This rendition of the Iroquoian creation story was compiled by Anataras (Alan Brant) from Tyendinaga.

And again, they say, as far as our stories and legends or myths or whatever you want to call them, as far as our information about our culture goes, that this is - I guess - the oldest story that we have. Some of the stories they say go right back to the time of creation or the beginning of man. But this story goes much farther past that in history, beyond the beginning of the earth or the world that we understand now, when we look outside. This story begins way before that ever came into existence. This story I call an Iroquoian creation story, because in trying to learn an entire - I guess - whole story of creation for myself - I guess to make sense in my mind - I gathered different pieces from different nations, Mohawks and Cayugas and Onondagas and Senecas, mostly. So I’d heard different parts of this story from them. So I kind of put it all together, so that it made sense to me.

And this story, hopefully ... it illustrates our connection as aboriginal people or as native people whatever the politically correct term is this week - it illustrates our connection to the earth and I guess - the way that we view different things as relatives, the way that we talk to our human relatives. We refer to different things in nature as brother or grandmother and so on. And we’ll illustrate that as we go through.

And again, just to let everybody know that during the course of this story, if you experience any kind of emotions be it sadness or happiness, not to feel bad if you express laughter or tears. That’s welcome and it’s supposed to happen, if it does happen that way. And - I guess - to get out of this story whatever it is that you need to get out of it, whether it’s entertainment or maybe some facts that you’ve been looking for and haven’t heard before, or a combination of both maybe - I don’t know. But we’ll offer this story to you. And whatever you get out of it is what you need.

Alan Brant Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

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So, like I said, “as this story goes”, it begins in a time when this earth that we know isn’t in existence yet. And it begins in a place, in a certain village, in a place we call the Sky World.

And it’s about this time of year, in January or so - maybe February. And even at that time in the history of everything, the people in the Sky World were doing ceremonies as well. And it was thanksgiving and acknowledgment of their natural world that they had, for sustaining their lives, and everything that they depended on for their existence.

And today we do the same kind of ceremony here on Mother Earth. And we refer to it as a Midwinter Ceremony. And so this is the type of ceremony they were doing in the Sky World in this one certain village.

And they say that in the Sky World, that there was no sickness or death, or greed or hatred. This was a place and a time, when all of the people really did work for the good of all the people. And these people who lived in the Sky World had very special powers or talents, each different from some of the others. So they all contributed to the whole for their good existence.

In this one village, there was a very elder leader who had never had a partner and had no children. So, at this one year in the Midwinter Ceremony, the people had, with the approval of the Chief, they added three days onto the end of the Midwinter Ceremony. And it was a game that they were going to play. And the game was a dream guessing contest. And in this contest - they say - all of the unmarried or unattached women of the village could take part. And whoever guessed the correct dream - and the dream would be one that the Chief himself would have chosen over the course of the previous year, and he would have told the dream to his assistant, so that there would be no cheating. But if one of the female contestants had guessed the correct dream, then she could become the wife of the Chief. And this was the whole purpose behind the people instituting this game. They were looking for a mate for the chief. So - they say - this had gone on, this ceremony, for many, many, many years - I don’t know, maybe generations. And no one had ever ever come close to guessing the right dream, and as all stories go, they say, “until this one time”.

There was a young woman who had never taken part in this contest before. And then she decided to do this, this one year. And they say on the third day, and on her last chance of guessing the dream, she did guess the correct dream. And I’ve never heard what that dream was, but they say that she did guess the correct one.

And so right away all of the villagers got extremely excited that somebody had actually got the answer right. And it had been so many years that they had been wishing that this would happen, so the Chief could have a partner and have children and pass his knowledge on to them. So the village was very excited that this young woman got the right answer. And immediately they started planning a wedding, and not once stopping to ask this young woman if she would like to marry the Chief, if she indeed wanted to do that.

So she was kind of swept up in all of what was going on in planning the wedding and all the excitement. Everything was planned for the following spring. And the next spring, there was a large wedding and much celebration. And people came from all over - all of the best speakers. And they came and they spoke a lot of good words about the people in the village and the Chief and the young woman - and lots of celebration. And so they were married, the Chief and this young woman.

And time went on. And in time the young woman began to think about what had happened. And she began to find out that she didn’t really love this Chief. She realized she was just swept up in the emotion of everything that was going on around her at the time. And so she never really had a chance to say or think about it: she just went along with it. And she found out that she had fallen in love with another young man in the same village. And she had become pregnant by this other young man. And so she knew now she had to go and tell the Chief how she felt, and that she was expecting a child by another man.

And they say that these people did have special gifts. And the gift that the Chief had was that he knew what was going on in the village all the time. And he had already known all this. He understood this; but, he wanted this young woman to come and tell him by herself. He didn’t want to approach her with it. So, she did. She went and she explained everything how she felt and how she didn’t love him: she loved another man. And they were going to have a child. So the Chief listened to her and he understood all the circumstances surrounding it. But he said they did have to go together, and tell the rest of the village what was happening. So they did. They called a village council together. And they told everyone what had happened. And, of course, the entire village was very sad at the turn of what had happened there. So they were also reminded - the people reminded the Chief and the woman - that there was - even at that time in this history, I guess - an ancient law that was put in place. For this type of event - I guess - or situation, the young woman and her new spouse would be banished. And they’d be banished not just from the village, but they were going to be banished from that entire world.

And the place that they were going to be sent to was a place that we would become very familiar with today.

In the centre of the village there was a large tree. And they had dug a hole beside this tree this is one of the versions that I’ve heard - and they say they dug a hole down beside it. And once they dug down so far, they broke through all of the earth. And then you could see light coming up from the bottom and when you looked way down through the hole, you could see very, very far down, there was a lot of air. And then, way down at the bottom, was rough seas like the ocean. And it was all water. There was a complete globe of water down there. And they say that it was salt water and it was also fresh water down there. That’s where they were going to send this young woman and her new partner.

Continued next week