Navajo Creation Myth Summary

“The Navajo Creation Myth,” is able to effectively teach the nature of relationships between people, also, it excels in entertaining its listeners, but it falls a bit short when it comes to the describing the culture or history of the people as it really isn’t the main purpose of the story. A big function of the third world chapter is about the origins of how men and women interact in their society currently. There was a disagreement between the two sexes and the god decided it would be best to split them up. Men would live on one side of the river and women would live on the other. Over time the Men were able to sustain themselves, but the women could not maintain their crops or hunt as efficiently as the men could. They petitioned the god to bring them back together, and the god would allow it, but only under the agreement that they must follow
Eventually, an event would take place, and they would have to burn it all down or flood it with water. So they abandon ship and move on up, looking for a new world for all their creations to live on. These gods act as the cultural heroes in this myth. They are the cause of actions that physically shape the world people live on and they teach lessons on what is wrong and what is right. There is one component of the myth that it misses the mark on, preserving the culture or history of a people. The people are clearly not the main subject of this myth, the creation of the world and the emergence of people is. It would be fair to say that this myth is a necessary requirement for the stories that involve the birth of their culture to take place. It would be difficult to create a story that describes why certain groups of people split up or why a religious ceremony takes place if they didn’t know what started it all. This myth gets a pass for not telling the history or culture of the people, as it serves as the foundation of stories that