The world is peopled, however, with other wonder-folk
besides the magic animals, and many of these mythic beings
belong to ancient and wide-spread systems. Thus, the Chero-
kee Flint (Tawiskala) is obviously the evil twin of the north-
ern Iroquois cosmogony; and although he has ceased to be
remembered as a demiurgic Titan, his evil and unsociable na-
ture remains the same.'*’’ In Choctaw tales, the Devil who is
drowned by a maiden whom he has lured from her home, and
whose body breaks into stony fragments, is apparently the
same being.®* The Ice Man, with his northerly winds and
sleety rains, who quenched the fire that threatened to consume
the world; the North who kept the South for Bride until the
hot sun forced him to release her; Untsaiyi, the Gambler,
who games away his life, and flees to the world’s end, where
he is bound and pinned by the two brothers who have pursued
him, there to writhe until the world’s end — all these are
tales with familiar heroes, known in many tribes and lands.

Nor are the tribes of magic folk different in kind from those
found elsewhere. There are the helpful spirit warriors, who
dwell in rock and hill, the Nunnehi; there are the Little
People, fairies good and evil; ** there are the Tsundigewi, the
Dwarfs who lived in nests scooped from the sand, and who
fought with and were overcome by the cranes;* the Water-
Cannibals, who live upon human flesh, especially that of
children; ® the Thunderers, whose steed is the great Uktena;



THE GULF REGION


69

the horned snake with a diamond in his forehead,®^ and to
whose cave a young man was lured by the Thunder^s sister,
only to find, when he returned to his folk to tell his story and
die, that the night he had spent there comprised long years.
Kanati, Lucky Hunter, the husband of Selu, Corn, and Tsui-
kalu, the slant-eyed giant, held dominion over the animals
and were gods of the hunter; while the different animals, each
in its kind, were under the supervision of the animal Elders,^®
such as the Little Deer, invisible to all except the greatest
hunters, the White Bear, to whom wounded bears go to be
cured of their hurts, Tlanuwa, the Hawk impervious to
arrows, Dakwa, the great fish which swallowed the fisherman
and from which he cut himself out, and the man-eating Leech,
as large as a house.

Such Is the general complexion of the Cherokee pantheon —
hordes or kinds of nature-powers, with a few mightier per-
sonalities emerging above them, embryonic gods. Altogether
similar are the conceptions of the Muskhogean tribes — giants
and dwarfs, fairies and wizards, now human, now animal in
shape, peopling hill and stream, forest and bayou.

VIL MYTHIC HISTORY57

Tribes, such as the Cherokee, Creek, and allied nations,
with settled towns and elaborate institutions are certain to
show some development of the historical sense. It is true that
the Cherokee have no such wealth of historic tradition as
have their northern cousins, the peoples of the Iroquois Con-
federacy; but at the same time they possess a considerable
lore dealing with their past. Hero tales, narrating the deeds of
redoubtable warriors of former days, and incidentally keeping
alive the memory of the tribes with whom the Cherokee were at
war in early days, naturally form the chief portion of such tra-
ditions; but there are also fabulous stories of abandoned towns,
ancient mounds, and strange peoples formerly encountered.



70 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

In one particular the Cherokee are distinguished above all
other tribes. In the first years of the nineteenth century
Sequoya, having observed the utility of the white man’s art
of writing, invented the Cherokee alphabet, still employed for
the native literature. He submitted his syllabary to the chief
men of the nation; it was adopted, and in a few months thou-
sands of the Cherokee had learned its use. Nevertheless, this
innovation was not made without antagonism; and the oppo-
nents, to make strong their case, told a tale of how, when In-
dian and white man were created, the Indian, who was the
elder, received a book, while the white was given bow and
arrows. But since the Indian was neglectful of his book, the
white man stole it, leaving the bow in its place, so that thence-
forth the book belonged legitimately to the white man, while
hunting with the bow was the Indian’s rightful life. A similar
tale makes the white man’s first gift a stone, and the Indian’s
a piece of silver, these gifts becoming exchanged; while an-
other story tells how the negro invented the locomotive, which
the white man, after killing the negro, took from him.

To an entirely different stratum of historical myth belongs
the story of the massacre of the Anikutani. These were a
priestly clan having hereditary supervision of all religious
ceremonies among the Cherokee. They abused their powers,
taking advantage of the awe in which they were held, to over-
ride the most sacred rights of their fellow tribesmen, until
finally, after one of the Anikutani had violated the wife of a
young brave, the people rose in wrath and extirpated the clan.
In later versions it is a natural calamity which is made re-
sponsible for the destruction of the wicked priests; so that here
we seem to have a tale which records not only a radical change
in the religious institutions of the tribe, but which is well on
the way toward the formation of a story of divine retribution.®

The Creek “Migration Legend,” edited by Gatschct, and
recorded from a speech delivered in 1735 by Chekilli, head
chief of the Creek, is a much more comprehensive historical



THE GULF REGION


71


myth than anything preserved for us by the kindred tribes.
The legend begins with the account of how the Cussitaw (the
Creek) came forth from the Earth in the far West; how they
crossed a river of blood, and came to a singing mountain
where they learned the use of fire and received their mysteries
and laws. After this the related nations disputed as to which
was the eldest, and the Cussitaw, having been the first to



Copper plate found in Etowah Mound, Georgia, representing a Birdlike
Deity. Now in the United States National Museum, Washington


cover their scalp-pole with scalps, were given the place of
honour. Since a huge blue bird was devouring the folk, the
people gave it a clay woman to propitiate it and to induce it to
cease its depredations. By this woman the bird became the
father of a red rat, which gnawed its parent’s bowstring. Thus
the bird was una.ble to defend itself, and the people slew it,
though they regarded it as a king among birds, like the eagle.
They came to a white path, and thence to the town of

X— 7



72 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Coosaw, where they dwelt four years. A man-eating lion
preyed upon the people of this town. “The Cussitaws said
they would try to kill the beast. They digged a pit and
stretched over it a net made of hickory bark. They then laid
a number of branches crosswise, so that the lion could not
follow them, and going to the place where he lay they threw
a rattle into his den. The lion rushed forth in great anger and
pursued them through the branches. Then they thought it
better that one should die rather than all, so they took a
motherless child and threw it before the lion as he came near
the pit. The lion rushed at it, and fell in the pit, over which
they threw the net, and killed him with blazing pinewood.
His bones, however, they keep to this day; on one side they
are red, on the other blue. The lion used to come every seventh
day to kill the people. Therefore, they remained there seven
days after they had killed him. In remembrance of him, when
they prepare for war they fast six days and start on the seventh.
If they take his bones with them they have good fortune.”
After this, the tribe continued its journey, seeking the people
who had made the white path. They passed several rivers,
and came to various towns; but when they shot white arrows
into these towns, as a sign of peace, the inhabitants shot back
red arrows. Sometimes the Cussitaw went on without fight-
ing, sometimes they fought and destroyed the hostile people.
Finally, “they came again to the white path, and saw the
smoke of a town, and thought that this must be the people they
had so long been seeking. This is the place where nowthe tribe
of Palachucolas live. . . . The Palachucolas gave them black
drink, as a sign of friendship, and said to them: Our hearts are
white and yours must be white, and you must lay down the
bloody tomahawk, and show your bodies, as a proof that they
shall be white.” The two tribes were united under a common
chief. “Nevertheless, as the Cussitaws first saw the red
smoke and the red fire and made bloody towns, they cannot
yet leave their red hearts, which are, however, white on one



THE GULF REGION 73

side and red on the other. They now know that the white
path was the best for them.”

Such is the migration-legend of the Creek, altogether similar
to other tales of tribal wandering both in the New World and
the Old. Partly it is a mythical genesis ; partly it is an exodus
from a primitive land of tribulation and war into a land of
peace; partly it is historical reminiscence, the tale of a conquer-
ing tribe journeying in search of richer fields. The sojourn by
the mountain of marvels whence came the talismanic pole,®^
as well as knowledge of the law and the mysteries, recalls the
story of Sinai, while the white path and the search for the
land of peace suggest the promise of Canaan. The episodes
of the man-devouring bird and the man-eating lion possess
many mythic parallels, while both seem to hark back to a time
when human sacrifice was a recognized rite.^® Doubtless the
whole tale is a complex of fact and ritual, partly veritable
recollection of the historic past, partly a fanciful account of
the beginnings of the rites and practices of the nation. Last
of all, comes the bit of psychological analysis represented by
the allegory of the parti-coloured heart of the Red Man who
knows the better way, but, because of his divided nature, is
not wholly capable of following it. This gives to the whole
myth an aetiological rationality and a dramatically appro-
priate finish. The fall of man is narrated; his redemption re-
mains to be accomplished.

Unquestionably many myths of the type of this Creek legend
have been lost, for it is only by rare chance that such heroic
tales survive the vicissitudes of time.



72 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Coosaw, whei'c they dwelt four years. A man-eating Hon
preyed upon the people of this town. “The Cussitaws said
they would try to kill the beast. They digged a pit and
stretched over it a net made of hickory bark. They then laid
a number of branches crosswise, so that the lion could not
follow them, and going to the place where he lay they threw
a rattle into his den. The lion rushed forth in great anger and
pursued them through the branches. Then they thought it
better that one should die rather than all, so they took a
motherless child and threw it before the lion as he came near
the pit. The lion rushed at it, and fell in the pit, over which
they threw the net, and killed him with blazing pinewood.
His bones, however, they keep to this day; on one side they
are red, on the other blue. The lion used to come every seventh
day to kill the people. Therefore, they remained there seven
days after they had killed him. In remembrance of him, when
they prepare for war they fast six days and start on the seventh.
If they take his bones with them they have good fortune.”
After this, the tribe continued its journey, seeking the people
who had made the white path. They passed several rivers,
and came to various towns; but when they shot white arrows
into these towns, as a sign of peace, the inhabitants shot back
red arrows. Sometimes the Cussitaw went on without fight-
ing, sometimes they fought and destroyed the hostile people.
Finally, “they came again to the white path, and saw the
smoke of a town, and thought that this must be the people they
had so long been seeking. This is the place where nowthe tribe
of Palachucolas live. . . . The Palachucolas gave them black
drink, as a sign of friendship, and said to them: Our hearts are
white and yours must be white, and you must lay down the
bloody tomahawk, and show your bodies, as a proof that they
shall be white.” The two tribes were united under a common
chief. “Nevertheless, as the Cussitaws first saw the red
smoke and the red fire and made bloody towns, they cannot
yet leave their red hearts, which are, however, white on one'



THE GULF REGION 73

side and red on the other. They now know that the white
path was the best for them.”

Such is the migration-legend of the Creek, altogether similar
to other tales of tribal wandering both in the New World and
the Old. Partly it is a mythical genesis; partly it is an exodus
from a primitive land of tribulation and war into a land of
peace; partly it is historical reminiscence, the tale of a conquer-
ing tribe journeying in search of richer fields. The sojourn by
the mountain of marvels whence came the talismanic pole,®’-
as well as knowledge of the law and the mysteries, recalls the
story of Sinai, while the white path and the search for the
land of peace suggest the promise of Canaan. The episodes
of the man-devouring bird and the man-eating lion possess
many mythic parallels, while both seem to hark back to a time
when human sacrifice was a recognized rite.*® Doubtless the
whole tale is a complex of fact and ritual, partly veritable
recollection of the historic past, partly a fanciful account of
the beginnings of the rites and practices of the nation. Last
of all, comes the bit of psychological analysis represented by
the allegory of the parti-coloured heart of the Red Man who
knows the better way, but, because of his divided nature, is
not wholly capable of following it. This gives to the whole
myth an aetiological rationality and a dramatically appro-
priate finish. The fall of man is narrated; his redemption re-
mains to be accomplished.

Unquestionably many myths of the type of this Creek legend
have been lost, for it is only by rare chance that such heroic
tales survive the vicissitudes of time.



CHAPTER V
THE GREAT PLAINS
I. THE TRIBAL STOCKS

T he broad physlographical divisions of the North Ameri-
can continent are longitudinal. The region bounded on
the east by the Atlantic seaboard extends westward to parallel
mountain ranges which slope away on the north into the
Labrador peninsula and Hudson’s Bay, and to the south into
the peninsula of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. West of the
eastward mountains, stretching as far as the vast ranges of the
Rockies, is the great continental trough, whose southern half
is drained by the Mississippi into the Gulf, while the Macken-
zie and its tributaries carry the waters from the northern divi-
sion into the Arctic Ocean. The eastern portion of this trough,
to a line lying roughly between longitudes 90 and 95, is a
part of what was originally the forest region; the western
part, from far beyond the tree line in the north to the des-
erts of northern Mexico, comprises the Great Plains of North
America, the prairies, or grass lands, which, previous to white
settlement, supported innumerable herds of buffalo to the south
and caribou to the north, as well as a varied and prolific life
of lesser animals — antelope, deer, rabbits, hares, fur-bearing
animals, and birds in multitude. Coupled with this plenitude
of game was a paucity of creatures formidable to man, so that
aboriginally the Great Plains^ afforded a hunting-ground with
scarcely an equal on any continent. It was adapted to and did
support a hale population of nomadic huntsmen.

As in similar portions of the earth having no natural bar-
riers to passage and intercourse, the human aboriginals of the



THE GREAT PLAINS


75


region fell into few and vast linguistic stocks. Territorially
the greatest of these was the Athapascan, which occupied all
central Alaska and, in Canada, extended from the neighbour-
hood of the Eskimo southward through the greater part of
British Columbia and Athabasca into Alberta, and which,
curiously enough, also bounded the Great Plains population
to the south, Athapascan tribes, such as the Navaho and
Apache, occupying the plains of southern Texas, New Mexico,
and northern Mexico. Just south of the northern Athapascans
a stratum of the Algonquian stock, including the important
Cree and Blackfoot tribes, penetrated as far west as the moun-
tains of Alberta and Montana, while north of the southern
Athapascans, as it were reciprocally, a layer of the western
Shoshonean stock extended eastward into central Texas, the
Shoshonean Comanche forming one of the fiercest of the Plains
tribes. Between these groups, occupying the greatest and
richest portion of the prairie region in the United States, were
the powerful and numerous Siouan and Caddoan peoples, the
former, probably immigrants from the eastern forests, having
their seat in the north, while the Caddo, whose provenance
seems to have been southern, were divided into three segre-
gated groups, Texan, Nebraskan, and Dakotan. The Pawnee,
Wichita, Arikara, and Caddo proper are the principal tribes
of the Caddoan stock; the Siouan stock is represented by
many tribes and divisions, of whom the most famous are the
Dakota or Sioux, the Omaha, Assinaboin, Ponca, Winnebago,
Mandan, Crow, and Osage. It is of interest to note that five
states, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the two Dakotas,
either bear the designations of Siouan tribes or appellations
of Siouan origin, while many towns, rivers, and counties are
similarly named. Other important Plains tribes, occupying
the region at the base of the Rocky Mountains, from Wyoming
south to northern Texas, are the Arapaho and Cheyenne of the
intrusive Algonquian stock and the Kiowa, linguistically un-
related to any other people.

