The Traditional Relationship Between Humans and Garter Snakes on Turtle Island

Executive Summary

Across Turtle Island — the Indigenous name for North America, rooted in creation stories shared by Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Lenape, and many other peoples — the garter snake has occupied a remarkably rich place in human spiritual, ecological, and ceremonial life. Far from being merely a common garden reptile, the garter snake (Thamnophis spp.) is embedded in cosmological narratives, healing traditions, and sacred ceremonies spanning the continent. This report explores that relationship from its mythological foundations to its contemporary conservation significance, drawing on oral traditions, ethnographic records, and ecological knowledge.[1][2]

1. Turtle Island: The Name and Its Context

Before examining the garter snake's role specifically, it is important to understand the worldview within which that role is situated. "Turtle Island" is the name many Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and beyond give to the land more commonly called North America. The name arises from creation stories in which land itself emerged on the back of a great turtle — in Haudenosaunee tradition, Sky Woman fell from the Sky World and was caught by water animals, with a muskrat bringing mud that was placed upon the turtle's shell to form the Earth. In Anishinaabe tradition, the trickster-hero Nanabozho orchestrated a similar creation after a great flood, and the turtle's back became the foundation of the new world.[3][4][1]

This cosmology is not incidental to the garter snake story. In Indigenous worldviews across Turtle Island, humans, animals, and the land exist in webs of reciprocal relationship and mutual obligation. Animals are not mere background to human history — they are participants in creation, teachers, healers, and spiritual interlocutors. Within this framework, the garter snake carries meanings that no Western zoological taxonomy fully captures.[5]

2. The Garter Snake Across Turtle Island

2.1 Distribution and Ecological Overview

Garter snakes (Thamnophis spp., with around 35 species) are among the most widespread and ecologically significant reptiles on Turtle Island, ranging from central Canada in the north to Costa Rica in the south. They thrive in diverse habitats — grasslands, forests, wetlands, and near water — and play an essential role as pest controllers, consuming slugs, insects, small rodents, and amphibians. Their presence stabilizes ecosystems and provides a food source for predators including hawks and owls. Garter snakes give birth to live young and can produce litters of up to 85 offspring, though the average is considerably smaller.[6][7][8]

In central Canada, particularly Manitoba, the red-sided garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) creates one of the planet's most spectacular wildlife phenomena: the Narcisse Snake Dens, where an estimated 75,000–150,000 individuals overwinter in limestone sinkholes and emerge each spring for mating rituals involving enormous "mating balls". This annual spectacle, occurring on Anishinaabe and Métis ancestral territory, is the largest aggregation of snakes anywhere on Earth.[9][10]

2.2 Cultural Significance: A Continent-Wide Pattern

In Indigenous cultures across Turtle Island, snakes in general — and garter snakes in particular — are viewed through a lens profoundly different from European colonial traditions. While European Christianity associated serpents primarily with evil and temptation (via the Garden of Eden narrative), Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island largely revered snakes as symbols of transformation, healing, water, fertility, and spiritual power. The ecological reality of the garter snake — its harmless nature, its closeness to water, its shedding of skin, its apparent "death" and "rebirth" with each seasonal cycle — aligned powerfully with Indigenous spiritual frameworks.[11][5]

As Anishinaabe conservationist Chevaun Toulouse writes from Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation, snakes in First Nations culture are considered "guides, protectors, and heroes" and were "amongst the most powerful of the spiritual beings to First Nations". She notes that snakes were depicted as "compassionate and willing to sacrifice itself to save others" and that snakes were believed to have literally created rivers, their "twisted, winding nature" mirroring the oscillating movements of waterways.[12]

3. The Garter Snake in Specific Traditions

3.1 The Arapaho: Sacred Wheel and the Sun Dance

Perhaps the most direct and detailed mythology specific to garter snakes comes from the Arapaho people of the Great Plains. In the creation account associated with the Flat Pipe (a sacred ceremonial object), after the land was formed following a primordial flood, Garter Snake approached the creator figure and made an offering:[13][14]

"I am very low in spirit, and I desire to place myself away from harm and violence. You know that I am very innocent and delicate in every way. I have a very faithful disposition and am energetic in my ways and reverent toward my neighbors... I desire to be located away from harm, and be a circumference of the earth."

