In the beginning nothing existed but water and a muskrat. As the little animal kept diving down to the bottom of the water in search of food, his mouth became frequently filled with mud. This he spat out and so gradually formed by alluvial deposit, an island, which grew and grew until it finally became large enough to be the earth.
The natives of the Philippine Islands tell this story of the creation of the world.
HOW THE KITE HELPED TO MAKE THE WORLD
The world at first consisted only of sky and water and between these two there flew a kite. The kite became weary of flying about, and finding no place to rest; so he set the water at variance with the sky. Then, in order to keep the water within bounds and so that it should not get uppermost, the sky loaded the water with a number of islands in which the kite might settle and leave them at peace. Now, it happened that floating about in the water was a large cane with two joints which was at length thrown up by the waves at the feet of the kite as it stood on the shore of one of the islands. The kite split open the cane with its bill, and behold, a man came out of one joint and a woman out of the other. They were soon after married by the consent of their god, Bathala Meycapal, and from them are descended the different nations of the world.
In some stories, a fish instead of a bird or an animal is the maker of the earth, while there is an interesting Polynesian myth in which the earth itself was a fish and was fished up out of the waters with a fish hook. The person who accomplished this remarkable feat was the youngest of the Maui brothers, and the flower of the family, by all accounts. We shall hear of him again in the chapter on child myths.
HOW MAUI FISHED UP THE EARTH
The youngest Maui was always very badly treated by his elder brothers. They were in the habit of going off and leaving him alone at home with nothing to do and nobody to play with. Their treatment of him at meals was even more shocking. They would devour the best of every thing themselves, and toss him a bone or offal to eat.
Finally, little Maui plucks up courage to assert himself, and the next time his brothers go a-fishing, he takes his place in the boat and insists on going, too. “Where is your hook,” ask the two brothers. “Oh this will do,” says little Maui, taking out his ancestor’s jawbone. This he throws overboard for his fish-hook, but on trying to pull it in again he finds it very heavy. By hauling away at it, however, he at last lifts it, and finds it has brought up the land from the bottom of the deep. This land proved to be an extraordinary combination of an enormous fish and an island with houses and men and animals on it.
The world supporting tortoise is a familiar mythological friend, believed in by Asia, and holding an important place in the mythology of the North American Indian, where a turtle, the lonely inhabitant of the waste of waters, dived to the depths for the earth.
Even so humble an insect as the grasshopper figures in the Bushman’s story of the creation of the world. Insignificant as the grasshopper appears to us, to the Bushman he appeared a great creature, called Cagn, with truly omnipotent powers, for he undertook the work of creation without even the usual raw material of water. He simply gave orders and caused all things to appear and to be made,—sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, animals.