distress appeared.[1] There is instructive variety in the ways in which the lower American races work out the conception of the divine forefather. The Mingo tribes revere and make offerings to the First Man, he who was saved at the great deluge, as a powerful deity under the Master of Life, or even as identified with him; some Mississippi Indians said that the First Man ascended into heaven, and thunders there; among the Dog-ribs, he was creator of sun and moon;[2] Tamoi, the grandfather and ancient of heaven of the Guaranis, was their first ancestor, who dwelt among them and taught them to till the soil, and rose to heaven in the east, promising to succour them on earth, and at death to carry them from the sacred tree into a new life where they should all meet again, and have much hunting.[3]
Polynesia, again, has thoroughly worked the theory of divine ancestors into the native system of multiform and blending nature-deities. Men are sprung from the divine Maui, whom Europeans have therefore called the 'Adam of New Zealand,' or from the Rarotongan Tiki, who seems his equivalent (Mauitiki), and who again is the Tii of the Society Islands; it is, however, the son of Tii who precisely represents a Polynesian Adam, for his name is Taata, i.e., Man, and he is the ancestor of the human race. There is perhaps also reason to identify Maui and the First Man with Akea, first King of Hawaii, who at his earthly death descended to rule over his dark subterranean kingdom, where his subjects are the dead who recline under the spreading kou-trees, and drink of the infernal rivers, and feed on lizards and butterflies.[4] In the mythology of Kamchatka, the relation between the Creator and the First Man is one not of identity but of parentage. Among the sons of
- ↑ Pr. Max. v. Wied, 'N. Amerika,' vol. ii. p. 157.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' pp. 133, &c., 228, 255. Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. pp. 159, 177; Pr. Max v. Wied, vol. ii. pp. 149, &c. Compare Sproat, 'Savage Life,' p. 179 (Quawteaht the Great Spirit is also First Man).
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. ii. p. 319.
- ↑ Schirren, 'Wandersagen der Neuseeländer,' p. 64, &c., 88, &c. Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 111, vol. iv. pp. 145, 366.