Because of this humble and faithful offering, Garter Snake was honored as the first being to receive the gift of the hosei-hoowu' — the Offerings Lodge, or Sun Dance. This is an extraordinary distinction: the garter snake, a small and seemingly modest creature, was chosen over more powerful animals to receive the most sacred ceremonial knowledge of the Arapaho people.[14]

In the Arapaho sacred Medicine Wheel — the hosei-hoowu' itself — the garter snake is symbolically represented as the outer rim, making it literally "the circumference of the Earth". The wheel is painted in the image of the garter snake, and its form is constructed from Long Stick (a bush with flexible limbs), while eagle feathers represent the Four Old Men of the cardinal directions. Garter Snake thus occupies a cosmological position as the boundary and totality of the known world, a guardian of the perimeter between the human and the spiritual.[15][13][14]

The Arapaho language project at the University of Colorado, drawing on ethnographer George Dorsey's original fieldwork, preserves the detail of this tradition, identifying three species of garter snake (Thamnophis elegans, Thamnophis radix, and Thamnophis sirtalis) all connected to this sacred role.[14]

3.2 The Anishinaabe: Medicine Serpent and River Creator

Among the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe/Chippewa) peoples, serpents occupy a central role in the spiritual ecology of Turtle Island, particularly in relation to water. Snakes were believed to have created rivers — their sinuous movements mirroring the curves of waterways — and were recorded as spiritual beings on petroglyphs, petroforms, and sacred birch bark scrolls of the Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society).[16][17][12]

The Medicine Serpent of Anishinaabe tradition was described as the most powerful and influential of the snake beings: "a healer and protector of medicine that could give gifts to medicine men, which were highly sought after". The snake was also "a helper and protector of women".[12]

Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, who transmitted sacred knowledge through his painting and his 1965 book Legends of My People: The Great Ojibway, depicted serpents as central symbols of medicine power. He wrote, "The emblem for medicine… was a horned snake", and his paintings depicted sacred serpents representing "forces of good and evil," the duality inherent in all powerful medicine.[18]

The Anishinaabe worldview also includes the fearsome Mishipeshu (Great Lynx or Underwater Panther), an aquatic spirit-being whose domain includes mastery over all water creatures, including snakes. This being, depicted in ancient red-ochre pictographs at Agawa Rock on Lake Superior, embodies the cosmos's watery underworld in perpetual conflict with the Thunderbirds of the sky — a cosmic duality in which serpentine beings play a crucial mediating role.[19][20][21][22]

The Menominee Algonquian tradition preserves a particularly distinctive belief: that chipmunks and garter snakes can transform into one another. This shape-shifting relationship suggests garter snakes occupied a liminal zone between terrestrial and woodland realms, crossing categorical boundaries in ways that made them spiritually significant.[23]

3.3 The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois): Ecological Observers and Protective Allies

The Haudenosaunee peoples, whose confederacy (the Six Nations) shaped the political geography of the northeastern woodlands, maintained a notably practical and observational relationship with garter snakes alongside spiritual ones. As recorded through conservation practitioners, "the Haudenosaunee also saw [snakes'] benefits to the ecosystem and humans, as snakes eat pests that carry disease or decimate crops". This recognition of the garter snake as a pest controller and agricultural ally reflects an integrated view in which ecological function and spiritual relationship were not separate categories.[12]

The very name "Iroquois" — an Algonquian word applied by neighboring peoples — derived from a term meaning "snake," acknowledging the Haudenosaunee's spiritual power rather than constituting an insult. This linguistic history shows how deeply serpentine symbolism was woven into intertribal relationships and the attribution of spiritual and political authority.[24]

3.4 Algonquian Peoples: The River as Serpent

Among the diverse Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Eastern Woodlands — including the Rappahannock, Powhatan, and others of coastal Virginia — snake symbolism was embedded in the geography of the land itself. At the Rappahannock River fall line, a remarkable serpent petroglyph known as "Snake Rock" was carved using traditional stone-on-stone techniques, spanning approximately three feet in length.[24]

What makes this petroglyph extraordinary is its hydrological function: the carving resides in the river itself, and during normal water flow, only portions are visible; during drought, the complete petroglyph emerges as a dramatic environmental indicator. The serpent was thus both a spiritual symbol and a practical gauge of river health — the Great Horned Serpent representing "powerful spiritual forces controlling river flow, fish abundance, and rainfall timing". Snake Rock's position also aligns with summer solstice sunrise, suggesting astronomical significance integrated with water ceremonies.[24]

