842 Some Deities and Demons of the Navajos. (October, 
They begin their cosmogony with an already existing world. 
It is a dim world; there is light, but as yet no sun, moon or 
stars. It is inhabited, however, by animals or animal gods with 
the gift of speech and other human attributes, and by some vague 
gods, probably meteorological personifications, possessing more 
of the human than the animal character. Just when mortal man 
first appears on the stage it is difficult or impossible to determine. 
True there is a first man and a first woman, as there seem to be 
in nearly all Indian myths; but they do not appear as the pro- 
genitors of the race. The time of their beginning is not told, 
they are coeval with the universe, and they still live in distant 
lands, but not in the nether world where dead Navajos go; in 
short, they are immortal and eternal—they are gods. Perhaps 
we have in them but an extension of the zoolatry of the Indian; 
as the lower animals have their ancient divine prototypes, so man 
must have his. With a strange suggestion of the existence of a 
primeval Darwin, we find in the legend the animals assuming 
more and more the human character, until the lower worlds’ 
which were once peopled only by flying animals are later inhab- 
ited by creatures who are spoken of as men. All the beings in 
the first world are able to fly away on wings from the rising 
waters of the flood ; while in the third and fourth worlds they are 
obliged to seek protection in the hollow of a great reed, which 
grows as fast as the rising waters advance and bears the fugitives 
upward out of danger. 
Arrived on this, the fifth, world, men increased and multiplied ; 
but soon various enemies to the human race arose, demons an 
giants who devoured men, until after a while the race became 
nearly or quite extinct. Then came the great hero-god Wagay- 
nezgant, to whom I will refer later, and killed the demons. After 
this, by special acts of creation, new men and women were made. 
Possibly the first of these creations is to be regarded as the first 
appearance of the true mortal Indian on the earth. 
The Navajo has no faith in monogenesis, he believes in several 
special creations even for his own tribe. The process by which 
their rude gods made men in the old days was quite an elaborate 
one, and the Navajo shaman, in relating the myth, does full jur 
_ tice to all the difficulties. A full recital of all the symbolic 
mummeries that the divine beings thought it necessary tO = 
m in this creative act, would be at best but tedious reading. 
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