336 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL VI. 
Morning,” who seems to have been “the chief of all the (benevolent and) 
beneficent gods,” the creator of all things, and the general culture-hero 
of the race. 
In the creation-myths of the Zuni Indians we meet with Pazyatuma, 
“the God of Dew,” at whose touch the all-nourishing corn received its 
form and proportion (Cushing, Z. C.; p. 393), and “an ancient people of 
the Dew,” who are termed “ Drinkers of the Dew of Grasses,” because, in 
their long search for water they “drank dew from their father 
(Paiyatuma), like deer on the mountain” (p. 398). Very poetic indeed 
is the concept of the Dew-God “touching the plants with the refreshing 
breath of his flute” (p. 395), as he came at dawn from the East-land. It 
was Paiyatuma who taught the Zunis “the customs and song of the 
planting (of corn),” and when his work was accomplished he disappeared 
from the sight of men in “the gray mists of the morning” (p. 447). Such 
thorough-going recognition of the power and function of dew is most 
remarkable. : 
The health-giving, health-restoring properties of morning dew were 
known to primitive peoples ages before Father Kneipp’s brigades of 
barefoot enthusiasts trod the grass at sunrise in the city parks. Among 
savage and barbarous races the first and most efficacious lustration of 
the new-born child is often its bath of morning dew, and in peasant 
Europe “going to meet the dew” is one of the last of the old May-Day 
observances to survive, the belief having not yet died out entirely that 
“washing the face in May-dew,” will render one beautiful all the year 
round. The use of dew as “holy water,” Dr. Brinton points out, was in 
vogue among the Mayas, the sacred objects in the temple and the wor- 
shippers being sprinkled with “dew gathered at dawn from the leaves.” 
(Wyths of New World, p. 148.) 
As an example of the way in which primitive peoples carry out 
curious lines of thought to unexpected conclusions, we might cite the 
word ¢chitchtok, in the language of the Klamath Indians of Oregon, 
“curly-haired,”’ because the ringlets “ recall the round shape of the dew- 
drops.” In certain primitive tongues (e,g., Yoruba, zz, “dew, mist”) the 
same word signifies at once “dew azd mist,” and this suggests one of the 
earliest forms of the nebular hypothesis in the cosmologies of the lower 
races. According to a myth of the Apache Indians, recorded by Capt. 
J. G. Bourke (Journ. of Amer. Folk-Lore, I11., p. 109), after the world 
had been created by the elemental gods, Ika-esh-kin, “the Child of the 
Dawn,” came and “threw out water upon the world; it became a fog, 
and, descending upon the land, made all to grow, and fruits, trees, etc, 
came forth in the four quarters of the earth.” Mist, haze and fog play 
