244 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 277 



MYTHOLOGY AND AMERICAN MYTHS. 



Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, of the Bureau of Ethnology, read a paper 

 on this subject before the Anthropological Society of Washington 

 recently. " Mythology," he said, " is sometimes called the science 

 of myths ; but no man, I think, who knows the present condition 

 of mythology would venture to call it a science. To begin with, 

 there is no agreement as to the origin or meaning of a myth among 

 any considerable number of men occupied either in explaining or 

 studying mythology. The masters disagree, and the disciples are 

 at swords' points. How can you have a science when you are not 

 agreed as to the nature of its subject-matter ? The question, 

 ' What is the origin and nature of the story to which the name 

 " myth " is given ? ' is answered in a variety of ways, — proof posi- 

 tive either that the true answer has not been given, or, if given, stu- 

 dents of mythology are unable to perceive it. To go no farther 

 than England, we find two diff^erent answers given to the question, 

 in the form of two different theories. 



" The first of these theories may be called the ' theory of obliv- 

 ion ; ' the second, the 'theory of confusion.' Max MuUer's theory 

 of oblivion is founded on the hypothesis that men did not and 

 could not make myths till they had forgotten who the chief actors 

 in these myths were ; that myth-makers only began to work when 

 they had no means of knowing what they were working with, or 

 with whom they had to deal in making up their stories ; Miiller's 

 dictum being, ' It is the essential character of a true myth that it 

 should no longer be intelligible by reference to a spoken language.' 



" Herbert Spencer's theory of confusion is founded on the sup- 

 position that myths owe their origin to a confusion in the minds of 

 primitive people, who worship their own earthly and natural ances- 

 tors under the guise of beasts, birds, reptiles, and plants, because 

 these ancestors, when alive, received the names of beasts, birds, 

 reptiles, and plants, and, after being dead two or three generations, 

 were confounded with those creatures or plants. So the people 

 who began by worshipping the ghosts of ordinary human beings, 

 their own fathers, fell to w'orshipping wild beasts, snakes, birds, 

 and insects, from whom they thought themselves descended by 

 the ordinary process of fleshly generation. To fill out the whole 

 list, men, if their ancestors came from the east, were descended 

 from the sun ; if from beyond the sea, they were descended from 

 the sea ; if from a mountain, the mountain was their ancestor. 

 This theory is discussed with as much seriousness as if it had 

 foundation or proof in the world, as if it had ascertained facts to 

 support it. 



" Besides these two theories, we have a method of studying my- 

 thology which is ably explained by Andrew Lang, author of the 

 article 'Mythology' in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' According 

 to this method, Aryan mythology had its beginnings when the an- 

 cestors of our race were in the same condition as the ancestors of 

 the American Indians and other contemporary uncivilized races of 

 the earth, when they began to make their myths ; and therefore all 

 that seems anomalous to us, all that Miiller calls silly, senseless, 

 and savage in Aryan mythology, is a survival from times when the 

 Aryans were in the same stage of thought and development as the 

 men who made the savage myths : consequently Aryan myths are 

 to be explained by comparison with myths of savage races, and by 

 a study of man in the sum of his manners, ideas, and institutions. 



" England cannot tell us at present what a myth is. Though 

 England has one of the finest myth-fields in the world to work in. 

 Englishmen have done little in collecting myths, except in a desul- 

 tory fashion — nothing toward collecting them in their integrity, 

 with all their details, and in such groups that they would throw 

 light on each other. Now, can we in this country describe the 

 nature and origin of a myth ? The Bureau of Ethnology has a col- 

 lection of at least fifteen hundred stories obtained directly from the 

 Indians of North America. Many of these stories are true myths 

 from the earliest period. The collection is an important one, the 

 largest yet made in any country, so far as known, and I believe 

 also the most valuable. Now, if we were asked to tell what myths 

 are, we should be safe in answering. ' We can tell what the oldest 

 and simplest myths in the Bureau of Ethnology are.' My answer, 

 based on the myths I have collected and on those I have examined, 

 would be, myths are stories in which the characters are represented 

 as persons who brought about by their activity every thing that 



took place in the world of the senses and imagination of the men 

 who framed the stories. 



