Xochiquetzal The goddess of flowers and fruits, Xochiquetzal, or Feather Flower, is the mother of Quetzalcoatl. With her twin brother, Xochipilli, the flower prince, she rules over beauty, love, female sexuality, happiness, and youth. When Quetzalcoatl departs the empire, she takes less interest in the affairs of humans. Very much akin to the Mesopotamian Inanna and other Near Eastern love goddesses, she protects lovers and prostitutes in her role as moon goddess. Symbolized by flowers, Xochiquetzal also protects marriage and is a fertility goddess who may have committed incest with her brother, Xochipilli, the flower prince and god of lust. In Aztec myth, Xochipilli is the guardian of the spirits of brave warriors who die and become richly plumed birds.

THE MYTHS OF THE INCAS.

Rulers of one of the largest and richest empires in the Americas, the Incas began their rise about 1200 CE and began to expand into an empire in the 1400s, until they dominated a vast region that centered on the capital, Cuzco. The empire extended more than 2,500 miles along the western coast of South America until the Incas-reeling from an epidemic that led to civil war-fell to Spanish forces soon after their arrival in 1532. But their cultural heritage is still evident today in the highlands of Peru, where descendants of the Incas still speak Quechua, the Incan language, and perform traditional healing ceremonies.

Was the "lost city" of Machu Picchu really a "sacred place"?

Sure, "lost city" sounds a lot more intriguing than "summer house" or "weekend getaway." But, contrary to conventional wisdom, Machu Picchu may not have been a sacred place. New archaeological evidence shows that when the Incas went to Machu Picchu, they probably kicked back, drank some chicha (fermented corn or berry beer), and enjoyed themselves.

For most of the nearly hundred years since Hiram Bingham, an explorer with no archaeological training, stumbled upon the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1911, the idea of a secret, sacred "lost city" has captivated imaginations. Elevated in the snow-clad Andean peaks, Machu Picchu ("old peak") has been the impetus for many a New Age odyssey to Peru in hopes of attaining enlightenment at this high, Andean "energy vortex." On the Richter scale of the world's "mystical places," Machu Picchu ranks right up there with Stonehenge and the pyramids. A walled compound large enough to accommodate upwards of 1,000 people, it is divided into two sections: an agricultural area with terraced fields, canals to bring water, and massive stone retaining walls; and an "urban" area that included more than a hundred residences, warehouses, baths, fountains, and two temples, one of which had a window that allowed the sun to shine through on the summer solstice.

Machu Picchu and the Incas who built it are fascinating, but a lot less exotic than the stories and theories that grew up around this fabled "lost city." As New York Times science correspondent John Noble Wilford recently wrote, "Bingham, a historian at Yale, advanced three hypotheses-all of them dead wrong.... The spectacular site was not, as Bingham supposed, the traditional birthplace of the Inca people or the final stronghold of the Incas in their losing struggle against Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Nor was it a sacred spiritual center occupied by chosen women, the 'virgins of the sun,' and presided over by priests who worshiped the sun god. Instead, Machu Picchu was one of many private estates of the emperor and, in particular, the favored country retreat for the royal family and Inca nobility. It was, archaeologists say, the Inca equivalent of Camp David, albeit on a much grander scale."

But nobody's is making pilgrimages to the presidential getaway to absorb its psychic energies.

The people who constructed the architectural marvel of Machu Picchu also built what was the greatest and largest civilization in the Americas before Columbus arrived (or "pre-Columbian," as the textbooks like to call it). Based in the capital of Cuzco (also spelled Cusco),* in the 12th century CE, the Incas began to expand their land holdings until they occupied a vast region. With a brilliantly engineered system of terraced agriculture and linked by a magnificent road system, this empire stretched more than 2,500 miles (4,020 kilometers) along the west coast of South America, from present-day Colombia, through parts of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. With an estimated 10 million subjects, according to National Geographic, this empire was really a loose confederation of tribes ruled by a single group, the Incas. It was a theocracy to a degree greater than any other American civilization-very much in line with the empires of the ancient Near East. The ruler or the "Inca" was considered divine and a direct descendant of the sun god. Below him were his family, a large ruling aristocracy, and an elaborate priesthood that practiced both human sacrifice and mummification. A great deal of recent archaeology has added considerably to the understanding of the Incas, especially in the discovery of numbers of mummified children who had been sacrificed.

