134 IROQUOIAN COSMOLOGY 



when encountei'ed appear enigmatic and quaint, and are not under- 

 stood by the uninformed. The relators themselves often do not know 

 the signitication of the terms they employ. The author has attempted, 

 where it appeared needful, to reduce evident metaphors to statements 

 of concrete things which gave rise originally to the figures of speech. 



The attempts of a primitive people to give in the form of a narrative 

 the origins and to expound the causes of things, the sum of which 

 constitutes their philosophy, assume in time the form of cosmologic 

 legends or myths. In these legends are stored the combined wisdom 

 and speculations of their wise men. their ancients, their prophets, and 

 their soothsayers. 



By primitive man all motions and activities were interpreted as mani- 

 festations of life and will. Things animate and things inanimate were 

 comprised in one heterogeneous class, sharing a common nature. All 

 things, therefore, were thought to have life and to exercise will, 

 whose behests were accomplished through orenda — that is, through 

 magic power, reputed to be inherent in all things. Thus, all phe- 

 nomena, all states, all changes, and all activity were interpreted as 

 the results of the exercise of magic power directed by some control- 

 ling mind. The various beings and bodies and operations of environ- 

 ing nature were interpreted strictly in terms of the subjective self. 

 Into the known world self was projected. The wind was the breath 

 of some person. The lightning was the winking of some person's 

 eyes. The generative or reproductive power in nature was personi- 

 fied, and life and growth were in the fostering care of this personage. 



Upon the concepts evolved from their impressions of things and 

 from their experience with the bodies of their environment rest the 

 authority for men's doctrines and the reasons for their rites and cere- 

 monies. Hence arises the great importance of recording, translating, 

 and interpreting from the vernacular the legends constituting the 

 cosmology of peoples still largely dominated by the thoughts peculiar 

 to the cultural stage of imputative and self-centered reasoning. The 

 great difhculty of accurately defining and interpreting the ideas of 

 primitive man without a deep and detailed stud}- and a close transla- 

 tion of the words embodying these ideas I'enders it imperative for 

 their correct apprehension that they be carefully recorded in the 

 vernacular, and that there be made not only a free but also a litei'al 

 rendering of the record, in such wise that the highly subjective 

 thought of barbaric man may be cast, so far as is possible, into the 

 more objective phraseology of science and enlightenment. By this 

 means it is possible to obtain a juster and more accurate comprehen- 

 sion and interpretation of the thoughts and conceptions underlying 

 and interwoven with the cosmologic and other legends of primitive 

 man than that obtained by the ordinary method of recording only a 

 free and popular version of them. 



