They swam around to Big Turtle and asked him what to do with the woman on their backs. Big Turtle at once sent a runner with a moccasin to the animals, so they came at once for a great council. The council talked a long while. Then someone stood up and asked about the tree. He said perhaps divers might go down and get just a little earth from its roots, if they knew where it had sunk. Big Turtle said, “Yes. If we can get earth, perhaps we might make an island for this woman.” So the swans took them all to the place where the tree had fallen in the waste of waters.

Big Turtle called for divers. First down went Otter, the best of them all. He sank at once out of sight. He was gone a long, long while. At last he came up, but he gasped and was dead. Then Muskrat was sent down. He also was gone a long, long while. Muskrat also died. Next Beaver was sent down to get earth from the roots of the tree. Beaver also was drowned. Many animals were drowned.

Big Turtle called, “Who will offer to go down for the earth?” No one offered himself, until at last Old Toad said she would try. All the animals laughed. Old Toad was very small and very ugly. Big Turtle looked her over, but he said, “Well, you try then.”

Down went Old Toad. At last they could not see her at all, though she went down slowly. Then they waited for her to come back. They waited, and waited, and waited. They began to say, “She will never come back.” Then they saw a little bubble break on the water. Big Turtle said, “Let us swim there. That is where Old Toad is coming up.” So it was done. Then Old Toad came slowly to the surface, close to Big Turtle. She opened her mouth and spat out a few grains of earth that fell on Big Turtle’s shell. Old Toad was done for, too.

Small Turtle at once began to rub the earth around the edge of Big Turtle’s shell. It began to grow into an island. The animals were looking on as it grew. Then the island became large enough for the woman to live on, so she stepped onto the earth. The island grew larger and larger, until it became as large as the world is today.

When an earthquake occurs, it is because Big Turtle moves his foot. Sometimes he gets tired.

HOW THE EARTH WAS FORMED

Cree

One winter day Wisagatcak was chiseling the ice, trying to catch Big Beaver. At last he caught him by shutting up the creek with stakes, leaving only an opening in the center of the stream. Then Wisagatcak stood there, waiting for Big Beaver to attempt an escape in that way. He stood there a long while. Just as evening came, Wisagatcak saw a beaver coming along, but just as he was about to kill him, Muskrat came up quietly behind him and scratched him. Wisagatcak was so startled he did not catch the beaver.

At last it became dark, so he went ashore and built a fire, but he had nothing to eat. He said to himself, “Tomorrow I will try to break the dam down and dry up the creek.”

Carved Stone Dishes
Showing the Indian love of the grotesque
From “Memoirs, American Museum of Natural History”

Early next morning Wisagatcak made a pointed stick from juniper wood. Then he broke the dam down, but yet the creek did not dry up. The water rose, and rose, and rose, until Wisagatcak no longer stood on dry ground. So he at once made a raft and got on that. He took on the raft with him two of every kind of animal, and stayed there with them for two weeks. So they drifted about because there was no chance to land anywhere. And while he drifted, Big Beaver was making medicine against him for breaking the dam.

Now after two weeks, Wisagatcak wished to know the depth of water under the raft. He tied a long string to the feet of Muskrat and asked him to dive down and bring up some mud.

Muskrat went down, down, down! He could not even reach the bottom, and drowned before Wisagatcak could bring him up. Then he waited three days and told Crow to go and see if he could find any moss. Crow came back without anything in his bill. When Crow came back without any moss, Wisagatcak was frightened. He had a little moss on his raft, so he took that and began to make medicine. The next day he asked Wolf to take the moss in his mouth and run around the raft with it. Wolf did so, and as he ran around, earth began to appear and grow on the raft.

Wolf ran around the raft for a week, and the land grew larger and larger. It continued to grow for two weeks. By that time the earth had grown so large that Wolf never came back.

This is how the earth came to be built over water. And this is why there are springs in the earth.

When Wolf had been gone for a week, Wisagatcak said to the other animals, “I guess now the land must be large enough for us all to live on.”

Beaver asked, “How are we going to live? We are eating willows and poplars here, but there are no trees on earth yet.”

Wisagatcak said, “Um-m-m-m! Yes, you will need a little creek to live in also.”

Beaver said, “Why, yes, of course.”

Wisagatcak said, “I’ll do something tonight.”

That night Wisagatcak made magic again. He tried to dig down through the earth to his raft, to get a log from it; but the earth was so thick, and the pressure of it so great, he could not even find a trace of a log. When he failed to get even a stick, he said to Beaver, “I’ll make a creek for you, and you will have to live on grass roots until trees grow up.”

That is why, even today, Beaver eats certain white roots as well as bark.

When Wisagatcak came back, he found that Beaver had dug ditches in every direction in his search for roots.

OLD ONE AND CREATION

Thompson River

Before the days of the grandfathers, all was water. Old One lived then in the Sky Land.

He still lives in the Sky Land, just where it is reached by the snow-capped mountains. But in the days before the grandfathers, Old One became tired of looking down at the waste of waters beneath him. There was no earth at all. Old One thought, “I will make an island in the middle of that great lake, which will be pleasant to look at.”

He took some soil from the Sky Land, and made a large hollow ball of it. Then he threw it down on the water. The lower side of the ball spread flat, and all the upper part caved in and spread out into a very large island. The earth even now lies on the water just as it was when Old One threw down the ball. It is all broken up into flats and hollows, hills and islets, just as it spread out from the hollowed ball.

But even then the bare earth was not pleasant to Old One, so he himself came down afterward and made the grass and trees and flowers to grow.

That is why the earth is surrounded by water.

CREATION OF THE EARTH

Thompson River

Long, long ago, everything was a blank. There was nothing at all, anywhere, except a number of people who lived together in a camp. They were Sun and his wife Earth. There were also Moon and Stars living there in that camp.

Now Earth scolded Sun all the time. She kept saying, “Oh, you’re so hot! Go out of doors; you make the house too hot!” She kept telling Sun how cross he was. Then Sun got tired of it. He moved away, and as Stars and Moon were his relatives, they went with him. So Earth Woman was left all alone in the camp. Then Earth Woman wept because she was alone.

Old Man came around just then, and he asked what