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 Reconciling Trendiness/Maintaining Authenticity
Commodification or Resistance?
13 Hidden Rainbows in Plain Sight: Human Rights Discourse and Gender and Sexual
Minority Youth
Tracey Peter and Catherine Taylor
What Does LGBTQ Stand For?
What Is Homophobia?
What Is Transphobia?
Why the Fuss?
Post-Structuralism
Discourse
Normalizing Gender
Normalizing Heterosexuality
Power/Knowledge/Resistance
Language
Experiences of LGBTQ Youth
Consequences of Violating Dominant Discourse
Conflicting Discourses: Human Rights Versus Hallway Pedagogy
GSAS
Institutional Responses
The Bad News and the Good News
Social Change
14 Making Drug Use into a Problem: The Politics of Drug Policy in Canada
Susan Boyd, Connie Carter and Donald MacPherson
Crime Rates and Drug Crime
Prisons in Canada
Prisons, Race and Gender in Canada
Safe Streets and Communities Act and the Social Construction of Safety
Does the “War on Drugs” Work?
An Inability to Limit Use
Cannabis as a Case in Point
The Curious Case of Canada’s Marijuana for Medical Purposes
Alternatives to Prohibition
Drug Policy in the Future
15 It Begins with Food: Food as Inspiration and Imperative for Social Change
Sally Miller
The Complexities of Food
The Moral Economies of Food
Food and Resistance
The Power of Narrative
The Globalization of Food
 Canada and the Global System
Canada’s Food System
Resistance: Beyond Victors and Victims
Power and Story: How Telling Makes It So
Resistance Is Multiple
Alternative Food Systems
Power in Alternative Food Movements
Food Policy for Change
Alternatives that Reframe the Food System
Food Sovereignty Movements
Rewriting the Narratives of the Global Food Economy: Agroecology
New Ways of Thinking, New Ways of Eating
Coalitions and the Power to Change
16 “Twitter Revolution” or Human Revolution?: Social Media and Social Justice Activism
Leslie Regan Shade, Normand Landry and Rhon Teruelle
What Are Social Media?
Social Media and Activism: A Primer
Surveilling Dissent
Am I Talking to Myself? Critiques of Online Activism
It Is a Contested Terrain
Index
 Acknowledgements
Thanks to everyone who has been involved in this, the sixth edition of Power
and Resistance. To all the authors, those who are new to Power and
Resistance and those who revised chapters for this edition, our thanks: your
insights and hard work are sincerely appreciated and contribute to what we
think is a great book. To the Fernwood team involved with making this book
— Beverley Rach for overseeing production, Curran Faris for copy editing,
John van der Woude for the cover design, Brenda Conroy for designing the
book and Debbie Mathers for pre-production — thank you. From Wayne and
Les, thanks to Jessica for joining the editorship of Power and Resistance; we
hope you can help keep its politics going for years to come. Finally, to all the
people who struggle for social justice in Canada: it is your dedication and
selflessness that inspired the book that we hope plays some small part in
creating a society in which everyone is valued and respected.
Wayne Antony
Les Samuelson
Jessica Antony
 About the Authors
JESSICA ANTONY is a managing editor at Fernwood Publishing. She is a
member of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications at the
University of Winnipeg, where she has taught academic writing since 2009.
Jessica also works as a freelancer, providing editing, writing and consulting
services for both fiction and non-fiction works.
WAYNE ANTONY is a co-publisher at Fernwood Publishing. He is also a
founding member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba
(CCPA-MB) and has been on the board of directors since its inception. Prior to
becoming involved with the CCPA-MB, he worked with the Winnipeg political
activist organizations, the Socialist Education Centre and Thin Ice. Wayne
also taught sociology at the University of Winnipeg for eighteen years. He is
co-author of three reports on the state of public services in Manitoba (for
CCPA-MB) and is co-editor (with Les Samuelson) of five editions of Power and
Resistance, co-editor (with Dave Broad) of Citizens or Consumers? Social
Policy in a Market Society and Capitalism Rebooted? Work and Welfare in
the New Economy and co-editor (with Julie Guard) of Bankruptcies and
Bailouts.
SUSAN BOYD is a distinguished professor in the Faculty of Human and Social
Development, University of Victoria. She is the author of seven books,
including More Harm than Good: Drug Policy in Canada (co-authored with
Connie Carter and Donald MacPerson) and numerous articles on drug policy.
She is on the Steering Committee of Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and
works with community organizations that advocate for drug policy reform
and harm reduction initiatives.
JAMIE BROWNLEE currently teaches at Carleton University and conducts
research in the Canadian and international political economy, higher
education, environmental politics and climate change, corporate crime and
access to information law. He is the author of Ruling Canada: Corporate
Cohesion and Democracy and Academia, Inc.: How Corporatization is
Transforming Canadian Universities. He is also the co-editor of Access to
Information and Social Justice: Critical Research Strategies for Journalists,
Scholars, and Activists.
CONNIE CARTER is currently a senior research officer at the B.C.
Representative for Children and Youth and was former senior policy analyst
at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. She has held a number of scholarships
including the Joseph Armand Bombardier Ph.D. Fellowship (2006–09) from
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. With Susan Boyd and
Donald MacPherson, she is co-author of More Harm than Good: Drug Policy
in Canada.
WENDY CHAN is a professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University. Her
work examines the criminalization of marginalized groups in the context of
immigration, criminal justice, mass media and welfare system. Her most
recent book is the co-authored (with Dorothy Chunn) Racialization, Crime
and Criminal Justice in Canada.
MARK HUDSON is an associate professor of sociology and coordinator of the
Global Political Economy Program at the University of Manitoba. He writes
and researches about the entanglement of environments and political
economy. He is the author of Fire Management in the American West: Forest
Politics and the Rise of Megafires and co-author (with Ian Hudson and Mara
Fridell) of Fair Trade, Sustainability, and Social Change.
MURRAY KNUTTILA is a professor of sociology at Brock University and an
adjunct member of the Department of Sociology and Social Studies at the
University of Regina. He is co-author (with Wendee Kubik) of three editions
of State Theories and the author of Paying for Masculinity: Boys, Men and
the Patriarchal Dividend.
NORMAND LANDRY is Canada Research Chair in Media Education and Human
Rights and a professor at TÉLUQ, Université du Québec. Normand’s work
focuses on communication rights, media education, social movement theory,
law and democratic communications.
DONALD MACPHERSON is currently the director of the Canadian Drug Policy
Coalition and has an adjunct faculty appointment in the Faculty of Health
Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Formerly he was North America’s first
drug policy coordinator at the City of Vancouver, where he worked for
twenty-two years. He is the author of Four Pillars Drug Strategy. In 2007 he
received the Kaiser Foundation National Award of Excellence in Public
Policy in Canada. With Susan Boyd and Connie Carter, he is co-author of
More Harm than Good: Drug Policy in Canada.
ELIZABETH MCGIBBON is a professor in the Faculty of Science at St. Francis
Xavier University. Her publications and research focus on critical health
studies, emphasizing the structural determinants of health, ecological health,
social justice and human rights. She is a co-investigator in a Canadian
Institutes for Health Research study, “Indigenous Heart Health in Manitoba
From a Two-Eyed Seeing Perspective.” Elizabeth is author of Oppression: A
Social Determinant of Health and Anti-Racist Health Care Practice.
SALLY MILLER has worked in sustainable food and agriculture for almost
twenty years in Canada and in the U.S. She has extensive experience as a
consultant and manager in a variety of organic and natural food and
agriculture co-operatives and enterprises. Her publications include Edible
Action: Food Activism and Alternative Economics, Belongings: The Fight for
Food and Land as well as various research reports and articles on food,
farming and land.
PAMELA D. PALMATER is a member of Eel River Bar First Nation, one of the
First Nations belonging to the Mi’kmaw Nation in New Brunswick. She is a
lawyer, author and social justice activist and currently serves as an associate
professor and chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. Her
recent publications include Beyond Blood: Rethinking Indigenous Identity
and Indigenous Nationhood.
TRACEY PETER is an associate professor of sociology at the University of
Manitoba. Her general research and publication interests include: mental
health and well-being, issues of homophobia and transphobia, LGBTQ-
inclusive education, trauma and violence, suicide prevention, social
inequality and marginalization, youth and research methods/statistics.
DENNIS PILON is an associate professor of political science at York University.
His research and publications focus on elections, electoral reform and
democratization, as well as class analysis and the question of identity in
politics, particularly working class identity. He is the author of The Politics of
Voting: Reforming Canada’s Electoral System and Wrestling with
Democracy: Voting Systems as Politics in the Twentieth Century West.
JAMES POPHAM is an assistant professor of criminology at Wilfrid Laurier
University. His research focuses on two areas: cyber deviance and social
justice. He is currently working on projects that unite these two interests.
LES SAMUELSON is an associate professor of sociology at the University of
Saskatchewan. He has an active interest in social justice initiatives, especially
at the community level. His research interests include justice reform,
especially as it pertains to Indigenous people, and international crime, justice
and human rights. He is co-editor (with Wayne Antony) of five editions of
Power and Resistance.
LESLIE REGAN SHADE is a professor in the Faculty of Information at the
University of Toronto. Her research focus since the mid-1990s has been on
the social and policy aspects of information and communication technologies,
with particular concerns towards issues of gender, youth and political
economy.
JIM SILVER is a professor in and chair of the Department of Urban and Inner-
City Studies at the University of Winnipeg. He is a founding member of
CCPA-Manitoba and is a member of the Manitoba Research Alliance. Jim’s
research interests are in inner-city, poverty-related, and community
development issues. His most recent books are Solving Poverty: Innovative
Strategies from Winnipeg’s Inner City (2016) and Poor Housing: A Silent
Crisis (co-edited with Josh Brandon; 2015).
ELIZABETH SHEEHY the is vice dean research, and held the Shirley Greenberg
Chair for Women and the Legal Profession Faculty of Law 2002–05 and
2013–16, at the University of Ottawa. She was co-counsel for the Women’s
Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and has participated in the legal
work for many ground-breaking cases. Elizabeth sat on the University’s Task
Force on Respect and Equality (“Rape Culture”) and is on the advisory board
for Informed Opinions and the board for the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre. Her
most recent books are an edited collection, Sexual Assault in Canada: Law,
Legal Practice and Women’s Activism, and Defending Battered Women on
Trial: Lessons from the Transcripts.
CATHERINE TAYLOR is a professor in the Faculty of Education and the
Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of
Winnipeg. Her recent work on research ethics, LGBTQ well-being, LGBTQ -
inclusive education and confrontations between LGBTQ and heteronormative
discourses has been published widely in scholarly books and journals.
RHON TERUELLE is a postdoctoral research scholar at the Department of
Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary. His research
focuses on social movements and collective action in relation to digital media
and civic mobilization. In particular, he investigates various communication
tactics employed by grassroots organizations with particular concerns about
meaningful social change, racial equality and the environment.
 1
Social Problems and Social Power
Individual Dysfunction or Social Injustice?
Wayne Antony, Les Samuelson and Jessica Antony

YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS

• Of the 338 members of the federal parliament, nearly 90 (26.6 percent)
self-identified as businessman or woman, while just under 50 (14.9
percent) self-identified as lawyer. There are over 30 consultants, about 30
executives, managers and senior administrators, 30 teachers and over 20
journalists. Less than 10 (3 percent) self-identified as something akin to
trades and skilled labour, with about the same number indicating “farmer”
as their affiliation.
• Two-thirds of First Nations in Canada have had at least one drinking
water advisory in the last decade. Between 2004 and 2014, 400 out of
618 First Nations had a water problem — 93 percent of Saskatchewan
and New Brunswick First Nations and 87 percent of First Nations in
Alberta had drinking water advisories. On any given day, there are more
than 150 boil water advisories in effect in First Nations. The longest water
advisory is twenty years at Neskantaga First Nation, Ontario.
• The average member of Canada’s 100 most highly-paid CEOs earned as
much by 12:18 p.m. on the second working day of 2016 as was earned
by the average Canadian full-time employee in the entire year.
• Among patients fifty years or older, women are less likely than men to be
admitted to an ICU and to receive selected life-supporting treatments, and
they are more likely than men to die after critical illness.
• In 2014, 58,000 girls and women and 28,000 boys and men were injured
or killed by a family member; one woman was killed by a family member
every four days, while every six days a woman was killed by an intimate
partner, and every twenty-three days a man was killed by an intimate
partner. It is estimated that at least 70 percent of violence within families
is not reported.
• Total media revenue in Canada in 2014 was $75.4 billion, up from $19
 billion in 1984. Of the revenue in TV, Bell accounts for over 33 percent
(with 70 TV channels); Bell and Shaw account for over 50 percent, and the
“Big Five” (Bell, Shaw, Rogers, CBC and Quebecor) account for 90
percent. The Big Four (the Five excluding CBC) account for 57 percent of
all telecom, Internet and media revenue, twice as much as ten years ago.
Canada tops the list of media concentration in thirty industrial countries.
• Canadian governments support oil, gas and coal industries with $2.9
billion in subsidies and $2.9 billion in public financing per year. For the
G20 countries, the total government support is $444 billion per year.
• In 2015, the tar sands production of 2 million barrels per day uses
11,000–44,000 litres of water per second; planned expansion to 3 billion
barrels per year will use an estimated 7 million litres of water per second,
more water than there is in the Athabasca River.
Sources: CCPA 2016; Public Health Agency of Canada 2016; Winseck 2016; CBC
News 2015; Fowler et al. 2007; Parliament of Canada n.d.; Oil Change International
Institute 2015; Pannozzo 2016.

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF THESE “THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW”? Pollution of our
air, water and soil; poverty that is increasingly widespread and persistent; the
epidemic of sexual violence on campuses; the difficulties faced by
immigrants and refugees; the consequences of colonialism and more. This
book is about trying to figure out the who, what, when, where, how and why
of the conflicts, troubles and dilemmas that confront us in Canada.
In a simple but absolutely crucial sense, how we think about social issues
depends on how we approach thinking about social life in general. At the risk
of oversimplification, we can say that there are two basic approaches to
getting below the surface of our social lives. There is what we will call the
neoliberal approach — some might see this as a “traditional” way of looking
at social problems — and there is what we will call the “critical” approach.
Many other books on social issues tend to describe three approaches based on
traditional divisions in sociology: functionalist, interactionist and conflict
theories. (In Chapter 2 Murray Knuttila describes some of the social and
political theories that make up these two approaches in detail: the traditional
includes pluralism, rational choice and institutionalism, and the critical
includes Marxism, neo-Marxism and feminism.)
 How we think about social issues depends on how we approach thinking
about social life in general.

