Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
The Koniagas have their ancestral bird and dog, demiurges, makers of
sea, rivers, hills, yet subject to "a great deity called Schljam Schoa,"
of whom they are the messengers and agents.** The Aleuts have their
primeval dog-hero, and also a great old man, who made people, like
Deucalion, and as in the Macusi myth, by throwing stones over his
shoulder.***
* Bancroft, iii. 100-102 [Holmberg, Eth. Skiz., p. 61].
** Ibid., 104, quoting Dall's Alaska, p. 405, and
Lisiansky's Voyage, pp. 197, 198.
*** Brett's Indians qf Guiana, p. 384.
Concerning the primal mythical beings of the great hunter and warrior
tribes of America, Algonkins, Hurons and Iroquois, something has already
been said in the chapter on "Myths of the Origin of Things".
It is the peculiarity of such heroes or gods of myth as the opposing Red
Indian good and evil deities that they take little part in the affairs
of the world when once these have been started.* Ioskeha and Tawiscara,
the good and bad primeval brothers, have had their wars, and are now, in
the opinion of some, the sun and the moon.** The benefits of Ioskeha
to mankind are mainly in the past; as, for example, when, like another
Indra, he slew the great frog that had swallowed the waters, and gave
them free course over earth.***
* Erminie Smith, in _Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, 1880-
81, publishes a full, but not very systematic, account of
Iroquois gods of to-day. Thunder, the wind, and echo are the
chief divine figures. The Titans or Jotuns, the opposed
supernatural powers, are giants of stone. "Among the most
ancient of the deities were their most remote ancestors,
certain animals who later were transformed into human
shapes, the name of the animals being preserved by their
descendants, who have used them to designate their gentes or
clans." The Iroquois have a strange and very touching
version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (op. cit., p.
104). It appears to be native and unborrowed; all the
details are pure Iroquois.
** Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, p. 102.
*** Ibid. i. p. 108.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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