188 
regions. The negroes of west Africa portray the animal actors in 
considerable detail, ascribing to them all the characteristics and 
emotions proper to man himself. The Indians of Canada, on the 
other hand, generally make of each animal a type, as in the fables 
of .Esop. The coyote is a treacherous creature, the wolverine both 
treacherous and gluttonous, the deer timid, the raven greedy, the 
buffalo brave and honourable but rather stupid. Many of their tales, 
however, lack even this amount of characterization, and a bird or 
animal has no other identity than that afforded by its name and 
outward description. 
More interesting than these nature tales are the [etiological and 
genealogical myths and the trickster and hero stories that are also 
attached to the first cycle. The Iroquoians and Eastern Algonkians 
have given us long cosmogonic myths in which the various episodes 
follow each other in more or less logical sequence. Another system- 
atic account comes from Bella Coola. on the Pacific coast, where the 
Indians had a fantastic but unusually well-ordered conception of the 
universe and its origin, built around the belief in the sky-god Alkun- 
tam. Elsewhere these tales are short and utterly disjointed, even 
when the same characters figure as the principal actors. Nearly every 
tribe has in fact numerous tales that flatly contradict one another, 
for there was no organized priesthood to collate all the versions, 
reducing them to harmony, and individual families handed down their 
own traditions regardless of whether they conflicted or not with the 
traditions of their neighbours. 
Althougli the Indians had innumerable [tdiological myths explain- 
ing, for example, how daylight began, why winter and summer alter- 
nate, why the raven is black and the sea-gull white, and why the 
chipmunk has stripes along its l)ack, yet there were no true creation 
stories, no myths attributing to the will of a creator the genesis of 
stars and planets, earth and water, day and night, the seasons, 
animals, and plants.^ The great Maiiitous or high deities of the 
Indians were not “ fathers of gods and men,” like Zeus and Brahma, 
and they could not be invoked as the ultimate causes of all things. 
Apparently the Indians felt no necessity for an ultimate cause, but 
assumed that the i)henomena of nature had always existed some- 
1 Boas : Oi>. cii., p. 325 f. Boas tliere states that the only Iiidiatis in America north of Mexico who 
possessed true creation mytlis were some tribes in nortlieni California. 
