58 SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS [eth. ans. 32 



We have seen attoniiits iiiiule to show that real gnds have been flevelopod by 

 savage men from their own (le.ul savage chiefs. Such a thing has never been 

 done since the liiinian race began, and it could never have been imagined by any 

 man who knew the ideas of primitive races from actual experience or from com- 

 petent testimony. The most stril;ing thing in all savage belief is the low esti- 

 mate put on man when unaided l)y divine, uncreated power. In Indian belief 

 every object in the universe is divine except man.' . . . 



Vegetable gods, .so called, have been scoffed at b.v writers on niytlio!()gy. The 

 scoff is baseless, for the firs! iienijle were turned, or turned theni.selves, into 

 trees and various plants as frequently as into beasts ;ind other creatures. Maize 

 or Indian corn is a transformed god who gave himself to be eaten to save man 

 from hunger and death. When Spanish priests saw little cakes of meal eaten 

 ceremonially by Indians, and when the latter informed tlioni that they were 

 eating their god, the good priests thought this a diabolical mo-kery of the 

 Holy Sacrament, ;ind a blasphemous trick of Satan to rnin jioor ignorant 

 Indians. 



I have a myth in which the main character is a violent and cruel old person- 

 age who is merciless and faith-breaking, who does no end of damage till he is 

 cornered at last by a good hero and turned into the wild parsnip. Before 

 transformation this old parsnip could travel swiftly, but now ho must stay in 

 one place, and of course kills people only when they eat him. 



The treasure saved to science by the primitive race of America is unique in 

 value and high significance. The first result from it is to carry us back through 

 untold centuries to that epoch when man made the earliest collective and con- 

 si.stent explanation of this universe and its origin. 



Occupying t'lis vantage-ground, we can now tln-ow a flood of liglit on all those 

 mythologies and ethnic religions or s.ystems of thought from whicli arc lost in 

 part. gre:it or small, the materials needed to prove the foinidation and begin- 

 nings of each of them. In this condition are all ancient recorded religions, 

 whether of Greece. Rome. Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, or India.' 



Agiiin, in speaking of the first people, the ancients, or the man- 

 heings of the oldest myth, or rather cycle of myths, in America, Mr. 

 Curtin continues his exposition of the significance of these poetic 

 figures : 



.\fter they had lived on an indefinite period, they appear as a vast number 

 of groups, which form two camps, which may be called the good and tlie bad. 

 In the good camp are the persons who originate all the different kinds of 

 food, establish all institutions, arts, games, amusements, dances, and religious 

 ceremonies for the coming race. 



In the other camp are cunning, deceitful beings, ferocious and hungry man- 

 eaters — the harmful powers of every description. The heroes of the good 

 camp overcome these one after another by stratagem, sujierior skill, swiftness, 

 or the use of the all-powerful wish: but they are inniiortal. and. though over- 

 come, can not be destroyed. . . . 



When the present race of men (that is, Indians) appear on the scene, the 

 people of the previous order of affairs have vanished. One division, vast in 

 number, a part of the good and all the bad ones, have become the beasts, birds, 

 lishes, reptiles, insects, plants, stones, cold, heat, light, darkness, tire, rain, 

 snow, earthquake, sun, moon, stars — have become, in fact, every living thing, 

 object, agency, phenomenon, process, and power outside of man. Another 



' Curtin, Jeremiah, Creation Myths of Primitive America, pp. xxxvil-x.xxviii, Boston, 

 1898. 



- Il)i<l., pp. xxxviii-xxxix. 



