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AuthorTopic: North American Mythology  (Read 11332 times)

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Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #15 on: August 03, 2019, 08:02:29 PM »

This extraordinary myth offers a multitude of analogies, not
only with New-World, but also with Old-World cosmogonies.
There is in it not a little that is suggestive of the Biblical
Genesis, or of the time when the morning stars sang together
and cloud and thick darkness were earth’s swaddling-band.
The Star-Gods of the Quarters, whose feet touch earth and
whose hands uphold the heavens, are the very image of the
cosmic Titans of old Mediterranean lore, and of the Homeric
Strife, “who holdeth her head in the Heavens while her feet
tread the Earth.” In the earlier astronomical portion of the
legend there is much that is reminiscent of Plato’s account of
creation, in the Timaeus, with its apportionments of the heav-
ens among the stars and its delegation of the shaping of all
save the souls of men to the Demiurge and the Star-Gods.
Surely, there is sublimity in the Pawnee conception of Tirawa,
in his abode above the circle of the heavens, passing his com-
mands to the bright evening star, the Mother Star, mistress
of the spirit garden of the West; of the Stars of the Quarters
singing together their creative hymns; and of the Gods of the
Elements, amid turmoil of cloud and wind and thunder and
flame, shaping and fashioning the habitable globe, breathing
the breath of life into stream and field, into physical seed and
spiritual understanding, and striking the earth with the fires
of purification.


IV. THE SON OF THE SUNi»

The story of a woman of the primitive period ascending to
the sky-world; of her marriage with a celestial god, son of the
Sun Father; of her breaking a prohibition; and of her fall to
earth, where a boy, or twin boys, is born to her; and tales of



PLATE XVIII


Kiowa drawing, representing (upper) the Woman
who climbed to the Sky in pursuit of a Porcupine that
turned out to be Son of the Sun, and (lower) who
later fell to E^arth, after digging the forbidden root
(see p. 115). After jiRBR, Plate I.XVIL






THE GREAT PLAINS


113

the fu ture dee ds of the son of the sky-god_— all this is common,
in part or in whole, t6"‘mahy tribes and to all regions of the
American continent. Indeed, it has obvious affinities to world-
wide myths of a similar type, of which Jack and the Beanstalk
is the familiar example in English folk-lore.

The Iroquoian cosmogonic tale of the Titaness who is cast
down from heaven to the waters of primeval chaos is a part
of this mythic cycle, but it does not tell of the previous ascent
of the woman into the sky-world. The beautiful and poetic
Blackfoot tale of Poia, the son of the girl who married the
Morning Star, is a more complete version of the myth — or
perhaps a transformation of the legend, for here it is no longer,
as with the Iroquois, a cosmogony, but the tale of a culture
hero. In different tribes it shifts from one character to the
other — world origins and civilization origins — but in the
main its central event seems to be the bringing of a golden
treasure from the sky-world by a wonderful boy who becomes
a teacher of mankind — a son of the Sun bringing to earth a
knowledge of the Medicine of Heaven.

The Skidi Pawnee narrate the story almost exactly in its
Blackfoot form, although they do not tell of the poetical trans-
lation to and from the heavens by means of a spider’s web;
but the Ankara, in their version of the “Girl Who Married a
Star,” give an account of this journey, which is by climbing
an ever-growing tree that at last penetrates the sky-world —
a means known not only to Jack of beanstalk fame, but to
many another tale of the Old and the New Hemispheres.'*®
It is in this form that the' story is known to several tribes —
Arapaho, Crow, Kiowa, Assiniboin.**

The events of the legend, as told in the very perfect Ara-
paho version, begin with the sky-world family: “their tipi was
formed by the daylight, and the entrance-door was the sun.”
Here lived a Man and a Woman and their two boys — Sun and
Moon. In search of wives the youths go along Eagle River,
which runs east and west, the older brother. Sun, travelling



1 14 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

down the stream; the younger, Moon, in the opposite direction.
Sun takes for his wife a water animal, the Toad; but Moon
decides to marry a mortal woman, and when he sees two girls
in the field, he turns himself into a porcupine and climbs
a tree. One of the girls starts to follow the animal up the
tree, but it keeps ascending, and the tree continues growing.
Finally the sky is pierced, and Moon, resuming the form of a
young man, takes the girl to wife in the sky-world lodge. There
a son is born to her. Meanwhile the father of Sun and Moon
has presented his daughter-in-law with a digging stick, but
her husband forbids her to dig a certain withered plant. Out
of curiosity she disobeys and uncovers a hole through which
she looks down upon the camp circle of her people. She under-
takes to descend by means of a sinew rope, but just before
she reaches earth with her son. Moon throws a stone, called
Heated Stone, after her, saying, “I shall have to make her
return to me” — a remark which, the Indians declare, shows
that there is another place for dead people, the sky-world.
The woman is killed by the stone, but the boy is uninjured.
At first he is nourished from the breasts of his dead mother;
but afterward he is found and cared for by Old Woman Night,
who had come to the spot. “Well, well ! ” she says to him, “Are
you Little Star? I am so happy to meet you. This is the
central spot which everybody comes to. It is the terminus of
all trails from all directions. I have a little tipi down on the
north side of the river, and I want you to come with me. It
is only a short distance from here. Come on, grandchild, Little
Star.” The old woman made bow and arrows for Little Star,
and with these he slew a horned creature with blazing eyes
which proved to have been the husband of Night.’’® She trans-
formed the bow into a lance, and with this he began to kill
the serpents which infested the world. While he was sleeping
on the prairie, however, a snake entered his body and coiled
itself in his skull. All the flesh fell from him, but his bones
still held together, and “in this condition he gave his image to



THE GREAT PLAINS


IIS

the people as a cross.” Sense had not altogether deserted him;
he prayed for two days of torrential rain and two of intense
heat; and when these had passed the serpent thrust its panting
head out of his mouth, whereupon he pulled it forth, and was
restored to his living form. The reptile’s skin he affixed to his
lance, and thus equipped returned to the black lodge of Night,
where he became the morning star.

In other versions — Crow, Kiowa — the Sun, not the Moon,
is the celestial husband; and the porcupine, with his beautiful
quills, would seem to be more appropriately an embodiment
of the orb of day. The tabued plant, which the wife digs, ap-
pears as a constant feature in nearly every variant. That there
is close association with the buffalo is indicated by the fact
that a buffalo chip (dried dung of the buffalo) is substituted
in the Crow story, and that in the Kiowa the tabu is a plant
whose top had been bitten off by that animal. The Kiowa
version gives the interesting variation that the boy, who is
adopted in this instance by Spider Woman, the earth goddess,
is split into twins by a gaming wheel (a sun-symbol) which he
throws into the air. The story goes on with the drowning of
one of the twins by water monsters, while the other trans-
formed himself into “medicine,” and in this shape gave him-
self to the Kiowa as the pledge and guardian of their national
existence.

V. THE MYSTERY OF DEATH “

Why men die is a problem no less mysterious to the human
mind than is the coming of life. One account of the origin of
death, conimon to a number of Plains tribes, makes it the con-
sequence of an unfavourable chance at the beginning of the
world. As the Blackfeet tell it. Old Man and Old Woman
debated whether people should die. “People will never die,”
said Old Man. “Oh,” said Old Woman, “that will never do;
because, if people live always, there will be too many people
in the world.” “Well,” said Old Man, “we do not want to



ii6 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

die forever. We shall die for four days and then come to life
again.” “Oh, no,” said Old Woman, “it will b6 better to die
forever, so that we shall be sorry for each other.” Unable to
agree, they leave the matter to a sign: Old Man throws a buf-
falo chip into the water; if it sinks, men are to die. “Now, Old
Woman had great power, and she caused the chip to turn into
a stone, so it sank. So when we die, we die forever.” . . .
We must have death in order that we may pity one another!
— there is an elemental pathos in this simple motive, as in the
not dissimilar Eskimo parable of the Old Woman who chose
light and death rather than life amid darkness.

A tale of a different complexion, touched by the character-
istic astrological genius of the tribe, is the Pawnee story of
the origin of death.^^ Mankind had not yet been created when
Tirawa sent the giant Lightning to explore the earth. In his
sack — the tornado — given him by Bright Star, who has com-
mand of the elements. Lightning carried the constellations
which Morning Star is accustomed to drive before him; and,
after making the circuit of the earth. Lightning released the
stars, to encamp there in their celestial order. Here they
would have remained, but a certain star, called Fool-Coyote
(because he deceives the coyotes, which howl at him, thinking
him to be the morning star, whom he precedes), was jealous
of the power of Bright Star, and he placed upon the earth a
wolf, which stole the tornado-sack of Lightning. He released
the beings that were in the sack, but these, when they saw that
it was the wolf, and not their master Lightning, which had
freed them, slew the animal; and ever since earth has been the
abode of warfare and of death.

Another Pawnee myth, with the same astrological turn, tells
of the termination that is to come to all earthly life. Various
portents will precede: the moon will turn red and the sun will
die in the skies. The North Star is the power which is to pre-
side at the end of all things, as the Bright Star of evening was
the ruler when life began. The Morning Star, the messenger



THE GREAT PLAINS


117

of heaven, which revealed the mysteries of fate to the people,
said that in the beginning, at the first great council which ap-
portioned the star folk their stations, two of the people fell
ill. One of these was old, and one was young. They were
placed upon stretchers, carried by stars (Ursa Major and Ursa
Minor), and the two stretchers were tied to the North Star.
Now the South Star, the Spirit Star, or Star of Death, comes
higher and higher in the heavens, and nearer and nearer the
North Star, and when the time for the end of life draws nigh,
the Death Star will approach so close to the North Star that
it will capture the stars that bear the stretchers and cause
the death of the persons who are lying ill upon these stellar
couches. The North Star will then disappear and move away
and the South Star will take possession of earth and of its
people. “The command for the ending of all things will be
given by the North Star, and the South Star will carry out
the commands. Our people were made by the stars. When
the time comes for all things to end our people will turn into
small stars and will fly to the South Star, where they belong.”
Like other Indians, the Pawnee regard the Milky Way as the
path taken by the souls after death. The soul goes first to
the North Star, they say, which sets them upon the north end
of the celestial road, by which they proceed to the Spirit Star
of the south.

Yet not all the spirits of the dead go to the stars — at least,
not directly. For the Indian the earth is filled with ghostly
visitants, spirits of men and animals wandering through the
places which life had made familiar. One of the most grue-
some classes of these is formed by the Scalped Men. Men
slain and scalped in battle are regarded as not truly dead; they
become magic beings, dwelling in caves or haunting the wilds,
for shame prevents them from returning to their own people.
Their heads are bloody and their bodies mutilated, as left by
their enemies, and one horribly vivid Pawnee tale tells how
they address one another by names descriptive of the patches



Ii8 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

of hair still left upon their heads — “One-Hair, Forehead-
Hair, Hair-Back-of-the-Head, all of you come!”

The story in which this occurs is of a man who had lost wife
and son, and in his bereavement was wandering over the prai-
ries in quest of death. He was met by the Scalped Men of his
tribe, and these, taking pity upon him, implored Tirawa to
return the dead to the land of the living. The request was
granted with certain restrictions — dead and living were to
encamp for four days, side by side, without speaking to one
another; the bereaved father might speak to his son, but might
not touch him. The tribesfolk assembled in camp; they beheld
a huge dust approaching; the spirits of their departed friends
passed before them. But when the father saw his son among
the dead, he seized hold of him and hugged him, and in his
heart he said, “I will not let you go!” The people shrieked;
the dead disappeared; and death has continued upon carth.“

Not less deeply pathetic is another Pawnee talc on the Or-
pheus and Eurydice theme. A young man joined a war-party
in order to win ponies as a bridal fee for the girl of his desire.
When her lover no longer appeared, the maiden, not knowing
that he had gone to war, sickened and died. On the return of
the war-party, it was noised through the village that the young
brave had captured more ponies than any of the other men;
and when he arrived at his father’s lodge, his mother told him
the tribal gossip, but failed to mention the girl’s death. He
went to the spring where tlie maidens go for water, the meeting-
place of Indian lovers, but his sweetheart was not among them.
The next day his mother remarked that a girl of the tribe had
died during his absence, and then he knew that it was his love
who was dead. When he learned this, he called for meat and
a new pair of moccasins, and went forth in search of the girl’s
grave, for the people, following the buffalo, had moved from
the place in which she had died. He came to the spot where
the grave was and remained beside it for several days, weeping.
Then he went on to the empty village, where the people had



THE GREAT PLAINS


1 19

been when the girl died, for he saw smoke rising from one of the
earth lodges. He peeped in, and there he saw his beloved, to-
gether with the buffalo robes and other objects which had
been buried with her. As he stood gazing, the maiden said,
“You have been standing there a long time. Come into the
lodge, but do not come near me. Sit down near the entrance.”
Night after night he was allowed to return, each time coming a
little nearer to the girl, but never being permitted to touch
her. Finally, she told him that, if he would do in all things as
she said, he might be allowed to keep her. After this, invisible
dancers filled the lodge, each night becoming more visible,
until at last he saw himself surrounded by a group of spirits
of the girl’s relatives. The leader said to him, “Young man,
when you first started from the village where your people are
you began to cry. We knew what you were crying about.
You were poor in spirit because this girl had died. All of us
agreed that we would send the girl back. You can see her now,
but she is not real. You must be careful and not make her
angry or you will lose her. You have been a brave man to
stay with the girl when we came in, but this is the way we are.
You can not see us, but some time we can turn into people and
you can see us, though we are not real. We are spirits. There
is one thing you must do before the girl can stay with you.
We have smoked.” The feat that remained to be accomplished
was that, when her mortal relatives should return and approach
her grave with meat-offerings, he must be able to seize and hold
her in their presence. Four trials would be granted him; if
he failed in each essay, she would vanish forever. Thrice he
was thrown, and the girl escaped; the fourth time, with the
aid of her uncles, he succeeded in holding her, and she became
his wife. Only her mother seemed to be suspicious of her; the
old woman took her hoe, went out to her daughter’s grave,
and dug till she found the bones; but when she returned, the
girl said to her: “Mother, I know what you have done. You
do not believe that I am your daughter; but, mother, I am
X — 10



120 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

your d 3 .ughter. NIy body lies up there, but I cini hcic with
you. I am not real, and if you people do not always treat me
properly, I will suddenly disappear.”

The spirit bride gave birth to a son in due time, but the
child was never allowed to touch the ground, and the mother
never made moccasins for her husband. He had become a man
of renown and he wished to take another wife. The spirit
wife warned him not to do so, but he persisted. Eventually a
quarrel came, due to the jealousy of the new wife, and the
man struck his spirit wife. She said: “Do not strike me any
more, for you know what I told you. For one thing I am glad,
and that is I have a child. If I had remained in the Spirit
Land I should never have been allowed to have a child.
The child is mine. You do not love my child. ... I love my
child. When I am gone I shall take my child with me.” The
mother disappeared in a whirlwind, and the next morning the
child was found dead. The man, too, died of grief and remorse,
but the people buided him apart from the ghost wife’s grave.

VI. PROPHETS AND WONDER-WORKERS

In the legendary lore of all Indian tribes the part played by
wonder-workers in the affairs of men is the predominating
theme. Sometimes these are demiurgic beings, exercising and
evincing their might in the process of creation. Sometimes
they are magical animals, endowed with shape-shifting powers.
Sometimes they are human heroes who acquire wonderful po-
tencies through some special initiation granted them by the
Nature-Powers, and so become great prophets, or medicine-
men. Frequently such human heroes are of obscure origin
— in a very familiar type of story, a poor or an orphan boy
who passes from a place despised into one of prominence and
benefaction.

In these legends various motives are manifest — a feeling
for history and the truth of nature, love of the marvellous,




Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #16 on: August 03, 2019, 08:03:08 PM »

THE GREAT PLAINS


121


and moral allegory. G. A. Dorsey divides Pawnee myths into
four great classes: (i) Tales of the heavenly beings, regarded
as true, and having religious significance. (2) Tales of Ready-
to-Give,®“ the culture hero,®^ especially pertaining to the guar-
dian deity of the people in the matter of food-quests. (3)
Stories of wonder-deeds on earth, the majority of them being
concerned with the acquisition of “ medicine ’’-powers by some
individual. (4) Coyote tales, not regarded as true, but com-
monly pointing a moral. The coyote, among the Pawnee, usu-
ally appears as a low trickster, not as a magical transformer,
as in his more truly mythic embodiments; and apparently he
is with them a degraded m3rthological being, perhaps belong-
ing to an older stratum of belief than their present astronomi-
cal theology, perhaps borrowed frbm other tribal mythologies.
There is reason to believe, says Dorsey, that when the Pawnee
were still residents of Nebraska the word coyote was rarely
employed in these stories, and that the Wolf was the hero of
the Trickster tales, this Wolf being the truly mythological
being who was sent by the Wolf Star to steal the tornado-sack
of Lightning, and so to introduce death upon earth. If the
Wolf be indeed a kind of mythic embodiment of the tornado,
which yearly deals death on some portion of the Great Plains,
the Omaha description of “the male gray wolf, whose cry,
uttered without effort, verily made the earth to tremble,”
will be at once full of significance; and it will inevitably call
to mind the Icelandic dog, Garm, baying at world-destroying
Ragnarok, and the wolf, Fenrir, loosed to war upon the gods
of heaven.

Stories of the Trickster and Transformer are universal in
North America.^® In the eastern portion of the continent the
Algonquian Great Hare (and his degenerate doublet, “Brer
Rabbit”) is the conspicuous personage, though he sometimes
appears in human form, as in Glooscap and his kindred. On
the Great Plains, and westward to the Pacific, the Coyote is
the most common embodiment of this character. Sometimes



122 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

he appears as a true demiurge, sometimes as the typical ex-
ample for a well-shot moral or as the butt of satire and ridicule.
Occasionally, the Trickster and the Coyote appear as doubles,
as in some Arapaho stories of Nihanpan, vying with Coyote
in contests of trickery; the Assiniboin Tricksters, Inktonmi
and Sitconski, have similar encounters with the Coyote or the
Rabbit, and they are made heroes of tales which elsewhere have
the animals themselves as central figures. Nihanpan, Ink-
tonmi, Sitconski, and the Athapascan trickster, Estas, all
appear as heroes of cosmogonic events, though they are appar-
ently in no sense deities, but only mythic personages of the Age
of Giants and Titans, when animal-beings were earth’s rulers.
“Old Man” of the Blackfeet and “Old Man Coyote” of the
Crow tribe play the same rUe; so that everywhere among the
Plains tribes we seem to see a process of progressive anthro-
pomorphization of a primitive Wolf god, who was the demiur-
gic hero. Whether such a being was ever worshipped, as are
the heavenly gods in the cult of Sun and Stars, is a matter of
doubt.

Among other animals the buffalo, and among birds the eagle,
held places of first importance; but all known creatures were
regarded as having potencies worthy of veneration and de-
sirable of acquisition. The Pawnee spoke of the animal-
powers as Nahurak, whom they thought to be organized in
lodges. Of these lodges, Pahuk on the Platte River was re-
garded as the most important. According to a story of which
there are several variants, a chief slew his son — in one ver-
sion as a sacrifice to Tirawa, in other forms of the legend be-
cause he was jealous of the son’s medicine-powers — and cast
the body into the Platte. The corpse was observed by the King-
fisher, who informed the animals at Pahuk. When the body
floated down to their hill-side lodge, the animals took it, car-
ried it in by the vine-hidden entrance, and sent to the animals
of Nakiskat, the animal lodge to the west, to inquire whether
life should be restored to the body of the slain youth. The



THE GREAT PLAINS


123


animals of Nakiskat referred the matter to the animals of
Tsuraspako, still westward on the Platte, and these sent him
on to Kitsawitsak, southward in Kansas; there he was bidden
to go to Pahua and thence again to Pahuk, all the lodges
agreeing that the verdict should be left to the ruling Nahurak
of Pahuk. The latter decided to restore life to the body and to
send the youth back to his tribe instructed in the animal mys-
teries. There he became a great teacher and doctor, and taught
the people to give offerings to the Nahurak of Pahuk, which
was thenceforth a place of great sanctity.

A sojourn in the interior of a hill or a mountain which is
the lodge of Nature-Powers who instruct the comer in medic-
inal mysteries is a frequent episode, especially in stories ac-
counting for the origin of a certain cult or rite. The Cheyenne
legend of the introduction of the Sun-Dance is a tale of this
character.® In a time of famine a young medicine-man went
into the wilderness with a woman, the wife of a chief, journey-
ing until they came to a forest-clad mountain, beyond which
lay a sea of waters. The mountain opened, and they entered;
and Roaring Thunder, who talked to them from the top of the
mountain-peak, instructed them in the ritual of the dance.
“From henceforth, by following my teachings, you and your
children shall be blessed abundantly,” he said; “follow my
instructions accurately, and then, when you go forth from this
mountain, all of the heavenly bodies will move. The Roar-
ing Thunder will awaken them, the sun, moon, stars, and the
rain will bring forth fruits of all kinds, all the animals will
come forth behind you from this mountain, and they will fol-
low you home. Take this horned cap to wear when you perform
the ceremony that I have given you, and you will control the
buffalo and all other animals. Put the cap on as you go forth
from here and the earth will bless you.” Followed by herds of
buffalo, which lay down as they camped and marched as they
marched, they returned to their people, where the ritual was
performed; while the horned head-dress was preserved as a



124


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


sacred object and handed down in the tribe. In the Sun-Dance
ceremonial the altar is made of a buffalo skull, and it is often
by dragging buffalo skulls, attached by thongs to the muscles
of the back, that vows are fulfilled and penance is performed.
It is not difficult to see that the buffalo, as the great food ani-
mal of the Plains, is here the important personage, the gift of
the heavenly powers; and it would be interesting to theorize
on some similar origin for the bucrania which adorned the
places of sacrifice of classical peoples.

VII. MIGRATION-LEGENDS AND YEAR-COUNTS”

The historical sense had reached a certain development
among the Indians of the Plains as among those of the east.
Not only are migration-legends to be found, such as that of
the Creek, but pictographic records, like the Walum Olum of
the Delaware, are possessed by more than one western tribe.

Among the most interesting of these migration-traditions
— interesting because of their analogies with similar legends
of the civilized Mexican peoples — are the Cheyenne myths
reported by G. A. Dorsey. The tales begin with an origin
story,^® telling how, in the beginning, the Great Medicine
created the earth and the heavenly bodies; and, in the far
north, a beautiful country, an earthly Paradise where fruits
and game were plentiful, and where winter was unknown.
Here the first people lived on honey and fruits; they were
naked, and wandered about like the animals with whom they
were friends; they were never cold or hungry. There were
three races of these men: a hairy race; a white race, with hair
on their heads; and the Indians, with hair only on the top of
the head. The. hairy people went south, where the land was
barren, and after a time the Indians followed them; the white,
bearded men also departed, but none knew whither. Before
the red men left this beautiful country, the Great Medicine
blessed them and gave them that which seemed to awaken




PLATE XIX


Cheyenne drawing, representing the medicine-man
and his wife who brought back the Sun-Dance from
the Mountain of the Roaring Thunder (see p, 123),
After FCM ix, Plate XIV.






THE GREAT PLAINS 125

their dormant minds, for hitherto they had been without in-
telligence. They were taught to clothe their bodies with skins
and to make tools and weapons of flint.

The red men followed the hairy men to the south, where the
latter had become cave-dwellers. . These, however, were afraid
of the Indians, were few in number, and eventually disappeared.
Warned of a flood which was to cover the southland, the In-
dians returned to the north, to And that the bearded men
and some of the animals were gone from there. Nor were they
able, as before, to talk with the animals, but they tamed the
panther and bear and other beasts, teaching them to catch
game for the people. Afterward they went once more to the
south, where the flood had subsided, and where the land was
become beautiful and green. Another inundation came, how-
ever, and scattered them here and there in small bands, so
that they never again were united as one people. This deluge
laid the country waste, and to escape starvation they journeyed
north once more, only to And the lands there also barren.
After hundreds of years, the earth shook, and the high hills
sent forth fire and smoke; with the winter came floods, so that
all the red men had to dress in furs and live in caves, for the
winter was long and cold, and it destroyed all the trees. The
people were nearly starved when spring came; but the Great
Medicine gave them maize to plant and buffalo for meat, and
after that there were no more famines.

A second myth of the same people, which is in some de-
gree a doublet of the preceding, tells how the ancestors of
the Cheyenne dwelt in the far north, beyond a great body of
water. They were overpowered by an enemy and in danger
of becoming slaves, when a medicine-man among them, who
possessed a marvellous hoop and carried a long staff, led them
from the country. On the fourth night of their journey, they
saw before them a bright light, a little above the ground, and
this went in front of them as they advanced. When they came
to the water, the medicine-m-an told them that he was going



126


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


to lead them to a land where they should live forever. He sang
magic songs; the waters divided; and the people crossed on
dry land. The fire now disappeared, and when day came they
found themselves in a beautiful country.

In these events the missionary influence is obvious: the
Exodus of Israel is adapted to Cheyenne history. The story
goes on, however, with elements that seem truly aboriginal.
In the new country the Cheyenne were physically strong, but
mentally weak. They could carry off large animals on their
backs; they tamed the bear and the panther. Animals, too,
were huge. One variety was in the form of the cow, though
four times as large; it was tame by nature, and men used its
milk; twenty men and boys could get upon the back of one of
these creatures at a time. Another species resembled the horse,
but had horns and long, sharp teeth; this was a man-eater,
and could trail human beings through the rivers and tall grass
by scent; fortunately, beasts of this kind were few in number.
Most of the animals were destroyed in a great flood, after
which the Cheyenne who survived were strong in mind, but
weak in body.

It is tempting to see in these stories vague memories of
great physiographical changes, reaching back perhaps to the
glacial age, and to the period when the elephant kind was
abundant in North America, and the great sabre-tooth not
yet extinct. On the other hand, the northerly and southerly
wanderings of the tribe may well be historical, for it is alto-
gether in keeping with what is known of the drift of the tribal
stocks; naturally, such migrations in search of food would be
accompanied by changes in the conditions of life, in fauna
and in flora. The legend of the bearded white men in the far
north is interesting, both as recalling the Nahuatlan myths of
Quetzalcoatl, and for its suggested reminiscence of the North-
men: for may it not be possible that the hairy men of the
first races in the extreme north were the fur-clad Eskimo, and
that the bearded men, who came and disappeared, none knew



THE GREAT PLAINS


' 127

whither, were descendants of the Scandinavian colonizers of
Greenland?

Myths having to do with the gift of maize and of the buffalo
to mankind are of frequent occurrence. A Cheyenne tale re-
counts the adventures of two young men who entered a hill
by diving into a spring which gushed from it.^^ Inside they
found an old woman cooking buffalo meat and maize in
two separate pots; and they saw great herds of buffalo and
ponies and all manner of animals, as well as fields of growing
maize. The ancient crone ^ gave them the two bowls with
maize and meat, commanding them to feed all the tribe, last
of all an orphan boy and an orphan girl, the contents of
the vessels being undiminished until it came the turn of the
orphans, who emptied the dishes.®^ Buffalo arose from the
spring, while from the seed that the young men brought maize
was grown, this cereal being thereafter planted every year by
the Cheyenne. It is easy to see in the episode of the orphans
the symbol of plenty, for with wild tribes the lot of the
orphan is not secure: it is the orphan child that is sacrificed
in the hour of danger, the orphan who is left to starve in time
of famine, the orphan, too, who is sometimes led to a wonder-
ful career by the pitying powers of nature.®^

The Dakota divide their national history by the epochal de-
scent of the Woman-from-Heaven,'^ which, in the chronology
of Battiste Good (Wapoctanxi), a Brule, occurred in the year
901 A. D. All the tribes of the Dakota nation were assembled
in a great camp, when a beautiful woman appeared to two of
the young men, saying, ‘T came from Heaven to teach the
Dakotas how to live and what their future shall be. ... I
give you this pipe; keep it always.” Besides the pipe, she
bestowed upon them a package containing four grains of maize
— one white, one black, one yellow, one variegated — with
the words, “ I am a buffalo, the White Buffalo Cow. I will spill
my milk [the maize] all over the earth, that the people may
live.” She pointed to the North: “When you see a yellowish



128


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


cloud toward the north, that is my breath; rejoice at the sight
of it, for you shall soon see buffalo. Red is the blood of the
buffalo, and by that you shall live.” Pointing to the east,
symbolized by blue; “This pipe is related to the heavens, and
you shall live with it” — that is, the blue smoke of the pipe
is akin to the heavenly blue to which it ascends. Southward:
“Clouds of many colors may come up from the south, but look
at the pipe and the blue sky and know that the clouds will
soon pass away and all will become blue and clear again.”
Westward: “When it shall be blue in the west, know that it
is closely related to you through the pipe and the blue heavens,
and by that you shall grow rich. ... I am the White Buffalo
Cow; my milk is of four kinds; I spill it on the earth that you
may live by it.®^ You shall call me Grandmother. If you young
men will follow me over the hills you shall see my relatives.”
And with this revelation she disappeared."*®

Battiste Good’s chronology, or “ Cycles,” is one of the most
interesting pictographic records made by an Indian north of
Mexico. It recalls the Nahuatlan historical documents by
its cyclic character, although the numerical period, seventy
years, is different. Each cycle is represented by a circle,
surrounded by tipis, and containing emblems recalling note-
worthy events. Occurrences from 901, the year of the mythic
revelation, to 1700 are legendary, but from 1700 onward each
year is marked by an image emblematic of some event of an
historical character. The veracity of the record is proved in
part by the existence of other Dakotan “Winter-Counts” (so
called because the Dakota chiefly choose winter events to
mark their chronology) with corroborative statements. Simi-
lar pictographic chronologies have been discovered elsewhere,
those of the Kiowa showing a division of the year into sum-
mer and winter and even into moons, or months; but in no
other part of the American continent, north of Mexico, do we
find an antiquity of reference equal to that claimed for the
Siouan records.