But with their highly centralized government, the Incas at their height were easy pickings for the Spanish. When Francisco Pizarro landed on the South American coast, the Incas were already divided by an internal war and a leadership crisis, and weakened by a smallpox epidemic that had arrived from the north. In 1532, Pizarro-described by historians as "an illiterate pig breeder"-marched about 160 men into the mountains, kidnapped the Inca ruler, Atahualpa, briefly held him hostage, then executed him despite the ransom that had been paid, said to be history's largest, a substantial roomful of gold. (Pizarro later became involved in a series of intrigues and was himself beheaded by rival Spaniards in 1541. Maybe there is some "rough justice.") While Incan insurrections and rebellions flared for nearly thirty years afterwards, the handwriting was clearly on the wall. In the end, "guns, germs and steel" were again brutally effective. But the Spanish cannons, swords, and vicious mastiff war dogs did not kill most of those Incas. Smallpox did.*

In Plagues and Peoples, a compelling account of the role of disease in history, William H. McNeill points out that this onset of deadly sickness had more than just the practical effect of killing large numbers of natives throughout Central and South America. As McNeill writes, "First, Spaniards and Indians readily agreed that epidemic disease was a particularly dreadful and unambiguous form of divine punishment.... Secondly, the Spaniards were nearly immune from the terrible disease that raged so mercilessly among the Indians.... The gods of the [Indians] as much as the God of the Christians seemed to agree that the white newcomers had divine approval for all they did.... From the Amerindian point of view, stunned acquiescence in Spanish superiority was the only possible response."

Shrouded in legends, the Inca empire that Pizarro decimated so efficiently had begun in earnest about 1438, when Pachacuti, the ninth Inca ruler, put down an invasion by the neighboring Chanca confederacy. Called the "Alexander the Great" of the Incas, Pachacuti was a military leader and an effective administrator who conquered the regions south of Cuzco and rebuilt the city as the center of the empire and a monument to Inca power. Later looked upon as a Creator god, he began the construction of Machu Picchu around 1450.

From Spanish documents, recovered pottery, and other archaeological clues, scholars estimate that Machu Picchu was largely abandoned after only eighty years. Plague, brought by the Spaniards, had left the rest of the empire in turmoil by then. But, at an elevation of 6,750 feet, remote Machu Picchu was relatively untouched-and never even seen by the Spanish. Though called a "lost city," it was really not a city at all. Just a splendid hideaway.

Nevertheless, Bingham, who found Machu Picchu and was made famous by it, was not completely mistaken about its religious aspects. There were clearly temples there, and sun worship was part of its rituals, probably along with imbibing some chicha. This local beer was no doubt made at a thousand-year-old site with twenty brewing vats, which was discovered in the Andes in the summer of 2004. Described by one researcher as "a large-scale state-sponsored institutional" brewery, it could produce several hundred gallons at a time. According to scholar Gary Urton, chicha was also brewed in the same field where Mama Huaco, one of the Incan founding ancestral sisters, was mummified and buried.

Did the Incas have a foundation myth?

Since the Incas had no written language, most of what is known of their myths and religion comes from retellings by Spanish conquerors, or Incan accounts told to their Spanish masters. As a result, many of these myths are considered suspect.* These include a variety of Incan foundation myths and legends involving a set of siblings called the Ayars, who may be based on historical figures. Anthropologist and Inca expert Gary Urton explains in Inca Myths that "Ayar comes from the Quechua word aya, 'corpse,' establishing a link between the ancestors as mythological characters and the mummified remains of the Inca kings, which were kept in a special room in the Temple of the Sun in Cusco. In addition, this same word ayar was the name of a wild strain of the quinua plant, a high-altitude grain crop of the Andes."

In one of these foundation myths, we encounter the somewhat common mythic themes of sibling rivalry and incest as four brothers and four sisters in the Ayar family emerge from caves in the mountains and found the Incan empire. Fearing that their powerful troublemaking sibling Ayar Cachi might become dominant, three of the brothers gang up on him and wall him up. Of the remaining brothers, Ayar Oco turns himself into a sacred stone; Ayar Ayca becomes the protector of the fields; and Ayar Manco (later called Manco Capac) seizes Cuzco, the Inca capital city, and marries his sister, Mama Ocllo.

