o the forms familiar to man--every tribe accounting
thus for its own environment. The origin of the land, of mountains,
defiles, lakes, rivers, trees, rocks, sun, moon, and stars, wind and
rain, human beings and lower animals, and sometimes of social
organizations and ceremonies, is explained in some way natural to the
thought of the time and place. Not all these details occur in the
cosmogony of every tribe or clan, but the purpose of every cosmogony is
to account for everything in the origin of which the people are
interested.

+256+. The creator in the cosmogonies known to us is not always an
animal--he is sometimes a man, sometimes a god; it is possible, however,
that human and divine creators are the successors of original animal
creators. In Central Australia the production of certain natural
features of the country and the establishment of certain customs are
ascribed to ancestors, mythical beings of the remote past, creatures
both animal and human, or rather, either animal or human--possibly
animals moving toward the anthropomorphic stage.[457] However this may
be, there are instances in which the creator is an animal pure and
simple, though, of course, endowed with extraordinary powers. The beast
to which the demiurgic function is assigned is selected, it would seem,
on the ground of some peculiar skill or other power it is supposed to
possess; naturally the reason for the choice is not always apparent. For
the Ainu the demiurge is the water wagtail;[458] for the Navahos and in
California,[459] the coyote or prairie wolf; among the Lenni-Lenape, the
wolf.[460] Various animals--as elephants, boars, turtles, snakes--are
supposed to bear the world on their backs. The grounds of such opinions,
resting on remote social conditions, are obscure.

+257+. Though, in early stadia of culture, animals are universally
revered as in a sort divine, there are few recorded instances of actual
worship offered them.[461] Whether the Bushmen and the Hottentots
worship the mantis (the Bushman god Cagn) as animal is not quite
clear.[462] The bear, when it is ceremonially slain, is treated by the
Ainu as divine--it is approached with food and prayer, but only for the
specific purpose of asking that it will speak well of them to its divine
kin and will return to earth to be slain. The Zuni cult of the turtle
and the Californian worship of the bird called _panes_[463] present
similar features. The non-Aryan Santhals of Bengal are said