&c. (see Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore, 1891, and Handbook of Amer. Inds., 1907), whose brother is sometimes represented as being after death the ruler of the spirit world. The Iroquoian correspondent of Nanabozho is Tehoronhiawakhon; the Siouan, in many respects, Ictinike. Among many tribes of the North Pacific coast region the culture-hero appears as the “transformer,” demi-god, human or animal in form (coyote, blue-jay, raven, &c.), the last often being tricksters and dupers of mankind and the rest of creation as well. This trickster and buffoon (also liar) element appears also in the Iroquoian and Algonkian culture-heroes and has received special treatment by Brinton (Essays of an Americanist, 1890). On the whole, the Algonkian and Iroquoian culture-hero is mainly actuated by altruistic motives, while the “transformer” of the Indians of the North Pacific coast region is often credited with producing or shaping the world, mankind and their activities as they now exist for purely egotistic purposes. Other noteworthy heroes, “reformers,” &c., among the North American Indians are the subject of legends, like the Iroquoian “Good Mind and Bad Mind,” the Algonkian (Musquaki) “Hot Hand and Cold Hand,” the Zuñian “Right Hand and Left Hand”; and numerous others, including such conceptions as the antagonism and opposition of land and water (dry and wet), summer and winter, day and night, food and famine, giants and pigmies, &c. In the matter of the personification of natural phenomena, &c., there is considerable variation, even among tribes of approximately the same state of culture. Thus, e.g. as Hewitt notes (Handbook of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 970), while with the Iroquoian and eastern Algonkian tribes “the Thunder people, human in form and mind and usually four in number, are most important and staunch friends of man”; in the region of the Great Lakes and westward “this conception is replaced by that of the Thunder bird.”
The Pawnee Indians of the Caddoan stock seem both individually and tribally to possess a deep religious sense expressing itself alike in moods of the person and in ceremonies of a general popular character. This is evident, alike from Miss Fletcher’s description (Amer. Anthrop., 1899, pp. 83-85) of a venerable priest of that tribe, Tahiroossawichi, and from her detailed account of “The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony” (Twenty-second Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1900–1901, pp. 5-372). This Hako ceremony, the original stimulus for which was probably desire for offspring, and then to ensure friendship and peace between groups of persons belonging to different clans, gentes or tribes, had no fixed or stated time and “was not connected with planting or harvesting, hunting or war or any tribal festival,” although the Indians take up the Hako, with its long series of observances and its hundred songs, “in the spring when the birds are mating, or in the summer when the birds are nesting and caring for their young, or in the fall when the birds are flocking, but not in the winter when all things are asleep; with the Hako we are praying for the gift of life, of strength, of plenty and of peace, so we must pray when life is stirring everywhere,”—these are the words of the Indian hieragogue.
In the arid region of the south-western United States there has grown up, especially among the Moqui, as may be read in the numerous monographs of Dr J. Walter Fewkes (and briefly in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1905), a system of religious ceremonials and sympathetic magic, the object of which is to ensure the necessary rainfall and through this the continued life and prosperity of the people. Here everything is conceived as really or symbolically related to sun, water, rain. The Moqui are essentially a religious people, and their mythology, in which the central figures are the “earth mother” and the “sky father,” has been described as “a polytheism largely tinged with ancestor-worship and permeated with fetishism.” Part of their exceedingly intricate, complex and elaborate ritual is the so-called “snake dance,” which has been written of by Bourke (The Snake Dance of the Moquis, 1884), Fewkes and others.
In the Gulf region east of the Mississippi, “sun worship,” with primitive “temples,” appears among some of the tribes with certain curious myths, beliefs, ceremonies, &c. The Natchez, e.g. according to Dr Swanton (Amer. Anthrop., 1907), were noteworthy on account of “their highly developed monarchical government and their possession of a national religion centring about a temple, which reminds one in many ways of the temples of Mexico and Central America.” They seem to have had “an extreme form of sun-worship and a highly developed ritual.” A simpler form of sun-worship is found among the Kootenay of British Columbia (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1889, 1892). With the Yuchi occur some Algonkian-like myths of the deluge, &c.