One way of describing these different ways of understanding social life is to

go back to a classic statement on the nature and value of the “sociological
imagination” made almost sixty years ago. In 1959, U.S. sociologist C.
Wright Mills distinguished between “private troubles” and “public issues.”
Using the gendered language that was typical in his day, Mills wrote:
[Private] troubles occur within the character of the individual and within
the range of his immediate relations with others; they have to do with his
self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and
personally aware. [Public] issues have to do with matters that transcend
these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life.
They have to do with the organization of many such milieux into the
institutions of [a] historical society as a whole, with the ways in which
various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of
social and historical life. (Mills 1959: 8)
For some analysts, again at the risk of a little oversimplification, social
problems are mainly about private troubles; for others, social problems
involve public issues.
The Neoliberal Approach: Individuals and Freedom
For the neoliberal approach, society is essentially a bundle of private
troubles. In his distinction between troubles and issues, Mills was pointing to
a profound bias in North American (actually, specifically U.S. or maybe
Anglo-American) thinking: the tendency to see society in individual terms. In
this neoliberal way of thinking, the understanding or explanation of how
society works really comes down to the choices that individual people make.
As human beings, we decide what we will eat, where we will live, what work
we will do, how we will treat others, whether we will go to university or
community college, what music we will listen to, who or if we will marry and
so on. Almost always, it is assumed, we choose to do what is best for us as
individuals. If we need to, we may decide to co-operate with others to
achieve some of our goals, but fundamentally and ultimately we act for
ourselves. Even so, these choices are and should be constrained, but only
within very wide boundaries. We cannot act in ways that threaten others —
their lives, their freedom or their rights. For instance, we cannot take our
neighbour’s new car just because driving around in it will make us feel good
or because we need a car.

In this neoliberal way of thinking, the understanding or explanation of how

society works really comes down to the choices that individual people make.

These constraints on individual choice, the traditional approach argues, tend

to have two bases: obvious and natural boundaries and those on which
everyone (or at least a majority) agrees. We know, even without there being
laws against it, that we cannot take someone else’s car just because it may be
good for us. We also agree with laws that protect our property and our lives.
But, according to the neoliberals, the legal constraints on freedom must be
kept to a minimum.
This is a perspective that is also preoccupied with social order and social
stability, that is, the social imperative for individuals and the parts of a social
system to be working together. Achieving this ability to effectively work
together, what many neoliberals call social “equilibrium,” comes from a set
of beliefs, values and morals that are widely shared and accepted and that
hold the system together. In other words, there is an assumption that a
consensus exists among the members of society that freedom is paramount,
individual merit and responsibility are important and family values, hard
work and respecting others’ property are what society and life are all about.
More than that, neoliberals contend that the social system does generally fit
together and function effectively and that it is generally, and must be, in a
long-term state of equilibrium. For some (probably most) traditional social
analysts, the democratic capitalism that currently dominates and characterizes
the societies of the developed industrial world epitomizes just such a free,
prosperous and stable social world (see Klein 2007).
Social theorists who call themselves pluralists share this emphasis on
freedom (see Chapter 2 for details about pluralism). Pluralists argue that
capitalist, liberal democracies are free because there are no groups that
dominate society, at least not for long periods of time or over many sectors of
a society. These societies have a free press, and most people have access to
the information that they need in order to know what is going on. Everyone is
free to vote and to try to influence social and political processes — for
pluralists, elections are the great political equalizer, as one person/one vote
makes us all the same. Everyone is free to pursue any form of education and
work, and the accompanying lifestyle, they desire. Without these kinds of
individual freedoms such a society would break down.
Pluralists note that there are powerful people and groups in a society, but
that power is always restricted and tempered by the power held by other
individuals and groups. As Murray Knuttila (Chapter 2) says, “complex
industrial societies are typically divided into different kinds of groups, classes
and factions based on a multitude of religious, class, occupational, regional,
ethnic and sexual differences, for example, corporations, unions, cultural
groups, professional associations, special interests and community groups.”
So many different groups make it at least difficult for one kind of group to
exercise power and authority over all of society for long periods of time —
for example, the power of corporations is limited by the rights of unions and
consumer groups.
In its most radical form, this traditional, individualistic approach can lead to
the claim — made by Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain from
1979 to 1990 — that there is no society, only individuals. This sense of
radical individualism underlies the neoliberal revolution, of which Thatcher
was the political architect in England (in the U.S. it was Ronald Reagan, who
was president from 1980 to 1989). Neoliberalism developed out of classic
liberalism of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the ideas of
freedom — life, liberty and property — took hold. Developing into a political
movement, liberalism was meant to undo the grasp that aristocracy,
hereditary privilege and the divine right of kings had over societies,
particularly in the governing of societies, especially in Western Europe and
the U.S. For the emerging powerful class of entrepreneurs and business
people, hereditary aristocracy (and conservatism) kept them from having
much political influence in their society (see Chapter 6 for more on the
emergence of liberal democracy).
Neoliberalism has taken up the essential core of liberalism in its focus on
individual freedom, liberty and personal responsibility. The term is used
mostly in a political economy sense, proclaiming that the competitive, free
market is “an ethic unto itself, capable of acting as a guide to all human
action, and substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs … hold[ing]
that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach … of [the]
market … seek[ing] to bring all human action into the domain of the market”
(Harvey 2005: 3). In a broad political sense, neoliberalism rests on a holy
trinity: eliminating the public sector, liberating corporations from government
regulation and bare-bones social spending (Klein 2007: 17). The public sector
is seen with much suspicion in that it is inherently inefficient, costly and a
waste of taxpayers’ money (Knuttila, Chapter 2). Thus, where markets for the
things we need to exist are not in place, such as health care, social security,
water, education and so on, they must be created (Harvey 2005: 3–5). In
strictly economic terms, this means that it is the state’s responsibility to
ensure the conditions of profitability for private corporations, the economic
equivalent of individuals.
In more general social terms, neoliberals see society as made up of freely
interacting individuals — the basic unit of society — who are responsible and
held accountable for the choices they make (Harvey 2005: 65). If there is
even such a thing as the common good, it is produced when these freely
interacting individuals are not restricted in the pursuit of their own best
interests. For neoliberals, most restrictions on individual freedom, especially
in the form of government regulation, are counterproductive to a prosperous
and harmonious society.
The Critical Approach: Social Structure, Power and Social Justice
In this book we approach social issues in a different way. We look at society
through a critical lens. Keeping in mind Mills’s distinction between public
issues and private troubles, this approach begins with the observation that to
understand our lives we need to examine the institutions — the social
structure — of our community and society. As Mills (1959: 10–11) argues,
what we experience in our lives is both caused and constrained by the various
and specific social settings — or social structures — that we are part of. As
such, “to understand the changes of many personal milieux we are required to
look beyond them.… To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it
with sensibility is to be capable of tracing [the] linkages among a great
variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological
imagination.” In other words, to fully understand our lives and the society in
which we live involves utilizing a structural or institutional — not an
individualistic — framework.
One way of getting at what this means is to return to the idea of the
individual choices that we can and do make. If we think, even for just a
minute, about how our choices — clothes, food, jobs, partners, education —
play out in everyday life, one of the first things we recognize is that the
choices we are presented with are not unlimited. Our choices, for example,
are largely influenced by where and when we live, who we are — women,
men, transgendered, Indigenous, white — or if we have children, go to
school, work part-time or full-time, and so forth.

