710 



TAWISKAKON 



[b. a. e. 



readily explainable by the phenomena of 

 the beginning of the spring of the year. 

 By tlie internal heat of the earth, icicles 

 thaw and become detached at their bases 

 and are not broken off within their 

 length; and on clear mornings the face 

 of nature is sometimes covered with 

 heavy hoarfrost which by the internal 

 warmth of things and a slight rise in the 

 temperature of the air becomes detached 

 without melting from the outside, as it 

 were, but falls likeflakes of snow. These 

 phenomena show that the power of the 

 Winter god is ending, and tbat Tawis^- 

 karo°' surrenders again his flint lance — 

 the piercing, blasting, withering power 

 of frost and winter's cold. 



In the cosmical legends of the Iro- 

 quoian tribes, Tawis^karo"', incited and 

 abetted by his grandmother, makes many 

 attempts to thwart his brother, Te'haro"^'- 

 hiawiVk^'ho"', in his work of bringing into 

 orderly being the present phenomena 

 and bodies of nature. One of the most 

 exciting of these efforts was the theft of 

 the sun by Tawis^karo"', and Aw6°'ha^i', 

 his grandmother. They carried it far 

 away to the southeast, where they hoped 

 to keep it solely for their own use. But 

 by the potent aid of the magic power of 

 various great man-beings, such as Otter, 

 Beaver, Fox, and Fisher, Te'haro°'- 

 hiawii'k^'ho"' was enabled to recapture 

 the sun and to bring it back and then to 

 place it where it now is shining for all 

 people. It is hardly necessary to point 

 out that this incident is the mythologic 

 statement of the fact that in the autumn 

 and winter the sun apparently goes far 

 to the southeast. 



Tawis^karo"', in emulation of his 

 brother's successful attempts to create 

 various things, made only noxious objects, 

 such as bats, lautterflies, owls, frogs, and 

 worms and other creeping things; but his 

 first great labor was to conceal from 

 Te'haro'^'hiawa'k'ho"' all the birds and 

 animals in a great cavern in a cliff; this 

 is evidently but a metaphorical state- 

 ment of the driving of the birds to migra- 

 tion and of the animals to hibernate by 

 the approach of Winter. According to 

 the legend they were in great part 

 freed by Te'haro°'hiawa'k^'ho°'. Then 

 Tawis^karo"' is discovered by his brother, 

 constructing a bridge of white rocks (i. e., 

 ice) on the surface of the surrounding 

 waters, which he asserted he was gradu- 

 ally extending toward the distant shore 

 of another land wherein dwelt fierce, 

 carnivorous monsters, in order to enable 

 them to come across to feed upon the 

 people and the animals created by Te'- 

 haro°'hiawa'k"ho°'; this was obviously 

 the statement that were all lakes and 

 rivers bridged solidly with ice, the 

 monsters Cold, Want, Famine, and 



Death -would readily cross and feed on 

 the creatures of his brother, for nothing 

 is killed except for food by the great 

 primal beings. He' was stopped in this 

 nefarious work by his brother, Avho sent 

 the tufted bluebird, with the bloody 

 thigh of a grasshopper in its mouth, to 

 frighten him by its cry. As this bird is 

 one of the first heralds of spring, its cry 

 told Winter that Spring was at hand, and 

 so Tawis'karo"^' fled with his work only 

 half finished. The bridge of white flint 

 dissolved as fast as he fled to the land. 

 When he became the prisoner of his own 

 brother he attempted to escape on one 

 of the pieces of white flint. It is only a 

 step from a cake of ice to the mythical 

 " white stone canoe," so popular and yet 

 so erroneously attributed to various other 

 beings. Again, he tries to imitate his 

 brother in creating a human being, which 

 was the object of his greatest desire; so 

 having learned from his brother that life 

 was immanent in the substance of the 

 earth, and therefore the products of it, 

 Tawis^karo"' decided to outdo him by 

 using the foam of water to form his man- 

 being, as in fact it was; after thus form- 

 ing the body of the man-being he called 

 his brother to see it, but failing to cause 

 it to show any signs of life, he implored 

 his brother to aid him by giving it life 

 and motion, which was done. As this 

 man-being was pure white it is obvious 

 that this creature was snow, and that 

 without life, which Tawis'karo"^' could not 

 give it, it could not come and go, as it 

 does, like that which has life and power 

 of motion. Some modern Iroquois who 

 are the adherents of the so-called Hand- 

 some Lake reformed Iroquois religion, 

 and others who have become converted 

 to Christianity claim to identify Tawis'- 

 karo°' with the devil of Caucasians, and 

 so reasoning from this incident pretend 

 that this devil created the white race. 

 The constant antagonism between Ta- 

 wis^karo"' and his twin brother finally 

 caused the latter to decide upon the 

 destruction of his younger brother. In 

 the details of the fierce combat with 

 unequal weapons to which this resolution 

 led, it is said that the surface of the 

 earth was crumpled into ridges and val- 

 leys, that the blood and the fragments 

 from the body of Tawis^karo"^' became 

 flint stones, and that from his intestines 

 were formed fruitful vines of many 

 kinds — a statement obviously due to the 

 fact that vines growing in the clefts of 

 rocks apparently barren have a peculiar 

 luxuriance. 



In the Cherokee story of the Rabbit and 

 Tawiskaia (Mooney, 19th Eep. B. A. E., 

 1900) the ceaseless struggle between life, 

 the productive force in nature, repre- 

 sented by the Rabbit, and the destructive 