A story which has many versions is that of the journey of
a group of men — sometimes four, sometimes seven — to the
abode of the Great Hare. He receives them courteously,
entertains them after their long journey, and asks each his
wish. One asks for skill in war, another for success in hunting,
another for fame, another for love, and the Master of Life
assures each of the granting of his request. But there is
one man yet to be heard from, and his plea is for long life;
whereupon he is transformed into a tree or, better, a stone:
“You shall have your wish; here you shall always remain for
future generations to look upon,” says the Hare. An odd sequel
to this story is that the returning warriors And their journey
very short, or again that what has seemed only a brief period
turns out to have been a stay of years — shifts of time which
indicate that their travel has led them into the spirit-world.

In another tale, this time from the Huron country, the fate-
ful journey to the Village of Souls is undertaken by a man who
has lost his beloved sister. Her spirit appears to him from time
to time as he travels, but he is unable to touch her. At last,
after crossing an almost impassable river, he comes to the
abode of one who directs him to the dancing-house of the spir-
its. There he is told to seize his sister’s soul, imprison it in a
pumpkin, and, thus secured, to take it back to the land of the
living, where he will be able to reanimate it, provided that,
during the ceremony, no one raises an eye to observe. This he
does, and he feels the life returning to his sister’s body, but at
the last moment a curious person ventures to look, and the
returning life flees away.®* Here is the tale of Orpheus and
Eurydice.

In both Algonquian and Iroquoian myth the path to the
Village of Souls is guarded by dread watchers, ready to cast
into the abyss beneath those whose wickedness has given them



THE FOREST TRIBES 51

into the power of these guardians — for this path they find in
the Milky Way, whose Indian name is the Pathway of Souls.®

VIII. HIAWATHA^

Tales recounting the deeds of Manabozho, collected and
published by Schoolcraft, as the “myth of Hiawatha,” were
the primary materials from which Longfellow drew for his
Song of Hiawatha. The fall of Nokomis from the sky; Hiawa-
tha’s journey to his father, the West Wind; the gift of maize,
in the legend of Mondamin;®® the conflict with the great Stur-
geon, by which Hiawatha was swallowed; the rape and res-
toration of Chibiabos; the pursuit of the storm-sprite, Pau-
Puk-Keewis; and the conflict of the upper and underworld
powers, are all elements in the cosmogonic myths of the Al-
gonquian tribes.

Quite another personage is the actual Hiawatha of Iroquoian
tradition, certain of whose deeds and traits are incorporated
in the poet’s tale. Hiawatha was an Onondaga chieftain whose
active years fell in the latter half of the sixteenth century.
At that time the Iroquoian tribes of central New York were
at constant war with one another and with their Algonquian
neighbours, and Hiawatha conceived the great idea of a union
which should ensure a universal peace. It was no ordinary
confederacy that he planned, but an intertribal government
whose affairs should be directed and whose disputes should be
settled by a federal council containing representatives from each
nation. This grandiose dream of a vast and peaceful Indian
nation was never realized; but it was due to Hiawatha that the
Iroquoian confederacy was formed, by means of which these
tribes became the overlords of the forest region from the
Connecticut to the Mississippi and from the St. Lawrence to
the Susquehanna.

This great result was not, however, easily attained. The
Iroquois preserve legends of Hiawatha’s trials; how he was



52


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


opposed among his own people by the magician and war-chief
Atotarho; how his only daughter was slain at a council of
the tribe by a great white bird, summoned, it is said, by the
vengeful magician, which dashed downward from the skies and
struck the maiden to earth; how Hiawatha then sadly departed
from the people whom he had sought to benefit, and came to
the villages of the Oneida in a white canoe, which moved with-
out human aid. It was here that he made the acquaintance
of the chief Dekanawida, who lent a willing ear to the apostle
of peace, and who was to become the great lawgiver of the
league. With the aid of this chieftain, Hiawatha’s plan was
carried to the Mohawk and Cayuga tribes, and once again to
the Onondaga, where, it is told, Hiawatha and Dekanawida
finally won the consent of Atotarho to the confederation.
Morgan says, of Atotarho, that tradition “ represents his head
as covered with tangled serpents, and his look, when angry,
as so terrible that whoever looked upon him fell dead. It
relates that when the League was formed, the snakes were
combed out of his hair by a Mohawk sachem, who was
hence named Hayowentha, ‘the man who combs,’” — which is
doubtless a parable for the final conversion of the great war-
chief by the mighty orator.®® After the union had been per-
fected, tradition tells how Hiawatha departed for the land of
the sunset, sailing across the great lake in his magic canoe.
The Iroquois raised him in memory to the status of a demigod.

In these tales of the man who created a nation from a medley
of tribes, we pass from the nature-myth to the plane of civil-
ization in which the culture hero appears. Hiawatha is an
historical personage invested with semi-divinity because of his
great achievements for his fellow-men. Such an apotheosis is
inevitable wherever, in the human race, the dream of peace
out of men’s divisions creates their more splendid unities.




PLATE XI

Iroquois drawing of Atotarho (i), receiving two
Mohawk chieftains, perhaps Dekanawida (2) and
Hiawatha (3). After Schoolcraft, Indian TribeSy part i,
Plate LXX.





CHAPTER IV
THE GULF REGION
I. TRIBES AND LANDS

T he states bordering the northern shores of the Gulf
of Mexico — the “Cotton Belt” — form a thoroughly
characteristic physiographic region. Low-lying and deeply
alluvial, abundantly watered both by rains and streams, and
blessed with a warm, equable climate, this district is the
natural support of a teeming life. At the time of its discovery
it was inhabited by completely individuated peoples. While
there were some intrusions of fragmentary representatives from
the great stocks of other regional centres — Iroquoian and
Siouan tribes from the north, and Arawak from the Bahamas
— the Gulf-State lands were mainly in the possession of lin-
guistic stocks not found elsewhere, and, therefore, to be re-
garded as aboriginals of the soil.

Of these stocks by far the largest and most important was
the Muskhogean, occupying the greater part of what is now
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, as well as a large portion
of Tennessee, and including among its chief tribes the Choc-
taw, Chickasaw, Creek (or Muskhogee), Alabama, Apalachee,
and Seminole Indians. Probably the interesting Natchez of
northern Louisiana were an offshoot of the same stock. Two
other stocks or families of great territorial extent were the
Timuquanan tribes, occupying the major portion of the Flori-
dan peninsula, and the Caddoan tribes of Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Of the beliefs of few aboriginal
peoples of North America is less known than of the Timu-
quanan Indians of Florida, so early and so entirely were they



54 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

destroyed; while the southern Caddo, by habit and thought,
are most properly to be regarded as a regional division of the
Great Plains tribes. Minor stocks are the Uchean of South
Carolina, early assimilated with the Muskhogean, and the
highly localized groups of the Louisiana and Texas littoral,
concerning whom our knowledge is slight. In the whole Gulf
region, it is the institutions and thought of the Muskhogeans
— with the culturally afElIated Cherokee — that are of domi-
nant importance and interest.

Historically, the Muskhogean tribes, in company with the
Cherokee of the Appalachian Mountain region, who were a
southern branch of the Iroquoian stock, form a group hardly
less important than the Confederacy of the north. The “Five
Civilized Tribes” of the Indian Territory, so recognized by
the United States Government, comprise the Cherokee, Chick-
asaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes, the major por-
tion of whom removed from their eastern lands between the
years 1832 and 1835 and established themselves in the Terri-
tory under treaty. In a series of patents to the several nations
of this group, given by the United States (1838 to the Chero-
kee, 1842 to the Choctaw, from whom the Chickasaw derived
their title, and 1852 to the Creek, who. In turn, conveyed
rights to the Seminole), these tribes received inalienable
titles to the lands into which they immigrated; and they ad-
vanced so rapidly in the direction of self-government and
stable organization, building towns, and encouraging and
developing industry, that they came to be known as “the five
civilized tribes,” in contrast to their less progressive brethren
of other stocks. The separate government of these tribes,
modelled upon that of the United States, but having only a
treaty relation with it, continued until, as the result of the
labours of a commission appointed by the United States Gov-
ernment, tribal rule was abolished. Accordingly, in 1906 and
1907, the Indians became citizens of the United States, and
their territories part of the state of Oklahoma.



THE GULF REGION


55


IL SUN-WORSHIP

It is not extraordinary that the Gulf-State region should
show throughout a predominance of solar worship. Every-
where in America the sun was one of the chief deities, and, in
general, his relative importance in an Indian pantheon is a
measure of civilization. In the forest and plains regions he is
likely to be subordinated to a still loftier sky-god, whose min-
ister he is; but as we go southward we find the sun assuming
the royal prerogative of the celestial universe, and advancing
to a place of supremacy among the world-powers.. Possibly,
this is in part due to the greater intensity of the southern sun,
but a more likely reason is the relative advance in agricul-
ture made by the southerly tribes. Hunting peoples are only
vaguely dependent upon the yearly course of the sun for their
food-supply, and hence they are only slightly observant of it.
Agricultural peoples are directly and insistently followers of
the sun’s movements; the solar calendar is the key to their
life; and consequently it is among them that the pre-eminence
of solar worship early appears. Proficiency in agriculture is a
mark of the Muskhogean and other southern Indians, and it
is to be expected that among them the sun will have become
an important world-power.

It is interesting to find that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian
tribe, assimilated their beliefs to the southern type. There is
little that is metaphysical in their pantheon. Above a horde of
animal-powers and fantastic sprites appear the great spirits
of the elements. Water, Fire, and the Sun, the chief of all.
The sun is called Unelanuhi, “the Apportioner,” in obvious
reference to its position as ruler of the year. Curiously enough,
the Cherokee sun is not a masculine, but, like the Eskimo sun,
a feminine being. Indeed, the Cherokee tell the selfsame story
which the Eskimo recount concerning the illicit relations of the
sun-girl and her moon-brother: how the unknown lover visited
the sun-girl every month, how she rubbed his face with ashes

X — 6



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


S6

that she might recognize him, and how, when discovered, “he
was so much ashamed to have her know it that he kept as
far away as he could at the other end of the sky; ever since he
tries to keep a long way behind the sun, and when he does some-
times have to come near her in the west he makes himself as
thin as a ribbon so that he can hardly be seen.” The Chero-
kee myth of the raising of the sun by the animal elders, hand-
breadth by handbreadth, until it was just under the sky-arch,
seven handbreadths high, is evidently akin to the similar legend
of the Navaho of the South-West; while the story of the two
boys who journeyed to the Sunrise, and the Cherokee version
of the myth of Prometheus — in which, after various other
animals have failed in their efforts to snatch fire from the sacred
sycamore in which Thunder had concealed it, the Water-Spider
succeeds — are both doublets of tales common in the far West.
Thus legends from all parts of the continent are gathered in
the one locality.

Like the Cherokee, the Yuchi Indians, who were closely
associated with the Creek politically, regarded the sun as a
female. She was the ancestress of the human race, or, accord-
ing to another story, the Yuchi sprang from the blood trickling
from the head of a wizard who was decapitated when he at-
tempted to kill the sun at its rising — a tale in which the head
would seem to be merely a doublet of the sun itself. Among
the Muskhogean tribes generally the sun-cult seems to have
been closely associated with fire-making festivals and fire-tem-
ples, in forms strikingly like those of the Incas of Peru. Per-
haps the earliest account is that preserved, with respect to
the Natchez, by Lafitau, in his Mesurs des sauvages ameri-
quains, i. 167-68:

“In Louisiana the Natchez have a temple wherein without
cessation watch is kept of the perpetual fire, of which great
care is taken that it be never extinguished. Three pointed
sticks suffice to maintain it, which number is never either in-
creased or diminished — which seems to indicate some mys-




PLATE XII


Florida Indians offering a stag to the Sun. The
drawing is from Picart {Ceremonies and religious CuS'-
toms of the various Nations of the known IV or Id ^ Lon-
don, 1733-39, iii, Plate LXXIV [lower]), and
represents a seventeenth century European conception
of an American Indian rite. The pole is a symbol
in the sun-worship of many Plains and Southern
Indians.






THE GULF REGION


57


tery. As they burn, they are advanced into the fire, until It
becomes necessary to substitute others. It is in this temple that
the bodies of their chiefs and their families are deposited. The
chief goes every day at certain hours to the entrance of the
temple, where, bending low and extending his arms in the
form of a cross, he mutters confusedly without pronouncing
any distinct word; this is the token of duty which he renders
to the Sun as the author of his being. His subjects observe
the same ceremony with respect to him and with respect to
all the princes of his blood, whenever they speak to them,
honouring In them, by this external sign of respect, the Sun
from which they believe them to be descended. ... It is
singular that, while the huts of the Natchez are round, their
temple is long — quite the opposite of those of Vesta. On the
roof at its two extremities are to be seen two images of eagles,
a bird consecrated to the Sun among the Orientals as it was to
Jupiter in all the Occident.

“The Oumas and some peoples of Virginia and of Florida
also have temples and almost the same religious observances.
Those of Virginia have even an Idol which they name Oki or
Kiousa, which keeps watch of the dead. I have heard say,
moreover, that the Oumas, since the arrival of the French who
profaned their temple, have allowed It to fall into ruin and
have not taken the trouble to restore it.”

III. THE NEW MAIZE®*

The most famous and interesting ceremony of the Mus-
khogean tribes is that which has come to be known in English
as “the Busk” (a corruption of the Creek puskita, meaning
“fast”). This was a celebration at the time of the first ma-
turing of the maize, in July or August, according to locality,
though it had the deeper significance of a New Year’s feast,
and hence of the rejuvenation of all life.

In the Creek towns, the Busk was held in the “great house,”



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


S8

which consisted of four rectangular lodges, each divided into
three compartments, and all open-faced toward a central
square, or plaza, which they served to bound. The lodges were
fitted with banks of seats, and each compartment was assigned
to its own class of men. The place of honour (in some towns at
least) was the western lodge, open to the morning sun, where
was the seat of the head chief. In the centre of the square was
kept burning a fire, made from four logs oriented to the four
cardinal points. The structure is highly suggestive of a kind of
temple of the year, the central fire being the symbol of the sun
and of the four-square universe, and the twelve compartments
of the lodges perhaps indicative of the year’s lunations. Al-
though the Busk was not a festival of the summer solstice, it
came, none the less, at the season of the hottest sun, and so
marked a natural change in the year.

The Busk occupies four days in the lesser towns, eight in the
greater; and the ceremony seems to have four significant parts,
the eight-day form being only a lengthening of the performance.
On the first day, all the fires of the village having been pre-
viously extinguished, a new fire is kindled by friction, and fed
by the four logs oriented to the cardinal points. Into this fire
is cast a first-fruits’ offering, consisting of four ears of the newly
ripened maize and four branches of the cassine shrub. Dances
and purificatory ceremonies occupy the day. On the second
day the women prepare new maize for the coming feast, while
the warriors purge themselves with “war physic,” and bathe
in running water. The third day is apparently a time of vigil
for the older men, while the younger men hunt in preparation
for the coming feast. During these preliminary days the sexes
are tabu to one another, and all fast. The festival ends with
a feast and merry-making, accompanied by certain curious
ceremonies, such as the brewing of medicine from a great vari-
ety of plants, offerings of tobacco to the cardinal points, and a
significant rite, described as follows:

“At the miko’s cabin a cane having two white feathers on its



THE GULF REGION


59


end is stuck out. At the moment when the sun sets, a man of
the fish gens takes it down, and walks, followed by all spec-
tators, toward the river. Having gone half way, he utters the
death-whoop, and repeats it four times before he reaches the
water’s edge. After the crowd has thickly congregated at the
bank, each person places a grain of ‘old man’s tobacco’ on
the head and others in each ear. Then, at a signal repeated
four times, they throw some of it into the river, and every
man, at a like signal, plunges into the water to pick up four
stones from the bottom. With these they cross themselves on
their breasts four times, each time throwing one of the stones
back into the river and uttering the death-whoop. Then they
wash themselves, take up the cane with the feathers, return
to the great house, where they stick it up, then walk through
the town visiting.”

