Chapter XXXIII: Creation Beliefs and Other Legends

All local Indians believed in a mythical age when animals were persons and talked to each other. Both Atsugewi and mountain Maidu thought that floods played a part in the past scheme of things before people were created by gifted animal ancestors.

Garth relates that “Atsugewi mythology tells of the successive
creation of two former worlds, the first of which was destroyed by a
great flood and the second by a fire which Coyote instigated in an
attempt to kill his rival, Grey Fox. After this both Coyote and Grey
Fox descended from the heavens on a long rope to the primeval sea
below. Here Grey Fox took combings from his fur (in some accounts a
piece of sod) and proceeded to make land of it, stretching it to all
sides until the present earth was made, in concept a large island
floating in the sea. Grey Fox then created trees, animals, and finally
people. The sun and moon were two brothers whom Grey Fox told to mount
into the sky to light the world, the one during the day and the other
at night.... Grey Fox first wanted to create two moons and two suns,
but Coyote objected saying that it would be too hot. Grey Fox then
made only the sun and one moon.”

In a somewhat different version, Dixon has recorded that the Atsugewi
“... recount how, in the beginning, there was only the illimitable sea
and the cloudless sky. Slowly in the sky a tiny cloud began to form,
and grew till it reached considerable proportions. Then gradually it
condensed, and, becoming solid, became the Silver-Gray Fox, the
Creator. Then arose immediately a fog; and from this, as it condensed,
and coagulated as it were, arose Coyote. By a process of
long-continued and intense thought, the Creator created a canoe into
which both he and Coyote descended, and for long years floated and
drifted aimlessly therein, till, the canoe having become moss-grown
and decayed, they had, perforce, to consider the necessity of creating
a world whereon they might take refuge.”

The Yana legends quoted below from Gifford and Klimek (first) and from Sapir and Spier are from the northern and central tribes, of that people. These legends are given in lieu of those of southern Yana and Yahi, with which this book should be concerned, because of the similarity of the culture of these four tribes. It is extremely unlikely that there would be very great differences in their legends and beliefs of creation. Obviously each tribe had its own unique details.

North Yana: “Coyote, assistant creator, was marplot (the evil schemer)
who brought death into the world as follows: Coyote, his two sons, and
other people went down-stream to get clamshells. The people played.
Coyote’s sons seized the clamshells and ran off with them. One escaped
with the stolen shells, but the other was killed. The Coyote boy who
escaped shouted to Old Man Coyote, who sat in his assembly house and
observed daily what transpired. Coyote boy told the old man his
brother was dead. Old Coyote then mourned for his son. Silver Fox told
him not to cry, but to clean the assembly house and bring in the dead
boy. They strewed the floor with straw and built fire. Silver Fox told
old Coyote to lie down and pretend to sleep. ‘Do not move,’ said
Silver Fox. This was to cause dead boy to revive. They started to cut
old Coyote’s belly to get back the spirit of his dead son. Old Coyote
shouted with pain and said: ‘Let him stay dead. The dead shall remain
dead.’ Thus he spoiled Silver Fox’s plan for resurrection.”

Central Yana: “... the creation of people took place at Wama-riwi, a
village at the cove north of Battle Creek and several miles west of
the present Shingletown, that is, roughly at the center of Yana
territory. Here in the beginning were Lizard and Cottontail (in
Dixon’s version, Lizard, Gray Squirrel, and Coyote; in Curtin’s,
Silkworm) who had no predecessors. Discussing how people shall be
made, Lizard lays down sticks which they carry to the four directions
to become neighboring Indian tribes. Realizing that they have omitted
those at the center, they put down bad (short) sticks there. Hence the
Yana are shorter than any of their neighbors: a view held by the Yana
and repeated by Powers as fact. In Dixon’s version (from the same
informant) Lizard carefully prepares three sticks for Atsugewi,
Wintun, and Achomawi, and as an afterthought, short sticks for the
Yana. The first three are placed to the east, west, and north; the
others are boiled to transform them into humans. Coyote refuses to
recognize them until they speak properly, that is, the Yana tongue.
Curtin’s version is quite different, although still the Yana are
created from sticks: his presumably Northern Yana informant, himself a
chief, placed the locale in his own country, at Round Mountain. Here
Silkworm puts down three sticks, for the Yana chief, a woman, and an
orphan, and a large number around the first for common people; he
instructs them how to procure food and admonishes that they obey the
chief.

