ligion in America are much disputed, and
will be more appropriately treated later. It is now very usual for
anthropologists to say, like Mr. Dorman, "no approach to monotheismn had
been made before the discovery of America by Europeans, and the
Great Spirit mentioned in these (their) books is an introduction by
Christianity".(1) "This view will not bear examination," says Mr. Tylor,
and we shall later demonstrate the accuracy of his remark.(2) But at
present we are concerned, not with what Indian religion had to say about
her Gods, but with what Indian myth had to tell about the beginnings of
things.

(1) Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 15.

(2) Primitive Culture, 1873, ii. p. 340.

The Hurons, for example (to choose a people in a state of middle
barbarism), start in myth from the usual conception of a powerful
non-natural race of men dwelling in the heavens, whence they descended,
and colonised, not to say constructed, the earth. In the Relation de la
Nouvelle France, written by Pere Paul le Jeune, of the Company of Jesus,
in 1636, there is a very full account of Huron opinion, which, with some
changes of names, exists among the other branches of the Algonkin family
of Indians.

They recognise as the founder of their kindred a woman named Ataentsic,
who, like Hephaestus in the Iliad, was banished from the sky. In the
upper world there are woods and plains, as on earth. Ataentsic fell down
a hole when she was hunting a bear, or she cut down a heaven-tree, and
fell with the fall of this Huron Ygdrasil, or she was seduced by an
adventurer from the under world, and was tossed out of heaven for her
fault. However it chanced, she dropped on the back of the turtle in the
midst of the waters. He consulted the other aquatic animals, and one of
them, generally said to have been the musk-rat, fished(1) up some soil
and fashioned the earth.(2) Here Ataentsic gave birth to twins, Ioskeha
and Tawiscara. These represent the usual dualism of myth; they answer
to Osiris and Set, to Ormuzd and Ahriman, and were bitter enemies.
According to one form of the myth, the woman of the sky had twins, and
what occurred may be quoted from Dr. Brinton. "Even before birth one of
them betrayed his restless and evil nature by refusing to be born in
the usual manner, but insisting on breaking through his parent's side
or arm-pit. He did so, but it cost his mother her life. Her body was
buried, and from it sprang the various vegetable pro