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Creation story of the Iyakotu

This is the first story of Eiutu, the First-and-Every, decider of all things, who dwells under the earth and hears all that happens; Eiutu the interpreter of ripples and tremors.

When Eiutu was new, finding himself alone in the world, he created two beings for company. Those beings were Nua-of-the-sky and Riyea-of-the-water.

Nua is the sky-shepherd, the puller of clouds, who who jumps from sky to sea in one heartbeat. It is Nua who makes the weather. He sculpts the clouds to form rain, snow, sleet, graupel¹; he dictates the shiftings of seasons and the times when crops will grow.

Riyea is the maiden, daughter of Eiutu, the bringer of water. Her abode is at the bottom of the sea. But back then, when all was new, Riyea lived above the waters and played upon the surface of the world.

Wherever Riyea played, there came the water, ice, and snow.

She took shoots and branches from the plants that were new and built a shelter for herself, to hide from Nua's downpours; and she built dams of mud to hold back the waters. And thus Riyea created the first river and its tributaries.

Then Riyea took clay from the blue mouth of the river and formed it into marbles. She let them bake in the sun and rolled them hither and thither as playthings. And so it happened that the daughter of Eiutu carelessly rolled these marbles north and south until they were altogether lost.

Riyea called out: "My clay marbles, come back to me!" But being clay and unalive, the marbles lay where they were, out of sight²; and Riyea cried who thought that there was life in what she touched. And thus was created the first waterfall.

Then Nua, who heard Riyea's tears, took thatch from the clouds and built a yellow ladder, and by this he climbed and leaped down to the earth, asking, "Why are you crying, sister?"

Riyea said: "I took clay from the bank of the river, and I baked it, and it has run from me and will not return."

And so Nua found the marbles, he gathered them up, and he bestowed life upon them; for in Nua burned the creative fires of Eiutu. And from that time the clay marbles had autonomy. They took on shapes and followed their own paths. These were the animals³: the ants, the insects, and other creatures. And having done this Nua returned to the skies.

Riyea was delighted with the living things of clay, and her cheerful mood melted the snows and made the world green, so that in all parts of the world there grew plants to feed the animals and flowed rivers to nourish them. For a long time did Riyea watch the animals and their ways and manners.

Then said Riyea, "These creatures are dead, as dead as my marbles, for they do not understand each other as we — Riyea, Nua and Eiutu — understand each other."

Then Nua bounded down his yellow ladder of thatch, saying, "What, sister, would you have these insects be as gods?" He was angry. And he pulled aside some number of the animals, as he would pull aside the clouds in making weather, and he gave knowledge to them, meaning to teach a lesson to Riyea. And he re-ascended to the sky.

He knew, Nua, that the animals with knowledge would destroy each other — so!

The animals with knowledge were the first Iyakotu, and Riyea saw that they could stand, and sing, and paint artworks, and plant and harvest the crops. They held dances and smoked pipes; they talked to each other thus. And Riyea, who loved to watch them, gave them the knowledge of building shelters, as she had once built to escape Nua's wrath of rain and snow.

But soon, as Nua had intended, the people began to fight. They would fight about anything: about who grew the tallest crop, about who owned the greatest number of animal-skin shoes, about whose hair was longer or shorter. And where the animals had never fought, the Iyakotu fought daily and weekly, so that it seemed that Nua's creation would destroy itself.

Nua came from the sky again and said to his sister, "Well! what do you think now?"

Then appeared Eiutu from beneath the earth. He said to Nua: "You gave knowledge, that had been only ours, to the animals, and thereby tried to destroy them; and so I banish you from the earth." And Nua fled from the earth to the sky, and he is there today.

Eiutu said to Riyea, "You and Nua have made the animals your toys, to be waved here and there and finally broken. From today, what is broken shall never be unbroken, and what was clay from the river shall return to the river."

Eiutu said this, and thenceforth when two people fought, one would die, and the dying was forever. And for those who would not fight, Eiutu created other deaths, so that Nua must strike them, or Riyea swallow them, or they waste away by remaining in the dark⁴ and shrivelling like spoiled crops. This was the beginning of hunting and cutting, so that people had to kill plants and animals to live; they had to eat them to live.

And then Eiutu, the First-and-Every, decider of all things, went back beneath the earth, to listen to everything that would happen.

You can still hear Nua grumbling about his ill-treatment, and that is the thunder. Sometimes, he comes down to the world to talk to his sister, and then you see the flash of lightning, which is the blur of his thatched ladder; he has to be quick, lest Eiutu catch him.

At the start of every year, the water-maiden Riyea plays as she did when Eiutu was new, spreading snow and ice over the water and the land. But then she remembers her clay marbles and the Iyakotu, and she is silent for a while. Then everything thaws.

And the Iyakotu? They cannot seek death, for a living thing must live; but during the winter they labour under the curse of ill luck, and in the summer, as the elders are heard to recite, "It was better to live as an ant than to live as a man."

1. Snow pellets.

2. "Out of sight": literally "underwater". In Iyakotu, water is synonymous with immeasurable places (nowhere, anywhere, and so forth) to the extent that everyday questions may receive an idiomatic water-phrase as answer. ("Where is the kettle?" "The ocean has taken it [it is missing].") Riyea's plea to the lost marbles has a watery quality that is difficult to render in English.

3. Iyakotu: "aipaano" (literally "those who do not breathe"), encompassing all living creatures other than human beings.

4. By being confined indoors, i.e. to the sickbed.