CHAPTER IV. 

 MYTHOLOGIC EXPIiANATIOK OF PHENOMENA. 



The iustinctive desire in man to fathom the mystery of human lile, to 

 solve the enigma of whence he came and whither he goes, and to ac- 

 count for the marvels ever presented to his senses, has in all times ex- 

 , cited the imagination and originated speculation. 



To explain the phenomena of life and nature the untutored mind has 

 seized upon every analogy suggesting the slightest clew, and imagina- 

 tion has aided the crude reasoning faculties. 



In the numerous Iroquois myths relating to the origin of both ani- 

 mate and inanimate objects in nature there appears a reflex of the 

 Indian's mind as he solves, to his entire satisfaction, mysteries, many of 

 which are the " burning questions" of this enlightened age. 



These tales only vary with the temperament of the narrator or the 

 exigencies of the locality. Where oft repeated they have in time been 

 recorded on the hearts and min<ls of the people either as myths or folk- 

 lore, embodying the fossilized knowledge and ideas of a previous age, 

 misinterpreted, perhaps, by those who have inherited them. 



For the ethnologist who would trace in mythology the growth of the 

 human mind, nowhere is the harvest more rich than among the abor- 

 igines of our own country; and prominent among these, in this lore 

 of "faded metaphors", are the Iroquois. To what dignity their folk- 

 lore might have attained had they been left to reach a lettered civil- 

 ization for themselves we cannot know; but, judging from the history of 

 other peoples, their first chroniclers would have accepted many of these 

 oral traditions as facts. 



To many from whom the writer received these myths they were reali- 

 ties, for there remain among these forest children those who still cling 

 to their oft-told tales as the only link binding them to a happier past. 

 Nor should they be considered as idle tales by the civilized man, who 

 has not yet rid himself of the shackles of superstition in a thousand 

 forms, and who sees daily his household gods torn down before him 

 by comparative mythology and its allied sciences. Let him rather 

 accept them reverently as the striving of the infant human mind in its 

 search after the unknowable, revealing that inherent something in man 

 which presupposes the existence of hidden forces, powers, or beings in 

 nature. At first, perhaps, this is a mere blind feeling, but as man de- 

 velops, it becomes an idea, then a recognized possibility; later, an ar- 

 ticle of religious faith. 



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