Creation Myths of Primitive America: In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of MankindCurtin, Jeremiah
Religion
Creation Myths of Primitive America: In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind
Curtin, Jeremiah
Creation -- Mythology; Indian mythology -- North America; Indians of North America -- Folklore
The person who was metamorphosed afterward into the red wiu bird (Tede
Wiu) is his rival, the person with whom Norwan left the dance, thus
causing the first war in the world. Was this person the red of evening
which became Tede Wiu afterward? If we acknowledge that he was, and if
we are willing to admit Norbis as the representative of all people
living east of the west, we have at once the two parties to an
irreconcilable rivalry in the most vital of questions, the possession
of warm sunlight, and that most vital of questions is embodied in the
person of a woman. That was the cause of the first war in the world
and of fell strife. A story substantially the same as this was, we may
think, the ultimate basis of the Iliad. The mythic origin of the
particular tale from which Homer constructed his epic had been
forgotten, that may be granted, but there is little doubt that in
rustic Greece men might have found a similar tale which was mythologic
beyond peradventure; and the Helen of that tale, or her equivalent,
was a person like Norwan. With the materials at our command even now,
we have enough to indicate this, for was not Helen the daughter of
Leda and the divine swan, a person to be fought for with all available
energy in the world at that period, and to be fought for in a war
which surpassed in importance all that have ever succeeded it?
Helen of Troy, the daughter of Leda and of Zeus, the overarching
heaven, with all its light; Norwan, daughter of the earth, with
Lassen's Butte, California, for her residence; and the Algonkin hero
whose place is taken by Hiawatha, are all different representatives
of the same person, different expressions for the same phenomenon; and
that person or phenomenon is the warm air which dances above the earth
in fine weather. This air, in one case noted here, is conceived as the
greatest benefactor of man, that being who gives the choicest and most
necessary gifts to all, and, in the other two cases, as a priceless
treasure, in the form of a woman who is to be fought for with all the
valor that can possibly be summoned, and in a manner that in Helen's
case inspired the noblest epic known to the world thus far.
These three cases show clearly the methods of mythology, and prove the
absolute need of knowing that we must deal (to borrow mathematical
language) with constants and variables taken together,--knowing
clearly, meanwhile, which are constants,--and not with variables only,
supposing them to be constants, or with constants and variables mixed
together without being able to distinguish which belong to one class
and which to the other. Were some writer to deal with the prehensile
capacity in animated creatures, and describe how it is exercised, he
would find a variety in the organs used for grasping things which
would represent very well the variety of methods employed by primitive
man in mythology to represent the same phenomenon or force in nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account