PLATE XX


Kiowa calendar, painted on buckskin. The bars,
twenty-nine in number, represent the years from 1864
onward. The crescents, thirty-seven in number,
represent a lunar record, separate from the year-count.
I'he figures attached to these signs are symbols of the
events which mark the periods indicated. Compare,
for other forms of pictographic and mnemonic record,
Plates V, X, XXX, and Figure 2. After // JR BE,
Plate LXXX.







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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #17 on: August 03, 2019, 08:04:00 PM »


CHAPTER VII

MOUNTAIN AND DESERT

I. THE GREAT DIVIDE

W EST of the Great Plains, and extending almost the full
length of the continent, rises the long wall of the Rocky
Mountains — the Great Divide of North America. To the
east of this chain lie the open prairies, grassy and watered,
and beyond these the ancient forest lands, rich in vegetation.
To the west, extending to the coastal ranges which abruptly
overlook the Pacific, is a vast plateau, at its widest occupying
a full third of the continental breadth, the surface of which is
a continuous variegation of mountain and valley, desert and
oasis. To the north this plateau contracts in width, becom-
ing more continuously and densely mountainous as it narrows
in the high ranges and picturesque glaciers of the Canadian
Rockies. In the central region it opens out into broad inter-
montane valleys, like that of the Columbia, and eventually
expands into the semi-arid deserts of the south-west, the land
of mesa and canyon, wonderfully fertile where water is ob-
tainable, but mainly a waste given over to cactus and sage-
brush. Still farther south the elevated area contracts again
into the central plateau of Mexico, which becomes more fruit-
ful and fair as the Tropic of Cancer is passed, until it falls
away at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

This plateau region of North America is well-nigh as dis-
tinct ethnically as it is physiographically. In the mountains
of British Columbia and up into central Alaska its aborigi-
nals are Athapascan tribes, whose congeners hold the Barren



130


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


Lands of the north and the Plains as far as Hudson’s Bay;
and in the south, in eastern New Mexico, in Arizona and south-
ern Texas, and on into Mexico itself, Athapascans are again
found in the Navaho and Apache peoples. Between these
limits, however — penetrating now westward to the Pacific,
now eastward into the Plains — is a succession of linguistic
stocks who are the characteristic autochthones of the moun-
tain and desert region, colouring with their beliefs and civil-
ization other intrusive tribes who have taken a habitation
beside them.

The northerly of these stocks is the Salishan, comprising
more than sixty tribes, of whom the Flathead and Pend
d’Oreille are perhaps best known. Southern British Columbia,
western Montana, and most of Washington, where they sur-
rounded Puget Sound and held the Pacific coast, is territory
which was once almost wholly Salishan; although, around the
headwaters of the Columbia, the Kutenai formed a distinct
stock consisting of a single tribe. Adjoining the Salish to the
south, and extending from the Columbia valley in Washington
and Oregon eastward to central Idaho, were the tribes of the
Shahaptian stock, made famous by the Nez Perce and their
great Chief Joseph. From central Oregon and Idaho, through
the deserts of Nevada, Utah, and southern California, east-
ward into the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado, and finally
out through the lower hills of New Mexico into the Texas
plains, were the tribes of the great Shoshonean family — Ban-
nock and Shoshoni in the north, Paiute and Ute in the central
belt, Hopi in Tusayan, and Comanche on the Great Plains. To
the south dwell the most characteristically desert peoples of
all — the Yuman Mohave and Cocopo of Arizona and Lower
California, the Pima and Papago of southern Arizona, whose
kindred extend far south into western Mexico. Another group,
culturally the most interesting of all, although territorially
the most limited, is formed by the Pueblo Indians — tribes of
various stocks forming little islets of race amid the engulfing



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 131

Athapascans of Arizona and New Mexico — but to these a
separate chapter must be devoted.

The cultural characteristics of these peoples vary from zone
to zone, both in form and in originality. In the north, where
the headwaters of the Columbia and the Missouri approach
each other, and where the valleys of these rivers form easy
paths that lead down to the sea or out into the plains, it is to
be expected that we should find, as we do find, the civilization
of the Salish and the Shahaptian approximating in form and
idea to that of the neighbouring peoples of coast and prairie.
In the central region, where the mountain barriers on each
side are huge and the distances are immense, it is equally
natural to discover among the sparse and scattered Shosho-
nean peoples a comparatively isolated culture — inept and
crude, with that reliance upon roots and herbs to eke out
their meagre supply of animal food which has won for many of
them the epithet “Digger Indians.” In the more open south,
agriculture was practised in some degree by every people —
Yuman, Piman, Athapascan, and Pueblo — and civilization
was accordingly higher, the arts of pottery, basketry, and
weaving being developed into skilled industries, especially
among the more gifted tribes. Here, however, there is a sharp
line between the dwellers in well-built pueblos and the camp-
ers, content with grass hut or brush wikiup in summer and
earth-covered hogan in winter — a difference reflected in social
organization and in ideas.

The subsistence of the tribes of the mountain and desert
area had its own character. The range of the buffalo, nowhere
found in such numbers as on the Plains, was restricted to the
eastern portion of the region; and the deer kind and other
large animals, such as the bear and mountain goat, were not
sufficiently numerous to form an economic equivalent. Of
smaller animals the hare was perhaps most important, and
his dignity is reflected in his mythic rUes. Horses were early
used, and in recent times the Navaho have become accom-



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


132

plished herdsmen. The dog was, of course, ubiquitous. Vege-
table subsistence is abundant in places where water is suf-
ficient, but these are few, and hence it comes that a great
part of the religion, especially of the agricultural tribes of tlie
South-West, revolves about rain-making and the rain-bringing
powers.

II. THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAINS

The prairie tribes, and even tribes of the forest region, held
the western mountains in veneration, for to them the Rockies
were the limits of the known world. They regarded them as
the pillars of heaven, whose summits were the abode of mighty
beings, who spoke in the thunders and revealed themselves in
the lightning’s flash. There, too, on the Mountains of the
Setting Sun, many a tribe placed the Village of Souls, to reach
which the adventurous spirit must run a gauntlet of terrors
— snow-storm and torrent, shaking rock and perilous bridge;
only the valiant soul could pass these obstacles and arrive
at last in the land of plenty and verdure which lay beyond.
Again, the mountains were the seats of revelation; thither
went mighty medicine-men, the prophets of the nations, to
keep their solitary vigils, or to receive, in the bosom of these
lodges of the gods, instruction in the mysteries which were to
be the salvation of their people.

It is not extraordinary that the mountains exercised a like
fascination over the mythopoetic imaginations of the tribes
who inhabited their valleys or dwelt on the intermontane
plateau. There are many myths accounting for the formation
of natural wonders, and the wilds are peopled with monstrous
beings, oft-times reminiscent of European folk-lore.® Giants,
dwelling in stone houses or armoured with stone ' shirts, are
familiar figures, as are also eaters of human flesh, fang-mouthed
and huge-bellied. The cannibal’s wife, who warns and protects
her husband’s visitors, even to the point where they destroy
him, is a frequent theme; and the Ute tell stories of mortal



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


133


men capturing bird-women hy stealing their bird-clothes while
they are bathing — exactly as the swan-maidens are taken in
Teutonic and Oriental folk-lore.^^ The home of these bird-
women is far away in the mountains, whither the human hero
makes his adventurous flight with magic feathers and a mantle
of invisibility.®^ In a Shoshonean tale, published by Powell,
Stone Shirt, the giant, slays Sikor, the crane, and carries
away the wife of the bird, but her babe is left behind and is
reared by his grandmother. One day a ghost appears and tells
the boy of the fate of his parents. He returns to his grand-
mother: “Grandmother, why have you lied to me about my
father and mother.?” — but she answers nothing, for she knows
that a ghost has told him all; and the boy sobs himself to sleep.
There a vision came to him, promising him vengeance, and he
resolved to enlist all nations in his enterprise; but first he com-
pelled his grandmother to cut him in twain with a magic
axe, which, when she had done, lo, there were two boys, whole
and beautiful, where before there had been only one.^ With
Wolf and Rattlesnake as their counsellors, the brothers set out
across the desert. From a never-failing cup they gave water
to their followers, when threatened with death from thirst;
and when hunger beset them, all were fed from the flesh of the
thousand-eyed antelope which was the watchman of Stone
Shirt, but which Rattlesnake, who had the power of making
himself invisible, approached and slew. In the form of doves
the brothers spied out the home of Stone Shirt, to which they
were taken by the gianPs daughters, to whom the two birds
came while the maidens bathed. In the form of mice, they
gnawed the bowstrings of the magic bows which the young
girls owned; and when Stone Shirt appeared, glorying in his
strength and fancied immunity, the Rattlesnake struck and
hurt him to the death. The two maidens, finding their
weapons useless, sang their death-song and danced their
death-dance, and passed away beside their father. The girls
were buried on the shore of the lake where their home had



134


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


been, but the bones of Stone Shirt were left to bleach as he
had left the bones of Sikor, the crane.

This myth surely recounts the conquests of the mountains
by the animal-powers, with the birds at their head. The
northern Shoshoni say that formerly there were numerous
Stone Giants (Dzoavits) dwelling in the hills; many of these
were killed by the Weasels, but most of them were destroyed
by birds who built fires which exterminated the race. In a
familiar western form of the Theft of Fire, it is a mountain
genius who is the fire’s jealous guardian, and from whom, by
craft and fleetness, the animals steal the precious element for
the succour of a cold and cheerless world.

It is not always the animals, however, who war against the
mountains. On the Columbia River, the canyon by which it
passes through the Cascade Range was at one time, the In-
dians say, bridged by rock, a veritable Bridge of the Gods;
but the snow-capped hills of the region engaged in war, hurl-
ing enormous boulders at one another, and one of these, thrown
by Mt. Hood at Mt. Adams, fell short of its mark, struck and
broke the bridge, and dammed the river where is now the great
cascade. A Salishan legend tells that this bridge was made
by Sahale, the creator, to unite the tribes of men who dwelt
on either side of the mountains. He stationed Loowit, the
witch, on guard at this bridge, where was the only fire in the
world,®^ but she, pitying the Indians, besought Sahale to per-
mit her to bestow upon them the gift of fire. This was done,
to the end that men’s lot was vastly bettered, and Sahale,
pleased with the result, transformed Loowit into a beautiful
maiden. But the wars brought on by the rivalry of two
chiefs, Klickitat and Wiyeast, for the hand of Loowit were so
disastrous to men that Sahale repented his act, broke down
the bridge, and, putting to death the lovers and their beloved,
reared over them, as memorials, the three great mountains
— over Loowit the height that is now St. Helens, over Wi-
yeast Mt. Hood, and over Klickitat Mt. Adams.



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 135

Another great elevation of the vicinity, Mt. Tacoma, has
its own legends. Of its beautiful Paradise Valley, near the
snow-line, the Indians made a sanctuary, a place of refuge for
the pursued, upon attaining which none dared harm him, a
place of penance for the repentant, a place of vigil for the
seeker after visions. But beyond this valley, toward the moun-
tain-top, no Indian ventured. Long ago, they said, a man was
told in a dream that on the mountain’s top was great wealth
of shell money. He made his way thither, and under a great
rock, elk-shaped like the spirit that had directed him, he
found stores of treasure; but in his greed he took all, leaving
naught as an offering to the mountain. Then it, in its anger,
shook and smoked and belched forth fire; and the man, throw-
ing down his riches, fell insensible. When he awoke, he was at
his old camp in Saghalie Illahle, “the Land of Peace,” now
called Paradise Valley; but the time he had passed, instead
of a single day, had been years, and he was now an old man,
whose remaining life was passed as a counsellor of his tribe,
venerated because of his ascent of the divine mountain.®®

III. THE WORLD AND ITS DENIZENS

Men’s Ideas of the form of the world, in the pre-scientific
stage of thinking, are determined by the aspect of their natu-
ral environment: dwellers by the sea look upon the land as an
island floating like a raft on cosmic waters; plalns-folk believe
the earth to be a circle overcanopied by the tent of heaven;
mountaineers naturally regard the mountains as the pillars
of the firmament supporting the sky-roof over the habitable
valleys. The Thompson River Indians, of Salishan stock,
dwelling amid the dense mountains that stand between the
Fraser and Columbia rivers, consider the earth to be square,
says Teit,^^ the corners directed to the points of the compass.
It Is comparatively level toward the centre, but rises In
mountain chains at the outer borders, where, too, clouds and

X — II



136 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

mists ascend from the encircling lakes. The earth rises to-
ward the north; hence it grows colder as one travels in this
direction.

Long ago, these Indians say, earth was destitute of trees
and of many kinds of vegetation; there were no salmon nor
berries. The people of the time, though they had human form,
were really animals; gifted with magical powers.'*® Into the
world then came certain transformers, ‘‘® the greatest of whom
were the Coyote and the Old Man,®® and these were the beings
who put the earth in order, giving the mountains and valleys
their present aspects and transforming the wicked among the
ancient world denizens Into the animal shapes which are still
theirs; the descendants of the good among these pristine beings
are the Indians of today. Many of these creatures, too, were
transformed into rocks and boulders: on a certain mountain
three stone men may be seen sitting in a stone canoe; they are
three human beings who escaped thither when the deluge
overtook the world; Coyote alone survived this flood, for he
transformed himself into a piece of wood, and floated until
the waters subsided.

It was Coyote’s son, created by his father from quartz, who
climbed to the sky-world on a tree which he made to grow by
lifting his eyelids.^® In that realm he found all sorts of utensils
useful to man, but when he chose one, the others attacked him,
so that he cursed them all thenceforth to be servants of the
human race. He returned to the world of man by means of a
basket which Spider lowered for him; and on earth, in a series
of miracles, he distributed the food animals for the people to
live upon. The place where Coyote’s son came back from the
sky is the centre of the earth.

There is a world below the world of men as well as a world
above. In the world below the people are Ants, very active
and gay and fond of the game of lacrosse. On a certain
day one of two brothers disappeared; the remaining brother
searched far and wide, but could find no trace of him. Now the



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


137


Ants had stolen him, and had carried him away to the under-
world, where he played with them at lacrosse. But one day,
as he was in the midst of a game, he began to weep, and the
Ants said that some one must have struck him with a lacrosse
stick. “No! Nobody struck me,” he answered. “I am sorrow-
ful because while I was playing a tear fell on my hand. It was
my brother’s tear from the upper world, and I know by it
that he is searching for me and weeping.” Then the Ants in
pity sent a messenger to the upper world to tell the bereaved
one that his brother was well and happy in the underworld.
“How can I see my brother.^” he asked. “I must not tell you,”
replied the Ant. “Go to the Spider, and he may tell you.”
But the Spider said, “ I cannot let you down, as my thread is
too weak. Go to the Crow.” The Crow answered, “I will not
tell you with my mouth, but I will tell you in a dream”;
and in the vision he was told to lift the stone over the fireplace
in his lodge, and there would be the entrance to the lower
world. He was to close his eyes, leap downward, and, when
he alighted, jump again. Four times he was to leap with closed
eyes. The bereaved brother did so, and the fourth jump
brought him to the lowest of the worlds, where he was happy
with his brother. This myth presents analogies not only
with the Navaho conception of an ant-infested series of under-
worlds, but far to the south, in Central America, with the Cak-
chiquel legend of the two brothers who played at ball with the
powers of the underworld; ^ and again, on a world canvas,
with the myriad tales of the bereaved one, god or mortal,
seeking the ghost of his beloved in gloomy Hades.®®

These same Indians tell a story that seems almost an echo
of the Greek tale of Halcyone or of Tereus lamenting the lost
Itys.* A certain hunter, they say, commanded his sister never
to eat venison while he was on the hunt, but she disobeyed, and
he struck her. In chagrin she transformed herself into a golden
plover and flew away, while he, since he really loved his sister,
began to weep and bemoan his fate, until he, too, became


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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2019, 08:04:46 PM »


138 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

a bird, crying disconsolately, “Na xlentcetca,” — ‘‘Oh, my
younger sister!”

Like the southern tribes, the Salish tell of a time when the
Sun was a man-slayer, nearer to earth than now.^^ Across a
bridge of fog an unlucky gambler made his way to the Sun’s
house, where the Sun’s son concealed him from his cannibal
fatherd® “Mum, mum, mum! There must be a man here,”
said the Sun; but his son persuaded him that there was none,
and sent the gambler back to earth, burdened with riches.

The Thunderbird is not so huge as the bird of the Plains
tribes; he is in fact a small, red-plumaged creature which shoots
arrows from his wing as from a bow, the rebound of the wing
making the thunder, while the twinkling of his eyes is the
lightning; the large black stones found in the country are
the Thunder’s arrows.®^ The winds arc people, dwelling north
and south; some describe the wind as a man with a large
head and a body thin and light, fluttering above the ground.
Long ago the South-Wind People gave a daughter in marriage
to the North, but their babe was thrown into the water by the
bride’s brother, whose southern warmth was unable to endure
the little one’s colder nature; and the child became ice float-
ing down the river. Where the powerful Chinook wind blows,
capable of transforming the temperature from winter to sum-
mer in a few hours, the Indians tell of a great struggle, a
wrestling-match of long ago, in which five brothers of the
Warm-Wind People were defeated and decapitated by the
Cold- Wind Brothers; but the son of one of the Warm- Wind
Brothers grew up to avenge his uncles, and defeated the Cold-
Wind Brothers, allowing only one to live, and that with re-
stricted powers. Both the stories — of the north marrying the
south and of the wrestling winds, or seasons — are found far
east among the Algonquians and Iroquois; but the allegory is
too natural to necessitate any theory of borrowing — any more
than we might suppose the bodiless cherubs of the old Italian
painters to be akin to the Salish wind-people.®®



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


139


IV. SHAHAPTIAN AND SHOSHONEAN WORLD-SHAPERS

The Nez Perce are the most important tribe of the Sha-
haptian stock. In the primeval age, they say,^^ there was a
monster in what is now central Idaho whose breath was so
powerful that it inhaled the winds, the grass, the trees, and dif-
ferent animals, drawing them to destruction. The Coyote, who
was the most powerful being of the time, counselled by the Fox,
decided to force an entrance into this horrible creature, and
there he found the emaciated people, their life being slowly
drawn out of them, chill and insensible. He kindled a fire
from the fat in the monster’s vitals, revived the victims, and
then, with the knives with which he had provided himself,
cut their way out into the sunlight. From the different parts
of the body of the hideous being he created the tribes of
men, last of all making the Nez Perce from its blood, mingled
with water. Here is another world-wide myth, the tale of
the hero, swallowed by the monster, making his way again to
light; though in this Nez Perce version it seems to be a true
cosmogony, the monster being the world-giant from whose
body all life emerges.

The Shoshoni, or Snake, who border upon the Nez Perce,
regard the firmament as a dome of Ice, against which a great
serpent, who is none other than the rainbow, rubs his back.®®
From the friction thus produced particles of ice are ground off,
which in winter fall to earth as snow, while in summer they
melt into rain. Thunder they do not ascribe to birds, but to
the howling of Coyote, or, some say, to a celestial mouse run-
ning through the clouds.®* A great bird they know, Nunye-
nunc, which carries off men, like the roc of Arabian tales,
but he is not connected with the thunder. Like neighbouring
tribes, they tell of a time when the sun was close to the earth,
killing men with its heat. The Hare was sent to slay it, and he
shattered the sun into myriad fragments; but these set the
world ablaze, and It was not until the Hare’s eyes burst, and a



140


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


flood of tears issued forth, that the conflagration was quenched.
Thereafter the sun was conquered, and its course regulated.^®

The tale of the theft of fire recurs in many forms.®^ The fa-
miliar type is that in which the flame is guarded by its first
owners in some mountain lodge, until the tribes of animals who
dwell in cold and gloom decide to steal it. Entrance is gained
to the home of the guardians by craft, and a bit of the fire is
smuggled out under the coat or blanket of the thief. He is
discovered and pursued by the owners of the flame, but suc-
ceeds in passing it on to another animal, which in turn gives
it to another, and this one to yet another, until it is distributed
in all nature, or, perhaps, hidden in trees or stones. A Sho-
shoni version makes the great animal hero of this region, the
Coyote, the thief. With the aid of the Eagle he steals the fire
from its guardian, the Crane. Blackbird and Rock-Squirrel
are the animals who carry the flame farther, while Jack-Rabbit
revives the fallen fire-carriers. The Thompson River Indians
make the Beaver the assistant of the Eagle in the theft; and
they also tell a story of the Pandora type, of a man who
guarded fire and water in two boxes till an Elk, out of curios-
ity, opened the receptacles and set the elements free. A Nez
Perce variant also makes the Beaver the thief; the Pines were
the fire’s first guardians, but the Beaver stole a live coal, hid
it in his breast, and distributed it to willows and birches and
other trees which as yet did not possess it; and it is from these
woods that the Indians now kindle fire by rubbing.

Perhaps the most dramatic fire-myth of all is the elaborate
Ute version, in which Coyote is again the hero. It was in the
age when Coyote was chief, but when the animals had no fire,
though the rocks sometimes got hot. Once a small piece of
burnt rush, borne by the winds, was discovered by Coyote,
and then he knew that there was fire. He made for himself
a head-dress of bark fibre, summoned the animals in council,
and dispatched the birds as scouts to discover the flame coun-
try. The Humming-Bird descried it; and headed by Coyote,



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


141

they made a visit to the fire-people, who entertained them with
dance and feast. As they danced, Coyote came nearer and
nearer to the flame, took off his bark wig, and with it seized
the fire. Then all fled, pursued by the enraged guardians.
Coyote passed the fire to Eagle, Eagle to Humming-Bird,
thence to Hawk-Moth, to Chicken-Hawk, to Humming-Bird
again, and once more to Coyote, who, nearly caught, concealed
himself in a cavern where he nourished the one little spark
that remained alive. The disappointed fire-people caused rain
and snow, which filled the valleys with water; but directed by
the Rabbit, Coyote discovered a cave containing dry sage-
brush. Here he took a piece of the dry sage-brush, bored a
hole in it, and filled it with coals. With this under his belt
he returned home and summoned the people who were left;
then he took the stick, made a hole in it with an arrow-point,
and whittled a piece of hard greasewood. After this h.e bored
the sage-brush with the greasewood, gathered the borings, and
put them in dry grass; blowing upon this he soon had a fire.
“This dry pine-nut will be burned hereafter,” he said. “Dry
cedar will also be burned. Take fire into all the tents. I shall
throw away the rocks. There will be fire in every house.”

V. COYOTE «

The animal-powers bulk large in the myths of the tribes of
the Mountain and Desert region. Doubtless in their religion,
apart from myth, the animal-powers are secondary; the Sho-
shoni, says De Smet, swear by the Sun, by Fire, and by the
Earth, and what men swear by we may be reasonably sure
marks their intensest convictions. The ritual of the calumet,
directed to the four quarters, to heaven, and to earth, is fa-
miliar here as elsewhere among the Red Men; and there is
not wanting evidence of the same veneration of a “Great
Spirit” which is so nearly universal in America.® Even in
myth there is a considerable degree of anthropomorphism.



142 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

The Transformer is not always an animal, but is often the
“Old One” or “Old Man,” the Ancient who is the true cre-
ator.®® Other manlike beings, good and evil, hold or have
held the rulership of certain provinces of nature; and in the
Age of Animals, before men were, the beasts themselves are
said to have had human form: their present shapes were im-
posed upon them by the Transformers. Nevertheless, they
were truly animals, in nature and disposition, and the heroic
age of Indian myth is the period of their deeds.

Among all these creatures Coyote is chief. It is difficult to
obtain a clear conception of the part which Coyote plays in
the Indian’s imagination. The animal itself, the prairie wolf,
is small and cowardly, the least imposing of the wolf kind.
In multitudes of stories he is represented as contemptible —
deceitful, greedy, bestial, with an erotic mania that leads him
even to. incest, often outwitted by the animals whom he en-
deavours to trick, without gratitude to those that help him;
and yet, with all this, he is shown as a mighty magician, re-
ducing the world to order and helping man with innumerable
benefactions, perhaps less the result of his intention than the
indirect outcome of his own efforts to satisfy his selfish appe-
tite. It is impossible to regard such a being as a divinity, even
among those tribes who make him the great demiurge; it is
equally out of the question to regard him as a hero, for his
character abuses even savage morals. In general he resem-
bles the Devil of mediaeval lore more than perhaps any other
being — the same combination of craft and selfishness, often
defeating its own ends, of magic powers and supernatural
alliances. The light in which the Indians themselves regard
him may best be indicated by the statement made to Teit
by an old Shuswap: “When I was a boy, very many stories
were told about the Old One or Chief, who travelled over the
country teaching people, and putting things to rights. Many
wonderful tales were related of him; but the men who told
these stories are now all dead, and most of the ‘Old One’



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


143


tales have been forgotten. The majority of the Coyote tales
have survived, however, and are often told yet; for they are
funny, and children like to hear them. Formerly Coyote sto-
ries were probably commonest of all. Long before the arrival
of the first white miners, a Hudson Bay half-breed told the
Shuswap that after a time strange men would come among
them, wearing black robes (the priests). He advised them not
to listen to these men, for although they were possessed of much
magic and did some good, still they did more evil. They were
descendants of the Coyote, and like him, although very pow-
erful, they were also very foolish and told many lies. They
were simply the Coyote returning to earth in another form.”

Coyote stories have a wide distribution. They are told by
Athapascans in the north and in the south, and by men of the
stocks that lie between, from the prairies to the western coast.
Their eastern counterparts are the tales of the Great Hare;
but the two beings. Hare and Coyote, appear together in
many stories, often as contestants, and the Hare, or Rabbit,
is an important mythic being among the Shoshonean Ute as
well as among the Algonquian Chippewa. Nevertheless, in
the west it is Coyote who holds the first and important place
among the animal-powers; and it may reasonably be assumed
that his heroship is a creation of the plateau region.

Like the Hare, Coyote is frequently represented as having
a close associate, or helper. Sometimes this is a relative, as
Coyote’s son; sometimes another animal, especially the Fox;
sometimes it is the Wolf, whose character is, on the whole,
more dignified and respectable. A most interesting Shoshonean
myth, published by Powell, tells how Wolf and his brother
debated the lot of mortals. The younger of the pair said:
“Brother, how shall these people obtain their food? Let us
devise some good plan for them. I was thinking about it all
night, but could not see what would be best, and when the
dawn came into the sky I went to a mountain and sat on its
summit, and thought a long time; and now I can tell you a good



144


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


plan by which they can live. Listen to your younger brother.
Look at these pine trees; their nuts are sweet; and there on
the plain you see the sunflower, bearing many seeds — they will
be good for the nation. Let them have all these things for their
food, and when they have gathered a store they shall put them
in the ground, or hide them in the rocks, and when they re-
turn they shall find abundance, and having taken of them as
they need, shall go on, and yet when they return a second time
there shall still be plenty; and though they return many times,
as long as they live the store shall never fail; and thus they
shall be supplied with abundance of food without toil.” “Not
so,” said the elder brother, “for then will the people, idle and
worthless, and having no labor to perform, engage in quarrels,
and fighting will ensue, and they will destroy each other, and
the people will be lost to the earth; they must work for all they
receive.” Then the younger brother went away grieving, but
the next day he came with the proposition that, though the
people must work for their food, their thirst should be daily
quenched with honey-dew from heaven. This, too, the elder
brother denied; and again the younger departed in sorrow.
But he came to the Wolf, his brother, a third time; “My
brother, your words are wise; let the women gather the honey-
dew with much toil, by beating the reeds with flails. Brother,
when a man or a woman or a boy or a girl, or a little one dies,
where shall he go ? I have thought all night about this, and when
the dawn came into the sky I sat on the top of the mountain
and did think. Let me tell you what to do ; When a man dies,
send him back when the morning returns, and then will all
his friends rejoice.” “Not so,” said the elder; “the dead shall
return no more.” Then the younger went away sorrowing.
But one day he beheld his brother’s son at play, and with an
arrow slew him; and when Wolf, the father, sought his boy in
anguish, his younger brother, the Coyote, said to him: “You
made the law that the dead shall never return. I am glad that
you are the first to suffer.” “ In such a tale as this, it is self-



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


H5

evident that we are hearing, not of heroes of romance, but of
fate-giving divinities; and it is not far to go back in imagina-
tion to a time when the Wolf was a great tribal god.

