SCIENCE 



NEW YORK, JANUARY 15, .1892. 



THE KLAMATH NATION. 



III. — MYTHOLOGY AND GENERAL ETHNOLOGY. 



The Klamath tnytholog-y, as is generally found to be the 

 case with any mythology belonging to a people who speak a 

 language radically distinct from all other tongues, has pecu- 

 liar features well worthy of notice and of comparison with 

 other and more widely known forms of belief. The princi- 

 pal deity is K'mukamtch, a name which Mr. Gatschet rencers 

 the "Old Man of the Ancients," or the "Primeval Old 

 Man." The expression, " man," however, seems in strictness 

 not to be comprised in it, as we are further informed that it 

 is composed of ^mMfcAa, "he is old," and the termination 

 amich, having a similar meaning, "old, ancient, primeval, 

 by-gone." "'The Most Ancient," or " The Oldest Being," 

 would seem to be the nearest interpretation. He is otherwise 

 designated P'tishamtch nalam, "Our Old Father," and 

 I^'laitcdkni, " The One on High." He created the world and 

 all that it contains. Various stories are told of the mode of 

 these creations. According to one account he made plants 

 and animals, including men, by thinking and wishing, "this 

 probably implying (as Mr. Gatschet suggests) that, after 

 forming an idea of some creature, he made that idea a reality 

 by the strong energy of his will," — a method which accords 

 with the Mosaic account of creation. Other myths speak of 

 his family, comprising a father, a wife or wives, a daughter, 

 and Aishish, "his son by adoption." "The name of his 

 daughter," we are told, "is not given, but she represents 

 the clouded or mottled evening sky. When (in the myth) 

 she leads him to the underworld, they meet there a vast 

 crowd of spirits, who for five nights dance in a large circle 

 around a fire, and on each of the intervening days are 

 changed into dry bones. K'mukamtch takes with him some 

 of these in a bag, and, when reaching the horizon at day- 

 break, throws the bones around the world, in pairs, and 

 creates tribes from them, the Modocs being the last of these. 

 Then he travels in the path of the sun till he reaches the 

 zenith, builds his lodge, and lives there now with his 

 daughter." 



Mr. Gatschet holds this divinity to be a nature god, repre- 

 senting usually the sun, but sometimes the sky. He bears 

 a certain likeness to the primal Aryan deity, whose my- 

 thological and ethnological history, as Dyauspitar (Heaven- 

 father) in India, Zeus pater in Greece, and Jupiter in Italy, 

 has been so happily traced and elucidated by Professor Max- 

 Muller. Like Zeus and Jupiter, also, in the vulgarizing 

 imaginations of later u:iythologists, he assumes the form of a 

 man or, in his more comic adventures, of a lower animal. 

 He takes then, in Klamath myths, the typical form of the 

 wise and knowing sTcel, the pine-martin, " which changes its 

 black winter fur to a brown coating in the hot months of the 

 year, and thereby becomes a sort of portent to the Indian." 

 As Skel-amfch, "Old Martin," he becomes the hero of as 

 many fanciful legends as those of Zeus in his various animal 

 disguises. 



His adopted son, Aishish, is the second and, in some re- 

 spects, the most interesting figure in the Klamath pantheon. 

 His name signifies "the one secreted," or "concealed," and 

 is given to him in allusion to the manner of his birth, which 

 resembled that ascribed in the Greek myth to Bacchus. In 

 his attributes, Aishish rather re'.'alls the other sons of Zeus, 

 Apollo and Hermes, or the Hindoo Krishna. He is beauti- 

 ful in appearance, beloved and admired by men, and is the 

 husband of many wives, selected by him among the birds, 

 butterflies, and the smaller quadrupeds. He is a social and 

 friendly deity, and often makes his appearance at festive 

 assemblies for archery and gambling (which is deemed a 

 manly and not degrading sport), when he shows himself un- 

 rivalled in these accomplishments. He is finely attired in 

 garments of his own making, ornamented with beads. He 

 is constantly at variance with his reputed father. Mr. Gat- 

 schet finds his prototype in the moon. "The moon is the 

 originator of the months, and the progress of the months 

 brings on the seasons, with the new life seen sprouting up 

 everywhere during spring and summer. So the quadrupeds 

 and birds, which are the first to appear after the long winter 

 months, are considered as the wives of Aishish, and the 

 flowers of summer vegetation are the beads of his gar- 

 ments." 



The other elementary deities of the Klamaths are mysteri- 

 ous shadowy beings, too dimly defined, in our author's 

 opinion, to deserve the name of gods. Among them are 

 Kaila, the earth; Lemeish, the thunder; Yamash and Muash, 

 the north and south winds; and Shukash, the whirlwind. 

 There are mythic stories relating to spirits of the dead, 

 to giants and dwarfs, and to deified animals, But none ot 

 them seem to be of much real significance, or to influence 

 greatly the lives of the people. Their mythology, like their 

 traditional history, was cramped in its development by a 

 peculiar superstition, which strictly forbade the utterance of 

 the name of any deceased person. This superstition made 

 the worship of ancestors impossible, limited all thought about 

 a future life, and abolished all historical tradition, — for, as 

 the author pertinently asks, "How can histor.y be told with- 

 out names?" The Klamath religion, therefore, appears 

 simply as the reverence for certain nature-powers. It has 

 no torturing or mangling rites, like the flesh-piercing and 

 finger-mutilation of the Dakota and Blackfoot tribes, and no 

 grossly immoral and anti-social traits, like some of the Mexi- 

 can and Peruvian observances. 



The belief in a future life, though obscured, is not entirely 

 extinguished by the superstition which has been mentioned. 

 The disembodied soul, now a nameless phantom, hovers for 

 a time about its late abode, and then, rising in the air, fol- 

 lows the sun in its westerly course, till it reaches the spirit- 

 land in the sky, E-eni, or Ayayani, "somewhere near K'mil- 

 kamtch." "Its arrival there is afterwards revealed by dreams 

 to the mourning relatives, who express in songs what they 

 have seen in their slumbers." There is a guardian, we are 

 told, over the spirits in. their passage through the sky, called 

 the WAsh Kmush, or the gray fox. " This name is evidently 

 borrowed from the coloring of the sky, as it appears during 

 a polar night, and must be compared to another beast name. 



