Saturday, May 26, 2012

birth of The Peacemaker

We leave Aionwahta wandering the woods aimlessly in grief, and pick up the story of The Peacemaker, which actually predates Aionwahta's own story a bit. A woman from the Huron village fled into the woods to birth her daughter in peace. She raises her daughter in isolation and is horrified to discover that, as she reaches adulthood, she becomes pregnant. The woman does not believe that her daughter hasn't been with a man, and tries to kill the baby boy several times before she is visited by a vision telling her that he was sent from the Creator and cannot be killed. (This is the second time in the Haudenosaunee legends that a child was born without a father, not even counting the cloud man that fathered the sky woman's daughter's twins. Very interesting how that is such an enduring legend throughout so many cultures and religions!) Above is J's drawing of the woman trying to bury the baby in a pit, below is Zoo Boy's drawing of the woman burning him in a big fire.




Above is J's story summary, below is Zoo Boy's.


1 comment:

MM said...

Interesting quote from F.F. Bruce: "There is reason to believe that behind great tracts of early mythology, especially these
creation sagas, there lies a primeval revelation, conveyed in pictorial language. The pagan
myths contain disconnected fragments of this revelation mixed with much extraneous matter;
the original picture has been broken into small pieces like a jig-saw puzzle, and these pieces
have been scattered and mixed up with pieces belonging to other patterns until it is difficult to
discern the original picture." Or as C.S. Lewis said much more succintly, "All myths are crooked images of some one true history."