The Great Flood

The story of the great flood that lasted forty days and forty nights is familiar to most of us Westerners, Christian or not. The Native American creation stories I read also often mentioned a flood that reset the world too.
In “The Earth Dragon” from a tribe along the Northern California Coast, the gods’ first world is washed away because it never stops raining (pg 108). In “The Voice, the Flood, and the Turtle” story of the Caddo people, two giant monsters are defeated when the Voice sends a flood to drown them. Meanwhile, a man and his wife take refuge in a hollow reed, bringing with them all of the animals they wished to save (pg 121). The Yuma tribe’s story “The Good Twin and the Evil Twin” the Creator’s son, Komashtam’ho lets it rain until the Earth floods to rid the world of some of the animals that were too wild or populous. (page 81).
As Sarah talked about in her post, the European influence on these recorded stories is impossible to remove. Still, I found the pervasiveness of the flood motif interesting.
The floods in the stories were only plot points, not the whole point of the story. The reoccurring flood theme made me curious to see if there is any empirical evidence that a worldwide flood actually happened. The scientific community, for the most part, is divided. I found a few websites and articles from the creationist viewpoint that use unpopular scientific theories to support their argument (http://www.earthage.org/EarthOldorYoung/scientific_evidence_for_a_worldwide_flood.htm, http://www.icr.org/geological-strata/). Those opposed to creationism agreed that the Ark story was implausible (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html). The underwater archeologist responsible for discovering the Titanic found evidence that a great flood took place in the land of the Bible (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/evidence-suggests-biblical-great-flood-noahs-time-happened/story?id=17884533). While this may explain a flood that coincides with Christian myths, I couldn’t find much evidence of a great flood in North America. There was one article about a flood that may have destroyed the Cahokia civilization (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/131030-cahokia-native-american-flood-mystery-archaeology-pollen/). So, with more research I may be able to find more evidence of North American floods. But for now it seems there was no great worldwide flood. :/