Topic: North American Mythology

[Prometheus]

https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra10gray/page/n8

GEORGE FOOT MOORE, A.M., D.D., LL.D., Consulting Editor


NORTH AMERICAN


BY

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA


VOLUME X



. BOSTON

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
M DCCCC XVI




Copyright, 1916
By Marshall Jones Company

Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
All fights reserved

Printed April, 1916


OTNTED IN tTHE TOUTED STATES OE AMERICA BY TEE TOIVERSIXY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY



AUTHOR’S PREFACE


N O one can be more keenly aware of the sketchy nature
of the study here undertaken than is the author. The
literature of the subject, already very great, is being aug-
mented at a rate hitherto unequalled; and it is needless to
say that this fact alone renders any general analysis at present
provisional. As far as possible the author has endeavoured
to confine himself to a descriptive study and to base this
study upon regional divisions. Criticism has been limited to
the indication of suggestive analogies, to summaries in the
shape of notes, and to the formulation of a general plan of
selection (indicated in the Introduction), without which no
book could be written. The time will certainly come for
a closely analytical comparative study of North American
myths, but at the present time a general description is surely
the work which is needed.

Bibliographical references have been almost entirely rele-
gated to the Notes, where the sources for each section will be
found, thus avoiding the typographical disfigurement which
footnotes entail. The plan, it is believed, will enable a ready
identification of any passage desired, and at the same time
will give a convenient key for the several treatments of related
topics. The Bibliography gives the sources upon which the text
Is chiefly based, chapter for chapter. Other references, inci-
dentally quoted, are given in the Notes. The critical reader’s
attention is called, in particular, to Note i, dealing with the
difficult question of nomenclature and spelling. The author
has made no attempt to present a complete bibliography of
American Indian mythology. For further references the litera-
ture given in the “Bibliographical Guides ” should be consulted;



VI


AUTHOR’S PREFACE


important works which have appeared since the publication
of these “Guides” are, of course, duly mentioned.

For the form and spelling of the names of tribes and of
linguistic stocks the usage of the Handbook of American
Indians is followed, and the same form is used for both the
singular and for the collective plural. Mythic names of In-
dian origin are capitalized, italics being employed for a few
Indian words which are not names. The names of various
objects regarded as persons or mythic beings — sun, moon,
earth, various animals, etc. — are capitalized when the per-
sonified reference is clear; otherwise not. This rule is difficult
to maintain consistently, and the usage in the volume doubt-
less varies somewhat.

The word “corn,” occurring in proper names, must be under-
stood in its distinctively American meaning of “maize.”
Maize being the one indigenous cereal of importance in Ameri-
can ritual and myth, “Spirits of the Corn” (to use Sir J. G.
Frazer’s classic phrase) are, properly speaking, in America
“ Spirits of the Maize.” A like ambiguity attaches to “ buffalo,”
which in America is almost universally applied to the bison.

The illustrations for the volume have been selected with a
view to creating a clear impression of the art of the North
American Indians, as well as for their pertinency to mythic
ideas. This art varies in character in the several regions quite
as much as does the thought which it reflects. It is interesting
to note the variety in the treatment of similar themes or in
the construction of similar ceremonial articles; for this reason
representations of different modes of presenting like ideas
have been chosen from diverse sources: thus, the Thunderbird
conception appears in Plates III, VI, XVI, and Figure l;
the ceremonial pole in Plates XII, XVII, XXX; and masks
from widely separate areas are shown in the Frontispiece and in
Plates IV, VII, XXV, XXXI. In a few cases (as Plates II,
VIII, IX, XI, XVIII, and probably XIX) the art is modified
by white influence; in the majority of examples it is purely



AUTHOR’S PREFACE


Vll


aboriginal. The motives which prompt the several treatments
are interestingly various: thus, the impulse which lies behind
Plates II, VIII, IX, XVIII, XIX is purely the desire for pic-
torial illustration of a mythic story; mnemonic, historical, or
heraldic in character — prompted by the desire for record —
are Plates V, X, XI, XVII, XX, XXI, XXX, XXXII, XXXIII;
while the majority of the remaining examples are representa-
tions of cult-objects. Through all, however, is to be observed
the keen aesthetic instinct which is so marked a trait of North
American tribes.

The author desires to express his sense of obligation to the
editor of this series. Dr. Louis H. Gray, for numerous and
valuable emendations, and to Dr. Melvin R. Gilmore, recently
of the Nebraska State Historical Society, now Curator of the
State Historical Society of North Dakota, especially for the
materials appearing in Note 58 and Plate XIV.

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER.


Marcb 1, 1916.




CONTENTS


PAGE

Author’s Preface v

Introduction xv

Chapter L The Far North i

I Norseman and Skraeling i

II The Eskimo’s World 3

III The World-Powers 5

IV The World’s Regions 6

V The Beginnings 8

VI Life and Death * 10


CHAPtER IL The Forest Tribes

I The Forest Region

II Priest and Pagan

' III The Manitos

IV The Great Spirit

V The Frame of the World

VI The Powers Above

VII The Powers Below

VIII The Elders of the Kinds

Chapter IIL The Forest Tribes

I Iroquoian Cosmogony

II Algonquian Cosmogony

III The Deluge

IV The Slaying of the Dragon

Y The Theft of Fire

Sun-Myths

VII The Village of Souls

VIII Hiawatha

Chapter IV. The Gulf Region

I Tribes and Lands

,^J[I^-Worship


13

13

IS

17

19

21

24

27

30

33

33

38

42

44

46

48

49
SI

S3

S3

5S



X


CONTENTS


PAGE


III The New Maize S 7

IV Cosmogonies 6o

V Animal Stories 64

VI Tricksters and Wonder-Folk 67

VII Mythic History 69

Chapter V. The Great Plains 74

I The Tribal Stocks 74

II An Athapascan Pantheon 77

III The Great Gods of the Plains 80

IV The Life of the World 82

V “Medicine” 85

Father Sun 87

VII Mother Earth and Daughter Corn 91

VIII The Morning Star 93

IX The Gods of the Elements 97

Chapter VI. The Great Plains (continued) 102

I Athapascan Cosmogonies 102

II Siouan Cosmogonies 105

III Ca.ddban Cosmogonies 107

X^JJf^-The Son of the Sun iiz.

V The Mystery of Death 115

VI Prophets and Wonder-Workers 120

VII Migration-Legends and Year-Counts 1 24

Chapter VIL Mountain and Desert 129

I The Great Divide 129

II The Gods of the Mountains 132

III The World and its Denizens 135

IV Shahaptian and Shoshonean World-Shapers .... 139

V Coyote 141

VI Spirits, Ghosts, and Bogies 145

VII Prophets and the Ghost-Dance 149

Chapter VIIL Mountain and Desert .... 154

I The Navaho and their Gods 154

II The Navaho Genesis ijg

III The Creation of the Sun 166

IV Navaho Ritual Myths igg



CONTENTS


XI

PAGE

V Apache and PIman Mythologf 175

VI Yuman Mythology 179

Chapter IX. The Pueblo Dwellers 182

I The Pueblos 182

11 Pueblo Cosmology 185

III Gods and Katcinas 187

IV The Calendar 192

V The Great Rites and their Myths 196

VI Sia and Hopi Cosmogonies 202

VII Zuni Cosmogony 206

Chapter X. The Pacific Coast, West 212

I The California-Oregon Tribes 212

II Religion and Ceremonies 215

III The Creator 217

IV Cataclysms 221

V The First People 225

VI Fire and Light 230

VII Death and the Ghost-World 233

Chapter XL The Pacific Coast, North 237

I Peoples of the North-West Coast 237

II Totemism and Totemic Spirits 240

III Secret Societies and their Tutelaries 245

IV The World and its Rulers 249

V The Sun and the Moon 254

VI The Raven Cycle 258

VII Souls and their Powers 262

Notes 267

Bibliography 315




ILLUSTRATIONS

FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

plate facing page

I Zuni masks for ceremonial dances — Coloured Fro^itispiece

II Encounter of Eskimo and Kablunait 2

III Harpoon-rest with sketch of a mythic bird capturing a

whale 8

III Dancing gorget 8

IV Ceremonial mask of the Iroquois Indians 14

V Chippewa pictograph — Coloured 18

VI Ojibway (Chippewa) quill-work pouch 22

VII Seneca mask 26

VIII Iroquois drawing of a Great Head — Coloured ... 30

IX Iroquois drawing of Stone Giants — Coloured ... 38

X Onondaga wampum belt 44

XI Iroquois drawing of Atotarho — Coloured 52

XII Florida Indians offering a stag to the Sun 56

XIII Fluman figure in stone 62

XIV Sacrifice to the Morning Star, pencil sketch by Charles

Knifechief 76

XV Portrait of Tahirussawichi, a Pawnee priest — ^Col-
oured 80

XVI Thunderbird fetish 84

XVII Sioux drawing — Coloured 90

XVIII Kiowa drawing — Coloured 112

XIX Cheyenne drawing 124

XX Kiowa calendar 128

XXI Ghost-Dance, painted on buckskin — Coloured . . 150

XXII Navaho gods, from a dry- or sand-painting — Col-
oured 156

XXIir Navaho dry- or sand-painting connected with the

Night Chant ceremony — Coloured. ....... 170



xiv


ILLUSTRATIONS


plate facing page

XXIV Apache medicine-shirt — Coloured 178

XXV Zuhi masks for ceremonial dances — Coloured ... 188

XXVI Wall decoration in the room of a Rain Priest, Zuni . 192

XXVII Altar of the Antelope Priests of the Hopi — Coloured 200

XXVIII Maidu image for a woman 216

XXIX Maidu image for a man 216

XXX Frame of Haida house with totem-pole 240

XXXI Kwakiutl ceremonial masks — Coloured 246

XXXII Haida crests, from tatu designs 256

XXXIII Chilkat blanket — Coloured 260

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

FIGURE PAGE

1 Birdlike deity 71

2 Map of the world as drawn by a Thompson River Indian 148

MAP

FACING PAGE

Map of the Linguistic Stocks of North America — Coloured • . 326



INTRODUCTION


I F the term be understood as signifying a systematic and
conscious arrangement of mythic characters and events,
it is certainly a misnomer to speak of the stories of the
North American Indians as “mythology.” To be sure, cer-
tain tribes and groups (as the Iroquois, the Pawnee, the Zuni,
the Bella Coola, to mention widely separate examples) have
attained to something like consistency and uniformity in
their mythic beliefs (and it is significant that in just these
groups the process of anthropomorphization has gone farthest);
but nowhere on the continent can we find anything like the
sense for system which in the Old World is in part evidenced
and in part introduced by the epic literatures — Aryan,
Babylonian, Greek, Norse.

Mythology in the classic acceptation, therefore, can scarcely
be said to exist in North America; but in quite another sense
— belief in more or less clearly personified nature-powers and
the possession of stories narrating the deeds and adventures
of these persons — the Indians own, not one, but many
mythologies; for every tribe, and often, within the tribe, each
clan and society, has its individual mythic lore. Here again
the statement needs qualifying. Beliefs vary from tribe to
tribe, even from clan to clan, and yet throughout, if one’s
attention be broadly directed, there are fundamental similari-
ties and uniformities that afford a basis for a kind of critical
reconstruction of a North American Indian mythology. No
single tribe and no group of tribes has completely expressed
this mythology — much less has any realized its form; but the
student of Indian lore can scarcely fail to become conscious of
a coherent system of myths, of which the Indians themselves



XVI


INTRODUCTION


might have become aware in course of time, if the intervention
of Old-World ideas had not confused them.

A number of distinctions are the necessary introduction to
any study of Indian myth. In the first place, in America, no
more than in the Old World, are we to identify religion with
mythology. The two are intimately related; every mythology
is in some degree an effort to define a religion; and yet there is
no profound parallelism between god and hero, no immutable
relation between religious ceremony and mythic tale, even
when the tale be told to explain the ceremony. No illustra-
tion could be better than is afforded by the fact that the great-
est of Indian mythic heroes, the Trickster-Transformer, now
Hare, now Coyote, now Raven, is nowhere important in ritual ;
while the powers which evoke the Indian’s deepest veneration.
Father Sky and Mother Earth, are of rare appearance in the
tales.

The Indian’s religion must be studied in his rites rather than
in his myths; and it may be worth while here to designate the
most significant and general of these rites. Foremost is the
calumet ceremony, in which smoke-offering is made to the sky,
the earth, and the rulers of earth’s quarters, constituting a kind
of ritualistic definition of the Indian’s cosmos. Hardly second
to this is the rite of the sweat-bath, which is not merely a means
of healing disease, but a prayer for strength and purification
addressed to the elements — earth, fire, water, air, in which
resides the life-giving power of the universe. Third in order
are ceremonies, such as fasting and vigil, for the purpose of
inducing visions that shall direct the way of life; for among the
Indian’s deepest convictions is his belief that the whole en-
vironment of physical life is one of strength-imbuing powers
only thinly veiled from sight and touch. Shamanistic or me-
diumistic rites, resting upon belief in the power of unseen
beings to possess and inspire the mortal body, form a fourth
group of ceremonies. A fifth is composed of the great com-
munal ceremonies, commonly called “dances” by white men.



introduction xvii

These arc<ahnosl invariably in the fonai of dramatic prayers -
combinations ot sacnhcc, song, and symbolic personation —
addressed tc' the great nature-powers, to sun and earth, to the
rain-bringers, and to tlic givers of food and game. A final
group is formed of rites honour of the dead or of ancestral
tutelari<-s, eereinomes usually annual and varying in purpose
from solicitude bn- the welfare of the departed to desire for
their assistance aitd propitiation of their possible ill will.

In these rituals are defined the essential beings of the In-
dian s pagan religion. There is the Great Spirit, represented
by Father Sky or by the sky’s great incarnation, the Sun
Father. Ihcic are Mother Earth and her daughter, the Corn
Mother. 1 here arc the intermediaries between the powers be-
low and those above, iitcluding the birds and the great mythic
Thunderbird, the winds and the clouds and the celestial bodies.
There are the Elders, or Guardians, of the animal kinds, who
replenish the earth with game and come as helpers to the hunts-
men; and llicre is the vast congeries of things potent, belong-
ing both to the seen and to the unseen world, whose help may
be won in the form of “medicine” by the man who knows the
usages of Nature.

Inevitably these powers find a fluctuating representation in
the varying imagery of myth. Consistency is not demanded,
for the Indian’s mode of thought is too deeply symbolic for
him to regard his own stories as literal: they are neither alle-
gory nor history; they are myth, with a truth midway between
that of allegory and that of history. Myth can properly be
defined only with reference to its sources and motives. Now
the motives of Indian stories are in general not difficult to
determine. The vast majority are obviously told for enter-
tainment; they represent an art, the art of fiction; and they
fall into the classes of fiction, satire and humour, romance,
adventure. Again, not a few are moral allegories, or they are
fables with obvious lessons, such as often appear in the story
of the theft of fire when it details the kinds of wood from which

X — ' .



svm


INTRODUCTION


fire can best be kindled. A third naotive is our universally
human curiosity: we desire to know the causes of things,
whether they be the forces that underlie recurrent phenomena
or the seeming purposes that mark the beginnings and govern
the course of history. Myths that detail causes are science in
infancy, and they are perhaps the only stories that may
properly be called myths. They may be simply fanciful ex-
planations of the origin of animal traits — telling why the
dog’s nose is cold or why the robin’s breast is red; and then we
have the beast fable. They may be no less fanciful accounts of
the institution of some rite or custom whose sanction is deeper
than reason; and we have the so-called aetiological myth.
They may be semi-historical reminiscences of the inauguration
of new ways of life, of the conquest of fire or the introduc-
tion of maize by mythical wise men; or they may portray re-
coverable tribal histories through the distorted perspective of
legend. In the most significant group of all, they seek to con-
ceptualize the beginnings of all things in those cosmogonic
allegories of which the nebular hypothesis is only the most
recently outgrown example.

Stories which satisfy curiosity about causes are true myths.
With this criterion it should perhaps seem an easy task for the
student to separate mythology from fiction, and to select or
reject from his materials. But the thing is not so simple.
Human motives, in whatever grade of society, are seldom un-
mixed; it is much easier to analyze them in kind than to
distinguish them in example. Take such a theme as the well-
nigh universally North American account of the origin of
death. On the face of it, it is a causal explanation; but in very
many examples it is a moral tale, while in not a few instances
both the scientific and the moral interest disappear before the
aesthetic. In a Wikeno story death came into the world by the
will of a little bird, — “How should I nest me in your warm
graves if ye men live forever?” — and however grim the fancy,
it is difficult to see anything but art in its motive; but in the

[Prometheus]

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).

[Prometheus]

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).

[Prometheus]

The religious and mythical ideas of the Eskimo wear the
hues of their life. They are savages, easily cheered when food
is plenty, and when disheartened oppressed rather by a blind
helplessness than by any sense of ignorance or any depth of
thought. Their social organization is loose; their law is
strength; their differences are settled by blood feuds; a kind
of unconscious indecency characterizes the relations of the
sexes; but they have the crude virtues of a simply gregarious
people — ready hospitality, willingness to share, a lively if fit-
ful affectionateness, a sense of fun. They are given to singing
and dancing and tale-telling; to magic and trance and spirit-
journeys. Their adventures in real life are grim enough, but
these are outmatched by their flights of fancy. As their life
demands, they are rapacious and ingrained huntsmen; and
perhaps the strongest trait of their tales is the succession of



THE FAR NORTH


S


images reflecting the intimate habits of a people whose every
member is a butcher — blubber and entrails and warm blood,
bones and the foulness of parasites and decay: these replace
the tenderer images suggested to the minds of peoples who
dwell in flowered and verdured lands.

