Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/267

 Water-Monsters of American Aboi r igiues. 255

��WATER-MONSTERS OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

Aquatic monsters are found in the folk-lore of every people, and are probably as numerous as land-monsters or terrestrial prodigies, for the sea, the lake, and all watery depths are more mysterious and more unaccountable than the surface of dry land. The term "mon- ster" may be taken in a double sense ; either it means an organism exceeding others of its kind in size, power, speed, or ugliness, but nevertheless a real product of nature ; or else it designates an im- possible creation of human imagination, like the dragon, griffin, uni- corn in heraldry, etc.

The Gila monster or Heloderma, salamander, inspires terror among the people, or they would not call it the hell-bender ; the whale is dreaded for its strength by all those who approach too near. Among the imaginary prodigies, of which antiquity was as productive as later epochs, might be mentioned the chimaera of Lycia in Asia Minor (which once may have represented some spout of volcanic origin), and Scylla and Charybdis, the living symbols of whirlpools and surfy shores. No wonder that such curiosities were once deified. The Krake was a floating, huge island in the folk-lore of Norway near to the maelstrom, a huge phenomenon brought into whirling motion by the influence of the tides. The celebrated Lorelei on the shores of the Rhine River may be called a combination of a mountain siren with a maid of the whirlpools.

It will be found that prodigies of this sort are always compounded of a human and of an animal or brutish element. The animal addi- tions are generally in the shape of organs of the body, as wings, claws, tusks, etc., and in some instances portions of vegetable char- acter are added to the figure. Artistic nations subordinate all these symbolic additions to the human idea, but with primitive nations the beastly nature prevails over the human faculties. In ancient Egypt, zootheism is expressed chiefly by animal faces or masks enveloping the head ; the Egyptian gods and goddesses represent rather powers of nature than moral or intellectual qualities. Greek art tended to idealize the beast's attributes in the human form, as we see with the centaurs, the fauns, and the satyrs, even with the naiades and the dryades ; but in other monsters of their creation the reverse ten- dency of idealism is perceptible, as in the Cerberus, the Grate, and the hydras.

Turning to our North American Indians, their monsters have in themselves more of the animal than of the human, and this appears usually in an exaggerated form. In the following pages it is not

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