THE FOREST TRIBES


31


tenance is mainly obtained by the chase: for them, the open
and closed, the green and the white, are the important divi-
sions of the year. The Iroquois say that Winter is an old
man of the woods, who raps the trees with his war-club: in
very cold weather one can hear the sharp sound of his blows;
while Spring is a lithe young warrior, with the sun in his
countenance. The Montagnais were not sure whether the two
Seasons were manlike, but they told Pere Le Jeune that they
were very sure that Nipin and Pipoun were living beings:
they could even hear them talking and rustling, especially at
their coming. “For their dwelling-place they share the world
between them, the one keeping upon the one side, the other
upon the other; and when the period of their stay at one end
of the world has expired, each goes over to the locality of the
other, reciprocally succeeding each other. Here we have, in
part, the fable of Castor and Pollux,” comments the good
Father. “When Nipinoukhe returns, he brings back with him
the heat, the birds, the verdure, and restores life and beauty
to the world; but Pipounoukhe lays waste everything, being
accompanied by the cold winds, ice, snows, and other phenom-
ena of Winter. They call this succession of one to the other
Achitescatoueth; meaning that they pass reciprocally to each
other’s places.” Perhaps as charming a myth of the seasons
as could be found is the Cherokee tale of “ the Bride from the
South.” The North falls in love with the daughter of the South,
and in response to his ardent wooings is allowed to carry her
away to his Northland, where the people all live in ice houses.
But the next day, when the sun rises, the houses begin to
melt, and the people tell the North that he must send the
daughter of the South to her native land, for her whole nature
is warm and unfit for the North.

But it is especially in the world of animals that the spirits
of the Kinds are important.^® “They say,” says Le Jeune,
speaking of these same Montagnais (whose beliefs, in this
respect, are typical), “that all animals, of every species, have



32


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


an elder brother, who is, as it were, the source and origin of all
individuals, and this elder brother is wonderfully great and
powerful. The elder of the Beaver, they tell me, is perhaps as
large as our cabin, although his Junior (I mean the ordinary
Beaver) is not quite as large as our sheep. ... If anyone,
when asleep, sees the elder or progenitor of some animals, he
will have a fortunate chase; if he sees the elder of the Beavers,
he will take Beavers; if he sees the elder of the Elks, he will
take Elks, possessing the juniors through the favor of their
senior whom he has seen in the dream. I asked them where
these elder brothers were. ‘We are not sure,’ they answered me,
‘but we think the elders of the birds are in the sky, and that
the elders of the other animals are in the water.’ ” In another
connexion the Father tells the following story, which he had
from a Montagnais: “A man, having traveled a long distance,
at last reached the Cabin or house of God, as he named him
who gave him something to eat. . . . All kinds of animals
surround him [the god], he touches them, handles them as he
wishes, and they do not fly from him; but he does them no
harm, for, as he does not eat, he does not kill them. However,
he asked this new guest what he would like to eat, and having
learned that he would relish a beaver, he caught one without
any trouble, and had him eat it; then asked him when he in-
tended going away. ‘In two nights,’ was the answer. ‘Good,’
said he, ‘you will remain two nights with me.’ These two
nights were two years ; for what we call a year is only a day or
a night in the reckoning of him who procures us food. And
one is so contented with him that two winters, or two years,
seem only like two nights. When he returned to his own coun-
try he was greatly astonished at the delay he had experienced.”
The god of the cabin is, no doubt, Messou (Manabozho),
the Algonquian demiurge, for he is “elder brother to all
beasts” and the ruler of animal life. Similarly, the Iroquoian
demiurge louskeha is the bringer and namer of the primal
animals: “They believe that animals were not at liberty from



THE FOREST TRIBES


33


the beginning of the world, but that they were shut up in a
great cavern where louskeha guarded them. Perhaps there
may be in that some allusion to the fact that God brought all
the animals to Adam,” adds Pere Brebeuf; and in the Seneca
version of the Iroquoian genesis, the youth who brings the
animals from the cavern of the Winds does, in fact, perform
the office of Adam, giving them their several names.



CHAPTER III


THE FOREST TRIBES

{Continued)

L IROQUOIAN COSMOGONY‘5

T he Onondaga version of the genesis-myth of the Iro-
quois, as recorded by Hewitt, begins in this fashion:
“He who was my grandfather was wont to relate that,
verily, he had heard the legend as it was customarily told by
five generations of grandsires, and this is what he himself was
in the habit of telling. He customarily said ; Man-beings dwell
in the sky, on the farther side of the visible sky. The lodges
they severally possess are customarily long [the Iroquoian
“long house,” or lodge]. In the end of the lodges there are
spread out strips of rough bark whereon lie the several mats.
There it is that, verily, all pass the night. Early in the morning
the warriors are in the habit of going to hunt and, as is their
custom, they return every evening.”

This heaven above the visible heavens, which has existed
from eternity, is the prototype of the world in which we
dwell; and in it is set the first act of the cosmic drama. Sorrow
and death were unknown there; it was a land of tranquil abun-
dance. It came to pass that a girl-child was bom of a celestial
maid, her father having sickened and died — the first death
in the universe — shortly before she was bom. He had been
placed, as he had directed, on a burial scaffold by the Ancient-
Bodied One, grandmother to the child; and thither the girl-
child was accustomed to go and converse with the dead parent.
When she was grown, he directed her to take a certain journey
through the heaven realm of Chief He-Holds-the-Earth, whom



THE FOREST TRIBES


35


she was to marry, and beside whose lodge grew the great
heaven tree.^^ The maiden crosses a river on a maple-log,
avoids various tempters, and arrives at the lodge, where the
chief subjects her to the ordeals of stirring scalding mush
which spatters upon her naked body and of having her burns
licked by rasp-tongued dogs. Having successfully endured
these pains, he sends her, after three nights, to her own people,
with the gift of maize and venison. She returns to her chief,
and he, observing that she is pregnant, becomes ill with an
unjustified jealousy of the Fire-Dragon. She gives birth to
a daughter, Gusts-of-Wind; whereupon the chief receives
visits from the Elders of the Kinds, which dwell in heaven,
among them being the Deer, the Bear, the Beaver; Wind,
Daylight, Night, Star; the Squash, the Maize, the Bean; the
Turtle, the Otter, the Yellowhammer; Fire, Water, Medicine,
— patterns of the whole furniture of creation. Aurora Borealis
divines what is troubling his mind, and suggests the uprooting
of the heaven tree. This is done, and an abyss is disclosed,
looking down into a chaos of Wind and Thick Night — “the
aspect was green and nothing else in color,” says the Seneca
version. Through this opening the Chief of Heaven casts his
spouse and the child, who returns again into the body of her
mother, first providing her with maize and venison and a fag-
got of wood, while the Fire-Dragon wraps around her a great
ray of light.

Here ends the Upper World act of the drama. The name
of the woman-being who is cast down from heaven is, as we
know from the Jesuit Relations, Ataentsic or Ataensic,'^ who
is to become the great Earth Mother. The Chief of Heaven
is her spouse, — so that these two great actors in the world
drama are Earth and Sky respectively; while their first-born
is the Breath-of-Life.

The second act of the drama is set in the World Below.
The Onondaga myth continues:

“So now, v6rily, her body continued to fall. Her body was



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


36

falling some time before it emerged. Now she was surprised,
seemingly, that there was light below, of a blue color. She
looked and there seemed to be a lake at the spot toward which
she was falling. There was nowhere any earth. There she saw
many ducks on the lake where they, being waterfowl of all
their kinds, floated severally about. Without interruption the
body of the woman-being continued to fall.

“Now at that time the waterfowl called the Loon shouted,
saying: ‘Do ye look, a woman-being is coming in the depths of
the water, her body is floating up hither.’ They said: ‘Verily,
it is even so.’

“Now in a short time the waterfowl called Bittern said:
‘ It is true that ye believe that her body is floating up from the
depths of the water. Do ye, however, look upward.’ All
looked up, and all said: ‘Verily, it is true.’

“One of the persons said: ‘It seems, then, that there must
be land in the depths of the water.’ At that time the Loon
said:. ‘Moreover, let us first seek to find some one who will
be able to bear the earth on his back by means of the forehead
pack strap.’”

All the animals volunteer. Otter and Turtle attempt the
feat and fail; the Muskrat succeeds, placing the soil brought
up from below on the back of the Turtle. “Now at this time
the carapace began to grow and the earth with which they
had covered it became the Solid Land.” Upon this land
Ataentsic alights, her fall being broken by the wings of the
fowl which fly upward to meet her.^°

On the growing Earth Gusts-of-Wind is reborn, and comes
to maturity. She receives the visits of a nocturnal stranger,
who is none other than the ruler of the winds, and gives birth
to twins ^ — Sapling and Flint, the Yoskeha and Tawiscara
of the Relations^ — who show their enmity by a pre-natal
quarrel, and cause their mother’s death in being born. From
the body of her daughter Ataentsic fashions the sun and the
moon, though she does not raise them to the heavens. Sapling



THE FOREST TRIBES


37

she casts out, for Flint falsely persuades her that it is Sapling
who is responsible for their mother’s death.

The third act of the drama details the creative acts of Sap-
ling and Flint, and their enmities. Sapling (better known as
Yoskeha, though his most ancient title seems to be Teha-
ronhiawagon, He-Holds-the-Sky) is the demiurge and earth-
shaper, and the spirit of life and summer. Flint, or Tawiscara,
is an imitator and trickster, maker of malevolent beings, and
spirit of wintry forces, but the favourite of Ataentsic.®®

The act opens with the visit of Sapling to his father, the
WindrRuler, who gives him presents of bow and arrows and
of maize, symbolizing mastery over animal and vegetable food.
The preparation of the maize is his first feat, Ataentsic ren-
dering his work imperfect by casting ashes upon it: “The way
in which thou hast done this is not good,” says Sapling, “for
I desire that the man-beings shall be exceedingly happy, who
are about to dwell here on this earth.” Next he brings forth
the souls of the animal kinds, and moulds the traits of the dif-
ferent animals.^^ Flint, however, imprisons them in a cavern,
and, although Sapling succeeds in releasing most of them, some
remain behind to become transformed into the noxious crea-
tures of the underworld. Afterward, in a trial of strength.
Sapling overcomes the humpback Hadui, who is the cause of
disease and decrepitude, but from whom Sapling wins the
secret of medicine and of the ceremonial use of tobacco. The
giving of their courses to the Sun and the Moon, fashioned
from his mother’s head and body by Ataentsic, was his next
deed.^® The grandmother and Flint had concealed these bodies
and had left the earth in darkness ; Sapling, aided by four ani-
mals, typifying the Four Quarters, steals back the Sun, which
is passed from animal to animal (as in the Greek torch-race in
honour of Selene) when they are pursued by Ataentsic and
Flint. The creation of man, which Flint imitates only to pro-
duce monsters, and the banishment of Flint to the under-
world complete the creative drama.



38 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

“Moreover, it is said that this Sapling, in the manner in
which he has life, has this to befall him recurrently, that he
becomes old in body, and that when, in fact, his body becomes
ancient normally, he then retransforms his body in such wise
that he becomes a new man-being again and again recovers
his youth, so that one would think that he had just grown to
the size which a man-being customarily has when he reaches
the youth of man-beings, as manifested by the change of voice
at puberty. Moreover, it is so that continuously the orenda
immanent in his body — the orenda with which he suffuses
his person, the orenda which he projects or exhibits, through
which he is possessed of force and potency — is ever full, un-
diminished, and all-sufficient; and, in the next place, nothing
that is otkon or deadly, nor, in the next place, even the Great
Destroyer, otkon in itself and faceless, has any effect on him,
he being perfectly immune to its orenda; and, in the next place,
there is nothing that can bar his way or veil his faculties.”

In the Relation of 1636 Brebeuf says of the Hurons: “If
they see their fields verdant in the spring, if they reap good
and abundant harvests, and if their cabins are crammed with
ears of corn, they owe it to louskeha. I do not know what God
has in store for us this year; but . . . louskeha, it is reported
has been seen quite dejected, and thin as a skeleton, with a
poor ear of corn in his hand.”

II. ALGONQUIAN COSMOGONY^®

As compared with the Iroquoian cosmogony, that of the
Algonquian tribes is nebulous and confused: their gods are
less anthropomorphic, more prone to animal form; the order
of events is not so clearly defined. There is hardly a person-
age or event in the Iroquoian story that does not appear in
Algonquian myth, and indeed the Algonquians would seem
to have been the originators, or at least the earlier possessors,
of these stories; yet the same power for organization which




PLATE IX


Iroquois drawing of Stone Giants. After School-
craft, Indian Tribes^ part i, Plate LXXIIL The
Stone (JiantsS are related to such cosniogonical beings
as Flint (Tawiscara) and Chakekenapok (sec pp. 36,
41). They are generally malevolent in character.
See Note 38 (pp. 291-92),






THE FOREST TRIBES


39


is reflected in the Iroquoian Confederacy appears in the Iro-
quois’s more masterful assimilation and depiction of the cosmic
story which he seems to have borrowed from his Algonquian
neighbours.

The central personage of Algonquian myth is Manabozho,^^
the Great Hare (also known by many other names and variants,
as Nanibozho, Manabush, Michabo, Messou, Glooscap), who
is the incarnation of vital energy: creator or restorer of the
earth, the author of life, giver of animal food, lord of bird and
beast. Brinton, by a dubious etymology, would make the
original meaning of the name to be “the Great White One,”
identifying Manabozho with the creative light of day; but if
we remember that the Algonquians are, by their own tradi-
tion, sons of the frigid North,^^ where the hare is one of the
most prolific and staple of all food animals, and if we bear
in mind the universal tendency of men whose sustenance is
precarious to identify the source of life with their principal
source of food, it is no longer plausible to question the identi-
fication, which the Indians themselves make, of their great
demiurge with the Elder of the Hares, who is also the Elder
Brother of Man and of all life.'^*

With Manabozho is intimately associated his grandmother,
Nokomis, the Earth, and his younger brother, Chibiabos,
who himself is customarily in animal form (e. g., the Micmac
know the pair as Glooscap and the Marten; to the Montag-
nais they were Messou and the Lynx; to the Menominee,
Manabush and the Wolf).'*^ This younger brother is sometimes
represented as a twin; and it is not difficult to see in Noko-
mis, Manabozho, and Chibiabos the Algonquian prototypes
of the Huron Ataentsic, louskeha, and Tawiscara.

