Amala

Region/Culture: North America (Pacific Northwest Coast peoples)
Mythos: Native American Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: A world-bearing giant who gained supernatural strength in secret, enough to balance the entire flat earth on the tip of a single spinning pole.
Role in Mythos: He is the cosmic supporter whose unbroken endurance keeps the world turning, and whose eventual death will end it.
Relation to Humans: Humanity rides on the world he holds up, almost none of them aware that he exists or that their existence rests on his back. The myth ties the survival of everyone to a single thread of ritual maintenance that people themselves can sever by hunting the ducks to nothing.

Once a year a servant makes the long approach to where the giant lies and pours wild-duck oil into the muscles of his back, kneading it down the slope of a shoulder that has not shifted in a lifetime. The smell of it is rank and heavy. The giant barely registers the touch. Underneath him, set on the tip of a single upright pole, the flat earth keeps turning, slow and even, and every village and salmon river and hunting trail rides that motion without ever feeling it move. It is the most important labor in the world. Almost no one who benefits from it knows the name of the one who performs it.

His name is Amala, and the name is not a compliment. It means smoke hole, the soot-darkened gap in the roof, and it was fastened to him because he was filthy. He began as the youngest child in a family, the weak one, the lazy one, the boy left to sleep in the cold ashes of the hearth. In some tellings he sleeps in his own urine. Everyone in the house had a free hand to strike him, and he gave them no reason to stop. He was the kind of child a family explains away to visitors.

Then, late and in secret, the strength came. No one saw how. The despised boy of the ash pile straightened into a handsome, powerful young man, and the first the others knew of it was when he began doing things no one else could. He performed feats that should not have been possible for any man, lifting what could not be lifted, breaking what could not be broken. When enemies came against his people he put himself between them and harm, and the relatives who had beaten him and stepped over him in the ashes found themselves protected by the one they had thrown to the fire.

His final feat was the one that mattered. Far off, on an island in the southwest sea, an old chief lay dying, and this chief had been holding up the world. Word of Amala’s exploits reached him, and he sent for the young man. When Amala came, the chief passed him the long pole on which the flat earth revolves, and let go. The stories disagree on exactly how the weight was taken. In some the pole is set against Amala’s chest; in others it rests behind his back. Either way the world passed from the dying to the strong, and the turning never broke.

Holding it is not a clenched, straining act but an endurance, a stillness kept across ages, and stillness has its own cost. The great muscles seize and cramp under their changeless load. So once each year the servant comes with spoonfuls of duck grease and wild-duck oil and works them into Amala’s body, and the relief lets him keep the earth in its slow spin for another year. Everything depends on that oil. And the oil depends on the ducks. When the last of them has been hunted from the world there will be no more grease to bring, and Amala’s muscles will fail, and the giant will die, and the flat earth will slide off the end of its pole. His strength has a supply line, and the supply line is birds.

This is not one people’s story alone. The giant beneath the world is told among the Tsimshian and the Nisga’a of the Nass River, among the Haida of Skidegate, Massett, and the Kaigani, and among the Tlingit further north along the cold, island-broken coast. The same figure travels the same stretch of shoreline from village to village, and the details shift as they always do when a story belongs to many mouths. The position of the pole changes. The squalor of his childhood changes. The ending does not.

What he actually looks like as he holds the world is left mostly to the imagination. The accounts care more about his ruin and his rise than his face, and more about the strange domestic intimacy of a servant oiling the back of the being on whom everything rests. The shape of the tale is impossible not to recognize. A child sleeps in the ashes, is despised, and climbs from the hearth to glory; a lone figure at the edge of the world carries its entire weight on his body. Whether those echoes of the ash-child and the sky-bearer reached the coast from far away or grew there on their own has never been settled, and the story holds either way.

His power is simple to state and almost beyond imagining: enough strength to take up the whole world and enough endurance to hold it steady, year upon year, without ever setting it down. It is strength that arrived from nowhere, in a body everyone had written off, which is its own kind of statement. His weakness is the other face of the same coin. He cannot move, cannot rest, cannot step away from the pole for an instant. He is bound to a thin thread he does not control, the yearly oil and the birds that make it, and on the day that thread snaps the world goes down with him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Amala in Native American mythology?

Amala is a world-bearing giant in the mythology of the Tsimshian and other Pacific Northwest Coast peoples, including the Nisga’a, Haida, and Tlingit. He holds the flat earth balanced on the tip of a single pole and keeps it slowly spinning. His name means “smoke hole” and was given to him because he was filthy.

How does Amala hold up the world?

Amala balances the flat earth on the end of an upright pole, which some versions of the myth say is pressed against his chest and others say is held behind his back. He does this lying down, in a state of unbroken endurance rather than active strain. The world turns on the pole as long as he can bear its weight.

Why does Amala need duck oil?

A servant rubs wild-duck oil and duck grease into Amala’s muscles once a year to relieve the cramping caused by holding the world without rest. The treatment lets him keep the earth spinning for another year. The world’s survival therefore depends on a steady supply of duck oil.

How does the world end in the myth of Amala?

The myth says that when all the ducks have been hunted out of the world, there will be no more duck oil to soothe Amala’s muscles. Without it, his strength gives out, the giant dies, and the flat earth slides off its pole and is destroyed. The end of the world is tied directly to the disappearance of the ducks.

How did Amala become so strong?

Amala began as the weak, lazy, mistreated youngest child of his family, made to sleep in the ashes of the hearth. Late in his life he gained supernatural strength in secret and transformed into a handsome, powerful young man. He went on to perform great feats and protect his people before a dying chief chose him to take over the task of holding up the world.