Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/203

 such man for each race, or possibly different races emerged, at different times, from holes in the earth. These are the inconsistencies of Zulu tradition. The Zulus, it seems, had no idea of God, but only la monnaie of the idea in the conception of powerful ancestral spirits, of a first father, and of a "lord," not a god, who plays with thunder. Lions and snakes are also called "lords." In them the dead are incarnate.

The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine myths) occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial condition in which some of the Digger Indians at present exist, living on insects and unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to the civilisation which the Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs.

From such peoples we might expect, perhaps, remarkable myths of creation, varying greatly in character. But these hopes are disappointed. The Hurons, for example (to choose a people in a state of middle barbarism), start from the usual conception of a powerful non-natural race of men dwelling in the heavens, whence they descended, and colonised, not to say constructed, the earth. In the Relation de la Nouvelle France, written by Père Paul le Jeune, of the Company of Jesus, in 1636, there is a very full account of Huron opinion, which, with some changes of names, exists among the other branches of the Algonkin family of Indians.

They recognise as the founder of their kindred a woman named Ataentsic, who, like Hephæstus in the