Early Colonial Indian Myths
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For this lesson, I chose to tell my wife the Onondaga Iroquois Creation Myth, “The Manner in Which It Established Itself.” Overall, she enjoyed the story and thought it had a “powerful religious message.” Within the myth, she was able to identify with the idea of an outside spirit or force which seems to be the focus of the characters motivations, much like the actions of the disciples in the Old Testament. My wife also thought that the myth stressed the idea of ritual, that is, that in order to tell the myth, that there was a strict order to the ritual itself, very similar to the Catholic Sacraments, for instance, although she is not Catholic.
The motif of the story which really intrigued her was the idea of journey. She liked how the girl traveled without allowing interruption, thus she was not veered from her destination. Being a Christian, she felt she could relate to this story because, as she stated “we are all on a journey through this life, and similarly, we should not be persuaded by evil interruptions which may stray us from our destination, or our religion”
She thought the journey could be parallel to many of the stories within the Bible, Moses journey, Noah Arc, even Jesus walk with the cross. He, like the protagonist in the myth, sis not let anything stop him from what he knew he had to do. He knew it was His burden to carry, just like the girl knew it was her duty to make the journey.
My wife also pointed out other parts of the story in which she thought parallel the book of Genesis. She thought that during the “dream feast”, when all the visitors came; the Deer, the Spotted Fawn, the Bear, etc, that this could be symbolic of the beginning of the Christian faith, as the disciples began to follow the Lord. My wife also felt that the creation in the myth, the part where she is pushed into the abyss, the myth states “the man-being child and the man-being mother of it became