If we think about how our choices play out in everyday life, one of the first
things we recognize is that some people have a wider range of choices than
others.

As soon as we give this reality some thought, we will also notice that some
people have a wider range of choices than others. For instance, some people
have the privilege to choose whether or not they go to university. Others can
choose which university they will go to (regardless of whether it is close to
home or far away). But many others do not have these choices available to
them; the option of attending university is not even on their radar. Instead,
they have to work to support themselves and others close to them. Or, as
Jamie Brownlee shows so clearly in Chapter 9, many people cannot take on
the large debt that university education requires (unless, of course, they live
in one of the Scandinavian countries where such education is fully paid for by
the state). Elizabeth McGibbon (in Chapter 7) demonstrates that whether or
not we will be sick with certain kinds of diseases, like diabetes, is strongly
related to our income and whether or not we are Indigenous. That is, not
everyone is free to make any choice — there are barriers; there are
inequalities between individuals.
For critical thinkers, a key feature of our social structure, and the second
main component of a critical approach, is social inequality. Inequalities are
not just about individual lifestyle choices. It is true that some people may
want bigger cars, the latest clothing fashions, to dine at the most expensive
restaurants or to live in luxurious houses while others may not want any of
these things. And social structure and inequality do not mean that we do not
make choices about our behaviour — we do have what sociologists call
“agency” (see Knuttila 2016). The point, however, is that the existence of
social inequality means a narrowing of life choices for many people, not just
in what they may want but also in what they can do and become. That is,
inequality is actually about power differences, not merely lifestyle
differences.
Power resides in social relationships, and it can take many forms. Power can
be exercised by virtually anyone, almost anywhere. A CEO tells the executive
committee that they must devise plans to increase profits by 20 percent over
the next four fiscal quarters. The Commissioner of the WNBA fines players for
wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts on the court. The big kid in grade 6
forces a smaller kid to give up a place in the cafeteria queue. In other words,
there are many possible bases of power, especially when it comes to one
individual pitted against another.

Power involves the ways in which people in particular social groups can
force people in other social groups to act in certain ways.

