An Iroquoian story of creation

Continued from last week

And so, again, they send all their best wishes with him. And he slaps the water with his tail and down he goes. So they all are kind of waiting for the beaver to come back. And they’re waiting around the turtle shell and the woman’s sitting on the back of it there. And the beaver’s gone quite a long time, and then they notice in the water he’s coming back up. So they all start cheering. And he splashes up out of the water. And they all swim over to him. And he’s thrashing around a lot on the water. And they look in his hands and he doesn’t have any of the brown stuff. They look on the back of his tail. They thought maybe be would have shoveled some up. But he didn’t have any on his tail either. And once he calms down, and they ask him what happened. And he tells them he got so far down that the sunlight disappeared. And he couldn’t tell which way he was going. And he started to get really scared that maybe there were serpents down there and he might get eaten. So eventually he did find his way back to the surface. But he had gone a long way down and he still didn’t feel bottom.

So again, the animals got together in their council. And they asked for another volunteer. This time they say that the otter volunteers. And everybody thinks that he can swim almost as fast as a fish. So, again, they send all of their best wishes with him. And he jumps off the back of the turtle. And he cuts the water just like a knife and he’s gone out of sight in no time. So they’re all waiting for the otter to return. And h’s gone twice as long as the beaver was gone this time. They finally see him coming back up from the depths of the ocean. And everybody starts cheering and he splashes up out of the water and they swim over to him. And they notice he’s not moving. So they swim over and they check him, because he’s not stirring at all. And they see that he is drowned. He had died. He lost his life doing this dive. And they look in his hands and he doesn’t have any of this brown stuff. So, of course, they’re all very sad right away at losing their brother. And they pick him up. And they take him over and rest him on the back of the turtle shell. Then they get together in their council again, the animals and they’re building towards consensus that they won’t do this dive any more: it’s too dangerous. And they say from back of the gathering animals. There comes a little tiny voice. This creature says that he wants to try this dive. And the entire group goes quiet. And the leader of this council can’t see who this creature is, but talks to the back of the group and he asks, “Did you see what happened to the beaver? He had a hard time recovering from the dive.” And he said, “Yes I saw that.” And he asked, “Did you see our brother the otter? He just lost his life making this dive.” And he says “Yes, I’ve seen that.” And he said, “And you still want to make this dive?” And he says, “Yes I still want to make this dive.” So he says to this little voice at the back, he says, “Come to the from where we can all see this such a brave creature.”

And the Animals group starts to divide. And they let this brave animal come towards the front. They all look down and beside them as he swims past. They all start laughing. And even the leader of the council is laughing. And by the time he gets to the front, the whole group of them is laughing. And he gets up on the edge of the turtle shell and he’s standing there. And they say, it’s a little creature, a little ball of fluff. And he’s got these really crooked whiskers and he’s got a tail like a pencil. And they say it’s the animal, this brave animal turns our to be the muskrat. And everybody stops laughing finally and again they ask him, did he see the Beaver? And he says, “Yes, I saw the hard time that he had.” He says, “Did you see the otter? Our Brother lost his life.” And he says, “Yes, I saw the otter.” So they ask him again, “Your still want to do this dive?” And again he says, “Yes.” So there’s nothing else they can do but send their best wishes with him. And so, he’s on the back of the turtle shell and he goes. He makes his dive. And he just kind of slides off the turtle shell and plops into the water. And it takes him a while but he disappears into the depth of the ocean.

So they’re all waiting. And they wait. And he’s gone even twice as long as the otter was gone. And a lot of the animals had given up hope. They thought that maybe if he did get to the bottom, maybe he got hooked up on a rock or maybe a serpent had eaten him. So they had all kind of gone back to their jobs and their lives. And a couple of the animals stayed behind and kept checking down into the depths of the ocean. And eventually they did see something coming up. And they called all of the animals back and they were waiting hopefully. Maybe it was the muskrat. And they were waiting. And slowly, slowly, he came back to the surface, when he got back to the surface; he splashed up out of the water. And they all went swimming over towards him, but he just lay there on the on top of the water as well, so the animals were very sad again. Right away they knew their brother the muskrat had lost his life as well.

Continued next week.