The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 3, Myths and Languages / The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 3

by Hubert Howe Bancroft

CHETHL AND AHGISHANAKHOU.

Connected with the history of this deluge is another myth in which a great Bird figures. When the waters rose a certain mysterious brother and sister found it necessary to part. The name of the brother was Chethl, that is, Thunder or Lightning, and the name of the sister was Ahgishanakhou, which means the Underground Woman. As they separated Chethl said to her: Sister, you shall never see me again, but while I live you shall hear my voice. Then he clothed himself in the skin of a great bird, and flew towards the south-west. His sister climbed to the top of Mount Edgecomb, which is near Sitka, and it opened and swallowed her up, leaving a great hole, or crater. The world itself is an immense flat plate supported on a pillar, and under the world, in silence and darkness, this Under-ground Woman guards the great pillar from evil and malignant powers. She has never seen her brother since she left the upper world, and she shall never see him again; but still, when the tempest sweeps down on Edgecomb, the lightning of his eyes gleams down her crater-window, and the thundering of his wings re-echoes through all her subterranean halls.[II-68]

The Koniagas, north of the Thlinkeets, have their legendary Bird and Dog—the latter taking the place occupied in the mythology of many other tribes by the wolf or coyote. Up in heaven, according to the Koniagas, there exists a great deity called Shljam Schoa. He created two personages and sent them down to the earth, and the Raven accompanied them carrying light. This original pair made sea, rivers, mountains, forests, and such things. Among other places they made the Island of Kadiak, and so stocked it that the present Koniagas assert themselves the descendants of a Dog.[II-69]

The Aleuts of the Aleutian Archipelago seem to disagree upon their origin. Some say that in the beginning a Bitch inhabited Unalaska, and that a great Dog swam across to her from Kadiak; from which pair the human race have sprung. Others, naming the bitch-mother of their race Mahakh, describe a certain Old Man, called Iraghdadakh, who came from the north to visit this Mahakh. The result of this visit was the birth of two creatures, male and female, with such an extraordinary mixing up of the elements of nature in them that they were each half man, half fox. The name of the male creature was Acagnikakh, and by the other creature he became father of the human race. The Old Man however seems hardly to have needed any help to people the world, for like the great patriarch of Thessaly, he was able to create men by merely casting stones on the earth. He flung also other stones into the air, into the water, and over the land, thus making beasts, birds, and fishes. In another version of the narrative, the first father of the Aleuts is said to have fallen from heaven in the shape of a dog.[II-70]

THE DOG-ORIGIN OF THE HYPERBOREANS.

In the legends of the Tinneh, living inland, north-east of the Koniagas, the familiar Bird and Dog again appear. These legends tell us that the world existed at first as a great ocean frequented only by an immense Bird, the beating of whose wings was thunder, and its glance lightning. This great flying monster descended and touched the waters, upon which the earth rose up and appeared above them; it touched the earth, and therefrom came every living creature—except the Tinneh, who owe their origin to a Dog. Therefore it is that to this day a dog's flesh is an abomination to the Tinneh, as are also all who eat such flesh. A few years before Captain Franklin's visit they almost ruined themselves by following the advice of some fanatic reformer. Convinced by him of the wickedness of exacting labor from their near relations, the dogs, they got rid at once of the sin and of all temptation to its recommission, by killing every cur in their possession.

To return to the origin of the Tinneh, the wonderful Bird before mentioned made and presented to them a peculiar arrow, which they were to preserve for all time with great care. But they would not; they misappropriated the sacred shaft to some common use, and immediately the great Bird flew away never to return. With its departure ended the Golden Age of the Tinneh—an age in which men lived till their throats were worn through with eating, and their feet with walking.[II-71]

Belonging to the Northern-Indian branch of the Tinneh we find a narrative in which the Dog holds a prominent place, but in which we find no mention at all of the Bird: The earth existed at first in a chaotic state, with only one human inhabitant, a woman who dwelt in a cave and lived on berries. While gathering these one day, she encountered an animal like a dog, which followed her home. This Dog possessed the power of transforming himself into a handsome young man, and in this shape he became the father by the woman of the first men. In course of time a giant of such height that his head reached the clouds, arrived on the scene and fitted the earth for its inhabitants. He reduced the chaos to order; he established the land in its boundaries, he marked out with his staff the position or course of the lakes, ponds, and rivers. Next he slew the Dog and tore him to pieces, as the four giants did the Beaver of the Palouse River, or as the creating Æsir did Aurgelmir. Unlike the four brothers, however, and unlike the sons of Bör, this giant of the Tinneh used the fragments not to create men or things, but animals. The entrails of the dog he threw into the water, and every piece became a fish; the flesh he scattered over the land, and every scrap became an animal; the bits of skin he sowed upon the wind, and they became birds. All these spread over the earth, and increased and multiplied; and the giant gave the woman and her progeny power to kill and eat of them according to their necessities. After this he returned to his place, and he has not since been heard of.[II-72]

Leaving now this division of our subject, more particularly concerned with cosmogony, it may not be amiss to forestall possible criticism as to the disconnected manner in which the various myths are given. I have but to repeat that the mythology with which we have to deal is only known in fragments, and to submit that a broken statue, or even a broken shard, of genuine or presumably genuine antiquity, is more valuable to science and even to poetry, than the most skillful ideal restoration.

INTERPRETATION OF MYTHS.