THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The earth-diver is the most widespread type of creation narrative in Native North America, told in distinct versions by dozens of peoples from the Great Lakes and Eastern Woodlands to the Plains; the folklorist Stith Thompson catalogued it as motif A812 in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. The shared frame: in the beginning, or after a world-drowning flood, nothing remains but water. A survivor, whether a god, a culture hero, or a woman fallen from the sky, asks the water birds and animals to dive for soil. The strong fail one after another, until the least of them, often the muskrat or a toad, comes up half-dead or dead with a speck of mud, which is placed, breathed upon, or danced over until it grows into the land.
Two famous versions stand in contrast. In the Anishinaabe telling, Nanabozho clings to driftwood after the flood while loon, otter, and beaver perish in the deep, and the muskrat gives its life for a few grains of earth spread on the great turtle's back. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) telling begins in a world above the sky: a pregnant Sky Woman falls through a hole beneath the celestial tree, the water birds catch her and set her on the great turtle, the muskrat brings up mud to spread on the shell, and as Sky Woman walks and dances the earth grows. From these tellings comes Turtle Island, still a living name for the North American continent.
In 1827 the Tuscarora writer David Cusick set down Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations in English, one of the earliest creation accounts recorded by a Native author. The earth-diver type is also found across Siberia and Central Asia, and scholars have long used it to discuss ancient narrative connections around the Bering Strait.
