Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/25



F the term be understood as signifying a systematic and conscious arrangement of mythic characters and events, it is certainly a misnomer to speak of the stories of the North American Indians as "mythology" To be sure, certain tribes and groups (as the Iroquois, the Pawnee, the Zuñi, the Bella Coola, to mention widely separate examples) have attained to something like consistency and uniformity in their mythic beliefs (and it is significant that in just these groups the process of anthropomorphization has gone farthest); but nowhere on the continent can we find anything like the sense for system which in the Old World is in part evidenced and in part introduced by the epic literatures—Aryan, Babylonian, Greek, Norse.

Mythology in the classic acceptation, therefore, can scarcely be said to exist in North America; but in quite another sense—belief in more or less clearly personified nature-powers and ) the possession of stories narrating the deeds and adventures of these persons—the Indians own, not one, but many mythologies; for every tribe, and often, within the tribe, each clan and society, has its individual mythic lore. Here again the statement needs qualifying. Beliefs vary from tribe to tribe, even from clan to clan, and yet throughout, if one s attention be broadly directed, there are fundamental similarities and uniformities that afford a basis for a kind of critical reconstruction of a North American Indian mythology. No single tribe and no group of tribes has completely expressed this mythology—much less has any realized its form; but the student of Indian lore can scarcely fail to become conscious of a coherent system of myths, of which the Indians themselves