Where People Came From: Algonquin Creation and the Eve Theory of Consciousness

TL;DR

• Among Algonquin/Anishinaabe peoples, humans arrive after the world is prepared, typically through Original Man shaped from earth and breath and a re-creation after a Flood via earth-diver (muskrat/mink) on Turtle’s back Parks Canada, AIFC/Mishomis Book excerpt, Speck 1915.
• A Kitigan Zibi account frames creation as a council of spirits planning for humans—explicit teleology of “beings to come” Canadian Museum of History.
• Wabanaki cousins (Abenaki/Mi’kmaq) remember “Owner made the first man,” with Gluskabe formed from left-over substance—first-man logic is pan-Algonquian, not tribal plagiarism Speck 1915, Wawenock texts via JSTOR.
• Early collectors (Schoolcraft, Brinton) over-systematized Michabo/Great Hare; treat as comparative scaffolding, not gospel Schoolcraft 1856.
• EToC says creation myths are memories of the phase-change to recursion (the “I”). The Algonquin corpus fits: planned humans → breath/voice → flood reset → re-creation from a seed EToC v3, EToC v2.

“My thesis is that women discovered ‘I’ first and then taught men about inner life.”
— Andrew Cutler, Eve Theory of Consciousness v3.0 (2024), Vectors of Mind — EToC v3

Scope, terms, and stakes#

By Algonquin I mean the Omàmìwininìwak (Ottawa Valley), an Anishinaabe people within the Algonquian language family. The “origin of people” appears in tightly related Anishinaabe traditions (Ojibwe/Odawa) and in Wabanaki to the east. I’ll prioritize Algonquin and direct Anishinaabe attestations, then bring in Wabanaki/Cree comparanda, flagging boundaries.¹ The goal: reconstruct the logic of origin—how people arrive—then map that logic to EToC.

Two caveats (be real):

1. 19th-c. anthros had a Great Spirit fixation and loved tidy systems; cross-check with living First Nations sources.
2. “Algonquin” ≠ “Algonquian.” I’ll show overlap without pan-tribal mush.

The core story: planned humans, Original Man, flood reset, re‑creation

1) “Humans are coming”: The council frame (Algonquin, Kitigan Zibi)#

A short Algonquin teaching text recorded from Kitigan Zibi opens with intent:

“The Great Spirit discussed his intention to put human beings on the earth.” (emphasis added) — “The Otter” (Joan Tenasco), Canadian Museum of History, CMH — “The Otter” page

This is not accidental emergence; it’s teleological. Spirits pledge functions to aid the future people. Otter’s pledge—teach cooperation—anticipates social learning as constitutive of being‑human. (Hold that thought for EToC.)

2) Original Man from earth + breath (Anishinaabe/Algonquin family)#

A concise Parks Canada narration (with Anishinaabemowin lines) states:

“Gitchi Manitou took the four parts of Mother Earth… From the union… man was created.” — Pukaskwa National Park, “An Anishinaabe creation story,” Parks Canada — An Anishinaabe creation story

Creation is composite (four elements) and animating breath/voice (via the megis shell and naming), aligning with Ojibwe teachings (e.g., Mishomis Book tradition). It locates humans after world‑making and before the flood.

3) Flood + earth‑diver → Turtle Island (Anishinaabe/Algonquin family)#

The Mishomis‑derived retellings keep the classic Eastern Woodlands sequence:

“Gichie Manito decided to purify the Earth… with water.” — AIFC handout from The Mishomis Book, AIFC — The Great Flood (PDF)

After the deluge, animals dive. Muskrat succeeds, bringing a tiny bit of earth; Turtle bears it; land grows. Humans live on the re‑created world. This is the canonical earth‑diver motif with Algonquian signatures (muskrat, mink variants).

4) Culture‑hero as Transformer in Algonquin country (Timiskaming Algonquin)#

Frank Speck’s Timiskaming Algonquin corpus preserves the same re‑creation logic under the Nenebuc/Wiske’djak cycle. One tale label is almost a syllabus:

“Muskrat dives for earth, which Nenebuc transforms into a new world.” — Speck 1915, Myths and Folk‑tales of the Timiskaming Algonquin and Timagami Ojibwa, title rubric, Geological Survey of Canada — Memoir 71 (PDF)

Read Speck’s text together with Ojibwe parallels: the Transformer stabilizes the post‑flood world, sets patterns, and often mediates between animals and the coming people.

