elision, as in _nin
nod-ajashkwe_, I hunt muskrats. But this is almost the word for mud, wet
earth, soil, _ajishki_. There is no reasonable doubt but that here again
otosis and personification came in and gave the form and name of an animal
to the original simple statement.

That statement was that from wet mud dried by the sunlight, the solid
earth was formed; and again, that this damp soil was warmed and fertilized
by the sunlight, so that from it sprang organic life, even man himself,
who in so many mythologies is "the earth born," _homo ab humo, homo
chamaigenes_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull has pointed out that in Algonkin the
words for father, _osh_, mother, _okas_, and earth, _ohke_ (Narraganset
dialect), can all be derived, according to the regular rules of Algonkin
grammar, from the same verbal root, signifying "to come out of, or from."
(Note to Roger Williams' _Key into the Language of America_, p. 56). Thus
the earth was, in their language, the parent of the race, and what more
natural than that it should become so in the myth also?]

This, then, is the interpretation I have to offer of the cosmogonical myth
of the Algonkins. Does some one object that it is too refined for those
rude savages, or that it smacks too much of reminiscences of old-world
teachings? My answer is that neither the early travelers who wrote it
down, nor probably the natives who told them, understood its meaning, and
that not until it is here approached by modern methods of analysis, has it
ever been explained. Therefore it is impossible to assign to it other than
an indigenous and spontaneous origin in some remote period of Algonkin
tribal history.

After the darkness of the night, man first learns his whereabouts by the
light kindling in the Orient; wandering, as did the primitive man, through
pathless forests, without a guide, the East became to him the first and
most important of the fixed points in space; by it were located the West,
the North, the South; from it spread the welcome dawn; in it was born the
glorious sun; it was full of promise and of instruction; hence it became
to him the home of the gods of life and light and wisdom.

As the four cardinal points are determined by fixed physical relations,
common to man everywhere, and are closely associated with his daily
motions and well being, they became prominent figures in almost all early
myths, and were personified as divinities. The winds were classified