Tyler Morgan English 343 September 23, 2011 The Iroquois Creation Story Recently I read three different

creation stories from three different cultures, and although they are all very different I found two to be very similar in several ways. When diving into religions other than Christianity I find myself most of the time extremely confused, and it is usually difficult to wrap the mind around the fact that people really do believe some of these things and base their lives around it. Reading the Iroquois Creation Story was no different, but it also lead me to the question, If I grew up in these cultures, is this something I would believe? Being a strong Christian believer, and as mentioned in class, at times being more of a western thinker when it comes to religion, sometimes thinking that the only thing that is correct is what I believe in, has sometimes hampered my ability to be open to new beliefs that may be different. In the Iroquois Creation Story, there is a roller coaster of emotions for myself as a reader who has never really read anything other than Christianity. While discovering that a turtle is believed to have been involved in the creation of the Great Island which is now North America and a virgin woman gave birth to twins. I found myself very confused, wondering how someone believes this. This woman was a virgin who was saved and comforted by a turtle after a long fall from the upper world and gave birth to twins, one of which decided to come out her side? No way. But right then I realized I was guilty of judging too quickly, so I attempted to draw comparisons to the Christian story and was stopped in my thoughts. Jesus was born from the Virgin Mary, so how can I possibly believe that and turn around and say or think that the Iroquois story is not believable? If this story is looked at with an open mind, it is incredibly similar to the Christian story. The good mind (good twin) created the heavens, brought the sun, moon and stars to the earth, just as God is believed to have done. The good mind formed two images of the dust of the ground, which were male and female, and gave them living souls by breathing in their nostrils and they were real people. Which can be

considered to be similar to the way God created man. Meanwhile the bad mind(evil twin) is making the earth dangerous by creating mountains, cliffs, waterfalls, reptiles and, in failing to create humans, apes and is attempting to confine all the animals the good twin makes by depriving them from mankind before the good mind releases them from confinement. This can be related to the work of the devil with Adam and Eve causing them to sin in the garden and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In a last battle of the twins the good twin gained victory by using deer horns, which the bad mind admitted thats the only thing that would cause his body to expire, and then the good mind crushed his brother in the earth. This leads to possibly the most shocking and obvious comparison from this story in the last few lines when the bad mind uses his last words to utter that he would have equal power over the souls of mankind after death. (p.21) This is clearly the same concept as God and the Devil in the Christian faith, because they were and are always battling and God has won battles before and will continue to win, but the Devil is believed to live below the earth and is the Evil Spirit just as is the bad mind. Reading this story and trying to draw comparisons between the Iroquois and Christian Creation Stories did not make life any easier. Usually when I discover other religions it is easy to scoff and be amazed simply that someone believes them, but in this case when I sat down and actually compared the two stories, they were almost so similar it was scary. Another strange fact is that the Iroquois are from North America, I know that there are other beliefs in North America besides Christianity, but for some reason this is strange to me, because it originated in North America. Some believe this story is a myth and others call it a history, and if somebody were to pick up both the Iroquois Creation Story and the King James Version from the Bible, with no prior knowledge or beliefs in religion, which would they believe? Or would they laugh at both and not believe either? That, to me, is the beauty of religion and the world altogether is the ability to have a choice and believe whatever you want to. Somebody out there, dead, alive, god or a human, has the

answer to what is correct and how everything was created, but I sure dont, I can only rest at the end of the day on my beliefs.