Creation of Man out of Clay 157 
Adam and the woman Ewa.” In this narrative the names of the man 
and woman betray European influence, but the rest of the story may 
be aboriginal. The Dyaks of Sakarran in British Borneo say that 
the first man was made by two large birds. At first they tried to 
make men out of trees, but in vain. Then they hewed them out 
of rocks, but the figures could not speak. Then they moulded a man 
out of damp earth and infused into his veins the red gum of the 
kumpang-tree. After that they called to him and he answered ; they 
cut him and blood flowed from his wounds? 
The Kumis of South-Eastern India related to Captain Lewin, the 
Deputy Commissioner of Hill Tracts, the following tradition of the 
creation of man. “God made the world and the trees and the creeping 
things first, and after that he set to work to make one man and one 
woman, forming their bodies of clay; but each night, on the com- 
pletion of his work, there came a great snake, which, while God was 
sleeping, devoured the two images. This happened twice or thrice, 
and God was at his wit’s end, for he had to work all day, and could 
not finish the pair in less than twelve hours; besides, if he did not 
sleep, he would be no good,” said Captain Lewin’s informant. “If 
he were not obliged to sleep, there would be no death, nor would 
mankind be afflicted with illness. It is when he rests that the snake 
carries us off to this day. Well, he was at his wit’s end, so at last he 
got up early one morning and first made a dog and put life into it, 
and that night, when he had finished the images, he set the dog to 
watch them, and when the snake came, the dog barked and frightened 
it away. This is the reason at this day that when a man is dying the 
dogs begin to howl; but I suppose God sleeps heavily now-a-days, or 
the snake is bolder, for men die all the same*.” The Khasis of Assam 
tell a similar tale*. 
The Ewe-speaking tribes of Togo-land, in West Africa, think that 
God still makes men out of clay. When a little of the water with 
which he moistens the clay remains over, he pours it on the ground 
and out of that he makes the bad and disobedient people. When he 
wishes to make a good man he makes him out of good clay; but 
when he wishes to make a bad man, he employs only bad clay for the 
purpose. In the beginning God fashioned a man and set him on the 
earth; after that he fashioned a woman. The two looked at each 
1 N. Graafland, De Minahassa (Rotterdam, 1869), 1. pp. 96 sq. 
2 Horsburgh, quoted by H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and of British North 
Borneo (London, 1896), 1. pp. 299 sq. Compare The Lord Bishop of Labuan, “On the Wild 
Tribes of the North-West Coast of Borneo,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of 
London, New Series, 11. (1863), p. 27. 
3 Capt. T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India (London, 1870), pp. 224—26. 
4 A. Bastian, Vélkerstémme am Brahmaputra und verwandtschaftliche Nachbarn (Berlin, 
1883), p. 8; Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), p. 106. 
