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Native American Mythology

Native American Mythology traditions, cosmology, and ancient mythology.

Region: North America

Period: oral traditions spanning millennia

12 Recorded Entries

Historical Attestation & Living Lore

Native North American mythology is the collective name for the oral traditions of hundreds of nations, each reaching back millennia, with no single system among them: the Haida and Tlingit of the rainforest coast tell of Raven stealing the light, the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes tell Nanabozho stories after the snow falls, the Lakota of the Plains pray to Wakan Tanka through the sacred pipe, and the Hopi of the southwestern mesas receive the kachinas in their kivas. Each tradition stands on its own, yet certain motifs run across the continent: animals diving for soil to create the world, a great turtle bearing the land, a vast bird whose wingbeats are thunder, and tricksters who bless and blunder in the same breath. These traditions have no single scripture. Their vessels are winter-night storytelling, song and dance in ceremony, and the memory of keepers passing their charge down the generations. Most written records come from ethnography since the nineteenth century: Schoolcraft's Algic Researches (1839), Swanton's Haida and Tlingit texts, the Lakota holy men's accounts recorded by Walker at Pine Ridge, and Black Elk's testimony in Brown's The Sacred Pipe, alongside Native authors writing from within, such as the Tuscarora historian David Cusick and the Ojibwe scholar Basil Johnston. Any page of text is a single dipper drawn from moving water. Everything gathered here belongs to living religions. The Sun Dance and the kachina ceremonies are still held, the birth of a white buffalo calf is still an event, and figures like the wendigo and the skin-walker remain grave subjects not spoken of lightly in their communities, far removed from the monsters of popular culture. This collection puts respect and accuracy first, naming the specific nation each entry comes from.

Mythological Figures & Lore

Showing all 12 records

artifact

Chanunpa, the Sacred Pipe

The instrument at the heart of all Seven Lakota Rites: a red stone bowl on a wooden stem, its smoke carrying prayer to Wakan Tanka. The original Calf Pipe remains with its nineteenth-generation keeper.

PrayerSacred ritesPipestone

deity

Coyote

The most widespread trickster of western North America: greedy, lecherous, clever and foolish at once. He steals fire and places the stars, dies of his own schemes, and always revives.

TrickeryFire theftCreation and mischief

tale

The Earth-Diver Creation

North America's most widespread creation narrative: in the beginning only water, animals dive in turn for soil, and the humblest brings up a speck of mud that grows on a turtle's back into Turtle Island.

CreationThe floodTurtle Island

spirit

Kachina

Spirit beings of the Hopi, Zuni, and other Pueblo peoples, governing rain, crops, and the life of the world. Hopi tradition counts over three hundred; masked dancers embody them from winter solstice to July.

Rain cloudsCornAncestors

hero

Nanabozho

Trickster and culture hero of the Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe peoples: son of the West Wind, often a great hare, who remade the land on a turtle's back after the flood and named all things.

Culture heroShapeshiftingRemaking the earth

deity

Raven

Trickster and transformer of the Haida, Tlingit, and other Northwest Coast peoples: he stole the sun, moon, and stars for the sky, and coaxed the first humans out of a clamshell.

Theft of lightShapeshiftingWorld-making

place

Sipapu

In Hopi emergence tradition, the opening through which humanity climbed from the Third World into the present Fourth World; a spring mound in the Little Colorado River gorge, echoed by a small pit in every kiva floor.

Emergence mythSacred siteThe world below

spirit

Skin-walker

In Navajo tradition, a practitioner of witchcraft who dons an animal skin to travel by night as coyote, wolf, or owl and do harm. A deeply tabooed subject, traditionally not discussed.

WitchcraftShapeshiftingNight travel

creature

Thunderbird

A giant bird spirit shared across many North American peoples: its wingbeats are thunder, its blinking eyes lightning. Northwest Coast stories tell of it seizing whales.

Thunder and lightningStormsMountain peaks

deity

Wakan Tanka

In Lakota (Sioux) tradition, the sacred power pervading all things; commonly rendered "Great Spirit," more precisely "Great Mystery."

Sacred powerCreationKinship of all beings

spirit

Wendigo

A cannibal spirit in Algonquian traditions, bound to deep winter, famine, and insatiable greed. A person who eats human flesh in extremity, or is possessed, may become one.

Deep winterFamineGreed

deity

White Buffalo Calf Woman

The holy woman of Lakota tradition who appeared in a year of famine bearing the sacred pipe, taught the Seven Sacred Rites, and departed by rolling into a buffalo of four colors.

Sacred ritesThe pipeBuffalo