Earth Doctor
Earth Doctor (Jewed Maka) is the primordial creator of Akimel O'odham cosmology, who emerges alone from the original darkness before earth or sky exist. Rubbing the substance of his own breast into a small ball, he fashions the earth, then the sky, sun, moon, and stars, and the first generation of living things. In the flood narratives he is one of three beings, alongside Elder Brother and Coyote, to survive the deluge sealed within a vessel of his own making; disputes over who first emerges from the receding waters establish the seniority that orders the later world. Sources differ on his relationship to Elder Brother, some tellings making the younger god his creation and others an independent rival, and in several versions Earth Doctor, angered by human wickedness, withdraws into the earth and calls up the flood himself. His mythology was recorded chiefly by Frank Russell and, from the Smith-Allison telling, by Donald Bahr.
Domains
- creation
- earth
- sky
Powers
- create matter from his own body
- call up the world-flood
Epithets
- Jewed Maka — Earth Doctor / Earth MakerDonald Bahr et al., The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth (1994). (primary)
Relations
- rival: Elder BrotherSources differ on whether Elder Brother is his creation, successor, or independent rival.Donald Bahr et al., The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth (1994). (primary)
- companion: CoyoteFrank Russell, The Pima Indians (1908), pp. 209-213. (primary)
- ally: BuzzardBoth are shaper-shamans of the early, still-soft earth.J. William Lloyd, Aw-aw-tam Indian Nights (1911). (primary)
Sources
- Earth Doctor emerges alone from primeval darkness and creates earth, sky, and the first living things.: Frank Russell, The Pima Indians, 26th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1908), pp. 206-211. (primary); J. William Lloyd, Aw-aw-tam Indian Nights (1911). (primary)
- He is one of the beings who survive the flood and disputes precedence with Elder Brother afterward.: Donald Bahr et al., The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth (1994). (primary)