Various tales are told as to the origin of the Great Hare.
The Micmac declare that Glooscap was one of twins, who
quarrelled before being born; and that the second twin killed
the mother in his birth, in revenge for which Glooscap slew
him. The Menominee say: “The daughter of Nokomis, the

X— s



40


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


Earth, is the mother of Manabush, who is also the Fire. The
Flint grew up out of Nokomis, and was alone. Then the Flint
made a bowl and dipped it into the earth; slowly the bowlful
of earth became blood, and it began to change its form. So
the blood was changed into Wabus, the Rabbit. The Rabbit
grew into human form, and in time became a man, and thus
was Manabush formed.” According to another version, the
daughter of Nokomis gave birth to twins, one of whom died,
as did the mother. Nokomis placed a wooden bowl (and we
must remember that this is a symbol of the heavens) over the
remaining child for its protection; upon removing the bowl,
she beheld a white rabbit with quivering ears: “0 my dear
little Rabbit,” she cried, “my Manabush!”

Other tribes tell how the Great Hare came to earth as a gift
from the Great Spirit. The Chippewa recognize, high over
all, Kitshi Manito, the Great Spirit, and next in rank Dzhe
Manito, the Good Spirit, whose servant is Manabozho. The
abode of all these is the Upper World. “When Minabozho,
the servant of Dzhe Manido, looked down upon the earth he
beheld human beings, the Anishinabeg, the ancestors of the
Ojibwa. They occupied the four quarters of the earth —
the northeast, the southeast, the southwest, and the north-
west. He saw how helpless they were, and desiring to give
them the means of warding off the diseases with which
they were constantly afflicted, and to provide them with
animals and plants to serve as food, Minabozho remained
thoughtfully hovering over the center of the earth, endeavor-
ing to devise some means of communicating with them.” Be-
neath Minabozho was a lake of waters, wherein he beheld an
Otter, which appeared at each of the cardinal points in suc-
cession and then approached the centre, where Minabozho de-
scended (upon an island) to meet it and where he instructed it
in the mysteries of the Midewiwin, the sacred Medicine Society.

According to the Potawatomi, also, the Great Hare appears
as the founder of a sacred mystery and the giver of medicine.

 

As the territories of the forest tribes were similar — heavily
wooded, whether on mountain or plain, copiously watered,
abounding in game and natural fruits — so were their modes of
life and thought cast to the same pattern. Every man was a
hunter; but, except in the Canadian north, agriculture was prac-
tised by the women, with maize for the principal crop,*^ and
the villages were accordingly permanent. Industries were of




PLATE IV


Ceremonial mask of the Iroquois Indians, New
York. Carved wood painted red. This mask repre-
sents one of the great anthropic beings defeated in
primal times by the Master of Infc ; its face, pre-
viously beautiful, was contorted in the struggle*
Specimen in the United States National Museum.








THE FOREST TRIBES


IS

the Stone Age, though not without art, especiall7 where the
ceremonial of life was concerned. The tribes were organized
for war as for peace, and indeed, if hunting was the vocation,
war was the avocation of every Indian man: warlike prowess
was his crowning glory, and stoical fortitude under the most
terrible of tortures his supreme virtue; the cruelty of the
North American Indian — and few peoples have been more
consciously cruel — can be properly understood only as the re-
flection of his intense esteem for personal courage, to the proof
of which his whole life was subjected. For the rest, a love of
ritual song and dance, of oratory and the counsel of elders,
a fine courtesy, a subtle code of honour, an impeccable pride,
were all traits which the Forest Tribes had developed to the
full, and which gave to the Indian that aloofness of mien and
austerity of character which were the white man’s first and
most vivid impression of him. In the possession of these traits,
as in their mode of life and the ideas to which It gave birth,
the forest Indians were as one people; the Algonquians were
perhaps the more poetical, the more given to song and proph-
ecy, the Iroquoians the more politic and the better tacticians;
but their diff'erences were slight in contrast to an essential
unity of character which was to form, during the first two
centuries of the white men’s contact with the new-found race,
the European’s indelible impression of the Red Man.

II. PRIEST AND PAGAN

Men’s beliefs are their most precious possessions. The gold
and the furs and the tobacco of the New World were bright
allurements to the western adventure; but it was the desire
to keep their faith unmolested that planted the first permanent
English colony on American shores, and Spanish conquistadores
and French voyageurs were not more zealous for wealth and
war than were the Jesuit Fathers, who followed in their foot-
steps and outstayed their departure, for the Christianizing of



i6 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the Red Man’s pagan soul. It is to these missionary priests
that we owe most of our knowledge of the Indian’s native be-
liefs — at least, for the earlier period. They entered the wilder-
ness to convert the savage, and accordingly it became their
immediate interest to discover what religious ideas this child
of nature already possessed. In their letters on the language,
institutions, and ideas of the Indians, written for the enlighten-
ment of those intending to enter the mission field, we have the
first reliable accounts of Indian myth and religion.

To be sure, the Fathers did not immediately understand
the aborigines. In one of the earliest of the Relations Pere
Lalemant wrote, of the Montagnais: “They have no form of
divine worship nor any kind of prayers”; but such expressions
mean simply that the missionaries found among the Indians
nothing similar to their own religious practices. In the Rela-
tion of 1647-48 Pere Raguenau said, writing of the Huron:
“To speak truly, all the nations of these countries have re-
ceived from their ancestors no knowledge of a God; and, before
we set foot here, all that was related about the creation of the
world consisted of nothing but myths. Nevertheless, though
they were barbarians, there remained in their hearts a secret
idea of the Divinity and of a first Principle, the author of all
things, whom they invoked without knowing him. In the for-
ests and during the chase, on the waters, and when in danger
of shipwreck, they name him Aireskouy Soutanditenr,^'^ and
call him to their aid. In war, and in the midst of their battles,
they give him the name of Ondoutaete and believe that he alone
awards the victory.®® Very frequently they address themselves
to the Sky, paying it homage; and they call upon the Sun to
be witness of their courage, of their misery, or of their inno-
cence. But, above all, in treaties of peace and alliance with
foreign Nations they invoke, as witnesses of their sincerity,
the Sun and the Sky, which see into the depths of their hearts,
and will wreak vengeance on the treachery of those who betray
their trust and do not keep their word. So true is what Ter-



THE FOREST TRIBES 17

tullian said of the most infidel Nations, that nature in the
midst of perils makes them speak with a Christian voice, —
Exclamant vocem naturaliter Christianam, — and have recourse
to a God whom they invoke almost without knowing him, —
Ignoto Deo.” ®

Exclamant vocem naturaliter Christianam! Two centuries
later another Jesuit, Father De Smet, uses the same expression
in describing the religious feeling of the Kansa tribe: “When
we showed them an Ecce Homo and a statue of our Lady of the
Seven Dolours, and the interpreter explained to them that that
head crowned with thorns, and that countenance defiled with
insults, were the true and real image of a God who had died
for love of us, and that the heart they saw pierced with seven
swords was the heart of his mother, we beheld an affecting illus-
tration of the beautiful thought of Tertullian, that the soul
of man is naturally Christian!”

It is not strange, therefore, that when these same Fathers
found in America myths of a creation and a deluge, of a fall
from heaven and of a sinful choice bringing death into the
world, they conceived that in the new-found Americans they
had discovered the lost tribes of Israel.

III. THE MANITOS*

“The definition of being is simply power,” says a speaker
in Plato’s Sophist; and this is a statement to which every
American Indian would accede. Each being in nature, the
Indians believe, has an indwelling power by means of which
this being maintains its particular character and in its own way
affects other beings. Such powers may be little or great,
weak or mighty; and of course it behooves a man to know which
ones are great and mighty. Outward appearances are no sure
sign of the strength of an indwelling potency; often a small
animal or a lethargic stone may be the seat of a mighty power;
but usually some peculiarity will indicate to the thoughtful



i8


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


observer the object of exceptional might, or it may be revealed
in a dream or vision. To become the possessor of such an ob-
ject is to have one’s own powers proportionally increased; it
is good “medicine” and will make one strong.

Every American language has its name for these indwelling
powers of things. The Eskimo word is Inua, or “owner”;
the Iroquois employ the word Orenda, and for maleficent
powers, or “bad magic,” Otgon; the Huron word is Oki;^® the
Siouan, Wakanda. But the term by which the idea has become
most generally known to white men, doubtless because it was
the word used by the Indians first encountered by the colo-
nists, is the Algonquian Manitou, Manito, or Manido, as it is
variously spelled. The customary translations are “power,”
“mystery,” “magic,” and, commoner yet, “spirit” and “medi-
cine” — and the full meaning of the word would include all
of these; for the powers of things include every gradation from
the common and negligible to the mysterious and magical:
when they pertain to the higher forces of nature they are in-
telligent spirits, able to hear and answer supplications; and
wherever they may be appropriated to man’s need they are
medicine, spiritual and physical.

The Indian does not make, as we do, a sharp division be-
tween physical and spiritual powers; rather, he is concerned
with the distinction between the weak and the strong: the
sub-human he may neglect or conquer, the superhuman he
must supplicate and appease. It is commonly to these latter,
the mighty Manitos, that the word “spirit” is applied.
Nor must we suppose that the Manitos always retain the
same shape. Nature is constantly changing, constantly trans-
forming herself in every part; she is full of energy, full of life;
Manitos are everywhere effecting these transformations, pre-
senting themselves now in this shape, now in that. Conse-
quently, the Indian does not judge by the superficial gift of
vision; he studies the effects of things, and in objects of hum-
blest appearance he often finds evidences of the highest pow-





PLATE V


Chippewa pictographic record of Midcwiwin songs
and rites. After Schoolcraft, Indian Trilm^ part i,
Plate LI. Two records arc given ; they arc read from
right to left, and upward. Following are interpre-,
rations of the figures, abridged from Schoolcraft.

Upper record: ,i. Medicine lodge with winged
figure representing the Great Spirit come to instruct
the Indians. 2. Candidate for admission with pouch
attached to his arm; wind gushes from the pouch.
3. Pause, indicating preparation of feast. 4, Arm
holding a dish, representing hand of the master of
ceremonies. 5. Sweat-lodge. 6. Arm of the priest
who conducts the candidate. 7. Symbol for gifts,
the admission fee of candidate. 8. Sacred tree, with
medicine root. 9. Stuffed crane medicine-bag. lo.
Arrow penetrating the circle of the sky. n. A
small high-flying hawk. 12. llie sky, the Great
Spirit above it, a manito’s arm upraised beneath in
supplication. 13. Pause. 14. Sacred or magic
tree. 15. Drumstick. 16. Half of thes sky with a
man walking on it, symbol of midday. 17. The
Great Spirit filling all space with his beams and halo.
18. Drum. 19. Tambourine with feather orna-
ments. 20. Crow. 21. An initiate or priest hold-
ing in one hand a drumstick, in the other the clouds
of the celestial hemisphere.

Lower record: i. A Wabeno’s, or doctor^s, hand.
2. Sacred tree or plant. 3. A Wabeno dog. 4.
Sick man vomiting blood. 5. Pipe, here represent-
ing ‘^bad medicine/’ 6. A worm that eats decaying
wood. 7. A Wabeno spirit, addressed for aid. 8.
A hunter with Wabeno powers. 9. The Great
Spirit, filling the sky with his presence. 10. Sky
with clouds. II. Fabulous monster chasing the
clouds. 12, Horned wolf. 13. The war eagle*
14. Bow and arrow, magically potent. 15. A
Mide initiate, or doctor, holding the sky* 16. The
sun. 17. Bow and arrow shooting power, 18.
Man 'with drum,' in ecstasy. Cf. Plate XX.






THE FOREST TRIBES


19

ers. Stones do not seem to us likely objects of veneration, yet
many strong Manitos dwell in them — perhaps it is the spark
of fire in the impassive flint that appeals to the Red Man’s
imagination; perhaps it is an instinctive veneration for the
ancient material out of which were hewn the tools that
have lifted man above the brute; perhaps it is a sense of the
age-long permanence and invulnerable reality of earth’s rocky
foundations®’’: —

Ho! Aged One, e?ka,

At a time when there were gathered together seven persons,*

You sat in the seventh place, it is said.

And of the Seven you alone possessed knowledge of all things.

Aged One, e^ka.

When in their longing for protection and guidance.

The people sought in their minds for a way.

They beheld you seated with assured permanency and endurance.
In the center where converged the paths,

There, exposed to the violence of the four winds, you sat.

Possessed with power to receive supplications.

Aged One, efka.

It is thus that the Omaha began his invocation to the healing
stones of his sweat lodge — a veritable omphalos, or centre of
the world, symbolizing the invisible, pervasive, and enduring
life of all things.


IV. THE GREAT SPIRIT*

The Algonquians of the north recognize as the chief of their
Manitos, Gitche (or Kitshi) Manito, the Great Spirit, whom
they also call the Master of Life.®* It should not be inferred
that a manlike personality is ascribed to the Great Spirit. He
is invisible and immaterial; the author of life, but himself
uncreated; he is the source of good to man, and is invoked
with reverence: but he is not a definite personality about whom

* The spirits of the seven directions, above, below, here, and the four cardinal
points. The passage is translated bf Alice C. Fletcher, 27 ARBE, p. 586. The
word “e?ka’' may be roughly rendered “ I desire,” ‘‘ I crave,” “I implore,” “I seek,”
etc., but has no exact equivalent in English,



20


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


myths are told; he is aloof from the world of sense; and he is
perhaps best named, as some translators prefer, the Great
Mystery of all things.

Yet the Great Spirit is not without proper names. Pcre
Le Jeune wrote thus in 1633, concerning the Montagnais:
“They say that there is a certain one whom they call Atahocan,
who made all things. Talking one day of God, in a cabin, they
asked me what this God was. I told them that it was he who
could do everything, and who had made the Sky and Earth.
They began to say to one another, ‘Atahocan, Atahocan, it is
Atahocan.’” Winslow, writing in 1622, mentions a similar
spirit, Kiehtan, recognized by the Massachusetts Indians;
and the early writers on the Virginia Indians tell of their belief
“that there is one chiefe God that hath beene from all eterni-
tie” who made the world and set the sun and moon and stars
to be his ministers. The Iroquoian tribes have no precise
equivalent for the Algonquian Kitshi Manito, but they be-
lieved in a similar spirit, known by the name of Areskoui or
Agreskoui, to whom they offered the first-fruits of the chase
and of victorious war. The terrible letter in which Pere Isaac
Jogues recounts his stay among the Iroquois, as a prisoner,
tells of the sacrifice of a woman captive to this deity: “And
as often as they applied the fire to that unhappy one with
torches and burning brands, an old man cried in a loud voice:
‘Aireskoi, we sacrifice to thee this victim that thou mayst
satisfy thyself with her flesh, and give us victory over our
enemies.’”

