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The danger which we incur, it seems, is ignorance of the original sense of savage or barbaric divine or heroic names say, Maui, or Yehl, or Huitzilopochhtli, or Heitsi Eibib, or Pundjel. By Mr. Max Muller's system such names are old words, of meanings long ago generally lost by the speakers of each language, but analysable by 'true scholars' into their original significance.
That's making extremes meet, isn't it?" "Yehl made many strange things," said Kalitan, who had been taking in all this information even more eagerly than Teddy. "He first dwelt on Nass River, and turned two blades of grass into the first man and woman. Then the Thlinkits grew and prospered, till darkness fell upon the earth.
A Thlinkit stole the sun and hid it in a box, but Yehl found it and set it so high in the heavens that none could touch it. Then the Thlinkits grew and spread abroad. But a great flood came, and all were swept away save two, who tossed long upon the flood on a raft of logs until Yehl pitied, and carried them to Mt. Edgecomb, where they dwelt until the waters fell."
In savage myths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing bird or beast is found among many widely scattered races. The raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire. Among the Cahrocs two old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote. Are these theftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-gods? Probably not.
The rites could grow up without importation, as the result of the similarities of primitive fancy everywhere. If Isis is Lady of the Grain in Egypt, so is Mama in Peru, and Demeter need no more have been imported from Egypt than Mama. If Osiris taught the arts of life and the laws of society in Egypt, so did Daramulun in Australia, and Yehl in British Columbia.
"Old Kala-kash tells this story, and he says that one of these people, when very old, went down through the crater of the mountain, and, given long life by Yehl, stays there always to hold up the earth out of the water. But the other lives in the crater as the Thunder Bird, Hahtla, whose wing-flap is the thunder and whose glance is the lightning.
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