Some Choctaw believe that Nanih Waiya is the "Mother Mound" ("Inholitopa iski") where the first Choctaw was created. As told by some Choctaw storytellers, it was either from Nanih Waiya or a cave nearby that the Choctaw people emerged. There are many variations of the story. According to some versions, the mound (or nearby cave) is also the origin of the Chickasaw, Creek people, and possibly even the Cherokee. (Note: As the Cherokee are an Iroquoian language people (distantly related to the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy formerly based in New York, most of whom lived around the Great Lakes), anthropologists and historians believe they migrated later into the Southeast and were not one of the peoples who emerged here from the indigenous ancestors who built Nanih Waiya.)