Also known as: Skyholder, Teharonhiawagon, Djuskaha
creation
growth
the useful and the good
The good-minded twin grandson of Sky Woman, who in Haudenosaunee tradition shapes the world's fertile land, food plants, and easy rivers, opposite his hard-minded brother Flint.
What English retellings often call Sapling or Skyholder is given different names by different Haudenosaunee nations and tellers: the Mohawk name Teharonhiawagon ("He Holds Up the Sky") is recorded by several 19th- and 20th-century sources, while Arthur C. Parker's Seneca tellers use Djuskaha and other terms. This site uses Sapling and Skyholder as the most common English forms while naming the Mohawk term as one nation's own name for him, not the only correct one.
The Twins' contest
After their grandmother Sky Woman raises them, Sapling and his brother Flint shape the features of the earth in opposite ways, one making it fertile, temperate, and easy to live in, the other making it difficult: mountains, rapids, and thorns, in some tellings, or dangerous creatures in others. Parker and Hewitt's recorded tellers differ on how their rivalry resolves, some describing a contest Sapling wins decisively, others describing an ongoing balance between the two rather than one twin's defeat. This site follows its sources in presenting that as unresolved variation, not a single correct ending.
Source Notes
These records lack edition and translator details. Their wording has not been verified as a direct quotation.
A Seneca telling of the Twins' birth and their shaping of the world's features, recorded from named tellers.
A comparative record of Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk tellings of the Twins' contest.
Worship & Cult
How Sapling was venerated in ancient times
Worship Practices
No specific ceremony for Sapling is described in the public sources this site draws on; the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) that many tellings credit to him remain a living agricultural and ceremonial staple among Haudenosaunee communities today, a continuity this site notes without describing any restricted ceremony attached to it.
