1-^4 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



the central world-tree. After the birth of the twins, Light One and 

 Toadlike (or dark) One, the Light One, also known as Good- 

 minded, noticing that there was no light, created the " tree of 

 light." This was a great tree having at its topmost branch a great 

 ball of light. At this time the sun had not been created. It is 

 significant, as will appear later, that the Good-minded made his tree 

 of light one that brought forth flowers from every branch. After 

 he had continued experimenting and improving the earth, " he made 

 a new light and hung it on the neck of a being, and he called the 

 new light Gaagwaa (ga gwa) and instructed its bearer to run his; 

 course daily in the heavens." Shortly after he is said to have " dug 

 up the tree of light, and looking into the pool of water in which the 

 stump (trunk) had grown, he saw the reflection of his own face 

 and thereupon conceived the idea of creating Ongwe and made them 

 both a man and a woman." 



The central world-tree is found also in Delaware mythology, 

 though so far as I can discover it is not called the tree of light. The 

 Journal of Bankers and Slyter^ records the story of creation as 

 heard from the Lenape of New Jersey in 1679. ^^^ things came 

 from a tortoise, the Indians told them. " It had brought forth the 

 world, and in the middle of its back had sprung a tree upon whose 

 branches men had grown." - This relation between men and the 

 tree is interesting in comparison with the Iroquois myth, as it is 

 also conceived to be the central world-tree. Both the Lenape and 

 the Iroquois ideas are symbolic and those who delight in flights of 

 imagination might draw much from both. 



The Seneca world-tree is described elsewhere in my notes as a 

 tree whose branches pierce the sky and whose roots extend to the 

 waters of the underworld. This tree is mentioned in various cere- 

 monial rites of the Iroquois. With the False Face Company, Hadigo 

 sa sho o, for example, the Great Face, chief of all the False Faces, 

 is said to be the invisible giant that guards the world tree (gain- 

 dowa ne). He rubs his turtle-shell rattle upon it to obtain its power, 

 and this he imparts to all the visible false faces worn by the com- 

 pany. In 'visible token of this belief the members of the company, 

 rub their turtle rattles on pine-tree trunks, believing that thereby 

 they become imbued with both the earth power and the sky power. 

 In this use of the turtle-shell rattle there is perhaps a recognition of. 



1 Journal of Voyage to New York in 1679-80, by Jasper Bankers and Peter 

 Slyter. translated in Trans. L. I. Hist. Soc, v. I, 1867. 



2 With the New England Indians the idea was held that men were found 

 by Glooskap in a hole by an arrow which he had shot into an ash tree. 



