Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/73

 progenitor of the race; and so they have a grizzly-bear-god, an eagle god, a rattlesnake-god, a trout-god, a spider-god—a god for every species and variety of animal.

By these animal-gods all things were established. The heavenly bodies were created and their ways appointed, and when the powers and phenomena of nature are personified, the personages are beasts, and all human institutions also were established by the ancient animal gods.

The ancient animals of any philosophy of this stage are found to constitute a clan or gens—a body of relatives, or consanguinii, with grandfathers, fathers, sons, and brothers. In Ute theism, the ancient Togoav, the first rattlesnake, is the grandfather, and all the animal gods are assigned to their relationships. Grandfather Togoav, the wise, was the chief of the council, but Shinauav, the ancient wolf, was the chief of the clan.

There were many other clans and tribes of ancient gods with whom these supreme gods had dealings, of which hereafter; and, finally, each of these ancient gods became the progenitor of a new tribe, so that we have a tribe of bears, a tribe of eagles, a tribe of rattlesnakes, a tribe of spiders, and many other tribes, as we have tribes of Utes, tribes of Sioux, tribes of Navajos: and in that philosophy tribes of animals are considered to be coördinate with tribes of men. All of these gods have invisible duplicates—spirits—and they have often visited the earth. All of the wonderful things seen in nature are done by the animal-gods. That elder life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are degenerate. Now and then as a medicine-man by practicing sorcery can perform great feats, so now and then there is a medicine-bear, a medicine-wolf, or a medicine-snake that can work magic.

On winter nights, the Indians gather about the camp-fire, and then the doings of the gods are recounted in many a mythic tale. I have heard the venerable and impassioned orator on the camp-meeting stand rehearse the story of the crucifixion, and have seen the thousands gathered there weep in contemplation of the story of divine suffering, and heard their shouts roll down the forest aisles as they gave vent to their joy at the contemplation of redemption. But the scene was not a whit more dramatic than another I have witnessed in an evergreen forest of the Rocky Mountain region, where a tribe was gathered under the great pines, and the temple of light from the blazing fire was walled by the darkness of midnight, and in the midst of the temple stood the wise old man telling in simple savage language the story of Tawats, when he conquered the sun and established the seasons and the days. In that pre-Columbian time, before the advent of white men, all the Indian tribes of North America gathered on winter nights by the shores of the seas where the tides beat in solemn rhythm, by the shores of the great lakes, where the waves dashed