A woman falls from the Sky World toward a world covered in water. Birds come to her aid. A turtle offers its back, while other animals dive into the depths to find something she can stand on.
In a creation account shared by the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, a muskrat returns with a little earth caught between its claws. Sky Woman places it on the turtle. The land begins to grow.
A little soil on a turtle’s back becomes a world. Sky Woman and Turtle Island belong to living Haudenosaunee traditions, and Oneida communities share different tellings. Even Sky Woman’s place in the family changes from one account to another.
Sky Woman falls through the roots
The Oneida Nation’s account is credited to Amos Christjohn. It begins in the Sky World, with a great tree and a young woman expecting a child. A hole opens near the tree; she falls through it, grasping roots and earth as she goes.
Birds and water animals help her reach the turtle’s back. Several animals try to bring up soil before the muskrat succeeds. What it retrieves joins the earth she carried from above, and a place to live starts taking shape.
The rescue depends on several animals. Birds keep the falling woman from drowning, the turtle supports her and the muskrat brings the soil. No one animal makes the land alone.
Turtle Island begins with the animals
The name Turtle Island makes sense within the account because land grows on the turtle’s back. It supports Sky Woman before there is any land for her to stand on.
The muskrat has an equally memorable task. Larger or more conspicuous animals have failed, yet the small animal returns with what is needed. The small amount of soil is enough for the land to start growing.
Amos Christjohn’s English account follows the rescue and the animals’ search for earth. Other Oneida tellers carry the story forward through Sky Woman’s family.
A second account follows another family line
The Oneida Indian Nation in New York publishes an account from Keller George, a Wolf Clan council member who lived from 1938 to 2023. Its introduction traces the telling to his maternal great-grandmother.
In that version, Sky Woman arrives in the water world and gives birth to twins. The brothers take opposing roles in the formation of the world and human beings. The account connects their differing powers with the mixture of kindness and wrongdoing in human life.
Other community-published versions place a generation between Sky Woman and the twins. She has a daughter, and that daughter becomes their mother. Sky Woman is then the grandmother.
Put the family trees beside each other and the difference becomes clear: Sky Woman is a mother in one telling and a grandmother in another. Combining the versions would change what each teller passed on.
Sky Woman, her daughter and the growing earth
The Oneida Nation of the Thames shares a telling in which Sky Woman arrives pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. Her daughter later bears the twins. The account follows the brothers’ contrasting actions as they shape the world.
Here, Sky Woman watches the creation unfold across two generations. Her daughter and grandsons have their own roles in the world taking shape.
Which telling came first? These community accounts offer no way to settle that question. They preserve versions shared today, including the family connections through which people learned them.
The foods that enter the story
Plants connect the creation accounts with things people grow, gather and use. In its discussion of women’s roles, the Oneida Indian Nation describes versions in which Sky Woman brings plants with her and in which plants grow from her daughter’s grave.
Corn, beans and squash are identified as the Three Sisters, the foods that sustain life. Tobacco and strawberries also have places in the account. These are plants people cultivate, eat or use in ceremonies.
The nation connects the account with women’s role in passing knowledge between generations. Corn, beans and squash sustain the descendants within the story as they sustain families today.
The turtle is still present in community life
The Oneida Nation’s account of its clan system identifies Turtle, Bear and Wolf clans and explains their relationships and responsibilities. It describes the Turtle Clan as keepers of the land, with responsibilities connected to the environment.
The nation also explains that clan identity comes through the mother’s family and that clan mothers appoint chiefs. Its description of these continuing traditions gives context for the importance of family relationships in the stories.
The turtle’s shape also appears in a building. The nation describes its elementary school as designed in the shape of a turtle. Symbols also appear around the reservation and in public materials.
Children can hear the account and attend a school shaped like one of its animals. The turtle is part of their surroundings as well as the story.
Roots above, land below
The tree in the Sky World provides another intriguing image. Roots and earth pass from one world to another as Sky Woman falls. In Amos Christjohn’s telling, what she carries becomes part of the land made on the turtle.
Trees connect realms in several religious traditions, although their roles differ. Yggdrasil in the Norse texts holds relationships among worlds around its roots and branches. The tree in this Oneida telling stands within the place from which Sky Woman descends.
The Norse tree connects worlds around its roots and branches; this Oneida tree marks the place where a woman passes from one world to another. In falling, she carries roots and earth with her.
Amos Christjohn’s account brings the two journeys together on the turtle’s back: earth carried down from the Sky World and soil brought up from the water’s depths. From those small beginnings, the land grows.
