stands tiptoe on the misty
mountain tops," across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that
knows no end, for both the opponents are immortal?

In the second, and evidently to the native mind more important cycle of
legends, he was represented as one of four brothers, the North, the
South, the East, and the West, all born at a birth, whose mother died in
ushering them into the world;[167-2] for hardly has the kindling orient
served to fix the cardinal points than it is lost and dies in the
advancing day. Yet it is clear that he was something more than a
personification of the east or the east wind, for it is repeatedly said
that it was he who assigned their duties to all the winds, to that of
the east as well as the others. This is a blending of his two
characters. Here too his life is a battle. No longer with his father,
indeed, but with his brother Chakekenapok, the flint-stone, whom he
broke in pieces and scattered over the land, and changed his entrails
into fruitful vines. The conflict was long and terrible. The face of
nature was desolated as by a tornado, and the gigantic boulders and
loose rocks found on the prairies are the missiles hurled by the mighty
combatants. Or else his foe was the glittering prince of serpents whose
abode was the lake; or was the shining Manito whose home was guarded by
fiery serpents and a deep sea; or was the great king of fishes; all
symbols of the atmospheric waters, all figurative descriptions of the
wars of the elements. In these affrays the thunder and lightning are at
his command, and with them he destroys his enemies. For this reason the
Chipeway pictography represents him brandishing a rattlesnake, the
symbol of the electric flash,[168-1] and sometimes they called him the
Northwest Wind, which in the region they inhabit usually brings the
thunder-storms.

As ruler of the winds he was, like Quetzalcoatl, father and protector of
all species of birds, their symbols.[168-2] He was patron of hunters,
for their course is guided by the cardinal points. Therefore, when the
medicine hunt had been successful, the prescribed sign of gratitude to
him was to scatter a handful of the animal's blood toward each of
these.[168-3] As daylight brings vision, and to see is to know, it was
no fable that gave him as the author of their arts, their wisdom, and
their institutions.

In effect, his story is a world-wide truth, veiled under a thin garb of
fancy. It is but a variation of that na