ACHOMAWI

The Achomawi (sometimes called Kommaidum or People of the Snow) tribe

of Northern California were a peaceful people who lived by hunting, fishing,
and gathering wild plants for medicinal purposes. Like many other California
tribes, they were the unfortunate victims of Gold Rush violence in the mid-19th
century. The Achomawi tell a myth about two creatorsone the wise Silver Fox,
the other the amoral trickster, Coyote.
***
In the beginning there was only water and a clear sky, when suddenly a cloud
appeared and became Coyote. Mist that
formed on the waters turned into Silver Fox. The two newly created beings
thought of a boat and a boat was formed.
Coyote and Fox floated about in the boat for many years but eventually became
restless. To make a change, Silver Fox made Coyote lie down and Coyote immediately
slept. While his companion was asleep, Silver Fox used combings from
his hair to make a kind of mat that he spread out on the water. He then thought
trees, rocks, shrubs, grass, and fruit. Then he woke up his friend, who asked where
they were. Were just here, said Silver Fox. Coyote, who had no self-control,
was delighted and began to eat things at will. The two beings agreed to live in the
new place and Silver Fox built the first sweat lodge there.
***
The myth begins with the all-encompassing presence of the primordial waters,
containing the potential for life. Although the waters in this creation from chaos
myth are representative of unformed creation, or chaos, they are also the maternal
source; the mother of creation. Born of the mother are two beings of different
naturesan essential duality that people understand exists in life and, therefore, in
creation itself. In this myth the effects of the duality play out in the idea that the
Silver Fox aspect of life (and presumably, humanity) produces, and the amoraltrickster
Coyote aspect eats. Silver Fox is wise and Coyote is lazy and impulsive.
The story, therefore, suggests a moral lesson about constructive behavior.
Although this is a creation from chaos myth it has elements of the ex
nihilo type of creation, especially in the segment in which Silver Fox thinks
trees and other elements of creation into existence.

ACOMA (AAKU)
The Acoma (Aaku) Native Americans, a Pueblo people of present day New
Mexico, mark their sacred center in a village that sits on top of a 600 foot
mesa. The Acoma people say that Sky City, as it is widely called, is the oldest
continually inhabited village in the area now known as the United States. The
Acoma people, like their neighbors at Laguna, are a Keres (Keresan-speaking)
people who have linguistic and cultural relatives further east in the southern
pueblos along the Rio Grande. All of the Keresthe people of the pueblos at Laguna
and Acoma in the east, and Santa Ana, Zia, San Felipe, Santo Domingo,
and Cochiti, further west and north, are Christianized. Along with the new religion
brought by the Spanish in the 16th century, however; the Pueblo people
continue to maintain their original religious beliefs, myths, and ceremonies.
There are several versions of the Keres
. The one below is specific to Acoma.
***
In the beginning two sister-spirits were born somewhere in the darkness of the
underground. Living in constant darkenss they grew slowly and knew one another
only by touch. For some time they were fed by a female spirit named Tsichtinako
(Thinking Woman) who taught them language.
When she thought the twins were ready, Tsichtinako gave the sisters baskets
containing seeds for all the plants and models of all the animals that would
be in the next world. Tsichtinako said the baskets were from their father and that
they were to be carried to the light of the upper world. She helped the sisters
find the seeds of four trees in the baskets, and these seeds the sisters planted
in the dark. After a long time the trees sprouted and onea pinegrew sufficiently
to break a small hole through the earth above and let in some light. With
Tsichtinakos help, the girls found the model of the badger, to whom they gave
the gift of life and whom they instructed to dig around the hole so it would become
bigger. They cautioned the animal not to enter into the world of light, and
he obeyed. As a reward he was promised eventual happiness in the upper world.
Next the sisters found the model of the locust in the baskets. After they gave him
life, they asked him to smooth the opening above but warned him not to enter
the world of light. When he returned after doing his job he admitted he had
indeed passed through the hole. What was it like up there? the sisters asked.
Flat, he answered. Locust was told that for having done his work he could
accompany
the spirits to the upper world but that for his disobedience he would
live in the ground and would have to die and be reborn each year. Then it was time
for the sister-spirits to emerge. Instructed by Tsichtinako, they took the baskets,
Badger, and Locust, climbed the pine tree to the hole above, and broke through
into the upper world. There they stood waiting until the sun appeared in what
Tsichtinako had told them was the east.
They had also learned the other three directions from her, as well as a prayer to
the sun, which they now recited, and the song of creation, which they sang for the
first time.
Tsichtinako revealed that she had been sent to be the sisters constant guide
by the creator, Uchtsiti, who had made the world from a clot of his blood. The
sisters were to complete the creation by giving life to the things in the baskets.
This they did by planting the seeds and breathing life into the animals, but when
the first night came the sisters were afraid and called on Tsichtinako, who explained
that the dark time was for sleep and that the sun would return.
The creation was duly completed by the sisters, who took the names Iatiku
(Life-Bringer) and Nautsiti (Full Basket).
***
Over the years additions were made to the Acoma creation story. Some say
the sisters quarreled and that Nautsiti disobeyed their father by giving birth to
two sons fathered by hot rain drops from the rainbow and that, as punishment, the
sisters were deserted by Tsichtinako.

According to this story, one of the boys was brought up by Iatiku. When he was
old enough, he became his aunts husband. It was from this incestuous relationship
that the first people were born.
Another tradition developed concerning spirit figures known as kachina,
figures common to most of the pueblo peoples of New Mexico and Arizona.
Some say that Iatiku later created these spirits, who would spend part of the year
in the sacred mountains and part of the year with the people dancing for them in
a way that would bring rain.
Acoma is a matrilineal culture; ownership is passed down through the female
line. Not surprisingly, the Acoma creation story is dominated by goddesses
rather than by a male deity. At the center of this creation myth is the concept of
female power in the universe. In such a universe the logical venue for the beginning
of the process whereby the world as we know it is created is the inside of the
Earth, the symbolic womb of the Great Mother personified by the spirit Tsichtinako.
While we are told that the Earth
itself and the potential for various animal and plant forms were created by a drop
of the father gods blood, we hear little or nothing about him after that. It is the
female characters who are necessary to the process by which the people and their
society emerge from the darkness and become viable humans. The father god
provides the seed; the mother goddess gives birth and nurtures and establishes
the customs of the people.
The Acoma people were once sedentary and agricultural. Their creation myth,
whatever else it may be, is a depiction of the process by which seeds germinate
and sprout forth from within the earth into our world. And among the sprouts
are good plants and bad, represented by the twin sons, one of whom institutes
incest or essential sinfulness at the very roots of the human experience.
Tsichtinako (Sussistinako) or Thinking Woman (although at the Zia pueblo
she is male) is a particularly important southwestern figure. Sometimes translated
as Thought Woman or Prophesying Woman, she in some ways resembles
the Hopi sometimes generatrix, Huring Wuhti (Hard-Beings Woman). She also
has characteristics of Spider Woman, known to all southwestern tribes. Thinking
Woman, who is of the fertile womblike underworld (like Spider Woman),
is able to carry her creative thought into the outside world. She has been called a
kind of silent Logos who brings everything into existence.