HI. THE WORLD-POWERS

For the Eskimo, as for all savage people, the world is up-
held by invisible powers. Everything in nature has its Inua,®
its “owner” or “indweller”; stones and animals have their
Inue, the air has an Inua, there is even an Inua of the strength
or the appetite; the dead man is the Inua of his grave, the soul
is the Inua of the lifeless body. Inue are separable from the
objects of which they are the “owners”; normally they are
invisible, but at times they appear in the form of a light or a
fire — an ill-seen thing, foretokening death.

The “owners” of objects may become the helpers or guard-
ians of men and then they are known as Tornait.^ Especially
potent are the Inue of stones and bears; if a bear “owner”
becomes the Tornak of a man, the man may be eaten by the
bear and vomited up again; he then becomes an Angakok, or
shaman,® with the bear for his helper. Men or women with
many or powerful Tornait are of the class of Angakut, endowed
with magical and healing power and with eyes that see hidden
things.

The Greenlanders had a vague belief in a being, Tornarsuk,
the Great Tornak, or ruler of the Tornait, through whom the
Angakut obtained their control over their helpers; but a like
belief seems not to have been prevalent on the continent.®
In the spiritual economy of the Eskimo, the chief place is
held by a woman-being, the Old Woman of the Sea, — Nerri-
vik, the “Food Dish,” the north Greenlanders call her, — while
Sedna is a mainland name for her.'^ Once she was a mortal
woman; a petrel wooed her with entrancing song and carried



6


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


her to his home beyond the sea. Too late she found that he
had deceived her. When her relatives tried to rescue her,
the bird raised such a storm that they cast her into the sea to
save themselves; she attempted to cling to the boat, but they
cut off her hand, and she sank to the bottom, her severed fin-
gers being transformed into whales and seals of the several
kinds. In her house in the depths of the sea Nerrivik dwells,
trimming her lamp, guarded by a terrible dog, and ruling over
the animal life of the deep. Sometimes men catch no seals,
and then the Angakut go down to her and force or persuade
her to release the food animals; that is why she is called the
“Food Dish.” It is not difficult to perceive in this Woman of
the Sea a kind of Mother of Wild Life — a hunter folk’s god-
dess, but cruel and capricious as is the sea itself.

In the house of Sedna is a shadowy being, Anguta, her father.
Some say that it was he who rescued her and then cast her
overboard to save himself, and he is significantly surnamed
“the Man with Something to Cut.” Like his daughter, Anguta
has a maimed hand, and it is with this that he seizes the dead
and drags them down to the house of Sedna — for her sover-
eignty is over the souls of the dead as well as over the food of
the living; she is Mistress of Life and of Death. According to
the old Greenlandic tradition, when the Angakut go down to
the Woman of the Sea they pass first through the region of
the dead, then across an abyss where an icy wheel is forever
revolving, next by a boiling cauldron with seals in it, and lastly,
when the great dog at the door is evaded, within the very en-
trance there is a second abyss bridged only by a knifelike way.
Such was the Eskimo’s descensus Averno.^

IV. THE WORLD’S REGIONS

As the Eskimo’s Inland is peopled with monstrous tribes,
so is his Sea-Front populous with strange beings.® There are
the Inue of the sea — a kind of mermen; there are the mirage-



THE FAR NORTH


7


like Kayak-men who raise storms and foul weather; there are
the phantom women’s boats, the Umiarissat, whose crews,
some say, are seals transformed into rowers. Strangest of all
are the Fire-People, the Ingnersuit, dwelling in the cliffs, or,
as it were, in the crevasse between land and sea. They are of
two classes, the Pug-Nosed People and the Noseless People.
The former are friendly to men, assisting the kayaker even
when invisible to him; the Noseless Ones are men’s enemies,
and they drag the hapless kayaker to wretched captivity down
beneath the black waters. An Angakok was once seal-hunting,
far at sea; all at once he found himself surrounded by strange
kayaks — the Fire-People coming to seize him. But a commo-
tion arose among them, and he saw that they were pursued
by a kayak whose prow was like a great mouth, opening and
shutting, and slaying all that were in its path; and suddenly
all of the Fire-People were gone from the surface of the sea.
Such was the power of the shaman’s helping spirit.

In the Eskimo’s conception there are regions above and re-
gions below man’s visible abode, and the dead are to be found
in each.^“ Accounts differ as to the desirability of the several
abodes. The mainland people — or some of them — regard the
lower world as a place of cold and storm and darkness and
hunger, and those who have been unhappy or wicked in this
life are bound thither; the region above is a land of plenty
and song, and those who have been good and happy, and also
those who perish by accident or violence, and women who die
in child-birth, pass to this upper land. But there are others
who deem the lower world the happier, and the upper the realm
of cold and hunger; yet others maintain that the soul is full
of joy in either realm.

The Angakut make soul-journeys to both the upper and the
lower worlds.^^ The lower world is described as having a sky
like our own, only the sky is darker and the sun paler; it is
always winter there, but game is plentiful. Another tale tells
of four cavernous underworlds, one beneath the other; the

X— 3



8


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


first three are low-roofed and uncomfortable, only the fourth
and lowest is roomy and pleasant. The upper world is beyond
the visible sky, which is a huge dome revolving about a moun-
tain-top; it is a land with its own hills and valleys, duplicating
Earth. Its “owners” are the Inue of the celestial bodies, who
once were men, but who have been translated to the heavens
and are now the celestial lights. The road to the upper world
is not free from perils: on the way to the moon there is a
person who tempts wayfarers to laughter, and if successful
in making them laugh takes out their entrails.® Perhaps this
is a kind of process of disembodying; for repeatedly in Es-
kimo myth occur spirit-beings which when seen face to face
appear to be human beings, but when seen from behind are
like skeletons.^®


V. THE BEGINNINGS

The Sun and the Moon were sister and brother — mortals
once. In a house where there was no light they lay together,
and when the sister discovered who had been her companion,
in her shame she tore off her breasts and threw them to her
brother, saying, “Since my body pleaseth thee, taste these,
too.” Then she fled away, her brother pursuing, and each
bearing the torches by means of which they had discovered
one another. As they ran they rose up into the heavens;
the sister’s torch burned strong and bright, and she became
the Sun; the brother’s torch died to a mere ember, and he be-
came the Moon.“ When the Sun rises in the sky and summer
is approaching, she is coming “to give warmth to orphans,”
say the Eskimo; for in the Far North, where many times in
the winter starvation is near, the lot of the orphan is grimly
uncertain.

The Greenlanders are alert to the stars, especially those
that foretell the return of the summer sun; when Orion is
seen toward dawn, summer is coming and hearts are joyous.




PLATE III


I

Example of gorget, or breast-ornament, of wood,
used by the Eskimo of western Alaska in shaman istic
dances, often in combination with a mask. On the
original (now in the United States National Museum),
the central figure of a man standing on a whale and
holding fishes is painted in red, all the other figures be-
ing in black. The central figure represents a marine
god or giant, probably the Food-Giver. See Note 9,
(p. 274).


2

Harpoon-rest with sketch of a mythic bird captur-
ing a whale. From Cape Prince of Wales, Now in
United States National Museum. The bird is prob-
ably the Thunderbird, as in the similar motive in the
art of the North-West Coast Indians.





THE FAR NORTH


9


The Eskimo tell how men with dogs once pursued a bear far
out on the ice; suddenly the bear began to rise into the air,
his pursuers followed, and this group became the constellation
which we name Orion. A like story is sometimes told of the
Great Bear (Ursa Major). Harsher is the tale which tells of
the coming of Venus: “He who Stands and Listens” — for
the sun’s companion is a man to the Eskimo. An old man, so
the story goes, was sealing near the shore; the noise of chil-
dren playing in a cleft of rock frightened the seals away;
and at last, in his anger, he ordered the cleft to close over them.
When their parents returned from hunting, all they could do
was to pour a little blood down a fissure which had been left,
but the imprisoned children soon starved. They then pursued
the old man, but he shot up into the sky and became the lumi-
nous planet which is seen low in the west when the light begins
to return after the wintry dark.^^

The Eskimo do not greatly trouble themselves with thoughts
as to the beginnings of the world as a whole; rather they take
it for granted, quite unspeculatively. There is, however, an
odd Greenlandic tale of how earth dropped down from the
heavens, soil and stones, forming the lands we know. Babies
came forth — earth-born — and sprawled about among the
dwarf willows; and there they were found by a man and a
woman (none knows whence these came), and the woman made
clothes for them, and so there were people; and the man
stamped upon the earth, whence sprang, each from its tiny
mound, the dogs that men need.^® At first there was no death;
neither was there any sun. Two old women debated, and one
said, “Let us do without light, if so we can be without death”;
but the other said, “Nay, let us have both light and death!”
— and as she spoke, it was so.“

The Far North has also a widely repeated story of a deluge
that destroyed most of the earth’s life, as well as another wide-
spread account of the birth of the different races of man-
kind — for at first all men were Eskimo — from the union of a



lO


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


girl with a dog; the ancestors of the white men she put in
the sole of a boot and sent them to find their own country,
and when the white men’s ships came again, lo, as seen from
above, the body of each ship looked precisely like the sole of a
boot!


VI. LIFE AND DEATH

Birth and death, in Eskimo conception, are less a beginning
and an end than episodes of life. Bodies are only instruments
of souls — the souls which are their “owners”; and what re-
spect is shown for the bodies of the dead is based upon a very
definite awe of the potencies of their Inue, which have been
augmented rather than diminished by the last liberation.
Souls may be born and reborn both as man and as beast,
and some have been known to run the whole gamut of the ani-
mal kingdom before returning to human shape.^® Ordinarily
human souls are reborn as men. Monsters, too, are born of
human parents : one of the most ghastly of the northern tales
is the story of “the Baby who ate its parents”; it tore off its
mother’s breasts as she suckled it, it devoured her body and
ate its father; and then, covered with its parents’ blood and
crying for meat, it crawled horribly toward the folk, who fled
in terror.^®

Besides the soul which is the body’s “owner” the Eskimo be-
lieve in a name-soul.®® The name of the dead man is not men-
tioned by his kinsfolk until a child has come into the world to
bear it anew. Then, when the name has thus been rAorn, the
dead man’s proper soul is free to leave the corpse and go to
the land of the departed. An odd variant of this Greenlandic
notion was encountered by Stefansson among the western
tribes: these people believe that the soul of the dead relative
enters the body of the new-born child, guarding and protect-
ing its life and uttering all its words until it reaches the age of
discretion; then the child’s own soul is supposed to assume
sway, and it is called after a name of its own. If there have



THE FAR NORTH


II


been a number of deaths previous to a birth, the child ma7
have several such guardian spirits.

Sometimes a child had dire need of guardian spirits. Such
a one was Qalanganguase; his parents and his sister were dead;
he had no kindred to care for him and he was paralysed in
the lower part of his body. When his fellow-villagers went
hunting, he was left alone; and then, in his solitude, the spirits
came and whiled away the hours. Once, however, the spirit
of his sister was slow in going (for Qalanganguase had been
looking after the little child she had left when she died), and
the people, on their return, saw the shadow of her flitting feet.
When Qalanganguase told what had happened, the villagers
challenged him to the terrible song-duel in which the Angakut
try one another’s strength; and they bound him to the sup-
ports of the house and left him swinging to and fro. But the
spirit of his mother came to him, and his father’s spirit, say-
ing, “Journey with us”; and so he departed with them, nor
did his fellow-villagers ever find him again.^®

Qalanganguase was an orphaned child and a cripple; his
rights to life — in the Polar North — were little enough.
Mitsima was an old man. He was out seal-catching in mid-
winter; a storm came up, and he was lost to his companions.
When the storm passed, his children saw him crawling like
a dog over the ice, for his hands and feet were frozen — his
children saw him, but they were afraid to go out to him, for
he was near unto death. “He is an old man,” they said, and
so they let him die; for the aged, too, have little right to life
in the Polar North.

Perhaps it is necessity rather than cruelty in a region where
life is hard. Perhaps it is that death seems less final, more
episodic, to men whose lives are always in peril. Perhaps it
is the ancient custom of the world, which only civilized men
have forgotten. “We observe our old customs,” said a wise
elder to Knud Rasmussen — and he was speaking of the ob-
servation of the rites for the dead — “in order to hold the



12


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


world up, for the powers must not be offended. We observe
our customs, in order to hold each other up. We are afraid of
the great Evil. Men are so helpless in the face of illness. The
people here do penance, because the dead are strong in their
vital sap, and boundless in their might.”



CHAPTER II


THE FOREST TRIBES

1. THE FOREST REGION

W HEN British and French and Dutch colonized North
America in the seventeenth century, the region which
they entered was a continuous forest extending northward to
the tree line of Labrador and Hudson’s Bay west, southward to
the foot-hills of the mountains and the shores of the Gulf, and
westward to about the longitude of the Mississippi River.
This vast region was inhabited by numerous tribes of a race
new to white men. The Norse, during their brief stay in Vin-
land, on the northern borders of the forest lands, had heard,
through the Skraelings, of men who wore fringed garments,
carried long spears, and whooped loudly; but they had not
seen those people, whom it had remained for Columbus first
to encounter. These men — “Indians” Columbus had called
them — were, in respect to polity, organized into small tribal
groups; but these groups, usually following relationship in
speech and natural proximity, were, in turn, loosely bound to-
gether in “confederacies” or “nations.” Even beyond these
limits affinity of speech delimited certain major groups, or
linguistic stocks, normally representing consanguineous races;
and, indeed, the whole forest region, from the realm of the
Eskimo in the north to the alluvial and coastal lands bordering
on the Gulf, was dominated by two great linguistic stocks, the
Algonquian and the Iroquoian, whose tribes were the first
aborigines encountered by the white colonists.

The Algonquians, when the whites appeared, were by far
the more numerous and wide-spread of the two peoples.



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


14

Their tribes included, along the Atlantic coast, the Micmac of
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the Abnaki, Pcnnacook,
Massachuset, Nauset, Narraganset, Pequot, etc., of New
England, the Mahican and Montauk of New York, the Dela-
ware of New Jersey, and the Nanticoke and Powhatan of Vir-
ginia and North Carolina. North of the St. Lawrence were the
Montagnais and Algonquin tribes, while westward were the
Chippewa and Cree, mainly between the Great Lakes and
Hudson’s Bay. The Potawatomi, Menominee, Sauk and Fox,
Miami, Illinois, and Shawnee occupied territory extending
from the western lakes southward to Tennessee and westward
to the Mississippi. On the Great Plains the Arapaho and Chey-
enne and in the Rocky Mountains the Siksika, or Blackfeet,
were remote representatives of this vast family of tribes.
In contrast, the Iroquoian peoples were compact and little di-
vided. The two centres of their power were the region about
Lakes Erie and Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence, south-
ward through central New York and Pennsylvania, and the
mountainous region of the Carolina and Virginia colonies.
Of the northern tribes the Five Nations,^® or Iroquois Con-
federacy, of New York, and the Canadian Huron, with whom
they were perpetually at war, were the most important; of
the southern, the Tuscarora and Cherokee. In all the wide
territory occupied by these two great stocks the only consid-
erable intrusion was that of the Catawba, an offshoot of the
famed Siouan stock of the Plains, which had established
itself between the Iroquoian Cherokee and the Algonquian
Powhatan.

[Prometheus]

 

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

[Prometheus]

PLATE VI

Chippewa side pouch ot black dressed buckskin
ornamented with red, blue, and yellow quill-work.
The two large birds represented are Thunderbirds.
Specimen in the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts. Sec Note 32 (pp. 287-88), and compare
Plates III, XVI, and Figure i.




i i*'"


li'-\







THE FOREST TRIBES


23


aelow — the powers that send upward the fructifying springs
ind break forth as spirits of life in Earth’s verdure. Further,
Doth the realms above and the realms below are habitations
for the souls of departed men; for to the Indian death is only a
:hange of life.

The Chippewa believe that there are four “layers,” or
storeys, of the world above, and four of the world below.
Fhis is probably only a reflection in the overworld and the
aether world of the fourfold structure of the cosmos, since
four is everywhere the Indian’s sacred number. The root of
the idea is to be found In the conception of the four cardinal
points or of the quarters of the world,®^ from which came the
ministering genii when the Earth was made, and in which
these spirits dwell, upholding the corners of the heavens.
Potogojecs, a Potawatomi chief, told Father De Smet how
Nanaboojoo (Manibozho) “placed four beneficial spirits at
the four cardinal points of the earth, for the purpose of con-
tributing to the happiness of the human race. That of the
north procures for us ice and snow, in order to aid us in dis-
covering and following the wild animals. That of the south
gives us that which occasions the growth of our pumpkins,
melons, maize and tobacco. The spirit placed at the west
gives us rain, and that of the east gives us light, and com-
mands the sun to make his daily walks around the globe.”
Frequently the Indians identify the Spirits of the Quarters
with the four winds. Ga-oh is the Iroquoian Wind Giant, at
the entrance to whose abode are a Bear and a Panther and a
Moose and a Fawn: “When the north wind blows strong, the
Iroquois say, ‘The Bear is prowling in the sky’; if the west
wind is violent, ‘The Panther is whining.’ When the east wind
blows chill with its rain, ‘The Moose is spreading his breath’;
and when the south wind wafts soft breezes, ‘The Fawn is
returning to its Doe.’” Four is the magic number In all In-
dian lore; fundamentally it represents the square of the direc-
tions, by which the creator measured out his work.



