Native Americans from the southeastern part of what is now the United States believed that the universe in which they lived was made up of three separate, but related, worlds, the Upper World, the Lower World, and This World. In the last there lived humans, most animals, and all plants. This World, a round island resting on the surface of waters, was suspended from the sky by four cords attached to the island at the four cardinal 'points of the compass. Lines drawn to connect the opposite points ...

Native Americans from the southeastern part of what is now the United States believed that the universe in which they lived was made up of three separate, but related, worlds, the Upper World, the Lower World, and This World. In the last there lived humans, most animals, and all plants.

This World, a round island resting on the surface of waters, was suspended from the sky by four cords attached to the island at the four cardinal 'points of the compass. Lines drawn to connect the opposite points of the compass, from north to south and from east to west, intersected. This World to divide it into four wedge - shaped segments. Thus a symbolic representation of the human world was a cross within a circle, the cross representing the intersecting lines and the circle the shape of This World.

Each segment of This World was identified by its own color. According to Cherokee doctrine, east was associated with the color red because it was the direction of the Sun, the greatest deity of all. Red was also the color of fire, believed to be directly connected with the Sun, with blood, and therefore with life. Finally, red was the color of success. The west was the Moon segment; it provided no warmth and was not life - giving as the Sun was. So its color was black. North was the direction of cold, and so its color was blue sometimes purple, and it represented trouble and defeat. South was the direction of warmth, its color, white, was associated with peace and happiness.

The southeastern Native Americans' universe was one in which opposites were constantly at war with each other, red against black, blue against white. This World hovered somewhere between the perfect order and predictability of the Upper World and the total disorder and instability of the Lower World. The goal was to find some kind of halfway path, or balance, between those other worlds.

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