The Origin of the Three Sisters

One strand of the creation

This episode is part of the larger account of Sky Woman's fall and the twins' shaping of the world. It is summarised here from the Seneca material in Arthur C. Parker's Seneca Myths and Folk Tales (1923) and the Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk texts in J.N.B. Hewitt's Iroquoian Cosmology. Tellers differ on many details, and the variants are noted.

The daughter

On the new earth that has grown across the Great Turtle's back, Sky Woman gives birth to a daughter, who grows quickly. When she is grown she conceives: in the Seneca telling Parker summarises, she marries Gä'ha', the gentle wind; other tellings name a different visitor or leave the father unnamed. She is carrying twins.

The twins' birth

The twins argue before they are born about how to enter the world. The first, Sapling, is born in the ordinary way. The second, Flint, forces his way out through his mother's side or armpit, and she dies. Sky Woman, grieving, asks which of them killed their mother; in many tellings Flint blames his brother, and she believes him.

The grave

Sky Woman buries her daughter, and from the grave the food plants begin to grow: corn, beans, and squash, and in several tellings tobacco as well. Tellers differ on which plant grows from which part of her body, and in some versions the sun and the moon are made from her face or body too. The plants that sustain the people are, in this way, the gift of the twins' mother, and the Seneca remember the corn, the bean, and the squash as inseparable sisters, the Dion'he'kon.

The twins take up the work

From here the story becomes the twins' contest: Sapling making the world good to live in, Flint making it hard. But it begins with a death that feeds everyone who comes after.