The usual rite to the Great Spirit, however, is not of this
horrible kind. From coast to coast the sacred Calumet is
the Indian’s altar, and its smoke is the proper offering to
Heaven.*® “The Sceptres of our Kings are not so much re-
spected,” wrote Marquette, “for the Savages have such a
Deference for this Pipe, that one may call it the God of Peace
and War, and the Arbiter of Life and Death.” “It was really
a touching spectacle to see the calumet, the Indian emblem



THE FOREST TRIBES


21


of peace, raised heavenward by the hand of a savage, present-
ing it to the Master of Life imploring his pity on all his chil-
dren on earth and begging him to confirm the good resolutions
which they had made.” This is a comment of Father De
Smet, who spent many years among many different tribes,
and it is he who preserves for us the Delaware story of the
gift of the Calumet to man: The peoples of the North had
resolved upon a war of extermination against the Delaware,
when, in the midst of their council, a dazzling white bird
appeared among them and poised with outspread wings above
the head of the only daughter of the head chief. The girl
heard a voice speaking within her, which said: “Call all the
warriors together; make known to them that the heart of the
Great Spirit is sad, is covered with a dark and heavy cloud,
because they seek to drink the blood of his first-born children,
the Lenni-Lennapi, the eldest of all the tribes on earth. To
appease the anger of the Master of Life, and to bring back
happiness to his heart, all the warriors must wash their hands
in the blood of a young fawn; then, loaded with presents, and
the Hobowakan [calumet] in their hands, they must go all
together and present themselves to their elder brothers; they
must distribute their gifts, and smoke together the great calu-
met of peace and brotherhood, which is to make them one
forever.”

V. THE FRAME OF THE WORLD

Herodotus said of the Persians: “It is their wont to per-
form sacrifices to Zeus, going up to the most lofty of the moun-
tains; and the whole circle of the heavens they call Zeus;
and they sacrifice to the Sun and the Moon and the Earth,
to Fire and to Water and to the Winds; these are the only
gods to whom they have sacrificed ever from the first.” The
ritual of the calumet indicates identically the same concep-
tion of the world-powers among the American Indians. “On
all great occasions,” says De Smet, “in their religious and



22


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


political ceremonies, and at their great feasts, the calumet pre-
sides; the savages send its first fruits, or its first puffs, to the
Great Waconda, or Master of Life, to the Sun, which gives
them light, and to the Earth and Water by which they are
nourished; then they direct a puff to each point of the com-
pass, begging of Heaven all the elements and favorable winds.”
And again: “They offer the Calumet to the Great Spirit, to
the Four Winds, to the Sun, Fire, Earth and Water.”

The ritual of the calumet defines for the Indian the frame
of the world and the distribution of its indwelling powers.
Above, in the remote and shining sky, is the Great Spirit,
whose power is the breath of life that permeates all nature and
whose manifestation is the light which reveals creation. As
the spirit of light he shows himself in the sun, “ the eye of the
Great Spirit”; as the breath of life he penetrates all the world
in the form of the moving Winds. Below is Mother Earth,
giving forth the Water of Life, and nourishing in her bosom
all organic beings, the Plant Forms and the Animal Forms.
The birds are the intermediaries between the habitation of men
and the Powers Above; serpents and the creatures of the waters
are intermediaries communicating with the Powers Below.

Such, in broad definition, was the Indian’s conception of the
world-powers. But he was not unwilling to elaborate this sim-
ple scheme. The world, as he conceived it, is a storeyed world:
above the flat earth is the realm of winds and clouds, haunted
by spirits and traversed by the great Thunderbird; above this,
the Sun and the Moon and the Stars have their course; while
high over all is the circle of the upper sky, the abode of the
Great Spirit. Commonly, the visible firmament is regarded
as the roof of man’s world, but it is also the floor of an arche-
typal heavenly world, containing the patterns of all things
that exist in the world below: it is from this heaven above the
heavens that the beings descend who create the visible uni-
verse. And as there are worlds above, so are there worlds
beneath us; the earth is a floor for us, but a roof for those

INTRODUCTION


XIX


version known to the Arctic Highlanders, where the poign-
ant choice is put, “Will ye have eternal darkness and eternal
life, or light and death?” — art and morality and philosophy
are all intermingled.

To perfect our criterion we must add to the analysis of mo-
tive the study of the sources of mythic conceptions. In a
broad way, these are the suggestions of environing nature,
the analogies of human nature both psychical and physi-
ological, imagination, and borrowings. Probably the first of
these is the most important, though the “nature-myth” is far
from being the simple and inevitable thing an elder genera-
tion of students would make of it. Men’s ideas necessarily re-
flect the world that they know, and even where the mythic
incidents are the same the timbre of the tale will vary, say
from the Yukon to the Mississippi, in the eastern forest, or on
the western desert. There are physiographical boundaries
within the continent which form a natural chart of the divi-
sions in the complexion of aboriginal thought; and while there
are numberless overlappings, outcroppings, and intrusions,
none the less striking are the general conformities of the char-
acter of the several regions with the character of the mythic
lore developed in them. The forests of the East, the Great
Plains, the arid South-West, secluded California, the North-
Western archipelago, each has its own traits of thought as it
has its own traits of nature, and it is inevitable that we sup-
pose the former to be in some degree a reflection of the latter.
Beyond all this there are certain constancies of nature, the
succession of darkness and light, the circle of the seasons, the
motions of sun, moon, and stars, of rivers and winds, that
affect men everywhere and everywhere colour their fancies;
and it is not the least interesting feature of the study of a wide-
spread mythic theme or incident to see the variety of natural
phenomena for which it may, first and last, serve to account,
since the myth-maker does not find his story in nature, but
writes it there with her colouring.



XX INTRODUCTION

The second great source of myth material is found in the
analogies of human nature. Primarily these arc psychical:
the desires and purposes of men are assumed, quite uncon-
sciously, to animate and to inspire the whole drama of nature’s
growth and change, and thus the universe becomes peopled with
personalities, ranging in definition from the senselessly vora-
cious appetites incarnated as monsters, to the self-possessed
purpose and, not infrequently, the “sweet reasonableness”
of man-beings and gods. Besides the psychical, however,
there are the physical analogies of humankind. The most
elementary are the physiological, which lead to a symbolism
now gruesome, now poetic. The heart, the hair, and the breath
are the most significant to the Indian, and their inner meaning
could scarcely be better indicated than in the words of a
Pawnee priest from whom Alice Fletcher obtained her report
of the Hako. One act of this ceremony is the placing of a
bit of white down in the hair of a consecrated child, and in
explaining this rite the priest said: “The down is taken from
under the wings of the white eagle. The down grew close to
the heart of the eagle and moved as the eagle breathed. It
represents the breath and life of the white eagle, the father of
the child.” Further, since the eagle is intermediary between
man and Father Heaven, “the white, downy feather, which is
ever moving as if it were breathing, represents Tirawa-atius,
who dwells beyond the blue sky, which is above the soft, white
clouds”; and it is placed in the child’s hair “on the spot where
a baby’s skull is open, and you can see it breathe.” This is the
poetic side of the symbolism; the gruesome is represented by
scalping, by the tearing out of the heart, and sometimes by
the devouring of it for the sake of obtaining the strength of
the slain. Another phase of physiological symbolism has to do
with the barbarian’s never-paling curiosity about matters of
sex; there is little trace of phallic worship in North America,
but the Indian’s myths abound in incidents which are as un-
consciously as they are unblushingly indecent. A strange and



INTRODUCTION


XXI


recurrent feature of Indian myth is the personification of
members of the body, especially the genital and excretory
organs, usually in connexion with divination. The final step
in the use of the human body as a symbol is anthropomor-
phism — that complete anthropomorphism wherein mythic
powers are given bodies, not part human and part animal,
but wholly human; it marks the first clear sense of the dig-
nity of man, and of the superiority of his wisdom to that of
the brutes. Not many Indian groups have gone far in this
direction, but among the more advanced it is a step clearly
undertaken.

Imagination plays a part in the development of myth which
is best realized by the aesthetic effect created by a body of
tales or by a set of pictorial symbols. The total impression of
Indian mythic emblems is undoubtedly one of grotesquerie, but
it is difficult to point to any pagan religious art except the
Greek that has outgrown the grotesque; and the Indian has a
quality of its own. There is a wide difference, however, in
the several regions, and indeed as between tribes of the same
region. The art of the North-West and of the South-West are
both highly developed, but even in such analogous objects as
masks they represent distinct types of genius. The Navaho
and the Apache are neighbours and relatives, but they are
poles apart in their aesthetic expression. Some tribes, as the
Pawnee, show great originality; others, as the northern Atha-
pascans and most of the Salish, are colourless borrowers.

Borrowing is, indeed, the most difficult of problems to solve.
In the abstract, it is easy to suppose that, with the main simi-
larities of environment in North America and the general even-
ness of a civilization everywhere neolithic, the like conditions of
a like human nature would give rise to like ideas and fancies.
It is equally easy to suppose that in a territory permeable
nearly everywhere, among tribes in constant intercourse, bor-
rowing must be extensive. Both factors are significant, though
in general the obvious borrowing is likely to seem the more



XXll


INTRODUCTION


impressive. Nevertheless, universal borrowing is a difficult
hypothesis, for innumerable instances show an identity of Old-
World and New-World ideas, where communication within
thinkable time is incredible. Even in the New World there are
wide separations for identical notions that seem to imply dis-
tinct origins. Thus the Arctic Highlanders, who have only
recently learned that there are other peoples in the world, pos-
sess ideas identical with those of the Indians of the far South.
When such an idea is simply that there is a cavernous under-
world which is an abode of spirits, there Is no need to assume
communication, for the notion is world-wide; but when the two
regions agree in asserting that there are four underworld cav-
erns — an idea which is in no sense a natural Inference — then
the suspicion of communication becomes inevitable. Again,
constellation-myths which see in Corona Borealis a circle of
chieftains. In the Pleiades a group of dancei's, in Ursa Major
a quadruped pursued by three hunters, might have many
independent origins; but when we encounter so curious a story
as that of the incestuous relations of the Sun and the Moon
told by Eskimo in the north and Cherokee in the south, com-
munication is again suggested; and this suggestion becomes
almost certainty when we find, further, that a special incident
of this myth — the daubing of the secret lover with paint or
ashes by which he Is later identified — appears in another
tale found in nearly every part of the continent, the story of
the girl who bore children to a dog.

In the story just mentioned the children of the girl and the
dog sometimes become stars, sometimes the ancestors of a tribe
or clan of men; and this is a fair illustration of the manner in
which incidents having all the character of fiction are made to
serve as explanatory myths by their various users. The funda-
mental material of myth is rather a collection of incidents
fitted into the scheme of things suggested by perception and
habit than the stark invention of nature; and while the inci-
dents must have an invention somewhere, the greater portion



INTRODUCTION


XXlll


of them seem to be given by art and adopted by nature, —
borrowing and adaptation being, for the savage as for the civil-
ized man, more facile than new thinking.

In every considerable collection of Indian stories there are
many adaptations of common ideas and incidents. In different
regions this basic material comes to characteristic forms of
expression. Finally, in the continent as a whole, viewed as one
great region, there is a generally definable scheme, within which
the mythic conceptions of the North American fall into place.
It is in this sense, and with reference to this scheme, that we
may speak of a North American Indian mythological system.

On the side of cosmology, the scheme has already been
indicated. There is a world above, the home of the Sky
Father and of the celestial powers; there is a world below, the
embodiment of the Earth Mother and the abode of the dead;
there is the central plane of the earth, and there are the genii
of its Quarters. But cosmology serves only to define the
theatre; it does not give the action. Cosmogony is the essen-
tial drama. In the Indian scheme the beginning is seldom
absolute. A few tribes recognize a creator who makes or a
procreator who generates the world and its inhabitants; but
the usual conception is either of a pre-existent sky-world,
peopled with the images of the beings of an earth-world yet to
come into being, or else of a kind of cosmic womb from which
the First People were to have their origin. In the former type
of legend, the action begins with the descent of a heaven-born
Titaness; in the latter, the first act portrays the ascent of the
ancestral beings from the place of generation. Uniformly, the
next act of the world drama details the deeds of a hero or of
twin heroes who are the shapers and lawgivers of the habitable
earth. They conquer the primitive monsters and set in order
the furniture of creation; quite generally, one of them is slain,
and passes to the underworld to become its Plutonian lord.
The theft of fire, the origin of death, the liberation of the ani-
mals, the giving of the arts, the institution of rites are all



XXIV


INTRODUCTION


themes that recur, once and again, and in forms that show
surprisingly small variation. Universal, too, is the cataclysmic
destruction of the earth by flood, or fire and flood, leaving a
few survivors to repopulate the restored land. Usually this
event marks the close of a First, or Antediluvian Age, in which
the people were either animal in form or only abortively hu-
man. After the flood the animals are transformed once for
all into the beings they now are, while the new race of men is
created. It is not a little curious to find in many tribes tales
of a confusion of tongues and dispersion of nations bringing
to a close the cosmogonic period and leading into that of
legendary history.

Such, in broad outline, is the chart of the Indian’s cosmic
perspective. It is with a view to its fuller illustration that the
myths studied in the ensuing chapters have been chosen from
the great body of American Indian lore.



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY




NORTH AMERICAN
MYTHOLOGY


CHAPTER I

THE FAR NORTH

I. NORSEMAN AND SKRAELING

I N the year of our Lord 982 Eric the Red, outlawed from
Iceland, discovered Greenland, which shortly afterward
was colonized by Icelanders. Eric’s son, Leif the Lucky, the
first Christian of the New World, voyaging from Norway to
Greenland, came upon a region to the south of Greenland
where “self-sown corn” and wild vines grew, and which,
accordingly, he named Vinland. This was in the year 1000,
the year in which all Mediaeval Europe was looking for the
Second Advent and for earth’s destruction, but which brought
instead the first discovery of a New World.

As yet no people had been encountered by the Scandina-
vians in the new-found lands. But the news of Vinland stirred
the heart of Thorfinn Karlsefni and of his wife Gudrid, and
with a company of men and two ships they set out for the
region which Leif had found. First they came to a land which
they called Helluland, “the land of flat stones,” which seemed
to them a place of little worth. Next they visited a wooded
land full of wild beasts, and this they named Markland.
Finally they came to Vinland, and there they dwelt for three
winters, Gudrid giving birth to Snorri, the first white child
born on the Western Continent. It was in Vinland that the
Norsemen first encountered the Skraelings: “They saw a
number of skin canoes, and staves were brandished from
their boats with a noise like flails, and they were revolved in
the same direction in which the sun moves.” Thorfinn’s band




2


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


was small, the Skraelings were a multitude; so the colony re-
turned to Greenland in the year 1006.

Apparently no further attempt was made to settle the main-
land, though from time to time voyages were made thither for
cargoes of timber. But the Greenland colony continued, un-
molested and flourishing. About the middle of the thirteenth
century peoples from the north, short and swart, began to
appear; encounters became unfriendly, and in 1341 the north-
ernmost Scandinavian settlement was destroyed. Meanwhile,
ships were coming from Norway less and less frequently, and
the colony ceased to prosper, ceased to be heard from. At the
time when Columbus discovered the Antilles there was a
Bishop of Greenland, holding title from the Pope, but there is
no evidence that he ever saw his diocese, and when, in 1585,
John Davis sailed into the strait now bearing his name all
trace of the Norsemen’s colony was lost.

But the people of the Far North had not forgotten, and
when the white men again came among them they still pre-
served legends of former Kablunait.’' The story of the first
meeting of the two peoples still survived, and of their mutual
curiosity and fear, and of how an Eskimo and a white man
became fast friends, each unable to outdo the other in feats of
skill and strength, until at last the Eskimo won in a contest at
archery, and the white man was cast down a precipice by his
fellow-countrymen. There is the story of Eskimo men lying
in wait and stealing the women of the Kablunalt as they came
to draw water. There are stories of blood feuds between the
two peoples, and of the destruction of whole villages. At Ikat
the Kablunait were taken by surprise; four fathers with their
children fled out upon the Ice and all were drowned; sometimes
they are visible at the bottom of the sea, and then, say the
Eskimo, one of our people will die.

