ssitot le jour se fit".--Petitot, Traditions
Indiennes, p. 173. But I take it that the sacrifice of a white hare's
head makes light magically, as sacrifice of black beasts and columns of
black smoke make rainclouds.

Some of the degraded Digger Indians of California have the following
myth of the origin of species. In this legend, it will be noticed, a
species of evolution takes the place of a theory of creation. The story
was told to Mr. Adam Johnston, who "drew" the narrator by communicating
to a chief the Biblical narrative of the creation.(1) The chief said it
was a strange story, and one that he had never heard when he lived at
the Mission of St. John under the care of a Padre. According to this
chief (he ruled over the Po-to-yan-te tribe or Coyotes), the first
Indians were coyotes. When one of their number died, his body became
full of little animals or spirits. They took various shapes, as of deer,
antelopes, and so forth; but as some exhibited a tendency to fly off to
the moon, the Po-to-yan-tes now usually bury the bodies of their dead,
to prevent the extinction of species. Then the Indians began to assume
the shape of man, but it was a slow transformation. At first they
walked on all fours, then they would begin to develop an isolated human
feature, one finger, one toe, one eye, like the ascidian, our first
parent in the view of modern science. Then they doubled their organs,
got into the habit of sitting up, and wore away their tails, which they
unaffectedly regret, "as they consider the tail quite an ornament".
Ideas of the immortality of the soul are said to be confined to the old
women of the tribe, and, in short, according to this version, the Digger
Indians occupy the modern scientific position.

(1) Schoolcraft, vol. v.

The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,(1) are
suspected of having been influenced by the Biblical narrative. They say
that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found himself sitting
in a chair. As he was all alone, he took a piece of his body and a piece
of earth, and made a man. He next made a woman, steadied the earth
by placing beasts beneath it at the corners, and created plants and
animals. Other men he made out of bears. "He created the white man
to make tools for the poor Indians"--a very pleasing example of
a teleological hypothesis and of the doctrine of final causes as
understood by the Winnebagoes. The Chaldean myth of the making of ma