40 
MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 16. 
in the origin myth of the Medicine Dance, the hero, although 
regarded as a creation of Earthmaker, still retains in vestigial 
form this part of the old hero formula, although it has been 
skillfully motivated. 
In the death of the mother we are probably dealing with the 
persistence of a motif that is of considerable importance in the 
separate myth of the birth of Nenebojo. There is also present 
an evident assimilation here with the Twin myth, where the 
mother is generally killed by an ogre. We may also be dealing 
with part of the hero formula, for not only must the hero be born 
of a virgin, but he must be born before his time, generally in 
seven months with the consequent death of his mother. 
The variability in the number of heroes is probably due to 
a partial confusion of this myth with the independent myth 
of the birth of the hero, where he is regarded as one of the four 
cardinal points. It is the confusion with the same myth that 
probably accounts for the change from a friendly to an inimical 
attitude of the heroes. 
The association of the brother with the land of the dead 
is constant for all these tribes, it having been recently found 
among the Ojibwa too, but apparently only among those tribes 
where a ritual is connected with it, like the Menominee, Pot- 
tawatami, Fox, and Winnebago, is it particularly motivated. 
That the hero’s disguise should in all but one case be a 
“stump,” shows how closely this particular motif was associated 
with the Two-Brother myth in this particular area. 
Summing up, we may say that we are dealing here with a 
version of the Two-Brother myth that is fairly constant within 
a restricted area, that the differences found are of an accidental 
nature or are connected either with the incomplete use of the 
hero formula or with ritualistic associations. Nowhere, the 
Fox version always excepted, have they resulted from attempts 
at literary remodelling. 
All the foregoing changes have arisen during the trans- 
mission of the myth from one generation to another, and we 
may, therefore, assume that in the transmission of this particular 
version of a folk-lore-myth, not only has the plot been kept 
practically intact in most of its details, but that even a constancy 
