Art by Robert F. Kuhn

The Miwok, an American west coast tribe, have a story in which originally there is “no earth, only water”.

Silver Fox (a female) expresses her loneliness in a sort of prayer song and encounters Coyote. That it takes two to create makes perfect mythological sense, as does Silver Fox’s artistic proposal:

“We will sing the world” . Here, creation is not the relatively severe “dividing” that God does, but artistic expression.

“They danced and sang and beneath them Earth took shape”.

Coast Miwok Dancer