Iroquoians refer to their country as Wendat Ehen, meaning “This Old Island.” In their cosmogony (creation) narrative, this island was thought to be resting on the back of a giant turtle, floating on the waters of the primal sea. Through their founding myth, these tribes recall how everything on earth was created, from birds and planets to spiritual beings. They also explain how first humans had to adapt to their environment to survive subsequent crises.
In Iroquois myths regarding the origins of life, “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky” plays a role in the creation of the Earth and its multitudinous life forms. The myths depict the Earth as a giant land mass resting on the back of an even larger turtle. (Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)
These myths, in which “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky” plays a crucial part, were told and transmitted by elderly members of the group on long winter nights, sometimes for many days. Each version having been embellished and modified by its teller, it is only by regrouping all known versions that anthropologists and mythologists can attempt to grasp what was understood and taken for granted by the Iroquois people.
There are at least twenty-five known versions of “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky,” and throughout these versions the same motifs can be found. The first known version was recorded by Gabriel Sagard in 1623, followed ten years later by Jean de Brébeuf and Paul Ragueneau’s recollections. At the end of the nineteenth century, folklorist and Tuscarora-born J. N. B. Hewitt gathered an impressive number of texts from Iroquoian communities that showed a strong continuity, despite the fact that 250 years had passed.
The cosmological myth is composed of nine interrelated stories. These include the Sky World itself, the uprooting of the Light Tree, the fall of the Woman from the Sky, the plunging of animals to save the woman, the creation of the Earth on the Turtle’s back, and the daughter of the Woman from the Sky giving birth to twins. The twins’ stories conclude the cycle, and these include the story of the Good Twin, as a cultural hero, who frees the animals enslaved by his brother and brings maize, the story of the cosmic fight between the brothers involving fatal weapons, and finally, the expulsion of the Bad Twin while Good Twin and Woman from the Sky retire to the Sky World, promising to come back at the end of the world.
Longer versions sometimes provide more detailed elements such as incest, the impregnation of women by the wind, a fight between the twins while still in the womb, a toad holding back water until it comes out of its belly or underarms as a torrent, a quest for the father and testing of the son, experimentation in creating human life, and light stealing. In any event, the Woman Who Fell from the Sky myth can be divided in three parts, corresponding to three time periods:
In the first era, the Sky World is located in the visible part of our sky where anthropomorphic (nonhumans having human-like traits) gods live, whose culture is similar to what North America’s indigenous people know. In the middle of a clearing in a forest is located a village full of life, made of wood longhouses built to accommodate extended maternal families. The only light these gods can depend on comes from the Tree of Life, or Light Tree, standing beside the chief’s house.
Every day inhabitants went about their tasks until one morning a boy and a girl from the same family lay together in an incestuous relation. She combed his hair, and this symbolic physical contact got her pregnant. The boy died shortly after the birth of his daughter.
Another version states that a young woman was promised to the chief of the village, and she had to satisfy a cultural wedding ritual and walk directly into her future husband’s house with a loaf of bread. There she cooked maize into porridge, suffering various ordeals such as being burned with the boiling porridge or having her wounds licked by ferocious white dogs. After proving her courage to her husband she made her bed near his, their feet touching. With their soles in contact they sat, mixed their breaths, and she got pregnant.
After a while the chief became jealous of his pregnant wife and asked his community to help him solve this problem through a Dreams Ceremony. It is decided that she must be thrown down a hole created by the uprooting of the Tree of Life. The Tree is rooted back and the Sky World period is over.
In the second era, the woman falls from the sky carrying a small amount of earth she scraped from the edge of the hole. Birds meet her and help her land on the water, while the Animal Council sends many divers to help her to the surface. Only Muskrat succeeds but dies sacrificing himself to save the Woman. She is laid down on the back of Turtle, and from then on, every movement she makes generates life. Her daughter grows up and is courted by many animals. She accepts Turtle’s demand and is impregnated, and she hears two voices quarrelling inside of her.
The first born of the twins is Sapling, the Good Twin. After him Flint, the Bad Twin, is born covered with warts and bearing a flint comb. Flint is so eager to see daylight that he kills his mother by birthing from her underarm. He lies to his grandmother and tells her Sapling is responsible for the daughter’s death, becoming her favorite. They bury the body and keep the head as a source of light.
The Woman throws away the oldest twin and lives with the youngest. Abandoned, Sapling finds his father and learns from him how to hunt. This learning reveals a different world and with the help of Turtle, he acquires useful knowledge such as building a house, making fire, and cooking maize.
Everything Sapling creates is countered by Flint’s doing; cultivated plants are met with poison ivy, rivers and lakes inspire rapids and falls, and humans fabricated by Sapling motivate Flint to fabricate monkeys and monsters. Flint tries to gather all of Sapling’s creations into one cave but when the Good Twin comes to free his animals, he is tricked into freeing Flint’s monsters, creating a movement of life and death associated with the seasons.
After a destructive fight between the twins, the order is restored and every character is given a role in the new world. Some stay on Earth to help humanity, while others are sent back to the Sky World.
In the third and final era, Sapling and Flint both go back to the Sky World but the Creator of Men comes to Earth to help in cases of extreme crisis, each time under the identity of a young fatherless boy. First he suggested that men live in clan structures. He came a second time to teach humans the four sacred thanking ceremonies of the Longhouse. His third visit was devoted to teaching the Berries ceremony. On his fourth visit, he taught humans the Longhouse values and knowledge.
Sapling is said to be living in the east, where the sun rises, while Flint is sometimes associated with a land of the Dead, where he lives with his Grandmother.
Geneviève Pigeon
See also Birth of Good and Evil, an Iroquois Myth; Brothers Who Followed the Sun, an Iroquois Legend; Creation Stories of the Native Americans; Myths; Star Boy, a Blackfoot Legend
Further Reading
Fenton, William. 1991. The False Faces of the Iroquois. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Hewitt, John N. B. 1928. Iroquoian Cosmology. Washington, DC: Smithsonian.
Parker, Arthur C. 1989. Seneca Myths and Folk Tales. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Tooker, Elisabeth, ed. 1979. Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands: Sacred Myths, Dreams, Visions, Speeches, Healing Formulas, Rituals and Ceremonials. New York: Paulist Press.