lton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.

(14) Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington,
1880-81.

(15) A Journey, etc., p. 342.

Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the
lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his
command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible
or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and
resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the
dead, and can descend to their abodes.

When we begin to examine the gods of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised, as
distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and creative
guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general, though
not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same
accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark,
or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. Among the Greeks, Zeus,
mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the
medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le Jeune, the old Jesuit
missionary, observed,(1) the medicine-man enjoys on earth all the
attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural
endowments of the gods of MYTH, whether these gods be zoomorphic or
anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the
medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as
Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the god was once a
real living medicine-man. But myth-making man confers on the deities of
myth the magical powers which he claims for himself.

(1) Relations (1636), p. 114.

CHAPTER V. NATURE MYTHS.

Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths--In
these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general animation
of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun myths, Asian,
Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian, Brazilian,
Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican, Zulu, Macassar,
Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and Aryan sun and moon
myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised, of animals, accounting
for their marks and habits--Examples of custom of claiming blood kinship
with lower animals--Myths of various plants and trees--Myths of stones,
and of metamorphosis into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The
whole natural philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives i