when the world was new

In our story, Grandmother Ots-Toch is starting to tell the Haudenosaunee creation stories to Aionwahta. Her first story was about the creation of the earth, and how the Sky Woman fell from the Sky World, guided by the birds, to live on Turtle's back, and how Muskrat brought earth up from the bottom of the sea to create Turtle Island. Above is J's story drawing, of Atsytsyakayon falling to the world, aided by the birds. (You can see some of the animals, including the giant turtle, awaiting her arrival.) Below is Zoo Boy's drawing of the Sky Chief digging beneath the Great Tree of Light as directed by his dream. Zoo Boy pointed out that he was digging with his hands, since they probably didn't have shovels way back then. (That kid cracks me up!)

Above is J's story summary, below is Zoo Boy's. Again, they carefully selected the sentences they included to make sure their summaries made sense. (The story summary we composed together contained 9 sentences, J chose 8 and Zoo Boy chose 4 for the summaries they wrote down in their good books.)