In another version of the legend, the sun god and creator Inti sends his son Manco Capac, and Manco's daughter and wife Mama Ocllo, to teach civilization to men. Inti gives them a large wedge of gold and tells them to start a city wherever this magical golden block should sink into the ground of its own accord. That proved to be at Cuzco, the Incan capital.

WHO'S WHO OF INCAN GODS Because the Incas routinely absorbed the local deities of the people they conquered, their pantheon is wide-ranging. The gods below are generally considered the most significant of the deities that have come down through the filter of Spanish colonialism.

Inti The sun god from whom the Incas trace their descent, Inti is the divine ancestor who sends his children to earth with the arts of civilization. In an Inca foundation myth, Inti's children found Cuzco and conquer the people of the Andes. Portrayed as a solar disk with a human face, Inti was the central deity worshipped at the great sun temple at Cuzco, whose walls were lined with gold, which the Incas believed was the sweat of the sun. As Incan myth evolved, Inti was said to have three sons-the gods Viracocha, Pachacamac, and Manco Capac.

Inti's wife and sister is Mama Kilya, the moon goddess of fertility and a protector of women. Incan rulers married within their families, as the pharaohs of Egypt did, perhaps to consolidate power.

Manco Capac Also known as Ayar Manco, Manco Capac is the legendary founder of the Incan royal house, who marries one of his sisters, Mama Ocllo. All later rulers of the Inca claim to be descended from Manco Capac.

Pachacamac An ancient sun god known as "earth maker," Pachacamac is a brooding character who appears in an early Peruvian Creation myth that is believed to have originated in the coastal areas rather than in the Andes Mountains. After creating the first man and woman, Pachacamac neglects them, and the man starves to death. When the woman complains about the loss of her companion, Pachacamac impregnates her with the rays of the sun and she gives birth to a baby boy. But after four days, Pachacamac grows jealous of the infant, tears him into pieces, and then turns the dismembered body parts into food. The teeth become corn, the ribs and bones become plants, and the boy's flesh becomes fruits and vegetables. In a final act of desecration, Pachacamac uses the boy's penis and navel to create another son, but he kills his first child's mother. Finally, Pachacamac creates a new human couple, who repopulate the land. His wife, Mama Pacha, was a dragoness who caused earthquakes and ruled over planting and harvesting the crops.

Viracocha The "foam of the lake" (or the "lake of creation"), Viracocha is a pre-Inca Peruvian deity whom the Incas adopted as their own when they conquered the region. Although there are several versions of his story from Spanish colonial sources, Viracocha is always presented as the creator who lives in Lake Titicaca and oversees sun, water, storms, and light. He is also depicted as a sad old man weeping tears of rain over his disappointing first creation-men. When Viracocha destroys his creation by-what else?-a flood, they turn into a race of giant stones. Today the remnants of these stones are believed to stand near Lake Titicaca, the world's highest lake, which is located on the border between Peru and Bolivia. Some of the many islands in the lake have ruins of civilizations that existed before the Spanish conquest.

In a second creation, Viracocha makes the divine ancestors of the Incan rulers. While those rulers emerge from one cave, ordinary mortals come out of another.

Viracocha's wife (and sister) is Mama Cocha, the goddess of wind and rain.

As Incan myth and religion evolved, Viracocha is presented as the son of Inti. Because the sun temple in Cuzco contains images of Viracocha and all the other Incan gods, it is believed that these gods are all manifestations of Inti.

THE MYTHS OF NATIVE NORTH AMERICA.

Canada, Mexico, Massachusetts, Utah. It is difficult to go anywhere in continental North America without seeing these place names and realizing that this place is Indian country. As Alvin M. Josephy Jr. writes in 500 Nations, "What is little understood even today...is that almost every community in Canada, the United States and Mexico was once an Indian community and those communities before the arrival of the whites were part of unique Indian nations that blanketed the entire continent." As many as six hundred different languages were spoken, and there were probably just as many sacred traditions. The first Europeans were fascinated by these people and where they had come from. And the speculation, debate, and controversy over that question continues today.

