{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Native American","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_nam_iro_irc_irc04_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_nam_iro_irc_irc04_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_nam_iro_irc_irc04_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/nam/iro/irc/irc04.htm","summary":"This is a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) creation myth, likely a recorded and translated version from the Seneca or Onondaga tradition \u2014 the translation style, terminology (\"otgon,\" \"man-beings\"), and formal apparatus suggest an early 20th-century ethnographic transcription, possibly from J.N.B. Hewitt's work for the Bureau of American Ethnology. The narrative opens in a sky world where a jealous chief pushes his pregnant wife through a hole left by an uprooted sacred tree; she falls toward a primordial sea below. Underwater beings debate who can save her, and Turtle volunteers, forming the foundation on which she scatters earth from her hands to create land \u2014 the classic \"Turtle Island\" earth-diver cosmogony. The Sky Woman then creates the sun, night, and names the major constellations (the Pleiades as \"They-are-dancing,\" the Big Dipper as \"They-are-pursuing-the-bear,\" the Morning Star as \"It-brings-the-day\"), establishing herself explicitly as a divine controller. The myth then shifts to a second generation: the Sky Woman's daughter is impregnated by Wind, dies giving birth to twin boys \u2014 one normal, one grotesquely warty, who tears out through her navel \u2014 and the story closes with the elder twin setting out to find his father. Anyone interested in Indigenous North American cosmology, earth-diver creation traditions, or the role of female creator figures in Iroquoian religion will find this a primary-source narrative rich with astronomical knowledge and theologically significant detail.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Iroquoian Cosmology: A Seneca Version","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Native American","translated_text":null,"word_count":5986}