Turtle
Arapaho · numen · Arapaho traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Turtle is the successful earth-diver of the Arapaho cosmogony. When the Creator, alone with the Flat-Pipe upon a shoreless water, resolves to make land, he sends the water-animals down one after another to seek the bottom; most fail or are drowned, but Turtle returns bearing a little earth, and from this scrap the world is spread and enlarged. Tellings differ on the identity of the successful diver, some naming a duck or other water-bird in Turtle's place, but the turtle is the creature most traditionally credited with the deed.
Domains
- creation
Powers
- dive to the bottom for earth
Relations
- ally: Man-AboveAnswers the Creator's summons and provides the earth.Dorsey & Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho (1903). (primary)
- companion: the Flat-PipeFurnishes the ground over which the Flat-Pipe presides.Dorsey & Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho (1903). (primary)
Sources
- In the Arapaho earth-diver cosmogony a diving creature, traditionally the turtle, brings up the earth from beneath the primeval water.: Dorsey & Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho (1903). (primary)