The Tuscarora tradition opens with the notion that there were originally
two worlds, or regions of space, that is an upper and lower world. The
upper world was inhabited by beings resembling the human race. And the
lower world by monsters, moving on the surface and in the waters, which
is in darkness. When the human species were transferred below, and the
lower sphere was about to be rendered fit for their residence; the act of
their transferrance is by these ideas, that a female who began to descend
into the lower world, which is a region of darkness, waters, and
monsters, she was received on the back of a tortoise, where she gave
birth to male twins, and there she expired. The shell of this tortoise
expanded into a continent, which, in the English language, is called
"island," and is named by the Tuscaroras, Yowahnook. One of the children
was called Got-ti-gah-rah-quast, or good mind, the other, Got-ti-gah-
rak-senh, or bad mind. These two antagonistical principles were at
perpetual variance, it being the law of one to counteract whatever the
other did. They were not, however, men, but gods, or existences, through
whom the Great Spirit, or "Holder of the Heavens," carried out his
purposes.

The first work of Got-ti-gah-rah-quast was to create the sun out of the
head of his dead mother, and the moon and stars out of the other parts of
her body. The light these gave drove the monsters into the deep waters to
hide themselves. He then prepared the surface of the continent and fitted
it for human habitation, by making it into creeks, rivers, lakes and
plains, and by filling them with the various kinds of animals and
vegetable kingdom. He then formed a man and a woman out of the earth,
gave them life, and called them Ongwahonwd, that is to say, a real
people. Meanwhile the bad mind created mountains, water-falls, and
steeps, caves, reptiles, serpents, apes, and other objects supposed to be
injurious to, or in mockery to mankind. He made an attempt also to