Mondamin is the maize: a god, who is eaten, arising from Hiawatha’s introversion. His hunger, taken in a double sense, his longing for the nourishing mother, gives birth from his soul to another hero, the edible maize, the son of the earth mother. Therefore, he again arises at sunset, symbolizing the entrance into the mother, and in the western sunset glow he begins again the mystic struggle with the self-created god, the god who has originated entirely from the longing for the nourishing mother. The struggle is again the struggle for liberation from this destructive and yet productive longing. Mondamin is, therefore, equivalent to the mother, and the struggle with him means the overpowering and impregnation of the mother. This interpretation is entirely proven by a myth of the Cherokees, “who invoke it (the maize) under the name of ‘The Old Woman,’ in allusion to a myth that it sprang from the blood of an old woman killed by her disobedient sons”:[654] “Faint with famine, Hiawatha Started from his bed of branches, From the twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre.” The battle at sunset with the god of the maize gives Hiawatha new strength; and thus it must be, because the fight for the individual depths, against the paralyzing longing for the mother, gives creative strength to men. Here, indeed, is the source of all creation, but it demands heroic courage to fight against these forces and to wrest from them the “treasure difficult to attain.” He who succeeds in this has, in truth, attained the best. Hiawatha wrestles with himself for his creation.[655] The struggle lasts again the charmed three days. The fourth day, just as Mondamin prophesied, Hiawatha conquers him, and Mondamin sinks to the ground in death. As Mondamin previously desired, Hiawatha digs his grave in mother earth, and soon afterwards from this grave the young and fresh maize grows for the nourishment of mankind.