the lightnings are last
seen in the autumn;[116-2] or when in the traditional history of the
Iroquois we hear of another great horned serpent rising out of the lake
and preying upon the people until a similar hero-god destroys it with a
thunderbolt,[116-3] we cannot be wrong in rejecting any historical or
ethical interpretation, and in construing them as allegories which at
first represented the atmospheric changes which accompany the advancing
seasons and the ripening harvests. They are narratives conveying under
agreeable personifications the tidings of that unending combat which the
Dakotas said was being waged with varying fortunes by Unktahe against
Wauhkeon, the God of Waters against the Thunder Bird.[117-1] They are
the same stories which in the old world have been elaborated into the
struggles of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of Thor and Midgard, of St. George and
the Dragon, and a thousand others.

Yet it were but a narrow theory of natural religion that allowed no
other meaning to these myths. Many another elemental warfare is being
waged around us, and applications as various as nature herself lie in
these primitive creations of the human fancy. Let it only be remembered
that there was never any moral, never any historical purport in them in
the infancy of religious life.

In snake charming as a proof of proficiency in magic, and in the symbol
of the lightning, which brings both fire and water, which in its might
controls victory in war, and in its frequency, plenteous crops at home,
lies the secret of the serpent symbol. As the "war physic" among the
tribes of the United States was a fragment of a serpent, and as thus
signifying his incomparable skill in war, the Iroquois represent their
mythical king Atatarho clothed in nothing but black snakes; so that when
he wished to don a new suit he simply drove away one set and ordered
another to take their places,[118-1] so, by a precisely similar mental
process, the myth of the Nahuas assigns as a mother to their war god
Huitzilapochtli, Coatlicue, the robe of serpents; her dwelling place
Coatepec, the hill of serpents; and at her lying-in say that she brought
forth a serpent. Her son's image was surrounded by serpents, his sceptre
was in the shape of one, his great drum was of serpents' skins, and his
statue rested on four vermiform caryatides.

As the symbol of the fertilizing summer showers the lightning serpent
was the god of fruitfulness. Born in the atmospheric water