Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/31

Rh recurrent feature of Indian myth is the personification of members of the body, especially the genital and excretory organs, usually in connexion with divination. The final step in the use of the human body as a symbol is anthropomorphism—that complete anthropomorphism wherein mythic powers are given bodies, not part human and part animal, but wholly human; it marks the first clear sense of the dignity of man, and of the superiority of his wisdom to that of the brutes. Not many Indian groups have gone far in this direction, but among the more advanced it is a step clearly undertaken.

Imagination plays a part in the development of myth which is best realized by the aesthetic effect created by a body of tales or by a set of pictorial symbols. The total impression of Indian mythic emblems is undoubtedly one of grotesquerie, but it is difficult to point to any pagan religious art except the Greek that has outgrown the grotesque; and the Indian has a quality of its own. There is a wide difference, however, in the several regions, and indeed as between tribes of the same region. The art of the North-West and of the South-West are both highly developed, but even in such analogous objects as masks they represent distinct types of genius. The Navaho and the Apache are neighbours and relatives, but they are poles apart in their aesthetic expression. Some tribes, as the Pawnee, show great originality; others, as the northern Athapascans and most of the Salish, are colourless borrowers.

Borrowing is, indeed, the most difficult of problems to solve. In the abstract, it is easy to suppose that, with the main similarities of environment in North America and the general evenness of a civilization everywhere neolithic, the like conditions of a like human nature would give rise to like ideas and fancies. It is equally easy to suppose that in a territory permeable nearly everywhere, among tribes in constant intercourse, borrowing must be extensive. Both factors are significant, though in general the obvious borrowing is likely to seem the more