The best data as to the religion and mythology of the Iroquoian tribes are to be found in the writings of Hewitt, especially in his monograph on “Iroquoian Cosmology” (Twenty-first Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1899–1900, pp. 127-339). In the creation-myths several instances of European influence are pointed out. Mother-earth and her life are the source, by transformation and evolution, of all things. The first beings of Iroquoian mythology (daylight, earthquake, winter, medicine, wind, life, flower, &c.) “were not beasts, but belonged to a rather vague class of which man was the characteristic type,”—later come beast-gods. According to Hewitt the Iroquoian term rendered in English “god” signifies really “disposer, controller,” for to these Indians “god” and “controller” are synonymous; and so “the reputed controller of the operations of nature received worship and prayers.” Creation-legends in great variety exist among the North American aborigines, from simple fiat actions of single characters to complicated transformations accomplished with the aid of other beings. The specific creation legend often follows that of the deluge.
Perhaps the most remarkable of all North American creation stories is that of the Zuñi as recorded by Cushing (Thirteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1891–1892) in his “Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths.” Here the principal figure is “Awonawilona, the maker and container of all,” and the growth-substance the “fogs of increase,” which he evolved by his thinking in the pristine night. The long tale of the origin of the sun, the earth and the sky, and the taking form of “the seed of men and all creatures” in the lowest of the four caves or wombs of the world and their long journey to light and real life on the present earth is a wonderful story of evolution as conceived by the primitive mind, an aboriginal epic, in fact.
In the mythology and religion of the Algonkian tribes (particularly the Chippewa, &c.) is expressed “a firm belief in a cosmic mystery present throughout all nature, called manitou.” This manitou “was identified with both animate and inanimate objects, and the impulse was strong to enter into personal relation with the mystic power; it was easy for an Ojibwa to associate the manitou with all forms of transcendent agencies, some of which assumed definite characters and played the rôle of deities” (Jones). There were innumerable manitous of high or low degree. The highest development of this conception was in Kitchi Manitou (Great Manitou), but whether this personification has not been considerably influenced by teachings of the whites is a question. The chief figure in the mythology of the Chippewa and related tribes is Nanabozho, who “while yet a youth became the creator of the world and everything it contained; the author of all the great institutions in Ojibwa society and the founder of the leading ceremonies” (Jones, Ann. Arch. Rep. Ontario, 1905; Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore, 1902, &c.). It is to this character that some of the most human of all Indian myths are attached, e.g. the Micmac legend of the origin of the crowing of babies and the story of Nanabozho’s attempt to stick his toe into his mouth after the manner of a little child. Nanabozho is also the central figure in the typical deluge legend of the Algonkian peoples of the Great Lakes (Journ. of American Folk-Lore, 1891), which, in some versions, is the most remarkable myth of its kind north of Mexico.
The best and most authoritative discussion of the religions and mythological ideas of the Eskimo is to be found in the article of Dr Franz Boas on “The Folk-Lore of the Eskimo” (Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore, 1904, pp. 1-13). The characteristic feature of Eskimo folk-lore is the hero-tales, treating of visits to fabulous tribes, encounters with monsters, quarrels and “wars,” shamanism, witchcraft, &c., and generally of “the events occurring in human society as it exists now,” the supernatural playing a more or less important rôle, but the mass of folk-lore being “thoroughly human in character.” In Eskimo myths there appears to be “a complete absence of the idea that transformations or creations were made for the benefit of man during a mythological period, and that these events changed the general aspect of the world,” quite in contrast with the conceptions of many Indian tribes, particularly in the region of the North Pacific, where the “transformer” (sometimes trickster also), demi-god, human or animal (coyote, raven, blue-jay, &c.), plays so important a part, as may be seen from the legends recorded in Dr Boas’s Indianische Sagen der nord-pacifischen Küste Amerikas (Berlin, 1895) and other more recent monographs. In Eskimo folk-lore the field of animal tales is quite limited, and Dr Boas is of opinion that the genuine animal myth “was originally foreign to Eskimo folk-lore,” and has been borrowed from the Indians. Perhaps the most prominent character in Eskimo mythology is Sedna, the old woman, who is mistress of the lower world beneath the ocean (Amer. Anthrop., 1900). The highest being conceived of by the Athabaskans of Canada was, according to Morice (Ann. Arch. Rep. Ontario, 1905, p. 204), “a real entity, which they feared rather than loved or worshipped.” The way of communicating with the unseen was through “personal totems,” revealed usually in dreams. The Hupa, an Athabaskan people of California, are reported by Goddard as possessing a deep religious sense. But the most remarkable mythology of any Athabaskan tribe is that of the Navaho, which has been studied in detail under some of its chief aspects by Dr Washington Matthews in his valuable monographs, Navaho Legends (1897) and The Night Chant (1902). According to Dr Matthews, the Navaho “are a highly religious people having many
