Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/449

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dians — especially of Central America and Peru — reveals analogies to the star-lore of other continents so widespread, so numerous, and so striking that no room is left for chance. But may not these analogies have resulted from the teachings of the early missionaries and explorers? One objection to this is that everywhere alike the earliest writers state that these legends were related to them on their arrival as being already well known and long known. That some of the most important of these stellar legends of Ancient America are very old is beyond doubt. Let us also notice the marked disagreement in details which the most similar American legends reveal either in comparison with each other or with those of other continents. Had they sprung from recent teaching, or had they been of recent and single origin, they would surely have presented greater similarity. Again, the distribution of these analogies is too extensive to be accounted for by missionary teaching, and the internal evidence shows practically no element of European thought within the legends. Examined with reference to this point, the Micmac Bear legend is markedly primitive. The only feature to which suspicion can possibly be directed is the pot in which the bear meat was cooked. It is probable that the Micmacs knew how to boil their food in pre-European times, either in stones which they hollowed out or in the birch bark dishes which I have seen them manufacture and use for this purpose in the woods. There is reason to suppose that they boiled many of their medicinal preparations long before the coming of the whites. Wo, their word for pot, seems to be purely native in origin.

Let us pass on, then, to the real question which confronts every inquiry into the cause or causes of the numerous similarities which exist between the continents in human thoughts, habits, and customs. Did these similarities originate independently, or were they transmitted from one continent to another in times so remote that not only all memory of a common origin has been lost, but other peoples have intervened who knew nothing of these analogies? Beyond doubt, as some authority has well put it, the fact that primitive peoples on different continents build wooden huts is not evidence that one has taught the other, for everywhere it rains, everywhere man is by his nature impelled to construct a shelter, and generally wood is the most available material for that purpose. In other words, like causes acting independently on the mind of man (which is everywhere the same) produce like results. It is this principle which, applied to such subjects as the world-wide story of the solar hero, for example, offers such a plausible explanation of its numerous and striking analogies. Just in proportion as the concepts involved in these analogies are of a general nature — i. e. dependent