390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



both the sun and the moon are regarded as masculine. When the 

 sexes differ, the sun and moon are usually considered as man and wife, 

 and the Tlingit of the Northwest Coast explain the sun's eclipse as due 

 to a visit of the wife to her husband. In a myth, which curiously 

 enough is common among the Eskimo and the Cherokee and also occurs 

 in South America, the sun and moon are brother and sister, guilty of 

 incest. 



In the Southwest and parts of the Pacific Coast of North America 

 the sun and moon are conceived as material objects borne across the 

 sky by carriers, and the yearly variations of the sun's path are ex- 

 plained by mechanical means — poles by which the sun bearer ascends 

 to a sky bridge which he crosses and which is as broad as the ecliptic. 



Though the sun is so generally regarded a great deity, he is seldom 

 supreme, since almost invariably both the sun and moon are created 

 beings who appear after man has already been accounted for, thus 

 requiring the native theologian to account for a higher and more 

 abstract being who created them. 



Myths that concern the sun vary in detail not only among the differ- 

 ent tribes, but often with individuals from the same tribe who recount 

 them. Nevertheless these stories fall into several definite patterns, 

 some of which are of remarkably wide distribution. In some instances 

 even minor details are preserved in a myth which may extend to both 

 American continents. Some of the more important of these are : 



1. The almost universal North American tale of the hero or 

 heroic brothers, usually twins, whose father is the sun. 



2. The Phaethon myth, common in the Northwest, in which the 

 mink is permitted to carry the sun disk and, as a consequence, 

 causes a great conflagration. 



3. The related legend of the creation of the sun, which, until 

 it is properly elevated to a safe distance above the earth, over- 

 heats the world. 



4. Tales of the theft of the sun, which are variants of the 

 world-wide Promethean story of the theft of fire. 



By way of illustrating the nature of these tales I will give a few 

 which are typical of the patterns I have mentioned. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE SUN AND MOON 



Practically all the Californian peoples who discussed the origin 

 of the sun and moon regarded them as something which was obtained 

 or made only after man himself had come into existence on earth. 

 They did not think of the sun as a primeval object, existing from the 

 very beginning. In central California the presence of the sun was 

 usually accounted for by a theft story, the sun being possessed by 



