Chapter IX 



THE SPIRITS OF THE BUSH 



Animals as Sentiext Human Beings 



Preliminary (ISOA). Fablea, Tales, and Legends (131-162D). 



130A. It is proposed to dovotc^ this chapter to a collection of 

 legends dealing with the many hoasts and birds met with in the 

 forest, interesting in that they are all represented as thinkmg, talking, 

 and acting as do sentient human beings. They are also believed to 

 possess Spkits just like those of human folk. At the same time we 

 must not be surprised to learn that the events and occurrences now 

 about to bo recorded are sup])osod to have taken place a long while 

 ago; but in those days, so the Akawais say, Makunainia made man 

 and animal all of one speech, advising them to live in unity, and judg- 

 ing by the legends here narrated the injunction seems to have been 

 fairly well oboyeil. To put tlu^ niattei' sliortW, these creatures with 

 human ideas were born so: they "growed." True it is that now and 

 again the fact of the human actor having an animal foi-m, or the 

 animal an anthropomorphic one, is explaiiied as being due to reasons 

 already stated, i. e., by way of punishment or pure devilment at the 

 instigation of the Spirit of some person departiul. It is also a firm 

 article of faith that the medicine-man, to whom nothmg is impossible, 

 can effect transformation of himself or others, similar to those pro- 

 duced by the Spiiits. In addition, there is a widespread Indian 

 belief that at every eclipse of the moon animals are metamorphosed — 

 a tapir may change bito a snake, a man ilito a beast, and vice versa. 

 And so even in the telling of these stories, the Indian expects his 

 hearers to take quite as a matter of couree — just in the same way 

 as he is firmly convinced himself — that animals and birds associate 

 with man; that they are aU of one and the same breed; that they 

 may equally live, eat, and drhik, loA'e, hate, and die. It is small 

 wonder then that the Indian folk-lore is so largely crammed with 

 this same idea of ilan and Animal (used in its widest sense) being 

 so intimately interchangeal)l(\ 



131. The Honey-bee Son-in-law (W) 



A man made up a little family party to accompany him ou a hunting expedition, 

 taking with him his two sons and a daughter ; he left his wife and the other two girls 

 at home. He took the party far out into the bush, where they constructed a banab 

 and rested themselves. Next day the girl told her father that she was not feeling 

 well, in other words, that it was not permissible for her to build the babracote, to do 



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