“The origin of sex, or rather its proper attribution rests in the
circumstance that in the beginning, women were men; men were women.
The women were such poor hunters that people starved. To remedy this,
Cottontail placed stones in a fire; when the women were seated, the
stones burst, cutting their proper organs, and the women became men.
Hands were then webbed like Lizard’s. In order that they might handle
bows and pestles, Lizard, experimenting, cut his fingers apart. With
this as a model, he separated those of humans. (In Curtin’s version,
Water Lizard remedies the defect for himself alone.) In the beginning
when people died, they rose from their graves again. Coyote, who
objected to these improvements of human affairs, not only proposes
that they shall stay dead but stamps down a dead man who would rise.
When his own son dies, he changes his mind, but Lizard, Cottontail,
and Gray Squirrel will have none of it, so that death and mourning
were established forever.”

Again Garth is here quoted on Atsugewi beliefs: “As in most of
northern California there are numerous natural phenomena in Atsugewi
territory which marked some mythological event. A low cone-like rock
in Dixie Valley was said to be a basket belonging to Coyote. About
four miles south of Pittville on the old village site of Mawakasui was
an oblong rock ten feet or so in length which was said to be the
petrified remains of a lizard whom Butterfly had killed. The extremely
rough tongue of lava-covered land extending down the center of Hat
Creek Valley was created by Porcupine to impede Coyote with whom
Porcupine was running a race. Eagle Lake was said to have been
formerly in Atsuge territory, but Coyote tired of the manzanita
berries and camass roots which the people fed to him here, so he moved
the lake to the Apwaruge country. Here the people fed him epos roots
and treated him better.”

The Maidu concept of the world according to Dixon is that of “...
floating on the surface of a great sea, but anchored by five ropes
stretched by the Creator, which hold the island steady, and prevent it
from drifting about. Occasionally some being seizes these ropes and
shakes them, and this causes earthquakes. The world was flat when
first made from the bit of mud brought up from the depths of the
primeval sea by the turtle (turtle does not appear in the northeast or
mountain Maidu version) or from the robin’s nest floating in the sea.
Later the Creator and the Coyote went about over the world, making the
rivers and mountains. Coyote was in general responsible for the
latter, and for the extreme roughness of the country....” The
Creator’s stone canoe is said to be visible today on top of Keddie
Peak just north of Indian Valley (Greenville); also his and Coyote’s
dance houses may be seen as huge circular depressions at what is now
Durham (near Chico).

In his extensive collection of Maidu myths, Dixon observes that
“Throughout the myths there is nowhere any suggestion that the Maidu
had any knowledge of any other region, that they were immigrants in
the land where they live. This complete absence of any migration
tradition is a feature which is very characteristic, and serves to
differentiate the mythology not only of the Maidu, but of most
Californian tribes, from that of the Southwest, and much of the
eastern portion of the continent.”

He further states: “here the creation is a real beginning: beyond it,
there is nothing. In the beginning was only the great sea, calm and
unlimited, to which, down from the clear sky, the Creator came, or on
which he and Coyote were floating in a canoe. Of the origin of
previous place of abode of either Creator or Coyote, the Maidu know
nothing....”

“... the whole series of tales told by the stock ... appeared to
follow one another in a more or less regular and recognized order.
Beginning with the creation, a rather systematic chain of events leads
up to the appearance of the ancestors of the present Indians, with
whose coming the mythic cycle came to a close. This mythic era, the
be-be-ito, seems to fall into a number of periods, with each of which
a group or set of myths has to deal. First, we have the coming of
Ko-do-yan-pe (Earth-Namer or Creator) and Coyote, their discovery of
this world, and the preparation of it for the ‘first people’; next the
creation of these first people, and the making and planting of the
germs of the human race, the Indians, who were to come after; third,
the long period during which the first people were in conflict, and
were in the end changed to the various animals in the present world.
In this period Earth-Maker tries to put an end to Coyote, whose evil
ways and wishes are in direct contrast to his own.” Creator was always
dignified and striving to make life easy, happy, and deathless for
mankind, while Coyote, a trickster and amorous knave, worked with
continued success to render life difficult for man with the result
that man’s lot is to suffer and finally to die. This belief was
generally uniform among the tribes of the Lassen area. “... During
this period Earth-Maker strives for a last time in vain with Coyote,
his defeat, and disappearance toward the East coincident with the
appearance of the human race, which bursts forth from the spots where
the original pairs had been buried long before.” These potential human
beings had been made “... as tiny wooden figures by the Creator, and
planted here and there in pairs, that they might grow in secret and
safety during the time of monsters and great conflicts....”

In other myths also there is great similarity among the Maidu,
Atsugewi, Yana, and Yahi. Dixon says concerning “... The theft of
fire, for instance.... In all, the fire is held by a man and his
daughters, and is discovered largely through the agency of the Lizard;
the fire is watched and guarded by a sentinel bird, is stolen in
consequence of his sleeping while on guard, and pursuit by the women
is hindered by the strings of their skirts being cut as they sleep.
The fire is brought back by a group of animals, among whom the fire is
divided for safety; and the pursuers, who are usually Thunder, and his
two daughters Rain and Hail, are put to flight.”