24


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


VI. THE POWERS ABOVE

Even greater than the Wind Giant is the Thunderer,
whom the Iroquois deemed to be the guardian of the Heavens,
armed with a mighty bow and flaming arrows, hater and de-
stroyer of all things noxious, and especially to be revered as
having slain the great Serpent of the waters, which was de-
vouring mankind. Hino is the Thunderer’s name, and his
bride is the Rainbow; he has many assistants, the lesser Thun-
derers, and among them the boy Gunnodoyah, who was once
a mortal. Hino caught this youth up into his domain, armed
him with a celestial bow, and sent him to encounter the great
Serpent; but the Serpent devoured Gunnodoyah, who com-
municated his plight to Hino in a dream, whereupon the
Thunderer and his warriors slew the Serpent and bore Gunno-
doyah, still living, back to the Skies. Commonly the Thun-
derer is a friend to man; but men must not encroach upon his
domain. The Cherokee tell a tale of “the Man who married
the Thunder’s sister”: lured by the maiden to the Thunder’s
cave, he Is there surrounded by shape-shifting horrors, and
when he declines to mount a serpent-steed saddled with a
living turtle. Thunder grows angry, lightning flashes from his
eye, and a terrific crash stretches the young brave senseless;
when he revives and makes his way home, though it seems to
him that he has been gone but a day, he discovers that his
people have long given him up for dead; and, indeed, after
this he survives only seven days.®®

One of HIno’s assistants is Oshadagea, the great Dew Eagle,
whose lodge is in the western sky and who carries a lake of dew
in the hollow of his back. When the malevolent Fire Spirits
are destroying Earth’s verdure, Oshadagea flies abroad, and
from his spreading wings falls the healing moisture. The Dew
Eagle of the Iroquois is probably only the ghost of a Thunder-
bird spirit, which has been replaced, among them, by Hino the
Heavenly Archer. The Thunderbird is an invisible spirit; the



THE FOREST TRIBES


25


lightning is the flashing of his eye; the thunder is the noise of
his wings. He is surrounded by assistants, the lesser Thunder-
ers, especially birds of the hawk-kind and of the eagle-kind;
Keneu, the Golden Eagle, is his chief representative. If it
were not for the Thunderers, the Indians say, the earth would
become parched and the grass would wither and die. Pere
Le Jeune tells how, when a new altar-piece was installed in
the Montagnais mission, the Indians, “ seeing the Holy Spirit
pictured as a dove surrounded by rays of light, asked if the
bird was not the thunder; for they believe that the thunder is
a bird; and when they see beautiful plumes, they ask if they
are not the feathers of the thunder.”

The domain above the clouds is the heaven of the Sun and
the Moon and the Stars. The Sun is a man-being, the Moon a
woman-being; sometimes they are brother and sister, some-
times man and wife.^® The Montagnais told Pere Le Jeune
that the Moon appeared to be dark at times because she held
her son in her arms: “‘If the Moon has a son, she is married,
or has been?’ ‘Oh, yes, the Sun is her husband, who walks all
day, and she all night; and if he be eclipsed or darkened, it is
because he also sometimes takes the son which he has had by
the Moon into his arms.’ ‘Yes, but neither the Sun nor the
Moon has any arms.’ ‘Thou hast no sense; they always hold
their drawn bows before them, and that is why their arms do
not appear.’” Another Algonquian tribe, the Menominee,
tell how the Sun, armed with bow and arrows, departed for
a hunt; his sister, the Moon, alarmed by his long absence,
went in search of him, and travelled twenty days before she
found him. Ever since then the Moon has made twenty-day
journeys through the sky. The Iroquois say that the Sun,
Adekagagwaa, rests in the southern skies during the winter,
leaving his “sleep spirit” to keep watch in his stead. On the
eve of his departure, he addresses the Earth, promising his
return: “Earth, Great Mother, holding your children close
to your breast, hear my power! ... I am Adekagagwaa!



26


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


I reign, and I rule all your lives! My field is broad where
swift clouds race, and chase, and climb, and curl, and fall
in rains to your rivers and streams. My shield is vast and cov-
ers your land with its yellow shine, or burns it brown with
my hurrying flame. My eyes are wide, and search everywhere.
My arrows are quick when I dip them in dews that nourish
and breathe. My army is strong, when I sleep it watches my
fields. When I come again my warriors will battle throughout
the skies; Ga-oh will lock his fierce winds; Heno will soften
his voice; Gohone [Winter] will fly, and tempests will war
no more!”

The Indians know the poetry of the stars. It is odd to find
the Iroquois telling the story of the celestial bear, precisely
as it is told by the Eskimo of northern Greenland: how a
group of hunters, with their faithful dog, led onward by the
excitement of the chase, pursued the great beast high into the
heavens, and there became fixed as the polar constellation
(Ursa Major). In the story of the hunter and the Sky Elk
the sentiment of love mingles with the passion of the chase.
Sosondowah (“Great Night”), the hunter, pursued the Sky
Elk, which had wandered down to Earth, far up into the
heaven which is above the heaven of the Sun. There Dawn
made him her captive, and set him as watchman before the
door of her lodge. Looking down, he beheld and loved a
mortal maiden; in the spring he descended to her under the
form of a bluebird; in the summer he wooed her under the
semblance of a blackbird; in the autumn, under the guise of a
giant nighthawk, he bore her to the skies. But Dawn, angered
at his delay, bound him before her door, and transforming
the maiden into a star set her above his forehead, where he
must long for her throughout all time without attaining her.
The name of the star-maiden, which is the Morning Star, is
Gendenwitha, “It Brings the Day.” The Pleiades are called
the Dancing Stars. They were a group of brothers who were
awakened in the night by singing voices, to which they began




PLATE VII


Secret society mask of the Seneca. The Cireat
Wind Mask/’ a medicine or doctor mask, used in the
ceremonies of the False Face Company. This society
is said to have originated with the Stone Giants, who
are represented in one of the masks used. Repro-
duced by courtesy of Arthur C. Parker, Archaeologist
of the New York State Museum. Sec Note 65
(pp. 309-10), and compare Frontispiece and Plates
IV, XXV, XXXL





THE FOREST TRIBES


27


to dance. As they danced, the voices receded, and they, fol-
lowing, were led, little by little, into the sky, where the pitying
Moon transformed them into a group of fixed stars, and bade
them dance for ten days each year over the Red Man’s council-
house; that being the season of his New Year. One of the danc-
ing brothers, however, hearing the lamentations of his mother,
looked backward; and immediately he fell with such force that
he was buried in the earth. For a year the mother mourned
over his grave, when there appeared from it a tiny sprout,
which grew into a heaven-aspiring tree; and so was born the
Pine, tallest of trees, the guide of the forest, the watcher of
the skies.

VII. THE POWERS BELOW

As there are Powers above so are there Powers below. Earth
herself is the eldest and most potent of these.®^ Nokomis,
“Grandmother,” is her Algonquian name, but the Iroquois
address her as Eithinoha, “Our Mother”; for, they say, “the
earth is living matter, and the tender plantlet of the bean and
the sprouting germ of the corn nestling therein receive through
their delicate rootlets the life substance from the Earth. . . .
Earth, indeed, feeds itself to them; since what is supplied to
them is living matter, life in them is produced and conserved,
and as food the ripened corn and bean and their kinds, thus
produced, create and develop the life of man and of all living
things.”

Earth’s daughter, in Iroquois legend, is Onatah, the Corn
Spirit.®® Once Onatah, who had gone in search of refreshing
dews, was seized by the Spirit of Evil and imprisoned in his
darkness under the Earth until the Sun found her and guided
her back to the lost fields; never since has Onatah ventured
abroad to look for the dews. The Iroquois story is thus a
parallel of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. The
Chippewa, on the other hand, make of the Corn Spirit a
heaven-sent youth, Mondamin, who is conquered and buried



28


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


by a mortal hero: from his grave springs the gift of maize.
Other food plants, such as the bean and the pumpkin, as
well as wild plants and the various species of trees, have their
several spirits, or Manitos; indeed, the world is alive with
countless mysteries, of every strength and size, and the for-
est is all thronged with armies of Pukwudjies, the Indian’s
fairy folk.®® “During a shower of rain thousands of them are
sheltered in a flower. The Ojibwa, as he reclines beneath the
shade of his forest trees, imagines these gods to be about
him. He detects their tiny voices in the insect’s hum. With
half-closed eyes he beholds them sporting by thousands on a
sun-ray.”

The Iroquois recognize three tribes of Jogaoh, or Dwarf
People: the Gahonga, of the rocks and rivers, whom the In-
dians call “Stone Throwers” because of their great strength
and their fondness for playing with stones as with balls; the
Gandayah, who have a care for the fruitfulness not only of
the land — for they fashion “dewcup charms” which attract
the grains and fruits and cause them to sprout, — but also
of the water, where they release captive fish from the trap
when the fishermen too rapaciously pursue; and the Ohdowas,
or underground people. The underworld where the Ohdowas
live is a dim and sunless realm containing forests and plains,
like the earth of man, peopled with many animals — all of which
are ever desirous to ascend to the sunny realm above. It is
the task of the Ohdowas to keep these underworld creatures
in their proper place, especially since many of them are venom-
ous and noxious beasts; and though the Ohdowas are small,
they are sturdy and brave, and for the most part keep the mon-
strous beings imprisoned; rarely do the latter break through
to devastate and defile the world above. As there are under-
earth people, so are there underwater people® who, like the
Fire-People of the Eskimo, are divided into two tribes, one
helpful, one hurtful to man. These underwater beings are
human in form, and have houses, like those of men, beneath



THE FOREST TRIBES


29


the waters; but they dress in snake’s skins and wear horns.
Sometimes their beautiful daughters lure mortal men down
into the depths, to don the snake-skin costume and to be lost
to their kindred forever.

Of monstrous beings, inhabiting partly the earth’s surface,
partly the underworld, the Iroquois recognize in particular
the race of Great Heads and the race of Stone Giants.
The Great Heads are gifted with penetrating eyes and provided
with abundant hair which serves them as wings; they ride on
the tempest, and in their destructive and malevolent powers
seem to be personifications of the storm, perhaps of the tornado.
In one tale, which may be the detritus of an ancient and crude
cosmogony, the Great Head obviously plays the role of a
demiurge; and a curious story tells of the destruction of one
of the tribe which pursued a young woman into her lodge and
seeing her parching chestnuts concluded that coals of fire were
good to eat; partaking of the coals, it died. These bizarre
creatures are well calculated to spice a tale with terrors.

The Iroquoian Stone Giants,®® as well as their congeners
among the Algonquians (e. g. the Chenoo of the Abnaki and
Micmac), belong to a wide-spread group of mythic beings of
which the Eskimo Tornit are examples. They are powerful
magicians, huge in stature, unacquainted with the bow, and
employing stones for weapons. In awesome combats they fight
one another, uprooting the tallest trees for weapons and rend-
ing the earth in their fury. Occasionally, they are tamed by
men and, as they are mighty hunters, they become useful
friends. Commonly they are depicted as cannibals ; and it may
well be that this far-remembered mythic people is a reminis-
cence, coloured by time, of backward tribes, unacquainted
with the bow, and long since destroyed by the Indians of his-
toric times.® Of course, if there be such an historic element in
these myths, it is coloured and overlaid by wholly mythic con-
ceptions of stone-armoured Titans or demiurges (see Ch. Ill,
i, ii).



30


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


VIII. THE ELDERS OF THE KINDS «

The Onondaga story of the beginnings of things closes with
these words: “Moreover, it is verily thus with all things
that are contained in the earth here present, that they sev-
erally retransform or exchange their bodies. It is thus with all
things that sprout and grow, and, in the next place, with all
things that produce themselves and grow, and, in the next
place, all the man-beings. All these are affected in the same
manner, that they severally transform their bodies, and, in
the next place, that they retransform their bodies, severally,
without cessation” (Hewitt, 2 i ARBE, pp. 219-20).

Savages, and perhaps all people who live near to Nature, are
first and inevitably Heracliteans : for them, as for the Greek
philosopher, all things flow, the sensible world is a world of
perpetual mutation; bodies, animate and inanimate, are but
temporary manifestations — outward shadows of the multi-
tude of shape-shifting Powers which govern the spectacle from
behind the scene. Yet even the savage, conscious as he is of
the impermanency of sensible things, detects certain constant
forms, persistently reappearing, though in various individual
embodiments. These forms are the natural kinds — the kin-
dreds or species into which Nature is divided; they are the
Ideas of things, as a greater Greek than Heraclitus would say;
and the Indians all develop into Platonists, for they hold that
each natural kind has its archetype, or Elder (as they prefer),
dwelling in an invisible world and sustaining the temporary
lives of all its earthly copies by the strength of its primal
being.

The changing seasons themselves — which, for all peoples
beyond the tropics, are the great facts governing the whole
strategy of life — become fixed in a kind of constancy, and
are eventually personified into such beings as we still fanci-
fully form for Spring and Summer and Winter and Autumn.®®
To be sure, the seasons are not so many for peoples whose sus-




PLATE VIII


Iroquois drawing of a Great Head — a type of
bodiless, man-eating monster (see Note 37, pp. 290--
91). The picture, reproduced from Schoolcraft, Indian
Trihesj part i, Plate LXXII, is an illustration of the
story of the outwitting of the (Jrcat Hea<l by an In-
dian woman, a story common to many of the Eastern
tribes (see p. 29),

[Prometheus]

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.

[Prometheus]

THE FOREST TRIBES


41


The story is recorded by Father De Smet: “A great manitou
came on earth, and chose a wife from among the children of
men. He had four sons at a birth; the first-born was called
Nanaboojoo, the friend of the human race, the mediator be-
tween man and the Great Spirit; the second was named
Chipiapoos, the man of the dead, who presides over the coun-
try of the souls; the third, Wabasso, as soon as he saw the
light, fled toward the north where he was changed into a white
rabbit, and under that name is considered there as a great
manitou; the fourth was Chakekenapok, the man of flint, or
fire-stone. In coming into the world he caused the death of
his mother.” The tale goes on to tell the deeds of Nanaboojoo.
(l) To avenge his mother he pursues Chakekenapok and slays
him: “all fragments broken from the body of this man of
stone then grew up into large rocks; his entrails were changed
into vines of every species, and took deep root in all the for-
ests; the flintstones scattered around the earth indicate where
the different combats took place.”®® (2) Chipiapoos, the
beloved brother of Nanaboojoo, venturing one day upon the
ice, was dragged to the bottom by malignant manitos, where-
upon Nanaboojoo hurled multitudes of these beings into the
deepest abyss. For six years he mourned Chipiapoos, but at
the end of that time four of the oldest and wisest of the mani-
tos, by their medicine, healed him of his grief. “The mani-
tous brought back the lost Chipiapoos, but it was forbidden
him to enter the lodge; he received, through a chink, a burning
coal, and was ordered to go and preside over the region of
souls, and there, for the happiness of his uncles and aunts,
that is, for all men and women, who should repair thither,
kindle with this coal a fire which should never be extinguished.”
Nanaboojoo then initiated all his family into the mysteries
of the medicine which the manitos had brought. (3) After-
ward Nanaboojoo created the animals, put the earth, roots,
and herbs in charge of his grandmother, and placed at the four
cardinal points the spirits that control the seasons and the



42


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


heavenly bodies, while in the clouds he set the Thunderbirds,
his intermediaries.^^


III. THE DELUGE«

The second of these episodes of the Potawatomi legend, in
its more universal form, is the tale identified by the Jesuit
Fathers as a reminiscence of the Biblical Deluge. In his
Relation of 1633, Le Jeune gives the Montagnais version:

‘'They say that there is one named Messou, who restored
the world when It was lost in the waters. . . . This Messou,
going hunting with lynxes, instead of dogs, was warned that it
would be dangerous for his lynxes (which he called his brothers)
in a certain lake near the place where he was. One day as
he was hunting an elk, his lynxes gave it chase even into the
lake; and when they reached the middle of it, they were sub-
merged in an instant. When he arrived there and sought his
brothers everywhere, a bird told him that it had seen them at
the bottom of the lake, and that certain animals or monsters
held them there; but immediately the lake overflowed, and
increased so prodigiously that it inundated and drowned the
whole earth. The Messou, very much astonished, gave up all
thought of his lynxes, to meditate on creating the world anew.
He sent a raven to find a small piece of earth with which to
build up another world. The raven was unable to find any,
everything being covered with water. He made an otter dive
down, but the depth of the water prevented it from going to
the bottom. At last a muskrat descended, and brought
back some earth. With this bit of earth, he restored every-
thing to its condition. He remade the trunks of the trees,
and shot arrows against them, which were changed into
branches. It would be a long story to recount how he re-
established everything; how he took vengeance on the mon-
sters that had taken his hunters, transforming himself into a
thousand kinds of animals to circumvent them. In short,



THE FOREST TRIBES


43

the great Restorer, having married a little muskrat, had chil-
dren who repeopled the world.”

The Menominee divide the story. They tell how Moqwaio,
the Wolf, brother of Manabush, was pulled beneath the ice
of a lake by the malignant Anamaqkiu and drowned; how
Manabush mourned four days, and on the fifth day met the
shade of his brother, whom he then sent to the place of the
setting sun to have care of the dead, and to build there a
fire to guide them thither. The account of the deluge, how-
ever, comes in connexion with the conflict of the Thunderers,
under the direction of Manabush who is bent on avenging his
brother, and the Anamaqkiu, led by two Bear chiefs. Mana-
bush, by guile, succeeded in slaying the Bears, whereupon the
Anamaqkiu pursued him with a great flood. He ascended a
mountain, and then to the top of a gigantic pine; and as the
waters increased he caused this tree to grow to twice , its height.
Four times the pine doubled in altitude, but still the flood
rose to the armpits of Manabush, when the Great Spirit made
the deluge to cease. Manabush causes the Otter, the Beaver,
the Mink, and the Muskrat, in turn, to dive in search of a
grain of earth with which he can restore the world. The first
three rise to the top, belly uppermost, dead; but the Muskrat
succeeds, and the earth is created anew.

