Exploring Lewis and Clark Reflections on Men and Wilderness

Chapter 1 Dreams In the beginning the surface of the earth was all water and there was darkness." In this darkness and on these waters First Creator and Lone Man walked. They came across a duck-a mud hen in some versions-diving under the water and were curious. They asked the duck what she ate and she returned from a dive with sand in her beak, which they used to create the earth. The First Creator made broad valleys, hills, coulees with timber, mountain streams, springs, and, as creatures, the buffalo elk, black-tailed and white-tailed antelope, mountain sheep and all other creatures useful to mankind for food and clothing. He made the valleys and coulees as shelter for the animals as well as for mankind. He set lakes far apart. Lone Man created for the most part level country with lakes and small streams and rivers far apart. The animals he made lived some of them in the water, like beaver, otter, and muskrat. Others were the cattle of many colors with long horns and long tails, moose, and other animals. First Creator and Lone Man compared their creations and found fault with each other's. "First Creator said of the land north of the Missouri River, 'The things you have created do not meet with my approval. The land is too level and affords no protection to man.' " Lone Man thought that First Creator had made the land south of the Missouri too rough. They agreed, though, to leave all as it was and to allow humans to use the south side until its resources were exhausted and then move across the river to the north. "So it was agreed between them and both blessed their creation and the two parted." Lone Man watched humans multiply and was pleased. He worried, though, about evil spirits among them and decided to be born as a man. He chose a Mandan virgin for his mother, turned himself into a kernel of corn, and entered her when she ate him. "In the course of time the child was born and he grew up like other children, but he showed unusual traits of purity and as he grew to manhood he despised all evil and never even married. Everything he did was to promote goodness." There are other stories about the creations, about the origins of Lone Man and his good deeds on behalf of humans. Mandans said they had come from a cavern on the north bank of a river at the ocean's shore. They told Lewis and Clark that they came from a village under the earth, from which they climbed on a grapevine. They knew that Lone Man never married or engaged in a sexual act. They believed that light-complexioned people would come from the east, because that was prophesized from the time of creation. And they anticipated trouble from the white men when fur traders and explorers arrived. When First Creator saw the whites that Lone Man created, he disapproved. "You have made a queer kind of men-they will always be greedy!" "In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth." Important stories repeat. The earth is created three times in Genesis, and the Mandan told their creation story in multiple versions too. "So God created man in his own Image, in the Image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Again: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, & breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Lone Man breathed life into his creations too, and not always in the same way. Myths vary in the repetition. Both the variation and the repetition are essential. "And God spoke to Noah, saying, Go forth from the Ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee: Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and cattle, and of every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth." Myths, by their very essence, can bSlaughter, Thomas P. is the author of 'Exploring Lewis and Clark Reflections on Men and Wilderness', published 2004 under ISBN 9780375700712 and ISBN 0375700714.