IxXXviii ETHNOGRAPHIC SKETCH. 



months brings on the seasons with the new life seen sprouting up every- 

 where during spring and summer. So the quadrupeds and birds wliich are 

 the first to appear after the h>ng winter months are considered as the wives 

 of Aishish, and the flowers of summer vegetation are the beads of his gai-- 

 ments. He enjoys more popularity than his father, for the moon's light is 

 mild, not burning nor offensive, nor does it dry up vegetation and make 

 men and beasts drowsy like the rays of the midday sun. Many nations 

 also believe that the changes of weather are partly due to the phases of the 

 moon. Although the "Birth of Aishish" myth obtained by me represents 

 Aishish rather as the adopted than as the real son of K'mukamtch, other 

 myths state him to be his son resulting from the union of the sun-disk to 

 the red sky of the morning or evening, symbolized by the woman Le=tka- 

 kawash. We must recall to mind that the term for father, p'tishap, in 

 Modoc t'shishap, is really the nourisJicr, feeder, and not the progenitor, for 

 it is a derivative from t'shin to grow* Most other mythologies consider the 

 relation of sun to moon as that of man to wife, or of wife to man (cf. Deus 

 Lunus), but here the thing is different. There are no female characters of 

 importance in Klamath mythology, nor does the language distinguish 

 grammatically between the sexes. 



The difficulty which we experience to distinguish solar r.nd lunar dei- 

 ties from each other in some of the American religions is caused by the 

 circumstance that in many languages of this western hemisphere the term 

 for sun and for moon is the same. In such lanoruag-es both orbs are distin- 

 guished from each other b}' being called day-luminary, or night-sun, night- 

 luminary, and with some tribes the belief has been found, that both are 

 actually the same celestial body, one being merely the image or shadow of 

 the other. In the Maskoki languages hasi answers for both, but the moon 

 is commonly called ni'li h;isi or "night sun." In the Tonica language ta^- 

 tchiksh, abbrev. ta^tchi stands for sun, moon, and star, but the moon is 

 usually named la-u tAp^tchi "night luminary," the stars ta^tchi tipula, 

 wliile the sun is either a^shukun ta^tchi, "day luminary" or simply ta;^- 

 tclii. Of the Tinne languages many have tsa, sa, of the Algonkin languages 

 kisis or parallel forms for both celestial bodies, separate distinctions being 



• Cf. the Grammar, in Appeudix VI, p. 710. 



