Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico / edited by Frederick Webb Hodge.
- Date:
- 1907-1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico / edited by Frederick Webb Hodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
983/1000 (page 965)
![composed of a body of such myths and fragments thereof. But of course no myth that has come down to the present time is simple. Myths and parts of myths have necessarily been employed to define and explain other myths or otlier and new phenomena, and the way from the first to the last is long and often broken. Vestigial myths, myths whose meaning or symbolism has from any cause whatsoever become obscured or entirely lost, constitute a great part of folklore, and such myths are also called folktales. A study of the lexic derivation of the terms “luyth” and “mythology” willnot lead to a satisfactory definition and inter- pretation of what IS denoted by either term, for the genesis of the things so named was not understood when they re- ceived these appellations. In its broadest sense, vu/thos in Greek denoted whatever was uttered by the mouth of man a say- ing, a legend, a story of something as un- derstood by the narrator, a word. But in Attic Greek it denoted also any prehis- toric story of the Greeks, and these were chietlv stories of gods and heroes, which were, though this fact was unknown to the Greeks themselves, phenomena of nature. And when the term received this specafic meaning it fell into discredit, because the origin and true characterof myths not be- ing understood, these prehistoric stories by the advance in knowledge came into disrepute among the Greeks themselves, and after theriseof Christianity they were condemned as the wicked fables of a false religion. Hence, in po|mlar usage, and (luite ajiart from the study of mythology, the term “myth” denotes what is in fact nonexistent—a nothing with a name, a story without a basis of fact—“ a nonentity of which an entity is affirmed, a nothing which is said to be something.” Besides im/lhos in Greek, logos, signifying ‘ word,’ was employed originally with ajiproxi- matelv the same meaning in ordinary speech at the time of Homer, who some- times u-sed them interchangeably. But, strictlv speaking, there was a difference from the beginning which, by the need for precision in diction, finally led to a wide divergence in the signification of the two terms. Logos, derived from legem, ‘to gather,’ wa-s seldom used by Homer to de- note ‘a saving, a speaking, or a significa- tion,’ but to denote usually ‘a gathering,’ or, strictly, ‘atelling, casting up or count- ing.’ In time this term caine to mean not only the inward constitutioii but the outward form of thought, and iinally to denote exactthinkingorreason—not only the reason in man, but the reason in the universe—the Divine Logos, the Volition of Go<l, theSon of God, Gotl lliniself._ It is so employed in the opening lines of the first chapter of the Gospel ot &t John. Such is a brief outline of the use.s of the two terms which in their primal significa- tion formed the term “mythology, from which but little can be gathered as to what constitutes a myth. U]i to a certain jicint there is substan- tial agreement among students in the use of the term mvth. But this means but little. To the' cpiestion, What is the nature and origin of a inyth? wholly dif- ferent replies, jicrplexing in number, are given, and for this rea.son the study of mythologv, of a definite body of mytlis. Inis not yet become a science. By careful study of adecpiate materials a clue to the meai'iing ami signilicance of myths may be found in the apprehension—vague m the beginning, increasingly definite as the study progresses—that all these thing.s, these tales, the.se gods, although so di- verse, arise from one simple though com- mon liasis or motive. Every body, element, or phenomenon of nature, whetheK subjective or objective, has its myth or story to account for its origin, historv, and manner of action. Portions of th'ese myths, especially those concerning the most striking objects of an environment, are woven together by some master mind into a cycle of myths, and a mvth of the beginnings, a genesis, or creation, story is thus developed. The horns and the cloven feet of the deer, the stripes of the chiimnmk’s ba(;k, the tail of the beaver, the flat nose of the otter, the rattles of the snake, the tides of rivers, the earthquake, the meteor, the aurora borealis; in short, every phenomenon that fixed the attention required and re- ceived an explanation which, being con- ventional, satisfied the commonsense of the community, and which later,owing to its imputation of apparently impossible attributes to fictitious personages to ac- count for the operations of nature, be- came, by the growing knowledge of man, a myth. A*mvth is of interest from three view- points,'namely, (1) as a literary product embodying a'wondrous story of things and personages; (2) for the character of the matter it contains as expressive of Inunan thought and the interpretation of human experience, and (3) for the pur- pose of comparison with the myths of alien or of cognate ]u‘oples and for the (lata it contains relating to the customs, arts, and archeology of the ])eople among whom it exisG. With the available data, it is as yet impossible to define with satisfactory clearness all the objective realities of the j)er.sonal agencies or men-beings of the .\merican Indian myths. In Indian thought these personages are constantly associated in fmmtion, and sometimes](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24881739_0983.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