In Algonquian three-worlds cosmology, the Lower World was the domain of "Water spirits, Horned Serpents, underground forces," accessible through rivers, springs, and underwater passages. Snakes were messengers and guardians of this realm, requiring tobacco or food offerings when travelers passed dangerous rapids or unusual rock formations.[24]

3.5 The Cherokee: Transformation and Sacred Danger

Cherokee cosmology contains the figure of Uktena, a horned serpent of immense power whose crystalline forehead gem granted visions, healing powers, and insight to those bold enough to approach it. The Cherokee associated the snake with "the Underworld," a realm not of damnation but of deep spiritual knowledge and dangerous transformation. The snake's shedding of skin was viewed as a symbol of renewal and regeneration — a metaphor for "rebirth, regeneration, and the cyclical nature of life".[25][11]

Among the Cherokee specifically, the garter snake was associated with renewal and healing, and an encounter with a garter snake was interpreted as "a new beginning or the start of a new phase in life".[26]

3.6 The Pawnee: Snake Brother and the King of the Waters

The Pawnee of the Great Plains preserved a tradition known as The Snake Brother, a version of a wider "King of the Waters" myth told across many Indigenous nations. In the typical telling, a man is transformed into a water serpent (horned serpent or water snake) and becomes a fearsome guardian of lakes — an entity capable of both destruction and extraordinary good fortune for his people. The Pawnee version is notable for departing from the usually malevolent Snake Man by having the transformed brother become a source of blessing and good luck when treated with loyalty and ceremony.[27][28]

The Pawnee also associated garter snakes with the spirit world as guides for spiritual seekers: "when one dreams about a garter snake, it indicates the need to pay more attention to their intuition and inner voice".[26]

3.7 The Hopi: Dance, Rain, and Brotherhood with Snakes

The Hopi people of northeastern Arizona have practiced the Tsu'tiki or Tsu'tiva — widely known as the Snake Dance — for thousands of years. This biennial, sixteen-day ceremony is conducted jointly by the Snake and Antelope fraternities as a "dramatized prayer for rain". Participants gather snakes from the four cardinal directions — including garter snakes, gopher snakes, bull snakes, and rattlesnakes — wash them with yucca-root suds in a purification ritual, then dance with live snakes in their mouths before releasing them unharmed to carry the people's prayers to the underground spirit world.[29][30][31]

The Hopi belief is that their "intimacy with rattlesnakes and other ophidian species engenders rainfall and fecundity upon the high desert". The tribe regards snakes as their "brothers" and relies on them to carry prayers for rain to the gods and spirits of their ancestors. The dance originated as "a water ceremony, as snakes were traditionally regarded as the guardians of springs". Crucially, at the end of the ceremony, all snakes — including the garter snakes — were returned to nature, unharmed. The snake "which dwells in the folds of the earth, shedding its skin to live again, represents the earthly form of lightning: celestial energy that discharges from the clouds and dispenses life-giving rain".[32][33][29]

4. Cross-Cutting Themes

4.1 The Snake as Water Being

One of the most consistent themes across Turtle Island is the association between snakes — garter snakes in particular — and water. In Anishinaabe tradition, snakes were believed to have created rivers. In Algonquian cosmology, the Great Horned Serpent controlled river flow. The Hopi Snake Dance originated as a water ceremony and prayer for rain. The Arapaho's garter snake was designated "the circumference of the earth" — a boundary associated with the primordial waters. In the Rappahannock tradition, the river itself was personified as a great serpent.[32][14][12][24]

This consistent association makes ecological sense: garter snakes are semi-aquatic and frequently found near wetlands, streams, and lakes — precisely the locations where Indigenous peoples gathered, fished, and drew spiritual meaning from the land. The snake's familiarity in these liminal water-land zones placed it naturally at the threshold between worlds.

4.2 Transformation, Renewal, and the Shedding of Skin

The garter snake's annual skin-shedding was universally interpreted as a symbol of transformation, renewal, and the cyclical nature of existence. This process — the emergence of a "new" snake from the husk of the old — resonated with initiation ceremonies, seasonal cycles, and healing traditions across the continent. In the Rappahannock tradition, the snake's periodic disappearance and reappearance was explicitly linked to the cycle of the river itself, the spiritual world, and the renewal of life.[34][11][5][24]

4.3 Medicine, Healing, and Spiritual Power

Snakes served as emblems of medicine across Turtle Island. In Anishinaabe tradition, the Medicine Serpent was the guardian of healing knowledge. In Navajo tradition, the story of Glispa describes a young woman drawn into the Earth by the Snake People, where she studied healing arts for two years before returning with chants "passed on for generations". In Cherokee cosmology, snakes connected humans to sacred healing knowledge, even when that knowledge carried dangerous dimensions.[35][25][18][12]

