708 



TAWISKARON 



[B. A. E. 



name of the personification of the winter 

 power transfigured into a man-being, a 

 god of winter, whose functions and 

 activities constitute him the mighty frost 

 king, whose breath and magic power 

 blight the verdure of plants and trees 

 and lock lakes and rivers in bonds of ice. 

 In confirmation of the preceding inter- 

 pretations, the following expressions are 

 cited from Bruyas' Radices Iroquf«orum: 

 oufise, or gawisa, 'ice', 'hail', 'glass'; 

 owiskra, 'hail', 'sleet'; gawwkerontion, 

 gawisontion, 'one is casting or sowing 

 hail, ice, sleet', hence 'one (it) is hail- 

 ing' ; lastly, watiowiskzventare, meaning 

 ' it has covered it with frost, with ice ' ; 

 'it has spread out ice (like a sheet)' ; 

 hence 'it has covered it with glare ice.' 

 In the two sentence-words preceding the 

 last one cited, the final -ontion is the per- 

 fect tense form of the irregular verb -oti', 

 'cast', 'throw', but it has a present 

 meaning, 'is casting, throwing'. The 

 termination of the last citation, -kwentare ' , 

 is a perfect tense form with the meaning 

 of a present tense, viz, 'is lying flat', 

 ' is lying face downward '. The original 

 meaning of the nominal stem -unskcir- of 

 thevocableo!wsMm" wasapparently 'crys- 

 tal', 'smooth', 'slippery', ' slick '; hence 

 it came to designate ice on the one hand, 

 and chert or flint on the other. Even 

 among the Cherokee, who are linguis- 

 tically cognate with the Iroquoian peo- 

 ples of the E. and n., Tdivi''skdld is the 

 name of a mythic anthropic being, called 

 Flint, regarded as the producer of flint 

 rock. They have also preserved in the 

 words tiXivi^ska or tdivi^skage, signifying 

 'smooth', 'slick', the fundamental 

 meaning the stem had before it came to 

 denote 'flint'. Thus Cherokee usage con- 

 firms the suggestion that the basic sig- 

 nification of the stem -lolskar-, or -wlsker-, 

 is 'smooth', 'crystal', 'slippery', 'slick'. 

 A similar connection between terms de- 

 notive of 'ice' and 'flint' respectively, 

 exists among some of the Algonquian 

 dialects, and also between these terms 

 and the name for 'wolf, a false con- 

 nection has been established in some of 

 these same dialects. In Passamaquoddy 

 and Malecite malsum and malsumsis sig- 

 nify 'wolf and 'small wolf respectively, 

 while the first is also a name of this 

 younger brother of Nanabozho (Ku- 

 loskap) ; and in the closely related Mic- 

 mac, mdh signifies 'flint' or 'chert'. 

 The last is found in Unami Delaware 

 under the form mdhales, and in the 

 Unalachtigo Delaware of Campanius 

 Holm under that of maMres, with the 

 signification 'flint', 'chert'. But in the 

 Abnaki it appears under the form monlsem, 

 with the meaning 'wolf. In the Chip- 

 pewa name for 'white flint', mikwame- 

 wabik, literally ' ice stone ' or ' ice rock ', 



is brought out the reason for the use of 

 the same vocable to denote 'ice', 'frost', 

 'sleet', on the one hand, and 'chert', 

 'flint', on the other. The Chippewa 

 term for ice is inikwam, and the Cree 

 miskivamiy, whence the derivative misk- 

 vmmissa, 'it hails'. Piponoukhe (written 

 Kabebonicca by Schoolcraft) signifies 

 freely ' Winter Maker', from pipon, ' win- 

 ter', and the verb-stem -oke or -okhe, 

 ' make, cause, do ' ; and Chakekenapok 

 means 'the Man of Flint, or the Fire- 

 stone'. In the foregoing identifications 

 are found the reasons that gave the name 

 'He is the Flint', ' He Overspreads with 

 Ice', 'He is the Ice', 'He is the Winter- 

 maker', and lastly, 'He is the Wolf, to 

 one and the same personage identified 

 with the production and control of cer- 

 tain phenomena in nature. It has thus 

 become evident that through wrong in- 

 terpretations of misunderstood homo- 

 phonic but not cognate terms, various 

 striking appellations, suggested by more 

 or less apparent similarity between the 

 unrelated natural phenomena in question, 

 have been made the name of the imagi- 

 nary man-being, originally believed to 

 produce and control but one class of 

 phenomena. Brinton (Myths of the 

 New World, 203, 1896) endeavored to 

 show that the name Tawiskara was a 

 cognate or derivative of the Oneida 

 tetiucalas, and the Mohawk iyokaras or 

 teivhgarlas, which he rendered 'dark or 

 darkness' (although they in fact all 

 mean 'at the time it becomes dark, at 

 twilight'), and he purported to quote 

 Bruyas and Cuoq in support of this 

 opinion, although neither of these lexi- 

 cographers, so far as known, attempted 

 to analyze the name Tawiskaron or 

 Tawiskara). 



An imaginary man-being of the cosmo- 

 gonic philosophy of the Iroquoian and 

 other tribes, to whom Avas attributed the 

 function of making and controlling the 

 activities and phenomena of winter. He 

 was the Winter God, the Ice King, since 

 his distinctive character is clearly defined 

 in terms of the activities and phenom- 

 ena of nature peculiar to this season. As 

 an earth power he was one of the great 

 primal man-beings belonging to the 

 second cosmical period of the mytho- 

 logical philosophy of the Iroquoian, Al- 

 gonquian, and perhaps other Indians. 

 Although his paternity was not beyond 

 question, his parentage was illustrious. 

 In the mythology to which he belonged, 

 his grandmother, Awe^'hai' ('Mature 

 Flower', or probably 'Mature Earth'), 

 called Mesakomikokwi by the Potawa- 

 tomi, was expelled from the skyland, 

 situated above the visible firmament, be- 

 cause of her husband's jealousy. Wlien 

 in falling she reached the waters of the 



