How Raven let the light out
There is no single Native American mythology. The United States recognises more than 570 tribal nations and Canada has hundreds of First Nations, each with its own language and stories, many of them still told and held sacred today. The stories here come from just a few.
On the Pacific coast of Canada and Alaska, the Haida and Tlingit tell of a time when the world was dark because a chief kept the sun, moon and stars shut away in boxes. RAVEN turned himself into a pine needle, was swallowed by the chief's daughter in a drink of water, and was born as the chief's grandson. He cried until he was given the boxes to play with, then opened them and flew off with the light. The Haida artist Bill Reid carved RAVEN discovering the first humans in a clamshell, and the sculpture appeared on the back of Canada's twenty-dollar note from 2004.
The world on a turtle's back
The Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, tell of Sky Woman, who fell through a hole in the sky world towards endless water. Birds caught her on their wings, and the animals dived one after another to bring up mud for her to stand on. Most failed; the small muskrat came up at last with a pawful, which was spread on the back of a great TURTLE and grew into the land. Ojibwe tellings have a similar dive, with NANABOZHO, and many Indigenous people still call North America Turtle Island.
Why the stars are in a mess
In a Diné (Navajo) story, the stars were being set out carefully in the sky, one pattern at a time, when COYOTE grew impatient, grabbed the blanket holding the rest and flung them upwards — so most stars are scattered about at random instead of arranged in neat pictures. COYOTE turns up in stories across the West as a trickster: clever, greedy, often his own worst enemy, and a good example of what not to do.
The clown who does everything backwards
Among the Lakota, a HEYOKA is someone who has dreamed of the WAKINYAN, the Thunder Beings, and must afterwards behave in reverse: saying goodbye for hello, shivering in the summer heat, riding a horse facing its tail. It is meant to be funny, but the role is serious. Laughter breaks tension, and doing everything the wrong way round makes people see the right way afresh.
A sea goddess, and a world named after her
The Inuit of the Arctic, who have traditions of their own, tell of SEDNA, who lives at the bottom of the sea. In one version her father threw her from his kayak in a storm, and when she clung to its side he cut off her fingers, which became the seals, walruses and whales. When she is angry she keeps the sea animals away from hunters, and because she has no fingers she cannot comb her own hair; a shaman who travels down to comb it for her can calm her. In 2003 astronomers named one of the most distant objects ever found in our solar system after her, an icy world as cold and remote as the deep sea she rules.