Spider Grandmother (Kokyangwuti)

Spider Grandmother, known as Kokyangwuti to the Hopi and Na'ashjé'ii Asdzáá to the Navajo, is a fundamental figure across Native American mythology who serves as a creator, guide, and protector of humanity. In Hopi tradition, she often works alongside the sun god Tawa to fashion the world and breathe souls into living things, eventually leading the first people through the Four Great Caverns to their final home while teaching them the essential arts of weaving and pottery. She is depicted as either a timeless woman or a common spider residing in a kiva-like hole underground, emerging to provide medicinal cures, strategic advice, or magical intervention, such as when she spun a web over the village of Oraibi to save it from fire or aided the hero Tiyo with a protective serum.

Among the Navajo, she is revered as a constant helper who provided the Hero Twins with protective feather hoops to battle monsters and taught the people how to weave rugs from sheep's wool to survive the winter, though she also maintains a disciplined side symbolized by Spider Rock, where she is said to capture misbehaving children. Her influence extends to the Zuni, where Water Spider identified the center of the earth, and to the Ojibwe, where Asibikaashi inspired the creation of protective web charms for infants, illustrating her universal role as a "Thought Woman" who weaves the fabric of culture, religion, and survival across diverse tribal traditions ranging from the Choctaw fire-bringer stories to the Pueblo sacred ceremonies.