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.
988/1000 (page 970)
![MYTHOLOGY [b. a. k. a group of worlds—one at the east, one at the south, one at tlie west, one at the nortli, one above, and one below—wliich, witli the inidworld, number seven in all. Even each of the principal colors is as- signed to its appropriate world (see Color symbolism). Hence, to the primitive mind, the cosmos (if the term be allowed here) was a universe of man-beings whose activ- ities constituted the operations of nature. To it nothing was what it is to scientilic. thought. Indeed, it was a world wholly artificial and fanciful. It was the product of the fancy of savage and inchoate thinking, of the comnionsense of savage thought. So far as is definitely known, the vari- ous systems of mythology in North Amer- ica differ much in detail one from an- other, superficially giving them the as- pect of fundamental difference of origin and growth; but a careful study of them discloses the fact that they accord with all great bodies of mythology in a prin- ciple which underlies all, namely, the principle of change, transmigration, or metamorphosis of things, tlirough the exercise of omida, or magic power, from one state, condition, or form, to another. By this means things have become what they now are. Strictly, then, creation of something from nothing has no place in them. In these mythologies, purporting to be *i)hilosophies, of cour.>^e, no knowledge of the real changes which have affected the environing world is to be sought; but it is equally true that in them are em- bedded, like rare fossils and precious gems, many most important facts regard- ing the history of the human mind. For a definite people in a definite plane of culture, the myths and the concomi- tant beliefs resting on them, of their neighbors, are not usually true, since the personages and the events narrated in them have an aspect and an expression quite different from their own, although they may iu the last analysis express fundamentally identical things—may in fact spring from identical motiv'es. Among the Irocjuois and the eastern Algonquian tribes, the Thunder people, human in form and mind and usually four in number, are most imjmrtant and staunch friends of man. But in the Lake re.^ion, the N. W. coast to Alaska, and in the northern drainage of the Missi.s«ipi>i and Missouri valleys, this conception is replaced by that of the Thunderbird. Among the AlgoiKpiian and the Iro- quoian tribes the myths regarding the so-called lire-dragon are at once striking and important. Now, the lire-dragon is in fact the j)er.«onilication of the meteor. Flying through the air among the stars, the larger meteors appear against some midnight sky like fiery reptiles sheathed in lambent liames. It is believed of them that they fly from one lake or deep river to another, in the bottom of which they are bound by enchantment to dwell, for should they be permitted to remain on the land they would set the world on fire. The Iroquois applied their name for the lire-dragon, ‘light-thrower,’ to the lion when first seen, thus indicating their con- ception of the fierceness of the fire-dragon. The Ottawa and Chippewa missibizi, or rnissibizlni, literally ‘great lynx,’ is their name for this mytliic being.* The horned ser]>ent does not belong here, but the misnamed tigers of the Peoria and other AlgoiKpiian tribes do. Among the Iro- (piois it was the deeds of the lire-dragon that hastened the occasion for the meta- morphosis of the primal beings. As early as IHfiS Brinton called atten- tion to the curious circumstance that in the mythology of those Eskimo who had had no contact with European travelers, there were no changes or transformations of the world affecting the aspect and character of the earth. In this state- ment he is followed by Boas (1904), who also claims that the animal mylh jiroper did not belong originally to Eskimo my- thologjq although there are now iu this mythology some animal mythsand weird tales and accounts regarding monsters and vampire ghosts and the thaumaturgic deeds of shamans and wizards. This is in strong contrast with the content of the mythologies of the Indian tribes that have been studied. In its general aspects the mythologj'of the North American Indians has been in- structively and profitably discus.sed by several American anthropologists, who have greatly advanced the study and knowledge of the subject. Among these are Powell, Brinton, Boas, Curtin, Fletcher, Matthews, Cushing, Fewkes, and Dixon. Powell treated the subject from the philosophicandevolutional jinintof view, and sought to establish successive stages in the develoiunent of the mythologic thought or concejit, making them inqnita- tion, personification, and n'ification; and the product he divided into four stages from the character of the dominant gods ineach, namely, (1) lier.astoiheism, wherein everything has life, personality, volition, and design, and the wondrous attrilnites of man; (2) zobthcixm, wherein life is not attributed indiscriminately to lifeless things, the attributes of man are imputed to the animals and no line of demarca- tion is drawn betwetm man and beast, and all facts and phenomena of nature are explained in the mythic history of these zobmor[)hic gods; (8) physUhcism,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24881739_0988.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