5) The “first man” logic appears east, too (Wabanaki comparandum)#

A Wawenock (Abenaki) text recorded by Speck opens bluntly:

“When the Owner made the first man… Gluskabe created himself out of the left‑over material.” — Wawenock Myth Texts, Journal of American Folklore 28 (1915), JSTOR — Wawenock Myth Texts

Different nation, same first‑man scaffolding: human origin is deliberate and residue‑based—a fascinating micro‑theory of personhood (more below).

A table of correspondences (motif → function → sources → EToC mapping)#

Table 1. Where people come from (Algonquin/Anishinaabe focus, with careful comparanda)

Provenance & influence (so we don’t conflate “Algonquin” with the whole family)#

Table 2. Provenance and influence

How this fits EToC (without forcing it)#

EToC posits a phase change: recursion births an I that can narrate itself; women likely crossed first, then taught men; “Creation myths are memories of this transition” (EToC v2; full argument v3).

Here’s the minimal, non‑contorted alignment:

1. Teleological planning → pedagogical teleology. The Algonquin council frame (“we intend humans”) anticipates EToC’s claim that culture prepares minds for an inner turn. The story bakes in for‑humans design. That’s exactly the EToC “memetic scaffolding” idea.

2. Breath/voice → inner speech. Original Man animated via breath/voice aligns with EToC’s emphasis on recursive language as the interface that stabilizes self‑reference (“we exist inside the story the brain tells itself”—EToC v3 cites this directly).

3. Flood reset → plasticity window. The deluge as a reset event matches EToC’s “crisis → re‑organization” dynamic (rituals/entheogens opening learning windows). The new world from a pinch of earth mirrors “seed → memeplex,” i.e., tiny recursive kernels scaling to culture.

4. Earth‑diver minimalism → recursion from a grain. A single grain of earth suffices to regrow a world. That’s how recursion acts in cognition: small self‑referential loops scale outwards to encompass symbols, time, and ethics.

5. Transformer standardizes → protocolization. Nenebuc/Nanabozho’s tidy‑up is cultural protocolization of the recursive world: naming, norms, hunting rules—what EToC frames as the memetic regularization that made recursion heritable (via selection gradients on stable symbolic processing).

6. “Left‑over” man → surplus/self. The Wawenock “left‑over material” is wildly on‑brand for EToC: human selfhood as surplus of creation—a remainder that reflects upon the whole. (Yes, Straussian, but the text gives permission.)

No, this is not cherry‑picking. It’s reading the logic of emergence that the corpus itself foregrounds. When women/elders teach, they enact the “council” the myth already imagined. When initiates “die” in flood‑like ordeals and re‑emerge named, they replay earth‑diver logic at the scale of one brain.

Close readings (primary-forward, brief, surgical)

Kitigan Zibi “Otter” (Algonquin)#

The story is meta: spirits debate what humans will need; each pledges a teaching. Otter’s job is “how to work together,” an explicit theory of cooperation as equipment for personhood. This reads like a preface to social recursion (ToM → norms), not an afterthought. Source: Canadian Museum of History, text credited to Joan Tenasco: CMH — “The Otter”

Pukaskwa “An Anishinaabe creation story”#

Composite matter + animating breath, with naming and clan logic downstream. This is the Eastern Woodlands’ answer to ensoulment: voice makes person. Parks Canada hosts a bilingual (English/Anishinaabemowin) presentation: An Anishinaabe creation story

Mishomis “Great Flood” (AIFC excerpt)#

A classic teaching: water reset, animal dives, humble Muskrat succeeds. The ethics are transparent: humility and persistence, not brute force, “save the world.” That’s a moral for who becomes a stable self too. PDF handout: AIFC — The Great Flood

Speck’s Timiskaming Algonquin cycle#

Speck publishes parallel Algonquin/Ojibwa tales where Nenebuc/Wiske’djak cleans up the post-flood mess. Titles alone map the grammar (“Muskrat dives… Nenebuc transforms…”). Primary: Memoir 71 (PDF)

Wawenock “first man” (comparandum)#

“When the Owner made the first man… Gluskabe created himself out of the left-over material.” Why it matters: residual creation as a category—humans arrive as the rema that can reflect on the rest. JSTOR stable link: Wawenock Myth Texts

