Jewed Maakai
Jewed Maakai, the Earth Doctor, is the first being in O'odham cosmology. In the darkness before the world he rubs sweat and grime from his breast, kneads it into a small ball, and expands it into the flat, spinning disk of the earth, then covers it with plants and the first creatures. He is the elder of the creative powers, and in the Pima-Papago 'Hohokam Chronicles' his work is completed and partly contested by Elder Brother. Sources differ on the sequence of the earliest acts and on whether Earth Doctor or Elder Brother is responsible for particular features of the land. Displeased with the world he has made, Earth Doctor at last withdraws, in some tellings sinking down through the earth itself, leaving the ongoing shaping of human life to Elder Brother and Coyote.
Domains
- creation
- earth
Powers
- shape the world from his own substance
- make the first living things
Epithets
- Jeved Ma:kai — Earth Shaman / Earth DoctorDean Saxton and Lucille Saxton, O'odham Hoho'ok A'agitha: Legends and Lore of the Papago and Pima Indians (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973) (secondary)
Relations
- ally: I'itoiCo-creators who order the newly made world together.Donald Bahr et al., The Short Swift Time of Gods on Earth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) (secondary)
- ally: BanRuth M. Underhill, Papago Indian Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946) (secondary)
Sources
- Earth Doctor is the primordial creator who shapes the earth from matter rubbed from his own body at the beginning of time.: Ruth M. Underhill, Papago Indian Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946) (secondary); Donald Bahr et al., The Short Swift Time of Gods on Earth: The Hohokam Chronicles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) (secondary)
- Angered by the disorder of his creation, Earth Doctor eventually withdraws by sinking down through the earth.: Frank Russell, The Pima Indians, 26th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908) (secondary)