A third version of the deluge-myth tells how the Great Hare,
with the other animals, was on a raft in the midst of the waters.
Nothing could be seen save waterfowl. The Beaver dived,
seeking a grain of soil; for the Great Hare assured the ani-
mals that with even one grain he could create land. Neverthe-
less, almost dead, the Beaver returned unsuccessful. Then the
Muskrat tried, and he was gone nearly a whole day. When he
reappeared, apparently dead, his four feet were tight-clenched;
but in one of them was a single grain of sand, and from this
the earth was made, in the form of a mountain surrounded by
water, the height ever increasing, even to this day, as the
Great Hare courses around it.



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


44

It is obvious that in this chaotic flood we have an Indian
equivalent of “the waters below the firmament” in the midst
of which, according to the Hebrew genesis, the dry land
appeared. And the Indians, like the Semites, conceived the
world to be a mountain, rising from the waste of cosmic
waters, and arched by the celestial dome. “They believe,”
says the author of the Relation of 1637, “that the earth is
entirely flat, and that its ends are cut off perpendicularly;
that souls go away to the end which is at the setting Sun
and that they build their cabins upon the edge of the great
precipice which the earth forms, at the base of which there
is nothing but water.”

IV. THE SLAYING OF THE DRAGON

The deeds of the Great Hare include many contests with
the giants, cannibals, and witches who people Algonquian
folk-tales. In these he displays adept powers as a trickster
and master of wile, as well as a stout warrior. The conflict with
Flint turns, as in the Iroquois tradition, upon a tricky dis-
covery of what substance is deadly to the Fire-Stone Man:
Flint asks the Hare what can hurt him; he replies, the cat’s-
tail, or featherdown, or something of the sort, and, in turn,
puts the question to Flint, who truthfully answers, “the horn
of the stag”; and it is with stag’s horn that the Hare fractures
and flakes his body — a mythic reminiscence, we may suppose,
of the great primitive industry of flint-flaking by aid of a
horn implement.

The great feat of the Hare as a slayer, however, was his
destruction of the monstrous Fish or Snake which oppressed
and devoured men and animals. This creature like the Teu-
tonic Grendel was a water monster, and ruler of the Powers of
the Deep.® Sometimes, as in the Iroquoian myth, he is a
horned serpent; commonly, among the Algonquians, he is a
great fish — the sturgeon which swallows Hiawatha. The




PLATE X

Onondaga wampum belt believed to commemorate
the formation of a league (possibly the Iroquois Con-
federacy) or an early treaty with the Thirteen Colonies
(there are thirteen figures of men). After JRBEj
p. 252.






THE FOREST TRIBES 45

Menominee tell how the people were greatly distressed by
Mashenomak, the aquatic monster who devoured fishermen.
Manabush allows himself to be swallowed by the gigantic
creature, inside of which he finds his brothers, the Bear, the
Deer, the Raven, the Pine-Squirrel, and many others. They
all hold a war-dance in the monster’s maw, and when Mana-
bush circles past the heart he thrusts his knife into it, causing
Mashenomak to have a convulsion; finally, he lies motionless,
and Manabush cuts his way through to the day. In another
version, Misikinebik, the monster who has destroyed the
brother of Manabush, is slain by the hero in the same fashion.
The Micmac, who live beside the sea, make the great fish to
be a whale, who is a servant rather than a foe of Glooscap,
and upon whose back he is carried when he goes in search of
his stolen brother and grandmother. The Clams (surely tame
substitutes for water demons!) sing to the Whale to drown
Glooscap; but she fails to understand them, and is beached
through his trickery. “Alas, my grandchild!” she lamented,
“you have been my death. I can never get out of this.”
“Never you mind, Noogumee,” said Glooscap, “I’ll set you
right.” And with a push he sends her far out to sea. It is
evident that the legend has passed through a long descent!

In his war against the underwater manitos, the assistants
of the Great Hare are the Thunderbirds. In the Iroquoian
version it is the Thunderboy who is swallowed by the horned
water-snake, from whose maw he is rescued by Thunder and
his warriors — as in the Hiawatha story it is the gulls who re-
lease the prisoner from the sturgeon’s belly in which he has
been engulfed as a consequence of his rash ambition to con-
quer the ruler of the depths. The myth has many variants
however, and while it may sometimes represent the storm
goading to fury the man-devouring waters, in a more uni-
versal mode it would seem to be but an American version of
the world-old conception of the conquest of the watery Chaos
by the creative genius of Light.



46


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


V. THE THEFT OF FIRE«

The conquest of fire by man deservedly ranks among the
most impressive of all race-memories, for perhaps no one nat-
ural agency has done so much to exalt the potency of the human
race as has that which gives us heat and light and power.
Mythic imagination everywhere ascribes a divine origin to
fire; the heaven, or some other remote region over which
guardian powers preside, is the source of this great agency,
from which — as in the Greek tale of Prometheus — it is
“stolen in the pith” and borne among men to alleviate their
estate.

In Algonquian myth the Great Hare, here as elsewhere, is
“the benefactor of mankind.” A Menominee version begins
quite naively; “Manabush, when he was still a youth, once
said to his grandmother Nokomis, ‘Grandmother, it is cold
here and we have no fire; let me go to get some.’” Nokomis
endeavours to dissuade him, but the young hero, in his canoe,
starts eastward across the waters to an island where dwells
the old man who has fire. “This old man had two daughters,
who, when they emerged from the sacred wigwam, saw a little
Rabbit, wet and cold, and carefully taking it up they carried
it into the sacred wigwam, where they set it down near the
fire to warm.” When the watchers are occupied, the Rabbit
seizes a burning brand and scurries to his canoe, pursued by
the old man and his daughters. “The velocity of the canoe
caused such a current of air that the brand began to burn
fiercely”; and thus fire is brought to Nokomis. “The Thun-
derers received the fire from Nokomis, and have had the care
of it ever since.”

It is not difficult to see in the old man across the Eastern
waters a Sun-God, nor in the sacred wigwam with its maiden
watchers a temple of fire with its Vestals. “Fire,” says De
Smet, “is, in all the Indian tribes that I have known, an em-
blem of happiness or good fortune.” It is the emblem of life,



THE FOREST TRIBES


47


too. Said a Chippewa prophet: “The fire must never be suf-
fered to go out in your lodge. Summer and winter, day and
night, in storm or when it is calm, you must remember that
the life in your body and the fire in your lodge are the same
and of the same date. If you suffer your fire to be extinguished,
at that moment your life will be at its end.” Even in the
other world, fire is the source of life; there Chibiabos keeps the
sacred fire that lights the dead thither; and, says De Smet,
“ to see a fire rising mysteriously, in their dreams or otherwise,
is the symbol of the passage of a soul into the other world.”
He narrates, in this connexion, the fine Chippewa legend of
a chief, arrow-stricken in the moment of victory, whose body
was left, in all its war-panoply, facing the direction of the
enemy’s retreat. On the long homeward return of the war-
party, the chief’s spirit accompanies the warriors and tries to
assure them that he is not dead, but present with them;
even when the home village is reached and he hears his deeds
lauded, he is unable to make his presence known; he cannot
console his mourning father; his mother will not dress his
wounds; and when he shouts in the ear of his wife, “I am
thirsty! I am hungry!” she hears only a vague rumbling.
Then he remembers having heard how the soul sometimes for-
sakes its body, and he retraces the long journey to the field of
battle. As he nears it, a fire stands directly in his path. He
changes his course, but the fire moves as he does; he goes to
the right, to the left, but the spirit-fire still bars his way. At
last, in desperate resolution, he cries out: “I also, I am a spirit;
I am seeking to return to my body; I will accomplish my de-
sign. Thou wilt purify me, but thou shalt not hinder the
realization of my project. I have always conquered my ene-
mies, notwithstanding the greatest obstacles. This day I will
triumph over thee, Spirit of Fire!” With an intense effort he
darts through the mysterious flame, and his body, to which
the soul is once more united, awakens from its long trance on
the field of battle.*®



48


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


VI. SUN-MYTHS

The Old Man and the Maids from whom Manabush steals
the fire belong to the Wabanunaqsiwok, the Dawn-People,
who dress in red; and, should a man or a woman dream of the
Dawn-People, he or she must forthwith prepare a ball game.
This, it is said, was instituted by Manabush in celebration of
his victory over the malignant manitos; he made Kineun,
the Golden Eagle and Chief of the Thunderers, leader of one
side, and Owasse, the Bear and Chief of the Underground
People, leader of the other; “ but the Thunderers always win
the game, even though the sky be darkened by cloud and rain.^®

It is easy to recognize in the ball, which bears the colours
of the East and the West, red and yellow, a symbol of the
Sun; and in this myth (as in the Iroquois legend of the rape
of the Sun) “ to see a story of the ceaseless conflict of Day
and Night, with Day the eternal conqueror. Sun-symbolism,
also, seems to underlie the tale of Ball-Carrier, i® the boy who
was lured away by an old witch who possessed a magic ball
that returned of itself to her wigwam when a child pursued it,
and who was sent by her in search of the gold (Sunlight) and
the magic bridge (Rainbow) in the lodge of a giant beyond
the waters. Ball-Carrier, who is a kind of Indian Jack the
Giant-Killer, steals the gold and the bridge, and after many
amazing adventures and transformations returns to his home.

A similar, perhaps identical, character is the Tchakabech of
Le Jeune’s Relation of 1637.^ Tchakabech is a Dwarf, whose
parents have been devoured by a Bear (the Underworld Chief)
and a Great Hare, the Genius of Light. He decided to ascend
to the Sky and climbed upward on a tree, which grew as he
breathed upon it, until he reached the heavens, where he found
the loveliest country in the world. He returned to the lower
world, building lodges at intervals in the branches of the
tree, and induced his sister to mount with him to the Sky;
but the little child of the sister broke off the end of the tree,



THE FOREST TRIBES


49


just low enough so that no one could follow them to their des-
tination. Tchakabech snared the Sun in a net; during its cap-
tivity there was no day below on earth; but by the aid of a
mouse who sawed the strands with his sharp teeth, he was at
last able to release the Sun and restore the day. In the Menom-
inee version recorded by Hoffman, the snare is made by a
noose of the sister’s hair, and the Sun is set free by the un-
aided efforts of the Mouse.

In these shifting stories we see the image of changing Na-
ture — Day and Night, Sunlight and Darkness, the Heavens
above and the Earth beneath, coupled with a vague appre-
hension of the Life that Is in all things, and a dim effort to
grasp the origins of the world.

VII. THE VILLAGE OF SOULS

The Great Hare, the Algonquians say, departed, after his
labours, to the far West, where he dwells in the Village of
Souls with his Grandmother and his Brother. Perrot tells of
an Indian who had wandered far from his own country, en-
countering a man so tall that he could not descry his head.
The trembling hunter hid himself, but the giant said: “My
son, why art thou afraid? I am the Great Hare, he who has
caused thee and many others to be born from the dead bodies
of various animals. Now I will give thee a companion.” Ac-
cordingly, he bestowed a wife on the man, and then continued,
“Thou, man, shalt hunt, and make canoes, and do all things
that a man must do; and thou, woman, shalt do the cooking
for thy husband, make his shoes, dress the skins of animals,
sew, and perform all the tasks that are proper for a woman.”
Le Jeune relates another tale: how “a certain savage had re-
ceived from Messou the gift of immortality in a little package,
with a strict injunction not to open it; while he kept it closed
he was immortal, but his wife, being curious and incredulous,
wished to see what was inside this present; and having opened



50 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

it, it all flew away, and since then the savages have been
subject to death.” Thus, in the New World as in the Old,
woman’s curiosity is mankind’s bane.^®

[Prometheus]

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.”

[Prometheus]

In the opening ceremony (according to one authority) the
fire-maker is said to converse with “the Master of Breath.”
Doubtless the cane tipped with white feathers is (as white
feathers are elsewhere) a symbol of the breath of life, and the
rite at the riverbank is thus to be interpreted as the death of
the year throughout the world’s quarters.

That the Indians regarded the Busk as a period of momen-
tous change is clear from its attendant social consequences.
The women burned or otherwise destroyed old vessels, mats,
and the like, replacing them with new and unused ones; the
town was cleansed; and all crimes, except murder, were for-
given. The new fire was the symbol of the new life of the
new year, whose food was now for the first time taken;
while the fasting and purgation were purificatory rites to
prepare men for new undertakings. The usual date for the
ceremony was in July or August, though it varied from town
to town with the ripening of the maize. Ceremonies similar
to the Creek Busk, though less elaborate, were observed by
the Chickasaw, Seminole, and, doubtless, by other Muskho-
gean tribes.



6o


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


IV. COSMOGONIES «

The Gulf States, representing a region into which tribes
from both the north and the west had pressed, naturally show
diverse and contradictory conceptions, even among neighbour-
ing tribes. Perhaps most interesting is the contrast of cos-
mogonic ideas. The Forest tribes of the north commonly find
the prototype of the created world in a heaven above the
heavens, whose floor is the visible Armament; the tribes of the
South-West very generally regard the habitable earth as an
upper storey into which the ancestors of man ascended from
their pristine underground abodes. Both of these types of cos-
mogony are to be found in the Gulf region.

Naturally the Cherokee share with their Iroquoian cousins
the belief in an original upper world, though their version of
the origin of things is by no means as rich and complicated as
the Iroquois account. “The earth,” they say, “is a great island
floating in a sea, and suspended at each of the four cardinal
points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is
of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the
people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink
down into the ocean, and all will be water again.” Originally
the animals were crowded into the sky-world; everything was
flood below. The Water-Beetle was sent on an exploration,
and after darting about on the surface of the waters and find-
ing no rest, it dived to the depths, whence it brought up a bit
of mud, from which Earth developed by accretion.^® “When
the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still
dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track to go every day
across the island from east to west, just overhead. It was too
hot this way, and Tsiskagili, the Red Crayfish, had his shell
scorched a bright red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the
Cherokee do not eat it. The conjurers put the sun another
handbreadth higher in the air, but it was still too hot. They
raised it another time, and another, until it was seven hand-



THE GULF REGION


6i


breadths high and just under the sky arch. Then it was right,
and they left it so. This Is why the conjurers call the highest
place ‘the seventh height,’ because it Is seven handbreadths
above the earth. Every day the sun goes along under this arch,
and returns at night on the upper side to the starting place.” ^

The primeval sky-world and the chaos of waters, the episode
of the diving for earth, and the descent of life from heaven all
indicate a northern origin; but there are many features of this
myth suggestive of the far South-West, such as the crowding
of the animals in their original home, the seven heights of
heaven, and the raising of the sun. Furthermore, the Cherokee
myth continues with an obvious addition of south-western
ideas: “There is another world under this, and It is like ours
in everything — animals, plants, and people — save that the
seasons are different. The streams that come down from
the mountains are the trails by which we reach this under-
world, and the springs at their heads are the doorways by
which we enter it, but to do this one must fast and go to water
and have one of the underground people for a guide. We
know that the seasons in the underworld are different from
ours, because the water in the springs is always warmer in
winter and cooler in summer than the outer air.”

Among other Cherokee myths having to do with the begin-
nings of things is a legend of the theft of fire — a tale widely
distributed throughout America. The world was cold, says
the myth, until the Thunders sent their lightnings to implant
fire in the heart of a sycamore, which grew upon an island.
The animals beheld the smoke and determined to obtain the fire
to warm the world. First the birds attempted the feat, Raven
and Screech Owl and Horned Owl and Hooting Owl, but came
away only with scorched feathers or blinking eyes. Next the
snakes. Black Racer and Blacksnake, in succession swam
through the waters to the Island, but succeeded only in black-
ening their own skins. Finally, Water-Spider spun a thread
from her body and wove it into a tusti bowl which she fastened



6z


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


on her back and in which she succeeded in bringing home a
live coal.®^ Game and Corn came into the world through the
activities of two bo7s, one the son and one the foster-son of
old man Lucky Hunter and his wife Corn. The boys followed
their father into the woods, saw him open the rock entrance
of the great cave in which the animals were confined, and after-
ward in mischief loosed all the animals, to people the world
with game.^^ Their mother Corn they slew, and wherever
her blood fell upon the ground there maize sprang up.^® The
parents went to the East and dwelt with the sunrise, but the
boys themselves became the Thunderers and abode in the
darkening West, and the songs which they taught to the
hunters are still used in the chase of deer.

Like the Cherokee, the Yuchi held to the northern cosmog-
ony — an upper world, containing the Elders of men and ani-
mals, and a waste of waters below. Animal after animal
attempts to bring up earth from the deep, until, in this legend,
the crayfish succeeds in lifting to the surface the embryonic
ball whence Earth is to grow. The Yuchi add, however, an
interesting element to the myth: The new-formed land was
semi-fluid. Turkey-Buzzard was' sent forth to inspect it, with
the warning that he was not to flap his wings while soaring
above earth’s regions. But, becoming wearied, he did so, to
avoid falling, and the effect upon the fluid land of the winds so
created was the formation of hill and valley.

In contrast to these tales of a primeval descent or fall
from an upper world are the cosmogonic myths of an ascent
from a subterranean abode, which the Muskhogean tribes share
with the Indians of the South-West. “At a certain time, the
Earth opened in the West, where its mouth is. The earth
opened and the Cussitaws came out of its mouth, and set-
tled near by.” This is the beginning of the famous migra-
tion-legend of the Creeks, as preserved by Gatschet.®^ The
story recounts how the earth became angry and ate up a por-
tion of her progeny; how the people started out on a journey




PLATE XIII


Human figure in stone, probably representing a
deity ; height 2 i }4 inches. Found in Bartow County,
Georgia. After Report of the United States National
Museum^ 1896, Plate XLIV.





