Earth Holder
Also known as: The Sky Chief, The Ancient One, He-Holds-the-Earth
Mythological Narrative
The chief of the Sky World and husband of Sky Woman, who in many tellings uproots the great celestial tree, opening the hole through which she falls.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## The chief above
Before there is earth, the recorded cosmologies describe a Sky World with its own people, lodges, and a great tree that lights it. Its chief, called Earth Holder in Parker's Seneca material and given other names in the Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk versions J.N.B. Hewitt recorded, takes Sky Woman as his wife. Parker summarises a Seneca telling in which the chief becomes jealous and troubled, and, prompted by a dream or by the Fire Beast, uproots the great tree; Sky Woman falls, or is pushed, through the opening to the waters below.
## Why the tree comes down
The reasons differ from teller to teller, and Hewitt's comparative texts are the fullest record of that difference: in some versions the chief is ill and dreams that the tree must be uprooted to cure him; in others jealousy drives him; in others Sky Woman leans over the hole out of curiosity and falls. This site treats those as genuine variants, not errors to be resolved, and does not describe the chief as simply good or wicked.
## After the fall
Earth Holder stays in the Sky World, which continues above the new earth. The recorded tellings say little more about him after the fall; the story's attention turns to Sky Woman, her daughter, and the twins, and this site does not add to what the sources give.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Earth Holder.
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