Sky Woman and the Turtle's Back
A woman falls through the hole left where a great tree was uprooted in the Sky World, and the water birds catch her and set her on a turtle's back while muskrat dives for mud from the bottom to spread there. The island grows into the earth; her daughter bears twin grandsons who divide the work of shaping it, one making smooth rivers and fruit, the other rapids, brambles and cold. Haudenosaunee oral tradition kept in the Longhouse and put into print by the Tuscarora writer David Cusick in 1827 and in fuller Onondaga and Mohawk versions by the Tuscarora ethnologist John Hewitt around 1900.
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Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
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Closest analogues
- 48% · 11 shared
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- 39% · 9 shared