THE GULF REGION 63

toward the sunrise; how they crossed a River of Slime, then a
River of Blood, and came to the King of Mountains, whence a
great fire blazed upward with a singing sound. Here there was
an assembly of the Nations, and a knowledge of herbs and of
fire was given to men : from the East came a white fire, which
they would not use; from the South a blue fire, neither would
they have this; from the West came a black fire, and this, too,
was refused; but the fire from the North, which was red and
yellow, they took and mingled with the fire from the mountain,
“and this is the fire they use today; and this, too, sometimes
sings.” On the mountain they found a pole which was rest-
less and made a noise; they sacrificed a motherless child to
it,^® and then took it with them to be their war standard.'*®
At this same place they received from singing plants knowl-
edge of the herbs and purifications which they employ in
the Busk.

The Choctaw, like the Creek, regard themselves as earth-
born. In very ancient times, before man lived, Nane Chaha
(“high hill”) was formed, from the top of which a passage led
down into the caverns of earth from which the Choctaw
emerged, scattering to the four points of the compass. With
them the grasshoppers also appeared, but their mother, who
had stayed behind, was killed by men, so that no more of the
insects came forth, and ever after those that remained on
earth were known to the Choctaw as “mother dead.” The
grasshoppers, however, in revenge, persuaded Aba, the Great
Spirit, to close the mouth of the cave; and the men who re-
mained therein were transformed into ants.'*®

The Louisiana Choctaw continue their myth with the story
of how men tried to build a mound reaching to the heavens,
how the mound was thrown down and a confusion of tongues
ensued, how a great flood came, and how the Choctaw and
the animals they had taken ?with them into a boat were saved
from the universal deluge — all elements of an obviously
OldrWorld origin; though the story of the smoking mountain,



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


64

and of the cavern peopled by the ancestral animals and men,
is to be found far in the North and West on the American
continent, to which it is undoubtedly native.

V. ANIMAL STORIES

To the most primitive stratum of myth belong those tales of
the beginnings of things which have to do, not with the source
of the world — for the idea that man’s habitat is itself a single
being, with beginning and end, is neither a simple nor a very
primitive concept — but which recount the origins of animal
traits. How Snake got his poison, why ’Possum has a large
mouth, why Mole lives underground, why Cedar is red-grained
— these are titles representative of a multitude of stories nar-
rating the beginnings of the distinctive peculiarities of ani-
mals and plants as the Indian’s fancy conjectures them. The
Gulf-State region is particularly rich in tales of this type,
and it has been urged very plausibly that the prevalence of
similar and identical animal stories among the Indians and
negroes points to a common and probably American source
for most of them.

The snakes, the bees, and the wasps got their venom, ac-
cording to the Choctaw story, when a certain water- vine, which
had poisoned the Indians who came to the bayou to bathe,
surrendered its poison to these creatures out of commisera-
tion for men; the opossum got his big mouth, as stated by
these same Indians, from laughter occasioned by a malev-
olent joke which he perpetrated upon the deer; the mole lives
underground, say the Cherokee, for fear of rival magicians
jealous of his powers as a love-charmer; and in Yuchi story
the red grain of the cedar is due to the fact that to its top is
fastened the bleeding head of the wizard who tried to kill
the sun.

The motives inspiring the animal stories are various. Doubt-
less, the mere love of story-telling, for entertainment’s sake, is



THE GULF REGION


65

a fundamental stimulus; the plot is suggested \>y nature, and
the fancy enlarges upon it, frequently with a humorous or
satirical vein. But from satire to moralizing is an easy turn;
the story-teller who sees human foible in the traits of animals
is well on the way to become a fabulist. Many of the Indian
stories are intended to point a moral, just as many of them are
designed to give an answer, more or less credible, to a natural
difference that stimulates curiosity. Thus we find morals
and science, mingling instruction with entertainment, in this
most primitive of literary forms.

Vanity is one of the motives most constantly employed.
The Choctaw story of the raccoon and the opossum tells how,
long ago, both of these animals possessed bushy tails, but the
opossum’s tail was white, whereas the raccoon’s was beauti-
fully striped. At the raccoon’s advice, the opossum undertook
to brown the hairs of his tail at a fire, but his lack of caution
caused the hair to burn, and his tail has been smooth ever
since. A similar theme, with an obvious moral, is the Chero-
kee fable of the buzzard’s topknot: “The buzzard used to
have a fine topknot, of which he was so proud that he refused
to eat carrion, and while the other birds were pecking at the
body of a deer or other animal which they had found he would
strut around and say: ‘You may have it all, it is not good
enough for me.’ They resolved to punish him, and with the
help of the buffalo carried out a plot by which the buzzard
lost not his topknot alone, but nearly all the other feathers
on his head. He lost his pride at the same time, so that he is
willing enough now to eat carrion for a living.”

Vengeance, theft, gratitude, skill, and trickery in contest
are other motives which make of these tales not only explana-
tions but lessons. The fable of the lion and the mouse has a
Cherokee analogue in the story of the wolf whose eyes were
plastered shut, while he slept, by a malicious raccoon; a bird,
taking pity on the wolf, pecked the plaster from his eyes; and
the wolf rewarded the bird by telling him where to find red



66


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


paint with which he might colour the sombre feathers of his
breast. This was the origin of the redbird. The story of the
hare and the tortoise is recalled by the race of the crane and
the humming-bird; the swift humming-bird outstripped the
crane by day but slept at night; the lumbering crane, because
of his powers of endurance, flying night and day, won the
race. Even more suggestive of the same fable is the tale of
how the terrapin beat the rabbit, who had challenged him to
a race, by posting at each station on the course a member of
his family, himself awaiting his antagonist at the finish.

Magic and transformation stories form still another class
presenting many analogies to similar Old-World tales.^® The
Cherokee have a story, immediately reminiscent of German
folk-tales, of a girl who found a bullfrog sitting beside the
spring where she went for water; the bullfrog transformed
himself into a young man, whom she married, but his face
always had a froggish look. In other cases transformation is
for the sake of revenge, as the eagle who assumed human form
after his mate had been killed, and who took vengeance upon
the tribe of the hunter. Probably the moral of the broken
tabu lies at the basis of this story, for this is a frequent motive
in tales where men are transformed into animals or animals
assume human shape. Thus, a hungry hunter is turned into a
snake for eating squirrel meat, which was tabu to him; another
has his death foretold by a katydid whose song he ridicules;
another is lured by a doe, which comes to life after he has
slain her, to the cavern of the deer, and is there himself trans-
formed into a deer, returning to his own people only to die.
Stories of the Rip Van Winkle type develop from this theme
of the hunter lured away by animals, as in the instance of the
man who spent a night with the panthers, and found, upon his
return, that he had been lost a whole season; while Euro-
pean tales of merfolk find their parallels in stories of under-
water towns to which fishermen are dragged or lured by wizard
fishes.



THE GULF REGION


67


VI. TRICKSTERS AND WONDER-FOLK«

The telling of animal stories leads naturally to the formation
of groups of tales in which certain animals assume constant
and characteristic rUes, and attain to the rank of mythic be-
ings. The Brer Rabbit stories, made famous as negro tales
by Joel Chandler Harris, appear as a veritable saga cycle
among the Cherokee, from whom they are doubtless borrowed.
There can be little question that “ Brer Rabbit” — vain, tricky,
malicious — is a southern and humorous debasement of the
Great Hare, the Algonquian demiurge and trickster; while
the Turtle, also important in northern cosmogony, is repre-
sented by the put-upon, but shifty, “Brer Terrapin” of the
southern tales. The “tar baby” by which the thieving Rabbit
was tricked and caught appears in Cherokee lore as a “tar
wolf,” set as a trap ; the Rabbit, coming upon it by night, kicks
it and is stuck fast; the wolf and the fox find him caught, and
debate how he shall be put to death; the Rabbit pleads with
them not to cast him into the thicket to perish, which accord-
ingly they do, and thus he makes off. The escape of an animal
from his captors through pretending fear of his natural ele-
ment and thus inducing them to throw him into it is a frequent
incident in animal tales, while the “tar baby” story has va-
riants, as Mooney says, “not only among the Cherokee, but
also in Mexico, Washington, and southern Alaska — wher-
ever, in fact, the pinon or the pine supplies enough gum to
be molded into a ball for Indian uses.” Another legend found
from coast to coast, and known to Cherokee and Creek, is the
story of how the Rabbit dines the Bear (the “imitation of
the host” theme, as it is called, which has endless variants
throughout the continent) : “The Bear invited the Rabbit to
dine with him. They had beans in the pot, but there was no
grease for them, so the Bear cut a slit in his side and let the
oil run out until they had enough to cook the dinner. The
Rabbit looked surprised, and thought to himself, ‘That’s a



68


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


handy way. I think I’ll try that.’ When he started home he in-
vited the Bear to come and take dinner with him. When the
Bear came the Rabbit said, ‘I have beans for dinner, too.
Now I’ll get grease for them.’ So he took a knife and drove it
into his side, but instead of oil, a stream of blood gushed out
and he fell over nearly dead. The Bear picked him up and
had hard work to tie up the wound and stop the bleeding.
Then he scolded him, ‘You little fool, I’m large and strong
and lined all over with fat; the knife don’t hurt me; but
you’re small and lean, and you can’t do such things.’”

[Prometheus]

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.

[Prometheus]

NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


76

The manner of life of the Plains tribes was everywhere
much the same. They were in the main hunters, living in
towns during the winter and in summer moving their portable
camps from place to place within the tribal hunting range.
The skin tipi, or Indian tent, was the usual type of dwelling,
generally replacing the bark wigwam of the forests; but the
Caddoan and some other tribes built substantial earth lodges
— a form of dwelling which archaeological research shows to
have been ancient and wide-spread along the banks of the
great western rivers. Agriculture,^'* too, was more important
and more highly developed among the earth-lodge dwellers,
being partly a symbol and partly a consequence of their more
settled life. It found its reflection, also, in ideas, the most
significant and terrible instance being that underlying the
Morning Star sacrifice of the Skidi Pawnee, which, like the
similar rite of the Kandhs (or Khonds) of India, consisted in
the sacrifice of a virgin, commonly a captive from a hostile
tribe, whose body was torn to pieces and buried in the fields
for the magical fructification of the grain.®® One of the most
romantic stories of the West is of the deed of Pctalesharo, a
Skidi warrior of renown.*’® A Comanche maiden was about to
be sacrificed according to custom when Petalesharo stepped
forward, cut the thongs which bound the captive, declaring
that such sacrifices must be abolished, and bearing her through
the crowd of his tribesmen, placed her upon a horse and con-
veyed her to the borders of her own tribal territories. This was
in the early part of the nineteenth century, and it is said that
his act put an end to the rite.

In warlike zeal and enterprise the Indians of the Plains
were no whit inferior to the braves of the East. The coming
of the horse, presumably of Spanish introduction, added won-
derfully to the mobility of the Indian camp, and opened to
native daring a new field, — that of horse-stealing; so that the
man who successfully stole his enemy’s horses was little less
distinguished than he who took hostile scalps. The Indian’s




PLAl'E XIV


Pencil sketch by Charles KniFcchicf, representing
the scaffold used by the Skidi l^iwnee in the sacrihee
to the Morning Star. See Note 58 (pp. 303 06),
By courtesy of Dr, Melvin R, (iilmore.





THE GREAT PLAINS


77


wars were really in the nature of elaborate feuds, giving oppor-
tunity for the display of prowess and the winning of fame, like
the chivalry of the knight-errant; they were rarely intentional
aggressions. Nor was Indian life wanting in complex rituals
for the making of peace and the spread of a sense of brotherhood
from tribe to tribe. Under the great tutelage of Nature noble
and beautiful ceremonies were created, having at their heart
truths universal to mankind; and nowhere in America were
such mysteries loftier and more impressive than among the
tribes of the Great Plains.

II. AN ATHAPASCAN PANTHEON®

Of all the great stocks of the Plains the Athapascan tribes
(with the exception of the Navaho) show the least native ad-
vancement. The northern Athapascans, or Tinne tribes, in
particular, while good hunters and traders, are far from war-
like, even in self-defence, and their arts are inferior to the
general level of the Plains peoples. The ideas of these tribes
are correspondingly nebulous and confused. Father Jette,
who has made a study of the mind of the Yukon Indians, says
of them that “whereas there is a certain uniformity in the
practices” of these people, “there are very few points of belief
common to several individuals, and these are of the vaguest
kind.” And he and other observers find a certain emptiness
in the rites of the far north, as if the Indians themselves had
forgotten their real significance.

Father Jette gives a general analysis of the Yukon pantheon.
The Tinne, he says, are incapable of conceiving really spiritual
substances, but they think of a kind of aeriform fluid, capable
of endless transformations, visible and invisible at will, pene-
trating all things and passing wherever they wish; and these
are the embodiments of spiritual power. There is little that is
personal and little that is friendly in these potencies; the relig-
ion of the Tinne is a religion of fear.



78 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

The four greater spirits among these powers are Man of
Cold, Man of Heat, Man of Wind, and a Spirit of Plague
(Tena-ranide), the evil that afflicts man’s body, known by
many names and appearing in many forms. Man of Cold
“reigns during the winter months, causes the frost and the
snow, kills people by freezing them to death, takes possession
of the body at death, and faithfully covers the grave of the
Tena with a shroud of snow.” Man of Heat is the foe of Cold,
whom he has conquered in the summer, as he succumbs in
turn during the season of cold.^® He is more friendly to man
than is Cold, but still must be kept in check, for he, too,
stifles and suffocates when the chance is offered him. Wind
brings death and destruction in storm; while Tena-ranide is
Death itself stalking the earth, and ever in wait for man —
literally, says Father jette, the name means “the thing for
man,” that is, “the thing that kills man.”

It is obvious enough that here we have the world-scheme of
a people for whom the shifts of nature arc the all-important
events of life. Changes of season and weather are great and
sudden in the continental interior of North America, becoming
more perilous and striking as the Arctic zone is approached;
and so we find, as we might expect, that the peoples of the
northern inland make Heat and Cold and Windy Storm fore-
most of their gods, with the grisly form of ever-striking Death
for their attendant. Below these greater spirits there is a
multitude of confused and phantom powers. There are souls
of men and animals, the soul which is “next to” the body
and makes it live; there are the similar souls of “those who are
becoming again,” or awaiting reincarnation; finally, there
is a strange shadow-world of doubles, not only for men and
animals, but for some inanimate objects. The Yoga (“pic-
ture,” “shadow”), as the double is called, is “a protecting
spirit, jealous and revengeful, whose mission is not to avert
harm from the person or thing which it protects but to punish
the ones who harm or misuse it.” When a man is to die, his



THE GREAT PLAINS


79


Yega is first devoured by Tena-ranide or one of the malevolent
Nekedzaltara, who are servants of the death-bringer. The
familiars, or daemons, of the shamans, form another class of
personal spirits, similar to the Tornait of the Eskimo Angakut,
whose function Is to give their masters knowledge of the hidden
events and wisdom of the world, as well as power over disease
and death.

The Nekedzaltara, “Things,” form a class or classes of the
hordes of nature-powers, visible and invisible, which people
the world with terrors. Father Jette gives a folk-tale descrip-
tion of one of these beings — one form out of a myriad. The
story seems to be a version of the wide-spread North American
tale of the hero who is swallowed by a water-dwelling mon-
ster, from whose body he cuts his way to freedom. The hero
has just gotten into the Nekedzaltara’s mouth; ^

“Then he stopped and looked around him. He was in a
kettle-shaped cave, the bottom of which was covered with
boiling water; from this large bubbles were constantly coming
forth. Looking up he saw stretching above his head a huge
jaw; and looking down he saw another enormous jaw beneath
him. Then he realized that he had put himself into the very
mouth of a devil: he had gone into It unawares. He was deep
in it, close to the throat, where the boiling water was bubbling
up. The long twisting ropes were appendages to the devil’s
jaw, and now they began to encircle him and closed fast upon
him. But he drew his sword and cut them. Then he ran out
of the dreadful cave. Before going, as he saw the big teeth on
the monster’s jaw, he pulled out one of them and took it with
him. . . . And he gave the devil’s tooth to his master.”

It is easy to see in this monster a whale, says the recorder;
and certainly it is quite possible that this version of the story
got its picturesque detail from the Arctic and the Eskimo, to
whose beliefs those of the Tinne tribes show so many parallels.
Of course, the story is known far to the South also, — in the
episode of Hiawatha and the sturgeon, for example.



8o


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


III. THE GREAT GODS OF THE PLAINS

On the plains there is a majestic completeness of almost
every view of earth and sky. There are no valley walls to
narrow the horizon; there arc no forests to house men from
the heavens. The circle of the horizon is complete and whole,
and the dome of the sky, where the rainbow forms frequently
in perfect arc, is vast and undiminished. To men accustomed
to the broad spaces and simple lines of such vision, the brilliant
blue of predominantly sunny skies, the green of the summer
prairies, the sparkling white of the winter plains, the world
seemed at once colossal and intelligible. Its plan was the plan
of their own lodges: a flat and circular base over which was
hung the tent of the skies, with door to the east, the direction
of the rising sun. “If you go on a high hill,” said a Pawnee
priest, “and look around, you will see the sky touching the
earth on every side, and within this circular enclosure the people
dwell.” The lodges of men were made on the same plan, to
“represent the circle which Father Heaven has made for the
dwelling-place of all the people”; and, in many tribes, the camp
form was also circular, the tipis being ranged in a great ring,
within which each clan had its assigned position.

