What do Sky Woman and Sky Woman's Daughter have in common?

They share no domain in this atlas: Sky Woman is associated with creation, the sky world, and the earth, and Sky Woman's Daughter with birth, the food plants, and the moon (in some tellings).

Which traditions do they belong to?

Both belong to the Haudenosaunee Tradition.

Side by sideParent and child

Sky Woman vs Sky Woman's Daughter

Sky Woman and Sky Woman's Daughter are recorded as parent and child in the Haudenosaunee Tradition.

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At a glance

Sky Woman and Sky Woman's Daughter compared
	Sky Woman	Sky Woman's Daughter
Tradition	Haudenosaunee Tradition	Haudenosaunee Tradition
Domains	creation, the sky world, the earth	birth, the food plants, the moon (in some tellings)
Symbols	the Great Turtle, the celestial tree	corn, beans, and squash growing from her grave
Also called	Awenhai	Mother of the Twins

Where they meet

The atlas records no domain or symbol that Sky Woman and Sky Woman's Daughter share.

They are compared because of how the myths connect them, not because of what they rule.

Where they part

Only Sky Woman

Associated with creation, the sky world, and the earth.

Only Sky Woman's Daughter

Associated with birth, the food plants, and the moon (in some tellings).

How each was worshipped

Sky Woman

Sky Woman's story is told as part of Haudenosaunee oral tradition rather than marked by a specific festival or temple; this site does not describe any ceremony associated with her, in keeping with the guidance of the sources used here.

Sky Woman's Daughter

No ceremony for this figure is described in the public sources this site draws on.

The two figures

Haudenosaunee Tradition

Sky Woman

The woman who falls from the Sky World through a hole torn open when a great tree is uprooted, and is caught and set on the back of the Great Turtle, whose back becomes Turtle Island.

Sky Woman's fall is the opening event of Haudenosaunee cosmological tradition, recorded in detail by J.N.B. Hewitt (Tuscarora) in *Iroquoian Cosmology* from Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk tellers, and by Arthur C. Parker (Seneca) in *Seneca Myths and Folk Tales* (1923). Tellings agree on the core shape, a woman falls from a torn-open sky, is slowed by waterfowl, and is set on a turtle whose back grows into the earth, but differ on why she fell (an uprooted tree, a jealous husband, curiosity about the hole of light), which animal succeeds at diving for the mud that becomes land, and other particulars. This site follows Hewitt and Parker in treating these as genuine regional and individual variants rather than errors to be corrected into one master version.

Read the full Sky Woman entry

Haudenosaunee Tradition

Sky Woman's Daughter

The daughter born to Sky Woman on the new earth, mother of the twins Sapling and Flint, who dies giving birth to them; in many tellings the food plants grow from her grave.

Sky Woman is already pregnant when she falls, or gives birth soon after, and her child is a daughter who grows quickly on the new earth. Most recorded tellings do not give the daughter a personal name, and this site does not supply one. How she conceives the twins is one of the points on which tellers most disagree: in the Seneca retelling Parker summarises she marries Ga'ha', the gentle wind, while other versions recorded by Hewitt name a different visitor, or leave the father mysterious.

Read the full Sky Woman's Daughter entry

About this comparison

Comparisons pair figures that play a similar role across traditions, or that the myths connect within one. A shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.