VI. SPIRITS, GHOSTS, AND BOGIES

Giants, dwarfs, talking animals, ogre-like cannibals, many-
headed water monsters, man-stealing rocs, sky-serpents, and
desert witches are all forms which, in the jargon of the north-
west, are regarded as tamanos, or powerful, though they are
neither gods nor spirits, and, indeed, may be destroyed by an
adroit and bold warrior. These beings must be put in the
general class of bogies, and, though one is tempted to see, es-
pecially in the prevalence and ferocity of cannibal tales, some
reminiscence of former practices or experiences, there is prob-
ably nothing more definite behind them than the universal
fancy of mankind.

To a somewhat different category belong the tutelaries, or
daemons attached as guardians to individuals, and the re-
sidua of once-living beings which correspond to the European’s
conceptions of ghosts and souls. Both of these classes of beings
are related to visionary experience. The Indian’s tutelary ^ is
commonly revealed to him in a fast-induced vision, especially
in the period of pubescence; from the nature of the revelation
comes his own conception of himself — vision of a weapon or a
scalp will mean that he is to be a warrior, of a game-animal
that he will succeed in the chase, of a ghostly being that he will
be a medicine-man of renown; and from it he fashions an image
or fabricates a bundle which is to be his personal and potent
medicine; sometimes, he even derives his name — the secret
name, which he may reveal only after some exploit has jus-
tified it — from the same source. Similarly, ghosts and their
kind are likeliest seen in the course of spirit-journeys, in trance
or dream; or, if beheld by the eyes of flesh, they may be dis-
pelled by the taunt, “Thou art only a ghost! Get thee gone.”



146 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

On the other hand, a ghost that is feared may be a fatal an-
tagonist.

Ghosts and souls are distinct. In several tribes ghosts are
regarded as the shadows of souls; they dress and appear like
the man himself. Souls may make journeys from the living
body and return again; in the case of shamans they may reach
the land of souls itself, and still come back. Souls of the dead
may be reincarnated in human bodies; usually this is in their
own families; some tribes say that only children are so reborn.
Again, souls are frequently regarded as manikins, a few inches
high — a conception found all over the earth ; and the noises
of the spirit-world, especially the voices of the shades, are thin
and shrill or like the crying of a child.®®

Ghosts, as distinguished from souls or spirits, are of a more
substantial character.^® They are wraiths of the dead, but they
assume material forms, and at times enter into human rela-
tions with living people, even marriage and parentage. Often
the ghost is detected as such only when his body is seen trans-
parent, with the skeleton revealed — and we are reminded of
the Eskimo ghosts, men when beheld face to face, but skeletons
when perceived from behind. Reminiscent of another Eskimo
idea, the Cannibal Babe, is the Montana legend of the Weep-
ing Child.^® A traveller passing a certain place would hear an
infant crying; going thither, he would find the babe and take
it in his arms and give it his finger to quiet it; but the child
would suck all the flesh from his bones, so that a great pile of
skeletons marked its monstrous lair. The Klickitat, a Shahap-
tian tribe of the lower Columbia, have a story of the union of
a mortal and a ghost curiously like the Pawnee tale of “The
Man who Married a Spirit.” The Klickitat buried their dead
on islands of the river, and it was here that the body of a young
chief was carried. But neither his soul, on the isle of the dead,
nor the mind of his beloved, who was with her people, could
forget one another, and so he came to her in a vision and called
her to him. At night her father took her in a canoe to the


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147


isle and left her with the dead. There she was conducted to the
dance-house of the spirits, and found her lover more beautiful
and strong than ever he was upon earth. When the sun rose,
however, she awoke with horror to find herself surrounded hj
the hideous remains of the dead, while her body was clasped
by the skeleton arm of her lover. Screaming she ran to the
water’s edge and paddled across the river to her home. But
she was not allowed to remain, for the fear of the departed was
now upon the tribe; and again she was sent back, and once
more passed a night of happiness with the dead. In the course
of time a child was born to her, more beautiful than any mor-
tal. The grandmother was summoned, but was told that
she must not look upon the child till after the tenth day; un-
able to restrain her curiosity, she stole a look at the sleeping
babe, whereupon it died. Thenceforth, the spirit-people de-
creed, the dead should nevermore return, nor hold intercourse
with the living.®®

The path from the land of the living to the land of the dead
is variously described by the different tribes. Generally it lies
westward, toward the setting sun, or downward, beneath the
earth. Often it is a journey perilous, with storms and trials
to be faced, narrow bridges and yawning chasms to be crossed
— a hard way for the ill-prepared soul. Teit has given us a
full account — of which the following is a paraphrase — of
the road to the soul’s world, as conceived by the Thompson
River tribes ® — a description interesting for its analogies to
the classical Elysium, lying beyond St)rx, and the three judges
of the dead :

The country of the souls is underneath us, toward the sun-
set; the trail leads through a dim twilight. Tracks of the people
who last went over it, and of their dogs, are visible. The path
winds along until it meets another road which is a short cut
used by the shamans when trying to intercept a departed soul.
The trail now becomes much straighter and smoother, and is
painted red with ochre. After a while it winds to the west-



148


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


ward, descends a long gentle slope, and terminates at a wide
shallow stream of very clear water. This is spanned by a long
slender log, on which the tracks of the souls may be seen.
After crossing, the traveller finds himself again on the trail,
which now ascends to a height heaped with an immense pile of

clothes — the belongings which the
souls have brought from the land
of the living and which they must
leave here. From this point the
trail is level, and gradually grows
lighter. Three guardians are sta-
tioned along this road, one on either
side of the river and the third at
the end of the path; it is their duty
to send back those souls whose time
is not yet come to enter the land of
the dead. Some souls pass the first
two of these, only to be turned back
by the third, who is their chief and
is an orator who sometimes sends
messages to the living by the re-
turning souls. All of these men are
very old, grey-headed, wise, and
venerable. At the end of the trail
is a great lodge, mound-like in form,

with doors at the eastern and the
Fig. 2. Sketch of the World ^ 1 . r j 11

, , - , , western sides, and with a double

Map of the world as drawn by* a ^ ^

Thompson River Indian, (a) West- row of fires extending through it.

U When the deceased friends of a per-
Sunrise point, (e) Middle place, son expect his soul to arrive, they
After 11, 343. assemble here and talk about his

death. As the deceased reaches the entrance, he hears people
on the other side talking, laughing, singing, and beating drums.
Some stand at the door to welcome him and call his name.
On entering, a wide country of diversified aspect spreads out




MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


149


before him. There is a sweet smell of flowers and an abun-
dance of grass, and all around are berry-bushes laden with ripe
fruit. The air is pleasant and still, and it is always light and
warm. More than half the people are dancing and singing to
the accompaniment of drums. All are naked, but do not seem
to notice it. The people are delighted to see the new comer,
take him up on their shoulders, run around with him, and
make a great noise.

VIL PROPHETS AND THE GHOST-DANCE^

A spirit-journey and a revelation is the sanction which cre-
ates an Indian prophet. Shaman and medicine-man alike
claim this power of spiritual vision, and the records of investi-
gators sufficiently show that the Indian possesses in full degree
this form of mystic experience. Behind nearly every important
movement of the Indian peoples lies some trance of seer or
prophet, to whom the tribes look for guidance. Underneath
the conspiracy of Pontiac” were the visions and teachings of
a Delaware prophet, who had visited the Master of Life and
received from him a message demanding the redemption of
the Indian’s lands and life from white pollution; the trances of
Tenskwatawa were the inspiration of his brother, the great
chief Tecumseh, In the most formidable opposition ever organ-
ized by Indians against the whites; Kanakuk, the prophet of the
Kickapoo, talked with the Great Spirit, and brought back to
his tribe a message of sobriety and industry, peace and piety.

Of the later prophets the most notable have been men of the
far West. Smohalla, chief of a small Shahaptian tribe of Wash-
ington, who was called by his people ^^The Shouting Moun-
tain” because they believed that his revelation came from a
living hill which spoke to him as he lay entranced, founded a
sect of Dreamers, whose main tenet was hostility to the ways
of the white man and insistence that the land of the Indian
should be Indians’ land: ^^My young men shall never work,”



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


ISO

he said; “men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to
us in dreams.” This was the doctrine which inspired Chief
Joseph and his Nez Perce in the wonderful exploit which
marked the exodus of his tribe in 1877 — “the Earth is our
Mother; she shall not be torn hy plow nor hoe; neither shall
she be sold, nor given from the hand of her children.”

Very similar is the teaching of the Paiute prophet, Wovoka,
the Indian “messiah,” whose promises of a regeneration of the
life of the Red Man, with the foreigner destroyed or driven
from his ancient holdings, spread throughout all the tribes of the
Plains and Mountains, and eventuated in the Sioux uprising
of 1890 and the tragedy of Wounded Knee. Wovoka is the
son of a prophet; his home a strip of valley prairie surrounded
by the dark walls of volcanic sierras. Here, when he was about
thirty-three, in the year “when the sun died” (probably the
eclipse of January i, 1889), he declared that he went up to
heaven, and saw God, and received a message to all Indians
that they must love one another, that they must not fight, nor
steal, nor lie, and he received also a dance which he was to
bring to them as pledge and promise of their early redemption
from the rule of the whites. The dead are all alive again, the
prophet taught; already they have reached the boundaries of
earth, led by the spirit captain in the form of a cloud. When
they arrive, the earth will shake, the sick be healed, the old
made young, and the free life of the Indian again restored.
Among many of the tribes the dance which they were to con-
tinue until the day of the advent assumed the form of ecstasy
and trance, in which visionary souls would perceive the advanc-
ing hosts of the spirit Indians, the bufFalo once more filling the
prairies, and the Powers of the Indian’s universe returning to
their ancient rule. Better than aught else the Ghost-Dance
songs, collected by Mooney from the various tribes among whom
the religion spread, give the true spirit of the creed, and at the
sartie time afford an insight into the religious feeling which
goes far deeper in the Indian’s experience than story-made




PLATE XXI


Ghost-Dance, painted on buckskin by a Ute captive
among the Cheyenne in 1891. Cheyenne and Arap-
aho are the dancers; the prostrate forms in the centre
represent persons entranced; the round object is a
blanket; before it stands a medicine-man hypnotizing
a subject. Now in United States National Museum.
After /./ ARBE^ part 2, Plate CIX.





MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 15 1

myth (See James Mooney, “The Ghost-Dance Religion,” in
14 ARBE, Part 2, pp. 953-1103).

A curious and lovely feature of these Indian hymns of the
Ghost-Dance is their intense visualization of Nature. The
words are elemental and realistic, but no song is without its
inner significance, either as symbolic of indwelling Powers or
as vocables of individual experiences too full for complete ex-
pression. Among the Paiute songs one seems to be a promise
of the advancing spirits, approaching by the Path of Souls to
an earth clothed in a kindred purity —

The snow lies here — rd’rani!

The snow lies here — rd’rani!

The snow lies here — ro’rani!

The Milky Way lies there!

Others tell of rejuvenated animal and vegetable life —

A slender antelope, a slender antelope,

He is wallowing upon the ground.

And —

The cottonwoods are growing tall,

They are growing tall and verdant.

Again it is the elements, astir with expectancy of the great
regeneration —

The rocks are ringing.

The rocks are ringing,

They are ringing in the mountains!

And especially there is the whirlwind, advancing, like the Spirit
Captain, as a cloud that foretokens the new life of earth —

There is dust from the whirlwind,

There is dust from the whirlwind,

The whirlwind on the mountain!

The Whirlwind! The Whirlwind!

The snowy Earth comes gliding, the snowy Earth comes gliding!

The more beautiful and intellectual Ghost-Dance songs
come, however, not from the Paiute, who originated the cere-


X — It



IS2


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


mony, but from the Plains tribes who developed it to its
intensest form. Especially fine are the Arapaho songs. The
Whirlwind is still the mighty power — the Psychopompos,
leading the ghostly visitants —

Our father, the Whirlwind —

By its aid I am running swiftly,

By which means I saw our father.

The Whirlwind is personified thus —

I circle around,

I circle around

The boundaries of the Earth,

Wearing the long wing feathers as I fly.

Many songs are devoted to the bird messengers of the Ghost-
Dance, to the mythical Thunderbirds and to the Crow which
is the sacred bird of the dance; and in these there is almost
always a note of exaltation —

I fly around yellow,

I fly around yellow,

I fly with the wild rose on my head,

On high —

On high —


Uplifted, too, and exultant is the note of another Arapaho
song, to the Father —

Father, now I am singing it — Hi^ni^ni!

Father, now I am singing it — Hi^ni^ni!

That loudest song of all,

That resounding song —

Again, the note struck is cosmogonic, with a reference back
to the old beliefs of the Indians — In this case to the Algon-
quian conception of the Turtle whose carapace supports the
Earth —

At the beginning of human existence — Fyehe^eye^^

It was the Turtle who gave this grateful gift to me,

The Earth — Fyahe^eye^!

Thus my father told me — Ahe^eyF-hieye\f



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


153


But the commonest note of all, and the one that best sum-
marizes the whole spirit, not only of the Ghost-Dance, but of
the prophecy of the Indians through all the later period when
they have felt themselves inevitably succumbing before the
hard encroachments of the white race, is the note of sorrowful
supplication, a pleading for help. The most pathetic of these
songs, ^^sung,” says Mooney, “to a plaintive tune, sometimes
with tears rolling down the cheeks of the dancers,” is that which
he calls the Indian’s Lord’s Prayer —

Father, have pity on me,

Father, have pity on me;

I am crying for thirst,

I am crying for thirst;

All is gone — I have nothing to eat.

The hunger and thirst here meant are of the spirit, and the
sustenance that the Indian supplicates is the spiritual food
and drink which will support him through the harsh trials of
a changing life.



CHAPTER VIII


MOUNTAIN AND DESERT

{Continued)

I. THE NAVAHO AND THEIR GODS

T he Navaho speak an Athapascan tongue, but in blood
they are one of the most mixed of Indian peoples, with
numerous infusions from neighbouring tribes, additions having
come to them from the more civilized Pueblo dwellers as well
as from the wandering tribes of the desert. But various as is
their origin, the Navaho have a cultural unity and distinction
setting them in high relief among Indian peoples. They prac-
tise a varied agriculture, are herdsmen even more than hunts-
men, and have developed arts, such as blanket weaving and
silversmithing, which have made them pre-eminent among
Indian craftsmen. It is chiefly in the matter of habitation
that they are inferior to the tribes of the pueblos, for until
recently they have persistently adhered to temporary dwell-
ings (partly, it is supposed, because of the superstition which
calls for the abandonment of a house in which a death has
occurred) — the hogan, or earth hut, for winter, the brush
shelter for summer residence.

In particular the Navaho have developed an artistic power
which has won for them the admiration of the white race, with
whom their work finds a ready market; though it is perhaps in
the unmerchantable wares of the mind, in myth and poetry,
and their curiously ephemeral sand-painting that their powers
are revealed at their best. Their religious rituals are charac-
terized by elaborate masques, far more in the nature of drama
than of dance; by cycles of unusually poetic song (though their



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 155

melodic gift is not comparable with that of some other tribes) ;
and by an elaboration and concatenation of myth which truly
deserves the name of a mythology, for it is no mere aggrega-
tion of unconnected legends, but an organized body of teach-
ing. Among all peoples on the way toward civilization there
is a tendency to organize the confused and contradictory
stories of uncritical savagery into consistently connected sys-
tems; and the Navaho are well advanced in this direction. Very
many of the tales found elsewhere in North America as dis-
jointed episodes have been incorporated by them into dramatic
series; and in no small sense is their artistic skill manifested
by the cleverness with which these stories are assimilated to
not wholly congruous contexts — for it is obvious that in their
mythology, as in their arts, the Navaho have been wide bor-
rowers, though In both art and mythology they have bettered
these borrowings in relation and design.

Another evidence of advancement in Navaho culture is the
degree of personification — anthropomorphic personification —
attained in their pantheon. Animal-beings are consistently of
less importance than manlike divinities, and in the concep-
tion of nature-powers the phenomenon is more likely to be
the instrument than the embodiment of the potency — light-
ning is the arrow or missile of the war-god or storm-god, the
rainbow is a bridge, light and clouds are robes or bundles, the
sun itself is dependent upon the Sun-Carrier, Tshohanoai, who
hangs the blazing disk in his lodge at the end of the day’s
journey. .All this represents that consistent intellectualization
of nature-myth, which finds one of its earliest expressions in
the replacing of immanent nature-powers by manlike gods
who make of nature their tool. In their curiously geometrical
representations of the gods, it Is not animals, nor part animals,
that the Navaho draw, but conventionalized men and women,
and in their ceremonial masques the divine beings still have
recognizably human form and feature.

Of course there are abundant traces of the more primitive



IS6 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

type of thinking. The background of the mythic world of the
Navaho is filled in with classes of beings, sometimes emerging
into distinct individuals, sometimes sinking back into vague
kinds, such as are found in the protean strata of every mythol-
ogy — beings like the Satyrs, Panes, Keres, and Daimones of
the Greeks, or the local and household godlings of the Romans.
The Yei of the Navaho, for the most part genii locomm, num-
ber among them many such kinds : ® fire-godlings and god-
lings of the chase, corn spirits and harvest deities, such as the
Ganaskidi, or “Humpbacks,” who bear cloud-humps upon their
backs and ram’s horns on their heads, and sometimes appear
in the guise of the Rocky Mountain sheep. Other Yei ap-
proach the dignity and importance of great gods, though their
homes are the wild places — mountains and caverns — of earth:
among these Thonenli, the Water Sprinkler, and especially
Hastsheyalti, the Talking God (also known as Yebitshai, “Ma-
ternal Grandfather of the Gods”), and Hastshehogan, the
House-God, hold high positions in the Navaho pantheon and
figure importantly in myth and ritual. Hastsheyalti is god of
the dawn and the east, Hastshehogan of evening and the west;
white maize is Plastsheyalti’s and yellow Hastshehogan’s; and
it is from white and yellow maize that man and woman are
created by the gods under the supervision of these two Yei
chieftains.®^

The Yei are in the main beneficent and kindly to man.
Another class, the Anaye, or Alien Gods, are man-destroyers
— monsters, giants, beasts, or bogies.^ The worst of them were
slain by the Sons of the Sun long ago, but the race is not yet
utterly destroyed. Still another evil kind is made up of the
Tshindi, or Devils, ugly and venomous, — among whom is
numbered the Corpse Spirit, which remains with the body when
the soul departs to the lower world.^^ Other classes comprise
the Animal Elders, such as are universal in Indian lore; the
Digini, half wizard, half sprite, dwelling In, the strange and fan-
tastic formations with which volcanic fire and eroding waters



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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #20 on: August 03, 2019, 08:06:17 PM »


PLATE XXII


Navaho gods, from a dry- or sand-painting. The
figure with the rectangular head is a female divinity,
with arms covered with yellow pollen. The round-
headed figures are male deities, the one carrying a
lightning bow and a rattle, the other having a cloud-
sack on his back and a basket before him. The
colours and ornaments are symbolic of maize and
other vegetation, of rain, lightning, fertility, etc.
After MAM vi, Plate VIIL





157


MOUNTAIN AND DESERT

have made the Navaho countrf picturesque; and
Powers, among whom -Tieholtsodi, of the watef® bent at \ t jc
earth, is the most powerful.®

The highest place in the Navaho pantheon is
natlehi,'^ the “Woman Who Changes ” — for, like the Phoenix,
when she becomes old, she transforms herself again into a
young girl and lives a renewed life.'*® Though she c>riginatc*d on
earth, her home is now in the west, on an island crealei.! ioi
her by the Sun-Carrier, who made her his wife, hroni that
direction come the rains that water the Navaho countr)* and
the winds that foretell the spring; and it is therefore appro-
priate that the goddess of nature’s fruitfulness should dwell
there. The younger sister of Estsanatlehi is Yolkai Estsan,
the White Shell Woman, wife of the Moon-Carrier, Klehanoai.
The white shell is her symbol, and she is related to the waters,
as her sister, whose token is the turquoise, is akin to the earth;
white is the colour of the dawn and the east, blue of luidtlay a mi
the south, and it is with the magic of these colour.s that tlu*
two sisters kindle the sun’s disk and the moon’s — althougdi,
according to Navaho myth, which is by no mcan.s alway.s
consistent, the Sun-God and the Moon-God were in c.^istence
before the sisters were created.

Of the male deities worshipped by the Navaho, the nuist
important are the brothers, Nayanezgani, Slayer of the ;\licn
Gods, and Thobadzistshini, Child of the Waters.** In .sotne
stories these are represented as twins of the Sun-Carrier and
Estsanatlehi; in others, Thobadzistshini is the child of Water
and Yolkai Estsan. These two brothers are the new genera-
tion of gods which overthrow the monsters and bring to an end
the Age of Giants. Their home is on a mountain in the centre
of the Navaho country, to which warriors betake thcinstilves
to pray for prowess and success in war. Klehanoai, the Moon-
Carrier, is sometimes identified with a deity by the nanie of
Bekotshidi, represented as an old man, and regarded as the
creator of many of the beasts, especially the larger game and



IS8 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the domestic animals; his home is in the east, and many of the
Navaho think that he is the god worshipped by the white men.

Another mythic pair of importance are the First Man, Atse
Hastin, and the First Woman, Atse Estsan, who were created
in the lower world from ears of maize; it is they who led the
First People into the world in which we live. Coyote,^® who
is a conspicuous figure in adventures serious and ludicrous,
though he never plays the rUe of demiurge, such as he sustains
among many Indian tribes, is sometimes represented as ac-
companying these two Elders from the lower world. Spider
Woman is an underground witch (the large spiders of the
South-West make their nests in the ground), friendly with her
magic; and Niltshi, the Wind, saves many a hero by whispering
timely counsels in his ear. Other beings are little more than
lay figures : such are Mirage Boy, Ground-Heat Girl, White-
Corn Boy, Yellow-Corn Girl, Rock-Crystal Boy, Pollen Boy,
Grasshopper Girl, etc. — a few out of the multitude which
seem to be, in many cases, merely personifications of objects
important in ritual practices.

The most important cult-symbols employed by the Navaho
are arranged in groups according to their system of colour-
symbolism®^ — white, the mantle of dawn, for the east; blue,
the robe of the azure sky, for the south; yellow, the raiment
of the sunset, for the west; black, the blanket of night, for
the north. Thus, the “jewels” of the respective quarters are:
east, white shell beads and rock-crystal; south, turquoise;
west, haliotis shell (regarded by the Navaho as yellow); north,
black stones or cannel-coal.®'' Birds are similarly denoted by
the hues of their feathers; animals by their hides; maize by
the colour of its kernels — white, blue, yellow, and, for the
north, variegated (the north is sometimes all-colours, in-
stead of black). The colours are used also in the sand-paint-
ings, or drawings, which form an important and distinctive
feature of Navaho rites; and in the painting of the prayer-
sticks, frequently adorned with feathers,®® which, with pollen



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 159

and tobacco, in the form of cigarettes, are the principal articles
offered in sacrifice.®® Navaho rituals comprise many elaborate
ceremonies, a conspicuous feature of which are masques, or
dramatic representations of myths, in which the actors per-
sonate the gods. A convention of these masques is the repre-
sentation of male deities with rounded, and of female with
rectangular faces, a distinction which is maintained in the
sand-paintings.

II. THE NAVAHO GENESIS^®

The Navaho believe that the world is built in a sequence of
storeys, the fifth of these being the earth on which men now
dwell.^^ The genesis-legend of this tribe divides into four epi-
sodic tales, the first of which, the Age of Beginnings, narrates
the ascent of the progenitors of Earth’s inhabitants from storey
to storey of the Underworld, and their final emergence upon
Earth. The second, the Age of Animal Heroes, tells of the set-
ting in order of Earth, its illumination by the heavenly bodies,
and the adventures of its early inhabitants. The third,
the Age of the Gods, recounts the slaying of the giants and
other monsters by the War-Gods and the final departure of
the great goddess to the West. The fourth, the Patriarchal
Age, chronicles the growth of the Navaho nation in the days
of its early wanderings; to this age, too, belong most of the
revelations which prophets and visionaries bring back in the
form of rites, acquired in their visits to the abodes of the gods.

The lowest of the world-storeys, where the Navaho myth
begins, was red in colour, and in its centre was a spring from
which four streams flowed, one to each of the cardinal points,
while oceans bordered the land on all sides. Tieholtsodi, the
water monster, the Blue Heron, Frog, and Thunder were
chiefs in this world; while the people who “started in life
there” were ants, beetles, dragon-flies, locusts, and bats (though
some say First Man, First Woman, and Coyote were in ex-



i6o NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

istence even here). For the sin of adultery these people were
driven out by a flood raised by the Underworld gods/® and as
they flew upward, seeking a place of escape, a blue head was
thrust from the sky and directed them to a hole leading into the
next storey. This second world was blue, and was inhabited
by the Swallow People. Here they lived till, on the twenty-
fourth night, one of the strangers made free with the wife of
the Swallow chief; and they were commanded to leave. Again
they flew upward, and again a voice — that of Niltshi, the
Wind — directed them to an opening by which they escaped
into the third storey. Here they were in a yellow world, in-
habited by Grasshoppers; but exactly what happened in the
world below was repeated here, and once more directed by a
Wind they flew up into the fourth storey, which was all-
coloured.®^

The fourth world was larger than the others and had a
snow-covered mountain at each of the cardinal points. Its in-
habitants were Kisani (Pueblo Indians), who possessed culti-
vated fields and gave the wanderers maize and pumpkins. The
four gods of this world were White Body, Blue Body, Yellow
Body, and Black Body, and these created Atse Hastin (First
Man) and Atse Estsan (First Woman), from ears of white and
yellow maize respectively.®® To this pair came five births of
twins, of whom the first were hermaphrodites,®^ who invented
pottery and the wicker water-bottle. The other twins inter-
married with the Mirage People, who dwelt in this world, and
with the Kisani, and soon there was a multitude of people
under the chieftainship of First Man.

“One day they saw the Sky stooping down and the Earth
rising to meet it.” At the point of contact Coyote and Badger
sprang down from the world above; Badger descended into
the world below, but Coyote remained with the people. It
was at this time that the men and women quarrelled and tried
the experiment of living apart; at first the women had plenty
of food, but eventually they were starving and rejoined the



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT i6i

men. Two girls, however, who were the last to cross the
stream that had separated the sexes, were seized by Tiehol-
tsodi, and dragged beneath the waters.^® Guided by the gods,
a man and a woman descended to recover them, but Coyote
surreptitiously accompanied them and, unperceived, stole two
of the offspring of the Water Monster. Shortly afterward, a
ffood was sent by the Monster, “high as mountains encircling
the whole horizon.” The people fled to a hill and various ani-
mals attempted to provide a means of escape by causing trees
to outgrow the rising- waters, but it was not until two men
appeared, bearing earth from the seven sacred mountains of
what is now the Navaho’s land, that a soil was made from
which grew a huge hollow reed, reaching to the sky.^ The
last of the people were scarcely in this stalk, and the opening
closed, before they heard the loud noise of the surging waters
outside. But there was still no opening in the sky above. They
sent up the Great Hawk, who clawed the heaven till he could
see light shining through; the Locust followed, and made a
tiny passage to the world above, where he was met by four
Grebes from the four quarters, and in a magic contest won
half of their world; finally, the Badger enlarged the hole so
that people could go through, and all climbed into the fifth
world, whose surface is our earth.

The place of emergence was an islet in the middle of a lake,
but the gods opened a passage, and they crossed to the shores.
It was here that they sought to divine their fate, and a hide-
scraper was thrown into the water: “If it sinks we perish, if it
floats we live.” It floated, but Coyote cast in a stone, saying,
?“Let me divine: if it sinks we perish, if it floats we live.” It
sank, and in answer to the execrations of the people, he said:

If we all live and continue to increase, the earth will soon be
too small to hold us. It is better that each of us should live
but a time on this earth and make room for our children.”

