Dawn
deity sky Iroquois single tradition · 2
Dawn is a powerful celestial deity who captured the hunter Sosondowah and commanded him to guard the door of her lodge in the sky for eternity. When Sosondowah defied her by repeatedly escaping to visit Gendenwitha, Dawn punished him by transforming Gendenwitha into a star and placing her on his forehead. She possesses the power to transform beings and enforce eternal servitude.
↻ synthesized from 2 sources
When
- First attested
- 800 BCE
- Attested period
- -800 – 0
- Historical notes
- Posthomerica is thought to have been written around the 8th century BCE.
Relationships
- parent of
- Memnon
- creator of
- Gendenwitha
- served by
- Sosondowah
Mentioned by
Sources
wikipedia (2)
Source passages
“Dawn commanded him to spend eternity guarding the door of her lodge in the sky...Dawn, angry at the defiance of Sosondowah, transformed Gendenwitha into a star”
#3137 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5
“His divine mother, the Dawn, has his body carried away by the winds and metamorphoses his troops into birds.”
#40918 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001