it goes on, "'So is thy will,' said
the Sky-father, 'yet not alone shalt thou helpful be unto
our children';" and we learn how the Sky-father assisted the
Earth-mother. "Thus in other ways, many diversed, they
worked for their offspring."[230]

[230] Cushing, _Zuni Creation Myths_.

There is one reflection only I desire to offer on this most beautiful
maternal version of the creation legend. Here we find complete
understanding of the woman's part; she is the one who gives life; she
is the active partner. The Sky-father is represented as her agent, her
helper. Why should this be? Contrast this idea with the patriarchal
creation story of the Bible.

"And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be
alone; I will make him an help meet for him.... And the Lord
God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;
and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead
thereof: and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the
man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the
man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out
of Man."[231]

[231] Gen. ii, 18, 21-23.

I would again assert my strong belief that in the religious conception
of a people we find the true thoughts and the customs of the period in
which they originated. A patriarchal people could not have given
expression to a creation myth in which the female idea prevailed, and
the mother, and not the father, was dominant. For men have ever
fashioned the gods in their own human image, endowing them with their
thoughts and actions. The sharp change in the view of woman's part in
the relationship of the sexes is clearly symbolised in these creation
myths. Yes, it marks the degradation of woman; she has fallen from the
maternal conception of the feminine principle, guiding, directing, and
using the male, to that of the woman made for the man in the
patriarchal Bible story.

Another group of legends that I would notice refer to the conflict
between the right of the mother and that of the father in relation to
the children. These stories belong to a period of transition. In
ancient Greece, as we have seen, the paternal family succeeded the
maternal clan. In his _Orestia_, AEschylus puts in opposition before
Pallas Athene the right of the mother and the right of the father.
The chorus of the Eumeni