feet; but it fell out quite otherwise than he had promised himself, and Iouskeha struck him so heavy a blow in the side that the blood gushed forth in streams. The poor wretch fled, and from his blood which fell upon the land came the flints which the savages still call Taouiscara, from the victim's name. From this we see it to be true that the original myth of the two brothers, the White One and the Dark One, had no moral element. It seems mere nature-myth, the contest between Day and Night, for the Hurons knew that Iouskeha was the Sun, even as his mother or grandmother Aataentsic was the Moon. Yet in the contrast between these two, the Huron mind had already come to the rudimentary contrast of the Good and Evil Deity. Iouskeha the Sun, it is expressly said, seemed to the Indians their benefactor; their kettle would not boil were it not for him; it was he who learnt from the Tortoise the art of making fire; without him they would have no luck in hunting; it is he who makes the corn to grow. Iouskeha the Sun takes care for the living and all things concerning life, and therefore, says the missionary, they say he is good. But Aataentsic the Moon, the creatress of earth and man, makes men die and has charge of their departed souls, and they say she is evil. The Sun and Moon dwell together in their cabin at the end of the earth, and thither it was that the Indians made the mythic journey of which various episodes have been more than once cited here; true to their respective characters, the Sun receives the travellers kindly and saves them from the harm the beauteous but hurtful Moon would have done them. Another missionary of still earlier time identifies Iouskeha with the supreme deity Atahocan: 'Iouskeha,' he says, 'is good and gives growth and fair weather; his grandmother Eatahentsic is wicked and spoils.'[1] Thus in early Iroquois legend, the Sun and Moon, as god and god-
- ↑ Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jésuites dans la Nouvelle France,' 1635, p. 34, 1636, p. too. Sagard, 'Histoire du Canada,' Paris, 1636, p. 490. L. H. Morgan, 'Iroquois.' p. 156. See ante, vol. i. pp. 288, 349.
