Reading Notes: Mississippi Valley/Great Lakes, Part A

 Main Characters:

• A god figure in many different forms
• Manabush

Secondary Characters:

• People and animals of the earth

Important things to remember:

• The Earth-Maker
• The Earth-Maker was sad there was nothing, so he created a piece of earth from what he was sitting on, then creating grass and a man named Tortoise
• Tortoise made war on earth, so he took him back and sent a Hare instead
• Creation
• The Creator of All Things had no eyes but could see all, and he created earth underwater with fish first
• A crawfish brought up the mud to make land, and man was created
• Man was created before woman, giving man tobacco
• The Creator gave them bows and arrows, taught them to make fire and to honor bones
• The animals were smarter than man and gave them council
• The Great Flood
• A new world was made when Manabush balled the earth and tossed it into the water
• In the new world, many men went as animals to the Sky-World and came back with many new gifts from above
• The Origin of Tobacco and Maple Sugar
• Tobacco
• Manabush smelled an odor and found a giant who was the Keeper of Tobacco
• He seized a bag and when the giant tried to stop him he turned him into a grasshopper to be the pest of tobacco
• Manabush shared the tobacco with his people
• Maple Sugar
• Manabush could not find food, so he went to the top of trees and shook them to make maple sugar 

Tobacco, via Dreamstime

Story Notes from: Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes unit myth-folklore-unit-mississippi-valley.html