K'mCkamtcjh. Ixxxiii 



noontime, would alone suffice to show that he represents the sun, the most 

 potent, we may say unique factor in giving life, nourishment, and health 

 to living organisms, the most important of the sky-gods, and the great 

 center of myth production among all nations of the world. In one of the 

 Modoc myths it is stated that "at the call of the morning star K'mush 

 sprang from the ashes (of the fiery sky or aurora) as hale and as bright as 

 ever, and so will he continue to live as long as the (solar) disk and the 

 morning star shall last, for the morning star is the 'medicine' (muluash?) 

 of the disk." In other myths he appears in tlie form of the golden or 

 bright Disk, inhabiting the higher mountain ridges and becoming the suitor 

 of females afterwards deified. Thus, like Hor, Ra, and Atum, he appears 

 sometimes as the morning sun, at other times as the noonday and evening 

 sun, and in the myths referring to weather he is either the summer or the 

 winter sun. The burning pipe which Aishish's son takes from his grand- 

 father and destroys in the camp-fire represents the sun setting in a glowing 

 red evening sky. As the summer sun with his gigantic power he brings 

 on a conflagration of the world and as a cloud-gatherer he causes an inun- 

 dation. In the warm season he appears wrapt up in haze and fogs, which 

 the myth in its imagery represents as "a smoky camp-fire," almost impen- 

 etrable to the sun-rays: "his arrows fall to the ground before they reach 

 the mark."* To typify his sagacity and omniscience, K'mukamtch appears 

 under the symbolic mask of a quadruped, the pine-marten or Ske'l, in Modoc 

 Tchke'l, which changes its black winter fur to a brown coating in the hot 

 months of the year, and thereby became a sort of portent to the Indian. 

 Similar changes occur with all the fur animals, but with the marten the 

 difference in the color appears to be greater than with others. Skel sends 

 his brother Tchashgai, or Weasel, to obtain one-eyed women for both, these 

 being^sun and moon, which the Eskimos also represent as one-eyed, deified 

 persons.f The North wind, which is blowing in alternation with the South 

 wind, is attacked and killed by Ske'l. Here Ske'l represents the sun of the 

 summer months, for the summer's heat defeats the cold blasts of the wintry 



* Texts, pp. 99, 4 (shlayaks ak), and 5. 



tCf. the Maidu nijtli of KodoYampe iu StepLeii Powers's " California Tribes ; " 

 Contributions to North American Ethnology, III, 293, 



