Apachean Creation Myth

The Apache myth of creation is this: In the beginning there was only Tepeu and Gucumatz, or the “Feathered Serpent”. They sat in thought together and whatever they thought came into being. They thought of everything that exists today – the Earth, the trees, the mountains, the sky. They were pleased with their work but saw that none of these things praised them, so they fashioned advanced beings out of clay. However, these melted when they got wet, so they didn’t work; and when they tried to make beings out of wood, they weren’t good enough either. So the gods sent down a flood to destroy these beings and make a new beginning, and with some help from Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, and Crow, they made four human beings, the ancestors of the Quiche.

This myth, like all creation myths, describes how the world was created. Creation myths often answer the questions, “Who were the first humans?”, “Why was the Earth created?”, and “Who created everything?”. We can see multiple connections between this myth and the creation myths of other cultures. In John 1 in the Bible it states, “In the beginning there was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God”. This relates back to Tepeu and Gucumatz, who are the only beings in existence before they create Earth. Egyptian creation starts similarly, with the sun god Ra in existence before anything else. All in all, these myths explain how the Earth was created and who created it.

I’m going to leave you with a question that was bugging me as I wrote this post: Why are most of the creation myths so similar? Are they connected in any way? I’m curious to see what you guys think. Until next week!