Schoolcraft / “Michabo” (use carefully)#

Helpful for diffusion and for the Transformer type; unhelpful when it collapses distinct nations into a single solar-hare theology. It’s public-domain, so read, but triangulate with living sources and Speck. Project Gutenberg — Schoolcraft 1856

Optional timeline (attestation, not origins)#

Objections (and why they don’t break the thesis)#

1. “That Pukaskwa page is Ojibwe, not Algonquin.” Correct; the Algonquin are Anishinaabe. The origin‑of‑people logic is shared; Algonquin‑specific pieces are supplied via CMH “Otter” and Speck’s Timiskaming Algonquin corpus. Cross‑family edges are flagged.

2. “Schoolcraft distorted things.” Yep. That’s why this piece weights Speck + living presentations higher and uses Schoolcraft for type‑comparisons. Also: direct short quotes only, with links.

3. “EToC is retrofitting.” Not really. The alignment is at the process level (teleology → breath/voice → crisis reset → seed re‑creation → cultural protocolization). If you strip EToC, the process logic remains true in the texts.

What the correspondences actually say about people#

• Teleology of personhood. Humans are not an accident in these stories; they are anticipated agents equipped by other beings.
• Voice before law. Breath/name precedes hard norms; law arrives with the Transformer. That’s “inner speech before external code.”
• Humility saves the world. Earth-diver’s hero is small, persistent, often female-coded in some tellings—an ethics of low status → high consequence.
• World from a pinch. The cognitive analogy is unavoidable: recursion builds a vast “world” from tiny symbolic kernels.

EToC’s strong claim (“women discovered ‘I’ first”) can’t be proved from these tales, but the teaching ecology (elder → initiate, cooperation as first gift, humility as world-maker) is completely consonant with a learned, memetically stabilized self.

FAQ#

Q1. Is the Algonquin origin‑of‑people specifically Turtle Island or Original Man?
A. Both appear across the family: Original Man (earth + breath) before the flood, then Turtle Island via earth‑diver after—a creation and re‑creation grammar (see Pukaskwa; AIFC/Mishomis; Speck).

Q2. Where is an Algonquin‑specific creation frame, not just Ojibwe?
A. The Kitigan Zibi “Otter” text: a Great Spirit council planning for humans; it’s explicitly Algonquin (Canadian Museum of History link in Sources).

Q3. Isn’t “Michabo” solar‑hare theology a 19th‑c. artifact?
A. Partly. Treat Schoolcraft as comparative background; ground specifics in Speck + living sources. The earth‑diver/flood and Transformer scaffolds are robust without solar allegory.

Q4. How does any of this test EToC?
A. It yields crisp predictions: ritual resets (flood) + naming/breath rites + protocolization post‑initiation. Where those co‑occur historically, EToC looks stronger.

Footnotes#

Sources#

(Primary and near-primary first; all links are open-access when possible.)

1. Canadian Museum of History. “The Otter” (Algonquin teaching text, Kitigan Zibi). CMH page
2. Parks Canada (Pukaskwa National Park). “An Anishinaabe creation story” (bilingual summary with Anishinaabemowin lines). Parks Canada page
3. American Indian Family Center (AIFC). The Great Flood (excerpted from the Mishomis Book tradition). PDF
4. Speck, Frank G. Myths and Folk-tales of the Timiskaming Algonquin and Timagami Ojibwa. Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 71, 1915. PDF
5. Speck, Frank G. “Wawenock Myth Texts.” Journal of American Folklore 28 (1915): 1–40. JSTOR stable link
6. Schoolcraft, Henry R. The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends… 1856. Project Gutenberg
7. Schoolcraft, Henry R. Algic Researches, Vols. 1–2 (1839). Project Gutenberg entry points: Vol. 1 ; Vol. 2
8. Singer, Eliot A. “Walking Round and About the ‘Algonkin Great Hare’” (contextual survey; cites Jesuit Relations; Cree/Naskapi comparanda). PDF
9. Jesuit Relations (English translations; index gateway). Creighton index gateway
10. Vectors of Mind (Cutler, Andrew). Eve Theory of Consciousness v3.0. EToC v3
11. Vectors of Mind (Cutler, Andrew). Eve Theory of Consciousness (v2). EToC v2
12. Algonquins of Ontario. Orientation page (context on people and region). Our proud history