Traditions of the Thompson River Indians (cont.)
Among the Athapascan tribes of northwestern America we find also roost inventions made and transformations accomplished by a being who tries to reach his own selfish ends. Thus Petitot6 tells of Kunyan, who made the first arrows for defending himself. Later on he killed the people, and when the deluge was threatening he built a raft to save himself. It seems that on it he collected the animals for his future use. He then brought up the mud from the bottom of the sea, from which a new earth was created. Later on he found that there was no water in the world and he obtained it for his own use.
The Klamath myths of the " Old Man," recorded by Gatschet, seem to partake of the same character. The "Old Man" is the creator, but in ridding the country of malevolent beings he only tries to overcome his own enemies. He kills North Wind and South Wind in revenge for their having killed his brother.
I might add many more examples of this character, almost all from the tribes of the northwestern parts of America, but it may be well to add an example taken from another region. The god Kutka of the Kamchadal, according to the description given by Steller, corresponded exactly to the Raven creator of the Alaskan Indians.
It seems, therefore, that in this region at least, the being who gave the world its present shape and man his arts was not prompted by altruistic motives. He did so in the course of his personal adventures, often with the direct aim of harming his enemies. He is not what we ordinarily understand by the term " culture hero," a benevolent being of great power whose object it is to advance the interests of mankind, but he is simply one of many more or less powerful beings who gave the world its present shape. With this conception of the so-called culture hero the difficulty disappears of uniting in one person the benevolent being and the trickster. He helps man only incidentally by advancing his own interests. This he tries to do by fair means or foal, just as the Indian will treat his enemy. When he overcomes his enemies the result of his labors must accrue to the benefit of his fellow beings or of later generations, while wherever he fails, he necessarily often appears as a foolish trickster. We have a condition corresponding almost exactly, to the attitude of medieval Christendom to the devil. The latter was considered as a powerful being, always intent to advance his own interests. Often he succeeds, but often his triumph is defeated by the cleverness of his adversaries. The difference between these two series of myths lies mainly in the fact that the devil in all his adventures had only one object in view, namely, the acquisition of souls, while the Indian transformer struggled with a great variety of enemies who infested the country.
This aspect of the transformer myths makes it also intelligible why failures as well as successes should be ascribed to the hero. There was no psychological reason which made it more difficult to ascribe failures to him than successes; and since he was one of the most important figures of Indian mythology, it is quite reasonable to suppose that gradually more and more tales clustered around him.
It maybe asked why, if the hero of these tales is not intentionally a benefactor of mankind, do his acts always result in advantages to man. I believe the explanation of the phenomenon must be looked for largely in the circumstance that the human mind has a tendency to consider existing conditions as the results of changes. The world has not always been what it is now. It has developed, either for better or for worse. On the whole, the progress of invention among a more primitive people is not so rapid that man is induced to speculate on the possible future achievements of his race. There is rather a tendency to consider the present accomplishments as the stationary result of a previous development. Therefore it is hardly likely that Indian traditions should speak of lost arts; they will rather refer to the introduction of new arts, and consequently the introducer must appear as the culture hero. The only exceptions that seem at all possible are such when the native imagines that previous races were able to accomplish certain feats by means of magical powers, which in course of time were lost. These ideas are embodied in many animal stories, and appear very clearly in the Coyote tales of the Chinook to which I referred before.
It is the same when we consider the relation of man to animals and plants. Everywhere he has succeeded fairly well in conquering ferocious animals and making others useful to himself. There is hardly any being that he is not able to overcome in some manner or the other. But still the difficulties are often so great, that we can easily understand how his fancy will create stories of animals that man was not able to subjugate, or conditions under which he was not able to conquer the animals that furnish food and clothing. His fancy cannot as easily invent conditions under which it would be possible to conquer the animal world more easily by natural means, than is done now, because he cannot foresee possible improvements in weapons of attack and defense. Therefore it seems intelligible why so many stories describing the primitive status of our world refer to the extinction of monsters by heroes.
