The substitution of human beings in the stead of the personified forces or processes of nature supplies the reason that apparently wonderful superhuman deeds are accomplished by the human substitutes, whereas the acts portrayed are those of natural forces, not of human brain and brawn.
The stories of the Dagwanoenyent, or Flying Heads, Cyclones, and Whirlwinds, of the Genonsgwa, or Stone Coats (the Frost Giants, or Gods of Winter, but originally named Tawiskaron), and of the Sʻhagodiyoweqgowa, or Wind God, purport to relate historical events, although they are mythic and legendary in form. But unlettered peoples do not transmit history. The writing of history presupposes not only the art of writing but also some kind of permanent social and political organization. Individual experiences fade rapidly, for lacking the needful general interest they do not unite with others in forming even some phase of the local history of a group. The experiences of individuals and even of small unimportant groups of people also lack the interest necessary to bring about their transmission as history. Hence such uncivilized peoples leave to their posterity no authentic accounts of the events of their times, for only in song and saga, where poetry mingles with fact, do they attempt to transmit the narratives of historical events and experiences.
But with the organization and development of society into greater complexity of social and governmental organization there arises the need for the transmission of a record of tribal or communal experiences [[66]]in which a certain number of persons are intensely interested—tribal wars, feats and acts and sayings of great leaders and reformers, and other noteworthy public events claim permanency of record, and thus history is written.
Popular tradition treats historical events in a naïve poetical way, and authentic historical experiences may thus be preserved. Through poetic treatment oral tradition becomes legend, so that one of the clearest criterions of legend is the fact that it frequently relates things that are not credible. Legend is the tradition of men who have not the art of writing and is a particular form of poetic narrative. So that in origin and nature history differs from legend because of difference of spheres of interest. Private and personal affairs and experiences and things that are of some interest to the common people and heroes, great personages, and public events and affairs are made attractive to the popular minds by means of poetic treatment. Legend is oral tradition in use among folk who do not make use of writing or other graphic art to secure permanency of record, while history is the written record of events and achievements and thoughts of men, which always presupposes the existence and the practice of graphic or scriptorial art.
Now, oral tradition, or legend, is not transmitted without important variation in details from generation to generation, and so it is an untrustworthy medium for the conveyance of historical events.
The saga, or popular story, may become sacred legend—that is, a characteristically “sacred” narrative about the “first people,” or the gods—or it may remain simply a story or tale. These two classes of story or narrative had specific names among the Seneca and their congeners of the Iroquoian stock. The sacred legend was called Kăʹkāāʼ, or Kăʹkarăʼ by the r-using dialects of the Iroquoian tribes. The literal meaning of this noun is not known; in the Onondaga dialect the k-sound would be replaced by the g-sound. These legends are “sacred” to the extent that they would not be related except during certain seasons of the year for the fear of breaking a religious taboo, forbidding strictly the telling of this class of narrative. The transgression of this prohibition was punished by the offended and vexed “first people,” concerning whom the myths or stories are related, although modern story-tellers, with scarce an exception, who have forgotten the true and logical reason for the inhibition mistakenly declare that the aforesaid penalty would be inflicted by the toads or snakes or by some other subtle animal.
The myths of the American Indian refer to an order of things which preceded the present order, and to a race of man-beings who dwelt first in the world above the sky and later in small number only on this earth and who were the so-called “first people,” “the ancients.” [[67]]It is evident that myths of origins project backward to an assumed condition of things the story of a day or of a year, and creation is described as Spring on a universal scale, that is, it explains the manner in which the order of things, existent where the stories are told, came about, as a Rebirth of Nature. But no one will contend that there were human eyewitnesses of what the narratives report.
The wise men, prophets, and priests of tribal men painted these tales with the glamour and witchery of poetry. Myths are the poetic judgments of tribal men about the phenomena of life and the outside world and embody the philosophy of these men about the problems and mysteries of the universe around them and in their own lives. So, in order to understand these narratives, it is necessary to study them with the deepest sympathy. But our sympathy with the viewpoint of the myth narratives of tribal men should not veil the realities of science from our minds.
Piloted by science in seeking to know the truth about the universe, scholars do not expect to discover it in the myth-lore or the folk-lore of tribal men. To study the birth and the growth of opinions forms one of the most instructive chapters in the science of mind or psychology.
The Seneca name Sʻhagodiioweʹʻgōwā or Sʻhagodiioweʹqgōwā designates one of the famous “man-beings” who are of the lineage of the “first people.” Some unknowing Indian interpreters render this term erroneously by the English words “false face,” which is a translation which effectually conceals the literal meaning of the expression, which is freely “The Great Ones Who Defend Them.” But as an appellative the term is also applied to a single one of these fictitious beings. The plural concept is evidently a late development, and probably arose after the establishment of societies whose members, when ceremonially attired, must for one thing wear a wooden mask having as its essential mark a wry mouth. So it is clear that the expression “false face” applies to the members of such societies and not at all to the man-beings so impersonated. The Iroquoian myth of Creation knows only one man-being, who assumed the duty of protecting mankind from pestilence and disease. He was the God of the Air or the Wind, sometimes appearing as the Whirlwind. Ceremonially he is addressed as Sʻhedwásōʹdăʻ or as Etʻhiʻsōʹdăʻ, both meaning “He Who Is Our Grandfather.”