HEWITT] INTRODUCTION 135 



A fact of great importance made evident in these texts is that 

 anthropic persons, called man-beings in the accompan3'ing translations, 

 were, in Iroquoian thought, the primal beings. They were the first to 

 exercise the functions and to experience the lot of their several kinds. 

 Sometimes these first beings have been called the prototypes of the 

 things of like kind which are to-day. Some of these beings were mere 

 fictions, figures of speech made concrete and objective. They were 

 not beasts, but they belonged to a rather vague class, of which man 

 was the characteristic type. To speak with the logicians, no other 

 deduction from the intension and the extension of the term ongwe, 

 man-being, appears sufiiciently broad to set forth the true interpre- 

 tation of the personages the narrative of whose lives and acts con- 

 .stitutes the subject matter of these texts. Among these primal beings 

 may be named Daylight, Earthquake, Winter, Medicine, Wind, or 

 Air, Life (germination), and Flower. So it seems evident from this 

 fact that l)east powers, the so-called beast gods, were not the first 

 beings or chief actors at the beginning of time. 



Beast gods appear later. In the development of Iroquoian thought, 

 beasts and animals, plants and trees, rocks, and streams of water, hav- 

 ing human or other eifective attributes or properties in a paramount 

 measure, were naturally regarded as the controllers of those attributes 

 or properties, which could be made available by orenda or magic power. 

 And thus began the reign of the beast gods, plant gods, tree gods, and 

 their kind. The signification of the Iroquoian term usually rendered 

 into English by the term '"god" is "disposer," or '"controller." This 

 definition supplies the reason that the reputed controllers of the opera- 

 tions of nature received worship and prayers. To the Iroquois god 

 and controller ai'e synonymous terms. 



From the very nature of the subject-matter and the slow acquire- 

 ment of new ideas and development of concepts, the content of a cos- 

 mologic myth or legend must be the result of a gradual combination 

 and readjustment of diverse materials, which, in tiie flux of time, are 

 I'ecast many times into new forms to satisfy the growing knowledge 

 and wider experience and deeper research of the people among whom 

 the myth is current. In different bi'anches of a cognate group of peo- 

 ples the old materials, the old ideas and concepts, modified by accul- 

 tural influences and by new and alien ideas, may be combined and 

 arranged in quite unlike forms, and hence arise varying versions of a 

 cosmogonic legend. These different versions modify the thought con- 

 temporary with them, and are in turn still further changed b^- accul- 

 tural influences and motives arising from the activities of the people. 

 And in later times, when they no longer constitute the chief body of 

 the philosophy of the people, these legends and stories concerning the 

 causes and beginnings of things are called m^'ths. 



