the next creature down, which was the Hare who began having a philosophical struggle with "his grandmother," who was the mother of The Earth-Maker (his father) and pleaded that he wanted the humans to live forever like himself. Hare's grandmother explains that how can Hare make the humans live forever if The Earth-Maker could not while creating them, and Hare began to realize that without death that the humans would inevitably run out of resources and space on The Earth-Maker's creation. After seeing the death of the people on the creation, Hare accepted the way in which The Earth-Maker and went to the edge of this creation where the fires raged all around the edge.