American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent. Brinton Daniel Garrison
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chitona oudeis apechaluphen on ego charpon etechan, aelios egeneto.)]" Proclus, quoted by Tiele, ubi suprá, p. 204, note.]
CHAPTER II.
THE HERO-GODS OF THE ALGONKINS AND IROQUOIS
§1. The Algonkin Myth of Michabo.
THE MYTH OF THE GIANT RABBIT–THE RABBIT CREATES THE WORLD–HE MARRIES THE MUSKRAT–BECOMES THE ALL-FATHER–DERIVATION OF MICHABO–OF WAJASHK, THE MUSKRAT–THE MYTH EXPLAINED–THE LIGHT-GOD AS GOD OF THE EAST–THE FOUR DIVINE BROTHERS–MYTH OF THE HUAROCHIRIS–THE DAY-MAKERS–MICHABO'S CONTESTS WITH HIS FATHER AND BROTHER–EXPLANATION OF THESE–THE SYMBOLIC FLINT STONE–MICHABO DESTROYS THE SERPENT KING–MEANING OF THIS MYTH–RELATIONS OF THE LIGHT-GOD AND WIND-GOD–MICHABO AS GOD OF WATERS AND FERTILITY–REPRESENTED AS A BEARDED MAN.
§2. The Iroquois Myth of Ioskeha.
THE CREATION OF THE EARTH–THE MIRACULOUS BIRTH OF IOSKEHA–HE OVERCOMES HIS BROTHER, TAWISCARA–CREATES AND TEACHES MANKIND–VISITS HIS PEOPLE–HIS GRANDMOTHER, ATAENSIC–IOSKEHA AS FATHER OF HIS MOTHER–SIMILAR CONCEPTIONS IN EGYPTIAN MYTHS–DERIVATION OF IOSKEHA AND ATAENSIC–IOSKEHA AS THARONHIAWAKON, THE SKY SUPPORTER–HIS BROTHER TAWISCARA OR TEHOTENNHIARON IDENTIFIED–SIMILARITY TO ALGONKIN MYTHS.
Nearly all that vast area which lies between Hudson Bay and the Savannah river, and the Mississippi river and the Atlantic coast, was peopled at the epoch of the discovery by the members of two linguistic families–the Algonkins and the Iroquois. They were on about the same plane of culture, but differed much in temperament and radically in language. Yet their religious notions were not dissimilar.
§1. The Algonkin Myth of Michabo.
Among all the Algonkin tribes whose myths have been preserved we find much is said about a certain Giant Rabbit, to whom all sorts of powers were attributed. He was the master of all animals; he was the teacher who first instructed men in the arts of fishing and hunting; he imparted to the Algonkins the mysteries of their religious rites; he taught them picture writing and the interpretation of dreams; nay, far more than that, he was the original ancestor, not only of their nation, but of the whole race of man, and, in fact, was none other than the primal Creator himself, who fashioned the earth and gave life to all that thereon is.
Hearing all this said about such an ignoble and weak animal as the rabbit, no wonder that the early missionaries and travelers spoke of such fables with undisguised contempt, and never mentioned them without excuses for putting on record trivialities so utter.
Yet it appears to me that under these seemingly weak stories lay a profound truth, the appreciation of which was lost in great measure to the natives themselves, but which can be shown to have been in its origin a noble myth, setting forth in not unworthy images the ceaseless and mighty rhythm of nature in the alternations of day and night, summer and winter, storm and sunshine.
I shall quote a few of these stories as told by early authorities, not adding anything to relieve their crude simplicity, and then I will see whether, when submitted to the test of linguistic analysis, this unpromising ore does not yield the pure gold of genuine mythology.
The beginning of things, according to the Ottawas and other northern Algonkins, was at a period when boundless waters covered the face of the earth. On this infinite ocean floated a raft, upon which were many species of animals, the captain and chief of whom was Michabo, the Giant Rabbit. They ardently desired land on which to live, so this mighty rabbit ordered the beaver to dive and bring him up ever so little a piece of mud. The beaver obeyed, and remained down long, even so that he came up utterly exhausted, but reported that he had not reached bottom. Then the Rabbit sent down the otter, but he also returned nearly dead and without success. Great was the disappointment of the company on the raft, for what better divers had they than the beaver and the otter?