But the peril of the flood was not yet escaped, for waters
were observed welling up from the hole of emergence. Then



i 62


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


it was discovered that Coyote had with him the stolen off-
spring of Tieholtsodi. At once the people threw them into the
hole, and with a deafening roar the waters subsided. Shortly
after this, the first death occurred, and two hunters, looking
down into the lower world, beheld the deceased combing her
hair, as she sat beside a river. The two men died very soon;
so that the people knew that a ghost is a thing ill seen.

First Man and First Woman, Black Body and Blue Body,
built the seven mountains of the Navaho land, one at each
cardinal point, and three in the centre. “Through Tsisna-
dzini [Pelado Peak, New Mexico], in the east, they ran a bolt
of lightning to fasten it to earth. They decorated it with
white shells, white lightning, white corn, dark clouds, and he-
rain. They set a big bowl of shell on its summit, and in it they
put two eggs of the Pigeon to make feathers for the moun-
tain. The eggs they covered with a sacred buckskin to make
them hatch [there are many wild pigeons in this mountain
now]. All these things they covered with a sheet of daylight,
and they put the Rock-Crystal Boy and the Rock-Crystal
Girl into the mountain to dwell.” Mount Taylor, of the San
Mateo range, is the southern mountain, and this was pinned
to earth with a great stone knife, adorned with turquoise,
mist, and she-rain, nested with bluebird’s eggs, guarded by
Turquoise Boy and Corn Girl, and covered with a blanket of
blue sky. San Francisco, in Arizona, the mountain of the
west, was bound with a sunbeam, decked with haliotis shell,
clouds, he-rain, yellow maize and animals, nested with eggs
of the Yellow Warbler, spread with yellow cloud, and made the
home of White-Corn Boy and Yellow-Corn Girl. San Juan,
in the north, was fastened with a rainbow, adorned with black
beads, nested with eggs of the Blackbird, sheeted with dark-
ness, and made the abode of Pollen Boy and Grasshopper Girl.^^
In a similar fashion the three central mountains were built.

The Sun-Disk, the Moon-Disk, and the Stars were then made
by First Man and First Woman, and two men from among



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


163

the people were appointed to be the Sun-Carrier and the Moon-
Carrier,^® these being the same two men who had caused the
reed to grow, by means of which the folk had ascended from
the world below.

The earth was now formed, but its inhabitants were not yet
in order. The myth goes on to tell of the birth of the giants and
other man-devouring monsters — the dread Anaye.^® They
were the offspring of women who had resorted to evU prac-
tices during the separation of the sexes in the world below.
The first-born was the headless and hairy being, Theelgeth;
the second the harpylike Tsanahale, with feathered back; the
third was the giant whose hair grew into the rock, so that he
could not fall, and who kicked people from the cliff as they
passed; the fourth birth produced the limbless twins, the
Binaye Ahani, who slew with their eyes; and there were many
other monsters besides these, born of sinful women to become
destroyers of men.®

The next event in this age was the descent of a gam-
bler from the heavens, He-Who-Wins-Men, who enslaved the
greater part of mankind by inducing them to bet their free-
dom.®® Now we first hear of the beneficent Yei, Hastsheyalti
and Hastshehogan, with their assistants. Wind, Darkness, the
animal-gods, and others. By their aid a young Navaho de-
feated the Gambler, and with a magic bow shot him into the
sky whence he came, and whence he was sent back into the
world to become the ruler of the Mexicans.

Coyote®® now appears upon the scene in a series of ad-
ventures such as are told of him by neighbouring tribes; the
unsuccessful imitation of his host, in which Coyote comes in-
gloriously to grief in endeavouring to entertain, first Porcu-
pine, then Wolf, as they had entertained him; a tradition of
Coyote’s hunt, in which he rounds up game by driving them
with fire from a faggot of shredded cedar-bark — a story with
many resemblances to the Ute version of the theft of fire; the
tale of the blinding of Coyote, who attempts to imitate birds



1 64 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

whom he sees toss up their eyes and catch them again in the
sockets, and of the substitution of gum eyes, which melt as
fire is approached, for the eyes he has lost; the story of how
Coyote killed a giant by pretending to break and heal his own
leg, and inducing the giant to follow his example; and the
legend, which is apparently a version of the fire-theft tale, of
how Coyote marries a witch who is unable to kill him, is con-
cealed by her from her man-devouring brothers, steals fire
from their lodge, is persecuted by animals at the instigation of
the brothers, and is avenged by his wife, who is transformed
into a bear. The youngest brother, however, with the aid of
the winds, escapes the Bear Woman and eventually kills her,
causing her to live again in the form of the several animals,
which spring from the parts of her body as he cuts it up.

Here end the adventures of the Age of Animals. The ensuing
is the Age of the New Gods. The Yei, under the leadership
of Hastsheyalti, create Estsanatlehi — the great goddess who
rejuvenates herself whenever she grows old — from an image
of turquoise, and her sister, Yolkai Estsan, from white shell.
Each sister gives birth to a son; Estsanatlehi becomes the
mother of Nayanezgani, whose father is the Sun; Yolkai
Estsan of Thobadzistshini, Son of the Waters.^ Counselled
by Niltshi, the Wind, and aided by Spider Woman, who gives
them life-preserving feathers, the boys journey to the home
of the Sun-Carrier — passing, with magic aids, clashing rocks
which, like the Symplegades, close upon those who go between
them; a plain of knifelike reeds and another of cane cactuses,
which rush together and destroy travellers, and finally a des-
ert of boiling sands.® Bear guardians, serpent guardians, and
lightning guardians still bar their way to the Sun’s house,
but these, too, they overcome by means of the Spider’s spells.
In the lodge of the Sun, which is of turquoise and stands on
the shore of a great water, the children of the Sun-Carrier
conceal them in a bundle; but the Sun-Carrier knew of their
coming, and when he had arrived at the end of the day’s



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 165

journey, and had taken the Sun from his back and hung it on
a peg on the west wall of his lodge, he took down the parcel.
“He first unrolled the robe of dawn with which they were
covered, then the robe of blue sky, next the robe of yellow
evening light, and lastly the robe of darkness.” In a series of
tests he tried to slay the boys, but, finding at last that he could
not do so, he acceded to their request for weapons with which
to fight the beings that were devouring mankind — armour
from every joint of which lightning shot, a great stone knife,
and arrows of lightning, of sunbeams, and of the rainbow.
The brothers returned to earth on a lightning flash, and in a
series of adventures, like the labours of Hercules, cleansed the
world of the greater part of the man-devouring monsters which
infested it. On a second visit to the Sun, they received four
hoops by means of which their mother, Estsanatlehi, raised a
great storm which brought to an end the Age of Monsters and
formed the earth anew, shaping the canyons and hewing pil-
lars of rock from the ancient bluffs. “Surely all the Anaye
are now killed,” said Estsanatlehi; but Old Age, Cold, Poverty,
and Hunger still survived, and were allowed to live on; for
should they be slain, they said, men would prize neither life
nor warmth nor goods nor food.“

When this had been accomplished, the brothers returned to
the mountain which is their hoine, and whither warriors go to
pray for success in war.®* Then the Sun-God, after creating
the animals which inhabit the earth, departed for the far West
where he had made a lodge, beyond the waters, for Estsanat-
lehi, who became his wife and the great goddess of the west,
the source of the life-bringing rains. Every day, as he journeys
toward the west, the Sun-Carrier sings:

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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #21 on: August 03, 2019, 08:07:27 PM »

“ In my thoughts I approach.

The Sun-God approaches.

Earth’s end he approaches,

Estsanatlehi’s hearth approaches,

In old age walking the beautiful trail.



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


i66

“In my thoughts I approach,

The Moon-God approaches,

Earth’s end he approaches,

Yolkai Estsan’s hearth approaches.

In old age walking the beautiful trail.”

For Yolkai Estsan, too, became the bride of a god. But before
she departed for the divine lodge, she remained for some time
solitary. It was then, in the days of her loneliness, that Has-
tsheyalti came to her, and it was decided that a new race of
men should be created. With the assistance of all the gods a
man was formed from a white, and a woman from a yellow,
ear of maize. Niltshi gave them the breath of life; the Rock-
Crystal Boy gave them mind; the Grasshopper Girl gave them
voices. Yolkai Estsan gave them fire and maize, and married
the man to Ground-Heat Girl and the woman to Mirage Boy,
and from these two couples is descended the first gens of the
Navaho tribe — the House of the Dark Cliffs, “so named be-
cause the gods who created the first pair came from the cliff
houses.”


III. THE CREATION OF THE SUNi*

In the Navaho Genesis, just recounted, there is a brief de-
scription of the creation of the Sun-Disk. A somewhat differ-
ent and fuller version, recorded by James Stevenson, is as
follows:

“The first three worlds were neither good nor healthful.
They moved all the time and made the people dizzy. Upon
ascending into this world the Navaho found only darkness
and they said, ‘We must have light.’” Two women were sum-
moned — Ahsonnutli (Estsanatlehi) and Yolaikaiason (Yolkai
Estsan) — and to them the Indians told their desire. “The
Navaho had already partially separated light into its several
colors. Next to the floor was white, indicating dawn; upon
the white blue was spread for morning; and on the blue yellow
for sunset; and next was black representing night. They had



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 167

prayed long and continuously over these, but their prayers
had availed nothing. The two women on arriving told the
people to have patience and their prayers would eventually
be answered.

Night had a familiar, who was always at his ear. This
person said, ^Send for the youth at the great falls. ^ Night sent
as his messenger a shooting star. The youth soon appeared
and said, ^Ahsonnutli has white beads in her right breast
and turquoise in her left. We will tell her to lay them on dark-
ness and see what she can do with her prayers.’ This she did.
The youth from the great falls said to Ahsonnutli, ^ You have
carried the white-shell beads and the turquoise a long time;
you should know what to say.’ Then with a crystal dipped
in pollen she marked eyes and mouth on the turquoise and on
the white-shell beads, and forming a circle round these with
the crystal she produced a slight light from the white-shell
beads and a greater light from the turquoise, but the light was
insufficient.

“Twelve men lived at each of the cardinal points. The forty-
eight men were sent for. After their arrival Ahsonnutli sang
a song, the men sitting opposite to her; yet even with their
presence the song failed to secure the needed light. Two eagle
feathers were placed upon each cheek of the turquoise and two
on the cheeks of the white-shell beads and one at each of the
cardinal points.®® The twelve men of the east placed twelve
turquoises at the east of the faces. The twelve men of the
south placed twelve white-shell beads at the south. The men
of the west placed twelve turquoises on that side, and the
men of the north twelve white-shell beads at the north, and
with a pollen-dipped crystal a circle was drawn around the
whole. But the wish remained unrealized. Then Ahsonnutli
held the crystal over the turquoise face, whereupon It lighted
into a blaze. The people retreated far back on account of the
great heat, which continued increasing. The men from the
four points found the heat so intense that they arose, but they
X— 13



i68


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


could hardly stand, as the heavens were so close to them.
They looked up and saw two rainbows, one across the other
from east to west and from north to south. The heads and
feet of the rainbows almost touched the men’s heads. The
men tried to raise the great light, but each time they failed.

“Finally, a man and a woman appeared, whence they knew
not. The man’s name was Atseatsine [Atse Hastin] and the
woman’s name was Atseatsan [Atse Estsan]. They were
asked, ‘How can this sun be got up?’ They replied, ‘We
know; we heard the people down here trying to raise it, and
this is why we came.’ ‘Sunbeams,’ exclaimed the man, ‘I have
the sunbeams; I have a crystal from which I can light the sun-
beams, and I have the rainbow; with these three I can raise the
sun.’ The people said, ‘Go ahead and raise it.’ When he had
elevated the sun a short distance it tipped a little and burned
vegetation and scorched the people, for It was still too near.
Then the people said to Atseatsine and Atseatsan, ‘Raise the
sun higher,’ and they continued to elevate it, and yet it con-
tinued to burn everything. They were then called to lift it
higher still, but after a certain height was reached their power
failed; it would go no farther.

“The couple then made four poles, two of turquoise and two
of white-shell beads, and each was put under the sun, and with
these poles the twelve men at each of the cardinal points raised
it. They could not get it high enough to prevent the people
and grass from burning. The people then said, ‘Let us stretch
the world’; so the twelve men at each point expanded the
worId.“ The sun continued to rise as the world expanded, and
began to shine with less heat, but when it reached the meridian
the heat became great and the people suffered much. They
crawled everywhere to find shade. Then the voice of Dark-
ness went four times around the world telling the men at the
cardinal points to go on expanding the world. ‘I want all
this trouble stopped,’ said Darkness; ‘the people are suffering
and all is burning; you must continue stretching.’ And the



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


169

men blew .and stretched, and after a time they saw the sun
rise beautifully, and when the sun again reached the meridian
it was only tropical. It was then just right, and as far as the
eye could reach the earth was encircled first with the white
dawn of day, then with the blue of early morning, and all
things were perfect. And Ahsonnutli commanded the twelve
men to go to the east, south, west, and north, to hold up the
heavens [Yiyanitsinni, the holders up of the heavens], which
office they are supposed to perform to this day.’^

IV. NAVAHO RITUAL MYTHS«

The myth of the creation of the sun, just quoted, gives a
vivid picture of a primitive ritual, with its reliance upon mi-
metic magic and the power of suggestion; the magic depicted
is that of the gods, but all Navaho ceremonials, and indeed
Indian rituals generally, are regarded as derived from the
great powers. The usual form of transmission is through some
prophet or seer who has visited the abodes of the powers, and
there has been permitted to observe the rites by means of
which the divine ones attain their ends. On returning to his
people, the prophet brings the ceremony (or ‘Mance,” as such
rites are frequently called, although dancing is commonly a
minor feature) to his people, where it is transmitted from gen-
eration to generation of priests or shamans. It is interesting to
note that among the Navaho it is usually the younger brother
of the prophet, not the prophet himself, who conducts the rite,
when once it is learned; ^ and it is their custom to choose
younger brothers to be educated as shamans (though the elder
brothers are not deterred from such a career, if they so choose)
the Navaho reason being that the younger brother is likely to
be the more intelligent.

Indian rites may be broadly divided into three classes: (i)
rites pertaining to the life-history of the individual — birth,
pubescence, death; and to social life — clan and fraternity



170


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


rites, rites for the making of war and the cementing of peace;
(2) rites connected with the elements and seasons, maize fes-
tivals, rain dances, the magic fructification of fields and the
magic invocation of game; and (3) mysteries or medicine rites,
designed to bring health, both physical and spiritual, and to
ensure life and prosperity to individual and tribe, — a thera-
peutic which recognizes that all men are at all times ailing and
in need of some form of divine aid. The various elements of
the different types interlace, but in general, those of the first
class fall into a biographical or an historical series, those of
the second class tend to assume a ferial character, and those
of the third class depend upon the chance of necessity or of
desire for their performance — upon the fulfilment of a vow,
the need of the sick for cure, or the like.

Navaho ceremonials are mainly of the latter kind and are in
sharp contrast to the calendric rites of their Pueblo neighbours.
They are medicine ceremonies, undertaken in the interest of
the sick, who individually defray the expenses, although the
rite is supposed to benefit the whole tribe; and they are per-
formed at no stated times, but only in response to need. There
is, however, some restriction: the Night Chant, the most popu-
lar of all Navaho ceremonies, may be held only in the winter,
when the snakes are hibernating — perhaps because serpents
are regarded as underworld-powers, and related to the malefi-
cent deities of the region of the dead; a similar motive pro-
duces a reverse effect on the Great Plains, where the Hako
Ceremony and the Sun-Dance are observed only when the
world is green and life is stirring.®®

The Night Chant, like some other Navaho ceremonies, has
a nine-day period. On the first day holy articles and the sacred
lodge are prepared; on the second, the sweat-house and the
first sand-painting are made, and the song of the approach of
the gods is sung: prayers and a second sweat-house are features
of the third day, while the fourth is devoted to preparations
for the vigil which occupies the fourth night, at which the




PLATE XXIII


Navaho dry- or sand-painting connected with the
Night Chant ceremony. The encircling figure is the
Rainbow goddess. The swastika-like central figure
represents the whirling logs with Yei riding upon
them (see p. 173). At the East is Hastsheyalti
(white)*, at the West, Hastshehogan (black). Rain
spirits, with cloud-sacks and baskets, are North and
South. Symbols of vegetation are between the arms
of the cross. After MAM vi, Plate VL








MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


171

sacred masks of the gods are sprinkled with pollen and water
and a communal supper is followed hy a banquet; the prin-
cipal feature of each of the next four days is the preparation of
an elaborate sand-painting of the gods, each picture symbo-
lizing a mythic revelation, and the touching of the affected
parts of the bodies of the sick with the coloured sands from
the analogous parts of the divine images; the ninth day is
devoted to preparations for the great ceremony which marks
the ninth night, at which the masque of the gods is presented.
It is from this masque of the ninth night that the Night Chant
gets its name, and this is the night, too, of that prayer to the
dark bird who is the chief of pollen which is perhaps the most
poetic description of the genius of thunder-cloud and rain in
Indian literature, and which runs thus, abridged from Mat-
thews’s translation : —

In Tsegihi,

In the house made of dawn,

In the house made of evening twilight,

In the house made of dark cloud,

In the house made of rain and mist, of pollen, of grasshoppers,
Where the dark mist curtains the doorway,

The path to which is on the rainbow,

Where the zigzag lightning stands high on top,

Where the he-rain stands high on top,

Oh, male divinity!

With your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us.

With your leggings and shirt and head-dress of dark cloud, come to
us,

With your mind enveloped in dark cloud, come to us,

With the dark thunder above you, come to us soaring,

With the shapen cloud at your feet, come to us soaring.

With the far darkness made of the dark cloud over your head, come
to us soaring,

With the far darkness made of the rain and the mist over your head,
come to us soaring.

With the zigzag lightning flung out on high over your head,

With the rainbow hanging high over your head, come to us soaring.
With the far darkness made of the dark cloud on the ends of your
wings,



172 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

With the far darkness made of the rain and the mist on the ends of
your wings, come to us soaring,

With the zigzag lightning, with the rainbow hanging high on the
ends of your wings, come to us soaring.

With the near darkness made of the dark cloud of the rain and the
mist, come to us,

With the darkness on the earth, come to us.

With these I wish the foam floating on the flowing water over the
roots of the great corn.

I have made your sacrifice,

I have prepared a smoke for you,

My feet restore for me.

My limbs restore, my body restore, my mind restore, my voice re-
store for me.

Today, take out your spell for me,

Today, take away your spell for me.

Away from me you have taken it,

Far off from me it is taken,

Far off you have done it.

Happily I recover,

Happily I become cool,

My eyes regain their power, my head cools, my limbs regain their
strength, 1 hear again.

Happily for me the spell is taken off,

Happily I walk; impervious to pain, I walk; light within, I walk;
joyous, I walk.

Abundant dark clouds I desire.

An abundance of vegetation I desire.

An abundance of pollen, abundant dew, I desire.

Happily may fair white corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you,
Happily may fair yellow corn, fair blue corn, fair corn of all kinds,
plants of all kinds, goods of all kinds, jewels of all kinds, to the
ends of the earth, come with you.

With these before you, happily may they come with you,

With these behind, below, above, around you, happily may they come
with you,

Thus you accomplish your tasks.

Happily the old men will regard you,

Happily the old women will regard you,

The young men and the young women will regard you,

The children will regard you,

The chiefs will regard you,

Happily, as they scatter in different directions, they will regard you,
Happily, as they approach their homes, they will regard you.



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT 173

May their roads home be on the trail of peace,

Happily may they all return.

In beauty I walk,

With beauty before me, I walk,

With beauty behind me, I walk.

With beauty above and about me, I walk.

It is finished in beauty,

It is finished in beauty.

The Tsegihi of the first verse of this impressive prayer is
one of the sacred places with which the Navaho country
abounds. The myths which explain most of their rites fre-
quently recount the visits of prophets to such places, and it
was from such a trip that the Night Chant was brought back:
a hunter found his arm paralysed when he attempted to draw
the bow upon four mountain sheep; after the fourth endeavour
the sheep appeared to him in their true form, as Yei, and con-
ducted him to their rocky abode, where he was taught the
mystery and sent home to his people. This same man became
a great prophet: he made a strange voyage in a hollow log,
with windows of crystal, guided by the gods; finally, at a
place sacred to the Navaho, a whirling lake with no outlet and
no bottom, he beheld the ‘^whirling logs’’ — a cross upon
which rode eight Yei, two on each arm; and by these he was
instructed in a mystery of healing, in which maize and rain and
life-giving magic play the chief roles. There are other myths
representing similar journeys in god-steered logs, from which
the hero returns with a magic gift: on one such trip, the prophet
is said to have gone as far as the sea — ^‘the waters that had a
shore on one side only” — and there to have learned the art
of mixing colours and the use of maize, a food till then unknown
to the Navaho.

Upon another myth is based the ceremony of the Mountain
Chant. Like the Night Chant, this rite is characterized by a
nocturnal masque of the gods, depicting the mythic adven-
ture, and in it the hero ascends to the world above the sky,
where the people were Eagles. Here, with the aid of Spider



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Re: North American Mythology
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174


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


Woman’s magic, he defeated the Bumble-Bees and Tumble-
Weeds who were the Eagles’ foemen, and in return was given
the sacred rite. He, however, used his powers to trick the
Pueblo people into surrendering their wealth to him; and in a
great shell which he obtained from them he was lifted by
ropes of lightning up into the heavens, surrounded by his
treasure.®® The story recalls similar ascents in the legends of
northern Indians.

Of all the ritual myths of the Navaho the most pathetic is
the story of the Stricken Twins.^ They were children of a
mortal girl by a god; and in childhood one was blinded, the
other lamed. Driven forth by relatives too poor to keep them,
they wandered from one abode of the gods to another in search
of a cure, the blind boy carrying the lame. At each sacred place
the Yei demanded the fee of jewels which was the price of
cure, and when they found that the children had nothing sent
them on with ridicule. Their father, Hastsheyalti, secretly
placed food for them, for he wished to keep his paternity con-
cealed, and finally gave them a cup containing a never-failing
supply of meal.®^ After twice making the rounds of the sacred
places, rejected at all, the children’s paternity was discovered,
and the gods, taking them to the sweat-house, undertook to
heal them, warning them that they must not speak while there;
but when the blind one became faintly conscious of light, in
joy he cried, “Oh, younger brother, I see!”; and when the
lame one felt returning strength, he exclaimed, “Oh, elder
brother, I move my limbs!” And the magic of the gods was
undone. Again blind and halt, they were sent forth to secure
the fee by which alone they could hope for healing. The gods
aided them with magic, and they tricked the wealthy Pueblo
dwellers into giving them the needed treasure. Provided with
this, they returned once more to the abode of the Yei, and
in an elaborate ceremony — a nine days’ rite — they were at
last made perfect. The ritual they took back to their people,
after which they returned to the gods, one to become a rain



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


175


genius, the other a guardian of animals.®® In this myth the
abodes of the Yei are usually represented as crystal-studded
caverns, which are entered through rainbow doorways. An
interesting feature, as touching the primitive philosophy of
sacrifice, is the reason given by the Yei for refusing a cure:
you mortals, they say, have certain objects, tobacco, pollen,
feathers, jewels, which we lack and desire; in return for our
healing, you should give them to us: do ut des. The gods of
the Navaho are not represented as omnipotent, nor as much
more powerful than men: to save the passenger in the floating
log from capture by mortals, they must resort to the magic
device of raising a storm and concealing their hero — as Aeneas
is driven forth by the angry waves, or as Hector is hidden
from peril in a cloud.

V. APACHE AND PIMAN MYTHOLOGY

The mythology of the Apache, who like the Navaho are of
Athapascan stock, is of the same general character as that of
their kindred tribe, except that it lacks the organization and
poetry of Navaho myth, and in general reflects the inferiority
of Apache to Navaho culture. The same gods reappear, fre-
quently with the same names; similar stories are told of them,
though in a fragmentary fashion; rites and ceremonies show
many common elements. Occasionally, an Apache version re-
veals a dramatic superiority to the Navaho, as in the Jicarilla
story of the emergence, where a feeble old man and old woman
were left behind when the First People ascended into this world.
“Take us out,” they called, but the people heeded them not,
and the deserted ones cried after them, “You will come back
here to me”; and now they are rulers of the dead in the
lower world.^® Such improvements, however, are incidental;
the bulk of Apache lore is on an inferior level, with an emphasis
on the coarser elements and on the unedifying adventures and
misadventures of Coyote.



176 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Similar in grade Is the mythology of the other two wide-
spread stocks of the South-West, the Piman and Yuman,
who occupy the territories to the west and south-west of the
Navaho country, far into Mexico and Lower California, and
who form, in all probability, the true autochthones of the
arid region. In material culture these peoples are perhaps
superior to the Apache, their hereditary foe, for they are suc-
cessful agriculturists on the scale which their lands permit;
yet they are in no sense the equals of the Navaho. Their
mythology and religion have been slightly reported, but enough
is known to make clear the general relations of their ideas.

Among tribes of the Piman stock Sun, Moon, and Morning
Star are the great deities governing the world, while Earth
Doctor and Elder Brother are the important heroes of demiur-
gic myth.'® The Moon is the wife of Father Sun, the pair being
identified by some of the half-Chrlstlanized Mexican peoples
with the Virgin and the Christian God. Coyote is the son of
Sun and Moon according to the Pima, and all the tribes of
this stock have their full quota of tales of Coyote and his
kindred. The Devil is a mighty power in the eyes of the
Tarahumare, a Mexican tribe of Piman stock, and no mean
antagonist for Tata Dios (“Father God”), whom he 'slays
twice before he is finally cast down. Death, It may be noted,
is no annihilation in Piman view, for, as one shaman remarked,
“the dead are very much alive. ” It is among the Cora of Mex-
ico, that Chulavete, the Morning Star,'^ is most Important,
though the other tribes recognize him (or her, for with the
Pima “Visible Star” is a girl). Star-myths are found In various
tribes, an interesting instance being the legend, which occurs
in analogous forms in Tarahumare and Tepehuane lore, of
the women who commit the sin of cannibalism and flee from
their husbands into the heavens; there they are transformed
into stars, the Pleiades or Orion’s Belt, while the husband who
has vainly pursued them is changed into a coyote. The use of
the cross,®' apparently an ancient and indigenous symbol of



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


177


the Sun Father, and the cult of the peyote (a species of plant,
especially the cactus Lophophora Williamsiiy used to exalt and
intensify the imaginative faculties) are features of the ritual
of tribes of this stock; the peyote, deified as Hikuli, the four-
faced god who sees all things, being one of the important deities
of the pagan Tarahumare.

Piman cosmogony contains the typically south-western
ascent of the First People from the Underworld and the uni-
versal story of the deluge, but the form and embellishment of
these incidents are original. As told by a shaman of the Pima
tribe: ^^In the beginning there was nothing where now are
earth, sun, moon, stars, and all that we see. Ages long the
darkness was gathering, until it formed a great mass in which
developed the spirit of Earth Doctor, who, like the fluffy wisp
of cotton that floats upon the wind, drifted to and fro without
support or place to fix himself. Conscious of his power, he
determined to try to build an abiding place, so he took from
his breast a little dust and flattened it into a cake. Then he
thought within himself, ‘Come forth, some kind of plant,’
and there appeared the creosote bush.” Three times the earth-
disk upset, but the fourth time it remained where he had re-
placed it. “When the flat dust cake was still he danced upon
it singing:

^ Earth Magician shapes this world.

Behold what he can do!

Round and smooth he molds it.

Behold what he can do!

‘Earth Magician makes the mountains.

Heed what he has to say!

He it is that makes the mesas.

Heed what he has to say!

‘Earth Magician shapes this world;

Earth Magician makes its mountains;

Makes all larger, larger, larger.

Into the earth the magician glances;

Into its mountains he may see.’ ”



178 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Assuredly this is an extraordinary genesis, with its con-
ception of a primeval void and fiat creation, to come from
the untaught natives, and it is possible that mission teachings
may have influenced its form, though the matter seems to
be aboriginal. The story goes on with the creation of insects;
then of a sky-dome which the Earth Doctor commanded Spider
to sew to the earth around the edges; then of sun, moon, and
stars, the two first from blocks of ice flung into the heavens, —

“I have made the sun!

I have made the sun!

Hurling it high

In the four directions.

