sophy of the ancient
world," says Max Mueller, "centred in the Dawn, the mother of the bright
gods, of the Sun in his various aspects, of the morn, the day, the
spring; herself the brilliant image and visage of immortality."[165-1]
Now it appears on attentively examining the Algonkin root _wab_, that it
gives rise to words of very diverse meaning, that like many others in
all languages while presenting but one form it represents ideas of
wholly unlike origin and application, that in fact there are two
distinct roots having this sound. One is the initial syllable of the
word translated hare or rabbit, but the other means _white_, and from it
is derived the words for the east, the dawn, the light, the day and the
morning.[165-2] Beyond a doubt this is the compound in the names
Michabo and Manibozho which therefore mean the Great Light, the Spirit
of Light, of the Dawn, or the East, and in the literal sense of the word
the Great White One, as indeed he has sometimes been called.

In this sense all the ancient and authentic myths concerning him are
plain and full of meaning. They divide themselves into two distinct
cycles. In the one Michabo is the spirit of light who dispels the
darkness; in the other as chief of the cardinal points he is lord of the
winds, prince of the powers of the air, whose voice is the thunder,
whose weapon the lightning, the supreme figure in the encounter of the
air currents, in the unending conflict which the Dakotas described as
waged by the waters and the winds.

In the first he is grandson of the moon, his father is the West Wind,
and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of
conception. For the moon is the goddess of night, the Dawn is her
daughter, who brings forth the morning and perishes herself in the act,
and the West, the spirit of darkness as the East is of light, precedes
and as it were begets the latter as the evening does the morning.
Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural
father to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long and
desperate struggle. "It began on the mountains. The West was forced to
give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and
lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he,
'my son, you know my power and that it is impossible to kill
me.'"[167-1] What is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness,
carried on from what time "the jocund morn