First Creator
Mandan · deity · Mandan traditional religion; continuing · deity
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.
Domains
- creation of the land
- game animals and the hunt
Powers
- to shape the broken uplands and game animals south of the Missouri
- to walk the early world in the body of the coyote
Epithets
- Coyote
Relations
- companion: Lone Man
Sources
- George F. Will and Herbert J. Spinden, The Mandans: A Study of Their Culture, Archaeology and Language (Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 3, No. 4), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1906.
- Alfred W. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950.