By Alison Beach
Water begets life, and life exists on Earth because of water. The powerful theme of water presents itself in human myth and creation stories. Water, a significant element for the survival, success, and well-being of all humankind, plays an imperative role in biblical and Native American mythology as a main component of the stories of creation, destruction and cleansing that appear in both cultures.
In the beginning of both biblical and Native American literature, the theme of water surrounds the creation of the world. The Bible tells of how God hovered over the waters of the deep before he creates light on the first day. On the second day of biblical creation, God separated the waters. Water is present in other biblical days of creation as well. On the third day, water is separated from land to become the sea and, on the fifth day, God instructed water to ‘teem’ with living creatures. If put to creative use, water is a great force of creation in the Bible.
The Bible records seven days of creation and within these seven days, water is mentioned as a part of the creation process during four of these days. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is an extremely detailed book that was kept by the Israelites who were an extremely detail oriented people. One need only reference the record keeping of the Book of Numbers or the rules of the Book of Leviticus to see that this text uses repetition to relay the importance of an element or theme. Water mentioned or used repeatedly, especially four times in one chapter is a clear sign of the element’s significance to the God of the Bible and his followers.
Similar to Genesis’s opening verses, the Native American Navajo creation story, Hajíínéí, begins in darkness with water and sky that was mysteriously brought together to form the First World. From the landmarks that appear in their creation story, it is believed that the Navajo story is referencing their emergence into the Fourth World near the Southern San Juan Mountains near the famous Mesa Verde ruins. This high-altitude area, which is less than a three-hour drive from the current location of the Navajo Nations reservation, is home to a wide range of temperatures and sees rain and snowfall in addition to dry, hot summers. Water and precipitation for the Navajo, like the Israelites in the Middle East, would have played a big role in how their society adapted to an ever-changing climate.
Water also appears in the Iroquois creation story. In this tale the lower world is a place of great darkness inhabited by water monsters in the terrors of the great deep.
In all three stories, water exists before light heralding the ever present and crucial part water plays in life.
A second theme that appears in the Bible and Native American literature is water used as a destructive force. Interestingly, both Hajíínéí and the Bible creation stories illustrate worlds that start with water and become places where rivers flow, but there is no rain in the beginning of either story. We see water flowing in the Navajo’s First World from a great fountain to form three rivers. The Bible’s Garden of Eden contained a river that split into four rivers: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. In Genesis, God becomes angry with the wickedness of man and floods the entire world. This is the first time rain enters the biblical creation narrative, and it does so as a punishment.
In Hajíínéí the water guardians became angry at the Nílch’i Dine’é and sent a massive flood into the First World to punish them for their immoral behavior. This resulted in the Nílch’i Dine’é finding a narrow opening into the Second World. Another Native American tale from the Chippewa tribe illustrates the story of Manabush wearing the skin of an old medicine frog-lady to kill the King Snake to avenge the death of his nephew, but King Snake had the power to destroy the world with a massive flood if anyone succeeded in killing him. Manabush built a raft in preparation for the backlash of the devastating flood but forgot to bring the handful of earth necessary to rebuild land. During the flood many animals clung to Manabush’s raft, and many died trying to dive under the waters to find land. Ultimately, a handful of earth was obtained and Manabush rebuilt the world. This Chippewa flood was also a form of water destruction that resulted directly from the actions of Manabush. The early people of Native America told of water’s destructive power through literature just as the Bible describes this forceful aspect of water when God flooded the world.
A third water related them drawn from both the Bible and Native American stories is the cleansing power of water. Though it rushes as a destructive force over the earth, the floodwater’s intention, as described in Genesis, was to cleanse the world of evil. Cleansing rituals and rules appear in societies all over the world including both biblical people and Native American tribes. The Bible describes cleansing rules for garments, holy garments, Levite priests, bathing after eating an animal killed by another beast, a healed scab on the skin, spilt semen, and releasing a scapegoat among other many other cleansing needs. Clearly God holds in high esteem the cleansing power of water from the sheer number of verses in the Bible dedicated to cleansing rules.
Native Americans presented the need for cleansing in their literature as well, albeit sometimes this theme came in the form of an amusing Trickster Tale rather than closely followed rules. In the Winnebago tale The Trickster and the Talking Bulb, a Trickster becomes in desperate need of cleansing after falling into a gigantic pile of his own excrement after foolishly deciding to ignore the warning of a bulb. The Trickster runs into various forest trees desperately asking each one how to find the closest source of water so that he may wash the excrement from his eyes. Though the Trickster needs to literally cleanse his eyes, this part of the tale also represents the needs for the Trickster to cleanse himself of his foolish actions. The use of water to cleanse foolishness and wickedness from people show another way that water ties these two cultures together.
Water themes of cleansing, destruction, and creation play pivotal roles in both Native American myths and the Bible. Though these stories originate on different hemispheres, water’s powerful importance clearly comes through in humankind’s literature. As Frank Herbert stated in his 1965 epic science fiction novel Dune, “From water does all life begin…”