But each tribe knew exactly where they were from. And like every other culture throughout history, they had sacred stories to explain their beginnings. Many of the tribes of the Southwest told a story of how the first men had emerged from a sacred hole in the ground. Other traditions tell of races of great animals that lived before man, tricksters that created people, or mother goddesses who brought forth humanity and made earth fertile. But above all, the native people of North America had reverence for the sacredness of earth and everything in it, a primal idea that is found in almost all their myths.

MYTHIC VOICES.

Before the creation of man, the Great Spirit (whose tracks are yet to be seen on the stones, at the Red Pipe, in the form of a large bird) used to slay buffaloes and eat them on the ledge of the Red Rocks...and their blood running on the rocks turned them red. One day when a large snake had crawled into the nest of the bird to eat his eggs, one of the eggs hatched out in a clap of thunder, and the Great Spirit, catching hold of a piece of the pipestone* to throw at the snake, moulded it into a man. This man's feet grew fast in the ground where he stood for many ages, like a great tree, and therefore he grew very old; he was older than a hundred men at the present day; and at last another tree grew up by the side of him, when a large snake ate them both off at the roots, and they wandered off together; from these have sprung all the people that now inhabit the earth.

-Sioux Creation account, from Letters and Notes on the Manner, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians by George Catlin, cited in Parallel Myths by J. F. Bierlein All the Earth was flooded with water. Iktomi sent animals to dive for dirt at the bottom of the sea. No animal was able to get any. At last, he sent the Muskrat. It came up dead, but with dirt in its paws. Iktomi saw the dirt, took it, and made the earth out of it.... Iktomi then created men and horses out of dirt. Some of the Assiniboine and other northern tribes had no horses. Iktomi told the Assiniboine that they were always to steal horses from other tribes.

-Assiniboine Creation account, cited in Primal Myths by Barbara Sproul God Isn't Dead. She's Red.

-popular bumper sticker Is there a "North American" mythology?

Whether it is an elegiac Edward Curtis photo of a lone chief on horseback, an action-filled Frederic Remington painting of mounted hunters, or a John Wayne movie in which massed braves on war ponies appear threateningly on a ridge, American Indians and their horses are indelible icons.

But as late as 1700, many North American tribes had no horses. The animal that transformed much of the Native American world arrived in the 1500s with the Spanish, who guarded them carefully, not wanting to surrender the great military advantage they possessed. As historian Jake Page writes in In the Hands of the Great Spirit, "It would not be until decades into the next (18th) century that the horses would almost totally transform the cultures of the Plains and...Southwest, producing some of the finest light cavalry ever known on Earth."

Native Americans connected in a state of "oneness" with their horses is one of the persistent stereotypes of the American native past. There are others, including Hollywood's stock images of "Indians" as savage, dangerous, elusive, and untrustworthy characters-" Indian givers"-unless they happen to be Lone Ranger's reliable sidekick, Tonto. The stereotypes were underscored in pidgin-English dialogue, like "You speak-um with forked tongue" and "We smoke-um peace pipe." While the worst of this nonsense has been eliminated, there was still Disney's 1995 Pocahontas. Playing fast and loose with history, Disney turned the story of the mercenary soldier John Smith, who ran Jamestown with an iron fist, and the ten-year-old native girl Pocahontas into a colonial version of Romeo and Juliet. After seeing the film, a Native American school principal noted that Pocahontas was the equivalent of teaching the Holocaust by having Anne Frank fall in love with a German soldier.

Once past these stereotypes, the challenge comes in getting a handle on who the North American natives were and what they believed. One of the problems is sheer numbers. There are almost as many traditions and deities as there are tribes-and there are hundreds of tribes. Even so, as Native North American myth authority David Leeming points out, "As various as Indian cultures had become by the time they moved into North America, they had and have in common an identifiable collective mythological tradition.... These common themes, in many cases, can be traced back probably not only to Asian roots, but also to the process by which the various people migrated across the continents...."

A fundamental connection between many of these tribes is the idea that everything in life has a spiritual component. Not only was there a supernatural power or spirit present throughout the Creation, this power is also present in daily life-in the preparation for planting or hunting, constructing a home, or settling a dispute. Another common idea is that the creation of the earth and its people involves a supreme god, usually a male sky god, sky father, or "all father," but often a Mother Earth or great goddess as well. When the supreme deity is male, the messy details of Creation are often left to a helper, such as the "earth divers"-usually animals who create the earth by bringing up pieces of dry land from beneath a primal ocean. In other traditions, the helper deity is a goddess. A number of scholars point out that this scenario is a lot like "the men bring home the bacon and the women run the household." In what tribe have you heard that?