But even in these examples the people acting are not just individuals. That
is, power is not randomly distributed; it has a social basis and social patterns.
Power, in the social sense, involves the ways in which people in particular
social groups can influence, force, coerce and direct people in other social
groups to act in certain ways, narrowing their choices in life. These powerful
social groups tend to coalesce around race, gender, class and sexuality:
• white people expropriating land from Indigenous people, labelled “Indian”
people by Canadian legislation, who then find that their social and
economic activities cannot conform to their own views of who they want
to be and what kind of direction they want to pursue as individuals and as
nations (see Pamela Palmater, Chapter 3);
 • men using their physical strength and capacity for violence to control
women, while the surrounding culture encourages such behaviour and
society as a whole turns a blind eye, providing many women with little
choice but to cope with the fallout (see Elizabeth Sheehy, Chapter 11);
• rising tuition and debt levels blocking access to higher education for
underprivileged families (see Jamie Brownlee, Chapter 9).
• heterosexual people deciding that their sexual choices are “normal,” thus
complicating and denigrating the lives of and experiences of LGBTQ people
(see Tracey Peter and Catherine Taylor, Chapter 13).
Power can also be enacted through the state or government. For example,
James Popham and Les Samuelson (Chapter 5) show that what the state
legislates as criminal offences in Canada are not always the most harmful or
dangerous behaviours. For example, most of us, at one time or another, will
have money unwillingly taken from us by corporations, through everything
from misleading advertising to predatory pricing to violations of labour
standards regulations. The great financial meltdown of 2008 was, as Popham
and Samuelson describe, actually the pilfering of hundreds of millions of
dollars from citizens by various financial corporations through devious,
irresponsible actions that were not defined as criminal. It is estimated that
$11 trillion was drained from households during the crisis. But most of these
harmful business activities are not defined and treated as criminal theft, while
taking money unwillingly from a convenience store owner certainly is. Big
business has enough power to ensure that the state will protect its need to
maximize profits.
Relations of power also occur in other contexts. Sally Miller (Chapter 15)
tells us about how the ways in which we think about food reflect the desire of
agri-business to control food production and distribution. As she points out,
we tend to see food mainly in terms of supply and demand, as commodities to
be bought and sold — agri-business spends much time and resources making
sure we see it this way. But taking the culture and compassion out of food —
that is, turning food into nothing more than commodities — and denying that
adequate, safe, nutritious food is a human right not only ensures that large
numbers of people will go hungry because they are “unwilling to pay” the
going prices, but also increases the profits and control of food by
multinational corporations.
 Knowing that our society is characterized by inequality and the relations of
power does not mean that we can be certain of how power will operate. For
example, Murray Knuttila (Chapter 2) sets out a critical theory of how the
state acts on behalf of the interests of powerful groups (power that relates to
class, gender and race). But as Knuttila argues, while we know that such
powerful interests dominate society, we cannot specify ahead of time the
actual mechanisms through which power is exercised. We can do this
theoretically or abstractly — Knuttila discusses in general the direct and
indirect ways in which the powerful influence the state to do what they want
it to do. But, an understanding of how power actually operates can come only
through careful historical research, by uncovering the ways in which the
powerful try to protect their interests, sometimes through the state and
sometimes elsewhere, and the ways in which they are successful, and
unsuccessful.
So, as you can see, there are some basic disagreements about the nature of
society and how it is organized and how it operates. These disagreements find
their way into thinking about social issues and their causes. In general,
thinking about social issues involves trying to understand not only what
comes to be seen as a social problem but also how to resolve those problems,
both of which are connected to what we think causes social problems and
how society is organized and structured.
Defining Our Changing Problems
In thinking about social issues, we have to first consider what behaviours and
conditions are social problems. Without getting into a long discussion of how
to “define social problems” (which many social problems textbooks do), it is
sufficient to say that social problems are behaviours and conditions that both
(objectively) harm a significant group of people and behaviours and
conditions that are (subjectively) defined as harmful to a significant group of
people. Both elements are part of identifying what is a social problem. Augie
Fleras tells us that definitions of social problems are generally divided
between conditionalists and constructionists (Fleras 2005; see also Nelson
and Fleras 1995: 1–9). Conditionalists define social problems as conditions
that are seen as threatening and harmful by a significant segment of the
population. Constructionists, on the other hand, define social problems in
terms of people’s reactions to conditions that are or are perceived as harmful
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
of the first man was Aculmaitl—that is to say, aculli, shoulder, and
maitl, hand or arm—and from him the town of Aculma is said to take
its name.[II-22] And this etymology seems to make it probable that
the details of this myth are derived, to some extent, from the name
of the place in which it was located; or that the name of the first
man belonging to an early phase of the language, has been
misunderstood, and that to the false etymology the details of the
myth are owing.
As already stated there had been men on the earth previous to that
final and perfect creation of man from the bone supplied by
Mictlanteuctli, and wetted by the gods with their own blood at the
place of the Seven Caves. These men had been swept away by a
succession of great destructions. With regard to the number of these
destructions it is hard to speak positively, as on no single point in the
wide range of early American religion, does there exist so much
difference of opinion. All the way from twice to five times, following
different accounts, has the world been desolated by tremendous
convulsions of nature. I follow most closely the version of the
Tezcucan historian Ixtlilxochitl, as being one of the earliest accounts,
as, prima facie, from its origin, one of the most authentic, and as
being supported by a majority of respectable historians up to the
time of Humboldt.
Of the creation which ushered in the first age we
THE AGES OR SUNS
OF THE MEXICANS.
know nothing; we are only told by Boturini, that
giants then began to appear on the earth. This
First Age; or 'sun,' was called the Sun of the Water, and it was ended
by a tremendous flood in which every living thing perished, or was
transformed, except, following some accounts, one man and one
woman of the giant race, of whose escape more hereafter. The
Second Age, called the Sun of the Earth, was closed with
earthquakes, yawnings of the earth, and the overthrow of the
highest mountains. Giants, or Quinamés, a powerful and haughty
race still appear to be the only inhabitants of the world. The Third
Age was the Sun of the Air. It was ended by tempests and
hurricanes, so destructive that few indeed of the inhabitants of the
earth were left; and those that were saved, lost, according to the
Tlascaltec account, their reason and speech, becoming monkeys.
The present is the Fourth Age. To it appear to belong the falling of
the goddess-born flint from heaven, the birth of the sixteen hundred
heroes from that flint, the birth of mankind from the bone brought
from hades, the transformation of Nanahuatzin into the sun, the
transformation of Tezcatecatl into the moon, and the death of the
sixteen hundred heroes or gods. It is called the Sun of Fire, and is to
be ended by a universal conflagration.[II-23]
Connected with the great flood of water, there is a Mexican tradition
presenting some analogies to the story of Noah and his ark. In most
of the painted manuscripts supposed to relate to this event, a kind
of boat is represented floating over the waste of water, and
containing a man and a woman. Even the Tlascaltecs, the Zapotecs,
the Miztecs, and the people of Michoacan are said to have had such
pictures. The man is variously called Coxcox, Teocipactli, Tezpi, and
Nata; the woman Xochiquetzal and Nena.[II-24]
The following has been usually accepted as the
THE TOWER OF
BABEL.
ordinary Mexican version of this myth: In
Atonatiuh, the Age of Water, a great flood covered
all the face of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof were turned
into fishes. Only one man and one woman escaped, saving
themselves in the hollow trunk of an ahahuete or bald cypress; the
name of the man being Coxcox, and that of his wife Xochiquetzal.
On the waters abating a little they grounded their ark on the Peak of
Colhuacan, the Ararat of Mexico. Here they increased and multiplied,
and children began to gather about them, children who were all born
dumb. And a dove came and gave them tongues, innumerable
languages. Only fifteen of the descendants of Coxcox, who afterward
became heads of families, spake the same language or could at all
understand each other; and from these fifteen are descended the
Toltecs, the Aztecs, and the Acolhúas. This dove is not the only bird
mentioned in these deluvial traditions, and must by no means be
confounded with the birds of another palpably Christianized story.
For in Michoacan a tradition was preserved, following which the
name of the Mexican Noah was Tezpi. With better fortune than that
ascribed to Coxcox, he was able to save, in a spacious vessel, not
only himself and his wife, but also his children, several animals, and
a quantity of grain for the common use. When the waters began to
subside, he sent out a vulture that it might go to and fro on the
earth and bring him word again when the dry land began to appear.
But the vulture fed upon the carcasses that were strewed in every
part, and never returned. Then Tezpi sent out other birds, and
among these was a humming-bird. And when the sun began to
cover the earth with a new verdure, the humming-bird returned to
its old refuge bearing green leaves. And Tezpi saw that his vessel
was aground near the mountain of Colhuacan and he landed there.
The Mexicans round Cholula had a special legend, connecting the
escape of a remnant from the great deluge with the often-
mentioned story of the origin of the people of Anáhuac from
Chicomoztoc, or the Seven Caves. At the time of the cataclysm, the
country, according to Pedro de los Rios, was inhabited by giants.
Some of these perished utterly; others were changed into fishes;
while seven brothers of them found safety by closing themselves
into certain caves in a mountain called Tlaloc. When the waters were
assuaged, one of the giants, Xelhua, surnamed the Architect, went
to Cholula and began to build an artificial mountain, as a monument
and a memorial of the Tlaloc that had sheltered him and his when
the angry waters swept through all the land. The bricks were made
in Tlamanalco, at the foot of the Sierra de Cocotl, and passed to
Cholula from hand to hand along a file of men—whence these came
is not said—stretching between the two places. Then were the
jealousy and the anger of the gods aroused, as the huge pyramid
rose slowly up, threatening to reach the clouds and the great heaven
itself; and the gods launched their fire upon the builders and slew
many, so that the work was stopped.[II-25] But the half-finished
structure, afterwards dedicated by the Cholultecs to Quetzalcoatl,
still remains to show how well Xelhua, the giant, deserved his
surname of the Architect.
Yet another record remains to us of a traditional
THE MEXICAN
DELUGE.
Mexican deluge, in the following extract from the
Chimalpopoca Manuscript. Its words seem to have
a familiar sound; but it would hardly be scientific to draw from such
a fragment any very sweeping conclusion as to its relationship,
whether that be Quiché or Christian:—
When the Sun, or Age, Nahui-Atl came, there had passed already
four hundred years; then came two hundred years, then seventy and
six, and then mankind were lost and drowned and turned into fishes.
The waters and the sky drew near each other; in a single day all was
lost; the day Four Flower consumed all that there was of our flesh.
And this year was the year Ce-Calli; on the first day, Nahui-Atl, all
was lost. The very mountains were swallowed up in the flood and
the waters remained, lying tranquil during fifty and two spring-times.
But before the flood began, Titlacahuan had warned the man Nata
and his wife Nena, saying: Make now no more pulque, but hollow
out to yourselves a great cypress, into which you shall enter when,
in the month Tozoztli, the waters shall near the sky. Then they
entered into it, and when Titlacahuan had shut them in, he said to
the man: Thou shalt eat but a single ear of maize, and thy wife but
one also. And when they had finished eating, each an ear of maize,
they prepared to set forth, for the waters remained tranquil and their
log moved no longer; and opening it they began to see the fishes.
Then they lit a fire, rubbing pieces of wood together, and they
roasted fish. And behold the deities Citlallinicué and Citlallatonac
looking down from above, cried out: O divine Lord! what is this fire
that they make there? wherefore do they so fill the heaven with
smoke? And immediately Titlacahuan Tetzcatlipoca came down, and
set himself to grumble, saying: What does this fire here? Then he
seized the fishes and fashioned them behind and before, and
changed them into dogs.[II-26]
We turn now to the traditions of some nations situated on the
outskirts of the Mexican Empire, traditions differing from those of
Mexico, if not in their elements, at least in the combination of those
elements. Following our usual custom, I give the following legend
belonging to the Miztecs just as they themselves were accustomed
to depict and to interpret it in their primitive scrolls:—[II-27]
In the year and in the day of obscurity and
THE FLYING
HEROES OF
darkness, yea even before the days or the years
MIZTECA. were, when the world was in a great darkness and
chaos, when the earth was covered with water
and there was nothing but mud and slime on all the face of the
earth—behold a god became visible, and his name was the Deer,
and his surname was the Lion-Snake. There appeared also a very
beautiful goddess called the Deer, and surnamed the Tiger-Snake.[II-
28] These two gods were the origin and beginning of all the gods.

