Editing Arapaho (section)

==Culture==

===Creation myth===
The [[creation myth]] of the Arapaho people shows a connection with the [[Algonquian people]]. Both cultures have an "earth-diver creation myth". The Arapaho myth begins with a being called Flat Pipe who exists alone upon the water. The Great Spirit suggests to Flat Pipe that he create creatures to build a world. He first conceives of ducks and other water birds who dive beneath the surface of the water but are not able to find land. With guidance from the Great Spirit, Flat Pipe creates a [[turtle]] who can live on both land or in the water. The Turtle dives and returns, spitting out a piece of land that grows into the earth. Flat Pipe then goes about creating men, women, and animals to populate the earth. The turtle is common to many "earth-diver" creation myths.<ref name="Creation Myths of the World">{{cite book |last1=Leeming |first1=David A. |title=Creation Myths of the World |page=39}}</ref>

This myth is an example of "creation by thought". Flat Pipe creates the creatures by thinking of them.<ref name="Creation Myths of the World"/>

===Gender and division of labor===
{{anchor|Gender system}}<!--incoming links-->
Traditionally, men are responsible for hunting.<ref name="Hilger">Mary Inez Hilger, ''Arapaho Child Life and Its Cultural Background'' (1952)</ref> After horses were introduced, buffalo became the main food source—the meat, organs, and the blood all being consumed. Blood was drunk or made into pudding.<ref name="TAP-food">[https://www.colorado.edu/csilw/arapahoproject/traditional/food.html The Arapaho Project: Food]</ref> Women (and ''haxu'xan'' ([[Two Spirits]]))<ref name="Kroeber"/> are traditionally in charge of food preparation and dressing hides to make clothing and bedding, saddles, and housing materials.<ref name="Hilger"/><ref name="TAP-clothes">[https://www.colorado.edu/csilw/arapahoproject/traditional/clothes.html The Arapaho Project: Clothes]</ref>

The Arapaho have historically had social and spiritual roles for those who are known in contemporary Native cultures as [[Two Spirit]] or [[third gender]].<ref name="Kroeber">Alfred Kroeber, ''The Arapaho'' (1902)</ref><ref name="Lang">Sabine Lang, ''Men as Women, Women as Men'' {{ISBN|0292777957}}, 2010)</ref> Anthropologist [[Alfred Kroeber]] wrote about male-bodied individuals who lived as women, the ''haxu'xan'', who he says were believed to have "the natural desire to become women, and as they grew up gradually became women" (and could marry men);<ref name="Kroeber"/><ref name="Lang"/> he further stated that the Arapaho believed that the ''haxu'xan'''s gender was a supernatural gift from birds or other animals, that they had miraculous powers, and they were also noted for their inventiveness, such as making the first [[intoxicant]] from rainwater.<ref name="Kroeber"/>

===Clothing===
On the Plains, women (and ''haxu'xan'')<ref name="Kroeber"/> historically wore moccasins, leggings, and ankle-length buckskin-fringed dresses, ornamented with porcupine quills, paint, elk teeth, and beads.<ref name="TAP-clothes"/> Men have also worn moccasins, leggings, buckskin breechclothes (drawn between the legs, tied around the waist), and sometimes shirts; warriors have often worn necklaces.<ref name="TAP-clothes"/> Many of these items are still part of contemporary dress for both casual and formal wear, or as regalia.