To the east I threw it

To run its appointed course,” —

the stars from water which he sprayed from his mouth. Next
Earth Doctor created living beings, but they developed canni-
balism and he destroyed them. Then he said: “I shall unite
earth and sky; the earth shall be as a female and the sky as a
male, and from their union shall be born one who shall be a
helper to me.®^ Let the sun be joined with the moon, also even
as man is wedded to woman, and their offspring shall be a
helper to me.” Earth gave birth to Elder Brother, who in
true Olympian style later became more powerful than his
creator; and Coyote was born from the Moon. Elder Brother
created a handsome youth who seduced the daughter of South
Doctor, and the unrestrainable tears of the child of this union
threatened to destroy all life in a mighty flood.^® Elder Brother,
however, escaped by enclosing himself in a pot which rolled
about beneath the waters; Coyote made a raft of a log; while
Earth Doctor led some of the people through a hole which he
made to the other side of the earth-disk. After the flood Elder
Brother was the first of the gods to appear, and he therefore
became the ruler. He sent his subordinates in search of earth’s
navel, and when the central mountain had been discovered,
they set about repeopling the world.




PLATE XXIV


Apache medicine-shirt, painted with figures of
gods, centipedes, clouds, lightning, the sun, etc.
After p JRBE, Plate VI.





MOUNTAIN AND DESERT


179


myth continues with incidents having to do with the
of fire and the cremation of the dead; the freeing of the
[s, by the wile of Coyote/® from the cave in which they
mprisoned; the coming of the wicked gambler, who is
defeated and is changed into a vicious, man-devouring
the birth and destruction of a cannibal monster, Ha-ak,
e origin of tobacco from the grave of an old woman who
Dlen Ha-ak’s blood; and finally the destruction of Elder
;r by the Vulture, his journey to the underworld, and his
to conquer the land with the aid of some of the ante-
ins who had escaped to the other side of the world.

VI. YUMAN MYTHOLOGY “

tribes of the Yuman stock — of which the Mohave,
)pa, Havasupai, Walapai, Diegueno, and Yuma proper
; most important in the United States — occupy terri-
stending from the southern Californian coast and the
ula of Lower California eastward into the arid high-
Geographically they are thus a connecting link between
bes of the South-West and the Californian stocks, and
:ustoms and beliefs show relation to both groups; but
raditions assign their origin to the inland, and because
and of their great territorial extension, which is in con-
7ith the limited areas held by the stocks of the coastal
they may best be classed with the tribes of the desert

little that is recorded of their mythology tells of a time
Earth was a woman and Sky was a man.®^ Earth con-
(some say from a drop of rain that fell upon her while
pt), and twin sons were bom of her (some say from a
0 ), Kukumatz and Tochipa (Mohave), or Hokomata and
pa (Walapai, etc.). Earth at this time was close in the
:e of Sky, and the first task of the twins was to raise
avens, after which they set the cardinal points, defined



i8o NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the land, and created its inhabitants — though the Mohave
say that the First People were created by Mustamho, who was
himself the son of a second generation born of Earth and
Sky; and the Walapai tell how the first man, Kathatakanave,
Taught-by-Coyote, issued with his friend Coyote from the
Grand Canyon.

The Walapai myth goes on to recount how Kathatakanave
prayed to Those Above (the di superi) to create companions
for him; how Coyote broke the spell by speaking before all
men had been created and so slunk away, ashamed; how To-
chopa instructed the human race in the arts and was beloved
accordingly, and how Hokomata out of jealousy taught them
war and thus brought about the division of mankind. The
Havasupai tell also of the feud between the brothers, and that
Hokomata in his rage brought about a deluge which destroyed
the world.^^ Before the waters came, however, Tochopa sealed
his beloved daughter, Pukeheh, in a hollow log, from which
she emerged when the flood had subsided; she gave birth
to a boy, whose father was the sun, and to a girl, whose fa-
ther was a waterfall (whence Havasupai women have ever
been called “Daughters of the Water”); and from these two
the world was repeopled. In the Mohave version, Mustamho
took the people in his arms and carried them until the waters
abated.

The origin of death is told by the Dieguefio. “Tuchaipai
thought to himself, ‘If all my sons do not have enough food
and drink, what will become of them.?’” He gave men the
choice of living forever, dying temporarily, and final death;
but while they were debating the question, the Fly said,
“‘Oh, you men, what are you talking so much about.? Tell
him you want to die forever.’ . . . This is the reason why the
fly rubs his hands together. He is begging forgiveness of the
people for these words.”

Another myth, which the Yuman tribes share with the
Piman, tells of Coyote’s theft of the heart from a burning



MOUNTAIN AND DESERT i8i

corpse. As the Diegueho tell it, it is Tuchaipai, slain through
the malevolence of the Frog, whose body is placed upon the
pyre; the Mohave recount the same event of the remains of
Matyavela, the father of Mustamho, who may be a doublet
of Tuchaipai, or Tochipa. When the pyre is ready, Coyote is
sent away on an invented errand, for his presence is feared;
but seeing the smoke of the cremation, he hurries back in time
to snatch the heart from the burning body, and this he carries
off to the mountains. For this reason men hate the Coyote.’’

It is tempting to see in this myth, coming to peoples whose
kindred extend far into Mexico, some relation to the Nahua-
tlan human sacrifice, in which the heart was torn from the vic-
tim’s body, which was not infrequently thereafter burned.^®



CHAPTER IX
THE PUEBLO DWELLERS
I. THE PUEBLOS

O NE of the most interesting and curious groups of people,
not only of North America but of the world, is composed
of the Pueblo dwellers of New Mexico and Arizona. The
Pueblo Indians get their name (given them by the Spaniards)
from the fact that they live in compact villages, or pueblos,
of stone or adobe houses, which in some instances rise to a
height of five storeys. These villages suggest huge commu-
nal dwellings, or labyrinthine structures like the “house of
Minos,” but in fact each family possesses its own abode, the
form of building being partly an economy of construction,
but mainly for ready defence; for the pueblos are islets of
sedentary culture in the midst of what was long a sea of
marauding savagery. For this same protective reason sites
were chosen on the level tops of the mesas, or villages were
built in cliff walls, hollowed out and walled in (the “cliff
dwellings ” of the desert region have been identified as former,
and probably the earliest, seats of Pueblo culture) ; but under
the influence of their modern freedom from attack many of
the villages are gradually disaggregating into local houses.
Anciently the Pueblo territory extended from central Colorado
and Utah far south into Mexico; now about three hundred
miles separate Taos in the east from Oraibi in the west, while
the north and south distance, from Taos to Acoma, is half of
this. Within the modern area the pueblos fall into two main
groups: those of northern and central New Mexico, clustered
along the Rio Grande, and those of the Moqui or Hopi reserva-



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS 183

tion in Arizona; between these, and to the south, are the large
pueblos of Laguna, Acoma, and Zuni, all in New Mexico.

The Pueblo tribes are of four linguistic stocks; three of them,
the Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuhian, are unknown elsewhere; the
fourth constitutes a special group of Shoshonean dialects, the
language of the Hopi of Arizona, related to the Ute and Sho-
shoni in the north and perhaps to the Aztec far to the south.
But if there is divergence in language, there is little difference
in the degree of aboriginal evolution (though power to pre-
serve it under the pressure of white civilization varies greatly) .
The most astonishing feature of this development is that it
is based primarily upon agriculture.^^ The Pueblo culture
is located, and apparently has evolved, in what is agricultu-
rally the least promising part of North America south of the
Arctic barren lands. The South-West is an arid plateau, wa-
tered by scant rains and traversed by few streams. Its one
favourable feature is that where water is obtainable for irri-
gation the returns in vegetation are luxuriant; but irrigation,
even where feasible, requires both toil and intelligence, and it
seems truly extraordinary that the most varied agriculture of
the continent, north of Mexico, should have developed in so
unpromising a region. It is not, however, surprising that the
religion of the Pueblo agriculturists should be found to centre
about the one recurrent theme of prayer for rain; to few other
peoples is a dry year so terrible.

But it is not alone in agriculture and housing that the Pueblo
dwellers show advancement. In the industrial arts of basketry,
pottery, weaving, and stone-working they were and are in the
forefront of the tribes, and it is altogether probable that it is
to the Pueblos that the neighbouring Navaho owe their skill
in these industries. In decorative art they display an equal
pre-eminence, both geometric and naturalistic design being
pleasingly adapted to their elaborate symbolism. Socially the
Pueblo dwellers form a distinctive group. Each village is a
tribal unit, with a republican system of government, formed

X — 14

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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #23 on: August 03, 2019, 08:09:19 PM »


1 84 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

of a group of clans, originally exogamous and frequently,
though not invariably, with matrilinear descent. There is no
inferiority of the women to the men, though there is a divi-
sion of privilege: the family home is the property of the wife,
but in each pueblo there is a type of building — varying in
number from one, in the smaller, to a dozen or more in the
larger villages — called the “kiva,” which is characteristically
the men’s house. The kiva is partly temple, partly club-
house or lounging room; the more primitive type is circular,
the later rectangular, like the houses; sometimes it is sub-
terranean. In the kiva men gather for work or amusement,
and in the kiva occur the secret rites of the various fraternities
and priesthoods. Women are rarely admitted, except in those
pueblos where they have a kiva of their own, or rites demand-
ing one. It is regarded as probable that the kiva is the original
nucleus of the pueblo — the primitive “men’s house,” con-
verted into a temple, around which first grew the fortified
refuge, and later the settled and permanent town.

Where the pagan religion of the Pueblo dwellers persists
— and in matters of belief they have shown themselves to be
among the most conservative of Indians — their elaborate and
spectacular rites are in charge of fraternities or priesthoods,
each with its own cult practices and its proper fetes in the
calendar. These festivals are devoted to the three great ob-
jects of securing rain, and hence abundant crops, healing the
sick, and obtaining success in war. Practically all Pueblo men
are initiates into one or more fraternities, to some of which
women are occasionally admitted. In certain pueblos, as the
Hopi, the fraternities appear to have originated from the war-
rior and medicine societies of the various clans, such socie-
ties being found in almost every Indian tribe; in others, clan
origin cannot be traced if it ever existed, admission being
gained either by the exhibition of prowess (as formerly in the
warrior societies), by the fact of being healed by the rites of the
fraternity, or by some such portent as that to which is ascribed



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS 185

the Znm Struck-by-Lightning fraternity, which was founded
by a number of Indians, including, besides ZunI men, one
Navaho and a woman, who were severely shocked by a thun-
derbolt.®^ In many of the fraternities there are orders or steps
of rank, and the head men or priests of the societies hold a
power over the pueblo which sometimes amounts, as at Zuni,
to theocratic rule. In spite of differences of language and ori-
gin, the general resemblances of the Pueblos to one another,
in the matter of ritual and myth as in outward culture, is
such as to make of them an essential group. At least this is
indicated from the results which have been recorded for Sia,
Zuni, and the Hopi towns — of Keresan, Zunian, and Shosho-
nean stock respectively — which are the only groups as yet
deeply studied.


II. PUEBLO COSMOLOGY^i

The symbolism of the World-Quarters, of the Above, and
of the Below is nowhere more elaborately developed among
American Indians than with the Pueblos.®^ Analogies are drawn
not merely with the colours, with plants and animals, and
with cult objects and religious ideas, but with human society
in all the ramifications of its organization, making of mankind
not only the theatric centre of the cosmos, but a kind of elab-
orate image of its form.

According to their Genesis, the ancestors of the Pueblo
dwellers issued from the fourfold Underworld through a Si-
papu, which some regard as a lake, and thence journeyed in
search of the Middle Place of the World, Earth^s navel, which
the various tribes locate differently; in Zuni, for example, it is
in the town itself. The world is oriented from this point and
the sunrise — east is “the before,” as in the ancient lore of
the Old World — the four cardinals, the zenith, and t|ie nadir
defining the cosmic frame of all things. It may be of interest
to note that if these points be regarded as everywhere equi-
distant from the centre, and that if they then be circumscribed



NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


1 86

by circles in every plane about the centre, the resulting figure
will be a sphere; and it is not improbable that from such a
procedure arose the first conception of the spherical form of
the universe; the swastika and the swastika inscribed in a
circle are cosmic symbols in the South-West as in many other
parts of the world, and while no Indians had attained to the
concept of a world-sphere, the Pueblos at least were upon
the very threshold of the idea.®® Each of the six regions — the
Quarters, the Above, and the Below — possesses its symbolic
colour; in the Zuni and Hopi systems, the white of dawn is
the colour of the East; the blue of the daylit sky is the tint
of the West, toward which the sun takes his daily journey;
red, the symbol of fire and heat, is the hue of the South; and
yellow, for sunrise and sunset, perhaps for the aurora as well,
is the Northern colour; all colours typify the Zenith; black
is the symbol of the Nadir. As the colours, so the elements are
related to the Quarters ; to the North belongs the air, element
of wind and breath, for from it come the strong winter winds ;
the West is characterized by water, for in the Pueblo land rains
sweep in from the Pacific; fire is of the South; while the earth
and the seeds of life which fructify the earth are of the East.
In their rituals the Zuni address the points in this order:
prayer is made first to the Middle Place, then to the North
with whom is the breath which is the prime essential of life,
to the West whose rain-laden clouds first break the hold of
winter, to the South, the East, the Zenith, the Nadir which
holds in its bosom the caverns of the dead, and once again
the Middle Place. The tribal clans are grouped and organ-
ized with respect to these same points, while human activities,
as represented by the fraternities having them symbolically in
charge, are similarly oriented — war is of the North, peace and
the chase of the West, husbandry of the South, rite and medi-
cine of the East; to the Zenith belong the life-preservers, and
to the Nadir the life-generators, for not only do the dead de-
part thither to be born again, but it is from Below that the



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


187

ancestors of all men first came; to the Middle Place, the heart
or navel of the world, belong the “Mythic Dance Drama
People,” representing all the clans, and having in charge the
presentation of the masques of the ancestral and allied divin-
ities. This sevenfold division is reflected in the six kivas and
shrine of the Middle Place of the town itself; and may be
associated with the original seven towns of the ancestral com-
munity, for it is taken as established that the Seven Cities of
Cibola, whose fame brought Coronado and his expedition from
the south, were the ancestral pueblos of the present Zuni.®’'

III. GODS AND KATCINAS

In such a frame are set the world-powers venerated by the
Pueblo dwellers. These cosmic potencies may be classed in
two great categories : the gods, which represent the powers and
divisions of nature; and the Katcinas, primarily the spirits of
ancestors, but in a secondary usage the spirit-powers of other
beings, even of the gods.

Father Sun*® and Mother Earth are the greater deities of the
pantheon; but each is known by many names, and may indeed
be said to separate into numerous personalities — among the
Hopi, for example, the Sun is called Heart of the Sky, while
Mother of Germs or Seed, Old Woman, Spider Woman, Com
Maid, and Goddess of Growth are all appellations of the Earth.®^
Superior even to this primeval pair, the Zuni recognize Awona-
wilona, the supreme life-giving power, the initiator and em-
bodiment of the life of the world, referred to as He-She, whose
earliest avatar was the person of the Sun Father, but whose
pervasive life is confined to no one being.® No similar Hopi
being is reported.

Along with the Sun are other celestial gods, the Moon
Mother and the Morning and Evening Stars, the Galaxy,
Pleiades, Orion, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Polar Star,*^
and the knife-feathered monster whom the Zuni name Achi-



i88


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


yalatopa.®® Sun and Moon are masked by shields as they trav-
erse the skies, but, little by little, Awonawilona draws aside
the veil from Moon Mother’s shield and as gradually replaces
it, thus imaging the course of man’s life from infancy to the
fulness of maturity and thence to the decline of age. These,
with the meteorological beings, the cloud-masked rain-bring-
ers, are the di superi, “Those Above.” The di inferi, “Those
Below,” dwellers in the bosom of Mother Earth, include the
twin Gods of War,®® who in the years of the beginnings de-
livered mankind from the monsters; the Corn Father and Corn
Mother, the latter being Earth or Earth’s Daughters;®® and the
mineral “Men” and “Women” representing Salt, Red Shell,
White Shell, and Turquoise;®^ as well as the animal-gods, or
Ancients, which are the intermediaries between men and the
higher gods, and which also act as the tutelaries or patrons
of the several fraternities.^® Another deity, associated with
both the subterranean and the celestial powers, is the Plumed
Serpent, called Koloowisi by the Zuhi, Palulukoh by the
Hopi.®® This god is connected both with the lightning and with
fertility; a moving serpent is a natural symbol for the zigzag
flash of lightning, and it is probably this analogy which has
given rise in the South-West to the myth of sky-travelling
snakes; on the other hand, lightning is associated with rain-
fall, and rain, according to the South-Western view, is carried
aloft from the subterranean reservoirs of water; the connexion
of rain with fertility is obvious; in the Zuni initiation of boys
into the Kotikili (of which all who may enter the Dance-House
of the Gods, after death, must be members), Koloowisi is repre-
sented by a large image from whose mouth water and maize
issue, and in the highly dramatic Palulukonti of the Hopi
Indians there are several acts which seem to represent the
fructification of the maize by the Plumed Snake. Possibly
this deity is of Mexican origin, for far to the south, among
the Mayan and Nahuatlan peoples, the Plumed Serpent is a
potent divinity.




PLATE XXV


Zufii masks for ceremonial dances. Upper mask
of a Warrior God; lower, mask of the Rain Priest
of the North. After *?,’ JRBE^ Plates XVI, LIV.
See Note 65 (pp. 309~“io),and compare Frontispiece
and Plates HI, IV, VII, XXXI.





THE PUEBLO DWELLERS 189

The second great group of higher powers is composed of the
ancestral and totemic Katcinas which play an important part
in the Pueblo scheme of things.®® “While the term Katcina,”
says Fewkes, “was originally limited to the spirits, or personi-
fied medicine power, of ancients, personifications of a similar
power in other objects have likewise come to be called Katcinas.
Thus the magic power or medicine of the sun may be called
Katcina, or that of the earth may be known by the same
general name, this use of the term being common among the
Hopis. The term may also be applied to personations of these
spirits or magic potencies by men or their representation by
pictures or graven objects, or by other means.” The number
of Katcinas is very great, for every clan has its own, not to be
personated by members of any other clan; while others are
introduced by being adopted as a result of initiation into the
rites of neighbouring pueblos. In general, the Katcinas are
anthropomorphic. In ritual and in picture they appear as
masked, and to their representation is due the long series of
masques which characterize Pueblo ceremonial life.

The mask is certainly more than a symbolic disguise. The
mythology of the South-West, despite the extensive appear-
ance of animal-powers and the use of animal fetishes, is pre-
dominantly anthropomorphic in cast: the Sun and the Moon
are manlike beings, hidden by shields; clouds are shields or
screens concealing the manlike Rain-Bringers. The Hopi place
cotton masks upon the faces of their dead, and the Zuni
blacken the countenances of their deceased chieftains. Now
the dead depart to the Underworld “ (though the Zuni be-
lieve that members of the warrior society, the Bow Priesthood,
ascend to the Sky, thence to shoot their lightning shafts, while
the Rain-makers roll their thunderous gaming stones), there
to become themselves rain-bringers, or at least more potent
intercessors for rain than are their mortal brethren. “The
earth,” Mrs. Stevenson writes, “is watered by the deceased
Zuni, of both sexes, who are controlled and directed by



190 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

a council composed of ancestral gods. These shadow people
collect water in vases and gourd jugs from the six great waters
of the world, and pass to and fro over the middle plane,
protected from the view of the people below by cloud
masks.” These six great waters are the waters of the six
springs in the hearts of the six mountains of the cosmic
points. The Uwannami, as the Zuni name these shadowy
rain-makers, are carried by the vapour which arises from
these springs, each Uwannami holding fast a bunch of breath-
plumes®® to facilitate ascension. Clouds of different forms
have varying significance: cirrus clouds tell that the Uwan-
nami are passing about for pleasure; cumulus and nimbus
that the earth Is to be watered. Yet it is not from, but
through, the clouds that the rain really comes: each cloud is
a sieve into which the water is poured directly or sprinkled
by means of the plumed sticks, such as the Zuni use in their
prayers for rain. Of this same tribe Mrs. Stevenson says again:
“These people rarely cast their eyes upward without invoking
the rain-makers, for in their arid land rain is the prime object
of prayer. Their water vases are covered with cloud and rain
emblems, and the water in the vase symbolizes the life, or
soul, of the vase.” This picturesque conception of the office of
the ancestral gods is not shared by the Hopi, who regard the
rain as coming directly from a special group of gods, the Omo-
wuhs; but the Hop! do believe that the dead are potent in-
tercessors with these deities, and they call the mask which is
placed over the face of the deceased a “prayer to the dead to
bring rain.”

Pueblo maskers personate divine and mythological beings of
many descriptions, as well as the ancestral dead, and to the
masks themselves attaches a kind of veneration, due to their
sacred employment. Besides the masks, however, many other
objects are used as ritualistic sacra. Sticks painted with sym-
bolic colours, and adorned with plumes which convey the
breath of prayer upward to the gods, are offered by the thou-



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


191

sand, the placing of such prayer-plumes at notable shrines
being a feature of the ceremonial life of each individual.®®
The fraternities, or cult societies, erect elaborate altars, sand-
paintings, images, and symbolic objects, indicating the powers
to which they are devoted. Meal and pollen, seeds, cords of
native cotton, maize of various colours, tobacco in the form of
cigarettes, and stone implements, nodules, and figures are all
important adjuncts of worship. What are called fetishes are
employed in numbers, and vary in character from true fetishes
to true idols. Many of the stone fetishes are private prop-
erty, of the nature of the “medicine” universal in North
America.^ Others are properties of the fraternities, and are in
the keeping of certain priests or initiates who bring them forth
on the occasion of the appropriate festivals. Still others are of
the nature of tribal palladia, in charge of the higher priest-
hoods. Thus, at Zuni, the images of the Gods of War (wooden
stocks with crudely drawn faces, such as must have been the
most ancient xoana) are under the guardianship of the Bow
Priesthood, who are servants of the Lightning-Makers.®^

In Zuni the supreme sacerdotal group consists of the Ashi-
wanni, the rain priesthood, which comprises fourteen rain
priests, two priests of the bow, and the priestess of fecun-
dity.® Six of the rain priests are known as Directors of the
House, this house being the chamber which marks the Middle
Place of the world, in which is kept the fetish of the rain
priests of the North, who are supposed to be exactly over the
very heart of the world. The priest of the sun and the direc-
tor and deputy of the Kotikili, added to the Ashiwanni, form
the whole body of Zuni priests duplicating in the flesh the
Council of the Gods, which assembles in Kothluwalawa, the
Dance-House of the Gods. The Kokko constitute the entire
group of anthropic gods worshipped by the Zuni. The Koti-
kili is the society of those who may personate them in masques
(including in its membership all of the men and a few of the
women of Zuni) ; and it is only the members of the Kotikili



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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #24 on: August 03, 2019, 08:11:30 PM »


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


192

who are admitted into Kothluwalawa after death. The other
fraternities of Zuhi have in charge the service of animal, not
anthropic, deities — beings regarded rather as powerful inter-
mediaries between men and gods, and as magical assistants
of hunters and doctors, than as rulers of creation. In the Hopi
towns priests and fraternities likewise form the sacerdotal
organization, though with a clearer dependence upon what
is evidently a more ancient and primitive system of clan
worship.®

IV. THE CALENDAR®®

Agriculture makes a people not only non-migratory, but
close observers of the seasons, and hence of the yearly stations
of the sun. The count of time by moons is sufficient for nomadic
peoples, or for tribes whose subsistence is mainly by the chase,
but in a settled agricultural community the primitive lunar
year is sooner or later replaced by a solar year, determined by
the passage of the sun through the solstitial and equinoctial
points. The lunar measure of time will not be abandoned,
but it will be corrected by the solar, and gradually give way
to the latter. Such, indeed, is the outline of all calendric
development.

The Zuni year is divided into two seasons, inaugurated by
the solstices, each of which is composed of six months — luna-
tions, subdivided into three ten-day periods. The significa-
tions of the month names are interesting: the month of the
winter solstice, which is the beginning of the year, is called
Turning-Back, in reference to the Sun Father’s return from
the south; it is followed by Limbs-of-the-Trees-Broken-by-
Snow, No-Snow-in-the-Road, Little-Wind, Big-Wind, and No-
Name. For the remaining half of the year, these appellations,
though now inappropriate, are used again, the months of the
second half-year being, strictly speaking, nameless. A similar
duplication occurs in the Hopi calendar, where the names of
five moons are repeated, but in summer and winter rather




PLATE XXVI


Wall decoration in the room of a Rain Priest,
Zuili. Beneath the cloud-symbols are Plumed Ser-
pents, while a sacred Frog, wearing a cloud cap and
shooting forth lightnings, stands on their protruding
tongues. After 2j ARBR, Plate XXX VL




^ ';JBi




sffiiSiifispS





TEE PUEBLO DWELLERS


193


than in the solstitial division, which, however, plays an impor-
tant role in the ferial calendar. Fewkes records an interesting
remark that may give the true reason for the arrangement:
“When we of the upper world are celebrating the winter Pa
moon,” said the priest, “the people of the under world are
engaged in the observance of the Snake or Flute [summer fes-
tivals], and vice versa.” The priest added that the prayer-
sticks which were to be used by the Hopi in their summer
festivals were prepared in winter during the time when the
underworld folk were performing these rites. “From their
many stories of the under world,” writes Fewkes, “I am led to
believe that the Hopi consider it a counterpart of the earth’s
surface, and a region inhabited by sentient beings. In this
under world the seasons alternate with those in the upper
world, and when it is summer in the above it is winter in the
world below.” Ceremonies are said to be performed there,
as here.

Both Zuni and Hopi have priests whose special duty it is to
observe the annual course of the sun, and hence to determine
the dates for the great festivals of the winter and summer
solstices.^® The Zuhi sun priest uses as his gnomon a petrified
stump which stands at the outskirts of the village, and at which
he sprinkles meal and makes his morning prayers to the sun,
until, on the day when that luminary rises at a certain
point of Corn Mountain, the priesthood is informed of the
approaching change. Every fourth morning, for twenty days,
the sun priest offers prayer-plumes to the Sun Father, the
Moon Mother, and to departed sun priests; on the twentieth
morning he announces that in ten days the rising sun will
strike the Middle Place, in the heart of Zuni, and the ceremony
will begin. This rite occupies another twenty-day period, be-
ginning with prayers to the gods and ending in days of carnival
and giving; during this time the gods are supposed to visit
the town, images and fetishes are brought forth and adorned,
prayer-plumes are deposited by each family in honour of its



194


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


ancestral rain-bringers, boys arc initiated by ceremonial flog-
ging,®’- the sacred fire is kindled by the fire-maker, and there
is a great house cleaning, moral as well as physical, for per-
sonators of the gods make it a part of their duty to settle
family quarrels and to reprimand the delinquents, young and
old. At each solstice the sun is believed to rest in his yearly
journey (the Hopi speak of the solstitial points as “houses”);
when the sun strikes a certain point on Great Mountain five
days In succession, the second change of the year takes place.
The ceremonies of the summer solstice include pilgrimages to
shrines and elaborate dances, and this is also the season when
it Is especially lucky to fire pottery, so that all the kilns are
smoking. An Instructive feature Is the igniting of dried grass
and trees and bonfires generally; for the Zuni believe clouds
to be akin to smoke, and by means of the smoke of their
fires they seek to encourage the Uwannami to bring rain.®*
The ceremony of the summer solstice, in fact, is the inaugura-
tion of the series of masques in which they, in common with
the other Pueblos, implore moisture from heaven for the crops
that are now springing up.

The Hopi sun priests make use of thirteen points on the
horizon for the determination of ceremonial dates. Their ritual
year begins in November with a New Fire ceremony, which
is given in an elaborate and extended form every fourth year,
for it then includes the Initiation of novices into the fraterni-
ties. Other cer monies are similarly elaborated at these same
times; while still other rites, as the Snake- and Flute-Dances,
occur in alternate years. The Hopi year is divided into two
unequal seasons, the greater festivals occurring in the longer
season, which includes the cold months. Five and nine days
are the usual active periods for the greater festivals, though
the total duration from the announcement to the final purifica-
tion is in some instances twenty days. Of the greater festivals,
the New Fire ceremony of November is followed at the winter
solstice by the Soyaluna, in which the germ god is supplicated



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


195

and the return of the sun, in the form of a bird, is dramatized;
the Powamu, or Bean-Planting, comes in February, its main
object being the renovation of the earth for the coming sow-
ing and the celebration of the return of the Katcinas, to be
with the people until their departure at Niman, following the
summer solstice; the famous Snake-Dance of the Hopi alter-
nates with the Flute-Dance in the month of August. These are
only a few of the annual festivals, a striking feature of which
is the arrival and departure of the Katcinas. The period dur-
ing which these beings remain among the Hopi is approxi-
mately from the winter to the summer solstice, and it may be
supposed that their absence is due in some way to their func-
tion as intercessors for rain during the remaining half-year.
A secondary trait, found only in Katcina ceremonies, is the
presence of clowns or “Mudheads” — a curious type of fun-
maker whose presence in Zuni Cushing ascribes to the ancient
union of a Yuman tribe with the original Zuhian stock.