Now when these two gods became visible in the world, they made,
in their knowledge and omnipotence, a great rock, upon which they
built a very sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they
made their abode upon earth. On the highest part of this building
there was an axe of copper, the edge being uppermost, and on this
axe the heavens rested.
This rock and the palace of the gods were on a mountain in the
neighborhood of the town of Apoala in the province of Mizteca Alta.
The rock was called The Place of Heaven; there the gods first abode
on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy
and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and
darkness.
The father and mother of all the gods being here in their place, two
sons were born to them, very handsome and very learned in all
wisdom and arts. The first was called the Wind of Nine Snakes, after
the name of the day on which he was born; and the second was
called, in like manner, the Wind of Nine Caves. Very daintily indeed
were these youths brought up. When the elder wished to amuse
himself, he took the form of an eagle, flying thus far and wide; the
younger turned himself into a small beast of a serpent shape, having
wings that he used with such agility and sleight that he became
invisible, and flew through rocks and walls even as through the air.
As they went, the din and clamor of these brethren was heard by
those over whom they passed. They took these figures to manifest
the power that was in them, both in transforming themselves and in
resuming again their original shape. And they abode in great peace
in the mansion of their parents, so they agreed to make a sacrifice
and an offering to these gods, to their father and to their mother.
Then they took each a censer of clay, and put fire therein, and
poured in ground beleño for incense; and this offering was the first
that had ever been made in the world. Next the brothers made to
themselves a garden, in which they put many trees, and fruit-trees,
and flowers, and roses, and odorous herbs of different kinds. Joined
to this garden they laid out a very beautiful meadow, which they
fitted up with all things necessary for offering sacrifice to the gods.
In this manner the two brethren left their parents' house, and fixed
themselves in this garden to dress it and to keep it, watering the
trees and the plants and the odorous herbs, multiplying them, and
burning incense of powder of beleño in censers of clay to the gods,
their father and mother. They made also vows to these gods, and
promises, praying that it might seem good to them to shape the
firmament and lighten the darkness of the world, and to establish
the foundation of the earth, or rather to gather the waters together
so that the earth might appear—as they had no place to rest in save
only one little garden. And to make their prayers more obligatory
upon the gods, they pierced their ears and tongues with flakes of
flint, sprinkling the blood that dropped from the wounds over the
trees and plants of the garden with a willow branch, as a sacred and
blessed thing. After this sort they employed themselves, postponing
pleasure till the time of the granting of their desire, remaining
always in subjection to the gods, their father and mother, and
attributing to them more power and divinity than they really
possessed.
Fray Garcia here makes a break in the relation—that he may not
weary his readers with so many absurdities—but it would appear
that the firmament was arranged and the earth made fit for
mankind, who about that time must also have made their
appearance. For there came a great deluge afterwards, wherein
perished many of the sons and daughters that had been born to the
gods; and it is said that when the deluge was passed the human
race was restored as at the first, and the Miztec kingdom populated,
and the heavens and the earth established.
This we may suppose to have been the traditional origin of the
common people; but the governing family of Mizteca proclaimed
themselves the descendants of two youths born from two majestic
trees that stood at the entrance of the gorge of Apoala, and that
maintained themselves there despite a violent wind continually rising
from a cavern in the vicinity.
Whether the trees of themselves produced these
THE DUEL WITH
THE SUN.
youths, or whether some primeval Æsir, as in the
Scandinavian story, gave them shape and blood
and breath and sense, we know not. We are only told that soon or
late the youths separated, each going his own way to conquer lands
for himself. The braver of the two coming to the vicinity of
Tilantongo, armed with buckler and bow, was much vexed and
oppressed by the ardent rays of the sun, which he took to be the
lord of that district striving to prevent his entrance therein. Then the
young warrior strung his bow, and advanced his buckler before him,
and drew shafts from his quiver. He shot there against the great light
even till the going down of the same; then he took possession of all
that land, seeing he had grievously wounded the sun, and forced
him to hide behind the mountains. Upon this story is founded the
lordship of all the caciques of Mizteca, and upon their descent from
this mighty archer their ancestor. Even to this day, the chiefs of the
Miztecs blazon as their arms a plumed chief with bow, arrows, and
shield, and the sun in front of him setting behind gray clouds.[II-29]
Of the origin of the Zapotecs, a people bordering on these Miztecs,
Burgoa says, with a touching simplicity, that he could find no
account worthy of belief. Their historical paintings he ascribes to the
invention of the devil, affirming hotly that these people were blinder
in such vanities than the Egyptians and the Chaldeans. Some, he
said, to boast of their valor made themselves out the sons of lions
and divers wild beasts; others, grand lords of ancient lineage, were
produced by the greatest and most shady trees; while still others of
an unyielding and obstinate nature, were descended from rocks.
Their language, continues the worthy Provincial, striking suddenly
and by an undirected shot the very center of mythological
interpretation—their language was full of metaphors; those who
wished to persuade spake always in parables, and in like manner
painted their historians.[II-30]
In Guatemala, according to the relations given to Father Gerónimo
Roman by the natives, it was believed there was a time when
nothing existed but a certain divine Father called Xchmel, and a
divine Mother called Xtmana. To these were born three sons,[II-31]
the eldest of whom, filled with pride and presumption, set about a
creation contrary to the will of his parents. But he could create
nothing save old vessels fit for mean uses, such as earthen pots,
jugs, and things still more despicable; and he was hurled into hades.
Then the two younger brethren, called respectively Hunchevan and
Hunavan, prayed their parents for permission to attempt the work in
which their brother had failed so signally. And they were granted
leave, being told at the same time, that inasmuch as they had
humbled themselves, they would succeed in their undertaking. Then
they made the heavens, and the earth with the plants thereon, and
fire and air, and out of the earth itself they made a man and a
woman—presumably the parents of the human race.
According to Torquemada, there was a deluge some time after this,
and after the deluge the people continued to invoke as god the great
Father and the great Mother already mentioned. But at last a
principal woman[II-32] among them, having received a revelation
from heaven, taught them the true name of God, and how that
name should be adored; all this, however, they afterward forgot.[II-
33]

