trooker] ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE HURON 145 



ground that they contained only venomous reptiles. After eating the 

 second coui"se, the men tried to bend the rolled bow, but none suc- 

 ceeded in doing it except the young man m whose behalf the journey 

 had been undertaken. He received it as a gift from his host, who 

 then invited him to take a sweat bath with him. After they had come 

 from the sweat house, the host turned one of the companions into a 

 pine tree. From there, they went to the village of souls. Only three 

 returned alive, but frightened, to the house of their host. He en- 

 couraged them to return home with the help of a little meal of the 

 kind that souls eat. He told them that on the way home they would 

 pass through woods where deer, bears, and moose were as common as 

 leaves on the trees and, as they had been provided with the marvelous 

 bow, they had nothing to fear and would have successful hunting. 

 Wlien they reached their own village, there was much rejoicing ( JR 

 10: 153-155). 



CREATION MYTHS ^i 



Some said that in the beginning the earth was entirely covered with 

 water except for a little island on which lived one man and two com- 

 panions: a fox {tessandion) and a little animal like a marten, which 

 the Indians called tsouhendaia. The man sent Fox to plunge into the 

 water to see if there Avas a bottom to it. But Fox, having wet his 

 paws, drew back afraid to risk his life. The man, indignant, kicked 

 him into the water where the animal drowned. The man then encour- 

 aged tsouhendaia to plunge in. This animal did not imagine that 

 the water was so shallow and dived so violently against the bottom 

 that he came back with his snout covered with slime. The man, 

 pleased at this discovery, exhorted the animal to continue bringing up 

 soil, a task that he performed so assiduously that he made the earth 

 as we see it ( JR 10 : 131-133) . 



. Another myth concerned the goddess Aataentsic (JR 10: 127) 

 \_AtaentsiG (JR 10: 127; 14: 9), Eataentsic (JR 8: 117-119, 147), 

 Ataensiq (S 169, 172)] who fell from the sky. She made earth and 

 men. In the sky, people lived as on earth in a land like earth, with 

 woods, lakes, rivers, and fields. There was some disagreement among 

 the Huron as to the cause of Aataentsic'' s fall from the sky world. 

 Some said that as she was working in her field, she saw a bear. Her 

 dog began to pursue it and she followed him. The bear fell by accident 

 into a hole and the dog followed him. Aataentsic approached this 

 hole and seeing neither bear nor dog flung herself down it. When she 

 fell, she was pregnant. After this, the waters dried up little by little 

 and the earth appeared and became habitable (JR 8: 117-119, 147; 

 10:127). 



" See Appendix 2 : The Iroauoian Origin Myth Cycle, p. 151. 



