Evidence Analysis/Close Reading

Every People who has inhabited the Earth has a creation story. Creation stories provide insight as to the relationship the people have with their land and the natural world. The Blackfoot Nation attributes their creation to Napi, sometimes referred to as the “Old Man”. George Bird Grinnell transcribed and published the Blackfoot Indians Stories, in 1913. The creation story included in this collection tells how “the Old Man” created the earth and its inhabitants.
The narrative tells how “in the beginning there was water everywhere” and how the various creatures, the beaver, the otter, the loon, and the muskrat, all dove down to the bottom in an attempt to gather a little mud, mud that Napi would use to craft the earth. In the narrative, the beaver, the otter, and the loon all fail to receive the mud, but at last the muskrat resurfaces with traces on his paws, and these traces are what Napi uses to create the land. Later, after the land and the animals have been created Napi creates people, fashioning them out of clay. In order to create anything out of clay it must be wet, like mud, or it is no longer malleable. The parallels between both the earth, and humans, being created from the mud shows a symmetry, a brotherhood, between the people and the land which they inhabit.
The way the Blackfoot people see themselves in the greater scope of nature shows this deep connection with land, that they come from the land, and perhaps, in a lot of ways they are one and the same. This narrative demonstrates a deeper understanding the people share with the land that is forgotten in colonial discussions about people and their relationship to land.

The information discussed in this post was taken from George Bird Grinnell’s Blackfoot Indian Stories the link to which can be found here.