Neither Zuni nor Hopi succeed in entirely co-ordinating the
primitive lunar and solar years. The lunations and sun-
stations are observed, rather than counted in days; appar-
ently no effort is made to keep a precise record of time nor
to correct the calendar, unless indeed the uncertainty which
Fewkes found among the Hopi priests as to the true number
of lunations in the year, twelve according to some, thirteen
and even fourteen according to others, may represent such an
attempt. On a sun shrine near Zuni there are marks said to
represent year-counts; certain it is that few North American
Indians have a more ancient and verifiable tradition than is
possessed by the Pueblo dwellers.®^

Analogies between the Pueblo periods and festivals and
those of the more civilized peoples of ancient Mexico seem to
point to a remote identity — the five-, nine-, and twenty-day
periods,®® the general character of many of the rites and
mythological beings, the significance of the heart as the seat
of life.®® But one in search of parallels need not confine him-



196 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

self to the New World. The great summer solstice festival of
the Celts, with its balefires, is of a kind with that of the Zuhi,
while the purification ceremonies of the winter solstice have
points of identity with the Roman Lupercalia, the Anthesteria
of the Greeks, and similar festivals, which close analysis would
multiply. The quadrennial and biennial character of many
Pueblo ceremonies, as well as the division into greater and lesser
rites, are still other noteworthy analogues of Greek usage.

V. THE GREAT RITES AND THEIR MYTHS

Perhaps no feature of Pueblo culture is more distinctive
than the calendric arrangement of their religious rites. Other
tribes in North America have ceremonies as elaborate as any
in the pueblos, and probably in most cases these rituals are
regarded as appropriate only to certain seasons of the year,
but it is not generally the season that brings the performance:
sickness and the need for cure, the fulfilment of a vow, the
munificence or ambition of a rich man, are the commoner oc-
casions. In the pueblos, on the other hand, not a moon passes
without its necessary and distinctive festivals, which are fruit
of the season rather than of individual need or impulse, thus
marking a great step in the direction of social solidarity and
cultural advancement.

The origin of these ceremonies harks back to the genesis of
the tribes. Most of these are formed of an amalgam of clans
which from time to time have joined themselves to the initial
tribal nucleus, and have eventually become welded Into a single
body. Each of these clans has brought to the tribe Its own rites,
the mythic source of which is zealously recounted; and thus
the general corpus of the tribal ritual has been enriched. But
the joining of clan to tribe has entailed' a modification: by
adoption and Initiation new members have been added, from
without the clan, to the ceremonial body, and eventually (a
process which seems to have gone farthest in ZunI) a cult



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


197


society, or fraternity, has replaced the clan as the vehicle of
the rite; again, clans with analogous or synchronous rites
have united their observances into a new and complicated
ceremony, partly public, partly secret — for the esoteric as-
pect is never quite lost, each organization having its own rites,
such as the preparation of ceremonial objects, the erecting of
altars, etc., shared only by its initiates and usually taking place
in its proper kiva.

A famous ceremony of the type just named is the Snake-
Dance of the Hopi Indians, the most examined of all Pueblo
rites.®“ This ritual occurs biennially in five of the Hopi vil-
lages; remnants of a similar observance have been recorded
from Zufii and the eastern group of pueblos; and it is probable
that a form of it was celebrated in pre-Columbian Mexico.
The participants in the Hopi Snake-Dance are the members of
two fraternities — the Snake and the Antelope — each of which
conducts both secret and public rites during the nine days of
the festival. In the early part of the ceremony serpents are
captured in the fields and brought to the kiva of the Snake
priests, where the reptiles undergo a ritual bathing and tending;
the building of the Snake altar, with personifications of the
Snake Youth and Snake Maid, the initiation of novices, the
singing of songs, and the recitation of prayers are other rites
of the secret ceremonial. The Antelope priests meantime erect
their own altar, on which are symbols of rain-clouds and light-
ning, as well as of maize and other fruits of the earth; and
lead in a public dance in which symbols of vegetation and water
are displayed. The Antelope priests, moreover, are the first
to appear in the public dance on the final day, when the snakes
are brought forth from the Snake kiva. These are carried in
the mouths of the dancing Snake priests, who are sprinkled
with meal by the women; and finally the serpents are taken
far into the fields and loosed, that they may bear to the Powers
Below the prayers for rain and fertility which is the object
of the whole ceremony.



198 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

The symbolism of the Snake-Dance is in part explained by
the myth which, in varying versions, the Hopi tell of the Snake
Youth and Maid. It is a story very similar to the Navaho tale
of the Floating Log. A youth, a chief’s son, spent his days
beside the Grand Canyon, wondering where all the water of
the river flowed to and thinking, “That must make it very
full somewhere.” Finally, he embarks in a hollow log and is
borne to the sea, where he is hailed by Spider. Woman, who
becomes his wizardly assistant. Together they visit the kiva
of the mythic Snake People, at the moment human in shape,
who subject the young man to tests, which, with the aid of
Spider Woman, he successfully meets. The Snake People then
assume serpentine form; at the instigation of Spider Woman
he seizes the fiercest of these, whereupon the reptile becomes
a beautiful girl who, before the transformation, had caught the
youth’s fancy. This is the Snake Maid, whom he now marries
and leads back to his own country. The first offspring of this
union is a brood of serpents ; but later human children are born,
to become the ancestors of the Snake Clan. In some versions,
the Snake Maid departs after the birth of her children, never
to return; or her offspring are driven forth, from them spring-
ing a strange goddess of wild creatures, a sorceress who gam-
bles for life with young hunters, and who carries a child that
is never born.

In this mythic medley it is easy to see that the forces of
generation are the primary powers. The Snake Maid, from the
waters of the west, is the personification of underworld life,
the life that appears in the cultivated maize of the fields and
the reproduction of animals in the wilds (there are many in-
dications that other animals besides snakes were formerly im-
portant in the rite). Fewkes regards her as the Corn Goddess
herself and in one Hopi myth a Corn Maid is transformed into
a snake.®® The Snake Youth is probably a sky-power, for in
at least one version the Sun-Man bears the youth on his back
in his course about the earth. The significance of the antelope



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


199

in the ceremony is not so clear, though the altar of the Ante-
lope priests is obviously associated also with the powers of fer-
tility; but it may not be amiss to assume that the horn of the
antelope, like the horn of the ram in Old-World symbolism,
is also a sign of fertility; certainly the conception of descent
from an ancestral horn is not foreign to South-Western myth.^“

The Flute Ceremony, which alternates with the Snake-
Dance, has a similar purpose, though here the emblem of the
Sun, an adorned disk encircled by eagle feathers and streamers.
Is significant of the pre-eminence of the Powers Above; and
in the LalakontI, which follows, in September, the Flute or
Snake Ceremony of August, the women, who have charge of
the festival, erect an altar on which images of the Growth God-
dess and the Corn Goddess are conspicuous.’' In this ritual the
women dance, carrying baskets, while the two Lakone maids,
adorned with horn and squash-blossom symbols of fertility,
throw baskets and gifts to the spectators — all a dramatic plea
for a bountiful harvest.

The Corn Maidens®® are omnipresent in Pueblo rites, one of
the most sacred and guarded of the Zuni ceremonials being the
quadrennial drama representing their visit to their ancestors,
an observance occurring, like the Snake-Dance, in August.
When their fathers issued from the lower world, the Zuni say,
the ten Corn Maidens came with them and for four years ac-
companied them, unseen and unknown, but at Shipololo, the
Place of Fog, witches discovered them and gave them seeds
of the different kinds of maize and the squash. Here the Maid-
ens remained while the AshiwI, the fathers of the Zuni, con-
tinued on their journey; they whiled away their hours bathing
in the dew and dancing in a bower walled with cedar, fringed
with spruce, and roofed with cumulus cloud; each maiden held
in her hand stalks of a beautiful plant, with white, plumelike
leaves, brought from the lower world. Once the Divine Ones,
twins of the Sun and Foaming Waters, while on a deer hunt,
found the Maidens in their abode, and when their discovery



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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #25 on: August 03, 2019, 08:18:12 PM »


200


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


was related they were sent, at the command of the Sun priest,
to lead them to the people. The Maidens came and danced
before them all in a court decorated with a meal-painting of
cloud-symbols. But as they danced the people fell asleep, for
it was night, and during their slumber Payatamu, the diminu-
tive flower-crowned god who plays his flute in the fields, caus-
ing the flowers to bloom and the butterflies to crowd after
him (Pied Piper and god Pan in one), came near and saw the
Maidens dancing. He thought them all beautiful, but deemed
the Yellow Corn Maiden the loveliest of all. They read his
thoughts, and in fear kept on dancing until he, too, fell asleep,
when they fled away, by the first light of the morning star,
to the Mist and Cloud Spring, where the gods, in the form of
ducks, spread their wings and concealed the Maidens hiding
in the waters. But famine came to the people, and in their dis-
tress they called upon the Gods of War to find the Corn Maid-
ens for them. These two besought Bitsitsi, the musician and
jester of the Sun Father, to aid them, and he from a height
beheld the Maidens beneath the spreading feathers of a duck’s
wings. In their kiva the Ashiwanni were sitting without fire,
food, drink, or smoke: “all their thoughts were given to the
Corn Maidens and to rain.” Bitsitsi, borne by the Galaxy,
who bowed to earth to receive him, went to the Maidens with
the message of the Ashiwanni, which he communicated with-
out words; “all spoke with their hearts; hearts spoke to hearts,
and lips did not move.” He promised them safety and brought
them once more to the Ashiwi, before whom they enacted the
ceremonial dance which was to be handed down in the rites
of their descendants. Even Payatamu assisted. His home is a
cave of fog and cloud with a rainbow door, and thence he came
bringing flutes to make music for the dancers. “The Corn
Maidens danced from daylight until night. Those on the north
side, passing around by the west, joined their sisters on the
south side, and, leaving the hampone [waving corn], danced in
the plaza to the music of the choir. After they had all returned




PLATE XXVII

Altar of the Antelope Priests of the Hopi. The
central dry-painting represents rain-cloiuls and light-
ning. About this arc arranged symbols of vegetation,
prayer sticks, offerings of meal, etc. After /y JR Blij
Plate XLVI.





THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


201


to their places the Maidens on the south side, passing by the
west, joined their sisters on the north, and danced to the music,
not only of the choir, but also of the group of trumpeters led
by Payatamu. The Maidens were led each time to the plaza by
either their elder sister Yellow Corn Maiden, or the Blue Corn
Maiden, and they held their beautiful thlawe (underworld plant
plumes) in either hand. The Corn Maidens never again ap-
peared to the Ashiwi.”

Not all myths connected with the maize are as innocent or
poetic as this. The witches that gave the seed to the Corn
Maidens were the two last comers from the Underworld at the
time of the emergence. At first the Ashiwi were in favour of
sending them back, but the witches told them that they had in
their possession the seeds of all things, in exchange for which
they demanded the sacrifice of a youth and a maid, declar-
ing, “We wish to kill the children that the rains may come.”
So a boy and a girl, children of one of the Divine Ones, were
devoted, and the rain came, and the earth bore fruit — bitter
fruit it was, at first, till the owl and the raven and the coyote
had softened and sweetened it. Here we have one of the many
legends of the South-West telling of the sacrifice of children to
the Lords of the Waters which seem to point to a time when
the Pueblo dwellers and their neighbours, like the Aztecs of the
south, cast their own flesh and blood to the hard-bargaining
Tlaloque.®®

The one theme of Pueblo ritual is prayer for rain. When
asked for an explanation of his rites, says Fewkes {Annual
Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896, pp. 698-99),
there are two fundamentals always on the lips of the Hopi
priest. “We cling to the rites of our ancestors because they
have been pronounced good by those who know; we erect our
altars, sing our traditional songs, and celebrate our sacred
dances for rain that our corn may germinate and yield abun-
dant harvest.” And he gives the call with which the town crier
at dawn announces the feast:



202


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


All people awake, open your eyes, arise.

Become children of light, vigorous, active, sprightly.

Hasten clouds from the four world quarters ;

Come snow in plenty, that water may be abundant when summer
comes;

Come ice, cover the fields, that the planting may yield abundance.
Let all hearts be glad!

The knowing ones will assemble in four days;

They will encircle the village dancing and singing their lays . . .
That moisture may come in abundance.

VI. SIA AND HOPI COSMOGONIES

No Indians are more inveterate and accomplished tellers of
tales than are the Pueblo dwellers. Their repertoire includes its
full quota of coyote traditions and stories of ghosts, bugaboos,
cannibals, ogres,* and fairies, as well as legends of migration
and clan accession, of cultural innovations and the found-
ing of rites, the historical character of which is more or less
clear. But for insight into fundamental beliefs the cosmogonic
myths of these, as of other peoples, are the most valuable of all.
To be sure, not all the beings who play leading roles in cos-
mogony are equally important in cult: many of them belong to
that “elder generation” of traditionary powers which appear
in every highly developed mythic system; and often the po-
tencies for which there is a real religious veneration are sym-
bolized in myth by more or less strange personifications — as
Spider Woman, in the South-West, appears to be only an image
of the Earth Goddess, suggested by the uncannily huge earth-
nesting spiders of that region. Nevertheless, it is to cosmog-
onies that we must look for the clearest definition of mythic
powers.

In their general outlines the cosmogonies of the Pueblo
dwellers are in accord with the Navaho Genesis, with which
they clearly share a common origin. They differ from this,
and among themselves, in the arrangement and emphasis of
incidents, as well as in dramatic and conceptual imagination.



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


203


The cosmogony of the Sia is very near in form to that of the
Navaho. The first being was Sussistinnako, Spider, who drew
a cross in the lower world where he dwelt,®® placed magic
parcels at the eastern and western points, and sang until two
women came forth from these, Utset, the mother of Indians,
and Nowutset, the parent of other men. Spider also cre-
ated rain, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow, while the two
women made sun and moon and stars. After this there was
a contest of riddles between the sisters, and Nowutset, who,
though stronger, was the duller of the two, losing the contest,
was slain by Utset and her heart cut from her breast.®® This
was the beginning of war in the world. For eight years the
people dwelt happily in the lower world, but in the ninth a
flood came and they were driven to the earth above, to which
they ascended through a reed.'*® Utset led the way, carrying
the stars in a sack; the turkey was last of all, and the foaming
waters touched his tail, which to this day bears their mark.'*^
The locust and the badger bored the passage by which the
sky of the lower world was pierced, and all the creatures
passed through. Utset put the beetle in charge of her star-
sack, but he, out of curiosity, made a hole in it, and the stars
escaped to form the chaotic field of heaven, although a few re-
mained, which she managed to rescue and to establish as con-
stellations.^* The First People, the Sia, gathered into camps
beside the Shipapo, through which they had emerged, but they
had no food. Utset, however, “ had always known the name
of corn,” though the grain itself was not in existence; accord-
ingly, she now planted bits of heart, and, as the cereal grew, she
said, “This corn is my heart, and it shall be to my people as
milk from my breasts.” ®® The people desired to find the Middle
Place of the world, but the earth was too soft, and so Utset
requested the four beasts of the quarters — cougar, bear, wolf,
and badger — to harden it; but they could not, and it was
a Spider Woman and a Snake Man who finally made a path
upon which the people set forth on their journey. The quar-



204


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


rel of the men and women, their separation, and the birth of
cannibal beings from the women — events which the Navaho
place in the Underworld — now occur; a little while later the
sexes reunite, and a virgin, embraced by the Sun, gives birth
to Maasewe and Uyuuyewe, the diminutive twin Warriors,
who visit their Sun Father, and are armed to slay the monsters,
as in Navaho myth.^ After the departure of the Warrior
Twins, the waters of the Underworld began to rise, and the
people fled to the top of a mesa, the flood*® being placated only
by the sacrifice of a youth and a maiden. When the earth
was again hardened, the people resumed their search for the
Middle Place, which they reached in four days and where they
built their permanent home. Shortly afterward a virgin gave
birth to a son, Poshaiyanne,®® who grew up, outcast and neg-
lected, to become a great magician; gambling with the chief,
he won all the towns and possessions of the tribe, and the people
themselves, but he used his power beneficently and became a
potent bringer of wealth and game. Finally, he departed, prom-
ising to return; but on the way he was attacked and slain by
jealous enemies. A white, fluffy eagle feather fell and touched
his body, and as it came in contact with him, it rose again,
and he with it, once more alive. Somewhere he still lives, the
Sia say, and sometime he will come back to his people. Here
we meet a northern version of the famous legend of Quetzal-
coatl.®®

Hopi myths of the beginnings contain the same general in-
cidents. In the Underworld there was nothing but water; two
women, ^ Huruing Wuhti of the East and Huruing Wuhti of
the West, lived in their east and west houses, and the Sun made
his journey from one to the other, descending through an open-
ing in the kiva of the West at night and emerging from a simi-
lar aperture in the kiva of the East at dawn. These deities
decided to create land, and they divided the waters that the
earth might appear. Then from clay they formed, first, birds,
which belonged to the Sun, then animals, which were the prop-



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


205


erty of the two Women, and finally men, whom the Women
rubbed with their palms and so endowed with understanding.’®
At first the people lived in the Underworld in Paradisic bliss,
but the sin of licentiousness appeared, and they were driven
forth by the rising waters, escaping only under the leadership
of Spider Woman, by means of a giant reed, sunflower, and
two kinds of pine-tree."^ Mocking-Bird assigned them their
tribes and languages as they came up, but his songs were ex-
hausted before all emerged and the rest fell back into nether
gloom. At this time death entered into the world, for a sorcerer
caused the son of a chief to die. The father was at first deter-
mined to cast the guilty one back into the Sipapu, the hole of
emergence, but relented when he was shown his dead son
living in the realm below; “That is the way it will be,” said
the sorcerer, “if anyone dies he will go down there.”

The earth upon which the First People had emerged was
dark and sunless,’® and only one being dwelt there. Skeleton,
who was very poor, although he had a little fire and some maize.
The people determined to create Moon and Sun, such as they
had had in the Underworld, and these they cast, with their
carriers, up into the sky. They then set out to search for the
sunrise, separating into three divisions — the White People
to the south, the Indians to the north, and the Pueblos in
the centre. It was agreed that whenever one of the parties
arrived at the sunrise, the others should stop where they
stood. The whites, who created horses to aid them, were the
first to attain their destination, and when they did so a great
shower of stars informed the others that one of the parties had
reached the goal, so both Indians and Pueblo dwellers settled
where they now live. The legends of the flood and of the
sacrifice of children are also known to the Hopi, while the
Warrior Brothers — Pookonghoya and Balongahoya — per-
form the usual feats of monster-slaying.^^ Additional incidents
of a more wide-spread type are found in Hopi and other Pueblo
mythologies: the killing of the man-devouring monster by



2o6


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


being swallowed and cutting a way to light, thus liberating the
imprisoned victims; the creation of life from the flesh of a
slain animal; the freeing of the beasts from a cave, to people
the world with game; the adventures of young hunters with
Circe-like women of the wilderness — all of them myths which
represent the detritus of varied cosmogonies.

VIL ZUNi COSMOGONY^

Of all the Pueblo tales of the origin of the universe the Zuni
account is the most interesting, for it alone displays some power
of metaphysical conceptualization. “In the beginning Awona-
wilona with the Sun Father and the Moon Mother existed
above, and Shiwanni and Shiwanokia, his wife, below. . . .
(Shiwanni and Shiwanokia labored not with hands but with
hearts and minds ; the Rain Priests of the Zuili arc called Ashi-
wanni and the Priestess of Fecundity Shiwanokia.) . . . All
was shipololo (fog), rising like steam. With breath from his
heart Awonawilona created clouds and the great waters of
the world. . . . (He-She®'‘ is the blue vault of the firmament.
The breath-clouds of the gods are tinted with the yellow of the
north, the blue-green of the west, the red of the south, and the
silver of the east of Awonawilona. The smoke clouds of white
and black become a part of Awonawilona; they are himself, as
he is the air itself; and when the air takes on the form of a
bird it is but a part of himself — is himself. Through the light,
clouds, and air he becomes the essence and creator of vege-
tation.) . . . After Awonawilona created the clouds and the
great waters of the world, Shiwanni said to Shiwanokia, ‘I,
too, will make something beautiful, which will give light at
night when the Moon Mother sleeps.’ Spitting in the palm of
his left hand, he patted the spittle with the palm of his right
hand, and the spittle foamed like yucca suds and then formed
into bubbles of many colors, which he blew upward; and thus
he created the fixed stars and constellations. Then Shiwanokia



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


207

said, ‘See what I can do,’ and she spat into the palm of her
left hand and slapped the saliva with the fingers of her right,
and the spittle foamed like yucca suds, running over her hand
and flowing everywhere; and thus she created Awitelin Tsita,
the Earth Mother.”

Light and heat and moisture and the seed of generation —
these are the forces personified in this thinly mythic veil. In
the version rendered by Cushing there is a still more sin-
gle beginning: “Awonawilona conceived within himself and
thought outward In space, whereby mists of increase, steams
potent of growth, were evolved and uplifted. Thus, by means
of his innate knowledge, the All-container made himself in per-
son and form of the Sun whom we hold to be our father and
who thus came to exist and appear.^® With his appearance
came the brightening of the spaces with light, and with the
brightening of the spaces the great mist-clouds were thickened
together and fell, whereby was evolved water in water; yea,
and the world-holding sea. With his substance of flesh out-
drawn from the surface of his person, the Sun-father formed
the seed-stuff of twin worlds, impregnating therewith the great
waters, and lo! in the heat of his light these waters of the sea
grew green and scums rose upon them, waxing wide and
weighty until, behold! they became Awitelin Tsita, the ‘Four-
fold Containing Mother-earth,’ and Apoyan Tachu, the ‘All-
covcrlng Father-sky.’ From the lying together of these twain
upon the great world-waters, so vitalizing, terrestrial life was
conceived; whence began all beings of earth, men and the crea-
tures, in the Four-fold womb of the World. Thereupon the
Earth-mother repulsed the Sky-father, growing big and sink-
ing deep into the embrace of the waters below, thus separat-
ing from the Sky-father in the embrace of the waters above.

“As a woman forebodes evil for her first-born ere born, even
so did the Earth-mother forebode, long withholding from birth
her myriad progeny and meantime seeking counsel with the
Sky-father. ‘How,’ said they to one another, ‘shall our chil-



2o8


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


dren, when brought forth, know one place from another,
even by the white light of the Sun-father?’ . . . Now like
all the surpassing beings the Earth-mother and the Sky-father
were changeable, even as smoke in the wind; transmutable
at thought, manifesting themselves in any form at will, like
as dancers may by mask-making. . . . Thus, as a man and
woman, spake they, one to another.

“‘Behold!’ said the Earth-mother as a great terraced bowl
appeared at hand and within it water, ‘this is as upon me the
homes of my tiny children shall be. On the rim of each world-
country they wander in, terraced mountains shall stand, mak-
ing in one region many, whereby country shall be known from
country, and within each, place from place. Behold, again!’
said she as she spat on the water and rapidly smote and stirred
it with her fingers. Foam formed, gathering about the terraced
rim, mounting higher and higher. ‘Yea,’ said she, ‘and from
my bosom they shall draw nourishment, for in such as this
shall they find the substance of life whence we were ourselves
sustained, for sec!’ Then with her warm breath she blew
across the terraces; white flecks of the foam broke away, and,
floating over above the water, were shattered by the cold
breath of the Sky-father attending, and forthwith shed down-
ward abundantly fine mist and spray! ‘Even so, shall white
clouds float up from the great waters at the borders of the
world, and clustering about the mountain terraces of the hori-
zons be borne aloft and abroad by the breaths of the surpass-
ing soul-beings, and of the children, and shall hardened and
broken be by thy cold, shedding downward, in rain spray, the
water of life, even into the hollow places of my lap! For therein
chiefly shall nestle our children, mankind and creature-kind,
for warmth in thy coldness.’ . . . Lo ! even the trees on high
mountains near the clouds and the Sky-father crouch low
toward the Earth-mother for warmth and protection! Warm
is the Earth-mother, cold the Sky-father, even as woman is
the warm, man the cold being! . . .


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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #26 on: August 03, 2019, 08:20:42 PM »


THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


209


“‘Even so,’ said the Sky-father; ‘Yet not alone shalt thou
helpful be unto our children, for behold!’ and he spread his
hand abroad with the palm downward and into all the wrinkles
and crevices thereof he set the semblance of shining yellow
corn-grains ; in the dark of the early world-dawn they gleamed
like sparks of fire, and moved as his hand was moved over the
bowl, shining up from and also moving in the depths of the
water therein. ‘See!’ said he, pointing to the seven grains
clasped by his thumb and four fingers, ‘by such shall our chil-
dren be guided; for behold, when the Sun-father is not nigh,
and thy terraces are as the dark itself (being all hidden therein),
then shall our children be guided by lights — like to these lights
of all the six regions turning round the midmost one — as in
and around midmost place, where these our children shall
abide, lie all the other regions of space! Yea! and even as these
grains gleam up from the water, so shall seed-grains like to
them, yet numberless, spring up from thy bosom when touched
by my waters, to nourish our children.’ Thus and in other ways
many devised they for their offspring.”

The Zuni legend continues with events made familiar in
other narratives. As in the Navaho Genesis, the First People
pass through four underworlds before they finally emerge on
earth: “the Ashiwi were queer beings when they came to this
world; they had short depilous tails, long ears, and webbed feet
and hands, and their bodies and heads were covered with moss,
a lengthy tuft being on the fore part of the head, projecting
like a horn”; they also gave forth a foul odour, like burning
sulphur, but all these defects were removed by the Divine
Ones, under whose guidance the emergence and early journey-
ing of the First People took place. These gods, Kowwituma and
Watsusi, are twins of the Sun and Foam, and are obviously
doublets of the Twin Gods of War (whose Zuni names are
variants of those known to the Sia), by whom they are later
replaced.^^ Other incidents of the Zuni story tell of the origins
of institutions and cults near the place of emergence, of the



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NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


hardening of the world, of the search for the Middle Place,
and of the cities built and shrines discovered on the way.
Incidents of the journey include the incest of a brother and
sister, sent forward as scouts,^’ to whom a sterile progeny
was born, and who created Kothluwalawa, the mountain
home of the ancestral gods; the accession and feats of the
diminutive twins, the Gods of War; the coming of the Corn
Maidens, already recounted; the flood and the sacrifice of a
youth and a maid, which caused the waters to recede; the
assignment of languages and the dispersal of tribes; stories
of Poshaiyanki,®^ the culture hero, and of the wanderings
of Kiaklo, who visited Pautiwa, the lord of the dead, and re-
turned to notify the Ashiwi of the coming of the gods to endow
them with the breath of life “so that after death they might
enter the dance house at Kothluwalawa before proceeding to
the undermost world whence they came.”

In the cosmogonies of the Pueblo dwellers, thus sketched,
the events fall into two groups: gestation of life in the un-
derworld and birth therefrom, and the journey to the Middle
Place — Emergence and Migration, Genesis and Exodus. The
historical character of many of the allusions in the migration-
stories has been made plausible by archaeological investiga-
tions, which trace the sources of Pueblo culture to the old
cliff-dwellings in the north. Characteristically these abodes are
in the faces of canyon walls, bordering the deep-lying streams
whose strips of arable shore formed the ancient fields. May it
not be that the tales of emergence refer to the abandonment of
these ancient canyon-set homes, never capable of supporting
a large population? Some of the tribes identify the Sipapu
with the Grand Canyon — surely a noble birthplace! — and
when in fancy we see the First People looking down from the
sunny heights of the plateau into the depths whence they had
emerged and beholding, as often happens in the canyons of the
South-West, the trough of earth filled with iridescent mist, with
rainbows forming bridgelike spans and the arched entrances



THE PUEBLO DWELLERS


2II


to cloudy caverns, we can grasp with refreshened imagination
many of the allusions of South-Western myth. Possibly a
hint as to the reason which induced the First People to come
forth from so fairylike an abode is contained in the Zuhi
name for the place of emergence, which signifies “an opening
in the earth filled with water which mysteriously disappeared,
leaving a clear passage for the Ashiwi to ascend to the outer
world.”

One other point in South-Western myth is of suggestive in-
terest. This is the moral implication which clearly appears
and marks the advancement of the thought of these Indians
over more primitive types. In the world below the First People
dwelt long in Paradisic happiness; but sin (usually the sin of
licentiousness) appeared among them, and the angry waters
drove them forth, the wicked being imprisoned in the nether
darkness. The events narrated might be ascribed to mission-
ary influence, were it not that these same events have close
analogues far and wide in North American myth, and for the
further fact of the pagan conservatism of the Pueblos. That
the people are capable of the moral understanding implied is
indicated by the reiterated assertion of priest and story that
'‘the prayer is not effective except the heart be good.”



