• UPR Cayey

• INGL 3251

Reaction Paper #1: The originality of the Iroquois Creation Story

from the Greek Creation Myth

The Native-American creation stories "propose a general cultural outlook and offer

perspectives on what life is and how to understand it" (American Literature 30). The Iroquois

story of the beginning of the world is one of the best-known examples of Native-American oral

literature, due to its existence in twenty-five versions. The originality of this creation story can be

compared to the Greek creation myth in the following aspects: the emergence of beings, the

creation of different elements, and the different reasons each culture have about their creation

story.

One of my reactions to the originality between the Iroquois and Greek creation stories was

how different the emergence of various beings was to each culture. For the Iroquois, there were

already two worlds, in which one of them humans existed. As for the Greeks, there was chaos or

nothingness, from where the first deity, Gaia, emerged. But, in both creation stories, a woman

was conceived without male intervention. Both gave birth to the beings who were going to

continue the creation of things. The fact that this event occurs in both cultures despite being

thousands of miles apart amazes me. It makes me think how connected the imagination of men

and women are. Also, thinking in a biological way, it is impressive how the instinct of wanting to

know the origin of what surrounds them made both cultures use women as the element of

procreation, which makes complete sense.