In the Iroquois creation story, a muskrat brought mud from the bottom of the primordial sea to help create the earth.
The story begins with a sky-dwelling woman falling through an opening in the heavens into a vast watery world. Birds catch her and carry her toward a great turtle, but land is needed to give her a place to stand. Several animals attempt to dive to the sea floor and retrieve earth.
The beaver fails to return, and the duck also dies during its attempt. Finally, the muskrat succeeds, surfacing with mud, or oeh-dah, in its paws. The mud is placed on the turtle’s shell, where it grows into land. The turtle therefore becomes the earth bearer, a foundation for the widespread image known as Turtle Island.
The answer is not “Turtle”: the turtle supports the growing earth but does not retrieve the mud. Nor is it Beaver or Otter, which appear in some versions or related earth-diver traditions. Iroquois stories have regional and historical variants, but this recorded creation version specifically credits the muskrat with bringing up the mud.