e turned into rocks.(1) The rising sun in Popol Vuh (if the
evidence of Popol Vuh, the Quichua sacred book, is to be accepted)
changed into stone the lion, serpent and tiger gods. The Standing Rock
on the Upper Missouri is adored by the Indians, and decorated with
coloured ribbons and skins of animals. This stone was a woman, who, like
Niobe, became literally petrified with grief when her husband took a
second wife. Another stone-woman in a cave on the banks of the Kickapoo
was wont to kill people who came near her, and is even now approached
with great respect. The Oneidas and Dacotahs claim descent from stones
to which they ascribe animation.(2) Montesinos speaks of a sacred stone
which was removed from a mountain by one of the Incas. A parrot flew out
of it and lodged in another stone, which the natives still worship.(3)
The Breton myth about one of the great stone circles (the stones were
peasants who danced on a Sunday) is a well-known example of this kind
of myth surviving in folk-lore. There is a kind of stone Actaeon(4)
near Little Muniton Creek, "resembling the bust of a man whose head
is decorated with the horns of a stag".(5) A crowd of myths of
metamorphosis into stone will be found among the Iroquois legends in
Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1880-81. If men may become stones, on
the other hand, in Samoa (as in the Greek myth of Deucalion), stones
may become men.(6) Gods, too, especially when these gods happen to be
cuttlefish, might be petrified. They were chased in Samoa by an Upolu
hero, who caught them in a great net and killed them. "They were changed
into stones, and now stand up in a rocky part of the lagoon on the
north side of Upolu."(7) Mauke, the first man, came out of a stone.
In short,(8) men and stones and beasts and gods and thunder have
interchangeable forms. In Mangaia(9) the god Ra was tossed up into the
sky by Maui and became pumice-stone. Many samples of this petrified
deity are found in Mangaia. In Melanesia matters are so mixed that it is
not easy to decide whether a worshipful stone is the dwelling of a dead
man's soul or is of spiritual merit in itself, or whether "the stone is
the spirit's outward part or organ". The Vui, or spirit, has much the
same relations with snakes, owls and sharks.(10) Qasavara, the mythical
opponent of Qat, the Melanesian Prometheus, "fell dead from heaven"
(like Ra in Mangia), and was turned into a stone, on which sacrifices
are made by those who desire stren