on his back. Thus was formed a floating island, on which Ataentsic fell;
and here, being pregnant, she was soon delivered of a daughter, who in
turn bore two boys, whose paternity is unexplained. They were called
Taouscaron and Jouskeha, and presently fell to blows, Jouskeha killing
his brother with the horn of a stag. The back of the tortoise grew into
a world full of verdure and life; and Jouskeha, with his grandmother,
Ataentsic, ruled over its destinies.

[ The above is the version of the story given by Brebeuf, Relation des
Hurons, 1636, 86 (Cramoisy). No two Indians told it precisely alike,
though nearly all the Hurons and Iroquois agreed as to its essential
points. Compare Vanderdonck, Cusick, Sagard, and other writers.
According to Vanderdonck, Ataentsic became mother of a deer, a bear,
and a wolf, by whom she afterwards bore all the other animals, mankind
included. Brebeuf found also among the Hurons a tradition inconsistent
with that of Ataentsic, and bearing a trace of Algonquin origin. It
declares, that, in the beginning, a man, a fox, and a skunk found
themselves together on an island, and that the man made the world out of
mud brought him by the skunk.

The Delawares, an Algonquin tribe, seem to have borrowed somewhat of the
Iroquois cosmogony, since they believed that the earth was formed on the
back of a tortoise.

According to some, Jouskeha became the father of the human race; but,
in the third generation, a deluge destroyed his posterity, so that it
was necessary to transform animals into men.--Charlevoix, III. 345. ]

He is the Sun; she is the Moon. He is beneficent; but she is malignant,
like the female demon of the Algonquins. They have a bark house, made