The Tewa people are part of the larger Pueblo Indian culture of the American Southwest. Their traditional homeland lies along the upper Rio Grande River in present-day New Mexico. Like most Native American nations, the Tewa developed a complex cosmology to explain the creation of the world and the origins of their tribe. As with other creation myths, the Tewa creation story contains a number of variants and reflects some development over the tribe’s history.
One variation follows the conventional “emergence” format, in which the original people surface from under the ground. The myth begins with people living beneath the earth like ants. In those days, men and women lived separately because women did not want to obey their husbands. No one knew anything of the world above them yet, and they did not even know north, south, east, west, above, or below. The coming of a flood brought all of this to an end. The people needed to flee from the coming disaster, and so the women started to build a tower to escape from the flood. No matter how tall they built, however, it never reached the sky. Then the tower fell. Next, the men thought about what could be done to reach through the sky to the land above, so they planted a pine tree. It reached the sky, but it could not go through it. They planted reeds and sang to them so that they grew tall enough to go through the sky. Finally, Badger was able to climb the reeds to the very top. “What do you see, Badger?” they asked when he returned. “I could not see much. There was no light,” said Badger. “In four days, we will go up because the flood will drown us if we do not,” said a man. When the people came out of the ground, the men came out first and the women second. Only half of the women came to the earth because the rest were drowned in the flood (Parsons 1926, 170).
When the people climbed out of the earth into darkness, Mockingbird greeted them and taught them language. The people needed light, so they decided to make stars. They sent Coyote and two boys to set the stars in place. At first, the three carefully placed the stars into constellations. However, Coyote was impatient. “We will never get finished this way,” he said and threw the rest of the stars into the sky. The stars did not give enough light, so the people made the moon out of a wedding blanket. Even his light was still not enough, so a man made the sun from a blanket, a buckskin, a white fox skin, and a parrot tail. But the sun would not move in the sky. “Someone has to die for the sun to move,” said Coyote. Just then, a girl died, and the sun moved, but it stopped in the middle of the sky. “Someone must die every day at morning, noon, and evening to make the sun keep moving,” Coyote said. At first, the dead people came back to life after four days. But Coyote said, “This is not right. We cannot be living all the time.” Then Coyote died and did not come back after four days. Then a woman died, and she did not come back after four days either (Parsons 1926, 171).
Wondering what had become of their old world, the people went back to the hole they had climbed out of and saw a huge cactus growing there. They removed the cactus and peered into the hole. Coyote and the woman who had died looked up at them. “Do not be afraid,” said Coyote. “When a person dies, he returns to where our people came from and lives there forever” (Parsons 1926, 171).
A second version of the creation story moves away from the emergence format but also involves stars. The great warrior Long Sash, who was also the evening star, led the people to a new land to help them escape from their enemies. Along the way, he taught them how to hunt and live properly. During the journey, the people quarreled, and Long Sash said to them, “Will you follow me or not?” While the people thought about their answer, they stared at the two bright stars north of Long Sash. The people, at length, agreed to stop fighting and followed Long Sash. After a long while, however, everyone became tired. Long Sash fell into a trance and was told that the people would soon reach the new land. “If you ever doubt,” he said as he placed his headdress in the sky to lead the people, “just pray to the spirits and look at my headdress for inspiration” (Leeming and Page 1999, 14).
In a third telling of the Tewa creation tale, the people once again emerge from under the ground into a new land. The people had lived in darkness under the ground, but they wished for a different life. One day, Mole came to visit them. “What is it like above?” the people asked. Blind Mole could not tell them, but he offered to lead them to the land above. Mole dug and dug, and the people piled the earth he dug behind them. The dirt blocked the way back to their old land so that they could not return. When the people came out of the hole that Mole had dug, light blinded them, and they covered their eyes in fear. They wanted to return to the safety of the dark land, but a voice told them to wait and take their hands from their eyes. When they lowered their hands, three people stood before them. It was Grandmother Spider and her two grandsons, the War Twins. She greeted the people. “Do not be a foolish people and make war like my grandsons. If you wish to be happy, you must never use weapons” (Leeming 2010, 257).
The people did not know how to live in this new land. They did not even know north, south, east, west, above, or below. Grandmother Spider said to one of her grandsons, “If you shoot your arrow in that direction and it does not come back, that way is north.” Her grandson shot an arrow, and it did not come back, so the people knew that way was north. Grandmother Spider taught the people all the directions in this way. “Now we know the directions,” said the people, “but you need to tell us more.” Grandmother Spider explained that north is blue and green, west is yellow, south is red, east is white, above is all-colored, and below is black. Next Grandmother Spider showed them a tall corn plant and taught them how to use corn and how to prepare the land so that corn would grow.
Grandmother Spider pointed toward Turtle Mountain. “This mountain is the right place for you to live. It is in the South. When you see me and Mole again, you will know you are in the right place.” Then Grandmother Spider disappeared into the night.
The people disregarded Grandmother Spider’s wise advice and traveled to the Red Mountain. There the Comanche lived and killed many of the people. They did not heed Grandmother Spider’s warning and made weapons and fought for many years until most of the people had died. Finally, they went back to the place where they came out of the ground. When she saw the foolish people, Grandmother Spider wept tears of stars from her web in the sky. Many people joined her in the sky until there were only two remaining, a man and a woman. They decided to follow the wise advice Grandmother Spider gave them long ago and traveled across the hot desert until they reached some trees. The Rio Grande River flowed near the trees. The man and the woman saw a turtle crawling near the river. His shell looked like a spider’s web, and the tracks he left in the sand were the same as Mole’s tracks. The man and the woman knew they had reached the land because they found the signs of Mole and Grandmother Spider and had reached Turtle Mountain (Leeming and Leeming 1995, 258).
In these variations of the myth, the creation of the world proceeds as a conflation and balancing of opposing elements, of earth and sky, darkness and light, and life and death. On their journey together as a people the Tewa struggle to find their way in a world full of hardships and perils, but come to learn important skills that have enabled them to endure. Infused throughout is a deep ecology in which people, animals, earth, water, plants, sky, stars, and everything are connected together in a web of physical and spiritual interdependence.
Mary L. Sellers
See also Birth of Good and Evil, an Iroquois Myth; Coyote Tales; Creation Stories of the Native Americans; Great Spirit; Spider Woman
Further Reading
Leeming, David Adams. 2010. Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia. Second Edition, Volume I: Parts I and II. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Leeming, David Adams, and Margaret Adams Leeming. 1995. A Dictionary of Creation Myths. New York: Oxford University Press.
Leeming, David Adams, and Jake Page. 1999. Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Parsons, Elsie Worthington. 1926. Tewa Tales. New York: The American Folklore Society, G. E. Stechert.