Journal #4

Nika Bogoslovsky
10/5/07
Pima Creation Story

"But when he made the stars he took the water in his mouth and spurted it up into the sky. But the first night his stars did not give light enough. So he took the Doctor-stone (diamond), the tone-dum-haw-teh, and smashed it up, and took the pieces and threw them into the sky to mix with the water in the stars, and then there was light enough."

Summary:

This is the Pima tribe's creation story. Like the Iroquois creation story, it was translated by a Pima man who had been assimilated into "white" culture and had been Christianized. However, this story was written down 400 years after the Iroquois one was.

Response:

The Pima creation story is much more like the Christian story. Now I wonder if that is because of coincidence or because 400 extra years of living in a Christian society played a big role in influencing the translated version. What I really like about this creation story is that it reminds me of Greek mythology. It has a bit of magic to it that the Christian creation story lacks. The way The Doctor of Earth makes the makes the earth and the stars is so creative and almost wondrous. Like the Christian creation story there's this God like figure who makes earth out of nothing. He is also responsible for creating people, plants, animals, light, and stars; just like God was responsible for creating everything. I know native tribes were extremely different from each other, but for the Iroquois to believe in a creation story so out there and then for the Pima to have a creation story so similar to the Christian story makes me think twice. This story was written 400 years later, so this man was living in a more advance time and had probably been exposed to more American culture than the man who wrote the Iroquois story. It's very possible that, and unfortunate, that that's the case. He did, however, manage to keep the sort of mysticism that I think native cultures have over Christians'.