Old-One
Salish · deity · primordial / myth age · Recorded classification
Spirit-class creator/sky-deity; classed 'deity' per schema (no separate creator tier). Native theonym not consistently recorded in the early ethnographies — Teit translates it as 'Old-One' or 'the Chief'; term left empty rather than supplying a reconstruction.
Domains
- creation
- world ordering
Powers
- create the earth and the first beings
- send transformers to prepare the world
- Names and assigns to each being its nature and place in the world
Epithets
- the Old One The Old One; the creator who made the earth and the first people and set them in their landsElla Clark, Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies (secondary)
Relations
- mentor: CoyoteOld-One sent and instructed Coyote to travel the earth as transformer, ordering the world for the people to come.Teit, Mythology of the Thompson Indians (1912) (secondary)
Sources
- The Old-One is the supreme creator/sky-chief of the Interior Salish (Thompson, Okanagan, Shuswap) who makes the earth and sends Coyote to order it.: James Teit, 'The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,' Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1900). (ethnography); James Teit, 'The Salishan Tribes of the Western Plateaus,' ed. Franz Boas, 45th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1930). (ethnography)