The Arapaho's elevation of Garter Snake as the first recipient of the sacred Sun Dance gift further positions the garter snake as a conduit for ceremonial healing power. Native American healing traditions emphasize the holistic treatment of physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions simultaneously — a framework within which the garter snake's symbolism of renewal and medicine-keeping made it a natural ally.[36][37][13][14]

4.4 Humility, Faithfulness, and Spiritual Virtue

The Arapaho narrative about Garter Snake's offering is remarkable for its moral dimension. Garter Snake does not claim strength, ferocity, or power — it claims innocence, humility, faithfulness, and reverence. This attribution of virtue to a small, non-threatening creature reflects a broader Indigenous ethic in which spiritual significance is not proportional to physical size or power, but to relational qualities and ecological role. The garter snake's harmlessness, its proximity to humans and their gardens, and its steady presence throughout the growing season made it a trusted neighbor and, by extension, a model of the virtues its carriers admired.[14]

4.5 Duality: Protector and Warning

Several traditions also held garter snakes and snakes generally in a relationship of spiritual caution. In some Nations, garter snakes were symbols of jealousy or dishonesty. The Navajo tradition required great care in depicting snakes, believing their power could bring harm if treated carelessly. The Potawatomi spiritual leader James Kagmega described a cosmic worldview of "continual warfare between the Powers Above (Thunderbirds and their bird allies) and the Powers Below (Underwater Panthers and their snake and fish allies)" — a conflict that reverberated into human affairs. This duality — the snake as both healer and source of potential harm — reflects the honest complexity of Indigenous ecological philosophy, which refused to sanitize relationships with the natural world into simple categories of benevolent or malevolent.[20][38][15]

5. Material and Ecological Relationships

5.1 Practical Coexistence and Agricultural Knowledge

Beyond spiritual frameworks, Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island maintained deeply practical knowledge of garter snakes' ecological functions. The Haudenosaunee explicitly recognized snakes as predators of agricultural pests. Garter snakes consume slugs, snails, insects, earthworms, and small rodents — all major threats to traditional gardens, including the Three Sisters (corn, beans, squash) that anchored Indigenous agriculture across the continent. This ecological knowledge, often dismissed by colonial settlers who persecuted snakes out of fear or disgust, represents sophisticated traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) developed over millennia of observation and cohabitation.[39][6][12]

5.2 The Narcisse Phenomenon and Ancestral Territory

The extraordinary gathering of red-sided garter snakes at Narcisse, Manitoba — in the heart of territories inhabited by Anishinaabe, Cree, and Métis peoples for thousands of years — would certainly have been observed, named, and incorporated into the stories and spiritual geography of these nations. Modern conservation assessments explicitly acknowledge this gap: Canada's 2024 Northwest Territories species status report for the red-sided garter snake identifies "Indigenous and community knowledge" as "a major knowledge gap" and specifically calls for documentation of Indigenous knowledge on the snakes, their habitat, and threats. The annual emergence of tens of thousands of snakes from the earth — a spectacle echoing both the primordial emergence of beings from underground realms and the cyclical renewal of life — aligns powerfully with widespread Indigenous cosmological frameworks.[40][41][42][9]

5.3 Snake Petroglyphs and Sacred Geography

Across Turtle Island, serpent effigies in stone, on cliff faces, and in earthworks mark the sacred landscape. The Great Serpent Mound in Ohio — 1,300 feet in length, one of the largest effigy mounds in the world — was built by ancient North American cultures, likely related to the Adena or Mississippian traditions (c. 1000 BCE–1200 CE). This monumental serpent, overlooking a creek, incorporated astronomical alignments and cosmological meaning that scholars continue to interpret. More intimate serpent petroglyphs — like Snake Rock on the Rappahannock River — served both ceremonial and practical roles as gauges of the natural world.[43][44][45][24]

Anishinaabe pictographs at locations including Agawa Rock on Lake Superior depict serpentine beings in red ochre paint, some estimated at many generations old. These images formed what Anishinaabe scholars call mazinaajimowinan — "pictorial spirit writings" that encoded cosmological knowledge, migration histories, and ceremonial teachings in durable form across the landscape.[22][17]

