he myths of the
Dakotan stock. Many myths of the Tinnean also have been collected.
Petitot has recorded a number of those found at the north, and we have
in manuscript some of the myths of a southern branch--the Navajos.
Perhaps the myths of the Shoshonians have been collected more thoroughly
than those of any other stock. These are yet unpublished, but the
manuscripts are in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology. Powers has
recorded many of the myths of various stocks in California, and the old
Spanish writings give us a fair collection of the Nahuatlan myths of
Mexico, and Rink has presented an interesting volume on the mythology of
the Innuits; and, finally, fragments of mythology have been collected
from nearly all the tribes of North America, and they are scattered
through thousands of volumes, so that the literature is vast. The brief
description which I shall give of zooetheism is founded on a study of the
materials which I have thus indicated.

All these tribes are found in the higher stages of savagery, or the
lower stages of barbarism, and their mythologies are found to be
zooetheistic among the lowest, physitheistic among the highest, and a
great number of tribes are found in a transition state: for zooetheism is
found to be a characteristic of savagery, and physitheism of barbarism,
using the terms as they have been defined by Morgan. The supreme gods of
this stage are animals. The savage is intimately associated with
animals. From them he obtains the larger part of his clothing, and much
of his food, and he carefully studies their habits and finds many
wonderful things. Their knowledge and skill and power appear to him to
be superior to his own. He sees the mountain-sheep fleet among the
crags, the eagle soaring in the heavens, the humming-bird poised over
its blossom-cup of nectar, the serpents swift without legs, the salmon
scaling the rapids, the spider weaving its gossamer web, the ant
building a play-house mountain--in all animal nature he sees things too
wonderful for him, and from admiration he grows to adoration, and the
animals become his gods.

Ancientism plays an important part in this zooetheism. It is not the
animals of to-day whom the Indians worship, but their progenitors--their
prototypes. The wolf of to-day is a howling pest, but that wolf's
ancestor--the first of the line--was a god. The individuals of every
species are supposed to have descended from an ancient being--a
progenitor of t