The great gods of men in such a world form a natural, in-
deed an inevitable, hierarchy. Supreme over all is Father
Heaven, whose abode is the highest circle of the visible uni-
verse.® Tirawa-atius is his Pawnee name. All the powers in
heaven and on earth arc derived from him; he is father of all
things visible and invisible, and father of all the people, per-
petuating the life of mankind through the gift of children.
The Pawnee symbols of Tirawa are white featherdown, typi-
fying the fleecy clouds of the upper heavens — and hence the
cloud-bearing winds and the breath of life — and, in face-
painting, a blue line drawn arch-like from check to check over
the brow, with a straight line down the nose which symbolizes
the path by which life descends from above. Yet the Pawnee




PLAT!-: XV


Portrait of Tahirussawichi, a Pawnee priest.^ bearing
in hi<; hands an cagle-phnnc wand^ symbol of Mother
Kartli^ and a rattle marked with blue lines embkntiatic of
the Sky, After JRHH, part 2, Plate LXXXV,





THE GREAT PLAINS


8i


are not anthropomorphic in their ideas. “The white man
speaks of a Heavenly Father; we say Tirawa-atius, the Father
above, but we do not think of Tirawa as a person. We think of
Tirawa as in everything, as the Power which has arranged and
thrown down from above everything that man needs. What the
power above, Tirawa-atius, is like, no one knows; no one has
been there.”

The priest who made this remark also said: “At the crea-
tion of the world it was arranged that there should be lesser
powers. Tirawa-atius, the mighty power, could not come near
to man, therefore lesser powers were permitted. They were to
mediate between man and Tirawa.” The Sun Father and Earth
Mother were the two foremost of these lesser powers, whose
union brings forth all the moving pageantry of life. The Morn-
ing Star, the herald of the Sun, is scarcely less important.
The Winds from the four quarters of the world, the life-giving
Vegetation, Water, -the Hearth-Fire — all these are powers
calling for veneration. In the intermediate heavens, below
Sun and Moon, yet above man’s reach, are the bird messen-
gers, with the Eagle at their head, each with its special wisdom
and guidance. Here, too, dwell the Visions which descend to
the dreamer, giving him revelations direct from the higher
powers ; and here the dread Thunder wings his stormy course.

With little variation, these deities — Heaven, Earth, Sun,
Moon, Morning Star, Wind, Fire, Thunder — form the com-
mon pantheon of the Plains tribes. The agricultural tribes,
as the Pawnee and Mandan Indians, give the Corn Mother
a prominent place. Animal-gods, the Elders of the animal
kinds, are important according to the value of the animal as
game or as a symbol of natural prowess. The Eagle is supreme
among birds; the Bear, the Buffalo, the Elk, among quad-
rupeds; while the Coyote appears in place of the Rabbit as the
arch-trickster. The animals, however, are not gods in any
true sense, for they belong to that lesser realm of creation
which, with man, shares in the universal life of the world.



82


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


IV. THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

It has recently been much the custom of writers dealing
with Indian beliefs to assert that the conception of a Great
Spirit or Great Mystery is imported by white teachers, that
the untutored Indian knows no such being; the universality
of the earlier tradition as to the native existence of this idea is
regarded as of little consequence, almost as a studied misin-
terpretation. Nevertheless, when we find such definite con-
ceptions as that of Kitshi Manito among the Algonquians or
Tirawa-atius in Pawnee religion, or even such indefinite ones
as that of the Carrier Indian’s Yuttoere (“that which is on
high”),® we begin to question the truth of the modern asser-
tion. As a matter of fact, there is hardly a tribe that does not
possess its belief in what may very properly be called a Great
Spirit, or Great Mystery, or Master of Life. Such a being is,
no doubt, seldom or never conceived anthropomorphically,
seldom if ever as a formal personality; but if these preconcep-
tions of the white man be avoided, and the Great Spirit be
judged by what he does and the manner in which he is
approached, his difference from the Supreme Deity of the
white man is not so apparent.

Probably the Siouan conception of Wakanda, the Mystery
that is in all life and all creation, has been as carefully studied
as any Indian religious idea.® In general, Wakanda is the
Siouan equivalent of the Algonquian Manito, not a being but
an animating power, or one of a scries of animating powers
which are the invisible but potent causes of the whole world’s
life. “All the Indians,” says De Smet, of the Assiniboin,
“admit the existence of the Great Spirit, viz., of a Supreme
Being who governs all the important affairs of life, and who
manifests his action in the most ordinary events. . . . Every
spring, at the first peal of thunder, which they call the voice
of the Great Spirit speaking from the clouds, the Assiniboins offer
it sacrifices. . . . Thunder, next to the sun, is their great



THE GREAT PLAINS


83

Wah-kon. ... At the least misfortune, the father of a family-
presents the calumet to the Great Spirit, and, in prayer,
implores him to take pity on him, his wives and children.”
“Prayer to Wakanda,” another observer was told, “was not
made for small matters, such as going fishing, but only for
great and important undertakings, such as going to war
or starting on a journey.”

Doubtless the most illuminating analysis of this great Siouan
divinity which is in all things is that made by Miss Fletcher in
her study of the Omaha tribe. Wakanda, she says, “stands
for the mysterious life power permeating all natural forms and
forces and all phases of man’s conscious life. . . . Visible na-
ture seems to have mirrored to the Omaha mind the ever-
present activities of the invisible and mysterious Wakonda
and to have been an instructor in both religion and ethics.

. . Natural phenomena served to enforce ethics. Old men
have said: ‘Wakonda causes day to follow night without varia-
tion and summer to follow winter; we can depend on these
regular changes and can order our lives by them. In this way
Wakonda teaches us that our words and our acts must be truth-
ful, so that we may live in peace and happiness with one an-
other. Our fathers thought about these things and observed
?the acts of Wakonda and their words have come down to us.’

. . . All experiences in life were believed to be directed by
Wakonda, a belief that gave rise to a kind of fatalism. In the
face of calamity, the thought, ‘This is ordered by Wakonda,’
put a stop to any form of rebellion against the trouble and
often to any effort to overcome it. . . . An old man said:
‘Tears were made by Wakonda as a relief to our human nature;
Wakonda made joy and he also made tears!’ An aged man,
standing in the presence of death, said: ‘From my earliest
years I remember the sound of weeping; I have heard it all my
life and shall hear it until I die. There will be parting as long
as man lives on the earth. Wakonda has willed it to be sol’

. . . Personal prayers were addressed directly to Wakonda.



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


84

A man would take his pipe and go alone to the hills; there he
would silently offer smoke and utter the call, JVakonda ho!
while the moving cause, the purport of his prayer, would
remain unexpressed in words.'’® If his stress of feeling was great,
he would leave his pipe on the ground where his appeal had
been made. . . . Women did not use the pipe when praying;
their appeals were made directly, without any intermediary.
Few, if any, words were used; generally the sorrowful or bur-
dened woman simply called on the mysterious power she be-
lieved to have control of all things, to know all desires, all
needs, and to be able to send the required help.”

The mere quotation of Indian utterances, the mere descrip-
tion of their simple rites, out-tell all commentary. Yet the
testimony of one whose first and native education was in this
belief may well be appended. “The worship of the ‘great
Mystery,’” says Dr. Eastman, “was silent, solitary, free fnun
all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity
feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors as-
cended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because
they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there
were no priests authorized to come between a man and his
Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle
with the religious experience of another. Among us all men
were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their
divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor
forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there
was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were
there any scoffers or atheists. There were no temples or shrines
among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the In-
dian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to
build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the
mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the
sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinna-
cles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night
sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on,

[Prometheus]

 

PLATE XVI

Riiwhidc image of a Thunderbird for use as a head-
band ornament in ceremonial dances. The image is
beaded and painted, the zigzag lines representing the
lightning issuing from the heart of the Thunderbird.
See Note 3Z (pp. 28/ 88), and compare Plates III,
VI, XII, XXII, XXIV, XXVi; and Figure i . After
/./ JRBE^ part 2, p. 969.






THE GREAT PLAINS


85


the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun
kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous
wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic
southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic
rivers and inland seas — He needs no lesser cathedral!”

V. “MEDICINE”"

To make the impersonal and pervasive life of nature more
particularly his own, the Indian seeks his personal “medicine”
— half talisman, half symbol. Usually the medicine is revealed
in a fast-induced vision, or in a dream, or in a religious initia-
tion. It then becomes a personal tutelary whose emblem is
borne in its possessor’s “medicine-bag” — to which miraculous
powers are often attributed. “A skin of a weasel, heads and
bodies of different birds stuffed, images made of wood and stone,
of beads worked upon skin, rude drawings of bears, of buffalo
bulls, wolves, serpents, of monsters that have no name, nor
ever had an existence, in fact everything animate and inanimate
is used, according to the superstition and belief of the indi-
vidual. This object,” continues Father De Smet, “is envel-
oped in several folds of skin, with a lock of some deceased rela-
tive’s hair and a small piece of tobacco enclosed and the whole
placed in a parfieche [buffalo skin stripped of hair and
stretched over a frame] sack neatly ornamented and fringed,
and this composes the arcanum of the medicine-sack. This
sack is never opened in the presence of any one, unless the
owner or some of his family fall dangerously ill, when it is
taken out and placed at the head of his bed and the aid of the
Great Spirit invoked through it. Ordinarily this sack is opened
in secret; the medicine smoked and invoked and prayers and
sacrifices made in its presence, and through it, as a tangible
medium to the Great Spirit, who is unknown and invisible.”

The Indian’s “medicine” is, in fact, a symbol of superhuman
power, just as his pipe is a portable altar of sacrifice; having



86


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


these articles with him, he is equipped for all ordinary religious
service. As the medicine was so often revealed in vision, so
its potencies were partly to extend the knowledge of its owner
by giving him guidance in the hour of need. Indeed, the fun-
damental demands underlying the Indian’s use of his medicine
were, first, for clairvoyance, the power to see behind the
screen of appearances and to give man a longer time for adap-
tation to exigencies than his mere physical vision might allow,
and, second, for prowess, the strength to cope with environ-
ing perils, be they human enemies, elemental dangers, or the
insidious onslaughts of disease. The means for thus raising
the tension of man’s native abilities is the concentration of
diffuse natural forces by means of the emblem, be it image or
relic. With the more advanced Indians such “medicine” is
regarded as no more than a symbol of the greater Medicine of
nature — though still a symbol which is, in some vague sense,
a key for the unlocking of nature’s larger store.

Nor is “medicine” limited to private possession. Every
Indian had his own “medicine-bag,” but tribe and clan and
religious society all owned and guarded sacred objects not dif-
fering in character from the individual’s magic treasure, except
for their greater powers and the higher veneration attached
to them.

The “medicine” potency of objects is not limited to per-
sonal talismans and sacred things. The various tokens, such
as eagle feathers, animal skins or teeth or claws, with which
the Indian adorned his costume, were also supposed to have
powers which entitled them to be treated with respect. Simi-
larly, the painting of face and body, of robe and tipi, fol-
lowed the strictest of rules, and was for the specific purpose
of increasing the potencies of the owners of the decoration.
The Indian’s art was in a curious sense a private possession.
If a man invented a song, it was his song, and no other had a
right to sing it without his permission — usually, only after
a formal ceremony of teaching. In similar fashion, societies



THE GREAT PLAINS


87


had songs which could be sung only by their members; and
there were chants that could be sung only at certain periods
of the day or at fixed seasons of the year. So also in respect
to pictorial design: certain patterns were revealed to the
owner in dream or vision, and thereafter they were for his
person or clothing or dwelling, and might not be copied or ap-
propriated by any other, at least not without a proper trans-
fer. All this was a part of the Indian’s implicit belief that all
nature, including human thought and action, represents one
web of interknitted forces whose destined order may not be
broken without peril. White men call this belief superstition,
but in its essence it is not radically different from their own
notion of a nature fabricated of necessity and law.

VI. FATHER SUNi»

“Shakuru, the Sun, is the first of the visible powers,” said
the Pawnee priest, quoted above. “It is very potent; it gives
man health, vitality, and strength. Because of its power to
make things grow, Shakuru is sometimes spoken of as atius,
‘father.’ The Sun comes direct from the mighty power above;
that gives it its great potency.”

Here we have a compendium of the theology of sun-worship,
perhaps the most conspicuous feature of the Plains Indian’s
religion. The sun was regarded as a mighty power, though
not the mightiest; he was the first and greatest of the inter-
mediaries who brought the power of Father Heaven down to
earth, and he himself was addressed as “Father” or “Elder”
because of his life-giving qualities. Especially potent were his
first rays. “Whoever is touched by the first rays of the Sun
in the morning receives new life and strength which have
been brought straight from the power above. The first rays
of the sun are like a young man : they have not yet spent their
force or grown old.” Inevitably this expression brings to mind
the boy Harpocrates and the youth Horus, personations of

X — 8



88


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


the strength and splendour of the morning sun, as he leaped
from the couch of night before the eyes of the priests of old
Egypt.

Indeed, the Pawnee ritual in connexion with which this ex-
planation was given seems to afford us a glimpse of just such
a rite as must have been practised centuries before Heliop-
olis was founded or the temple of the Sphinx oriented to the
morning sun. All night long, in a ceremonial lodge whose door
is toward the east, priest and doctor chant their songs; as the
hour of dawn approaches, a watcher is set for the Morning
Star; and the curtain at the lodge door is flung back that the
strength-giving rays may penetrate within. “As the Sun rises
higher the ray, which is its messenger, alights upon the edge
of the central opening in the roof of the lodge, right over the
fireplace. We see the spot, the sign of its touch, and we know
that the ray is there. The fire holds an important place in the
lodge. . . . Father Sun is sending life by his messenger to
this central place in the lodge. . . . The ray is now climbing
down into the lodge. We watch the spot where it has alighted.
It moves over the edge of the opening above the fireplace and
descends into the lodge, and we sing that life from our Father
the Sun will come to us by his messenger, the Ray.” All day
long the course of the life-giving beam is followed with songs
of thankfulness. “Later, when the Sun is sinking in the west,
the land is in shadow, only on the top of the hills toward the
east can the spot, the sign of the ray’s touch, be seen. . . .
The ray of Father Sun, who breathes forth life, is standing on
the edge of the hills. We remember that in the morning it
stood on the edge of the opening in the roof of the lodge over
the fireplace; now it stands on the edge of the hills that, like
the walls of a lodge, inclose the land where the people dwell.
. . . When the spot, the sign of the ray, the messenger of
our Father the Sun, has left the tops of the hills and passed
from our sight ... we know that the ray which was sent
to bring us strength has now gone back to the place whence it



THE GREAT PLAINS 89

came. We are thankful to our Father the Sun for that which
he has sent us by his ray.”

Of Stonehenge and Memphis and Pekin and Cuzco, the
most ancient temples of the world’s oldest civilizations, this
ritual is strangely and richly reminiscent. Far anterior to the
olden temples must have been such shrines as the sacred if
temporary lodges of the Indian’s worship, within which the
daily movements of the sun’s ray were watched by faithful
priests — Horus of the morning, Re‘ of the midday, Atum of
the sunset — and by which the first invention of the gnomon,
and hence the beginnings of the measured calendar, were sug-
gested. Who, remembering the sculptures of Amenophis IV,
with rays reaching down from the Divine Disk to rest hands of
benediction upon the king, but will feel the moving analogy
of the Pawnee conception of the Ray, the Sun’s messenger,
touching his worshippers with life.? Or, indeed, who will fail to
find in the Indian’s prayers to Father Sun the same beauty and
aspiration that pervades the psalms of the heretic king?

The Sun-Dance of the Prairie tribes is their greatest and
most important ritual.®^ This is an annual festival, occupying,
usually, eight days, and it is undertaken in consequence of a
vow, sometimes for an escape from imminent death, especially
in battle; sometimes in hopes of success in war; sometimes as
the result of a woman’s promise to the Sun-God for the recov-
ery of the sick. In the main, the ceremonies are dramatic,
consisting of processions, symbolic dances, the recounting and
enactment of deeds of valour, and the fulfilment of vows of
various kinds undertaken during the year. The last and
central feature is the building of a great lodge, symbolic of
the home of man, in the centre of which is erected a pole, as
an emblem of earth and heaven, sometimes cruciform, some-
times forked at the top, and adorned with symbols typifying
the powers of the universe. Warriors under vow were for-
merly attached to this pole by ropes fastened to skewers in-
serted under the muscles of back and chest, and they danced



90


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


about it until the lacerated body was freed; but this and
other forms of sclf-tortui'c — a kind of atonement to the life-
giving Sun for the life he had spared — were not essential to
the ceremony, and in some tribes were never permitted;
among the Kiowa the more appearance of blood during the
ceremony was regarded as an ill omen.

Not only were vows of atonement and propitiation fulfilled
on the occasion of the Sun-Dance, but the dead of the year
were mourned, babes had their cars pierced by the medicine-
men, young men who had distinguished themselves were given
formal recognition, and tribal and intertribal affaii's and poli-
cies were discussed, for visiting tribes were often participants.
The central feature, however, was a kind of cosmic thanks-
giving, in which the people, through the Sun-Symbol, were
brought directly into relation with Father Sun. The prayer
of a chief directing this ceremony, in a recent performance
of it, gives its meaning perhaps more fully than could any
commentary:

“Great Sun Power! I am praying for my people that they
may be happy in the summer and that they may live through
the cold of winter. Many arc sick and in want. Pity them
and let them survive. Grant that they may live long and have
abundance. May we go through these ceremonies correctly,
as you taught our forefathers to do in the days that arc past.
If we make mistakes pity us. Help us. Mother Earth! for we
depend upon your goodness. Let there be rain to water the
prairies, that the grass may grow long and the berries be abun-
dant. 0 Morning Star! when you look down upon us, give us
peace and refreshing sleep. Great Spirit! bless our children,
friends, and visitors through a happy life. May our trails lie
straight and level before us. Let us live to be old. We are all
your children and ask these things with good hearts” (Mc-
Clintock, The Old North Trail, p. 297).

