Kishelemukong (the Great Creator)
Lenape · deity · Lenape traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kishelemukong, 'he who creates us by his thoughts,' is the supreme being of Lenape (Delaware) religion. Glossed by ethnographers and in the Unami ceremonial form Gicelemû'kaong recorded by Frank Speck, the Creator made the world and the host of lesser spirit-beings, the manitowak, then withdrew from direct involvement, entrusting the world's governance to them. He is the focus of the Big House (Xingwikaon) Ceremony, the central Lenape religious observance, in which the twelve carved faces of the Big House were addressed to him in autumn thanksgiving and renewal. The Creator is typically described in impersonal terms, without fixed sex, and is conceived as the source of all the manitou powers that the Lenape venerate.
Domains
- creation and cosmos
- supreme sovereignty
Powers
- to create the world and its spirits by thought alone
- to appoint the lesser manitou spirits as guardians of the world
Epithets
- Gicelemû'kaongFrank G. Speck, A Study of the Delaware Indian Big House Ceremony (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1931). (secondary)
- KitanitowitM. R. Harrington, Religion and Ceremonies of the Lenape (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1921). (secondary)
Sources
- Kishelemukong is the supreme Creator of the Lenape, who made the earth and the lesser manitou spirits by thought and is worshipped as Gicelemû'kaong at the Big House Ceremony.: Frank G. Speck, A Study of the Delaware Indian Big House Ceremony, in Native Text Dictated by Witapanoxwe (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1931). (secondary); John Bierhorst, Mythology of the Lenape: Guide and Texts (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995). (secondary)