The myths embodied in the earlier portion of the WALAM OLUM are perfectly familiar to one acquainted with Algonkin mythology. They are not of foreign origin, but are wholly within the cycle of the most ancient legends of that stock. Although they are not found elsewhere in the precise form here presented, all the figures and all the leading incidents recur in the native tales picked up by the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, and by Schoolcraft, McKinney, Tanner and others in later days. In an earlier chapter I have collected the imperfect fragments of these which we hear of among the Delawares, and these are sufficient to show that they had substantially the same mythology as their western relatives. The cosmogony describes the formation of the world by the Great Manito, and its subsequent despoliation by the spirit of the waters, under the form of a serpent. The happy days are depicted, when men lived without wars or sickness, and food was at all times abundant. Evil beings, of mysterious power, introduced cold and war and sickness and premature death. Then began strife and long wanderings. However similar this general outline may be to European and Oriental myths, it is neither derived originally from them, nor was it acquired later by missionary influence. This similarity is due wholly to the identity of psychological action, the same ideas and fancies arising from similar impressions in New as well as Old World tribes. No sound ethnologist, no thorough student in comparative mythology, would seek to maintain a genealogical relation of cultures on the strength of such identities. They are proofs of the oneness of the human mind, and nothing more. As to the historical portion of the document, it must be judged by such corroborative evidence as we can glean from other sources. I have quoted, in an earlier chapter, sufficient testimony to show that the Lenape had traditions similar to these, extending back for centuries, or at least believed by their narrators to reach that far. What trust can be reposed in them is for the archaeologist to judge. Authentic history tells us nothing about the migrations of the Lenape before we find them in the valley of the Delaware. There is no positive evidence that they arrived there from the west; still less concerning their earlier wanderings. Were I to reconstruct their ancient history from the WALAM OLUM, as I understand it, the result would read as follows:--