In the midst of their distress the (female) muskrat came forward and announced her willingness to make the attempt. Her proposal was received with derision, but as poor help is better than none in an emergency, the Rabbit gave her permission, and down she dived. She too remained long, very long, a whole day and night, and they gave her up for lost. But at length she floated to the surface, unconscious, her belly up, as if dead. They hastily hauled her on the raft and examined her paws one by one. In the last one of the four they found a small speck of mud. Victory! That was all that was needed. The muskrat was soon restored, and the Giant Rabbit, exerting his creative power, moulded the little fragment of soil, and as he moulded it, it grew and grew, into an island, into a mountain, into a country, into this great earth that we all dwell upon. As it grew the Rabbit walked round and round it, to see how big it was; and the story added that he is not yet satisfied; still he continues his journey and his labor, walking forever around and around the earth and ever increasing it more and more.
The animals on the raft soon found homes on the new earth. But it had yet to be covered with forests, and men were not born. The Giant Rabbit formed the trees by shooting his arrows into the soil, which became tree trunks, and, transfixing them with other arrows, these became branches; and as for men, some said he formed them from the dead bodies of certain animals, which in time became the "totems" of the Algonkin tribes; but another and probably an older and truer story was that he married the muskrat which had been of such service to him, and from this union were born the ancestors of the various races of mankind which people the earth.
Nor did he neglect the children he had thus brought into the world of his creation. Having closely studied how the spider spreads her web to catch flies, he invented the art of knitting nets for fish, and taught it to his descendants; the pieces of native copper found along the shores of Lake Superior he took from his treasure house inside the earth, where he sometimes lives. It is he who is the Master of Life, and if he appears in a dream to a person in danger, it is a certain sign of a lucky escape. He confers fortune in the chase, and therefore the hunters invoke him, and offer him tobacco and other dainties, placing them in the clefts of rocks or on isolated boulders. Though called the Giant Rabbit, he is always referred to as a man, a giant or demigod perhaps, but distinctly as of human nature, the mighty father or elder brother of the race.[1]
Such is the national myth of creation of the Algonkin tribes, as it has been handed down to us in fragments by those who first heard it. Has it any meaning? Is it more than the puerile fable of savages?
Let us see whether some of those unconscious tricks of speech to which I referred in the introductory chapter have not disfigured a true nature myth. Perhaps those common processes of language, personification and otosis, duly taken into account, will enable us to restore this narrative to its original sense.
In the Algonkin tongue the word for Giant Rabbit is Missabos, compounded from mitchi or missi, great, large, and wabos, a rabbit. But there is a whole class of related words, referring to widely different perceptions, which sound very much like wabos. They are from a general root wab, which goes to form such words of related signification as wabi, he sees, waban, the east, the Orient, wabish, white, bidaban (bid-waban), the dawn, wában, daylight, wasseia, the light, and many others. Here is where we are to look for the real meaning of the name Missabos. It originally meant the Great Light, the Mighty Seer, the Orient, the Dawn–which you please, as all distinctly refer to the one original idea, the Bringer of Light and Sight, of knowledge and life. In time this meaning became obscured, and the idea of the rabbit, whose name was drawn probably from the same root, as in the northern winters its fur becomes white, was substituted, and so the myth of light degenerated into an animal fable.
I believe that a similar analysis will explain the part which the muskrat plays in the story. She it is who brings up the speck of mud from the bottom of the primal ocean, and from this speck the world is formed by him whom we now see was the Lord of the Light and the Day, and subsequently she becomes the mother of his sons. The word for muskrat in Algonkin is wajashk, the first letter of which often suffers elision, as in nin nod-ajashkwe, I hunt muskrats. But this is almost the word for mud, wet earth, soil, ajishki. There is no reasonable doubt but that here again otosis and personification