ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. i 95 



until all were satisfied ; and a similarly miraculous supply of food 

 to the starving multitude is reported by the same people. In the 

 genesis myth of the Tusayan, the culture-hero was enabled to pass 

 dry shod through lakes and rivers by throwing a staff upon the 

 waters, which were at once divided as by walls. 



Among the Ojibwa traditions there is a variant of the concep- 

 tion that man could not look upon the form of a divine being and 

 live. According to these traditions the divine beings were obliged 

 to wear veils, and when one of them unintentionally let his eyes 

 fall upon the form of a man the man fell dead as if struck by 

 lightning. 



The MideViwin rite was granted to the Ojibwa at a time of 

 great trouble, through the intercession of Minabozho, their uni- 

 versal uncle, and at the same time rules of life were given to them, 

 which are still represented in hieroglyphics on birch-bark. They 

 have a resemblance in motive to the Biblical legends and laws. 

 At the time of a great pestilence, which came " when the earth 

 was new/' the Ojibwa were saved by one of their number to whom 

 a spirit, in the shape of a serpent, revealed a root which to this 

 day they name the " snake-root," and songs and rites pertaining 

 to the serpent are incorporated in the Mide'wiwin. 



Mr. W. W. Warren, in his " History of the Ojibwa Nation," 

 tells that he sometimes translated parts of Bible history to the 

 old Ojibwa men, and their expression invariably was, " The book 

 must be true, for our ancestors have told us similar stories genera- 

 tion after generation since the earth was new." Only last year a 

 well-informed representative in Washington of the Muskoki an- 

 swered questions about the myths and legends of his people by 

 the simple remark : " They are all in the Old Testament. Read 

 them there, without the trouble of taking them down from our 

 people." 



Sociology. The golden age of the Israelites, as recorded in 

 the Old Testament according to modified tradition, was the age 

 ending with the Judges. The people lived in a state nearest to 

 their ideal under a supposed theocracy, which really was not in- 

 stituted until the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The exploits of 

 Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson are pictures of antiquity equal in 

 grandeur and like in import to those of the Homeric heroes. If 

 the Indians could have written about their own past, they would 

 have portrayed a similar golden age, which, indeed, is mirrored in 

 their traditions and myths. 



But it must always be borne in mind that the Indians were not 

 nomads, and were never in the true pastoral stage ; hence their 

 tales of the good old times were more archaic than those presented 

 to us in the Israelite records. 



Nomadic life requires the possession of either domesticated 



