The turtle on whose back Sky Woman is set as she falls from the Sky World, and whose back, built up with earth by other animals, becomes Turtle Island, the Haudenosaunee name for the continent.
The Great Turtle appears in Haudenosaunee cosmological tradition as recorded by Hewitt and Parker: after Sky Woman falls and is slowed by waterfowl, the animals of the primordial waters debate who can bear her weight, and the turtle volunteers his back; another animal (muskrat, in many Seneca and Onondaga tellings, though other tellers name other divers) succeeds in bringing up mud from the depths to spread across the turtle's back, which grows into the earth. "Turtle Island" remains a name Haudenosaunee people and other Indigenous nations across North America use for the continent today, a living use of the story's image, not only a historical reference.
Variation across tellers
Which animal dives for the mud, how many attempts fail before one succeeds, and exactly how large the resulting land becomes vary between the Seneca tellers Parker recorded and the Onondaga and Mohawk tellers Hewitt recorded. This site does not resolve those differences into a single version.
Source Notes
These records lack edition and translator details. Their wording has not been verified as a direct quotation.
A Seneca telling of the diving animals and the growth of the earth on the turtle's back, recorded from named tellers.
A comparative record of Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk tellings of the earth-diver episode.
Worship & Cult
How Great Turtle was venerated in ancient times
Worship Practices
No specific ceremony is described in the public sources this site draws on.
Domains
the earth
endurance
the created world
Symbols
the turtle's shell (often read as marking the seasons or lands)