“We are all your children and ask these things with good
hearts”! Is not this the essence of religious faith?




PLATE XV n


Sioux drawings representing the Sun-Dance pole
and tortures c^Fdevotees (see p, 89). After / /

Plate XLVIIL See Note 61 (p, 307).







THE GREAT PLAINS


91


VIL MOTHER EARTH AND DAUGHTER CORN®-*

“H’Uraru, the Earth,” said the Pawnee priest, “is very-
near to man; we speak of her as Atira, Mother, because she
brings forth. From the Earth we get our food; we lie down
on her; wo live and walk on her; wc could not exist without her,
as wc could not breathe without Hoturu, the Winds, or grow
without Shakuru, the Sun.”

It is difficult to realize the deep veneration with which the
Indian looks upon his Mother the Earth. She is omniscient;
she knows all places and the acts of all men; hence, she is the
universal guide in all the walks of life. But she is also, and be-
fore all, the universal mother — she who brings forth all life,
and into whose body all life is returned after its appointed time,
to abide the day of its rebirth and rejuvenation. The concep-
tion was not limited to one part of the continent, but was
general. “The Sun is my father and the Earth is my mother;
on her bosom I will rest,” said Tecumsch to General Harrison;
and from a chieftain of the far West, the prophet Smohalla,
comes perhaps the i-nost eloquent expression of the sense of
Earth’s motherhood in Occidental literature. Urged to settle
his people in agriculture, he replied:

“You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and
tear my mother’s bosom Then when I die she will not take me
to her bosom to rest.

“You ask me to dig for stone! Shall I dig under her skin for
her bones.? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be
born again.

“You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell It, and be
rich like white men! But how dare I cut off my mother’s hair?

“It is a bad law, and my people cannot obey it. I want
my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come
to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again.
We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to
meet them in the bosom of our mother.”



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On the Great Plains a remarkable ceremony, known to many
tribes, represented the union of Heaven and Earth and the
birth of Life. The fullest account of it is preserved from the
Pawnee, though the Sioux and Omaha tribes have ccmtribuled
many elements of the ritual. The ffako (sacra, or sacred ob-
jects, employed in the ceremony), as the Pawnee rite is called,
is a dramatic prayer for life and children, for health and pos-
terity. It is directed to the universal powers, to Father Heaven
and the celestial powers, and to Mother Earth and the terres-
trial powers, with the beautiful imagery of birds as the inter-
mediaries between earth and heaven.’*'* The central symbols of
the mystery — for mystery it is, in the full classical sense —
are the winged wands which represent the hlaglc, the highest
of the bird messengers; a plume of white featherdown, typi-
fying the llcecy clouds of heaven, and hence the winds and the
breath of life, “breathed down from abova; ” ; and an ear of
maize, symbol of “Mother Corn,” daugliter of Heaven and
Earth.

“The car of corn,” said the priest, “i-eprescnts the super-
natural power that dwells in IPUraru, the earth which brings
forth the food that sustains life; so we speak of the ear as
h’Atira, mother breathing forth life.® The power in the earth
which enables it to bring forth comes from above; for that
reason we paint the car of corn with blue. . . . The life of man
depends upon the Earth. Tirawa-atius works through it. The
kernel is planted within Mother Earth and she brings forth
the ear of corn, even as children are begotten and born of
women. . . . We give the cry of reverence to Mother Corn, she
who brings the promise of children, of strength, of life, of
plenty, and of peace.”

It is impossible to study the Hako ceremonial without being
struck by the many analogies which it affords for what is known
of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In the latter, as in the Hako, an
ear of corn was the supreme symbol, while the central drama
of both was the imaging of a sacred marriage of Heaven and



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Earth and the birth of a Son, who symbolized the renewal of
life, physical and spiritual, in the participants. The Hako
did not, as the Eleusinian Mysteries did, convey a direct prom-
ise of life in a future world; but this is only a further step in
symbolism easy to take, and it is by no means beyond reason
to presume that the great religious mysteries of the ancients
took their origin from ceremonies of the type for which the
Indian rite furnishes us probably our purest and most primitive
example.

VIII. THE MORNING STAR^^

After the Sun the most important of the celestial divinities
among the Plains tribes is the Morning Star (Venus). The
Pawnee priest, Tahirussawichi, describes him thus:

“The Morning Star is one of the lesser powers. Life and
strength and fruitfulness are with the Morning Star. We are
reverent toward it. Our fathers performed sacred ceremonies
in its honor. The Morning Star is like a man; he is painted red
all over; that is the color of life. He is clad in leggings and a
robe is wrapped about him. On his head is a soft downy eagle’s
feather, painted red. This feather represents the soft, light
cloud that is high in the heavens, and the red is the touch of a
ray of the coming sun. The soft, downy feather is the symbol
of breath and life.”

This is the star for which the Pawnee watch, as the herald of
the sun, in the great ritual chant to the solar god. “The star
comes from a great distance, too far away for us to see the
place where it starts. At first we can hardly see it; we lose
sight of it, it is so far off ; then we see it again, for it is coming
steadily toward us all the time. We watch it approach; it
comes nearer and nearer; its light grows brighter and brighter.”
A hymn is sung to the star. “As we sing, the Morning Star
comes still nearer and now we see him standing there in the
heavens, a strong man shining brighter and brighter. The
soft plume in his hair moves with the breath of the new day.

[Prometheus]

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94

and the ray of the sun touches it with color. As he stands there
so bright, he is bringing us strength and new life. As we look
upon him he grows less bright, he is receding, going back to his
dwelling place whence he came. We watch him vanishing, pa.ss-
ing out of our sight. He has left with us the gift of life which
Tirawa-atius sent him to bestow.”

Formerly the Skidi Pawnee were accustomed to sacrifice a
captive virgin to the Morning Star, her body being used
magically to fertilize the fields of maize. A similar association
of ideas, though on the plane of mythic poetry rather than on
that of barbarous rite, seems to underlie the Blackfoot legend
of Poi'a, “Scarfacc,” the Star Boy.

Long ago, according to this story, a maiden, F'cather Woman,
was sleeping in the grass beside her tipi. The Morning Star
loved her, and she became with child. Thenceforth she suf-
fered the disdain and ridicule of her tribesfolk, until one day,
as she went to the river for water, she met a young man who
proclaimed himself her husband, the Morning Star. “She saw
in his hair a yellow plume, and in his hand a juniper branch
with a spider web hanging from one end. He was tall and
straight and his hair was long and shining. His beautiful
clothes were of soft-tanned skins, and from them came a
fragrance of pine and sweet grass.” Morning Star placed the
feather in her hair and, giving her the juniper branch, directed
her to shut her eyes; she held the upper strand of the spider’s
web in her hand and placed her foot on the lower, and in a
moment she was transported to the sky. Morning Star led her
to the lodge of his parents, the Sun and the Moon; and there
she gave birth to a son, Star Boy (the planet Jupiter). The
Moon, her mother-in-law, gave her a root digger, saying,
“This should be used only by pure women. You can dig all
kinds of roots with it, but I warn you not to dig up the large
turnip growing near the home of Spider Man.” Curiosity
eventually got the better of caution; Feather Woman, with the
aid of two cranes, uprooted the forbidden turnip, and found



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that it covered a window in the sky looking down to the earth
she had left; at sight of the camp of her tribesfolk she became
sad with home-sickness, and the Sun, her husband’s father,
decreed that she must be banished from the sky, and be re-
turned to earth. Morning Star led her to the home of Spider
Man, whose web had drawn her to the sky, and, with a
“medicine-bonnet” upon her head, and her babe. Star Boy,
in her arms, she was lowered in an elk’s skin to earth. Here,
pining for her husband and the lost sky-land. Feather Woman
soon died, having first told her story to her tribesfolk. Her
son. Star Boy, grew up in poverty, and, because of a scar
upon his face, was named Poia, “Scarface.” When he became
a young man, he loved a chieftain’s daughter; but she re-
fused him because of his scar. Since a medicine-woman told
him that this could be removed only by the Sun-God himself,
Poia set out for the lodge of the solar deity, travelling west-
ward to the Pacific. For three days and three nights he lay
on the shore fasting and praying; on the fourth day he beheld
a bright trail leading across the water, and following it he
came to the lodge of the Sun. In the sky-world Poia killed
seven huge birds that had threatened the life of Morning
Star, and, as a reward, the Sun not only removed the scar
from Poia’s face, but also taught him the ritual of the Sun-
Dance and gave him raven feathers to wear as a sign that he
came from the Sun, besides a lover’s flute and a song which
would win the heart of the maid whom he loved. The Sun
then sent him back to earth — by way of the short path. Wolf
Trail (the Milky Way) — telling him to instruct the Black-
feet in the ritual of the dance. Afterward Poia returned to
the sky with the maiden of his choice.

“Morning Star,” said the narrator of this m3rth, “was given
to us as a sign to herald the coming of the Sun. . . . The ‘ Star
that stands still’ (North Star) is different from other stars,
because it never moves. All the other stars walk round it.
It is a hole in the sky, the same hole through which So-at-sa-ki



NORTH AMERICAN MYITIOLOGY


96

(Feather Woman) was first drawn up to the sky and then let
down again to earth. It is the hole through which she gazed upon
earth, after digging up the forbidden turnip. Its light is the
radiance from the home of the Sun God shining through. The
half circle of stars to the east (Northern Crown) is the lodge
of the Spider Man, and the five bright stars just beyond (in the
constellation of Hercules) ai-e his five fingers, with which he spun
the web, upon which Soatsaki was let down from the sky.”

Corona Borealis is an impoitant constellation in the mythic
lore of nearly all the tribes of the Plains. According to the
Pawnee, it is a circle of chiefs who are the guardians of the
mystic sign of Tirawaatius, and the Pawnee society of Rarite-
sharu (chiefs in charge of the rites given by Tirawa) paint their
faces with the blue lines representing the arc of heaven and the
path of descent, and wear upon their heads the featherdown
symbol of celestial life. “The members of this society do not
dance and sing; they talk quietly and try to be like the stars.”

Ursa Major and the Pleiades are other constellations con-
spicuous in Indian myth. The Assiniboin regard the seven
stars of Ursa Major as seven youths who were driven by pov-
erty to transform themselves, and who rose to heaven by means
of a spider’s web. For the Blackfeet also these stars are seven
brothers who have been pursued into the heavens by a huge
bear (an interesting reversal of the Eskimo story). The Man-
dan believed this constellation to be an ermine; some of the
Sioux held it to be a bier, followed by mourners. The Pleiades,
in Blackfoot legend, are the “lost children,” driven by poverty
to take refuge in the sky.

Everywhere stars were associated with the dead. The
Mandan considered them to be deceased men: when a child
is born, a star descends to earth in human form; at death, it
appears once more in the heavens as a star.'® A meteor was
frequently regarded as a forerunner of death; and the Milky
Way, as with the eastern tribes, is the path by which souls
ascend into heaven.



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IX. THE GODS OF THE ELEMENTS “

The typical dwelling of the Plains folk, whether tipi or earth
lodge, is circular in ground-plan, and, similarly, tribal encamp-
ments, especially for religious or ceremonial purposes, were
round in form. On such occasions the entrance to the lodge
faced the east, which was always the theoretic orientation of
the camp. A cross, with arms directed toward the four cardi-
nal points, and circumscribed by a circle, symbolizes the Plains
Indian’s conception of the physical world, and at the same time
represents his analysis of the elemental powers of Nature, and
hence of his analysis of the organization of human society,
which is so directly dependent upon these potencies.

The circle of the horizon, the floor of the lodge of heaven;
the circle of the tribal encampment; and the circular floor of
the lodge, the home of the family — these might be said to
typify so many concentrics, each a symbol of the universe, in
the Indian’s thought. In the Hako, the priest draws a circle
with his toe, within which circle he places featherdown. “The
circle represents a nest, and is drawn by the toe, because the
eagle builds its nest with its claws- Although we are imitating
the bird making its nest, there is another meaning to the ac-
tion; we are thinking of Tirawa making the world for the
people to live in. If you go on a high hill and look around, you
will see the sky touching the earth on every side, and within
this circular inclosure the people live. So the circles we have
made are not only nests, but they also represent the circle
Tirawa-atius has made for the dwelling place of all the people.
The circles also stand for the kinship group, the clan, and the
tribe.”

The tribal circle of the Omaha was divided into two groups, the
Sky-People occupying the northern, and the Earth-People the
southern, semi-circle. The Sky represented the masculine, the
Earth the feminine, element in nature; the human race was sup-
posed to be born of the union of Earth-People and Sky-People;



98 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

and in tlie tribe marriage was not customary within either of
these two groups, but only between members of Earth clans
and members of Sky clans. Each group also had its own chief-
tain and ceremonial, so that the whole tribe possessed a dual
organization, corresponding to the great dualism of nature.

J. O. Dorsey found a similar scheme prevalent throughout
the Siouan stock, and this scheme he generalized by the figure
of a quartered circle. The quarters of one half, which was the
side of peace, were devoted respectively to Earth and Water;
the quarters of the masculine, or Sky half, which was the side
of war, were sacred to the spirits of Fire and Air. Powers of
Earth, Water, Fire, and Air formed the great groups of the
elemental gods. The Dakota name for the Earth-Power is
Tunkan, “Boulder,”-^ and it should be remembered that
stones were not only the materials for the most important of
aboriginal implements, but that they played an almost magical
part in the venerated medicine rite of the sweat-bath lodge.
Tlic priests of the Pebble Society of the Omaha relate the fol-
lowing myth in this connexion: “At the beginning all things
were in the mind of Wakonda. All creatures, including man,
were spirits. They moved about in space between the earth
and the stars. They were seeking a place where they could
come into a bodily existence. They ascended to the sun, but
the sun was not fitted for their abode. They moved on to the
moon and found that it also was not fitted for their abode.
Then they descended to the earth. They saw it was covered
with water. They floated through the air to the north, the
east, the south, and the west, and found no dry land. They
were sorely grieved. Suddenly from the midst of the water up-
rose a great rock. It burst into flames and the waters floated
into the air in clouds. Dry land appeared; the grasses and the
trees grew. The hosts of spirits descended and became flesh
and blood, fed on the seeds of the grasses and the fruits of the
trees, and the land vibrated with their expressions of joy and
gratitude to Wakonda, the maker of all things.”



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The Water-Powers ® were divided into two classes, those of
the streams, which were masculine, and those of the sub-
terranean waters, which were feminine. According to the
Winnebago, the earth is upheld by the latter, which are some-
times represented as many-headed monsters — veritable levia-
thans. The Wind-Makers, occupying half the space devoted
to the Sky-Powers, were especially associated with the four
quarters whence the winds came, and with the animal gods or
Elders, who came from the quarters. An Omaha cosmogony
tells how, when the earth was covered with water and the
souls were seeking their dwelling, an Elk came, and with a
loud voice shouted to the four quarters, whereupon the four
winds, in response, blew aside the waters, and exposed the
rock which was the kernel of Earth. The tale of the diving of
the different animals for mud, to expand the earth, is added
to this legend.

Of the Fire-Powers, the Sun and the Thunderers or Thunder-
birds were of first importance. The position of the Sun in the
Prairie Indian’s lore has been stated. The Thunders were
even more important among the aborigines of the central
west than with their eastern cousins, perhaps because the elec-
tric storms of the Plains are so much more terrible and con-
spicuous. The Assiniboin regard the Thunder as “the voice of
the Great Spirit speaking from the clouds,” says De Smet;
and the Dakota, he adds, “pretend that Thunder is an enor-
mous bird, and that the muffled sound of the distant thunder
is caused by countless numbers of young birds! The great
bird, they say, gives the first sound, and the young ones re-
peat it: this is the cause of the reverberations. The Sioux de-
clare that the young thunders do all the mischief, like giddy
youth, who will not listen to good advice; but the old thunder,
or big bird, is wise and excellent, he never kills or injures any-
one.”

The Thunder was pre-eminently the power of destruction,
and, therefore, a tutelary of war.®® When the boy was initiated



lOO


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


into manhood, a lock of hair was cut from his crown by the
priest, and dedicated to the Thunder. The hair, it must be
borne in mind, was in many ways regarded by the Indian as a
man’s strength and life. Frequently a lock of the hair of a
dead relative was preserved, and if carried by a pregnant
woman it was thought to ensure the rebirth of the dead. When
the hair on the boy’s crown grew out once more, a special lock
was parted in a circle from the rest, and braided by itself.
Upon this lock war-honours were worn, and it was this that
was taken when the dead enemy was scalped. It was more than
a symbol; it was the magic vehicle of the vital strength of the
slain man.*’®

In few Indian rites is the relation of the elemental powers
to human society more impressively symbolized than in the
Omaha ceremony of tlie sacred pole.'’‘ According to the legend,
the tribe was tlircatened with disruption and was holding a
council to determine by what means it could be kept intact.
During this conference, a young hunter lost his way in the
forest, and in the night he came upon a luminous tree. He
made his way home and told his father, a chief of the tribe, of
his discovery, whereupon the old man said to the Council:
“My son has seen a wonderful tree. The Thunder birdvS come
and go upon this tree, making a trail of fire that leaves four
paths on the burnt grass that stretch toward the four Winds.
When the Thunder birds alight upon the tree it bursts into
flame and the fire mounts to the top. The tree stands burning,
but no one can see the fire except at night.” It was agreed that
this marvel was sent from Wakanda. The warriors, stripped
and painted, ran for the tree, and struck it as if it were an
enemy; and after it had been felled and brought back to the
camp, for four nights the chiefs sang the songs that had been
composed for it. A sacred tent, decked with symbols of the
sun, was made for the tree, which was trimmed and adorned.
They called it a human being, and fastened a scalp-lock to it
for hair. The tree, or pole, had keepers appointed for it, and



THE GREAT PLAINS


lOI


It became the symbol of tribal unity and authority — a true
palladium, which was carried on important excursions, and
for which an annual rite was Instituted, commemorating the
manner of Its discovery.

