The World on Turtle's Back

In most accounts of this story, this woman is the second generation of “sky women” to experience an immaculate conception. She can be read as a primordial mother figure, or a mother to all humankind: Her fall into the underworld sets off the chain of events that creates the world as we know it, and she gives birth to the twins who create earthly people.

In Cusick’s version of the myth, the action happens around the woman and to her rather than her making decisions and taking firm actions. She experiences many things beyond her control and spends most of the story in darkness, displaying greater stress and agitation the closer she gets to labor. She also dies soon after giving birth, but her sons are able to live without milk or parental protection. Through the creative actions of her good son, the woman’s body becomes the building blocks for the visible world: Her head becomes the sun while remnants of her body become the moon and the stars, thus giving light to a world that was formerly dark. This juxtaposition of Passive Versus Active Creation is one of many dichotomies in the story.