138 TKOCJUOIAN COSMOLOGY 



<.-oiU'(>lit. Pho error is duo larycly to the iutluciu-e of tlic declaration 

 of liUo import in the Semitic mythology, found in the Hebrew Serip- 

 tures. the tijjunitlve character of which is usually not apprehended. 

 The thouaht originally expressed l)y the ancient teachei's of the Iro- 

 quoian and other barbaric peoi)les was that the earth through the life, 

 or life power, iiuiate and immanent in its substance —the life person- 

 ated by Tliaronhiawaki>n " -by feeding itself to them produces plants 

 and fruits and vegetables whii'h serve as food for l)irds and animals, 

 all which in their turn become food for men. a i)rocess whereby the 

 life of tlie earth is transnuited into that of man and of all living- things. 

 Hence, the Iroquois consistently say. in addressing the earth. ■' Eithi- 

 noha." "our Mother." Thus in ISlXi the author's late friend. Mr 

 David Stephens, a grave Seneca priest and philosopher, declared to 

 him that the earth or ground is living matter, and that the tender 

 plantlt^t of the bean and the sprouting germ of the corn nestling 

 therein receive through their delicate rootlets the life substani'C from 

 the earth: that. thus, the earth indeed feeds itself to them; that, since 

 \vhat is supplied to tiiem is li\ing matter, life in them is j)roduced and 

 conserved, and that as food the ripened corn and l)ean and their kinds, 

 thus produced, create and develop tlic life of man and of all living 

 things. Hence it is seen that oidy in tiiis metaphorical manner 

 Tharonhiawakon. the personified life inuuanent in the matter of the 

 earth, creates daily, and did in the beginning of time create man and 

 all living things out of the earth. 15ut the fiat creation of man and 

 thing's fi"om nothing or trom d(Minite portions of day or earth, as the 

 potter makes pottery, never is involved in the earliest known concep- 

 tions of the beginning of things. In the (juaint protologv. or science 

 of first things, of the Inxiuois things are derived from things through 

 transformation and evolution. The manner in which the earth or dry 

 h\nd itself was formed, as detailed in the Onondag-a and the Mohawk 

 texts, is an apt example of this statement. 



Another luisapprehended figure of speech is expressed in the popu- 

 lar dogma of the vii'gin, t>r parthenogenetic, conception, which in this, 

 as in other cosmologies, atfects one of the chief persons. This is. liow- 

 over. a metaphor as old as the earliest philosophies of man. And 

 some of the most beautiful and touching thoughts and activities of 

 both barbaric and enlightened man rest on the too literal acceptation 

 of the figurative statement of a great fact of life, attested by all 

 human experience, namely, that breath (spirit, air, wind, atmos, 

 atman) is the print-iple of life and feeling, and that without it there 

 can be no manifestation of life. This is the key to the riddle of the 

 virgin, or parthenogenetic. conception. It is made very clear in the 



'»He is alsio called Odendouuia. Sprout, or Sapling, and loskaha. having apparently the same 



