The Christian settlers thought that Native Americans were savages and that they had very different religious ideas but by comparing a popular Native American creation myth named "The World on the Turtle's Back" with Genesis it is possible to see that both religions are based on the same ideals and values. .
In "The World on the Turtle's Back" the creation of the world begins with a great ocean and far above there was a Sky-World "here lived gods who were like people--like Iroquois" (Iroquois 25). This is similar to Genesis, where at the beginning God was in the middle of darkness and emptiness. However, in the Iroquois tale, in the beginning there are birds and a void of air along with the emptiness and darkness. In the Iroquois tale there are a variety of creators which change as the story progresses. For example, in the beginning the gods created the ocean and the creatures that lived in the sky and in the ocean, but later in the story, the Iroquois woman who fell from the sky becomes the creator of the earth and all the land features. In Genesis, on the other hand, there is only one creator and he creates everything in existence. .
In the Iroquois myth there was a married couple of gods and there is "a sacred tree that stood at the center of the universe" (Iroquois 25). The woman decides she wants some bark from one of the roots of the tree and her husband even knowing it is forbidden he gives in. So he decided to take some of the roots, "so he dug a hole among the roots of this great sky tree, and he bared some of its roots. But the floor was not very thick, and he broke a hole through it" (Iroquois 25). Filled with curiosity, the wife looked into the hole and fell out of the Sky-World and their gods didn't try to save her since she and her husband had disobeyed. This action of cause and effect or of disobedience and punishment is similar as that in Genesis after Eve took the forbidden fruit and God punished her by changing everything in the perfect world he had created.
