The Importance of Water
Water is a fundamental focus point of life. The Earth's surface is 71% water, leading to more than 217,000 miles of coastline that human life has developed upon. Water acts as a staple point of survival, but can also heavily influence the culture that settles next to it. The creation story of a culture features important factors in the beginning of civilization, and it's no coincidence that many of these beginning stories also feature water. There are three recurring themes that creation tales are often centered on: floods, life and land coming from water, and new beginnings brought by water. Looking at the meaning behind these stories can bring the reader to a singular thesis. Water, as a highly prolific source of nourishment is often featured in the origin stories of many cultures.
Flooding is one of the most iconic cataclysmic events that can happen in the natural world. The story of Noah and the Ark is the most well known tale of flooding, bearing with it the connotations of redemption and the price of disbelief. In several of the Native American stories given, flooding was used as a turning point for civilizations, where they began again after catastrophic lost. The Cowichan tribe’s telling of The Great Flood even shares several key points with the story of Noah, with disbelievers of the foretold flood being punished via a watery grave. Similarly, in The Great Serpent and the Flood, the Great Serpent and his companions are punished in a massive flood that they caused. Creationism is the Christian community is told of a beautiful, bountiful land that harbors many fruits and life of all kinds. Genesis and the Garden of Eden are two notably significant examples of the start of the world being full of life and land. In contrast to this, numerous Native American stories begin with the world covered in water, with land forming from mud being a common subtle theme as well. In an old Cherokee myth, the earth was said to begin as being covered completely in water. It was only when the water beetle explored the depths of the large bodies of water and brought mud to the surface that land began to grow. The Muscogee tell their original tale a little differently, with a hill protruding from their vast water world. Here, the first people were created from clay. The Iroquis have a tale that, while seemingly offhanded when compaired to the prior two, is unique in it’s own nature. It begins by telling of a dreaming woman who ends up falling through a ‘cloud’ paradise into the watery surface of the earth. She’s caught by a generous fish hawk, who tries to sustain her weight for as long as he can. Though no creature can be perfect, he soon has to ask for land on which to set the world so he no longer has to support her. It’s from this land that the origin of the world began. Water, symbolically, brings upon change, rebirth, and cleansing. Sacramental baptism, the religious immersion of an individual in water, symbolises a spiritual rebirth and cleansing of all sin in the Christian church. Utilised for the same meanings, water can be used in Native American stories to bring about new change. An Apache origin story tells of the first humans being made of clay and wood, but both of these prototypes end up destroyed in water as a display of their weaknesses. The Chelan tribe tells of their greater power leaving the Beaver in water to be cleansed until it is ready to be torn apart and turned into the first humans. Lastly, a Lakota myth tells of their Creating Power who, unhappy with the world he has created, sings songs to bring rain that will wash away the old world in order to create a new one. This rain, similar to the destructive waves of the Apache story allows for old mistakes to be erased and recreated into a more suitable alternative. Due to the importance of water from a cultural standpoint, the origin stories of many Native American tribes center around water, or use it as a crucial turning point. By having numerous themes and mediums through which water was threaded in their origin stories, Native American tribes stressed the importance of the resource in their daily lives. |