First Creator is one of the two world-shapers of Mandan cosmology, identified with Coyote. In the creation narrative recorded by Will and Spinden, First Creator and Lone Man raise a ball of earth from beneath the primal water and divide it, creating the Missouri River as the boundary; First Creator takes the country to the south and west and makes its hills, timbered coulees, springs, and the large game animals — buffalo, elk, and antelope — useful to people for food and clothing. Distinctively among Siouan peoples, the Mandan and Hidatsa cast Coyote not as a buffoon-trickster but as a powerful creator deity. In some versions First Creator, dismayed by human ingratitude, sends a great flood, after which Lone Man preserves the people.