Perhaps the feeling of the Plains Indian for that great world
of nature which surrounds him may best be summed up in
the Blackfoot prayer to the Quarters, which Is recorded by
McClintock.®^ First, to the West: “Over there are the moun-
tains. May you see them as long as you live, for from them
you must receive your sweet pine as incense.” To the North:
“Strength will come from the North. May you look for many
years upon ‘the Star that never moves.’” To the East: “Old
age will come from below where lies the light of the Sun.” To
the South: “May the warm winds of the South bring you suc-
cess in securing food.”



CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT PLAINS

{Continued)

I. ATHAPASCAN COSMOGONIES^®

I N no portion of the American continent is intercourse of
tribe with tribe easier than on the Great Plains. Of natural
barriers there are none, and in the days of the aboriginal
hunter, when all the prairie nations spent a part of each year
in pursuit of the herds of game that crossed and rccrossed their
ill-defined hunting-grounds, it was inevitable that annually
there should be encounters of people with people, and even-
tually of ideas with ideas. It was on the Plains that the sign
language was developed and perfected, a mute lingua franca,
serving almost the explicitness of vocal speech. The funda-
mental ceremonials of a ceremonial race varied little from tribe
to tribe, and Indeed were often conveyed from one people to
another at the great intertribal gatherings, where feasting and
trading and the recounting of the deeds of heroes were the
order of the day. Loose confederacies were formed, and It was
sometimes the custom for friendly nations to exchange chil-
dren for a term that some might grow up in each nation ac-
quainted with the language of the other. Not infrequently
tribes or segments of tribes of quite distinct linguistic stocks
lived together in a more or less coherent nationality, sharing
the same territory and villages. Even in time of war there
were well recognized rules, forming a kind of chivalric code,
which obtained a general adherence; and one of the obvious
outcomes of Indian warfare was the constant replenishment of
tribal stocks with the blood of adopted captives.



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103


With all these sources of intermingling it was natural that
there should be interchange of stories, and indeed it is not un-
reasonable to suppose that the open country was the path
by which many of the tales found in both the extreme north
and the extreme south were transmitted from latitude to lati-
tude, while similarly there was here a meeting-ground for the
lore of the westward pressing tribes of the Forest Region and
the eastward intrusions of the Mountain and Desert stocks.
As a matter of fact, this meeting and commingling of myth is
just what we find on the Plains, perhaps nowhere better illus-
trated than in the field of cosmogony.

[Prometheus]

Even among the remote Athapascans of the north cosmo-
gonic myths are of diverse source. It is supposed that these
Indians came originally from the north-west, and it is, there-
fore, no matter of wonder that they know and tell legends of
the demiurgic Raven which form the characteristic cosmogony
of the Pacific Coast tribes. They are also acquainted with the
Forest Region tale of the deluge and of the animals that dived
for the kernel of soil from which the earth grew; and they tell,
likewise, the story known to the Eskimo, of the girl who bore
children to a dog, from whom mankind are descended, or who,
as in a Carrier version, became stars.^'^ According to this re-
cension, the girl was a virgin, who when her shame was dis-
covered, was abandoned to die; but she contrived to find food
for herself and her offspring, who were in the form of puppies.
One night, coming back to her abode, she saw the footprints of
children about the fireplace, and following this clue she re-
turned surreptitiously to the lodge on the next occasion, and
discovered her children in human form; she succeeded in de-
stroying the dog-dress of her three boys, but the girl-child
retransformed herself into a dog before her parent could inter-
fere. After this, the mother (who seems very clearly to be the
progenitress of all animal kinds, the Mother of Wild Life)
taught her boys to hunt the different animals, their sister,
the dog, aiding them in the chase; but one day brothers and

X — 9



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


104

sister pursued a herd of caribou up into the sky, where all
became stars, the Pursuers (Orion) and the Herd (Pleiades).”

The talc of the two boys who were followed by their mother’s
head seems to be a Great Plains version of the cosmogonic
stories of the Forest Region.®^ The mother of the boys was
decapitated by her husband for illicit intercourse with a ser-
pent; but the head remained alive and gave chase to the
children. With charms received from their father, the boys
protected themselves, first, by a mountain, but the head turned
itself into a wind and blew over it; second, by a heaven-
reaching thorn-bush, which sprang from a drop of blood drawn
from a wound in the head, but the head overleaped it; third,
by a wall of fire, but the head passed through it.®- Finally,
driven into the midst of a lake, the elder brother struck the
head with his knife, whereupon two water monsters emerged
and swallowed it. It is easy to sec in this pursuing head the
body of the cosmic Titaness, the Earth Goddess, overcoming
in turn earth, vegetation, and fire, and succumbing only to
that primeval flood upon which the earth rests; and it is inter-
esting to surmise in this legend the original of the gruesome
tales of cannibal heads, known to tribes of the greater portion
of North America.

A second part of the story tells of the adventures of the two
brothers,” one of whom is captured and held by a magician,
till he finally frees himself by proving his own greater magic;
the other is slain by water monsters, but restored by his brother,
although in the form of a wolf. The episode of the flood and
the diving animals also appears.®® All these themes are well
known in Algonquian myth. The stories of the journey of the
two young men to the village of souls, known as far as the
Gulf Region; the universal legend of the theft of fire; the
tradition of the creation of light; even the familiar South-
Western tale of the ascent of the ancestral Elders from the
under to the upper world, — each and every one is common
among the northern tribes. And perhaps nowhere in America



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105

is there a more charming mythic conceit than that of the
Chipewyans of the Arctic Barren Lands, relative to the Ani-
mal Age: “At the beginning there were no people, only ani-
mals; still they resembled human beings, and they could
speak : when the animals could speak it was summer, and when
they lost the power of speaking winter followed.” Here in-
deed we have a picture of the primeval world: the stillness of
the dark Arctic winter, when even the animals were mute; the
loveliness of summer, musical and living with the multitu-
dinous voices of Nature.

II. SIOUAN COSMOGONIES IS

The Assiniboin, the most northerly Siouan tribe, have a form
of the story of the mother’s head, but their own tales of the
origins of things centre about the diving animals and the trick-
ster hero, Inktonmi, a Siouan cousin of Manabozho. Further
to the south the Mandan also possessed two cycles of cos-
mogonic myths. Apparently of southern provenance are the
legends of the storeyed universe: there were four storeys
below and four above the earth. Before the flood, men lived
in an underworld village, to which a grape-vine extended from
the world above. Up this, first the animals, then men, climbed,
until a very corpulent woman broke the vine. Next a flood
destroyed most of the human race. A Kiowa version of this
tale tells how the first people emerged from a hollow cotton-
wood log, until it came the turn of a pregnant woman, who'
was held fast — and this accounts for the small number of the
Kiowa tribe.

The second Mandan cycle evidently belongs to the more
properly Siouan version of the demiurgic pair. The Lord of
Life created the First Man, who formed the earth out of mud
brought up from the waters by a duck. Afterward the First
Man and the Lord of Life quarrelled, and divided the earth
between them. The Hidatsa believe that the Lord of Life,



io6 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the Man-Who-Ncvcr-DicvS, lives in the Rocky Mountains; “
and they also say of the First Man, the Creator, that no one
made him, and that he is immortal. To the Old-Woman-Who-
Nevor-Dies,“ the Grandmother, who is none other than the
Earth, they ascribe a minor role in the creation; it was she who
gave them the “two kettles,” which are the tribal fetish, di-
recting that they be preserved in memory of the great waters
whence came all the animals dancing. When drought threat-
ens they hold a feast, ceremonially using the two kettles and
praying for rain. It seems altogether probable that these ves-
sels are the “bowls of earth and sky,” and so symbolize the
universe.

The Dakota tell the story of the drowning of the younger
brother of the First Man by the water monsters, and of his
resuscitation after they had been slain.'''-’ He was brought to
life, they say, by means of the swcat-batli, and it is not fanci-
ful to connect the cosmic forces with the symbolism of the
stones (earth) and steam (water) used in this rite.-’’ Indeed,
the Omaha make this symbolism definite. The idea of per-
manence, long life, and wisdom they typify by the stone;
“man’s restlessness, his questionings of fate, his destructive-
ness, arc frequently symbolized by the wolf”; and in myth
the wolf and the stone are the two demiurgic brothers — west-
ern duplicates of Flint and Sapling. One of the most inter-
esting of Omaha rituals is that of the Pebble Society, sung to
commemorate the great rock which Wakanda summoned from
the waters, at the beginning of the world, to be a home for the
animal souls that wandered about in primitive chaos (trans-
lated by Alice C. Fletcher, in 27 ARBE, p. 570) : —

Toward the coming of the Sun
There the people of every kind gathered.

And great animals of every kind.

Verily all gathered together, as well as people.

Insects also of every description.

Verily all gathered there together.

By what means or manner wc know not.



THE GREAT PLAINS 107

Verily, one alone of all these was greatest,

Inspiring to all minds,

The great white rock.

Standing and reaching as high as the heavens, enwrapped in mist,
Verily, as high as the heavens.

Thus my little ones shall speak of me.

As long as they shall travel in life’s path, thus shall they speak of me.
Such were the words, it has been said.

Then next in rank

Thou, male of the crane, stoodst with thy long beak
And thy neck, none like to it in length,

There with thy beak didst thou strike the earth.

This shall be the legend

Of the people of yore, the red people,

Thus my little ones shall speak of me.

Then next in rank stood the male gray wolf, whose cry,

Though uttered without effort, verily made the earth to tremble,
Even the stable earth to tremble.

Such shall be the legend of the people.

Then next in rank stood Hega, the buzzard, with his red neck.
Calmly he stood, his great wings spread, letting the heat of the sun
straighten his feathers.

Slowly he flapped his wings.

Then floated away, as though without effort.

Thus displaying a power often to be spoken of by the old men in
their teachings.


III. CADDOAN COSMOGONIES

Of the Caddoan stock the northerly Arikara were in close
association with the Hidatsa and the Mandan. Among them
it is natural to find again the story of the demiurgic pair —
^‘Wolf and Lucky Man,” as they name these heroes; but
the Arikara also have stories belonging to their own southerly
origin, especially legends of Mother Corn, the great goddess
of all the Caddoan tribes.^® It was Mother Corn who, with
the help of the animals, led the people from the under into
the upper world, after which she apportioned territories, and



io8 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

taught the use of implements and ceremonial rites. Previous
to their coming, the earth was inhabited by a race of people
“so strong that they were not afraid of anybody, but they did
not have good sense; they made fun of all the gods in heaven.”
This sounds curiously like the Greek myth of the race of Giants;
nor is the sequel unlike the Greek. “Nesaru looked down
upon them, and was angry. Nesaru said: ‘I made them
too strong. I will not keep them. They think that they arc
like myself. I shall destroy them, but I shall put away my
people that I like and that are smaller.’” The giants were
killed in a flood, while the animals and maize were preserved
in a cave. Eventually, from an car of maize which he had
raised in heaven, Nesaru created a woman. Mother Corn,
whom he sent into the underworld to deliver the people im-
prisoned there, and to lead them once more into the light of
day — a Descent into Hell, like that of Ishtar or PerseplK)ne
or many another Corn Goddess.

The Pawnee of Nebraska tell a more complicated tale of
first things, with a suggestively astrological motive under-
lying the myth.^'* In the beginning were Tirawa, Chief of
Tirawahut, the great circle of the heavens,” and Atira, his
spouse, the Sky-Vault. Around them sat the gods in council,
the place of each appointed by Tirawa. The latter spoke to
the gods, saying: “Each of you gods I am to station in the
heavens; and each of you shall receive certain powers from
me, for I am about to create people who shall be like myself.
They shall be under your care. I will give them your land to
live upon, and with your assistance they shall be cared for.”
Then he appointed the station of Sakuru, the Sun, in the cast,
to give light and warmth; and that of Pah, the Moon, in the
west, to illumine the night.^® Also, he allotted the stations of
the stars. To Bright Star, the evening star, he said, “You
shall stand in the west. You shall be known as Mother of all
things; for through you all beings shall be created.” To Great
Star, the morning star, he spake, “You shall stand in the



THE GREAT PLAINS 109

east. You shall be a warrior. Each time you drive the people
towards the west, see that none lag behind.” To the Star-That-
Does-Not-Move he appointed the north as station, and he
made him the star-chief of the skies. And in the south he
placed Spirit Star, “for you shall be seen only once in a while,
at a certain time of the year.” Four other stars he set over the
quartered regions, north-east and north-west, and south-east
and south-west, and commanding these four to move closer
to him, he said to them: “You four shall be known as the ones
who shall uphold the heavens. There you shall stand as long
as the heavens last, and, although your place is to hold the
heavens up, I also give you power to create people. You shall
give them different bundles, which shall be holy bundles.
Your powers will be known by the people, for you shall touch
the heavens with your hands, and your feet shall touch the
earth.”

After this, Tirawa said to Bright Star, the west star: “I
will send to you Clouds, Winds, Lightnings, and Thunders.
When you have received these gods, place them between you
and the Garden. When they stand by the Garden, they shall
turn into human beings. They shall have the downy feather
in their hair [symbol of the breath of life]. Each shall wear the
buffalo robe for his covering. Each shall have about his waist
a lariat of buffalo hair. Each shall also wear moccasins. Each
of them shall have the rattle in his right hand [symbol of the
garden of the Evening Star]. These four gods shall be the
ones who shall create all things.”

Then the Clouds gathered; the Winds blew; Lightnings and
Thunders entered the Clouds. When space was canopied,
Tirawa dropped a pebble into their midst, which was rolled
about in the thick Clouds. The storm passed, and a waste of
waters was revealed. Then to the Star-Gods of the World-
Quarters Tirawa gave war-clubs, bidding them to strike the
waters with them; and as they obeyed, the waters separated,
and the earth was made.



no NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

When all this had come to pass, Tirawa commanded the
Bright Star of the evening to tell the Star-Gods of the Quarters
to sing of the formation of the earth. As they sang, the ele-
mental gods, the Clouds and the Winds and the Lightnings
and the Thunders, again assembled, and from the might of
their storm earth was divided into hill and valley. Then again
Tirawa bade, through Bright Star, that the Star-Gods of the
Quarters should sing of timber and of vegetation, and again
there was a storm, and earth was given a dress of living green.
A third time they sang, and the waters of earth were cleansed
and sweetened and coursed in flowing streams. A fourth time
they sang, and all manner of seeds, which had been dropped
to earth, sprouted into life.

Now, at the decree of Tirawa, the Sun and the Moon were
united, and from their union was born a son; and the Morning
and the Evening Stars were united, and from them a daughter
was born. And these two, boy and girl, were placed upon the
earth, but as yet they had no understanding. Then Tirawa
again commanded: “Tell the four gods to sing about putting
life into the children. ... As the four gods rattled their
gourds, the Winds arose, the Clouds came up, the Lightnings
entered the Clouds. The Thunders also entered the Clouds.
The Clouds moved down upon the earth, and it rained upon
the two children. The Lightnings struck about them. The
Thunders roared. It seemed to awaken them. They under-
stood.”

To this pair a son was born, and then “they seemed to under-
stand all; that they must labor to feed the child and clothe
him. Before this time they had not cared anything about
clothing or food, nor for shelter.” Tirawa saw their needs, and
he sent the messenger gods to bear them gifts and to instruct
them. To the woman they gave seeds and the moisture to
fructify them; they bestowed upon her the lodge and the lodge
altar, the holy place; they presented her with the fireplace, and
they taught her the use of fire; the power of speech also was



THE GREAT PLAINS


III


granted her; and the space about the lodge was to be hers;
and the materials of the sacred pipes. To the man was given
man’s clothing and the insignia of the warrior: the war-club,
“to remind him that with war-clubs earth was divided from
the waters”; knowledge of paints, and the names of the ani-
mals; bow and arrows, and the pipes that should be sacred to
the gods. “As each star came over the land, the young man
went to the place where the Lightning had struck upon the
mountains.®* He found flint-stones with bows and arrows.
When the gods had sung the songs about giving these things
to these two people, the boy had seen the bow and arrows held
up by his father, the Sun.” **

After this. Bright Star came to the man in visions and
revealed to him the rites of sacrifice and the making of the
bundle of sacred objects which was to be hung up in the
lodge. Meanwhile the gods had created other people, and to
these also had been given bundles by the gods who had formed
them; but as yet they did not know the rites that were ap-
propriate to them. Then Bright Star said to the man: “Each
of these bundles contains a different kind of corn, given by the
gods. The Southwest people have the white corn; the North-
west people have the yellow corn; the Northeast people have
the black corn; the Southeast people have the red corn.”
She promised that one would be sent to reveal the rites of the
bundles. Thereupon Closed Man — for this was the chief’s
name — summoned the peoples from the four quarters, and
a man who had learned the rituals in a vision taught them the
songs and ceremonies. They made their camp in a circle, and
ranged the people in imitation of the stations of the stars;
and the priests performed a drama symbolizing the creation,
making movements over a bowl of water “to show the people
how the gods had struck the water when the land was divided
from the waters.”

Closed Man was the first chief. After he died, his skull was
placed upon a bundle; “for before he had died he had told the



II2


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


people that Tirawa had told him, through Bright Star, that
when he should die his skull should be placed upon the bundle,
so that his spirit should have power, and be ever present with
the Skidi people.”