Such are the memories of the lost colony which the Green-
landers have preserved. But far and wide among the Eskimo
tribes there is the tradition of their former association with




PLATE II


Encounter of Eskimo and Kablunait, from a Grcen-
landic drawing. After H. Rink, Taks am/ T?yif/itioas
of the Eskimo,



V





THE FAR NORTH


3


the Tornit, the Inlanders, from whom they were parted hy feud
and war. The Tornit were taller and stronger and swifter
than the Eskimo, and most of them were blear-eyed ; their
dress and weapons were different, and they were not so skil-
ful in boating and sealing or with the bow. Finally, an Es-
kimo youth quarrelled with one of the Tornit and slew him,
boring a hole in his forehead with a drill of crystal. After that
all the Tornit fled away for fear of the Eskimo and since then
the Coast-People and the Inland-Dwellers have been enemies.

In the stories of the Tornit may be some vague recollections
of the ancient Norsemen; more plausibly they represent the
Indian neighbours of the Eskimoan tribes on the mainland,
for to the Greenlanders the Indians had long become a fabulous
and magical race. Sometimes, they say, the Tornit steal women
who are lost in the fog, but withal are not very dangerous;
they keep out of sight of men and are terribly afraid of dogs.
Besides the Tornit there are in the Eskimo’s uncanny Inland
elves and cannibal giants, one-eyed people, shape-shifters,
dog-men, and monsters, such as the Amarok, or giant wolf,
or the horrid caterpillar that a woman nursed until it grew so
huge that it devoured her baby — for it is a region where
history and imagination mingle in nebulous marvel.^

II. THE ESKIMO’S WORLD

There is probably no people on the globe more isolated in
their character and their life than are the Eskimo. Their nat-
ural home is to the greater part of mankind one of the least
inviting regions of the earth, and they have held it for centuries
with little rivalry from other races. It is the coastal region
of the Arctic Ocean from Alaska to Labrador and from Labra-
dor to the north of Greenland: inlandward it is bounded by
frozen plains, where even the continuous day of Arctic sum-
mer frees only a few inches of soil; seaward it borders upon
icy waters, solid during the long months of the Arctic night.



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


4

The caribou and more essentially the seal are the two animals
upon which the whole economy of Eskimo life depends, both
for food and for bodily covering; the caribou is hunted in
summer, the seal is the main reliance for winter. But the
provision of a hunting people is never certain; the seasonal
supply of game is fluctuating; and the Eskimo is no stranger to
starvation. His is not a green world, but a world of whites
and greys, shot with the occasional splendours of the North.
Night is more open to him than the day; he is acquainted
with the stars and death is his familiar.

“Our country has wide borders; there is no man born has
travelled round it; and it bears secrets in its bosom of which no
white man dreams. Up here we live two different lives; in
the Summer, under the torch of the Warm Sun; in the Winter,
under the lash of the North Wind. But it is the dark and
the cold that make us think most. And when the long Dark-
ness spreads itself over the country, many hidden things are
revealed, and men’s thoughts travel along devious paths ”
(quoted from “Blind Ambrosius,” a West Greenlander, by
Rasmussen, The People of the Polar North, p. 219).

VAN Baarda, M. J., “Het Loda’sch in vergelijking met het Gale-
la’sch dialect op Halmaheira. Gevolgd door Loda’sche teksten
eii Yerhalen/’ in BTLF ivi. 317-496 (1904).

VAN DER Tuck, H. N., Bataksche Lesehoek^ vierde stuk, Amster-
dam, 1862*

VAN Dijken, H. (M, J. van Baarda, edit, and trans.), “Fabein,
verhalen en overleveringen der Galelareezen,” in BTLF
xlw 192-290, 387-564 (189s).

VAN Eerde, J. C., “De kalanglegende op Lombok,” in TTLF xlv.

30-59 {icpz),

VAN Hasselt, F. L. j., “Nnfoorsche fabein en vertellingen,” in

BTLF IxL 477-389 (1908).

Walleser, S., “Religiose Anschanungen und Gebrauche der Be-
wohner von Jap,” in AnthropoSy viii. 607-30, 1044-69 (1913).
Warneck, j., Religion der Batak. Leipzig, 1909.

West, J., History of Tasmania. 2 vols. Launceston, 1852.
W’estenberg, C. j., “Aanteekeningen .omtrent de godsdienstige
bcgrippen der Karo^Bataks,” in BTLF xli. 208-53 (1892).
\\"kstenkk, L. C., 1S99, “Bijdragen tot de kennis der folklore van
W'est-Bonieo,” in TTLF xli. 193-21 x.

1901, “Bijdragen tot de kennis der folklore van West-Bor-
nco/’ in r'fLF xliii. 159-82.

W'estervklt, W. D., 1910, Legends of Mm% a DemLGod of
Polynesia. Hoiioliihi, igio.- .

— — 1915 a, Legends of Old Honohilu. .Boston, 1915.

_ igi « . Legends of Gods- and Ghosts. Boston, 19 ^ 5 - ?

WhiiTE, J., The Ancient History af the Maoris his ' Mythology' -and'
Traditions. 4 vols. Wellington, t 886-89. , ,



364 ' OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY

WiELENGA,' D. K.5 “Soembaneesche verhalen,” in BT'LF, IxviiL
i-29r'(i9i3). ' ,

WiLKEN, G. A., 1875, ^'Bijdrage tot de kennis der Alfoerea van bet
, eiland Boeroe/’ in Ferh, Bat. Gen. K. W. xxxviii. i-di.

— ^ — —1884, "'^Het , Animisme bij de volken van den Indiscben
Archipel/’ in De Indische Gids^ vi, part pp. 13-58, 925-1000.;
part 2, pp* 19-100, 191-242,

WitKEN, P. N., ‘‘Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten
der Alfoeren in de Minahassa/’ in MNZG vii, 117-59, 289-333,
3.71-91 (1863).

WiLKEN, P. N., and Schwarz, J. A,, Allerlei over het land eii volk
van Bolang Mongondon/^ in MNZG xi. 284-398 (1867).
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Sea Islands^ with Remarks on the Natural History of the Islands^
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Williams, T., and Calvert, J., Fiji and the Fijians. 2 vols. Lon-
don, 1858.

WiNSEDT, P. O., "^^Some Mouse-Deer Tales, In JSBRJS xiv. £>1-70

(1905).

Wohlers, J. F. H., “Mythology and Traditions of the Maori in

New Zealand,*’ in Proceedings New Zealand Institute^ vii. '3-53

(1874).

Woods, J. D., The Native Tribes of South Australia. Adelaide, 1879.
Wyatt, W., “Some Account of the Manners and Superstitions of
the Adelaide and Encounter Bay Aboriginal Tribes,” in J. D.
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1879 -

Young, J. L., “The Origin of the Name Tahiti, as related by Mare-
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Zahn, H., “Die Jabim,” in R. Neuhaus, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii.
289-393. Berlin, 1911.

3. Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p. 492.

4. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, p. 388; Strehlow, 1907, p. 2.

5. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, chh. x, xi, passim; id. 1904, ch. xiii,
passim; Strehlow, 1907, p. 3, and passim; id. 1908, p. 2, and passim;
Howitt and Siebert, p. 102.

6. Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p. 408.

7. Smyth, i. 424, note.

8. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, p. 388. For another version see
Strehlow, 1907, p. 3.

9. (Loritja) Strehlow, 1908, p. 4; (Dieyeri) Gason, 1874, p. 13;
Howitt and Siebert, p. 102; A. W. Howitt, p. 779; (Kaitish) Spencer
and Gillen, 1904, p. 399; (Unmatjera) ib. p. 403.

10. New South Wales (Yuin), A. W. Howitt, p. 484;' (Wathi*
wathi) Cameron, p. 368.

11. West, iL 89.

12. South Australia (Adelaide and Encounter Bay), Wyatt, p. 166;
(Narrinyeri) Taplin, 1879a, p. 55; Victoria, Ridley, p. 137; (Yarra)
Smyth, i. 425; New South -Wales (Marura), Taplin, 1879b, P...27.;
(Kamilaroi) Ridley, p. 135;' Greenway, p. 242; (Wailwu'n) -ib. p..249-;.
Northern Territory (Larakia), Foelsche, p. 15.

13. Smyth, i 424. .

14. Proserpine River, W. E. Roth, p. 16.

15. Encounter Bay, H. A. E. Meyer, 1879, p. 201.; cf. Queensland
(Princess Charlotte Bay), W. E. Roth, p. 15.


342


OGEANIC MYTHOLOGY


16. Thomas, p. 65 (quoted in Smyth, i. 427).

17. (Kaitish) Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p. 499.

18* Smyth, i. 428. Ci Micronesia, p. 252.

19. Parker, 1898, p. 28.

: 20. Beveridge, 1883, p. 60; Stanbridge, 1861, p. 301; cl Melane-
sia, Woodlark Island, Montrouzier, p. 371.

21. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, p. 561; id. 1904, p. 624; Strehlow,
X907, p. 16.

22. (Loritja) Strehlow, 1908, p, 8.

23. H. A. E. Meyer, 1879, P* ^too.

24. Pennefether River, W. E. Roth, p. 8*

25. Smyth, i. 430.

26. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, p. 564; Strehlow, 1907, p. 17. The
moon seems to be regarded here as an object, not as a person; but
cf. Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p. 625.

27. Cf. also Northern Territory (Mara), Spencer and Gillen, 1904,
p. 627.

28. Princess Charlotte Bay, W. E. Roth, p. 7.

29. (Wongibon) Matthews, 1904, p. 359.

30. Cf. Polynesia, supra, Chapter III, Note 91, and Indonesia,
supra, Chapter III, Note 32.

31. Cf. Victoria, Stone, p, 463.

32. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, p. 564; cf. (Loritja) Strehlow, 1908,
p. 8; New South Wales (Kurnu), Matthews, 1904, p. 358.

33. Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p. 626.

34. For other moon-myths see Northern Territory (Kaitish),
Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p. 625; Central Australia (Dieyeri), M. E.
B. Howitt, p. 406; South Australia (Narrinyeri), H. A. E* Meyer,
1879, p. 200; Victoria, Smyth, i. 431; Queensland (Boulia), W. E.
Roth, p. 7.

35. See jT-zipfiS:, pp. in.

36. Dawson, p. 106.

37. Cf. New South Wales (Kamilarol), Matthews, 1904, p. 354.

38. Victoria (Lake Tyers and Kurnai), Smyth, i. 429, 478; for
other tales of the origin of the sea see Victoria, Smyth, i. 429, note;
Queensland (Pennefether River) W. E. Roth, p* ll.

39. See infra, pp. 281, 284, , .

40. Cf. Queensland (Princess Charlotte Bay), W. E. Roth, p. 12.

41. Victoria (?), Dunlop, p. 23; cf, Melanesia, New Guinea (Ber-
linhafen), Schleiermacher, p. 6;. Indonesia, supra, pp. 180 ff.

42. Brown, p. 509.

.43. (Wongibon) Matthews, 1904, p* 351.

' 44. Cf. (Euahlayi) Parker,; 1896, p. 24; Cameron, p. 368; South
Australia (Encounter Ba5^), H. A. E. Meyer, 1879, p. 203; Vic-



NOTES 343

toria (?), Dunlop, p. 25; Dawson, p. 54; Smyth, i, 458; Queens-
land (Pennefether River), W. E. Roth, p. II.

45. Smyth, i. 459; cf. (Kamilaroi) Ridley, p. 137.

46. Spencer and Gillen, 1899, p. 446; cf* South Australia (Narrin-
yeri), Eylmann, p. 92,

47. Matthew, p. 186.

48. See supra, p. 113,

49. See supra, p. 47.

50. Lake Condah, Smyth, i. 462.

51. Cape Grafton, W. E. Roth, p. ii; cf. Victoria, Stanbridge,
1861, p. 303.

52. (Euahlayi) Parker, 1896, p. 24.

53. (Kulkadoan) Urquhart, p. 87.

54. Gf. Northern Territory, Spencer and Gillen, 1904, p, 619.

55. Milligan, p. 274.

56. Cf* Central Australia (Arunta), Spencer and Gillen, 1899,
P- 445 -

57. See supra, p. 278*

58. Parker, 1896, p. 8; for another version see South Australia
(Narrinyeri), Taplin, 1879b, p. 51-

59. (Arunta) Strehlow, 1907, p. 32; (Loritja) id. 1908, p. 4.

60. But cf. Polynesia, supra, p. 29, and Indonesia, pp. 159,

166.

Chapter II

1. Parker, 1896, p. i; cf. Queensland (Pennefether River) W. E.
Roth, p. 13 ; and supra, p. 146.

2. Smyth, i. 449.

3* Princess Charlotte Bay, W. E. Roth, p. 12.

4. (Narrinyeri), Taplin, x879a, p. 62; Victoria, Matthews, 1907,
p. 44* ,

5* Parker, 1897, pp. 70 ff.

6. Parker, 1898, p. i.

7. (Narrinyeri) Taplin, 1879a, p. 56; H. A. E. Meyer, 1879, p. 201*

8. See supra, p. 274.

9. (Euahlayi) Parker, 1898, p. ii.

10. Wyatt, 1879, P* ^'66*

' II. See supra, p. 139.

12. Dunlop, p. '33* No locality. is given, but Victoria seems to be
indicated.

13. (Euahlayi) Parker, 1898, p. 43.'

14. (Euahlayi) Parker, i8g6, p. ii.

IS- ilatthews, 1904, p..37S. Ci Philippines (Tinguian), Cole,. 191,5,
p. 1 18; (Tagalog) Gardner,' pp. 270, 272; India, D'Penha, p. '142. : ::


344


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


16. ;Gf. Smyth, L 427; Hawaii, Westervelt, 1910, p. 115; Man-
gaia, Gill, 1876, p. 5; Samoa, Stuebel, p. 66.

17. Smyth, i. 447; cf. New South Wales (Euahlayi), Parker, 1896,

P‘ 47-

18* (Arunta) Strehlow, 1907, p. i8.

19. Anonymous, 1907b, p. 29.

20. Victoria (?), Dunlop, p, 29.



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BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ABBREVIATIONS


Am. Antiq

Arch. f. Anth. * . .
Austr. Assoc. Adv. ScL

BTLF ......


FCM

InL Arch. Eth

JAFL

JAI

JPS

JRSNSW ........

JSBMAS'

MNZG

PJS' ......... .

Proc. N. Z. InsL ......

TNI

TTIF

Ti^PRSf ........

Ti^PMSSA . : . .

FerL Bat Gm. W. .


American Antiquarian.

Archiv fiir Anthropologic.

Australian Association for the Ad-
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Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-
Indie.

Anthropological Series, Field Co-
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Mededeelingen van wege het Neder-
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Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie.

Tijdschrift voor indische Taal-, Land-
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Transactions and Proceedings of the
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Transactions and Proceedings of the
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Verhandelmgen van der Bataviaasch
Genootschaap van Kunst en Wet-
enschapen.'



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Ferh. BerL Ges. Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesell-

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Verh. Ges. Erdk. BerL . . . Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft fiir

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Annual^ iBBi, p. 59.

