The Twins: Sapling and Flint

Sky Woman's daughter, grown on the new earth of Turtle Island, gives birth to twin sons. Tellers differ on how she conceives; in many versions, the birth of the second twin, Flint, is unusually difficult and costs her life, which is why Sky Woman raises the boys herself.

As the twins grow, they set about shaping the young earth, and, in most tellings recorded by Parker and Hewitt, they work in opposite directions. Sapling, also called Skyholder, makes rivers run smoothly, plants bear food, and the land welcome; Flint makes rapids, thickets, and hardship, or in some tellings brings dangerous creatures into being. Neither is purely good or purely evil in the way an outside reader might expect; together they are read by many tellers as accounting for why the world holds both ease and difficulty side by side.

The brothers eventually contest with each other, sometimes described as a wrestling match or a contest of power, and recorded tellings disagree on how it ends. Some Seneca tellers describe Sapling winning outright; others describe an ongoing, unresolved balance between the two rather than one twin's final defeat. This site does not choose between them.