In Nicaragua, a country where the principal language was a Mexican

dialect, it was believed that ages ago the world was destroyed by a
flood in which the most part of mankind perished. Afterward the
teotes, or gods, restocked the earth as at the beginning. Whence
came the teotes, no one knows; but the names of two of them who
took a principal part in the creation were Tamagostat and Cipattonal.
[II-34]

Leaving now the Central American region we pass

THE COYOTE OF
THE PAPAGOS.
north into the Papago country, lying south of the
Gila, with the river Santa Cruz on the east and the
Gulf of California on the west. Here we meet for the first time the
coyote, or prairie wolf; we find him much more than an animal,
something more even than a man, only a little lower than the gods.
In the following Papago myth[II-35] he figures as a prophet, and as a
minister and assistant to a certain great hero-god Montezuma,
whom we are destined to meet often, and in many characters, as a
central figure in the myths of the Gila valley:—
The Great Spirit made the earth and all living
LEGEND OF
MONTEZUMA.
things, before he made man. And he descended
from heaven, and digging in the earth, found clay
such as the potters use, which, having again ascended into the sky,
he dropped into the hole that he had dug. Immediately there came
out Montezuma and, with the assistance of Montezuma, the rest of
the Indian tribes in order. Last of all came the Apaches, wild from
their natal hour, running away as fast as they were created. Those
first days of the world were happy and peaceful days. The sun was
nearer the earth than he is now; his grateful rays made all the
seasons equal, and rendered garments unnecessary. Men and beasts
talked together, a common language made all brethren. But an awful
destruction ended this happy age. A great flood destroyed all flesh
wherein was the breath of life; Montezuma and his friend the Coyote
alone escaping. For before the flood began, the Coyote prophesied
its coming, and Montezuma took the warning and hollowed out a
boat to himself, keeping it ready on the topmost summit of Santa
Rosa. The Coyote also prepared an ark; gnawing down a great cane
by the river bank, entering it, and stopping up the end with a certain
gum. So when the waters rose these two saved themselves, and met
again at last on dry land after the flood had passed away. Naturally
enough Montezuma was now anxious to know how much dry land
had been left, and he sent the Coyote off on four successive
journeys, to find exactly where the sea lay toward each of the four
winds. From the west and from the south, the answer swiftly came:
The sea is at hand. A longer search was that made towards the east,
but at last there too was the sea found. On the north only was no
water found, though the faithful messenger almost wearied himself
out with searching. In the meantime the Great Spirit, aided by
Montezuma, had again repeopled the world, and animals and men
began to increase and multiply. To Montezuma had been allotted the
care and government of the new race; but puffed up with pride and
self importance, he neglected the most important duties of his
onerous position, and suffered the most disgraceful wickedness to
pass unnoticed among the people. In vain the Great Spirit came
down to earth and remonstrated with his vicegerent, who only
scorned his laws and advice, and ended at last by breaking out into
open rebellion. Then indeed the Great Spirit was filled with anger,
and he returned to heaven, pushing back the sun on his way, to that
remote part of the sky he now occupies. But Montezuma hardened
his heart, and collecting all the tribes to aid him, set about building a
house that should reach up to heaven itself. Already it had attained a
great height, and contained many apartments lined with gold, silver,
and precious stones, the whole threatening soon to make good the
boast of its architect, when the Great Spirit launched his thunder,
and laid its glory in ruins. Still Montezuma hardened himself; proud
and inflexible, he answered the thunderer out of the haughty
defiance of his heart; he ordered the temple-houses to be
desecrated, and the holy images to be dragged in the dust, he made
them a scoff and byword for the very children in the village streets.
Then the Great Spirit prepared his supreme punishment. He sent an
insect flying away towards the east, towards an unknown land, to
bring the Spaniards. When these came, they made war upon
Montezuma and destroyed him, and utterly dissipated the idea of his
divinity.[II-36]

The Pimas,[II-37] a neighboring and closely allied

DELUGE OF THE
PIMAS. people to the Papagos, say that the earth was
made by a certain Chiowotmahke, that is to say
Earth-prophet. It appeared in the beginning like a spider's web,
stretching far and fragile across the nothingness that was. Then the
Earth-prophet flew over all lands in the form of a butterfly, till he
came to the place he judged fit for his purpose, and there he made
man. And the thing was after this wise: The Creator took clay in his
hands, and mixing it with the sweat of his own body, kneaded the
whole into a lump. Then he blew upon the lump till it was filled with
life and began to move; and it became man and woman. This
Creator had a son called Szeukha, who, when the world was
beginning to be tolerably peopled, lived in the Gila valley, where
lived also at the same time a great prophet, whose name has been
forgotten. Upon a certain night when the prophet slept, he was
wakened by a noise at the door of his house, and when he looked, a
great Eagle stood before him. And the Eagle spake: Arise, thou that
healest the sick, thou that shouldest know what is to come, for
behold a deluge is at hand. But the prophet laughed the bird to
scorn and gathered his robes about him and slept. Afterwards the
Eagle came again and warned him of the waters near at hand; but
he gave no ear to the bird at all. Perhaps he would not listen
because this Eagle had an exceedingly bad reputation among men,
being reported to take at times the form of an old woman that lured
away girls and children to a certain cliff so that they were never seen
again; of this, however, more anon. A third time, the Eagle came to
warn the prophet, and to say that all the valley of the Gila should be
laid waste with water; but the prophet gave no heed. Then, in the
twinkling of an eye, and even as the flapping of the Eagle's wings
died away into the night, there came a peal of thunder and an awful
crash; and a green mound of water reared itself over the plain. It
seemed to stand upright for a second, then, cut incessantly by the
lightning, goaded on like a great beast, it flung itself upon the
prophet's hut. When the morning broke there was nothing to be
seen alive but one man—if indeed he were a man; Szeukha, the son
of the Creator, had saved himself by floating on a ball of gum or
resin. On the waters falling a little, he landed near the mouth of the
Salt River, upon a mountain where there is a cave that can still be
seen, together with the tools and utensils Szeukha used while he
lived there. Szeukha was very angry with the Great Eagle, who he
probably thought had had more to do with bringing on the flood
than appears in the narrative. At any rate the general reputation of
the bird was sufficiently bad, and Szeukha prepared a kind of rope
ladder from a very tough species of tree, much like woodbine, with
the aid of which he climbed up to the cliff where the Eagle lived, and
slew him.[II-38] Looking about here, he found the mutilated and
decaying bodies of a great multitude of those that the Eagle had
stolen and taken for a prey; and he raised them all to life again and
sent them away to repeople the earth. In the house or den of the
Eagle, he found a woman that the monster had taken to wife, and a
child. These he sent also upon their way, and from these are
descended that great people called Hohocam, 'ancients or
grandfathers,' who were led in all their wanderings by an eagle, and
who eventually passed into Mexico.[II-39] One of these Hohocam
named Sivano, built the Casa Grande on the Gila, and indeed the
ruins of this structure are called after his name to this day. On the
death of Sivano, his son led a branch of the Hohocam to Salt River,
where he built certain edifices and dug a large canal, or acequia. At
last it came about that a woman ruled over the Hohocam. Her
throne was cut out of a blue stone, and a mysterious bird was her
constant attendant. These Hohocam were at war with a people that
lived to the east of them, on the Rio Verde, and one day the bird
warned her that the enemy was at hand. The warning was
disregarded or it came too late, for the eastern people came down in
three bands; destroyed the cities of the Hohocam, and killed or
drove away all the inhabitants.

