Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/30

The second great source of myth material is found in the analogies of human nature. Primarily these are psychical: the desires and purposes of men are assumed, quite unconsciously, to animate and to inspire the whole drama of nature's growth and change, and thus the universe becomes peopled with personalities, ranging in definition from the senselessly voracious appetites incarnated as monsters, to the self-possessed purpose and, not infrequently, the "sweet reasonableness" of man-beings and gods. Besides the psychical, however, there are the physical analogies of humankind. The most elementary are the physiological, which lead to a symbolism now gruesome, now poetic. The heart, the hair, and the breath are the most significant to the Indian, and their inner meaning could scarcely be better indicated than in the words of a Pawnee priest from whom Alice Fletcher obtained her report of the Hako. One act of this ceremony is the placing of a bit of white down in the hair of a consecrated child, and in explaining this rite the priest said: "The down is taken from under the wings of the white eagle. The down grew close to the heart of the eagle and moved as the eagle breathed. It represents the breath and life of the white eagle, the father of the child." Further, since the eagle is intermediary between man and Father Heaven, "the white, downy feather, which is ever moving as if it were breathing, represents Tirawa-atius, who dwells beyond the blue sky, which is above the soft, white clouds"; and it is placed in the child's hair "on the spot where a baby's skull is open, and you can see it breathe." This is the poetic side of the symbolism; the gruesome is represented by scalping, by the tearing out of the heart, and sometimes by the devouring of it for the sake of obtaining the strength of the slain. Another phase of physiological symbolism has to do with the barbarian's never-paling curiosity about matters of sex; there is little trace of phallic worship in North America, but the Indian's myths abound in incidents which are as unconsciously as they are unblushingly indecent. A strange and