CHAPTER X


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

L THE CALIFORNIA-OREGON TRIBES

A GLANCE at the linguistic map of aboriginal North
America will reveal the fact that more than half of the
radical languages of the continent north of Mexico — nearl7
sixty in all — are spoken in the narrow strip of territory extend-
ing from the Sierras, Cascades, and western Rockies to the
sea, and longitudinally from the arid regions of southern Cali-
fornia to the Alaskan angle. In this region, nowhere extending
inland more than five degrees of longitude, are, or were, spoken
some thirty languages bearing no relation to one another, and
the great majority of them having no kindred tongue. The
exceptional cases, where representatives of the great continen-
tal stocks have penetrated to the coast, comprise the Yuman
and Shoshonean tribes occupying southern California, where
the plateau region declines openly to the sea; small groups of
Athapascans on the coasts of California and Oregon; and the
numerous Salishan units on the Oregon-Washington coast and
about Puget Sound.

It is this latter intrusion, the Salishan, which divides the
Coast Region into two parts, physiographically and ethnically
distinct. From Alaska to Mexico the Pacific Coast is walled
off from the continental interior by high and difficult moun-
tain ranges. There are, in the whole extent, only two regions
in which the natural access is easy. In the south, where the Si-
erra Nevada range subsides into the Mohave Desert, the great
Southern Trail enters California; and here we find the ab-
origines of the desert interior pressing to the sea. The North-



213


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

ern, or Oregon, Trail follows the general course of the Missouri
to its headwaters, crosses the divide, and proceeds down the
Columbia to its mouth; and this marks the general line of
Salishan occupancy, which extends northward to the more
difficult access opened by the Fraser River. The Salishan
tribes form a division, at once separating and transition-
ally uniting a northern and a southern coastal culture of
markedly distinct type. Indeed, the Salish form a kind of
key to the continent, touching the Plains civilization to the
east and that of the Plateau to the south, as well as the two
coastal types; so that there is perhaps no group of Indians
more difficult to classify with respect to cultural relationships.

The linguistic diversity of the southern of the two Coast
groups bounded by the Salish is far greater than that of the
northern. In California alone over twenty distinct linguistic
stocks have been noted, and Oregon adds several to this score.
Such a medley of tongues is found nowhere else in the world
save in the Caucasus or the Himalaya mountains — regions
where sharply divided valleys and mountain fastnesses have
afforded secure retreat for the weaker tribes of men, at the
same time holding them in sedentary isolation. Similar con-
ditions prevail in California, the chequer of mountain and
valley fostering diversity. Furthermore, the nature of the lit-
toral contributed to a like end. The North-Western coast,
from Puget Sound to Alaska, is fringed by an uninterrupted
archipelago; the tribes of this region are the most expert In
maritime arts of all American aborigines; and the linguistic
stocks, owing to this ready communication, are relatively few.
From the mouth of the Columbia to the Santa Barbara Is-
lands, on the contrary, the coast is broken by only one spacious
harbour — the bay of San Francisco — and little encourage-
ment is offered to seafarers. Among the tribes of this coast the
art of navigation was little known: the Chinook, on the Colum-
bia, and the Chumashan Indians, who occupied the Santa
Barbara Islands, built excellent canoes, and used them with



214


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


skill; but among the intervening peoples rafts and balsas, crud-
est of water transports, took the place of boats, and even sea-
food was little sought, seeds and fruits, and especially acorn
meal, being the chief subsistence of the Californian tribes.

In the general character of their culture the tribes of
this region form a unity as marked as is their diversity of
speech. Socially their organization was primitive, without
centralized tribal authority or true gentile division. They
lived in village communities, whose chiefs maintained their
ascendancy by the virtue of liberal giving; and a distinctive
feature of many of the Californian villages was the large
communal houses occupied by many families. Grass, tule,
brush, and bark were the common housing materials, for
skill in woodworking was only slightly advanced; northward,
however, plank houses were built, such as occur the length
of the North-West Coast. Of the aboriginal arts only basket-
making, in which the Californian Indians, and especially the
Athapascan Hupa, excel all other tribes, was the only one highly
developed; pottery-making was almost unknown. In other
respects these peoples are distinctive: they were unwarlike
to the point of timidity; they did not torture prisoners; and
in common with the Yuman and Piman stocks, but in con-
trast to most other peoples of North America, they very gen-
erally preferred cremation to burial. Intellectually they are
lethargic, and their myths contain no element of conscious
history; they regard themselves as autochthones, and such
they doubtless are, in the sense that their ancestors have con-
tinuously occupied California for many centuries. Physical
and mental traits point to a racial unity which is in part borne
out by their language itself; for although their speech is now
divided into many stocks between which no relationship can
be traced — a clear indication of long and conservative segre-
gation, — yet there is a similarity in phonetic material, the
Californian tongues being notable, among Indian languages,
for vocalic wealth and harmony.



THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST


21


3


II. RELIGION AND CEREMONIES

The religious life and conceptions of the Californian tribes
reflect the simplicity of their social organization. In northern
California and Oregon the religious life gains in complexity
as the influence of the North-West becomes stronger, and a
similar increase in the importance of ceremonial is observed in
the south; but in the characteristic area of the region, central
California, the development of rites is meagre. The shaman
is a more important personage than the priest and ritual is
of far less consequence than magical therapy; in fact, the Cali-
fornian Indians belong to that primitive stratum of mankind
for which shamanism is the engrossing form of religious inter-
est, the western shamans, like the majority of Indian “medi-
cine-men,” acquiring their powers through fast and vision In
which the possessing tutelary is revealed.®

Of ceremonies proper, the most distinctive on this portion
of the Coast Is the annual rite in commemoration of the dead,
known as the “burning” or the “cry” or the “dance of the
dead.” This is an autumnal and chiefly nocturnal ceremony in
which, to the dancing and wailing of the participants, various
kinds of property are burned to supply the ghosts; the period
of mourning Is then succeeded by a feast of jollity. In few
parts of America are the tabus connected with the dead so
stringent: typical customs Include the burning of the house
in which death occurs; the ban against speaking the name of
the deceased, or using, for the space of a year, a word of
which this name is a component; and the marking of a widow
by smearing her with pitch, shearing her hair, or the like,
until the annual mourning releases her from the tabu. Such
usages, along with cremation, disappear as the North-West is
approached.

A second group of rites have to do with puberty. Her first
menstruation is marked by severe tabus for the girl concerned;
and a dance is given when the period is passed. Boys undergo

X — 16



2i6


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


an initiation into the tribal mysteries, the ceremony including
the recounting of myths. Rites of this character are not al-
ways compulsory, nor are they limited to boys, since men who
have passed the age period without the ceremony sometimes
participate later. The body of initiates forms a kind of Medi-
cine Society, having in charge the religious supervision of the
village. Still a third ceremonial group includes magic dances
intended to foster the creative life of nature, the number of
such rites varying from tribe to tribe.

Ceremonial symbolism, so elaborate in many portions of
America, is little developed in the West-Coast region. Picto-
graphs are unknown and fetishes little employed; nor is there
anything approaching in character the complicated use of
mask personations which reaches its highest forms in the
neighbouring South-West and North-West. Mythic tales and
ritual songs have a similar inferiority of development, the ex-
tremes of the region, north and south, showing the greatest
advancement in this as in other respects. In one particular
the Californians stand well in advance: throughout the cen-
tral region, their idea of the creation is clearly conceptualized;
and it is their cosmogonic myths, with the idea of a definite
and single creator, which form their most unique contribution
to American Indian lore. The creator is sometimes animal,
sometimes manlike, in form, but he is usually represented as
dignified and beneficent, and there is an obvious tendency to
humanize his character.

Northern California and Oregon, however, know less of such
a single creator. In this section stories of the beginnings start
with the Age of Animals — or rather, of anthropic beings who
on the coming of man were transformed into animals — whose
doings set the primeval model after which human deeds and
institutions are copied. Here is a cycle assimilated to the
myth of the North-West, just as the lore of the south Cali-
fornian tribes approaches the type of the plateau and desert
region.




PLATE XXVIII


Maidu image for a woman, used at the Burning
Ceremony in honour of the dead (see p. 215).
After BAM xvii, Plate XLIX.







PLATE XXIX

Maidu image for a man, used at the Burning Cere-
mony in honour of the dead. After BAM xvii,
Plate XLVIII.








THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST


217


HI. THE CREATOR!®

In the congeries of West-Coast peoples it is inevitable that
there should be diversity in the conception of creation and
creator, even in the presence of a general and family likeness.
But the differences in the main follow geographical lines. To
the south, while creation is definitely conceived as a primal
act, the creative beings are of animal or of bird form, for the
winged demiurge is characteristic of the Pacific Coast through-
out its length.^® In the central region of California and Oregon
the creator is imaged in anthropomorphic aspect, the animals
being assistants or clumsy obstructionists in his work. To the
north, and along the coast, the legend of creation fades into a
delineation of the First People, whose deeds set a pattern for
mankind.

Tribes of the southerly stocks very generally believed in
primordial waters, the waters of the chaos before Earth or of
the flood enveloping it. Above this certain beings dwell — the
Coyote and the birds. In some versions they occupy a moun-
tain peak that pierces the waves, and on this height they abide
until the flood subsides; in others, they float on a raft or rest
upon a pole or a tree that rises above the waters. In the latter
case, the birds dive for soil from which to build the earth; it
is the Duck that succeeds, floating to the surface dead, but
with a bit of soil in its bill — like the Muskrat in the east-
ern American deluge-tales. The Eagle, the Hawk, the Crow,
and the Humming-Bird are the winged folk who figure chiefly
in these stories, with the Eagle in the more kingly role; but
it is Coyote — though he is sometimes absent, his place being
taken by birds — who is the creator and shaper and magic
plotter of the way of life.

In the region northward from the latitude of San Francisco
— among the Maidu, Porno, Wintun, Yana, and neighbouring
tribes — the Coyote-Man, while still an important demiurgic
being, sinks to a secondary place; his deeds thwart rather



2i8


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #27 on: August 03, 2019, 08:21:35 PM »

than help the beneficent intentions of the creator, toll, pain,
and death being due to his Interference. “I was the oldest in
the olden time, and if a person die he must be dead,” says
Coyote to Earth-Maker in a Maidu myth, reported by Dixon.^®
The first act of this Maidu creation already implies the covert
antagonism ;

“When this world was filled with water, Earth-Maker floated
upon it, kept floating about. Nowhere in the world could he
see even a tiny bit of earth. No person of any kind flew about.
He went about in this world, the world itself being invisible,
transparent like the sky. He was troubled. ‘ I wonder how, I
wonder where, I wonder in what place, in what country we
shall find a world!’ he said. ‘You are a very strong man, to
be thinking of this world,’ said Coyote. ‘I am guessing in
what direction the world is, then to that distant land let us
float!’ said Earth-Maker.” The two float about seeking the
earth and singing songs : “ Where, 0 world, art thou ? ” “ Where
are you, my great mountains, my world mountains?” “As
they floated along, they saw something like a bird’s nest.
‘Well that is very small,’ said Earth-Maker. ‘It is small. If
it were larger I could fix it. But It Is too small,’ he said. ‘ I
wonder how I can stretch It a little!’ . . . He extended a rope
to the east, to the south he extended a rope, to the west, to
the northwest, and to the north he extended ropes. When all
were stretched, he said, ‘Well, sing, you who were the finder
of this earth, this mud! “In the long, long ago, Robin-Man
made the world, stuck earth together, making this world.”
Thus mortal men shall say of you, in myth-telling.’ Then
Robin sang, and his world-making song sounded sweet. After
the ropes were all stretched, he kept singing; then, after a time,
he ceased. Then Earth-Maker spoke to Coyote also. ‘Do
you sing, too,’ he said. So he sang, singing, ‘My world where
one travels by the valley-edge; my world of many foggy
mountains; my world where one goes zigzagging hither and
thither; range after range,’ he said, ‘I sing of the country I



219


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

shall travel in. In such a world I shall wander,’ he said. Then
Earth-Maker sang — sang of the world he had made, kept
singing, until by and by he ceased. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it would be
well if the world were a little larger. Let us stretch it!’ ‘Stop!’
said Coyote. ‘ I speak wisely. The world ought to be painted
with something so that it may look pretty. What do ye two
think?’ Then Robin-Man said, ‘I am one who knows nothing.
Ye two are clever men, making this world, talking it over;
if ye find anything evil, ye will make it good.’ ‘Very well,’
said Coyote, ‘I will paint it with blood. There shall be blood
in the world; and people shall be born there, having blood.
There shall be birds born who shall have blood. Everything —
deer, all kinds of game, all sorts of men without any exception
— all things shall have blood that are to be created in this
world. And in another place, making it red, there shall be red
rocks. It will be as if blood were mixed up with the world,
and thus the world will be beautiful!’ ” After this Earth-Maker
stretched the world, and he inspected his work, journeying
through all its parts, and he created man-beings in pairs to
people earth’s regions, each with a folk speaking differently.
Then he addressed the last-created pair, saying: “‘Now,
wherever I have passed along, there shall never be a lack of
anything,’ he said, and made motions in all directions. ‘The
country where I have been shall be one where nothing is ever
lacking. I have finished talking to you, and I say to you that
ye shall remain where ye are to be born. Ye are the last people;
and while ye are to remain where ye are created, I shall return,
and stay there. When this world becomes bad, I will make it
over again; and after I make it, ye shall be born,’ he said.
(Long ago Coyote suspected this, they say.) ‘This world will
shake,’ he said. ‘This world is spread out flat, the world is
not stable. After this world is all made, by and by, after a
long time, I will pull this rope a little, then the world shall
be firm. I, pulling on my rope, shall make it shake. And
now,’ he said, ‘there shall be songs, they shall not be lacking,



220


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


ye shall have them/ And he sang, and kept on singing until he
ceased singing. ^Ye mortal men shall have this song,’ he said,
and then he sang another; and singing many different songs,
he walked along, kept walking until he reached the middle
of the world; and there, sitting down over across from it, he
remained.”

In another myth of the Maidu, Earth-Maker descends from
heaven by a feather rope to a raft upon which Turtle and a
sorcerer are afloat. Earth-Maker creates the world from mud
brought up by the Turtle, who dives for it, and Coyote issues
from the Underworld to introduce toil and death among men.
The Maidu Earth-Maker has close parallels among neigh-
bouring tribes,® perhaps the most exalted being Olelbis, of the
Wintun: ^^The first that we know of Olelbis is that he was in
Olelpanti. Whether he lived in another place is not known,
but in the beginning he was in Olelpanti (on the upper side),
the highest place.” Thus begins Curtin’s rendering of the myth
of creation. The companions of Olelbis in this heaven-world
— completing the triad which so often recurs in Californian
cosmogonies — are two old women, with whose aid he builds
a wonderful sweat-house in the sky: its pillars are six great
oaks; its roof is their intertwining branches, from which fall
endless acorns; it is bound above with beautiful flowers, and
its four walls are screens of flowers woven by the two women;
‘‘all kinds of flowers that are in the world now were gathered
around the foot of that sweat-house, an enormous bank of
them; every beautiful color and every sweet odor in the world
was there. The sweat-house grew until it became wonder-
ful in size and splendour, the largest and most beautiful thing
in the world, placed there to last forever — perhaps the most
charmingly pictured Paradise in Indian myth.

Other creators, in the myths of this region, are Taikomol,
He-Who-Goes-Alone, of the Yuki; Yimantuwinyai, Old-One-
Across-the-Ocean, of the Hupa; K’mukamtch, Old Man, of
the Klamath, tricky rather than edifying in character; and the



221


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

Wishosk Maker Gudatrigakwitl, Old-Man-Above, who per-
forms his creative work by “joining his hands and spreading
them out.” Among these the Hupa creator seems not to have
existed forever: “It was at Tcoxoltcwedin he came into being.
From the earth behind the inner house wall he sprang into
existence. There was a ringing noise like the striking together
of metals at his birth. Before his coming smoke had settled on
the mountain side. Rotten pieces of wood thrown up by
someone fell into his hands. Where they fell there was fire.”
This surely implies a volcanic birth of the universe, natural
enough in a land where earthquakes are common and volcanoes
not extinct. Something of the same suggestion is conveyed by
a myth of the neighbouring Coos Indians, in which the world
is created by two brothers on a foundation of pieces of soot
cast upon the waters.'** In this Kusan myth the third person
of the recurrent Californian triad is a medicine-man with a
red-painted face, whom the brothers slay, spilling his blood in
all directions — an episode reminiscent of the role of Coyote in
the Maidu genesis. When the world Is completed, the brothers
shoot arrows upward toward the heavens, each successive bolt
striking into the shaft of the one above, and thus they build
a ladder by means of which they ascend into the sky.

IV. CATACLYSMS*®

The notion of cataclysmic destructions of the world by flood
or fire, often with a concomitant falling of the sky, is frequent
in West-Coast myth. Indeed, many of the creation-stories
seem to be, in fact, traditions of the re-forming of the earth
after the great annihilation, although in some myths both the
creation and the re-creation are described. One of the most
interesting is the genesis-legend of the Kato, an Athapascan
tribe closely associated with the Porno, who are of Kulanapan
stock.

The story begins with the making of a new sky, to replace



222 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the old one, which is soon to fall. ^^The sandstone rock which
formed the sky was old, they say. It thundered in the east; it
thundered in the south; it thundered In the west; It thundered
in the north. ‘The rock is old, we will fix it,’ he said. There
were two, Nagaitcho and Thunder. ‘We will stretch it above
far to the east,’ one of them said. They stretched it.®^ They
walked on the sky.” So the tale begins. Nagaitcho, the Great
Traveller, and Thunder then proceed to construct an outer
cosmos of the usual Californian type: a heaven supported by
pillars, with openings at each of the cardinal points for winds
and clouds and mist, and with winter and summer trails for
the sun’s course. They created a man and a woman, presum-
ably to become the progenitors of the next world-generation.
Then upon the earth that was they caused rain to fall: “Every
day it rained, every night It rained. All the people slept. The
sky fell. The land was not. For a very great distance there was
no land. The waters of the oceans came together. Animals of
all kinds drowned. Where the water went there were no trees.
There was no land. . . . Water came, they say. The waters
completely joined everywhere. There was no land or mountains
or rocks, but only water. Trees and grass were not. There were
no fish, or land animals, or birds. Human beings and animals
alike had been washed away. The wind did not then blow
through the portals of the world, nor was there snow, nor
frost, nor rain. It did not thunder nor did it lighten. Since
there were no trees to be struck, it did not thunder. There
were neither clouds nor fog, nor was there a sun. It was very
dark. . . . Then it was that this earth with its great, long
horns got up and walked down this way from the north. As It
walked along through the deep places the water rose to Its
shoulders. When It came up into shallower places, it looked
up. There is a ridge in the north upon which the waves break.
When it came to the middle of the world, In the east under the
rising of the sun, it looked up again. There where it looked up
will be a large land near to the coast. Far away to the south it



223


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

continued looking up. It walked under the ground. Having
come from the north it traveled far south and la7 down.
Nagaitcho, standing on earth’s head, had been carried to the
south. Where earth lay down Nagaitcho placed its head as it
should be and spread gray clay between its eyes and on each
horn. Upon the clay he placed a layer of reeds and then another
layer of clay. In this he placed upright blue grass, brush, and
trees. ‘I have finished,’ he said. ‘Let there be mountain
peaks here on its head. Let the waves of the sea break against
them.’”

The Wintun creation-myth, narrated by Curtin, possesses
a plot of the same type. Just as he perceives that the end
of the First World and of the First People is approaching,
Olelbis, He-Who-Sits-Above, builds his paradisic sweat-house
in the sky-world to become a refuge for such as may attain to
it. The cataclysm is caused by the theft of Flint from the
Swift, who, for revenge, induces Shooting Star, Fire Drill,
and the latter’s wife, Buckeye Bush, to set the world afire.®^
“Olelbis looked down into the burning world. He could see
nothing but waves of flame; rocks were burning, the ground
was burning, everything was burning. Great rolls and piles
of smoke were rising; fire flew up toward the sky in flames, in
great sparks and brands. Those sparks are sky eyes, and all
the stars that we now see in the sky came from that time when
the first world was burned. The sparks stuck fast in the sky,
and have remained there ever since. Quartz rocks and fire in
the rocks are from that time; there was no fire in the rocks
before the world fire. . . . During the fire they could see noth-
ing of the world below but flames and smoke.” Olelbis did not
like this; and on the advice of two old women, his Grand-
mothers, as he called them, he sent the Eagle and the Humming-
Bird to prop up the sky in the north, and to summon thence
Kahit, the Wind, and Mem Loimis, the Waters, who lived be-
yond the first sky.® “The great fire was blazing, roaring all
over the earth, burning rocks, earth, trees, people, burning



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NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


everything. Mem Loimis started, and with her Kahit. Water
rushed in through the open place made by Lutchi when he
raised the sky. It rushed in like a crowd of rivers, covered the
earth, and put out the fire as it rolled on toward the south.
There was so much water outside that could not come through
that it rose to the top of the sky and rushed on toward Olel-
panti. . . . Mem Loimis went forward, and water rose moun-
tains high. Following closely after Mem Loimis came Kahit.
He had a whistle in his mouth; as he moved forward he blew
it with all his might, and made a terrible noise. The whistle
was his own; he had had it always. He came flying and blow-
ing; he looked like an enormous bat with wings spread. As
he flew south toward the other side of the sky, his two cheek
feathers grew straight out, became immensely long, waved up
and down, grew till they could touch the sky on both sides.”
Finally the fire was quenched, and at the request of Olelbis,
Kahit drove Mem Loimis, the Waters, back to her underworld
home, while beneath Olelpanti there was now nothing but naked
rocks, with a single pool left by the receding waters. The myth
goes on to tell of the refashioning and refurnishing of the world
by Olelbis, assisted by such of the survivors of the cataclysm
of fire and flood as had managed to escape to Olelpanti. A
net is spread over the sky, and through it soil, brought from
beyond the confines of the sky-capped world, is sifted down to
cover the boulders. Olelbis marks out the rivers, and water is
drawn to fill them from the single lakelet that remains. Fire,
now sadly needed in the world, is stolen from the lodge of Fire
Drill and Buckeye Bush — the parents of flame — without
their discovering the loss (an unusual turn in the tale of the
theft of fire). The earth is fertilized by Old Man Acorn and
by seed dropping down from the flower lodge of Olelbis in
the skies. Many animals spring into being from the feathers
and bits of the body of Wokwuk, a large and beautiful bird,
with very red eyes; while numerous others are the result of the
transformations wrought by Olelbis, who now metamorphoses



22S


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

the survivors of the first world Into the animals and objects
whose nature they had In reality always possessed.^^ A par-
ticularly charming episode tells of the snaring of the clouds.
These had sprung into being when the waters of the flood struck
the fires of the conflagration, and they were seeking ever to
escape back to the north, whence Kahit and Mem Loimis had
come. Three of them, a black, a white, and a red one, are cap-
tured; the skin of the red cloud is kept by the hunters, who
often hang it up in the west, though sometimes in the east;
the black and the white skins are given to the Grandmothers
of Olelbis. “Now,” said the two old women, “we have this
white skin and this black one. When we hang the white skin
outside this house, white clouds will go from it, — will go
away down south, where its people began to live, and then they
will come from the south and travel north to bring rain.
When they come back, we will hang out the black skin, and
from it a great many black rain clouds will go out, and from
these clouds heavy rain will fall on all the world below.”
The Pacific Coast is a land of two seasons, the wet and the
dry, and these twin periods could scarcely be more beautifully
symbolized.^®

V. THE FIRST PEOPLE^

A little reflection upon the operations of animistic imagina-
tion will go far to explain the conception of a First People,
manlike In form, but animal or plant or stone or element in
nature, which is nowhere In America more clearly defined than
on the West Coast.® The languages of primitive folk are built
np of concrete terms; abstract and general names are nearly
unknown; and hence their thought is metaphorical in cast and
procedure. Now the nearest and most intelligible of meta-
phors are those which are based upon the forms and traits of
men’s own bodies and minds: whatever can be made familiar
in terms of human instinct and habit and desire is truly
familiar, — “Man is the measure of all things,” and primitive



226


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


mythic metaphor is the elementary form of applying this stand-
ard. At first it is the activities rather than the forms of things
that are rendered in terms of human nature; for it is always
the activities, the powers of things, that are important in
practical life; the outward, the aesthetic, cast of experience
becomes significant only as people advance from a life of
need to a life of thought and reflection. Hence, at first,
mythopoetic fancy is content to ascribe human action and
intention, human speech and desires, to environing creation;
the physical form is of small consequence in explaining the
conduct of the world, for physical form is of all things the
most inconstant to the animistic mind, and it is invariably
held suspect, as if it were a guise or ruse for the deluding of the
human race. But there comes a period of thought when anthro-
pomorphism — an aesthetic humanizing of the world — is as
essential to mental comfort and to the sense of the intelligi-
bility of nature as is the earlier and more naive psychomor-
phism: when the phantasms, as well as the instincts and
powers, of the world call for explanation.

Such a demand, in its incipiency, is met by the conception
of the First People. This is a primeval race, not only regarded
as human in conduct, but imagined as manlike in form. They
belong to that uncertain past when all life and all nature were
not yet aware of their final goal — a period of formation and
transformation, of conflict, duel, strife, of psychical and physi-
cal monstrosities, before the good and the bad had been clearly
separated. “As the heart is, so shall ye be,” is the formula ever
in the myth-maker’s half unconscious thought, and the whole
process of setting the earth in order seems to consist of the
struggle after appropriate form on the part of the world’s
primitive forces.^®

West-Coast lore is in great part composed of tales of the
First People, and it is instructive that the stories and events
in this mythology are far more constant than are the personali-
ties of the participants. This harks back to the prime impor-



227


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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #28 on: August 03, 2019, 08:22:16 PM »

THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

tance of the action: it is as if the motives and deeds of the
natural world were being tried out, fitted, like vestments, now
upon this type of being, now upon that, with a view to the dis-
covery of the most suitable character. It indicates, too, that
the tales are probably far older than the environment, which
they have been gradually transformed to satisfy. To be sure,
certain elements are constant, for they represent unchangeable
factors in human experience — as the relation of Earth and
Sky, Light and Darkness, Rain, Fire, Cloud, and Thunder;
but the animal personalities, and to a less extent the monstrous
beings, vary for the same plot in different tribes and differ-
ent tellings — vary, yet with certain constancies that deserve
note. Coyote, over the whole western half of North America,
is the most important figure of myth: usually, he is not an
edifying hero, being mainly trickster and dupe by turns; yet
he very generally plays a significant role in aiding, willy-nilly,
the First People to the discovery of their final and appropriate
shapes. He is, in other words, a great transformer; he is fre-
quently the prime mover in the theft of fire, which nearly all
tribes mark as the beginning of human advancement; and in
parts, at least, of California, his deeds are represented as al-
most invariably beneficent in their outcomes; he is a true, if
often unintentional, culture hero. Other animals — the Elk,
the Bear, the Lion — are frequent mythic figures, as are cer-
tain reptiles — the Rattlesnake, the exultant Frog Woman,
who floats on the crest of the world-flood, and the Lizard who,
because he has five fingers and knows their usefulness, similarly
endows man when the human race comes to be created. But
it is especially the winged kind — the birds — that play, after
Coyote, the leading roles in West-Coast myth. The Eagle, the
Falcon, the Crow, the Raven, and to a less degree the Vulture
and the Buzzard, are most conspicuous, for it is noticeable
that among birds, as among animals, it is the stronger, and
especially the carnivorous, kinds that are the chiefs of legend.
Nevertheless, this is no Invariable rule, and the Woodpecker,



228 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

whose red head-feathers were used as money among the Cali-
fornian tribes, the Humming-Bird, and indeed most other birds
known to them, figure in the myths of the region. Nor are
smaller creatures — the Louse, the Fly, and the Worm — too
insignificant for the maker of traditions.

