The creation-legends, as such, do not concern us much. They are of purely mythical, supernatural beings of various sorts, descending from the sky or coming up out of the underworld, and either finding a readymade earth to dwell upon or else creating one by magic. Some Southern darkies will tell you that the bluejay made the earth. “When all de worl’ was water he brung de fust grit er dirt.” The strangest conception of this kind is not American but that of the Ainus of northern Japan, who say that the earth originally was a sterile, cold, uninhabitable and dreadful quagmire. The creator existed aloft, however, and finally made and despatched a water-wagtail to construct a place habitable for men. The bird fluttered over the water-spaces, trampled the thin mud and beat it down with its feet. Thus ground was gradually hardened and elevated in spots, the water steadily drained away and good soil was left. Hence the Ainus hold the little wagtail in almost worshipful esteem.
Let us, however, restrict the inquiry to North America, and to the deluge-story proper—that is, the destruction of human life by water overwhelming a flourishing world, and the subsequent restoration.
The widely spread Algonkin stock has many such legends, in which one or several persons and animals survive by floating in a canoe or raft, and at their behest a beaver or a muskrat—the most natural agents—bring up from the bottom a little mud, which is expanded by magic into a new continent; but frequently birds do this service or otherwise help to form livable conditions. The Lenni Lenape (Delawares) had a tradition of a universal deluge in the far distant past, which Dr. Brinton[[27]] recounted as follows, assuring us that it is unmixed with any teaching by white missionaries: “The few people that survived had taken refuge on the back of a turtle who had reached so great an age that his shell was mossy, like the bank of a runlet. In this forlorn condition a loon flew that way, which they asked to dive and bring up land. He complied but found no bottom. Then he flew away and returned with a small quantity of earth in his bill. Guided by him, the turtle swam to a place where a spot of dry land was found. There the survivors settled and re-peopled the land.”
Few legends explain how or why the flood occurred. The Ojibways, however, say that it was the result of the malice of an underground monster visualized as a huge serpent (recalling the earth-dragon of the Chinese), which throughout all their mythology is the antagonist of the good, constructive genius represented by their tribal hero Manabozho.
The Beaver Indians of the Mackenzie Valley offer a more materialistic and more picturesque explanation. They told George Keith, one of the fur-traders there a century ago, whose Letters are printed in Masson’s collection of northern archives,[[99]] that the deluge resulted from the sudden melting of a snowfall so deep that tall trees were buried. This disastrous melting was produced by the release of the sun from a bug in which it had been hidden by sorcery. Then the sun flew away and began to shed its heat. There’s a sun-myth for you!
In the resulting freshet so philosophically accounted for the few persons who had been left unburied in the world of snow fled toward a high mountain, but only a man and a woman reached it. On this mountain were gathered pairs of all the kinds of animals in the country. The flood persisted, and there was nothing to eat. Then the mallard, the little grebe, or hell-diver, and the buzzard (?) were sent to dive into the sea and try to find its bottom. All failed repeatedly, but the buzzard dived again a few days later, and came up with his bill full of earth, which showed that the flood was subsiding. Finally the waters drained away or dried up, but the soil had been so ruined by submergence that not even roots could be found to serve as food. When everybody was nearly starved, however, the human pair and the animals succeeded in finding the home of Raven, who lived far away, and from his stores they obtained food. Then a new world of life began.
The Cheyennes and the Arikarees say that at the height of the flood “a person” (masculine) was floating in the water with all sorts of aquatic birds swimming about him. He asked that one of them dive and get some earth. All tried it and failed until a small duck brought up a little mud in its beak and gave it to the man. He kneaded it with his fingers until it was dry, then made little piles of it on the surface of the water, which enlarged and coalesced into a wide plain.
The Chitimacha Indians of northern Louisiana used to relate that a great deluge came, whereupon the redheaded woodpecker went up to the sky and hung by his claws to escape drowning, but his tail hung down into the dirty water and was stained black, as you now see it. The Pimas and other tribes of Arizona tell similar stories of certain birds, one clan of Pueblo Indians putting it on the turkey. They say that a flood was produced by the god Baholi Konga to punish tribal wickedness. The good persons in the community escaped this punishment by means of the fact that Baholi Konga had clothed them in turkey-skins, enabling them to fly to the high mountains. They flew too low, however, and the tails of their dresses dragged in the water, the stain of which is still visible.
With one more and a rather pretty tale from the traditions of the Paiute Indians, whose home is in the region of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, I must close this glance at aboriginal legends of a deluge here in America. These Indians relate that formerly the whole world was under water save the summit of Mt. Grant, on which existed a fire. It was the only fire in the universe, and it would have been extinguished when the wind blew hard and the waves were dashed against the peak had not the sage-hen settled down there and fanned away the water with her wings; but while doing this inestimable service to mankind the heat of the precious flame scorched her breast, and that accounts for its present blackness.
A curiously similar story, which illustrates the primitive savage’s perception that obtaining fire was the most important, the first, thing to do in beginning or reconstituting a habitable world, appears in the folklore of the Arawaks of British Guiana, and may well be told among deluge myths. They assure you that the world was once engulfed in a flood that left exposed only a hilltop where grew some tall cocoanut palms. The heavenly leader, Sigu, conducted all the animals to this hill and made such as could go up the trees, while others were placed in a cave sealed water-tight with wax. (It was during that long, distressful waiting in the palm-tops that the howling-monkeys perfected the agonizing quality of their terrific voices.) Finally the waters subsided and the agami (the trumpeter, Psophia crepitans) ventured too soon upon the ground in search of food; thereupon hordes of starved ants, issuing from their half-drowned nests, swarmed upon its legs, then of respectable size, and so nearly devoured them that only the sticklike shanks now characteristic of the bird remained. Sigu rescued the unfortunate agami, and then with infinite trouble kindled a fire with a spark that the maroodie (or guan, a fellow-bird with the agami of South-American barnyards) had snapped up in mistake for a shining red insect. The guan tried to shift the blame for this sinful error upon the alligator but failed to do so, for his own guilt was betrayed by the glowing spark that had stuck in his throat, as one may see by looking at any guan to-day.