hewi'tt] introduction 63 



sagas the personifications of the elements and forces of nature are 

 chissified as human bj' the use of the term on'gwe, " a human 

 being or mankind" (for the M'ord has both a singuhir and a plural 

 signification), to designate them. 



The task of classifying these narratives, even tentatively, is not an 

 easy one, for the proportion of these stories which seem to be unques- 

 tionably fiction to those which are myths :-nd legends is relatively 

 much larger than might be suspected without some investigation. It 

 is clearly wrong to call everytlung legend or myth when the evidence 

 from the facts seems to forbid such action. For it is evident that 

 ver}^ many of the narratives are fiction — .stories composed and related 

 to amuse, to mystify, or to glorify some hero, or perhaps to spread 

 the fame of some noted .sorcerer and his fetishes. 



The setting and the framework of the narrative or story may be 

 taken from a myth and one or more mj'th episodes incorporated in it. 

 but the result is a fabrication because it does not rest on facts of 

 human experience. 



Now, for example, the narratives concerning the so-called Stone 

 Coats. Stone Giants, or the Genonsgwa are not myths but legends. 

 These beings do not figure in the Creation Myth of the Iroquois, but 

 are a brood of beings whose connection with Stone is due to false 

 etymology of a proper name in a myth.^ This is an interesting and 

 instructive example of forgotten derivations of words and names 

 .•ind the resultant new conceptions. 



In the Genesis myth of the Iroquoian peoples the Winter Season. 

 by personification, was placed in the class of man-beings with the 

 name, " He-who-is-clad-in-ice," or " He-who-is-ice-clad." Now it so 

 happens that the word for ice and for chert or flint stone is derived 

 from a common stem whose fundamental meaning is " glare," " crys- 

 tal," or " what is ice-like." But the myth-tellers, in order to add an 

 air of the mystical to their recital, did not fail to play on the double 

 meaning of the word for ice, and so represented the Winter Man- 

 being as "The Flint-clad JMan-being" rather than as "The Ice-clad 

 Man-being." And the results of Winter's cold and frost wei'e told in 

 terms of flint or chert stone, and so bergs and cakes and blocks of 

 ice became in the narration objects of flint and chert stone. Winter's 

 cold is conveyed from place to place by means of cakes and l)ergs 

 of ice, which are transformed by the poet into canoes of flint or stone. 

 And in time the stone canoe is transferi'ed from myth to the realm of 

 fiction and legend to glorify the fame of some human hero. 



And in the thinking of the Iroquois the Flint-clad Man-being 

 became separated and distinct from the Man-being of the AVinter. 



■ Kor nn px'cndod otvmolot'ic dcinonstrntion of the facts stated in the text, consult 

 articles Tnwiskaron nnd Nanaiozho by the editor in the Bandbooli of American Indians 

 (Bulletin .10 of the Iliniuu of American Kthnoloijy). 



