Hutash (the Earth Mother)
Chumash · deity · Chumash traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Hutash is the Earth Mother of the Chumash and the maker of humankind. In the creation narrative recorded from Harrington's consultants she sowed the seeds of a magical plant on Limuw, the island now called Santa Cruz, and from those seeds the first Chumash arose. Her husband, the Sky Snake Alchupo'osh whom the Chumash see in the Milky Way, gave the people fire, and under its warmth they multiplied until the island grew crowded and loud. To resettle them Hutash spanned a great rainbow, Wishtoyo, from the tallest peak of the island to the high mountains of the mainland; as the people crossed, some grew dizzy and fell into the sea, and out of pity she changed them into dolphins, whom the Chumash still call kin.
Domains
- earth
- creation of humankind
Powers
- to bring forth the first human beings from the seeds of a magical plant
- to raise a rainbow bridge between the island and the mainland
Epithets
Relations
- spouse: Alchupo'osh (the Sky Snake / Milky Way)Hutash is married to the Sky Snake, Alchupo'osh, the Milky Way, whose gift of fire let the first people thrive on Limuw.Thomas C. Blackburn, December's Child (University of California Press, 1975) (secondary)
Sources
- Hutash is the Chumash Earth Mother who created the first people from seeds on Santa Cruz Island and made the rainbow bridge Wishtoyo, wife of the Sky Snake.: Thomas C. Blackburn, December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives (University of California Press, 1975) (secondary); A. L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 78, 1925) (secondary)