Creation Stories of the Americas - Khristin Montes, The Great Courses

The Mexica believe that a ravenous crocodilian monster set in motion the creation of the world. Its lower body became the ground and sea, its upper body the sky and stars. Elsewhere in the Americas, the Hopi of the US Southwest envisioned creation as a fourth world coming into being. A spider woman, fierce but compassionate, takes pity on a group of fallen humans, guiding them through cracks in the Earth’s surface to begin life anew.