Other common threads that run through the North American traditions include shamanism, drumming, chanting, sweat lodges, and pipe smoking. All of these traditions are believed to stem from the prehistoric roots that are widely shared by the people of North America. But perhaps the most familiar "public" face of the North American native traditions is sacred dancing, a form of communal prayer that brought spirituality to life in pulsing, rhythmic performances-some outdoor, some indoor; some very secret, others public-that connected the people with the "mysteries" surrounding them. The vivid image of Native Americans dancing in a circle in a parched field as they look to the sky and implore the Great Spirit to send rain to nurture the wilting corn crop is almost iconic. But the rain dance is only one of a wide range of sacred and secular dances that exist throughout many tribes. One of many others is the feather dance, a rite held whenever an eagle feather from a ceremonial dress accidentally fell to the floor. Because the eagle was considered a sacred bird, its feather would be retrieved and "reconsecrated" in a group dance. For the Iroquois, the feather dance was also a sacred expression of thanksgiving.

Perhaps the most famous "dance" from Native American tradition is the sun dance. Typically a four-day rite, the sun dance usually took place to welcome the revival of nature after winter. In preparation for the dance, a tree was cut down and erected as a sacred pole. After two or three days of feasting, sweat lodge purification rites, and fasting, the dancers attached themselves to the pole by piercing themselves with pegs secured by long grass ropes. They then danced, straining against these tethers until their skin broke or they collapsed to the ground from exhaustion and hunger. When the ordeal ended, it was believed that the dancers had absorbed the pain and suffering of the tribe for the year to come. Missionaries and government agents eventually banned the dance in the nineteenth century.

Dancing was also typically linked to fertility rites. Among many of the southwestern tribes, there was a corn dance, which was eventually merged with Catholic feast days. And the basket dance of the Pueblos took its name from the baskets symbolizing fertility and was originally held in spring. After Catholicism was introduced, the basket dance was moved to winter, because the missionaries did not want any ritual dancing during their holy days of Lent.

The ghost dance, whose name referred to the spirits of departed ancestors and the nearly depleted buffalo, was a reaction to the coming of whites and the destruction of native ways. Appearing in 1870, the dance grew out of a religious movement initiated among the Northern Paiute in Nevada by a tribal leader named Wodziwob. A new type of religious leader, Wodziwob was regarded as one of a number of "prophets" who appeared among several tribes to restore conditions to the way they were before the white man arrived. Among his many reforms, which included a prohibition on alcohol, he proposed performing a ghost dance to the ancestors to help make this happen. This communal prayer in the form of a continuous circular dance culminated when the dancers achieved a state of ecstasy.

But in 1890, another messianic movement grew among the Paiutes. This time it was led by another prophet, Wovoka, who also wanted to return to a time before the white man's coming. Wovoka's relatively benign message included a call to perform a five-day ghost dance to bring about that change. His message spread to the Plains, which sent a delegation, including Sitting Bull, to learn more about Wovoka's vision. As the movement gained followers, it took on more militant aspects, especially among the younger Sioux, some of whom wore "ghost shirts," which, they believed, would protect them from bullets. The movement provoked hysteria among white settlers, who saw it as a dangerous conspiracy. Eventually military action was called for, resulting in the arrest and death of Sitting Bull and the massacre of more than 300 ghost dancers-Lakota men, women, and children-at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, marking the practical end of the ghost-dance movement.

MYTHIC VOICES.

And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all living things in the spirit, and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together in one being. And I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one almighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

-Black Elk, from Black Elk Speaks WHO'S WHO OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIVE GODS The following list includes some of the most typical and intriguing North American deities and mythic figures. These include Great Spirits-the somewhat passive, "all-father" Creator gods shared by many North American tribes-and Earth Mothers, twins, and tricksters. (Tribal origins and locations are listed.) Coyote (many tribes and areas) The trickster god of the North American Indians of the western and southwestern United States, Coyote is the mischievous, cunning deity who causes numerous disasters to befall the world. As Richard Erdoes writes in American Indian Trickster Tales, "Coyote, part human, part animal, taking whichever shape he pleases, combines in his nature the sacredness and sinfulness, grand gestures and pettiness, strength and weakness, joy and misery, heroism and cowardice that together form the human character.... [He is] the godlike creator, the bringer of light, the monster-killer, the miserable little cheat, and of course, the lecher."

