Darwin and Modern ScienceSeward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Philosophy
Darwin and Modern Science
Seward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology); Science -- History
page 128.) The Osage Indians universally believed that they
were descended from a male snail and a female beaver. A flood swept the
snail down to the Missouri and left him high and dry on the bank, where
the sun ripened him into a man. He met and married a beaver maid, and
from the pair the tribe of the Osages is descended. For a long time
these Indians retained a pious reverence for their animal ancestors and
refrained from hunting beavers, because in killing a beaver they killed
a brother of the Osages. But when white men came among them and offered
high prices for beaver skins, the Osages yielded to the temptation and
took the lives of their furry brethren. (Lewis and Clarke, "Travels to
the Source of the Missouri River" (London, 1815), I. 12 (Vol. I. pages
44 sq. of the London reprint, 1905).) The Carp clan of the Ootawak
Indians are descended from the eggs of a carp which had been deposited
by the fish on the banks of a stream and warmed by the sun. ("Lettres
Edifiantes et Curieuses", Nouvelle Edition, VI. (Paris, 1781), page
171.) The Crane clan of the Ojibways are sprung originally from a pair
of cranes, which after long wanderings settled on the rapids at the
outlet of Lake Superior, where they were changed by the Great Spirit
into a man and woman. (L.H. Morgan, "Ancient Society" (London, 1877),
page 180.) The members of two Omaha clans were originally buffaloes and
lived, oddly enough, under water, which they splashed about, making it
muddy. And at death all the members of these clans went back to their
ancestors the buffaloes. So when one of them lay adying, his friends
used to wrap him up in a buffalo skin with the hair outside and say to
him, "You came hither from the animals and you are going back thither.
Do not face this way again. When you go, continue walking. (J. Owen
Dorsey, "Omaha Sociology", "Third Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology" (Washington, 1884), pages 229, 233.) The Haida Indians of
Queen Charlotte Islands believe that long ago the raven, who is the
chief figure in the mythology of North-West America, took a cockle from
the beach and married it; the cockle gave birth to a female child, whom
the raven took to wife, and from their union the Indians were produced.
(G.M. Dawson, "Report on the Queen Charlotte Islands" (Montreal,
1880), pages 149B sq. ("Geological Survey of Canada"); F. Poole,
"Queen Charlotte Islands", page 136.) The Delaware Indians called the
rattle-snake their grandfather and would on no account destroy one of
these reptiles, believing that were they to do so the whole race of
rattle-snakes would rise up and bite them. Under the influence of the
white man, however, their respect for their grandfather the rattle-snake
gradually died away, till at last they killed him without compunction
or ceremony whenever they met him. The writer who records the old custom
observes that he had often reflected on the curious connection which
appears to subsist in the mind of an Indian between man and the brute
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