Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



the soul of Herakles, according to the much 

 later legend in its Greek form, rose from his 

 funeral pyre to join the gods of Olympus. 



Our own red Indians were not behind the 

 primitive Europeans and Asiatics in their 

 reverence for the eagle, as any picture of a 

 chief with eagles' feathers in his hair will 

 testify. A deluge myth of the Dakotah 

 Indians explains the origin of the red pipe- 

 stone in the Minnesota quarries, a region 

 sacred among red men, where the seekers after 

 pipe-stone laid aside their weapons. When 

 the waters rose, a mass of Indians who had fled 

 to a hilltop were overwhelmed and perished on 

 the spot ; it is their fossil flesh which gives the 

 pipe-stone its dark-red hue. But one woman 

 escaped. A great eagle, who was really her 

 father, swooped down before her and she 

 seized his foot, so that by his aid she reached 

 a lofty mountain. From the twins she bore 

 descend all the red men now on earth. 



Thus in the earliest myths of Greece, as in 

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