Earth Surface Person

• Earth surface person, earth surface person

Earth Surface Person (plural Earth Surface People)

1. (folklore, Native American) A human being, specifically in cultures like the Navajo, residing on the physical Earth, as opposed to spiritual beings or deities, considered to reside in higher realms.
   • 1956, Ruth Murray Underhill, The Navajos, page 4:

     Their tales qualify this as Earth People or Earth Surface People, for, in the long, poetic myth which is their bible, they climbed up to the earth's flat disk from her dark, underground womb.

   • 1957, Katherine Spencer, Mythology and Values, An Analysis of Navaho Chantway Myths, page 153:

     Toad denounces angrily that an earth surface person should be going about here and shoots mudballs at various parts of her body (soles, hip joint, small of back, meeting of shoulder blades, hollow of head); she is lamed and felled by this witchery.

   • 1975, Leland C. Wyman, The Mountainway of the Navajo, page 190:

     Down where berries were reported to be, they went again, when suddenly she saw the woman's tracks. "Whose tracks are these? They are tracks of an earth surface person!" [Holy Young Woman said].

   • 1984, John R. Farella, The Main Stalk, A Synthesis of Navajo Philosophy, page 89:

     Thus, the story of Changing Woman here is the story of her creation of the earth-surface people and of the things that they need in order to exist.

   • 1993, Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman, page 121:

     The great Navajo chant Beauty Way deals with a fruitful coming-together of an earth-surface person - a human being - and a spirit; the Beauty Way ceremony itself, which incorporates the story, is given to the Navajo people as a consequence of that event.

   • 2001, Rose Mitchell, Tall Woman, The Life Story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo Woman, c. 1874-1977, page 297:

     Sure, people have problems when they're married; no Earth Surface Person is perfect.

   • 2003, R. A. F. McPhearson, Blackening Rite, page 22:

     The old man began the Restoration of the Earth Surface Person Upon His Return Home prayer, which describes the reuniting of a person with his home.