Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/209

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unaffectedly regret, "as they consider the tail quite an ornament." Ideas of the immortality of the soul are confined to the old women of the tribe, and, in short, the Digger Indians occupy the modern scientific position.

The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,[1] are suspected of having been influenced by the Biblical narrative. They say that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found himself sitting in a chair. As he was all alone, he took a piece of his body and a piece of earth, and made a man. He next made a woman, steadied the earth by placing beasts beneath it at the corners, and created plants and animals. Other men he made out of bears. "He created the white man to make tools for the poor Indians,"—a very pleasing example of a teleological hypothesis and of the doctrine of final causes as understood by the Winnebagoes. The Chaldean myth of the making of man is recalled by the legend that the Great Spirit cut out a piece of himself for the purpose; the Chaldean wisdom coincides, too, with the philosophical acumen of the Po-to-yan-te or Coyote tribe of Digger Indians. Though the Chaldean theory is only connected with that of the Red Men by its savagery, we may briefly state it in this place.

According to Berosus, as reported by Alexander Polyhistor, the universe was originally (as before Manabozho's time) water and mud. Herein all manner of mixed monsters, with human heads, goat's horns,

  1. Schoolcraft, iv. 228.