Great Spirit
Cree · deity · primordial · Recorded classification
Supreme creator/spirit classed 'deity'. Plains Cree Standard Roman Orthography kisê-manitow ('great/kind spirit'); Swampy Cree kihci-manitow. 'Manitow' is the general term for a spirit-power.
Domains
- creation
- spirit power
Powers
- create and uphold the world
- grant spirit-power to seekers
Epithets
- Kisê-Manitow The Great/Kind Spirit; the benevolent creatorCree oral tradition; Bloomfield, Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree (secondary)
Sources
- Kisê-manitow, the 'Great Spirit', is the supreme creator-manitow of the Cree, source of life and of the spirit-powers, with world-shaping delegated to the trickster-transformer.: David G. Mandelbaum, 'The Plains Cree' (Canadian Plains Research Center, 1979; orig. AMNH 1940). (ethnography); Leonard Bloomfield, 'Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree' (1930). (ethnography)