Sky Woman Falls

In the beginning, there was no land. There was only the wide ocean below and the sky world above. The sky world had earth and trees and rivers, and people lived in it. There was no death there.

In the middle of the sky world there grew a great tree. The tree was beautiful, and its roots went deep into the soil of the sky world. The chief of the sky people was called the Ancient One. He had a wife who was pregnant. She had been having strange dreams.

She told the Ancient One that she dreamed about the great tree. She dreamed it was uprooted. She wanted him to dig around it and pull it up.

The Ancient One did not like this dream. He did not want the tree disturbed. But she would not stop, and he loved her, and at last he had it dug up. The roots came out of the ground and there was a hole where the tree had been, and the woman went to the edge of the hole to look down.

What she saw was the world below the sky world. Down through the hole there was the wide ocean, and far down on its surface birds were flying.

She bent over the hole. The Ancient One came up behind her. Some say he pushed her. Some say she leaned too far. She fell.

She fell through the hole, down out of the sky world, through the air, down toward the water of the lower world.

The water birds saw her falling from a long way off. They flew up to meet her. They saw she could not swim and would drown. They linked their wings together to make a great living net, and they caught her on their wings. They carried her down gently. They held her up in the air.

The birds called to the great Turtle, who was in the water below them, and asked him to come up. The Turtle came up. The birds set Sky Woman on the back of the Turtle.

But the Turtle's back was bare. There was no soil. Sky Woman could not stand on it forever, and she would have nothing to plant. They needed earth.

The animals of the water held a council. They said one of them must dive down to the bottom of the ocean and bring up earth, the way they remembered there had been earth long ago. They knew it was deep. They knew it was dangerous.

The otter went down first. He was the strongest swimmer. He went down and was gone for a long time. He came up empty, exhausted.

The beaver went next. He came up empty.

The loon went down. The loon was a deep diver. The loon came up empty.

The muskrat, who was small and not very strong, said: "I will go." The other animals laughed at him. They said: "If the otter and the beaver and the loon could not do it, what hope do you have?" The muskrat went anyway. He took a deep breath and went down. He was gone a long time. The animals waited. They began to think he had drowned.

Then the muskrat floated up to the surface. He was dead. The other animals lifted him up and saw, in his small clenched paws, a tiny bit of mud from the bottom of the ocean. He had reached the bottom. He had brought it up. It had cost him his life.

The Turtle said: "Put the mud on my back."

The animals took the mud out of the muskrat's paws and laid it on the Turtle's back. The mud began to grow. It grew and spread and became a great island on the Turtle's back. The island grew with grasses and trees and rivers and mountains. It was the land we now stand on.

Sky Woman stood up on the back of the Turtle, on the new earth. She had been pregnant. She gave birth there to a daughter.

The daughter grew up on the Turtle's back. When she was old enough, the West Wind blew over her, and she became pregnant. She gave birth to twin sons. The first son came out the regular way. The second son was impatient and broke out through her side, and his mother died.

Sky Woman buried her daughter in the new earth. From the daughter's body, plants grew. From her head grew the corn. From her chest grew the squash. From her legs grew the beans. These three together would feed the people who would come.

The two boys grew up. The first one, the older, was good. He shaped the world to be useful. He made gentle rivers, animals that could be hunted, plants that could be eaten. The second one, the impatient one, was the opposite. He made what was hard. He made the rough mountains. He made the thorns and the snakes. He made the things that hurt people.

The two of them argued and fought. In the end the older brother killed the younger one and took his powers. But the world by then was already as it is now: with its gentle parts and its hard parts together, mixed.

That is the story the Haudenosaunee tell. We are living on the back of a turtle. The earth grew from a piece of mud a small dead muskrat brought up. The plants we eat came from the body of a young woman who fell from a hole in the sky.