American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent

by Daniel G. Brinton

In the course of time one of the brothers disappeared and the other determined to select a wife from one of the two women, as it seems he had not yet chosen. He watched what the Woman of Darkness did in her absence, and discovered that she descended into the waters and enjoyed the embraces of a monster, while the Woman of Light passed her time in feeding white birds. In course of time the former brought forth black man-serpents, while the Woman of Light was delivered of beautiful boys with white skins. The master of the house killed the former with his arrows, but preserved the latter, and marrying the Woman of Light, became the father of the human race, and especially of the Dènè Dindjié, who have preserved the memory of him.[27]

In another myth of this stock, clearly a version of the former, this father of the race is represented as a mighty bird, called Yêl, or Yale, or Orelbale, from the root ell, a term they apply to everything supernatural. He took to wife the daughter of the Sun (the Woman of Light), and by her begat the race of man. He formed the dry land for a place for them to live upon, and stocked the rivers with salmon, that they might have food. When he enters his nest it is day, but when he leaves it it is night; or, according to another myth, he has the two women for wives, the one of whom makes the day, the other the night.

In the beginning Yêl was white in plumage, but he had an enemy, by name Cannook, with whom he had various contests, and by whose machinations he was turned black. Yêl is further represented as the god of the winds and storms, and of the thunder and lightning.[28]

Thus we find, even in this extremely low specimen of the native race, the same basis for their mythology as in the most cultivated nations of Central America. Not only this; it is the same basis upon which is built the major part of the sacred stories of all early religions, in both continents; and the excellent Father Petitot, who is so much impressed by these resemblances that he founds upon them a learned argument to prove that the Dènè are of oriental extraction,[29] would have written more to the purpose had his acquaintance with American religions been as extensive as it was with those of Asiatic origin.

There is one point in all these myths which I wish to bring out forcibly. That is, the distinction which is everywhere drawn between the God of Light and the Sun. Unless this distinction is fully comprehended, American mythology loses most of its meaning.

The assertion has been so often repeated, even down to the latest writers, that the American Indians were nearly all sun-worshipers, that I take pains formally to contradict it. Neither the Sun nor the Spirit of the Sun was their chief divinity.

Of course, the daily history of the appearance and disappearance of light is intimately connected with the apparent motion of the sun. Hence, in the myths there is often a seeming identification of the two, which I have been at no pains to avoid. But the identity is superficial only; it entirely disappears in other parts of the myth, and the conceptions, as fundamentally distinct, must be studied separately, to reach accurate results. It is an easy, but by no means a profound method of treating these religions, to dismiss them all by the facile explanations of "animism," and "sun and moon worship."

I have said, and quoted strong authority to confirm the opinion, that the native tribes of America have lost ground in morals and have retrograded in their religious life since the introduction of Christianity. Their own faiths, though lower in form, had in them the germs of a religious and moral evolution, more likely, with proper regulation, to lead these people to a higher plane of thought than the Aryan doctrines which were forced upon them.

This may seem a daring, even a heterodox assertion, but I think that most modern ethnologists will agree that it is no more possible for races in all stages of culture and of widely different faculties to receive with benefit any one religion, than it is for them to thrive under one form of government, or to adopt with advantage one uniform plan of building houses. The moral and religious life is a growth, and the brash wood of ancient date cannot be grafted on the green stem. It is well to remember that the heathendoms of America were very far from wanting living seeds of sound morality and healthy mental education. I shall endeavor to point this out in a few brief paragraphs.

In their origin in the human mind, religion and morality have nothing in common. They are even antagonistic. At the root of all religions is the passionate desire for the widest possible life, for the most unlimited exercise of all the powers. The basis of all morality is self-sacrifice, the willingness to give up our wishes to the will of another. The criterion of the power of a religion is its ability to command this sacrifice; the criterion of the excellence of a religion is the extent to which its commands coincide with the good of the race, with the lofty standard of the "categorical imperative."