Spider Grandmother
Encyclopedia
The Spider Grandmother is creator of the world in Native American religion
Native American religion
Traditional Native American religions exhibit a great deal of diversity, largely due to the relative isolation of the different tribes that were spread out across the entire breadth of the North American continent for thousands of years, allowing for the evolution of different beliefs and practices...

s and myths
Native American mythology
Native American mythology is the body of traditional narratives associated with Native American religion from a mythographical perspective. Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons,...

 such as that of the Pueblo and Navajo
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...

/Dineh peoples. According to mythology, she was responsible for the stars in the sky, she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became the stars.

Playwright Murray Mednick
Murray Mednick
Murray Mednick is an American playwright and poet. He's best known as founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, where he served as artistic director from 1978 to 1995...

 wrote seven one-act plays called The Coyote circles with the same four characters: Coyote
Coyote (mythology)
Coyote is a mythological character common to many Native American cultures, based on the coyote animal. This character is usually male and is generally anthropomorphic although he may have some coyote-like physical features such as fur, pointed ears, yellow eyes, a tail and claws...

, Coyote trickster
Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...

, Spider Grandmother and Mute Girl. These same characters come from traditional native American stories and myths.

Some Navajo/Dineh limit the telling of stories involving Spider Grandmother to the winter months, which spiders supposedly spend asleep, to avoid attracting her attention or offending her.

Traditionally, the stories involving Spider Grandmother are narratives passed down orally from generation to generation. Susan Hazen-Hammond, author of "Timelines of Native American History," and at least eight other movies, has gathered numerous tales collected from various tribes and written these narratives in her book, Spider Woman's Web. In this book, Spider Grandmother is also referred to by the names Spider Woman and Spider Old Woman.

G. M. Mullett has also written a book documenting the oral legends of the Spider Woman specific to the Hopi
Hopi mythology
The Hopi maintain a complex religious and mythological tradition stretching back over centuries. However, it is difficult to definitively state what all Hopis as a group believe. Like the oral traditions of many other societies, Hopi mythology is not always told consistently and each Hopi mesa, or...

 Indians. In these narratives, Spider Woman is also known as the Earth Goddess.
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