Tsichtinako

Keresan Pueblos · deity · Keresan Pueblos traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification

Tsichtinako, 'Thought-Woman,' is the generative intelligence of the Keresan cosmos. In the Acoma origin myth she is the unseen female voice who tends the two sisters in the dark fourth world below, teaching them language and prayer, naming the seeds and the small clay images they carry in their baskets, and guiding them up through the earth into the light. In the eastern Keresan pueblo of Sia she appears as Sussistinnako, the spider, the very first being, who draws lines of sacred meal and sings until living creatures come into existence. Because thought and word are the instruments of her creation, later writers, and the Laguna author Leslie Marmon Silko, have made her the emblem of storytelling itself: what she thinks and names becomes real. Sources differ on whether she is one and the same as Spider Grandmother or a separate creative spirit acting for the creator-father Uchtsiti.

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