K'MCKAMTGH. IxKix 



THE ELEMENTARY DEITIES. 



In the Klamath tlieology the deities of" the elements have preserved 

 almost intact their character as representatives of the powers of nature. 

 Imperfectly anthropomorphized as they are, they appear rather as spirits 

 than as gods ; all of them, the Earth perhaps excepted, are of the male sex. 

 Like the animal genii they assume the adjectival suffix =amtchiksh, abbr. 

 -amtch bygone, ancient, belonging to the past* though less among the Modocs 

 than in the northern chieftaincy. The splendor, power, and awe-inspiring- 

 qualities of these superhuman beings is not diminished in the least by the 

 grotesque exterior and acts ascribed to some of them. The sky gods were 

 more plastically defined by popular imagination than the subterranean 

 deities, and hence we begin our sketch with the former. 



k'mukamtch. 



Ille mihi par esse deo videtiir, 

 Ille, si fas est, superare divos. 



The chief deity of the Klamath people, the creator of the world and 

 of mankind, is K'mukamtch, or the "Old Man of the Ancients," the "Pri- 

 meval Old Man." The full form of the name is K'muk'=amtchiksh, and 

 Modocs frequently use the shorter form Kemush, K'miish, an abbreviation 

 of k'mutcha, he has grown old, he is old, or of its participle k'mutchatko, 

 old. He is also named P'tish=amtch nalam, our old father. He was also 

 designated P'laitalkni, the one on high, though the term is now used for the 

 God of the Christians. In every way he is analogous to the "old man 

 above" or the "chief in the skies" of the Indians of Central California. 



What the Indians say and think of their chief deity I have outlined 

 in the Dictionary, pages 138-140, and jvhat follows here will substantiate 

 the data given there. Though K'mukamtch is reputed to have created 

 the earth, what is really meant is only the small portion of the globe 

 known to and inhabited by this mountaineer tribe, and not the inmiense 

 terrestrial globe, with its seas and continents. Neither have these Indians 

 an idea of what the universe really is when they call him the creator and 



* In Nahnatl we may compare the reverential sufiSx -tzin, and in Shosboni dialects 

 tbe parallel one of piich, bits; e. g., mubu owl in Bannock is mu'mbits oicl in the 

 Shosboni of Idaho. 



