This Seneca story was recorded by Jeremiah Curtin, a white man fluent in the Seneca language. In 1883, 1886, and 1887, Curtin spent many hours talking with Seneca men and women on the Cattaraugus reservation in New York state. The largest of the five tribes of the Iroquois confederacy, the Seneca had inhabited much of central New York in the sixteenth century, but by the mid-seventeenth century they had moved west to Lake Erie and south into Pennsylvania. Curtin recorded this tale in the Seneca language, and it was subsequently translated into English by I. W. B. Hewitt. Source: Jeremiah Curtin and I. W. B. Hewitt, “Seneca Fiction, Legends and Myths, Part 1,” Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 32 (1910–11 [1918])

I would like you to read it as an origin story. That is, think about it as it explains the creation of humanity.

What is the relationship between humanity and nature? What structure do you think society will take based on this origin story? These are questions I want you to think about and seek the answers to while you do this reading

This is the first chapter of Genesis from the King James version of the Bible. While I realize that this is clearly a religious text, I would like you to read it as an origin story. That is, think about it as it explains the creation of humanity.

What is the relationship between humanity and nature? What structure do you think society will take based on this origin story? Who authorizes this text? Why? These are questions I want you to think about and seek the answers to while you do this reading