Iroquois Creation Cycles
Also known as: Haudenosaunee Creation Myth, Sky Woman and the Twins, Iroquois Cosmogony, Creation on Turtle's Back
The Haudenosaunee creation cycle tells how Sky Woman fell from the Sky World, life was formed on Turtle’s back, and twin powers shaped a balanced but contested world of day and night, life and death.
Description
Told across the Six Nations in multiple variants, the cycle begins with Sky Woman’s fall through a hole in the Sky World. Water birds bear her down, and the animals dive for earth from the primordial waters; the grain of soil is placed on Turtle’s back, which grows into the land. Sky Woman gives birth to a daughter, who later bears the Twins—variously called Good Mind and Bad Mind, or Sapling and Flint. The benevolent twin fashions rivers, gentle animals, maize, and human order; the rival introduces mountains, thorns, predators, and strife. Their conflict establishes day and night, the seasons, and mortality. The cycle weaves together earth-diver motifs, the world-turtle, the corn mother complex, and a grandparental moon, setting the cosmological frame for later narratives and ritual life.
Historiography
Earliest attestations appear in the 17th-century Jesuit Relations, with fuller 19th–20th-century records by Haudenosaunee narrators and ethnographers (e.g., Cusick, Parker, Hewitt, Hale). Names, episodes, and emphases vary by nation (notably Seneca and Onondaga versions). Some printings reflect Christian or classicizing overlays, especially in Cusick’s prose history. Scholars note the stability of the earth-diver and world-turtle motifs alongside local innovations and colonial-era syncretism.
Date Notes
Creation cycle is an oral corpus among the Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora). Written forms are missionary, antiquarian, and ethnographic transcripts with local variants.
Archetypes
Symbols
Major Characters
- Sky Woman
- Good Mind
- Bad Mind
- Turtle
- Sky Chief
- Sky Woman’s Daughter
Myths
- Sky Woman’s Descent
- Creation on Turtle’s Back
- Birth of the Twin Beings
- Strife of Good Mind and Bad Mind
- Origins of Death and Sustenance
Facts
- The cycle unites earth-diver and world-turtle motifs widespread in Indigenous North America with Haudenosaunee-specific twin cosmology.
- Variants differ on names: Good Mind/Bad Mind, or Sapling/Flint (Seneca/Cusick).
- Muskrat is typically the successful diver who brings up the earth from the deep.
- Turtle functions as the terrestrial base; “Turtle Island” names the continent in numerous tellings.
- Sky Woman’s daughter often conceives by the West Wind and dies in childbirth, linking fertility and mortality.
- The benevolent twin creates maize and beneficial animals; the rival introduces hazards and predation.
- The twins’ contest explains topography (mountains, gorges) and temporal cycles (day/night, seasons).
- Grandmother’s transformation is linked to the moon in several versions, regulating time and ritual calendars.
- Earliest written attestations are Jesuit missionary accounts; 19th–20th-century ethnography preserves nation-specific versions.
- Some printed versions show Christian and classicizing influence; modern scholarship emphasizes consulting living narrators.