turbid speculations, in the writings of Schoolcraft. Many of the myths of the Indians of the South, in that region stretching back from the great Gulf, are known—some collected by travelers, others by educated Indians.
Many of the myths of the Iroquois are known. The best of these are in the writings of Morgan, America's greatest anthropologist. Missionaries, travelers, and linguists have given us a great store of the myths of the Dakota stock. Many myths of the Tinné also have been collected. Petitot has recorded a number of those found at the North, and we have in manuscript some of the myths of a Southern branch—the Navajos. Perhaps the myths of the Numas have been collected more thoroughly than those of any other stock. These are yet unpublished. Powers has recorded many of the myths of various stocks in California, and the old Spanish writings give us a fair collection of the Nahuatl myths of Mexico, and Rink has presented us an interesting volume on the mythology of the Innuits; and, finally, fragments of mythology have been collected from nearly all the tribes of North America, and they are scattered through thousands of volumes, so that the literature is vast. The brief description which I shall give of zoötheism is founded on a study of the materials which I have thus indicated.
All these tribes are found in the higher stages of savagery, or the lower stages of barbarism, and their mythologies are found to be zoötheistic among the lowest, physitheistic among the highest, and a great number of tribes are found in a transition state, for zoötheism is found to be a characteristic of savagery, and physitheism of barbarism, using the terms as they have been defined by Morgan. The supreme gods of this stage are animals. The savage is intimately associated with animals. "From them he obtains the larger part of Ms clothing, and much of his food, and he carefully studies their habits and finds many wonderful things. Their knowledge and skill and power appear to him to be superior to his own. He sees the mountain sheep fleet among the crags, the eagle soaring in the heavens, the humming-bird poised over its blossom-cup of nectar, the serpents swift without legs, the salmon scaling the rapids, the spider weaving its gossamer web, the ant building a play-house mountain—in all animal nature he sees things too wonderful for him, and from admiration he grows to adoration, and the animals become his gods."[1]
Ancientism plays an important part in this zoötheism. It is not the animals of to-day whom the Indians worship, but their progenitors—their prototypes. The wolf of to-day is a howling pest, but that wolf's ancestor—the first of the line—was a god. The individuals of every species are supposed to have descended from an ancient being—-
- ↑ Vide "Outlines of the Philosophy of the North American Indians," by J. W. Powell. Read before the American Geographical Society at Chickering Hall, December 29, 1876.
