Who Was Sky Woman? Nine years after Megapolensis recorded his
account of the Mohawk creation story, Adriaen Cornelissen van
der Donck captured another version, this one with an interesting
variation. We find it in his Description of New Netherland
(1653). They say that before the world and the mountains,
humans, and animals had come into existence God was with the
woman who dwells with him, and no one knows when that was or
where they had come from. Water was all there was or at any rate
water covered and overran everything. Even if an eye had existed
at that time it could not have seen anything but water wherever
it might have been, for all was water or covered by water. What
then happened, they say, was that the aforementioned beautiful
woman or idol descended from heaven into the water. She was
gross and big like a woman who is pregnant of more than one
child. Touching down gently, she did not sink deep, for at once
a patch of land began to emerge under her at the spot where she
had come down, and there sh