The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

matrifocally resorted to their accustomed modes of dealing with
outsiders; they relied on the red chief (or whatever that
personage might be called) and on their tribal groups whose
responsibility was external affairs. The Iroquois of the northern
regions, the Five “Civilized” Tribes of the southern regions, and
the Pueblo of the American Southwest—all among those earliest
contacted by Anglo-European invaders—had some dual
structure enabling them to maintain internal harmony while
engaging in hostilities with invading or adversary groups. The
Aztecs also had such complementary deities: the internal or
domestic god was a goddess, Cihuacoatl, Coatlique, or some
similar supernatural woman-being; their external god was
Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent, who was a god of
amalgamation or expansion. 16
Indian stories indicate that a dialogic construct based on
complementary powers (an interpretation of polarity that focuses
on the ritual uses of magnetism) was current among the Pueblos,
particularly the Keres. To the Keres Naotsete was the figure
associated with internal affairs, and Uretsete was concerned
with maintaining tribal psychic and political boundaries. 17
Essentially, the Keres story goes something like this (allowing
for variations created by the informant, the collector-translator,
or differences in clan-based variations): Naotsete and Uretsete
were sung into life by Ts’its’tsi’nako Thought Woman. They
carried bundles from which all the creatures came. The goddess
Uretsete gave birth to twin boys, and one of these boys was
raised by the other sister, who later married him. Of this union
the Pueblo race was born. Some tales (probably of fairly recent
origin) make Uretsete the alien sister and Naotsete the Indian
sister. Other stories, as noted earlier, make Uretsete male at
some undetermined point (but “he” always starts as female). The
Indian sister Uretsete is later known as Iyatiku, or Ic’city, and is
seen as essentially the same as her. But it is reasonable to