6. The Snake as Living Symbol in Contemporary Indigenous Life

6.1 The Black Snake Prophecy

One of the most powerful demonstrations of serpent symbolism's living relevance in Indigenous life came with the Standing Rock movement of 2016–2017. A Lakota prophecy speaks of a great Black Snake (zuzeca sape) that would cross the land, desecrate sacred sites, and poison the water before destroying the Earth. For the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of allied nations, the Dakota Access Pipeline was that Black Snake — a modern embodiment of a timeless warning about the consequences of disrespecting water and land.[46][47][48]

The Anishinaabe children's book We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom further illustrates this continuity, invoking the "Black Snake" as the embodiment of oil pipelines threatening the "first medicine," water. The Seven Fires Prophecy of the Anishinaabe speaks of two roads before humanity — one of respect for all living things, the other of accelerating technological conquest — with the Black Snake as the consequence of choosing wrongly.[49]

These modern invocations are not metaphor disconnected from ecology. They draw directly from the cosmological framework in which snakes govern waterways, mark boundaries, and carry warnings about the health of the land — the same framework that placed the garter snake at the circumference of the Arapaho Medicine Wheel and on the surface of Snake Rock on the Rappahannock.

6.2 Indigenous Conservation and the Garter Snake Today

Contemporary Indigenous conservationists are reclaiming the traditional knowledge of snakes as part of broader ecological stewardship. In Ontario, conservationist Chevaun Toulouse of Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation leads monitoring work on species-at-risk snakes including Butler's Garter Snake, combining "passion for snakes, education in western science, and First Nations culture". Butler's Garter Snake is listed as a species at risk in Ontario, threatened by habitat loss from urban development, road mortality, and intentional killing.[50][51][12]

In the Beaver Hills Biosphere near Edmonton — on Cree and Métis ancestral territory — garter snake road mortality has become a critical conservation issue, with over 800 snakes documented dead on a single seven-kilometre road stretch in 2023 and 2024. Conservation advocates connect this not just to ecological management but to the broader ethic of living in reciprocal relationship with the land that Indigenous governance frameworks have always maintained.[52]

The 2024 species status report for the red-sided garter snake in Canada's Northwest Territories explicitly calls for the documentation of Indigenous traditional knowledge about these snakes — recognizing that millennia of observation and relationship-building contain insights that Western science has only begun to approach.[41][42]

7. Knowledge Gaps and Methodological Cautions

This report draws on published ethnographic records, oral tradition documentation, Indigenous conservation writing, and archaeological interpretation. Several important limitations must be acknowledged:

• Oral traditions are not texts. Many sacred teachings about garter snakes remain within community practice and are not publicly documented. What appears here represents only what has been shared with outside researchers or published by Indigenous voices themselves.
• Tribal diversity is vast. Turtle Island encompasses hundreds of distinct nations with distinct languages, cosmologies, and relationships to specific animals. The term "Indigenous relationship with garter snakes" encompasses enormous diversity, and generalizations risk flattening significant differences.
• Colonial disruption. Generations of forced religious conversion, residential school systems, and the suppression of Indigenous ceremonies have disrupted the transmission of some traditional knowledge, including specific teachings about animals like the garter snake.
• Documentation gap. As noted by Canadian wildlife authorities, Indigenous knowledge of red-sided garter snakes specifically represents "a major knowledge gap" requiring active research and documentation efforts. Much remains to be learned through Indigenous-led research processes.[42][41]

Conclusion

The garter snake's relationship with the human peoples of Turtle Island is a story of cosmological dignity, ecological wisdom, and enduring spiritual significance. From the Arapaho's elevation of Garter Snake as the first recipient of the Sun Dance to the Anishinaabe's Medicine Serpent guarding the knowledge of healers; from the Algonquian's living water-gauge carved in river stone to the Hopi's ceremonial "brotherhood" with living serpents — garter snakes have been recognized as teachers, healers, boundary-keepers, and companions across the full breadth of the continent.[32][14][12][24]

This traditional relationship reflects a philosophical orientation — found across many distinct Indigenous cultures — in which even the most "humble" creature carries profound responsibility and spiritual power. The garter snake's harmlessness, its water-dwelling habits, its shedding skin, and its mass congregations at denning sites all became windows through which humans read the rhythms of the land and communicated with the spiritual dimensions of the world. As Indigenous-led conservation efforts reclaim this knowledge and apply it to urgent ecological challenges, the garter snake emerges not merely as a subject of history, but as a living teacher whose lessons remain as relevant as ever.[11][6][9]

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