SPIRIT DEITIES. xclx 



question is of volcanic origin. The natives avoid going near the lake ctr 

 even ascending the surrounding heiglits.* Earthquakes are often ascribed 

 by foreign nations to giants stretched out below, who are shifting their 

 underground position. Giants often appear also as ravishers, ogres, and 

 man-eaters, like the Scandinavian Yiittur, and two giant-women of the 

 Elip tilikum or "Primeval People," were changed into two columns of 

 sandstone, near the Yakima country, on Middle Columbia River, for having 

 preyed upon the human race.f 



Dwarfs. — A miraculous dwarf is mentioned under the name of na'hnias, 

 whose foot-prints, as small as those of a child, are sometimes seen upon the 

 snow-clad slopes of the Cascade Range by the natives. But the dwarfish 

 creatures who make them can be seen only by those initiated into the mys- 

 teries of witchcraft, who by such spirit-like beings are inspired with a 

 superior kind of knowledge, especially in their treatment of disease. The 

 name is derived either from ndna to swim/ the body from one to the other side, 

 or from nainAya to shiver, tremble 



Another dwarf genius, about four feet high, Givinwin, lived on Will- 

 iamson River, where he habitually sat on the top of his winter lodge and 

 killed many people with his black flint hat. He is now a bird. 



The Klamaths appear to know about certain spirits having bodies of a 

 diminutive size, but the characteristics of such are not distinct enough to 

 permit identification with the fairies, Erdmannchen or Kabeiroi of Euro- 

 ])ean mythologies. 



ANIMAL DEITIES. 



The deification of animals in the primitive forms of religion is highly 

 instructive, and instances are so numerous that it would take a series of 

 volumes to comprehend its details. Animal stories and shamanism are 



• Among tbe summits of the Sau Juan Mountains, New Mexico, there is to-day a 

 lake bounded by precipitous walls, and there is a little island in the center of the lake 

 with a hole in it, and something sticks out of the hole that looks like the top of a 

 ladder, and " this is the place through which our ancestors emerged from the fourth 

 into the fifth or present world." The Ndvajos never approach near to it, but they 

 stand on high summits around, and view from afar thei. natal waters. (From Navajo 

 Creation Myth, Am. Antiquarian, V^, 1883, p. 213.) 



to. Gibbs in Pacific Railroad Reports, I, 411. 



