Table of Contents
On an Aztlander program, Thomas O. Mills retells Hopi creation as a lesson about the planet’s lean, polar ice, and the sun’s path. He hopes the teaching still speaks to a warming world. He praises Hopi schooling in farming, ceremony, stars, medicine, and art, carried without books. Sun watchers follow the horizon from winter solstice to summer, and dances mark the year as kachinas leave and return. Mills reads that backward watching, plus serpent and sun images from Chaco and Egypt, as memory of a narrow tilt in which people can live. The full telling takes a day. In his short form, the creator, a nephew, and Spider Woman find a wobbling earth and try to steady it, ordering worlds and bringing plants. People must sing praise and tend corn, which he says cannot stand untended. War and forgetfulness end the first world in fire. Survivors shelter with ant people. Later ages fail when ice leaves the poles, the earth rolls, and flood follows the melt. Chaco, Egypt, and Hopi images are one diagram of that balance.
Key points
- Mills presents the creation teaching as a testable account of the earth’s tilt and of polar ice.
- He describes Hopi sun watching and a ceremonial year tied to solstices and the kachinas’ coming and going.
- In his shortened telling, the creator, a nephew, and Spider Woman find a wobbling earth and try to steady it.
- Corn is a creator’s gift that, he says, does not grow unless people tend it.
- Failed worlds end in fire, in a roll of the earth when the ice leaves the poles, and later in flood.
- He reads Chaco, Egyptian images, and Hopi symbols as reminders of the same balance.
Short quotes
It takes the Hopi a whole day to tell the creation story.
Thomas O. Mills, Hopi creation and the earth's tilt
He warns that his talk is only a brief version of a day long teaching. Watch at 29:40
Corn doesn't grow in the wild.
Thomas O. Mills, Hopi creation and the earth's tilt
He treats maize as something that exists only where people care for it. Watch at 35:26
Nothing was left but the people inside the ant hills and the first world's direction was west.
Thomas O. Mills, Hopi creation and the earth's tilt
In his telling, fire ends the first world and a few people survive with the ants. Watch at 37:27
And that's the last time the ice caps melted and there was a great flood.
Thomas O. Mills, Hopi creation and the earth's tilt
He ties a later destruction to melting ice and a flood. Watch at 53:06
Video by Aztlander. Watch on YouTube.