The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American India | Page 3

the Swing on the Pictured Rocks of Lake
Superior 243
Mukakee Mindemoea; or, the Toad-Woman 246
Eroneniera; or, an Indian Visit to the Great Spirit 251
The Six Hawks; or, Broken Wing 258
Weeng, the Spirit of Sleep 262
Addik Kum Maig; or, the Origin of the White Fish 265
Bokwewa; or, the Humpback Magician 269
Aggodagauda and his Daughter; or, the Man with his Leg tied up 274
Iosco; or, the Prairie Boys' Visit to the Sun and Moon 278
The Enchanted Moccasins 293
Leelinau. A Chippewa Tale 299
* * * * *
Wild Notes of the Pibbigwun 303

INTRODUCTION.
Hitherto, Indian opinion, on abstract subjects, has been a sealed book.
It has been impossible to extract the truth from his evasive replies. If
asked his opinion of religion in the abstract, he knows not the true
meaning of the term. His ideas of the existence of a Deity are vague, at
best; and the lines of separation between it and necromancy, medical
magic, and demonology are too faintly separated to allow him to speak
with discrimination. The best reply, as to his religious views, his
mythology, his cosmogony, and his general views as to the mode and
manifestations of the government and providences of God, are to be

found in his myths and legends. When he assembles his lodge-circle, to
hear stories, in seasons of leisure and retirement in the depths of the
forest, he recites precisely what he believes on these subjects. That
restlessness, suspicion, and mistrust of motive, which has closed his
mind to inquiry, is at rest here. If he mingles fiction with history, there
is little of the latter, and it is very easy to see where history ends and
fiction begins. While he amuses his hearers with tales of the adventures
of giants and dwarfs, and the conflicts of Manito with Manito, fairies
and enchanters, monsters and demons, he also throws in some few
grains of instruction, in the form of allegory and fable, which enable us
to perceive glimpses of the heart and its affections.
It is also by his myths that we are able to trace connections with the
human family in other parts of the world. Yet, where the analogies are
so general, there is a constant liability to mistakes. Of these foreign
analogies of myth lore, the least tangible, it is believed, is that which
has been suggested with the Scandinavian mythology. That mythology
is of so marked and peculiar a character, that it has not been distinctly
traced out of the great circle of tribes of the Indo-Germanic family.
Odin, and his terrific pantheon of war-gods and social deities, could
only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms and fire, which produce a
Hecla and a Maelstrom. These latitudes have invariably produced
nations, whose influence has been felt in an elevating power over the
world; and whose tracks have everywhere been marked by the highest
evidences of inductive intellect, centralizing energy, and practical
wisdom and forecast. From such a source the Indian could have derived
none of his vague symbolisms and mental idiosyncrasies, which have
left him, as he is found to-day, without a government and without a
God. Far more probable is it, in seeking for analogies to his mythology
and cosmogony, to resort to the era of that primal reconstruction of the
theory of a Deity, when the human philosophy in the oriental world
ascribed the godship of the universe to the subtile, ineffable, and
indestructible essences of fire and light, as revealed in the sun. Such
were the errors of the search for divine truth, power, and a controllable
Deity, which early developed themselves in the dogmas of the
Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, and wandering hordes of Northern
Asia.

Authors inform us that the worship of the sun lies at the foundation of
all the ancient mythologies, deeply enveloped as they are, when
followed over Asia Minor and Europe, in symbolic and linguistical
subtleties and refinements. The symbolical fires erected on temples and
altars to Baal, Chemosh, and Moloch, burned brightly in the valley of
the Euphrates,[5] long before the pyramids of Egypt were erected, or its
priestly-hoarded hieroglyphic wisdom resulted in a phonetic alphabet.
In Persia, these altars were guarded and religiously fed by a
consecrated body of magical priesthood, who recognized a Deity in the
essence of an eternal fire and a world-pervading light.
The same dogma, derived eastwardly and not westwardly through
Europe, was fully installed at Atacama and Cuzco, in Peru, at Cholulu,
on the magnificent and volcano-lighted peaks of Mexico; and along the
fertile deltas of the Mississippi valley. Altar-beds for a sacred fire, lit to
the Great Spirit, under the name and symbolic form of Ceezis, or the
sun, where the frankincense of the nicotiana was offered, with hymns
and