" The myth-persons are always and without exception non- 

 human. They appear as animals, including birds, fishes, reptiles, 

 insects, and sometimes shells, stones, plants, and fruits, all of which 

 are persons ; for in myths there are as many persons as there are 

 individual entities. There is another very important category of 

 persons, — the seasons ; certain processes in nature ; certain objects 

 in nature, as the sun, moon, and stars ; the four cardinal points; 

 the highest point in heaven, and the lowest point under the earth. 

 Many of these, on account of not belonging to the animal person- 

 ages, became assimilated and confounded with men sooner than the 

 others. These animals of mythology are the reputed ancestors of 

 the Indians who have totems, and, I believe, of all the primitive 

 people of the earth who have totems. The spirits of these animals 

 are the familiars or attendant spirits of the medicine-men among 

 all Indians, whether they have totems or not. The Indians of Cali- 

 fornia have no totems, but their medicine-men are aided by animal 

 or elemental spirits. The myth characters, though appearing as 

 persons having volition and desires, eating, drinking, and living the 

 ordinary lives of men, have wonderful powers and peculiarities. In 

 certain directions they are unconquerable, and bring about all the 

 things in nature observed by the myth-makers. This is the true 

 source of the grotesque and strange things in mythology. Thus we find 

 a person performing all the acts of a nature power, and at the same 

 time entering into such relations of love, hatred, enmity, and friend- 

 ship as exist among men ; becoming the husband or wife of another 

 nature power or process, or being the offspring of two nature pow- 

 ers. These myth characters are armed only with weapons and 

 appliances of men in an early stage of development. There is no- 

 correspondence between the alleged cause and the visible effect : 

 but, to compensate for their outward and evident insufficiency, these 

 weapons have a magic virtue ; and the persons using them, powers 

 beyond comprehension, and peculiar to themselves. These per- 

 sons are represented as doing things which no living agent could 

 ever do, which only the forces of nature do. On the other hand, 

 the forces of nature are in myths represented as doing the things 

 that only men do. When to these two features are added the cus- 

 toms, ways of thinking, and social habits of the early myth-makers, 

 there is plenty of room for the most ludicrous and unheard-of ad- 

 ventures, as well as cruel and revolting deeds. 



" The earliest myths are the simplest in structure, and the per- 

 sons in them are those that come under the observation of primitive 

 man soonest : animals, objects, and processes in nature belong to 

 this category. Later, because more complicated, and involving the 

 participation of these forces, are the creation myths, with which 

 are intimately connected myths concerning the origin of the arts 

 necessary for the maintenance of life ; games ; forms of dress and 

 ornament ; the observances necessary to obtain the favor and as- 

 sistance of the elemental powers or spirits, who, in nearly all cases, 

 are represented as animals, birds, reptiles, etc., of pre-human time, 

 or, as the Indians phrase it, ' of a world before this.' But. no mat- 

 ter in what forms they are presented, they are always called people. 

 The same term is applied to them as to the Indians of to-day, — 

 among the Iroquois Senecas, ongwe ; among the Modocs, maklaks : 

 among the Yana, ya/za / and so on, through every stock in 

 America. 



" But before proceeding further, it is best, perhaps, to give in 

 condensed form the myth of the birth of thunder and lightning. 

 The characters in this story are, Wimaloimis (grisly-bear maiden i; 

 Sula pokaila (mountain-trout old woman); the thigh-bone of the 

 western red-tailed hawk; and Walokit and Tumukit (lightning and 

 thunder), born of the grisly bear. 



" The Grisly Bear comes to the house of the Trout, and asks for 

 a night's lodging. Next morning she tries to eat up the Trout ; 

 but the latter turns into water, and escapes. Now, the Grisly Bear 

 sets up her home at that place, and, finding a thigh-bone of the 

 red-tailed hawk, hangs it up in the centre of her house, looks at it 

 continually, and from looking becomes pregnant. She brings forth 

 twins. Walokit (lightning) is born first. The moment he is born, 

 she turns to eat him up ; but he, prophetic in mind, knows her 

 thoughts, and flashes up so brightly that she is frightened, and 

 drops him. Next, Tumukit (thunder) is born. She tries to swal- 



