POWELL. ] THE COURSE OF EVOLUTION. 39 
region stretching back from the great Gulf, are known; some collected 
by travelers, others by educated Indians. 
Many of the myths of the Iroquois are known. ‘The best of these are 
in the writings of Morgan, America’s greatest anthropologist. Mission- 
aries, travelers, and linguists have given us a great store of the myths 
of the Dakotan stock. Many myths of the Tinnéan also have been col- 
lected. Petitot has recorded a number of those found at the north, 
and we have in manuscript some of the myths of a southern branch— 
the Navajos. Perhaps the myths of the Shoshonians have been col- 
lected more thoroughly than those of any other stock. These are yet 
unpublished, but the manuscripts are in the library of the Bureau of 
Ethnology. Powers has recorded many of the myths of various stocks 
in California, and the old Spanish writings give us a fair collection of 
the Nahuatlan myths of Mexico, and Rink has presented an interesting 
volume on the mythology of the Innuits; and, finally, fragments of 
mythology have been collected from nearly all the tribes of North Amer- 
ica, and they are scattered through thousands of volumes, so that the 
literature is vast. The brief description which [shall give of zodtheism 
is founded on a study of the materials which I have thus indicated. 
All these tribes are found in the higher stages of savagery, or the 
lower stages of barbarism, and their mythologies are found to be 
zootheistic among the lowest, physitheistic among the highest, and a 
great number of tribes are found in a transition state: for zodtheism is 
found to be a characteristic of savagery, and physitheism of barbarism, 
using the terms as they have been defined by Morgan. The supreme 
gods of this stage are animals. The savage is intimately associated 
with animals. From them he obtains the larger part of his clothing, 
and much of his food, and he carefully studies their habits and finds 
many wonderful things. Their knowledge and skill and power appear 
to him to be superior to his own. He sees the mountain-sheep fleet 
among the crags, the eagle soaring in the heavens, the humming-bird 
poised over its blossom-cup of nectar, the serpents swift without legs, the 
salmon scaling the rapids, the spider weaving its gossamer web, the ant 
building a play-house mountain—in all animal nature he sees things too 
wonderful for him, and from admiration he grows to adoration, and the 
animals become his gods. 
Ancientism plays an important part in this zodtheism. It is not the 
animals of to-day whom the Indians worship, but their progenitors— 
their prototypes. The wolf of to-day is a howling pest, but that wolf’s 
ancestor—the first of the line—was a god. The individuals of every 
species are supposed to have descended from an ancient being—a pro- 
genitor of the race; and so they have a grizzly-bear god, an eagle-god, 
a rattlesnake-god, a trout-god, a spider-god—a god for every species and 
variety of animal. 
By these animal gods all things were established. The heavenly 
bodies were created and their ways appointed, and when the powers and 
