er, daughter of the Moon, who died in giving
them life. Their names, Ioskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida
dialect the White One and the Dark One. Under the influence of Christian
ideas the contest between the brothers has been made to assume a moral
character, like the strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such
intention appears in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton has shown that
none of the American tribes had any conception of a Devil. When the
quarrel came to blows, the dark brother was signally discomfited; and
the victorious Ioskeha, returning to his grandmother, "established his
lodge in the far East, on the horders of the Great Ocean, whence the sun
comes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special guardian of
the Iroquois." He caused the earth to bring forth, he stocked the woods
with game, and taught his children the use of fire. "He it was who
watched and watered their crops; 'and, indeed, without his aid,' says
the old missionary, quite out of patience with their puerilities,
'they think they could not boil a pot.'" There was more in it than poor
Brebouf thought, as we are forcibly reminded by recent discoveries in
physical science. Even civilized men would find it difficult to boil a
pot without the aid of solar energy. Call him what we will,--Ioskeha,
Michabo, or Phoibos,--the beneficent Sun is the master and sustainer
of us all; and if we were to relapse into heathenism, like
Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not do better than to select him
as our chief object of worship.

The same principles by which these simple cases are explained furnish
also the key to the more complicated mythology of Mexico and Peru. Like
the deities just discussed, Viracocha, the supreme god of the Quichuas,
rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys westward, slaying
with his lightnings the creatures who oppose him, until he finally
disappears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in his name
the evidence of his origin, Viracocha signifying "foam of the sea"; and
hence the "White One" (l'aube), the god of light rising white on the
horizon, like the foam on the surface of the waves. The Aymaras spoke
of their original ancestors as white; and to this day, as Dr. Brinton
informs us, the Peruvians call a white man Viracocha. The myth of
Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same character. All these solar heroes
present in most of their qualities and achievements a striking likeness
to those o