the iroqouis and pima response

Briana Weems
The Iroquois & Pima Creation Response
6th-7th Period
The Iroquois and Pima are different tribes. The Iroquois were made up of the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations. They were names Iroquois by the French but the Iroquois called themselves, “People of the Longhouse” because of where they primary stayed. There was a lot of the Iroquois; the largest town contained as many as two thousand people. There are at least twenty-five versions of the Iroquois creation story. The Pimas lived along the Gila and Salt rivers in Arizona. The Spanish gave them their name because of their remoteness of power. The first myth of their creation was in 1694, which was when they started writing in their journals. These two tribes had two different beliefs on how they were and the world was created.
In the Iroquois creation story they talked about “two worlds in existence” meaning that two worlds were already created. They also talk about how there already people on the planet and a woman was becoming pregnant with twins. The woman then falls from one world to the other and crushes a turtle, which is how islands were formed. The story goes on then to say how the woman died while giving birth to the twins. They wasn’t a nurse there so it doesn’t tell how they were taken care of but they did end having names. One son was Enigorio, which was the good mind. The other was named Enigonhahetgea, which was the bad mind. This is their reason of how we have good and evil in the world. They no longer used their names throughout the story but called them the good and bad mind.
The good mind wanted to make the world a better place while the bad mind had other plans. The good mind actually took his mother’s head and made the sub and took her body made an orb and crated the moon. He made “numerous spots of light” which is now stars. His brother, the evil mind, continued to try and mess up his plans to make the world like trying to make people but ended up making monkeys. He also made mountains, waterfalls, great steeps and dangerous reptiles, things that could be dangerous to us. In the end the good mind defeated his brother, which left us with the saying, “good always conquers evil.”
The Pima’s story starts off by saying that there wasn’t a earth or water but there was a person called “The doctor of the Earth.” He started earth off by creating a bush and ants. He made him a helper because he knew that he needed help doing all the work that needed to be done. However his worker didn’t do anything and didn’t want to help do anything. The way he made was sun was by first creating water and then put into something that was a dish and hardened in place in the sky. The moon he made the same way, and with the stars he put water into his mouth and spit it out into the sky.
“The doctor of the Earth was known for being a perfectionist. He continued to make people on the world until they were exactly how he wanted them to be. The first groups of people were too selfish; the second groups were too prone to illness, the next smoke too much. He continued smashing the world until it was exactly how he wanted it to be. Both of these worlds were so different but ended up with all these different people on it.