Creation Myth of the Wintu Tribe of California

It is the ìworld before this oneî where the creation myths of the American Indians almost invariably begin. Their stories form a complete system: the earth falls from a perfect, yet crowded harmony into collision and conflict before finally transforming into the world now existing. The Wintu concept of creation is no exception. Three principal and discrete portions build the story of Norwanchakus and Keriha. In the first part, darkness and daylight are stolen. In the second, Keriha, the younger and faster of the two brothers, challenges Hubit, a salmon eating wasp. In the final portion, Keriha is stolen and his friends and brother must climb into the sky and then underground to rescue him.

In the beginning, there was no sun. While Norwanchakus and Keriha struggle to see in a depressing twilight, sounds of dancing drift from ìthe hill beyond the sky in the eastî (Curtin 214). As the brothers and their friend Patkilis (Jack Rabit) become more and more frustrated in their struggle to catch enough fish and collect enough wood amidst darkness, they decide that one of them should travel to the noisy place in the East. There, Patkilis meets a blind boy surrounded by acorns, guarding the bags that hold Puriwa and Sanihas, darkness and light. Realizing that these bags will end the constant twilight, the brothers and their friends Tsaik (Blue Jay), Pawnit (Kangaroo Rat) and Patkilis conceive a plan to steal the bags and the acorns from the blind boy. Deceiving the child proves to be an easy task but the village people put up a harder fight. When Pawnit is caught by one of the ìdancing peopleî in his flight from the village, he escapes by tearing open the bag of darkness, flooding the world with night. Patkilis later opens the bag of light, creating day.

Later, the brothers visit Norwanbuli, a powerful woman with food stores so abundant that she is known every direction the wind blows. Anticipating his brotherís greediness, Norwanchakus warns Keriha that he must only take what he is given. But Keriha is disappointed with his morsel of bread and becomes overwhelmed by the gnawing force of hunger. On their way out, he steals a handful of acorns from the basket next to the door. As the men move away from the house, the Earth begins to rise and sink, cracking and swaying. When Keriha drops the contraband acorns, the Earth falls quiet and still. The brothers continue, naming every plant, animal and landform that they see.

As they journey home, Norwanchakus and Keriha meet a young boy who carries a bag that can hold mountains. The second portion of the story is initiated when Keriha meets Hubit, the wasp that initiates the second portion of the story. For twenty days, Keriha plays a strange game with the insect tempting him with salmon in effort to make him go home. Finally, the wasp flies away, followed by Keriha who is determined to take Hubitís home. Despite Hubitís hurling of earth and rock, the wasp is no match for Kerihaís speed and wit. With the help of Norwanchakus, Keriha burns most of Hubitís home and then captures the waspís honey and combs. Following Hubitís death, Keriha becomes consumed with a destructive rage and greed, splitting the earth and killing strangers before he finally disappears. For thirty years, Norwanchakus searches relentlessly amidst the chaos for his brother, traveling east and west before finally discovering a group of rope braiding men who had heard of Kerihaís disappearance. The mensí ropes are to cast up into the sky so that Sas, the Sun, may be consulted and Kerihaís whereabouts discovered. But the old mensí ropes are too short. Only the little boy, who ìjust makes ropes of the shreds that otherís throw awayî (Curtin 235) has braided a rope long enough to climb into the sky. There, the boy meets Sas and learns that Keriha has been captured by the killed stranger and taken underground. Norwanchakus travels once more, crossing mountains, rivers, fire and a bridge made of a single strand of hair in search of his brother. He eventually finds Keriha hours from death. When Norwanchakus and Keriha emerge from underground, a ìvoice from aboveî (Curtin 240) warns that the earth will change soon. Heading the strong voice from the sky, the brothers go in opposite directions, Norwanchakus creating pipes and ash from the ash stick of his fish-net and Keriha creating all the ducks of the world from his skin. In a story composed of seemingly random events, the significance lies in the details. Indeed, even the fractured nature of the tale tells a story about Wintu culture, a group of people who perceived every phenomenon independent from every other. Both the broken structure of the narrative and the existence of Puriwa and Sanihas (darkness and daylight) before the sun was in the world correlate with this theme. Other seemingly arbitrary events are culturally significant insofar that they concern the ìnamingî of things. Among the Wintu, names were considered so important that a child was only formally named when he or she was old enough to understand what that name signified (Lapena, 1978). As people changed in age, behavior or appearance, their names changed as well, making it commonplace to have multiple epithets by adulthood. Consequently, the naming of animals, plants and landforms by the brothers is important because it gives those things meaning within the Wintu culture. Even the names of the brothers are really more general epithets that correspond to the eventual purpose of the characters: translated, Keriha means ìhaving to do with ducksî while Norwanchakus means ìthe southern end of the stickî, both facts that are central to the resolution of the story.

The natural resources upon which the Wintu depended also play a major role in Norwanchakus and Keriha. Acorns and salmon both occur repeatedly. Fishing and vegetal gathering was essential to the Wintu way of life. When the gold rush fell upon California in the mid nineteenth century, it was the pollution the rivers and land coupled with the crippling loss of life to malaria that reduced the Wintu population by more than fifty percent (Lapena, 1978). The role played by women within Wintu society is also articulated and respected in the story of Norwanchakus and Keriha. Norwanbuli, the woman with extensive stores of food and the acorns that eventually cause the earth the shake represents the important contributions made by women so far as the collection of food was concerned. Women were especially vital in the collection of acorns which were dried, pounded into acorn meal, leeched in sand pits and baked into bread or made into soup (Burland, 1985).

In addition to highlighting Wintu culture, Norwanchakus and Keriha story has much in common with many other creation myths from around the world. At the most basic level, the acorns stolen by Keriha from Norwanbuli parallel Eveís taking of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis. Both represent defiance through access of the forbidden, themes that reinforce obedience within society. Later, the hurling of earth and rocks by Hubit the wasp is reminiscent of Zeusís hurling of lightening and thunder in the Theogony. However, aside from the elementary similarity of heaving things heaved only in mythology, the correlation between the stories is relatively superficial: unlike Hubit, Zeus represents the protagonist and victor within a story. Hubitís actions are little more than a desperate attempt at domestic defense. Somewhat less evident are the similarities between the explanations of social structures within Norwanchakus and Keriha, the ìRig Vedaî and the ìEnuma Elishî. All three works explain the intent of the gods in their creation of the earth or commit a naturalist fallacy, telling how things used to be in order to justify ìthe way things areî. Unlike many creation myths, no central conflict between gods or grand-scale war carries the story; the most stressing dilemma within the narrative is the persisting darkness, a theme shared with Italo Calvinoís ìWithout Colorsî, ìIn the Beginningî, and to a certain extent, Genesis. However, this problem is quickly resolved through the exploitation of the blind, leaving Norwanchakus and Keriha to their assortment of fractured and seemingly disconnected exploits.

- Sarah