Sapling
Also known as: Skyholder, Teharonhiawagon, Djuskaha
Mythological Narrative
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## A name that varies by nation
What English retellings often call Sapling or Skyholder is given different names by different Haudenosaunee nations and tellers: the Mohawk name Teharonhiawagon ("He Holds Up the Sky") is recorded by several 19th- and 20th-century sources, while Arthur C. Parker's Seneca tellers use Djuskaha and other terms. This site uses Sapling and Skyholder as the most common English forms while naming the Mohawk term as one nation's own name for him, not the only correct one.
## The Twins' contest
After their grandmother Sky Woman raises them, Sapling and his brother Flint shape the features of the earth in opposite ways, one making it fertile, temperate, and easy to live in, the other making it difficult: mountains, rapids, and thorns, in some tellings, or dangerous creatures in others. Parker and Hewitt's recorded tellers differ on how their rivalry resolves, some describing a contest Sapling wins decisively, others describing an ongoing balance between the two rather than one twin's defeat. This site follows its sources in presenting that as unresolved variation, not a single correct ending.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Sapling.
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