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
Among other information as to the gods of the natives, Strachey quotes
the remarks of a certain Indian: "We have five gods in all; our chief
god appears often unto us in the likeness of a mighty great hare; the
other four have no visible shape, but are indeed the four wynds". An
Indian, after hearing from the English the Biblical account of the
creation, explained that "our god, who takes upon him the shape of a
hare,... at length devised and made divers men and women". He also drove
away the cannibal Manitous. "That godlike hare made the water and the
fish and a great deare." The other four gods, in envy, killed the
hare's deer. This is curiously like the Bushman myth of Cagn, the mantis
insect, and his favourite eland. "The godly hare's house" is at the
place of sun-rising; there the souls of good Indians "feed on delicious
fruits with that great hare," who is clearly, so far, the Virginian
Osiris.* Dr. Brinton has written at some length on "this chimerical
beast," whose myth prevails, he says, "from the remotest wilds of the
North-west to the coast of the Atlantic, from the southern boundary
of Carolina to the cheerless swamps of Hudson's Bay.... The totem"
(totem-kindred probably is meant) "clan which bore his name was looked
up to with peculiar respect." From this it would appear that the hare
was a totem like another, and had the same origin, whatever that may
have been. According to the Pere Allouez, the Indians "ont en veneration
toute particuliere, une certaine beste chimerique, qu'ils n'ont jamais
veue sinon en songe, ils Tappelient Missibizi," which appears to be a
form of Michabo and Mani-bozho.**
* _History of Travaile_, pp. 98, 99. This hare we have
alluded to in vol. i. p. 184, but it seems worth while again
to examine Dr. Brinton's theory more closely.
** Relations, 1637, p. 13
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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