Creation Stories from Around the World

Abstract

The Absarkoe or Crow people tell the story of how the world began:

Once there was only water, and Old Man Coyote. Coyote needed someone to talk with and soon found two ducks. He asked the ducks to check whether anything was under the water – one duck dove and disappeared for so long that Coyote worried he had died. But the duck emerged and informed Coyote that he had found the bottom. He went a second time to find a root, and the third time to bring up some earth. Coyote blew on the mud and it grew until it became the earth. Coyote planted the root on the earth, and plants and trees arose. Then Coyote began to make valleys, mountains, and lakes, and then took some of the clay to make people and more ducks. Within his earth, a smaller version of himself urged him to make all the other animals, as well as people with different languages who would fill the earth. In this way the bear, antelope, and other animals, as well as the dance, and war which came from people who could not understand each other.(Summarized from Leeming and Leeming 1995)