— -1882, *‘'The Legend of Kapeepeekauila, or the ? Rocks , of

Kana,” In Hawaiian Annual^ 1882, pp. 36-41.

Fornaxder, a., An Account of ike Polynesian ? Race; its.^Origins
and Migrations. 3 vols. ? London,,, 1880. ?

Forster, G., Foyage Round the World in the ^^Resol%tmnff iff2”-fS.
, 2 vols. London, 1777.


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


35 ^

ForsteRj J. R,, Observations made during a Voyage Round the.
Worlds on Physical Geography^ Natural History and Ethic Phi-
losophy. London, 177B.

Fox, C. E., and Drew, F. H., “Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval
(Solomon Islands),” in JAI xlv. 131-85, 187-229 (1915).
Fraser, J. (editor), 1890, “Some Folk-Songs and Myths from
Samoa,” in xxiv, 195-217.

— 1891, “Some Folk-Songs and Myths from Samoa,” in PRS

NSW^ XXV. 70-86, 96-146, 241-86.

1892, “Some Folk-Songs and Myths from Samoa,” in PRS..

AS# xxvi. 264-301.

- — 1896, “Folksongs and Myths from Samoa,” in /PS v.

171-83.

— 1897, “Folksongs and Myths from Samoa,” in /PS vi.

19-36,67-76,107-22.

• 1898, “Folksongs and Myths from Samoa,” in /PS vii.

15-30.

1900, “Folksongs and Myths from Samoa,” in /PS ix.

125-42.

Frere, M., Old Deccan Days. Hindoo Fairy Tales current in Souths
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Furness, W. H., 2nd, Folk-Lore in Borneo: a Sketch. Wallingford,
Pa., 1899. (Privately printed.)

Garcia, M,, Lettres snr les lies Marquises^ ou memoires pour servir
d r etude religieuse^ morale^ politique et statistique des lies Mar-
quises etde TOceanie Orientale. Paris, 1843.

Gardner, F., “Tagalog Folk-Tales,” in JAFL xx. 104-16; 300-10

(1907).

Gason, S., 1874, The Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe of
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— 1879, The Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe of

Australian Aborigines. (Reprinted in J. D. Woods, Native
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Gill, W. W., 1876, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific. London,
1 876.

1888, Life in the Southern Isles: Scenes and Incidents in the

South Pacific and New Guinea. New ed. London, 1888.

191 1, “Extracts from Dr. Wyatt Gill’s Papers,” in JPS

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353

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49^3? ‘^Die Karolineninsel Namoluk und ihrer Bewohner,”

in Baessler Archiv^ iiu 165-90.

Gomes, E, H., The Sea Dyaks of Borneo, London, n.d.

Graafland, N., De Minahassa; haar verleden en haar tegenwoordige
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Graebner, F., ^Wolkerkunde der Santa Cruz Inseln,” in Etkno^
logtcd^ L 71-184 (1909).

Gray, W., Some Notes on the Tannese,” in^i Austr* Assoc, Adv,
Set, iv. 645-80 (1892).

Greenway, C. C., ^^Kamilaroi Language and Traditions,” in JAI
vii. 232-46 (1878).

Grey, Sir G., Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History
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Hadbon, a. C., 1894, ^‘Legends from the Woodlarks,” in Folklore^
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1904, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition

to Torres Sir aits y v. 9-120.

1908, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition

to Torres Straits y vL 1-63.

Hagen, B., Unter den Papuas, Wiesbaden, 1899.

Hambroch, P., Hamhufgische wissenschaftliche Stiftung, Ergeb-
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Henry, T., ‘‘^Tahitian Folklore,” m JPS x. 51-52 (1901).

Hickson, S. J., A Naturalist in the North Celebes: Narrative of Travels
in Minakassay the Sangir and Talaut I stands y with Notices of the
Fawndy Flora and Ethmlogy of the Districts Visited , ' London,
1889.

Holmes, J* H., ^^Notes on the Elema Tribes of the Papuan Gulf,”
in JAI xxxiii. 125-34 (1903).

Hohgi, H., 1896, **The Lament 'of Te .Rangi-mauri for Tonga-
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— ^ 1907, ^^A Maori Cosmogony,” in. /PS ,xvi. 11.3-17.

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in TiVJ iii, part 1, pp. 3x3-71 (.1840).



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GCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


THoKS'BVKO'B^ A.y Sketches in Borneo, London, 1858.

Hose, C., and Macdougal, W., The Pagan Tribes of Borneo^ 2 vols.
London, - 1912-

Howitt, a. W., The Natwe Tribes of South’-East Australia, London,
- 1904. ,

Howitt, a. W., and Siebert, C., “Legends of the Dieri and' Kindred
Tribes of Central Australia/’ in JAI xxxiv. 100-29 (1904).

Howitt, M. E. B., “Some- Native Legends from Central Australia/’
in Folklore^ xiiL 403-17 (1902),

Hueting, a., “Verhalen en vertellingen in de Tobeloreesche taal/’
in jSTLF Ixl 1-319 (1908)*

17. Cf. Polynesia: Samoa, Abercromby, 1891, p. 460; Stuebel,
pp. 75, 145, 151; Chatham Island, Shand, 1894, p. 128; Indonesia:
Philippines (Tinguian), Cole, 1915, pp. 15, 63, 68, 71, 83, 125, etc.;
Micronesia: Marshall Group, Erdland, p. 311.

18. Gazelle Peninsula, Meier, 1909, p. 25; cf. also ib. p. 205.

19. Cf. Indonesia, Philippines (Tinguian), Cole, 191S5 PP- 62,
68, etc.; and Micronesia, in/ra, p. 251.

20. Cf. New Guinea (Kuni), Egidi, 1913, p. 1002.

21. New Guinea (Jabim), Zahn, p. 373; (Tami) Bamler, p. 540.

22. Malanta, Codrington, p. 21.

23. Cf. Indonesia, infra^ p. 168.

24. Parkinson, p. 685; Kleintitschen, p. 332; Meier, 1909, p. 35;
O. Meyer, p. 713.

25. Cf. Indonesia, infra^ pp. 218 ff.

26. Holmes, p. 126.

27. Codrington, p. 26.

2 %. Bley, p. 198.

29. Codrington, p. 156.

30. (Simbang) Hagen, p. 289.

31. Bley, p. 198.

32. Cf. Bley, p. 200; also Gazelle Peninsula, Meier, 1909, p. 109;
(Sulka) Rascher, p. 230; New Guinea (Goodenough Bay), Ker, p. 26;
(Taupota) ? Seligmann, p. 403; New Hebrides, Codrington, pp. 370,
372; Macdonald, 1898, p. 760; Samoa, Turner, 1884, p. 6; Malay
Peninsula, Skeat and Blagden, ii. 339.

33. Meier, 1907, p. 650.

34. (Moresby) Romilly, 1889, p. 136.

35. (Bogadjim) Hagen, p. 288.

36. Montrouzier, p. 369 (reprinted in Haddon, 1894, p. 318).

37. Cf. Australia, tnfray p. 275.' ?

38. Seligmann, p. 378.

39. Cf. Fiji, Williams and Calvert, p. 171; Polynesia, Cook Group,
Gill, 1876, p. 10; Society Group, ;Moerenhout, i. 426; and Indonesia,
infray p. 234. ?



3H


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


40. Gf. Fiji, Fisoiij pp. 34, 50; Samoa, Fraser, 1891, p. 243.

41. Ci Solomon Islands (Ysabel), Codrington, p. 366; Celebes
(Minahassa), Hickson, pp. 311, 317; P. N. Wilken, p. 328.

42. Cf. New Britain (Snlka), Rascher, p. 235; New Guinea (Kuni),
Egidi, 1913, p. 990.

43. Codrington, p. 156.

44. Lawes, p. 371; cf. Chalmers, p. 118; Gill, 1911, pp. 120, 126;
Ker, p. 99; Torres Straits, Haddon, 1904, p. 17; Admiralty Islands,
Meier, 1907, p. 659.

45. Cf. Philippines (Igorot), Beyer, p, 96; Seidenadel, p. 486.

46. Seligmann, p. 379.

47. Cf. New Guinea (Daudai), Beardmore and Haddon, p. 462;
Torres Straits, Haddon, 1904, p, 17; and widely in Polynesia, see
supra^ 47 ff.

48. Cf. Polynesia, supra^ p. 47.

49. Meier, 1907, p. 654; cf. ib. pp. 653, 656.

50. Cf. New Britain (Gazelle Peninsula), Meier, 1909, p. 37; New
Guinea (Goodenough Bay), Ker, p. 149.

51. (Sulka) Rascher, p. 234; cf. New Guinea (Kai), Keysser, p. 202.

52. Suas, 1911, p. 907.

53. Cf. Codrington, pp. 169, 286; Macdonald, 1892, p, 731; Lamb,
p. 216.

54. Codrington, p. 265 (ci ib. pp. 283, 286); Suas, 1912, p. 44;
Macdonald, 1898, p. 764; Solomon Islands, Codrington, pp. 260,
365; New Guinea (Kai), Keysser, pp. 162, 236; New Britain (Gazelle
Peninsula), Meier, 1909, p. 37; Kleintitschen, p. 334; Admiralty
Islands, Meier, 1908, p. 193.

55. Codrington, p. 265.

56. Bley, p. 198; cf. Gazelle Peninsula, Meier, 1909, p. 107; Ad-
miralty Islands, Meier, 1908, p. 194.

57. Meier, 1908, p, 194; cf. New Britain (Gazelle Peninsula),
Kleintitschen, p. 334; New Guinea (Moresby), Romilly, 1889, p. 154.

58. (Goodenough Bay) Ker, p. 30.

59. Ker, p. 52.

60. Cf. Fiji, Fison, p. 29.

61. See infra^ pp. 180 ff.

62. Gill, 1912, pp. 61 ff.

Chapter II

1. Cf. for Micronesia, Pelew Islands, Kuba.ry, P..47.'

2. Meier, 1909, p. 27. . .

3. Ci New Guinea (Kai), Keysser, p. 187; Philippines (Tagalog),
Gardner, p. 104; Celebes (Minahassa), Graafland, i. 165; Sumbawa,



NOTES 32s

Jonker, 1903, p. 251; Malay Peninsula (Perak), Anonymous, 1907a,

P- 73- . ,

4. Cf. New Guinea (Goodenough Bay), Ker, p, 136.

5. Meier, 1909, p. 59.

6. Meier, 1909, pp. 13-81; von Pfeil, p. 150 ff,; Kleintitsclien,
p. 33 1; (Sulka) Rascher, p. 233.

7. (Bilibili) Dempwolff, pp. 69-81.

8. Cf. Ker, pp. 136 ff.

9. -Yet cf. New Guinea (Wagawaga), Seligmann, p. 379.

10. Codrington, p. 156.

1 1. Cf. New Zealand, White, ii. 64, no, 117, etc.; Tonga, Mariner,
is. no.

12. Set supray p. 104.,

13. Codrington, p. 158.

14. This incident of the tree made whole is very widely distributed
through the whole of Oceania. For other examples in Melanesia see
Santa Cruz, O’Ferral, p. 227; New Caledonia, Lambert, p. 329; New
Guinea (Kuni), Egidi, 1913, p. 999; (Taupota) Seligmann, p. 403;
(Huon Gulf and Bilibili) Dempwolff, p. 76; (Tarnl) Bamler, p. S 3 i>
(Jabim) Zahn, p. 390; for Polynesian examples see supra^ p. 60 and
Part I, Chapter III, Note 38; for Indonesia see Borneo, Gomes,
p. 311; Philippines (Igorot), Seidenadel, p. 539; for Micronesia see
Erdland, p. 245.

15. Codrington, p. 159.

16. Codrington, pp. 160 ff.

17. Aurora, Codrington, p. 168.

18. Whitsuntide, Codrington, p. 169.

19. Codrington, p. 171.

20. Cf. Ambrym, Suas, 1911, p. 906.

21- Codrington, p. 170.

22. Suas, 1912, pp. 34 ff.

23. For other examples of the inexhaustible vessel of food see
Aurora, Codrington, p. 168; New Britain, Bley, p. 215; Tonga,
Fison, p. 81; Borneo (Dusun), Evans, p. 462; (Sea Dyak) Perham,
1886, p. 278; Philippines (Tinguian), Cole, 1915, pp. 34, 119; (Igo-
rot) Jenks, p. 201; Rotti, Jonker, 1906, p. 410; Pelew Islands, Ku-
bary, p. 45. ^

24. Cf. Micronesia, infra^ p. 260. In New Britain (Gazelle Penin-
sula) we also find the belief that the evil or foolish brother is killed
by the good; cf. Kleintitschen, p. 336.

25. Ci the similarity between Panggu or Panku, the creator deity
among the Tami and Kai people of New Guinea (see Keysser, pp. 1 55,
192), and Panku, the cosmic creator, deity of the Chinese. It is pos-
sible (?) that this is the result of Chinese contact in recent times.



326


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Chapter III

I. Rascher, pp. 230 ff.

A2. Cf. NewGumea (Kai), Keysser, p. 179; (Goodenough Bay)
Ker, p. 123; Seligmann, p. 414; (Moresby) Romilly, 1889, p. 121;
(Euni) Egidij 1913, p. 992; Santa Cruz, OTerral, p, 232; New
Hebrides (Aurora), Codrington, p. 403; Polynesia, Funafuti, David,
p. 107; New Zealand, Shand, 1896, p. 197; Chatham Islands, ib»
p. 195; Manihiki, Te Whitu, p. 97; cf. also Indonesia, Philippines
(Subanun), Christie, p. 102.

3. Aurora, Codrington, p. 398.

4. Cf. Banks' Islands, Codrington, p. 395, note; New Ireland,
Peekel, pp. 4S, SI.

5. For other instances of the life-token see Torres Straits, liad-
don, 1904, p. 34; New Guinea (Goodenough Bay), Ker, p. 61; In-
donesia, Halmahera (Loda), van Baarda, p. 484; Soemba, Wielenga,
p. 61; Philippines (Tinguian), Cole, 1915, p. 96.

6. Cf. for the incident of killing the cannibal or monster with hot
stones New Guinea (hloresby), Romilly, 1889, p. 125; (Tami)
Bamler, p. 535; (Nufoor) van Hasselt, p. 526; Indonesia, Celebes
(Toradja), Adriani, 1902a, p. 461; Philippines (Tinguian), Cole, 1915,
p. 199; Polynesia, see supra^ p. 69.

7. Zahn, p. 337.

8. Zahn, p. 340.

9. Cf. Indonesia, infra, p. x88; also Admiralty Islands, Parkin-
son, p. 713; New Guinea (Kuni), Egidi, 1913, p. 997.

10. StQ supra, p, 130.

11. New Guinea (Goodenough Bay), Ker, p. 21.

12. Cf. . New' Guinea (Tami), Bamler, p. 537; Philippines (Tiii-
guian), Cole, 191$, p. 96; Marshall Group, Erdland, p. 279; New
Zealand, Wohlers, p. 10.

, ?; 1,3, See supra, p... 64.

14. See infra, pp. 206 ff.

15. Codrington, p, 172; Suas, 1912, p. 54; cf. Efate, Macdonald,
1892, p. 731; id. 1898, p. 765; Aurora, Codrington, he. cii.; 'Banks
Islands, lb. p. 397; New Guinea (Bilibili), Dempwolff, p. 82.

