Turtle (the diver)

Turtle (Maidu Anosma) is the earth-diver of the Maidu creation. With the Father-of-the-Secret-Society he is already afloat on a raft upon the shoreless primal waters when Earth-Initiate comes down from the sky on the feather rope. When the creator wishes for land, it is Turtle who offers to dive; a rock is bound to his arm and a rope to his body, and he sinks for what the myth reckons as years before he returns to the surface, his shell green with slime, bearing under his nails the few grains of mud that the creator rolls into a ball and grows into the whole world. The earth-diver motif that he embodies is one of the most widespread of North American creation themes, and the green-shelled Turtle who raises the first soil makes the Maidu a Turtle-Island people.

Domains

• creation
• water

Powers

• to dive to the bottom of the primal waters and bring up the mud from which the land is made

Epithets

• AnosmaRoland B. Dixon, 'Maidu Myths', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XVII, part II (1902) (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: Earth-Initiate (Kodoyanpe, the Earth-Maker)Turtle acts at the bidding of Earth-Initiate, diving for the mud at the creator's word so that the land may be made.Roland B. Dixon, 'Maidu Myths', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XVII, part II (1902) (secondary)
• companion: Father-of-the-Secret-Society (Peheipe)Turtle and the Father-of-the-Secret-Society are the two beings adrift together on the raft when the creator descends at the beginning of the world.Roland B. Dixon, 'Maidu Myths', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XVII, part II (1902) (secondary); Roland B. Dixon, Maidu Texts, Publications of the American Ethnological Society IV (E. J. Brill, 1912) (secondary)

Sources

• Turtle, called Anosma, is the diver of the Maidu creation who brings up from beneath the primal waters the mud out of which Earth-Initiate forms the land.: Roland B. Dixon, 'Maidu Myths', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. XVII, part II (1902) (secondary); Roland B. Dixon, Maidu Texts, Publications of the American Ethnological Society IV (E. J. Brill, 1912) (secondary)