Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent by Daniel Garrison Brinton
page 43 of 249 (17%)
[Footnote 1: John Tanner, _Narrative of Captivity and Adventure_, p. 351.
Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, Vol. v, p. 420, etc.]

A curious addition to the story was told the early Swedish settlers on the
river Delaware by the Algonkin tribe which inhabited its shores. These
related that their various arts of domestic life and the chase were taught
them long ago by a venerable and eloquent man who came to them from a
distance, and having instructed them in what was desirable for them to
know, he departed, not to another region or by the natural course of
death, but by ascending into the sky. They added that this ancient and
beneficent teacher _wore a long beard_.[1] We might suspect that this last
trait was thought of after the bearded Europeans had been seen, did it not
occur so often in myths elsewhere on the continent, and in relics of art
finished long before the discovery, that another explanation must be found
for it. What this is I shall discuss when I come to speak of the more
Southern myths, whose heroes were often "white and bearded men from the
East."

[Footnote 1: Thomas Campanius (Holm), _Description of the Province of New
Sweden_, book iii, ch. xi. Campanius does not give the name of the
hero-god, but there can be no doubt that it was the "Great Hare."]


ยง2. _The Iroquois Myth of Ioskeha._[1]

[Footnote 1: The sources from which I draw the elements of the Iroquois
hero-myth of Ioskeha are mainly the following: _Relations de la Nouvelle
France_, 1636, 1640, 1671, etc. Sagard, _Histoire du Canada_, pp. 451, 452
(Paris, 1636); David Cusick, _Ancient History of the Six Nations_, and
manuscript material kindly furnished me by Horatio Hale, Esq., who has
DigitalOcean Referral Badge