A Guide to Mythology

by Helen A. Clarke

We come now to myths in which the Sun and the Moon, and other objects of nature, play the most important part. We find myths of this sort all over the globe, some of them crude and simple, and some of them in the form of very beautiful stories.

The Incas of Peru believed they were descended from the Sun, so with them the Sun was their totem instead of an animal or a plant. But there came a time when the Incas established a higher god than the Sun. They deposed the Sun because it could move only in one part of the heavens and so must have a ruler over it. So then to the question: “What are the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars,” they answered: “They are men and women. At evening they swim in the waters, they go down from sight in the west. In the morning the Sun cometh forth at Wau-bunong, the Place of Breaking Light.”

According to the Cherokee Indians, a number of beings were employed in constructing the Sun, the first planet made. “It was the intention of the Creator that men should live always, but the Sun, having surveyed the land, and, finding an insufficiency for their support, changed this design, and arranged that they should die. The daughter of the Sun was the first to suffer under this law. She was bitten by a serpent, and died. Thereupon the Sun decreed that men should live always. At the same time, he commissioned a few persons to take a box, and seek the spirit of his daughter, and return with it encased therein. In no wise must the box be opened. But the box was opened. Immortality fled. Men must die.”

The Sun-God was not always able to carry everything before him, as the story of his battle with the Hare-God shows, as well as the various stories about his being ensnared and his course regulated. In some countries, the Sun is the husband of the Moon, in others the Moon is the husband of the Sun. Again the Moon will be the sister of the Sun or the Sun the sister of the Moon.

THE NAVAJO STORY OF THE MAKING OF THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS

At the beginning, when the people had all crept out of the aperture in the cave in which they had previously lived, a council of wise men was held to discuss the propriety of introducing more light upon the earth, which at that time was very small, being lit only by a twilight, like that seen just at the breaking of dawn. Having deliberated some time, the wise men concluded to have a sun and moon, and a variety of stars placed above the earth. They first made the heavens for them to be placed in; then the old men of the Navajos commenced building a sun, which was done in a large house constructed for the purpose.

To the other tribes was confided the making of the moon and stars, which they soon accomplished; when it was decided to give the sun and moon to the guidance of the two dumb Fluters, who had figured with some importance as musicians in their former place of residence in the cave, and one of whom had accidentally conceived the plan of leaving that place for their present more agreeable quarters. These two men, who have carried the two heavenly bodies ever since, staggered at first with their weight; and the one who carried the sun came near burning the earth by bearing it too near, before he had reached the aperture in the mountain through which he was to pass during the night. This misfortune, however, was prevented by the old men, who puffed the smoke of their pipes toward it, which caused it to retire to a greater distance in the heavens. These men have been obliged to do this four times since the dumb man—the Fluter—has carried the sun in the heavens; for the earth has grown very much larger than at the beginning, and consequently the sun would have to be removed, or the earth and all therein would perish in its heat. Now, after the sun and moon had taken their places, the people commenced embroidering the stars upon the heavens the wise men had made, in beautiful and varied patterns and images. Bears and fishes and all varieties of animals were being skilfully drawn, when in rushed a prairie wolf, roughly exclaiming: “What folly is this? Why are you making all this fuss to make a bit of embroidery? Just stick the stars about the sky anywhere;” and, suiting the action to the word, the villainous wolf scattered a large pile all over the heavens. Thus it is that there is such confusion among the few images which the tasteful Navajos had so carefully elaborated.

THE STORY OF THE CONQUERING OF THE SUN

(North American Indian)

Once upon a time Tä-vwotz, the Hare-God, was sitting with his family by the camp-fire in the solemn woods, anxiously waiting for the return of Tä-vi, the wayward Sun-God. Weary with long watching, the Hare-God fell asleep, and the Sun-God came so near that he scorched the shoulders of Tä-vwotz. Foreseeing the vengeance which would be thus provoked, he fled back to his cave beneath the earth. Tä-vwotz awoke in great wrath and speedily determined to go and fight the Sun-God.