GATSCHET KAS. LEG. — COMMENTARY. [59] 27 



The Kasi'hta chief is, in Chief Chicote's opinion, called O'sta, 

 or foiir^ because he was then considered as representing the 

 four leading towns of the confederacy: Kawita, Kasi/ta, Abi/ka, 

 Tukaba/tchi. 



"The P1\kth opened in the Wkst, where its mouth is." 

 The issuing of the Kasi'hta people from the ground should not 

 be viewed as a birth-act of the Earth, the common mother of all 

 mankind. It is the ascent of man from a lower into the upper 

 world. Of these worlds, or successive places of human existence 

 there are four, five, or even more, in the different mythologic sys- 

 tems of the American Indians, the one mentioned here being the 

 last or present world, with all its sorrows and joys. Some old 

 Creeks are still acquainted with a superstition parallel to this : 

 When their people move west again, they will disappear in a place 

 called "the navel of the Earth." This is the name given by the 

 Chicasa to a certain mound in their old seats ; they believed that 

 this mound, which was probably of a peculiar shape, was the na- 

 vel and only visible part of a giant stretched out under the earth's 

 surface — the giant being, of course, the Earth itself personified. 

 Many primitive nations believe that the shifting of a giant's un- 

 derground position is the cause of earthquakes. 



To compare this '' mouth of the Earth " with the numerous 

 places which the Greeks and Romans regarded as the entrances 

 to the inferi or nether regions (caves, lakes, ponds, etc.), or to 

 the orifice through which the sun reaches its nocturnal abode 

 every evening, would be wrong. The Nani Waya myth of the 

 Cha'hta gives us the correct explanation of the passage. 



"The Earth became anguy and ate up their oiiiLDPtEN." 

 The sense of this passage is rather mysterious, and it seems 

 strange that the ofl'spring of those who had just emerged from 

 mother Earth into a superior world should at once be destroyed 

 by the Eaith itself. This calamity has to be placed in connection 

 with the low or infectious springs of water mentioned below. 

 What induces me to explain the term eatiiig up by the ravages 

 as the consequence of epidemics, of typhus or i7ialarial fevers^ is 

 the following : the Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon 

 believe that the Earth is incensed at them, and threatens them 