Coyote has many origins. The Maidu (California) believe that Coyote emerges from the ground and watches the creator Wonomi ("no death") make the first man and woman. When Coyote tries to do the same thing, the humans he creates are blind. So, Coyote decides it would be more interesting to make sickness, sorrow, and death to plague mankind. In short order, he accomplishes his goal.

But the joy quickly fades when Coyote's son is killed by a rattlesnake bite. Coyote tries to revive the corpse by submerging it in a lake. But the boy remains dead, so Coyote leaves the corpse to rot. Seeing what has happened, Wonomi realizes that Coyote will always be a torment, and decides to leave the earth and its affairs to his wily adversary.

In other tales, Coyote is a lecherous character with a colossal and magical penis. In a tale of the Shasta (northern California), Coyote sees two pretty maidens in a creek and desires them both. Turning himself into a salmon, Coyote/Salmon swims between the two girls and enters their bodies. As the girls ask each other if they feel something strange, Coyote emerges in his true form and laughs at them. In another Shasta tale, Coyote sees a girl digging for roots by a stream, changes his penis into the stalk of a plant, and stretches it across the stream so that it can enter her. When the girl sees the stalk, she taps at it with her digging tool. Coyote howls in pain and has to pull back his "stalk."

Glooskap (Gluskap) (Algonquian, Abenaki of the Northeast) A creator and trickster, Glooskap is a patriarch who makes the sun, moon, plants, animals, and people from Mother Earth's body. His troublesome brother, Malsum, creates insects, reptiles, and other nuisances. After Glooskap defeats his evil brother, he uses his trickster's ability to change shapes and defeat the witches, spirits, and sorcerers who threaten mankind. Glooskap performs other heroic feats, including riding on the back of a whale before leaving the world. He promises to return in times of peril.

Hahgwedhdiyu (Hodenosaunee, Northeast) Creator of the Iroquois, Hahgwedhdiyu is the son of the sky goddess Atahensic. His evil twin is Hahgwehdaetgan. After the twins' mother dies, Hahgwedhdiyu forms the sky and turns his mother's face into the sun; the moon and stars are made from her breasts, and the earth is made fertile with her body. The evil twin counters his brother by making floods, earthquakes, and other disasters. The brothers ultimately fight, and the evil sibling is defeated and banished to the murky underworld.

Hinun (Iroquois or Hodenosaunee, Northeast) The great thunder spirit and guardian of the sky, Hinun is portrayed as a powerful brave armed with a bow and arrows of fire. With help from his wife, Rainbow, and his friend Gunnodyak, Hinun fights the great serpent of the Great Lakes. When the serpent swallows Gunnodyak whole, Hinun rescues the young warrior and takes him up to the sky. After applying a magic ointment to his own eyes, Hinun is able to see the serpent in the lake and shoot it with his arrows. The great snake dies but makes a great noise as it writhes in death throes. Terrified by the noise, heaven and earth fall silent. Hinun also slays the ferocious giant stone people who dwell in the west and are planning to attack the Iroquois.

Igaluk (Inuit, Arctic regions) Igaluk is the supreme god who directs everything. He is also the moon. When Igaluk discovers that he has slept with his sister, the sun, there is great upset. His sister tears off her breasts and rises into the sky. Eventually the pair build a house in the sky that is divided in two sections. That is where they coexist.

Iktome (also Ik-to-mi) (Sioux, Plains) Known as Spiderman, Iktome is a trickster who does things backwards but is still a sly and cunning teacher. To the Assiniboine (Plains), he is the Creator who orders the animals to dive for bits of earth (see Mythic Voices). A man with the attributes of a spider, Iktome has a hearty sexual appetite, like his friend and frequent companion, Coyote.

