Cheyenne Creation

The Cheyenne Creation Story is the account of the beginning of the world, the seasons, and the first people in the time before time when all was water, and nothing existed but the Creator and aquatic birds. There are many versions of the tale, but the most popular shares similarities with the Lakota Sioux Creation Story.

In that story, the Creator sends various animals (the loon, otter, beaver, and turtle) down to the bottom of the endless water to bring up the primordial mud to make the earth while, in the Cheyenne tale, only waterbirds are featured. The tale is also known as the Cheyenne and Arapaho Creation Story as it has also always been told – and still is – by the Arapaho nation, a close ally of the Cheyenne. A second Cheyenne creation tale, focusing on the origin of the people, is similar to the Mandan Creation Story, in which human beings are originally subterranean and emerge from the earth onto the upper land that becomes their ancestral home.Creation stories of other Native American nations share some similarities with all three of these, but all differ significantly in detail, conclusion, and specific message. A constant in these tales, however, is the presence of a Creator – explicitly mentioned or implied – responsible for the "earth we walk on" and all things in it. Another similarity in the tales is the absence of evil. Those aspects of existence that people fear and suffer such as sickness, difficulties, disappointments, and death are understood as part of the whole human condition as envisioned by the Creator from the start, not as a punishment for a "fallen condition" brought about by sin.

There is no date of composition assigned to any of these stories as they were passed down orally from generation to generation until they began to be recorded by white settlers in the 18th and, primarily, 19th centuries. Many of the Cheyenne tales, including this one, were written down by the anthropologist and historian George Bird Grinnell (l. 1849-1938). The following is taken from his work By Cheyenne Campfires, first published in 1926.

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The creation story of the Cheyenne tells of a being who was floating on the surface of the water. Water birds, swans, geese, ducks, and other birds that swim already existed and these were all about him. The person called to these birds and asked them to bring him some earth. They were glad to do so and agreed, one after another, to dive down through the water and see if they could find earth at the bottom. The larger birds dived in vain. They came up without anything, for they could not reach the bottom, but at last one small duck came to the surface with a little mud in its bill.

The bird swam to the being and put the mud in his hand, and the being took it and worked it with his fingers until it was dry, when he placed it in little piles on the surface of the water, and each little pile became land, and grew and grew and spread, until, as far as one could see, solid land was everywhere. Thus was created the earth we walk onAfter there was firm ground, the Creator took from his right side a rib and from it made a man. From the man's left side, he took a rib and from that made a woman. These two persons were made at the same place but, after they had been made, they were separated and the woman was put far in the north, and the man in the south.