All of these beings, in the age of the First People, were
human in form; the present order of existence began with their
transformation into the birds and animals we now know. In
West-Coast myth, this metamorphosis often follows directly
upon the cataclysm of fire or flood by which the First World
was destroyed, thus giving the two periods a distinctness of
separation not common in Indian thought. In many versions
the transformation is the work of the world-shaper — Coyote
or another — as in the myth of Olelbis, who apportions to
each creature its proper shape and home after the earth has
been restored. Even more frequently there is a contest of
some sort, the outcome of which is that victor and vanquished
are alike transformed. This may be a battle of wits, as in the
Coos story of the Crow whose voice was thunder and whose
eyes flashed lightning:®^ a certain man-being persuaded the
Crow first to trade voices with him, and then to sell the light-
nings of his eyes for the food left by the ebb-tide, whereupon
the Crow degenerated into what he now is, a glutton with a
raucous voice, while the man became the Thunderer. Again,
the struggle may be of the gaming type: in a Miwok legend
Wek-wek, the Falcon, participated with a certain winged giant,
Kelok, in a contest at which each in turn allowed himself to
be used as a target for red-hot stones hurled by his opponent;
through over-confidence Wek-wek is slain, but he is restored to
life again by Coyote, who is shrewd enough to beat the giant
at his own game; while from the body of the slain monster is
started the conflagration that destroys the world.®® In a third
case, the contest is one of sorcery: the story of the Loon Woman
tells how she fell in love with the youngest of her ten brothers
as they danced in the sweat-lodge; by her magic she com-



THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST 229

pelled him to accompany her, but he escaped, and the brothers,
with the aid of their elder sister. Spider Woman, ascended to
heaven in a basket; Loon Woman perceived them, set fire to
the sweat-house, and all save the Eagle fell back into the flames;
their bodies were burned and Loon Woman made herself a neck-
lace of their hearts. Nevertheless, her triumph was brief, for
the Eagle succeeded in slaying her, and placing her heart along
with those of his brothers in a sweat-house, brought them all
back to life, but with the forms and dispositions which they
now possess.

The creation of the human race ™ marks the close of the age
of the First People. Usually the World-Maker is also the shaper
of men, and it is the West-Coast mode to conceive the process
quite mechanically: men are fashioned from earth and grass,
or appear as the transformations of sticks and feathers; the
Kato story is altogether detailed, telling how Nagaitcho made
a trachea of reed and pounded ochre to mix with water and
make blood. A more dignified creation was that of Gudatri-
gakwitl, the Wishosk Maker, who used no tools, but formed
things by spreading out his hands. “When Gudatrigakwitl
wanted to make people, he said, ‘I want fog.’ Then it began to
be foggy. Gudatrigakwitl thought: ‘No one will see it when
the people are born.’ Then he thought: ‘Now I wish people to
be all over, broadcast. I want it to be full of people and full
of game.’ Then the fog went away. No one had seen them
before, but now they were there.” Most imaginative of all is
the Modoc myth, recorded by Curtin. Kumush, the man of
the beautiful blue, whose life was the sun’s golden disk, had a
daughter. He made for her ten dresses: the first for a young
girl, the second the maturity raiment in which a maiden
clothes herself when she celebrates the coming of womanhood,
the third to the ninth festal and work garments such as women
wear, the tenth, and most beautiful of all, a burial shroud.
When the girl was within a few days of maturity, she entered
the sweat-house to dance; there she fell asleep and dreamed



230


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


that some one was to die, and when she came out she demanded
of Kumush her burial dress. He offered her each of the others
in turn, but she would have only this ; when she had donned It,
she died, and her spirit set out for the west, the home of them
that had passed away. Kumush, however, would not let her
go alone, and saying, “ I know all things above, below, and in the
world of ghosts; whatever is, I know,” he accompanied her
down into the caverns of the dead. There father and daughter
dwelt, by night dancing with the spirits, which became skeletons
by day. But Kumush wearied of this, and determined to return
to earth and restore life upon It. He took a basketful of the
bones and set out, but they resisted and dug sharply Into his
body. Twice he slipped and fell back, but the third time he
landed in the world above, and sowing there the bones of the
ghosts, a new race sprang up from them — the race of men who
have since inhabited the earth.

VI. FIRE AND LIGHTS

In the beginning the First World was without light or heat;
blackness and cold were ever)rwhere, or if there were light and
warmth, they were distant and inaccessible: “the world was
dark and there was no fire; the only light was the Morning,
and it was so far away in the high mountains of the east that
the people could not see it; they lived in total darkness” —
with this suggestive image of valley life begins a Miwok tale
of the theft of Morning. Sometimes it is Morning or Day-
light that is stolen, sometimes it Is the Sun, oftenest it is Fire;
but the essential plot of the story seldom varies : on the con-
fines of the world there is a lodge in which the Light or the Fire
is guarded by jealous watchmen, from whom their treasure
must be taken by craft; generally, the theft is discovered and a
pursuit is started, but relays of animals succeed in bearing off
a fragment of the treasure.

Coyote is the usual plotter and hero of myths of fire and light.



231


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

In a dramatic Kato story he dreams of the sun In the east.^^
With three mice for companions he sets out, coming at last to
the lodge where two old women have the sun bound to the
floor. When they sleep, the mice gnaw the bands that hold the
sun, and Coyote seizes it, pursued by the awakened women,
whom he changes into stone. From the stolen sun he fashions
all the heavenly bodies: ^^Moon, sun, fly into the sky. Stars
become many in it. In the morning you shall come up. You
shall go around the world. In the east you shall rise again in
the morning. You shall furnish light.’’ Not always, however,
is the venture so successful; in the Mlwok tale the stealing
of the sun results in the transformation of the First People into
animals, and the like metamorphosis follows on the theft of
fire as narrated by the Modoc. Sometimes the fire-origin story
is literal and simple, as in the Wishosk legend of the dog who
kindled the first flame by rubbing two sticks; sometimes it is
dramatic and grim, as in the duel of magicians, which the Coos
tradition narrates, in which one is eaten by maggots till he is
nothing but bones, before he finally succeeds in so terrifying
his opponent that the latter flees, and his wealth of fire and
water — a unique combination — is taken.^^ Again, there are
poetic versions — the Shasta story which makes Pain and his
children the guardians of fire; or the Miwok tale of the Robin
who got his red breast from nestling his stolen flame, to keep
it alive; or that of the Mouse who charmed the fireowners with
music and hid a coal in his flute.

The Maidu, naturally enough, make Thunder and his Daugh-
ters (who must be the lightnings) the guardians of fire.®^ They
tell, in a hero story, how the elder of two brothers is lured away
by, and pursues, a daughter of Thunder. He shoots an arrow
ahead of her, and secures it from her pack-basket (the storm-
cloud) without harm. He makes his way through a briar field
by the aid of a flint which cuts a path for him. Protected by
moccasins of red-hot stone, he follows her through a field of
rattlesnakes, and when he finds her he cuts off the serpent teeth



232


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


?which surround her vagina (a variant of one of the most wide-
spread of North American myth-incidents) . On his moccasins
he crosses a frozen lake, and with the assistance of a feather —
the universal symbol of life — he fords a deep river and passes
the Valley-of-Death-by-Old-Age.® Arrived at the house of
Thunder, he avoids poisoned food, breaks a pitch-log for
firewood, escapes a water monster that nearly drowns him,
and slays a grizzly bear which pursues him, when on a deer-
hunt, by shooting it in the left hind foot, its only vulnerable
spot. These labours performed, the North American Hercules
takes the daughter of Thunder to wife, and returns to his
home.

This is one of the many hero tales in which the West-Coast
mythology is rich. The red-hot moccasins suggest the personi-
fication of volcanic forces, so that the whole myth may well
be the story of a volcano, wedded to its lightnings, cleaving
lake and river and valley, and overcoming the mighty of earth.
A similar origin may be that of the Miwok giant Kelok, hurl-
ing his red-hot rocks and setting the world ablaze — surely a
volcanic Titan.

Another type of hero is the child of the Sun.^® The Maidu
story of the exploits of the Conquerors, born a't one birth to
Cloud Man and a virgin, is strikingly like the South-Western
tales of the divine twins, sons of the Sun; and a somewhat
similar legend is narrated by the Yuki.^ The kind of hero
more distinctive of the West Coast, however, is “Dug-from-
the-Ground.” In the Hupa recension a virgin, forbidden by
her grandmother to uproot two stocks (the mandrake super-
stition), disobeys, and digs up a child. He grows to manhood,
visits the sky-world, and finally journeys to the house of the
sun in the east, where he passes laborious tests, and in the game
of hockey overcomes the immortals, including Earthquake and
Thunder. Tulchuherris is the Wintun name for this hero; he
is dug up by an old woman, and when he emerges a noise like
thunder is heard in the distant east, the home of the sun.



233


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

Curtin regards Tulchuherris as the lightning, born of the fog
which issues from the earth after sunrise.

In another story, one of the most popular of Californian
tales,®^ the Grizzly Bear and the Doe were kindred and friends,
living together and feeding in the same pasture. One day
while afield the Bear killed the Doe, but her two Fawns dis-
covered the deed, and beguiling the murderess into letting them
have her cub for a playmate, they suffocated it in a sweat-
house. Pursued by the Bear, they were conveyed to heaven
by a huge rock growing upward beneath them ; and there they
found their mother. The story has many forms, but the Fawns
are always associated with fire. Sometimes they trap the
mother bear, but usually they kill her by hurling down red-
hot rocks. They themselves become thunders, and it is in-
structive that the Doe, after drinking the waters of the
sky-world, dies and descends to earth — clearly she is the
rain-cloud and her Fawns are the thunders. The legend of
the heaven-growing rock, lifting twins to the skies, occurs
more than once in California, most appropriate surely when
applied to the great El Capitan of the Yosemite.'^^

It is perhaps too easy to read naturalistic interpretations
into primitive myth. In many instances the meaning is un-
mistakably expressed and seems never to be lost, as in the
Promethean theft of fire; but in others — and the hero of
Herculean labours is a fair example — it is by no means cer-
tain that long and varied borrowing has not obscured the
original intention. Volcanic fire, lightning, and sunlight itself
seem to be the figures suggesting the adventures; but it may
well be that for the aboriginal narrators these meanings have
long since vanished.

VII. DEATH AND THE GHOST-WORLD

The source of death, no less than the origin of life, is a riddle
which the mind of man early endeavours to solve; and in the



234


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


New World, as sometimes in the Old, the event is made to
turn upon a primal choice. In the New-World tales, however,
it is not the creature’s disobedience, but deliberate selection
hy one of the primal beings that establishes the law. The typ-
ical story is of a conflict of design : the Author of Life in-
tends to create men undying, but another being, who is Coyote
far more often than any other, jealous of the new race, wishes
mortality into the world, and his wish prevails. In very many
versions, neither rational nor ethical principle is concerned in
the choice; it is a result of chance; but on the West Coast not
a few examples of the legend involve both reason and morals.
As it is told, one of the First People loses a child; its resurrec-
tion is contemplated; but Coyote interferes, saying, “Let it re-
main dead; the world will be over-peopled; there will be no
food; nor will men prize life, rejoicing at the coming of chil-
dren and mourning the dead.” “So be it,” they respond, for
Coyote’s argument seems good. But human desires are not
satisfied by reason alone, as is shown in the grimly ironical
conclusion; Coyote’s real motive is not the good of the living;
selfishness and jealousy prompt his specious plea; now his own
son dies, and he begs that the child be restored to life; but
“Nay, nay,” is the response, “the law is established.”

The most beautiful myth of this type that has been recorded
is Curtin’s “Sedit and the Two Brothers Hus,” of the Wintun.
Sedit is Coyote; the brothers Hus are buzzards. Olelbis,
about to create men, sends the brothers to earth to build a
ladder of stone from it to heaven; half way up are to be set a
pool for drink and a place for rest; at the summit shall be two
springs, one for drinking and the other for bathing — internal
and external purification — for these are to be that very Foun-
tain of Youth whose rumour brought Ponce de Leon from Spain
to Florida. When a man or a woman grows old, says Olelbis,
let him or her climb to Olelpanti, bathe and drink, and youth
will be restored. But as the brothers build. Coyote, the tempter,
comes, saying, “I am wise; let us reason”; and he pictures con-



235


THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

temptuously the destiny which Olelbis would bestow: “Sup-
pose an old woman and an old man go up, go alone, one after
the other, and come back alone, young. They will be alone as
before, and will grow old a second time, and go up again and
come back young, but they will be alone, just the same as at
first. They will have nothing on earth whereat to rejoice. They
will never have any friends, any children ; they will never have
any pleasure in the world; they will never have anything to
do but to go up this road old and come back down young
again.” “Joy at birth and grief for the dead is better,” says
Coyote, “for these mean love.” The brothers Hus are con-
vinced, and destroy their work, though not until the younger
one says to Coyote: “You, too, shall die; you, too, shall lie
in the ground never to rise, never to go about with an otter-
skin band on your head and a beautiful quiver at your back!”
And when Coyote sees that it is so, he stands muttering:
“What am I to do now.^ I am sorry. Why did I talk so much.^
Hus asked me if I wanted to die. He said that all on earth
here will have to die now. That is what Hus said. I don’t
know what to do. What can I do?” Desperate, he makes him-
self wings of sunflowers — the blossoms that are said always
to follow the sun — and tries to fly upward; but the leaves
wither, and he falls back to earth, and is dashed to death.
“It is his own deed,” says Olelbis; “he is killed by his own
words; hereafter all his people will fall and die.”

Such is the origin of death; but death is, after all, not the
end of a man; it only marks his departure to another world
than this earth. The body of a man may be burned or buried,
but his life is a thing indestructible; it has journeyed on to
another land. The West-Coast peoples find the abode of the
dead in various places.^® Sometimes it is in the world above,
and many are the myths detailing ascents to, and descents
from, the sky; sometimes it is in the underworld; oftenest, it
is in the west, beyond the waters where the sun is followed by
night. Not always, however, are mortals content to let their



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Re: North American Mythology
« Reply #29 on: August 03, 2019, 08:23:02 PM »


236 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

loved ones depart, and over and again occurs the story of the
quest for the dead, at times almost in the form of Orpheus and
Eurydice.^® Thus the Yokut tell of a husband grieving beside
his wife’s grave, until, one night, her spirit rises and stands
beside him. He follows her to the bridge that arches the river
separating the land of the living from the realm of them that
have passed away, and there wins consent from the guardians
of the dead for her return to earth, but he is forbidden to sleep
on the return journey; nevertheless, slumber overtakes him
on the third night, and he wakes in the morning to find that
he lies beside a log. The Modoc story of Kumush and his
daughter and of the creation of men from the bones of the dead
is surely akin to this, uniting life and death in one unbroken
chain. This conception is brought out even more clearly in
a second version of the Yokut tale, wherein the man who has
visited the isle of the dead tells how, as it fills, the souls are
crowded forth to become birds and fish.

That the home of those who have gone hence should lie
beyond the setting sun is a part of that elemental poetry by
which man sees his life imaged and painted on the whole field
of heaven and earth: the disk of morning is the symbol of
birth, noon is the fullness of existence, and evening’s decline is
the sign of death. But dawn follows after the darkness with a
new birth, for which the dead that be departed do but wait
— where better than in those Fortunate Isles which all men
whose homes have bordered on the western sea have dreamed
to lie beyond its gleaming horizons?



CHAPTER XI

THE PACIFIC COAST, NORTH

I. PEOPLES OF THE NORTH-WEST COAST

F rom Puget Sound northward to the neighbourhood of
Mt. St. Elias and the Copper River the coast is cut hy
innumerable fiords and bays, abutted by glaciated mountains,
and bordered by an almost continuous archipelago. The rainy
season is long and the precipitation heavy on this coast, which,
on the lower levels, is densely forested, conifers forming the
greater part of the upper growth, while the shrubbery of bushes
furnishes a wealth of berries. The red cedar {Thuja flicata)
is of especial importance to the natives of the coast, its wood
serving for building and for the carvings for which these people
are remarkable, while its bark is used for clothing, ropes, and
the like. Deer, elk, bear, the wolf, the mountain goat, the
beaver, the mink, and the otter inhabit the forest, the hills,
and the streams, and are hunted by the Indians; though it is
chiefly from the sea that the tribes of this region draw their
food. Besides molluscs, which the women gather, the waters
abound in edible fish ; salmon and halibut, for which the coast
is famous, herring, candlefish, from which the natives draw the
oil which is an important article of their diet, and marine
mammals, such as the seal, sea-lion, and whale. The region is
adapted to support a considerable population, even under
aboriginal conditions of life, while at the same time its easy
internal communication by water, and its relative inacces-
sibility on the continental side, encourage a unique and special
culture.

Such, indeed, we find. While no less than siz linguistic divi-



238 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

sions are found on the North-West Coast, accompanied by a
corresponding diversity of physical types, the general cul-
ture of the region Is one, and of a cast unlike anything else
on the continent. Its foundation is maritime, the Indians of
this region building large and shapely canoes, and some tribes,
such as the Nootka and Quileute, even attacking the whale
in the open sea. Villages are built facing the beach, and the
timber houses, occupied by several families, represent the high-
est architectural skill of any Indian structures north of the
pueblos. The wood-working craft is nowhere in America more
developed, not only in the matter of weapons and utensils,
but especially in carvings, of which the most famous exam-
ples are the totem-poles of the northern tribes. Work in
shell, horn, and stone is second in quality only to that in wood,
while copper has been extensively used, even from aboriginal
times. Basketry and the weaving of mats and bark-cloth are
also native crafts. In art the natives of the North-West at-
tained a unique excellence, their carvings and drawings show-
ing a type of decorative conventionalizing of human and animal
figures unsurpassed in America, as is also the skill with which
these elements are combined. The impulse of this art is almost
wholly mythical, and it finds its chief expression in heraldic
poles, grave-posts, and house-walls, in ceremonial masks and
rattles, and in the representation of ancestral animals on
clothing and utensils.

The social structure of the peoples of the North-West re-
flects their advancement In the crafts. The majority of the
tribes are organized into septs and clans determining descent
and marriage relations. In the northern area descent is counted
matrillnearly, in the southern by the patrilinear rule. The
Kwakiutl have an institution which seems to mark a transi-
tion between the two systems: descent follows the paternal
line, but each individual inherits the crest of his maternal
grandfather. In some village-groups parents are at liberty to
place their children in either the maternal or the paternal



THE PACIFIC COAST, NORTH 239

clan. Clan exogamy is the rule. Within the tribe the various
clans are not of equal status; consequently, there is a similar
gradation in the rank of the nobles who are the clan heads
or chiefs. These nobles are the real rulers of the North-West
peoples, whose government is thus of an oligarchic type. Clan
membership carries with it the right to use the ancestral crest,
certain totems involving the privileges of rank, while others
mark plebeian caste. Slavery is another institution prominent
in the North-West, slaves being either prisoners of war or
hopeless debtors.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of these tribes is the
Potlatch. Primarily this word designates a festival at which
a chieftain or a man of means distributes a large amount of
property, often the accumulation of years. These riches are
not, however, a free presentation, since the recipients are bound
to return, with interest, the gifts received, so that a wealthy
man thus ensures to himself competence and revenue, as well
as importance in the tribal councils. Rivalry of the intensest
sort is generated between the great men of the several clans,
each striving to outdo the others in the munificence of his
feasts, which thus become a matter of family distinction, enti-
tled to record on the family crest. The recognized medium of
exchange is the blanket, but a curious and interesting device is
the “Copper” — the bank-note of the North-West — a ham-
mered and decorated sheet of copper of a special form, having
the value of many hundred or of several thousand blankets,
according to the amount offered for it at a festal sale. These
Coppers are, in fact, insignia of wealth; and since the destruc-
tion of property is regarded as the highest evidence of social
importance, they are sometimes broken, or even entirely de-
stroyed, as a sign of contempt for the riches of a less able rival.

Of the stocks of the North-West the most northerly is the
Koluschan, comprising the Tlingit Indians, whose region ex-
tends frond the Copper River, where they border upon the
Eskimoan Aleut, south to Portland Canal. The Skittagetan



240


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


stock, of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the southern part
of Prince of Wales Island, is formed of the Haida tribes; while
on the opposite mainland,. following the Nass and Skeena riv-
ers far inland, is the district of the Tsimshian and other Chim-
mesyan peoples. South of these begin the territories of the
Wakashan stock, which extend on the mainland to Johnston
Strait and, beyond, over the whole western part of the is-
land of Vancouver. Powell divided this stock into the Aht
and Haeltzuk (Bellabella) tribes, but later authorities prefer
Kwakiutl and Nootka, the latter holding the seaward side of
Vancouver. The fifth group comprises the Coast Salish: a
northern division, about Dean Inlet and the Salmon and Bella
Coola rivers, adjoining the Wakashan territories; a central di-
vision extending from the head of the Strait of Georgia south-
ward to Chinook lands about the Columbia; and a southern
group holding the Oregon coast south of the Chinook peoples.
A single tribe, the Quileute, about Cape Flattery in Wash-
ington, represents the almost extinct Chimakuan stock. In
general, the culture of the Tlingit and Haida tribes show
an identity of form which distinguishes them as a group from
the like community manifested by the Tsimshian, Kwakiutl,
Nootka, and North-Coast Salish.

II. TOTEMISM AND TOTEMIC SPIRITS*

The ceremonies of the tribes of the North-West fall into
two classes, following their social and ceremonial organi?:ation.
The social division into clans, which are matrilinear and exo-
gamic in the north, while patrilinear or mixed systems prevail
in the south, finds outward expression in totemic insignia and
in ceremonial representations of the myths narrating the be-
ginnings of the septs. These origins are ascribed to an ancestor
who has been initiated by animal-beings into their mysteries,
or dances, thus conferring upon him the powers of the initiating
creatures; the animals themselves are not regarded as ancestral,




PLATE XXX


Frame of Haida house with totem-pole. After
MAM viii, Plate XL







THE PACIFIC COAST, NORTH 241

nor are the members of the clan akin to the totemic being,
except in so far as they possess the powers and practise the
rites obtained through the ancestral revelation. The manner of
revelation is precisely that in which the Indian everywhere in
North America acquires his guardian or tutelary, his personal
totem : in fast or trance the man is borne away by the animal-
being, taken perhaps to the lodge of its kind, and there given
an initiation which he carries back to his people. The dis-
tinctive feature of the North-Western custom, however, is
that a totem so acquired may be transmitted by inheritance,
so that a man’s lineage may be denoted by such a series of
crests as appears upon the totem-pole.®^ Correspondingly, the
number and variety of totemic spirits become reduced, ani-
mals or mythic beings of a limited and conventionalized group
forming a class fixed by heredity. Yet the individual character
of the totem never quite disappears; what is transmitted by
birth is the right to initiation into the ancestral mysteries;
without this ceremony the individual possesses neither the use
of the crest nor knowledge of its myths and songs.

The animal totems of the Tlinglt, as given by Boas, are
the Raven and the Wolf; of the Haida, the Raven and the
Eagle; of the Tsimshian, Raven, Eagle, Wolf, and Bear; of
the Heiltsuk Kwakiutl, Raven, Eagle, and Killer Whale; while
the Haisla (like the Heiltsuk Kwakiutl of Wakashan stock)
have six totems, Beaver, Eagle, Wolf, Salmon, Raven, and
Killer Whale. Among the remaining tribes of the region —
Nootka, Kwakiutl, and Salishan — family crests, rather than
clan totems, are the marks of social distinction; but even in
the north, where the totemic clan prevails, crests vary among
the clan families: thus, the families of the Raven clan of the
Stikine tribe of the Tlinglt have not only the Raven, but also
the Frog and the Beaver, as hereditary crests.

In addition to acquisition by marriage and inheritance,
rights to a crest may pass from one family or tribe to another
through war; for a warrior who slays a foe is deemed to have



242 NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

acquired the privileges of the slain man’s totem; if this be one
foreign to the conqueror’s tribe, slaves may be called upon
to give the proper initiation, which is still essential. Thus the
rights to certain crests pass from clan to clan and from tribe to
tribe, forming the foundation for a kind of intertribal relation-
ship of persons owning like totems. Wars were formerly waged
for the acquisition of desired totemic rights, and more than
once, the legends tell, bitter conflicts have resulted from the
appropriation of a crest by a man who had no demonstrable
right to it, for no prerogatives are more jealously guarded in
the North-West. Only persons of wealth could acquire the
use of crests, for the initiation must be accompanied by feast-
ing and gift-giving at the expense of the initiate and his kin-
dred. On the other hand, the possession of crests is a mark of
social importance; hence, they are eagerly sought.-
The origin of crests was referred to mythic ancestors. The .
Haida are divided into Eagles and Ravens. The ancestress of
the Raven clan is Foam Woman, who rose from the sea and is
said to have had the power of driving back all other super-
natural beings with the lightnings of her eyes; Foam Woman,
like Diana of the Ephesians, had many breasts, at each of
which she nourished a grandmother of a Raven family of the
Haida. The oldest crest of this clan is the Killer Whale, whose
dorsal fin, according to tradition, adorned the blanket of one
of the daughters of Foam Woman; but they also have for crests
the Grizzly Bear, Blue Hawk, Sea-Lion, Rainbow, Moon, and
other spirits and animals. Curiously enough, the Raven crest
among the Haida does not belong to families of the Raven clan,
but to Eagles, whose ancestor is said to have obtained it
from the Tsimshian. All the Eagles trace their descent from
an ancestress called Greatest Mountain, probably denoting a
mainland origin of this clan, but the Eagle is regarded as the
oldest of their crests. The animals themselves are not held to
be ancestors, but only to have been connected in some signifi-
cant fashion with the family or clan progenitor; thus, an Eagle



THE PACIFIC COAST, NORTH 243

chief appeared at a feast with a necklace of live frogs, and his
family forthwith adopted the frog as a crest.

Many creatures besides animals appear as totemic or family
crests, and the double-headed snake (represented with a head
at each end and a human head in the middle), known to the
Kwakiutl as Sisiutl, is one of the most important of these
beings.®® A Squawmish myth tells of a young man who pur-
sued the serpent Senotlke for four years, finally slaying it;
as he did so, he himself fell dead, but he regained life and, on
his return to his own people, became a great shaman, having
the power to slay all who beheld him and to make them live
again — a myth which seems clearly reminiscent of initiation
rites. The Sisiutl is able to change itself into a fish, whose flesh
is fatal to those who eat it, but for those who obtain its super-
natural help it is a potent assistant. Pieces of its body, owned
by shamans, are powerful medicine and command high prices.
The Bella Coola believe that its home is a salt-water lake be-
hind the house of the supreme goddess in the highest heaven,
and that the goddess uses this mere as a bath. The skin of the
Sisiutl is so hard that it cannot be pierced by a knife, but it
can be cut by a leaf of holly. In one Bella Coola myth the
mountain is said to have split where it crawled, making a
passage for the waters of a river. It would appear from these
and other legends that the Sisiutl, like the horned Plumed
Snake of the Pueblos, is a genius of the waters, perhaps a
personification of rain-clouds. A Comox tradition, in many
ways analogous to the South-Western story of the visit of the
Twin Warriors to the Sun, tells of the conquest of Tlaik, chief
of the sky, by the two sons of Fair Weather, and of the final
destruction of the sky-chief, who is devoured by the double-
headed snake — a tale which suggests clearly enough the efface-
ment of the sun by the clouds.

Another being important in clan ritual is the Cannibal
woman (Tsonoqoa, Sneneik),^® whose offspring are represented
as wolves, and in whose home is a slave rooted to the ground



244


NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY


from eating the food which the demoness gave her. This anthro-
pophagous monster dwells in the woods and carries a basket
in which she puts the children whom she steals to eat, and she
also robs graves; but at last she is slain by a sky-boy to whose
image, reflected in the water, she makes love. Komokoa, the
Rich One,'^ is the protector of seals, and lives at the bottom
of the sea; the drowned go to him, and stories are narrated
of persons who have penetrated to his abode and afterward
returned to give his crest to their descendants. A frequent form
of legend recounts how hunters harpoon a seal and are dragged
down with incredible velocity until the home of Komokoa is
reached; there they are initiated, and receive crests and riches
with which they go back to their kindred, who have believed
them long since dead. The Thunderbird,^^ described as a huge
creature carrying a lake on its back and flashing lightnings from
its eyes, is also a crest, traditions telling of clan ancestors being
carried away to its haunts and there initiated. Whales are said
to be its food, and the bones of cetaceans devoured by it may
be seen upon the mountains. Monstrous birds are of frequent
occurrence in the myths of the North-West, as in California,
many of them seeming to derive their characteristics from the
Thunderbird, while the latter is sometimes asserted to resemble
types of the Falconidae, as the hawk or the eagle.

The wooden masks, carved and painted, employed in the
initiation ceremonies connected with the clan totems are the
ritual representations of the clan myth.®® Many of these
masks are double, the inner and outer faces representing two
moods or incidents in the mythic adventure. Frequently the
outer is an animal, the inner a human, face — a curious ex-
pression of the aboriginal belief in a man-soul underlying the
animal exterior. Masks are not regarded as idols; but that a
kind of fetishistic reverence attaches to wood-carvings of super-
natural beings in the North-West is shown by the number of
myths telling of such figures manifesting life. “The carvings on
the house posts wink their eyes,” is a Haida saying denoting