The Hindoo philosopher says that the lightning-bearded Indra breaks the vessels that hold the waters of the skies with his thunder-bolts, and the rains descend to irrigate the earth.
The philosopher of civilization expounds to us the methods by which the waters are evaporated from the land and the surface of the sea, and carried away by the winds, and gathered into clouds to be discharged again upon the earth, keeping up forever that wonderful circulation of water from the heavens to the earth and from the earth to the heavens—that orderly succession of events in which the waters travel by river, by sea, and by cloud.
Rainbow.—In Shoshoni, the rainbow is a beautiful serpent that abrades the firmament of ice to give us snow and rain. In Norse, the rainbow is the bridge Bifrost spanning the space between heaven and earth. In the Iliad, the rainbow is the goddess Iris, the messenger of the King of Olympus. In Hebrew, the rainbow is the witness to a covenant. In science, the rainbow is an analysis of white light into its constituent colors by the refraction of raindrops.
Falling stars.—In Ute, falling stars are the excrements of dirty little star-gods. In science—well, I do not know what falling stars are in science. I think they are cinders from the furnace where the worlds are forged. You may call this mythologic or scientific, as you please.
Migration of birds.—The Algonkian philosopher explains the migration of birds by relating the myth of the combat between Ka-bĭ-bo-no-kĭ and Shiñgapis, the prototype or progenitor of the water-hen, one of their animal gods. A fierce battle raged between Ka-bĭ-bo-no-kĭ and Shiñgapis, but the latter could not be conquered. All the birds were driven from the land but Shiñgapis; and then was it established that whenever in the future Winter-maker should come with his cold winds, fierce snows, and frozen waters, all the birds should leave for the south except Shiñgapis and his friends. So the birds that spend their winters north are called by the Algonkian philosophers “the friends of Shiñgapis.”
In contrast to this explanation of the flight of birds may be placed the explanation of the modern evolutionist, who says that the birds migrate in quest of abundance of food and a genial climate, guided by an instinct of migration, which is an accumulation of inherited memories.
Diversity of languages.—The Kaibäbĭt philosopher accounts for the diversity of languages in this manner: Sĭ-tcom´-pa Ma-só-ĭts, the grandmother goddess of the sea, brought up mankind from beneath the waves in a sack, which she delivered to the Cĭn-aú-äv brothers, the great wolf-gods of his mythology, and told them to carry it from the shores of the sea to the Kaibab Plateau, and then to open it; but they were by no means to open the package ere their arrival, lest some great disaster should befall. The curiosity of the younger Cĭn-aú-äv overcame him, and he untied the sack, and the people swarmed out; but the elder Cĭn-aú-äv, the wiser god, ran back and closed the sack while yet not all the people had escaped, and they carried the sack, with its remaining contents, to the plateau, and there opened it. Those that remained in the sack found a beautiful land—a great plateau covered with mighty forests, through which elk, deer, and antelope roamed in abundance, and many mountain-sheep were found on the bordering crags; piv, the nuts of the edible pine, they found on the foot-hills, and us, the fruit of the yucca, in sunny glades; and nänt, the meschal crowns, for their feasts; and tcu-ar, the cactus-apple, from which to make their wine; reeds grew about the lakes for their arrow-shafts; the rocks were full of flints for their barbs and knives, and away down in the cañon they found a pipe-stone quarry, and on the hills they found är-a-ûm-pĭv, their tobacco. O, it was a beautiful land that was given to these, the favorites of the gods! The descendants of these people are the present Kaibäbĭts of northern Arizona. Those who escaped by the way, through the wicked curiosity of the younger Cĭn-aú-äv, scattered over the country and became Navajos, Mokis, Sioux, Comanches, Spaniards, Americans—poor, sorry fragments of people without the original language of the gods, and only able to talk in imperfect jargons.
The Hebrew philosopher tells us that on the plains of Shinar the people of the world were gathered to build a city and erect a tower, the summit of which should reach above the waves of any flood Jehovah might send. But their tongues were confused as a punishment for their impiety.
The philosopher of science tells us that mankind was widely scattered over the earth anterior to the development of articulate speech, that the languages of which we are cognizant sprang from innumerable centers as each little tribe developed its own language, and that in the study of any language an orderly succession of events may be discovered in its evolution from a few simple holophrastic locutions to a complex language with a multiplicity of words and an elaborate grammatic structure, by the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence.
A cough.—A man coughs. In explanation the Ute philosopher would tell us that an u-nú-pĭts—a pygmy spirit of evil—had entered the poor man’s stomach, and he would charge the invalid with having whistled at night; for in their philosophy it is taught that if a man whistles at night, when the pygmy spirits are abroad, one is sure to go through the open door into the stomach, and the evidence of this disaster is found in the cough which the u-nú-pĭts causes. Then the evil spirit must be driven out, and the medicine-man stretches his patient on the ground and scarifies him with the claws of eagles from head to heel, and while performing the scarification a group of men and women stand about, forming a chorus, and medicine-man and chorus perform a fugue in gloomy ululation, for these wicked spirits will depart only by incantations and scarifications.