Earth-Initiate (Kodoyanpe, the Earth-Maker)

Earth-Initiate (Maidu Kodoyanpe, also Wonomi, 'the immortal') is the benevolent creator of the northeastern and northwestern Maidu of the upper Sacramento Valley and the Sierra foothills below Mount Lassen. In the creation recorded by Dixon, the world is at first all dark water; a raft bearing Turtle and the Father-of-the-Secret-Society floats out of the north, and down a rope of feathers from the sky comes Earth-Initiate, who has Turtle dive for a little mud and from it grows the land, then makes the sun, the moon, the trees, the animals and the first people. In the version dictated by the storyteller Hanc'ibyjim and translated by Shipley, the creator sings the world into being and names all things. He is set against his companion Coyote, with whom he disputes whether human beings shall be immortal, and whom he opposes when Coyote spoils the perfect world.

Domains

• creation
• earth
• sky

Powers

• to make the dry earth grow from a handful of mud taken from beneath the primal waters
• to call the features of the world and its creatures into being by naming and singing them
• to fashion the first man and woman and the peoples of the several countries

Epithets

• Kodoyanpe
• Wonomi

Relations

• companion: Coyote
• rival: Coyote
• ally: Meadowlark

Sources

• Roland B. Dixon, 'Maidu Myths', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XVII, part II (1902)
• Roland B. Dixon, Maidu Texts, Publications of the American Ethnological Society IV (E. J. Brill, 1912)
• A. L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 78 (1925)