MYTH AND LEGEND DISTINGUISHED FROM THE SUPERHUMAN.
§ 10. The Omaha, Ponka, and cognate tribes distinguish at the present day between the myth (higaⁿ, higu) and the legend or story (iuȼa, etc.) on the one hand; and what on the other hand is called “Wakandaʇaȼicaⁿ,” “uqubeaʇaȼicaⁿ,” and “iȼa‘eȼĕaʇaȼicaⁿ.” The former are told only for amusement and are called, “iusictaⁿ iuȼa,” lying tales. They are regarded as “iqawaȼĕaʇaȼicaⁿ,” pertaining to the ludicrous. With this may be compared the statements of Lang:[4]
“Among the lowest and most backward, as among the most advanced races, there coexist the mythical and the religious elements in belief. The rational factor (or what approves itself to us as the rational factor) is visible in religion; the irrational is prominent in myth.” * * * “The rational and irrational aspects of mythology and religion may be of coeval antiquity for all that is certainly known, or either of them, in the dark backward of mortal experience, may have preceded the other.” The author has found certain Indian myths which abound in what to the civilized mind is the grossest obscenity, and that too without the slightest reference to the origin of any natural phenomena. Myths of this class appear to have been told from a love of the obscene. Nothing of a mysterious or religious character can be found in them. Perhaps such myths are of modern origin; but this must remain an enigma.
§ 11. The Omaha and Ponka are in a transition state, hence many of their old customs and beliefs are disappearing. Some have been lost within the past fifty years, others within the last decade, according to unimpeachable testimony. The Ponka are more conservative than the Omaha, and the Kansa and Osage are more so than the Ponka, in the estimation of the author.
§ 12. Though it has been said that the Indians feared to tell myths except on winter nights (and some Indians have told this to the author), the author has had no trouble in obtaining myths during the day at various seasons of the year.
§ 13. James Alexander, a full Winnebago of the Wolf gens and a non-Christian, told the author that the myths of the Winnebago, called wai-kaⁿ-na by them, have undergone material change in the course of transmission, and that it is very probable that many of them are entirely different from what they were several generations ago. Even in the same tribe at the present day, the author has found no less than three versions of the same myth, and there may be others.
The myth of the Big Turtle is a case in point.[5] The narrator acknowledged that he had made some additions to it himself.
§ 14. No fasting or prayer is required before one can tell a myth. Far different is it with those things which are “Wakandaʇaȼicaⁿ,” or are connected with visions or the secret societies. This agrees in the main with what Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, has learned from the Cherokee of North Carolina. Mr. Frank H. Cushing has found that the Zuñi Indians distinguish between their folk-lore and their cult-lore, i.e., between their legends and mythic tales on the one hand, and their dramatized stories of creation and their religious observances on the other, a special name being given to each class of knowledge. To them the mythic tales and folk-lore in general are but the fringe of the garment, not the garment itself. When they enact the creation story, etc., they beeve that they are repeating the circumstances represented, and that they are then surrounded by the very beings referred to in the sacred stories. Similar beliefs were found by Dr. Washington Matthews, as shown in his article entitled “The Prayer of a Navajo Shaman,” published in the American Anthropologist of Washington, D.C., for April, 1888.
§ 15. At the same time there seems to be some connection between certain myths and the personal names called, “nikie names.” This will be considered in detail in a future monograph on “Indian Personal Names,” now in course of preparation. One example must suffice for the present. In the [K]aⁿze gens of the Omaha there is a nikie name, Ԁasi duba, Four Peaks. The author did not understand its derivation until he studied the myth of Haxige and observed the prayers made in gathering the stones for the sweat-bath. Each stone was invoked as a venerable man (see § 9), the Four Peaks were mentioned several times, and the two superior deities or chief mysterious ones (Wakanda ʇañga agȼañʞaⁿhaⁿ hnañkace) were invoked.[6]
This last refers to the Wakanda residing above and the one in the ground. It is therefore possible that in past ages the Siouan tribes did not differentiate between the myth and what is “Wakandaʇaȼicaⁿ.” But we have no means of proving this.
§ 16. Most of the Omaha governmental instrumentalities (“wewaspe”) were “Wakandaʇaȼicaⁿ,” but there were things that were “Wakandaʇaȼicaⁿ,” which were not “wewaspe,” such as the law of catamenial seclusion. which were not “wewaspe,” such as the law of catamenial seclusion.