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
I have in mind at this moment a representative picture of this last
group of persons who were unwilling to be metamorphosed and strove to
avoid the new race, the inevitable Indians. They had no desire to see
men, and they fled to all sorts of lonely retreats and remote forest
places. At a certain point on the Klamath is a rough mountain slope
which rises abruptly from the water; far up, well toward the ridge,
about seven-eighths of the way from the river to the summit, is a
bulky high stone which seen from a distance looks much like a statue.
Close behind is another stone, somewhat smaller, which leans forward
in the posture of a person hastening eagerly. Both are white and
shining; they have the appearance of quartz rock. These were two
sisters hastening, rushing away to escape the coming change. When they
reached the points where they are standing at present, the foremost
sister looked toward the east and saw smoke; the second did not look,
but she heard the distant barking of dogs which came from the place
where the smoke was; both were changed into stone that same instant.
With the transformation of the last of the first people or divinities,
which was finished only when the Indians or some sign of them appeared
in every remote nook and corner in which a remnant of the first people
had taken refuge, the present order of things is established
completely. There are now in the world individualities of three
distinct sets and orders. First, that small number of the first people
whose minds had never changed, those gods who withdrew and who live in
their original integrity and harmony, who retired to places outside
the sky or above it; second, the great majority of the gods, who have
become everything in the present world save and except only Indians.
This cycle finished, there is a new point of departure, and we meet a
second group of myths concerning the existent world as it is now with
its happenings,--myths containing accounts of conflicts which are ever
recurrent, which began before all the first people were metamorphosed,
conflicts which are going on at present and which will go on forever;
struggles between light and darkness, heat and cold, summer and
winter, struggles between winds which blow in opposite directions,--in
fact, accounts of various phenomena and processes which attract the
attention of savage men more than others because savage men are living
face to face with them always.
This second group contains a large number of myths, many of them
exceedingly beautiful and, so far as they are known, highly pleasing
to cultivated people. Unfortunately few of these myths have been given
to the world yet, for the sole and simple reason that comparatively
few have been collected from the Indians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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