In one story told by the Brule-with a slight overtone of the Little Red Riding Hood tale-Iktome tricks a beautiful young maiden he sees walking one day. Dressing himself in the clothes of an old woman, he approaches the girl and asks for permission to accompany her across a stream. She notices that his legs are very hairy, and Iktome explains that it comes with age. When he hikes up his robes, she says his backside is hairy, too, and he responds that this happens to older people. When he lifts his robe farther, the girl gasps at the sight of his penis and asks what it is. Iktome explains that it is a wart put there by a sorcerer and will only go away if he puts it between her legs. The girl complies, and the "wart" grows smaller, but Iktome suggests that if he puts it between her legs again, it may go away altogether. Despite several tries, the "wart" remains, so Iktome suggests they keep going until it disappears. The girl, who has forgotten forgot why she set out across the river, readily agrees.

Kitchi Manitou (Algonquian, Northeastern woodlands) A manifestation of the Great Spirit, Kitchi Manitou is the divine energy that lives in all things. Man tries to control the "manitou" of small things, such as fire and wood, in order to gain control over the larger forces, such as the sun, wind, and rain.

Kwatee (Kivati) (Puget Sound, Washington) A trickster god, Kwatee transforms the old world that is filled with giant animal people into the world that exists today. When the giant animals discover what Kwatee is doing, they try to kill him. Kwatee then rolls balls of his own flesh into human beings. After his creation is complete, he sits on a rock and leaves the world to join the setting sun.

Nayenezgani (Navajo, Southwest) "Slayer of alien gods," the translation for Nayenezgani, is the great hero and protector of the Navajo as well as the son of Changing Woman. Together with his twin brother Tobadzastsini, Slayer patrols the world, always on the lookout for evil spirits. While going to visit their father the sun god, the twins meet Spider Woman, who warns them of the dangers they will face on their journey. She gives them two magic feathers: one will subdue any enemy and the other will preserve life.

When they reach the sun god, he tries to kill them. First he throws sharp spikes at them. Then he tries to boil them in a great pot, but the water will not boil. The magic feathers have protected them, but now their power is used up. The brothers are about to die when Caterpillar gives them magical stones and they are saved. Realizing that these boys are powerful warriors, the sun god gives them weapons they can use to protect the Navajo tribe from its enemies.

Raven (Haida and others, Pacific Northwest) A trickster, Raven wants to bring fire to the world when he sees smoke coming from the village of the fire people. With his friends Robin, Mole, and Flea, he tries to steal the fire. But in a series of missteps, Robin's feathers are scorched and Mole burrows underground. Raven finally decides to steal the chief's baby and hold it for ransom. To get his baby back, the chief gives Raven fire and two stones with which to make sparks.

Sky Woman (Hurons, Northeast) Atahensic, or Sky Woman, is the central figure in a Creation myth of the Hurons. In the beginning, there is only water below and sky above, where the sky people live. Sky Woman is sick, and her father is afraid that she will die. A member of the tribe dreams that if they dig up the corn tree, and Sky Woman sits next to it, she will be cured. Some of the tribe object, because the tree feeds the tribe. But Sky Woman's father urges them to help his daughter. When the tree is uprooted, it falls over and opens a dark hole in the ground. A young man gets angry and kicks Sky Woman through the hole.

Falling through darkness toward the infinite sea, Sky Woman is caught by Loon and carried on the back of Tortoise. Tortoise tells the other animals to dive to the bottom of the sea and bring back a little earth from the sea floor. Beaver goes first, then Otter, then Muskrat, who is dead when he surfaces but has a speck of dirt in his mouth. Tortoise gives the dirt to Sky Woman, and she spreads it around his shell until it becomes a fertile island.

With land to walk on, Sky Woman gets well, and then mysteriously becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter, Earth Woman. While Earth Woman is digging potatoes, she faces east and the wind impregnates her. She gives birth to twins, a good twin and an evil twin. But the evil twin's entry into the world is rough-he breaks through his mother's side and kills her.

Sky Woman buries her daughter and raises her twin grandchildren, although she cannot love the evil twin. One day the good twin digs up his mother's body, forms a sphere from her face, and makes the sun. From the back of her head he makes more spheres, which become the moon and stars. That is how day and night are created. Watered by her mother's tears, Earth Woman's corpse starts to sprout vegetables. Over time, maize and beans grow from her body. The good twin and the evil twin then make the rest of Creation, with the good twin creating trees and cool water and the evil twin creating dangerous mountains. And for the Hurons, that's how the world came into existence.