16. Cf. the tales of sky-peoplewho come down to fish, Santa Cruz,
OTerral, p. 231; Rotumah, Romilly, 1893, p. 143.

17. Cf. New Guinea (Nufoor), van. .Hasselt, p. 535; Philippines
(Viscayan), Maxfield and Millington, 1907, p. 96; Sumatra (Batak),
Pleyte, 1894, P- (Achin) Hurgronje, ii. 126; Aiinam, l^andcs,
1886, p. 123. It is possible that there is something more than a co-
incidence in the resemblance of the name by which the swan-maidens



...... ;NOTES . , ; . 327

are known in Lepers Island, to their Sanskrit prototypes,

th.tvidhyadhaTas,

18. Snas, 1912, p. 54.

19. Cf. Efate, Macdonald, 1898, p. 764; Aurora, Codrington,
p. 398; Whitsuntide, ib. p. 169; Torres Islands, ib. p. 375; New
Guinea (Tami), Bamler, p. 532; (Jabim) Zahn, p. 390. The dis-
tribution of this incident of the arrow-chain in the North Pacific area,
particularly upon the American coast, is a feature of considerable
interest. See F. Boas, Indianische Sagen von der Nord’-Pacifischen
Kuste Amerikas, Berlin, 1895, pp. 17, 3 L 64, 117, 157, 173, 215, 234,
246, 278; also Mythology of all Races^ Boston, 1916, x. 255.

20. Gazelle Peninsula, Meier, 1909, p. 85.

21. Cf. New Hebrides (Tanna), Gray, p. 657; Torres Straits, Had-
don, 1904, p, 89; New Guinea (Kai), Keysser, p. 164; (Nufoor) van
Hasselt, p, 571; Indonesia, see m/m, p, 226.

22. Cf. Parkinson, p. 688; Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, Mariner, ii.
1 16; Manihiki, Gill, 1915, p. 151; Celebes (Todjo), Adriani, 1902b,
p. 210.

23. (Bukaua) Lehner, p. 480.

24. For other examples of the belief that dawn or daylight drives
away ghosts and spirits or makes them assume another form see
m/m, p. 144 and also New Guinea (Kai), Keysser, pp. 163, 199, etc.;
(Goodenough Bay) Ker, p. 76; New Hebrides, Codrington, p. 409;
Netv Zealand, Grey, p. 66.

25. Cf. (Tami) Bamler, p. 526; (Jabim) Zahn, p. 369; (Good-
enough Bay) Ker, p. 59; Torres Straits, Haddon, 1904, p. 24.

26. Keysser, p. 197.

27. Cf. Keysser, p. 233.

28. (Ureparapara), Codrington, p. 360; cf. also Indonesia, m/m,

p. 194.^ ^ ?

29. Codrington, p. 364,

30. Goodenough Bay, Ker, p. 3.

31. Gazelle Peninsula, Meier, 1909, p, 285.

32. Cf. Australia, m/m, p. 288.


PART III
Chapter I

1. Beyer, p. 99, note 34, znd. passim^

2. Schmidt, 1906, passim* ” . ?

3. See Note 47, m/m.

4. G. A. Wilken, 18S4, p. 232; .Kruijt, 1906, p. 467*



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


328

5. Riedel, 1886, p. 2i7; Pleyte, 1893, p. 563.

6. The first portion of this myth, i.e. the incident of the lost
fish-hook and its recovery, is in one form or other widely spread
in Indonesia, outside the Kei Islands occurring also in Halmahera,
Soemba, Celebes, and Sumatra. It is likewise known from Japan
(Chamberlain, pp. 119 ff.) and the North-West coast of America (see
F. Boas, Indianische Sagen mn der Nord^Pacifischen Kuste Jmerikas^
Berlin, 1895, pp. 94, 99, 149, 190, 238, 254, 289, and ci S» T. Rand,
Legends of the Micmacs^ New York, 1894, p. 87).

7. Schwarz and Adriani, iL 397 ff.

8. Schwarz and Adriani, ii. 389; cf. ib. p. 377, and Graafland, L
21 1 ; Kruijt, 1906, p. 47; Juynboll, p. 327.

9. Cf. Loeang-Sermata, Riedel, x886, p. 312; Formosa, Davidson,

pp.SySff.

10. Probably the sky-world.

11. Reiter, p. 236.

12. Bastian, 1894, p. lo; cf. also Union Group, Hutchin, p. 173.

13. Banks Islands, Codrington, p, 156.

14. Furness, p. 6.

15. Cf. Samoa, von Biilow, 1899,

16. Nieuwenhuis, i. 129.

17. Cf. Nauru, Hambruch, p. 381.

18. For still another version see Nieuwenhuis, ii. 113.

19. Schwaner, i. 177.

20. A serpent with a precious stone in or on its head frequently
appears in Indonesian tales: Celebes (Central), Adriani and Kruijt,
p. 158; Sangir Islands, Adriani, 1894, p. 33. It is common also
among the Malays of the Peninsula (Malacca, Skeat, 1900, p. 303)
and is widely current in India (Crooke, ii. 143). From its distribu-
tion it seems clear that the idea was introduced into Indonesia from
Indian sources.

21. Cf. Schwaner, i. 177.

22. Hupe, p. 138.

23. Schwaner, loc. ctL,

24. Warneck, p. 28; cf. Kodding, p. 405; Pleyte, 1894, p. ,52;
id. 189s, p. 103. ^

25. Other versions say the three sons were born from three eggs
laid by a giant butterfiy and that they received their wives from
Mula Dyadi, who sent them down from above,

26. Van der Tuiik, p. 48; Pleyte, 1894, p. 56.

27. Westenberg, p. 214; de Haan, p. 14; ? Pleyte, 1894, p. 82. ?

28. See supra, p. 18.

29. Mindanao (Bllaan), Cole, 1913, p. 136.

30. See supra, p, iB,



NOTES


329


31. See p. i8.

32. Carolmes, Walleser, p. 610.

33. Kramer, p. 514; Fraser, 1891, p. 264.

34. Reiter, p. 444; cf. also Society Group, Bovis, p. 45; Philip-
piaes, Fraser, 1897, p. 26.

35. Sundermann, 1884, p. 449.

36. See p. 29.

37. Von Biilow, 1899, p. 61.

38. See supra^ p. 21.

39. Cf. the myth of the origin of man, as given from the Society
Group, supra, pp. 26 ff.

40. Van Eerde, p. 39.

41. Donleben and Christie, p. 175; cf. also Horner, p. 368.

42. Mindanao (Mandaya), Cole, 1913, p. 173; cf. also (Tagalog)
Gardner, p. 112.

43. Riedel, 1869a, p. 265.

44. Agerbeek, p. 153. ^

45. Igorot, Beyer, p. 94; Seidenadel, p. 487; Jenks, p. 201; Ifugao,
Beyer, pp. loi, 113.

46. White, i. 130; Smith, 1913, p. 144; Shortiand, p. 22; Wohlers,

47. E. Lunet de Lajonquiere, Ethnographie du Tonkin septentrional,
Paris, 1906, pp. 234, 262; S. R. Clarke, Among the Tribes in South-
West China, London, 1911, pp. 43 ff.; P. Vial, Les Lolos; Histoire,
mwurs, langue et ecriture, Shanghai, 1898 (quoted in Tooting Pao,
IL viii. 666 ff, [1907]); C. Gilhodes, ^‘Mythologie et religion des
Kachins,’^ in Anthropos, iii. 683 ff. (1908).

48. This incident also occurs in the Loeang-Sermata Group; see
Riedel, 1886, p. 31 1.

49. Kramer, p. 516; Sierich, 1902, p. 167.

50. Fison, p. 33.

51. Dunn, p* 16.

52. Horsbiirgh, p. 20; McDougall, p. 27.

53. Apparently traceable to Muhammadan and Indian influenees;
see G, A. Wilkeii, 1884, p. 247; and, for an opposite opinion, Schmidt,
1910, p. 7, note 6.

54. Riedel, 1886, pp. 312,367.

55. See jMpm, p. 156.

56. Riedel, 1886, passim,

57. See supra, p. 159. ? ?

58. Chatelin, p. i io; Sundermann, 1884, p. 449; Modigliani, p. 614.

59. Riedel, 1886, p, 90,

60. Riedel, 1886, p. 217.,. ?

61 « Riedel, 1886, p. 275., ?



330


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


62. See p. 157.

63* Nieuweiihuisen and Rosenberg, p. 108.

.,64. Chatelin, , p, no; ? Sundermann, 1884, p. 349; Lagemann,

pp. 341 ff.

65. See previous note.

66. Beyer, p. loi.

67. Riedel, 1886, pp. 190, 218, 247, 275, 289.

6^ Riedel, 1886, p. 148,

69. Riedel, 1886, p. 32.

70. Riedel, 1886, p. 3,

71. Riedel, 1886, p. 431*

72. Taylor, p. 197.

73. Hickson, p. 246.

.74,; Marsden, p. 302.

75. Furness, p. 7; Nieuwenhuis, ii. 113.

76. Schwaner, i. 178.

77. Sundermann, 1884, p. 449.

78. Riedel, 1886 (Amboina), p. 32; Ceram, ib. p. 89; Gorrom, ib*
p. 148; Aru Islands, ib. p. 247; Leti, ib, p. 367.

79. Riedel, 1886, p. 190.

80. Riedel, 1886, p. 218.

81. Cf. New Guinea (Elema), Holmes, p. 126,

82. Pleyte, 1895, p. 103.

83. Mindanao (Mandaya), Cole, 1913, p* 173.

84. Schwaner, i. 177 ff.

85. Pleyte, 1894, p. 52.

86. See p. 157.

87. Taylor, p. 122; Davidson, pp. 578, 580.

88- Beyer, p. 112.

89. Perez, p. 319; Beyer, pp. 94, 96; Jenks, p. 20i; Seidenadel^

p. 485.

90. Cole, 1913, p. 173.

91. Beyer, p. loi.

92. See supra^ p, 164.

93. Gardner, p. 112.

94. Agerbeek, p. 156.

95. (Bantik) Riedel, iSdga, p. 266,

96. Kruijt, 1906, p. 471; (Loda) van Baarda, p. 444.

97. Hickson, p. 246,

98. Benedict, p, 15.

99. Pleyte, 1B94, p. 61.

100. Schwaner, i. 179,

101. Kruijt, 1906, p. 469,

102. Kruijt, 1894, p. 339.



NOTES


331


103. Furnessj p. ii.

104. Diinnj p. 16.

105. Horsburgh, p. 20; cf. also McDoxigall, p. 27,

106. Evans5p. 423.

107. Cole, 1913, p. 137.

lok For vivification by whipping cf. Soemba, Wielenga, pp. 45, 65,
168.

109. Cole, 1913, p. 164.
no. Seldenadel, p. 487,
iii> Chatelin, p. no.

112. Excrement, Borneo, Sundermann, 1912, p. 172; skin-scnrf,
Philippines, Cole, 1913, p. 135.

1 13. Nieuwenhuis, i. 131.

114. Furness, p. 7.

115. Schwaner, i. 180.

1 16. Cf. the Dusun, in British North Borneo, who declare that
animals as well as plants were made from the body of the grandchild
of the two great gods (see Evans, p. 478).

117. Beyer, p. 109.
nk Cole, 1913, p. 172.

119. Nieuwenhuis, i. 130.

120. Minahassa, Graafiand, i. 232.

1 21. Cf. the Rarotongan myth in Polynesia (Fraser, 1891, p. 76).

122. Sundermann, 1884, p. 452; Chatelin, p. 114.

123. Cf. Mangaia (Cook Group), where they are the eyes of Vatea
(see Gill, 1876, p. 3).

124. Beyer, p. 105.

125. Cf. the sky-cannibals in Maori mythology, supra^ p. 62.

126. Beyer, p. 105.

127. Beyer, p. 89, 105.

128. Benedict, p. 16. It is interesting to find the very same tale
in the New Hebrides (see Macdonald, 1892, p. 731).

129. McDougall, p. 27; Fornander, i. 6 ^.

130. Evans, p. 433.

131. Hupe, p. 136; Sundermann, 1912, p. 172.

132. ' Chatelin, p, 114.

133. Riedel, 1886, p. 311.

134. Beyer, p. 100.

135.. Beyer, p. 112.

136. Jenks, p. 201; Seidenadel, p. 485 Beyer, p. 95; PereZj.p.jig*

137. Cole, 1915, p. 189.

138. Cole, 1913, p. 164.

139. Cole, 1913, p. 173.

140. Dunn, p. 17; cf. also Hose and Macdougal, ii. 144.



33 ^


OCEANIC' 'MYTHOLOGY


141. Evans, p. 469.

142. A similar tale occurs also among the Sea Dyaks (see Perham,
in H. L. Roth, 1896, i. 301).

143. Chatelm, p. 115,

144. See supray pp, 51 ff.

145. Evans, p. 478.

146. Immortality by casting the skin, as in the case of the snake,
is a wide-spread conception, and is especially common in Melanesia
(see Part II, Chapter I, Note 54). That immortality was offered to
man, but that he failed to hear and come and get the gift, is an idea
also found in Melanesia (see New Britain, Bley, p. 198),

147. Chatelin, p. 114.

148. See supra, pp. 170 ff.

149. Beyer, p. 96; Seidenadel, p. 485.

150. Torres Straits, Haddon, 1904, p. 17; New Guinea (Moresby),
Lawes, p. 371; (Kiwai) Chalmers, p. 118.

151. Beyer, p* 102.

152. See supra, pp. 47 ff.

153. Kruijt, 1894, p. 341.

154. Furness, p. 8.

155. Furness, p. 12.

156. Cf. Nauru, Hambruch, p. 442.


Chapter II

1. Brandes, 1894a, p. 35; Bezemer, p. 87.

2. For other versions in which the tortoise so tricks the ape see
Sunda, Kern, 1900, p. 367; Kangean Islands, van Ronkel, p. 71;
Cham, Landes, 1900, pp. 235 ff.; Annam, id. 1886b, p. 115; Cam-
bodia, Aymonier, pp. 30 ff.

3. Brandes, 1894a, p. 35* For other versions see Sunda, Kern,
1900, p. 367; Sumatra (Achin), Hurgronje, ii. 163; (Lampong) van
Ophuijsen, pp. 129, 140; Kangean Islands, van Ronkel, p. 72; Borneo,
Westenek, 1899, p. 198; (Milanau) Low, i, 347; (Bajau) Evans,
p, 474; Celebes (Toradja), Adriani, 1902a, p. 392; Sangir Islands,
Adriani, 1893, pp. 359, 367,. 386; Halmahera (Galela), van Dijken,
p. 205; Cham, Landes, 1900, pp. 235 ff.

4. Brandes, 1894a, p. 36; Sangir Islands, Adriani, 1893, pp. 368,
385; Cham, Landes, 1900, pp. 235 ff.; Cambodia, loc. cit.; Annam,
id. 1886b, p. 215.

5. This is the Sundanese version, Kern, 1900, p. 366; Brandes,
1894b, p. 382. For other versions see Sumatra (Achin), Hurgronje,
ii. 163; (Lampong) van Ophuijsen, .p.iaS; Malay, Brandes, he. cif.;



NOTES


333