Most of the Pueblo tribes call themselves the descendants of

Montezuma;[II-40] the Moquis, however, have a quite different story
of their origin. They believe in a great Father living where the sun
rises; and in a great Mother, whose home is where the sun goes
down. The Father is the father of evil, war, pestilence, and famine;
but from the Mother are all joys, peace, plenty, and health. In the
beginning of time the Mother produced from her western home nine
races of men in the following primary forms: First, the Deer race;
second, the Sand race; third, the Water race; fourth, the Bear race;
fifth, the Hare race; sixth, the Prairie-wolf race; seventh, the Rattle-
snake race; eighth, the Tobacco-plant race; and ninth, the Reed-
grass race. All these the Mother placed respectively on the spots
where their villages now stand, and transformed them into the men
who built the present Pueblos. These race-distinctions are still
sharply kept up; for they are believed to be realities, not only of the
past and present, but also of the future; every man when he dies
shall be resolved into his primeval form; shall wave in the grass, or
drift in the sand, or prowl on the prairie as in the beginning.[II-41]
The Navajos, living north of the Pueblos, say that
CAVE-ORIGIN OF
THE NAVAJOS.
at one time all the nations, Navajos, Pueblos,
Coyoteros, and white people, lived together,
underground in the heart of a mountain near the river San Juan.
Their only food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all kinds
of game were closed up with them in their cave; but their light was
dim and only endured for a few hours each day. There were happily
two dumb men among the Navajos, flute-players who enlivened the
darkness with music. One of these striking by chance on the roof of
the limbo with his flute, brought out a hollow sound, upon which the
elders of the tribes determined to bore in the direction whence the
sound came. The flute was then set up against the roof, and the
Raccoon sent up the tube to dig a way out; but he could not. Then
the Moth-worm mounted into the breach, and bored and bored till
he found himself suddenly on the outside of the mountain and
surrounded by water. Under these novel circumstances, he heaped
up a little mound and set himself down on it to observe and ponder
the situation. A critical situation enough! for, from the four corners of
the universe, four great white Swans bore down upon him, every
one with two arrows, one under either wing. The Swan from the
north reached him first, and having pierced him with two arrows,
drew them out and examined their points, exclaiming as the result:
He is of my race. So also, in succession, did all the others. Then they
went away; and towards the directions in which they departed, to
the north, south, east, and west, were found four great arroyos, by
which all the water flowed off, leaving only mud. The worm now
returned to the cave, and the Raccoon went up into the mud,
sinking in it mid-leg deep, as the marks on his fur show to this day.
And the wind began to rise, sweeping up the four great arroyos, and
the mud was dried away. Then the men and the animals began to
come up from their cave, and their coming up required several days.
First came the Navajos, and no sooner had they reached the surface
then they commenced gaming at patole, their favorite game. Then
came the Pueblos and other Indians who crop their hair and build
houses. Lastly came the white people, who started off at once for
the rising sun and were lost sight of for many winters.
While these nations lived underground they all spake one tongue;
but with the light of day and the level of earth, came many
languages. The earth was at this time very small and the light was
quite as scanty as it had been down below; for there was as yet no
heaven, nor sun, nor moon, nor stars. So another council of the
ancients was held and a committee of their number appointed to
manufacture these luminaries. A large house or workshop was
erected; and when the sun and moon were ready, they were
entrusted to the direction and guidance of the two dumb fluters
already mentioned. The one who got charge of the sun came very
near, through his clumsiness in his new office, to making a Phaethon
of himself and setting fire to the earth. The old men, however, either
more lenient than Zeus or lacking his thunder, contented themselves
with forcing the offender back by puffing the smoke of their pipes
into his face. Since then the increasing size of the earth has four
times rendered it necessary that he should be put back, and his
course farther removed from the world and from the subterranean
cave to which he nightly retires with the great light. At night also the
other dumb man issues from this cave, bearing the moon under his
arm, and lighting up such part of the world as he can. Next the old
men set to work to make the heavens, intending to broider in the
stars in beautiful patterns, of bears, birds, and such things. But just
as they had made a beginning a prairie-wolf rushed in, and crying
out: Why all this trouble and embroidery? scattered the pile of stars
over all the floor of heaven, just as they still lie.
When now the world and its firmament had been finished, the old
men prepared two earthen tinages or water-jars, and having
decorated one with bright colors, filled it with trifles; while the other
was left plain on the outside, but filled within with flocks and herds
and riches of all kinds. These jars being covered and presented to
the Navajos and Pueblos, the former chose the gaudy but paltry jar;
while the Pueblos received the plain and rich vessel; each nation
showing in its choice traits which characterize it to this day. Next
there arose among the Navajos a great gambler, who went on
winning the goods and the persons of his opponents till he had won
the whole tribe. Upon this, one of the old men became indignant,
set the gambler on his bowstring and shot him off into space—an
unfortunate proceeding, for the fellow returned in a short time with
firearms and the Spaniards. Let me conclude by telling how the
Navajos came by the seed they now cultivate: All the wise men
being one day assembled, a turkey-hen came flying from the
direction of the morning star, and shook from her feathers an ear of
blue corn into the midst of the company; and in subsequent visits
brought all the other seeds they possess.[II-42]
 Of some tribes, we do not know that they possess
ORIGIN-MYTHS OF any other ideas of their origin than the name of
SOUTHERN their first ancestor, or the name of a creator or a
CALIFORNIA. tradition of his existence.
The Sinaloas, from Culiacan north to the Yaqui River, have dances in
honor of a certain Viriseva, the mother of the first man. This first
man, who was her son, and called Vairubi, they hold in like esteem.
[II-43] The Cochimis, of Lower California, amid an apparent
multiplicity of gods, say there is in reality only one, who created
heaven, earth, plants, animals, and man.[II-44] The Pericues, also of
Lower California, call the creator Niparaya, and say that the heavens
are his dwelling-place. A sect of the same tribe add that the stars
are made of metal, and are the work of a certain Purutabui; while
the moon has been made by one Cucunumic.[II-45]
The nations of Los Angeles County, California, believe that their one
god, Quaoar, came down from heaven; and, after reducing chaos to
order, put the world on the back of seven giants. He then created
the lower animals, and lastly a man and a woman. These were made
separately out of earth and called, the man Tobohar, and the woman
Pabavit.[II-46]
Hugo Reid, to whom we are mainly indebted for the mythology of
Southern California, and who is an excellent authority, inasmuch as
his wife was an Indian woman of that country, besides the preceding
gives us another and different tradition on the same subject: Two
great Beings made the world, filled it with grass and trees, and gave
form, life, and motion to the various animals that people land and
sea. When this work was done, the elder Creator went up to heaven
and left his brother alone on the earth. The solitary god left below,
made to himself men-children, that he should not be utterly
companionless. Fortunately also, about this time, the moon came to
that neighborhood; she was very fair in her delicate beauty, very
kind-hearted, and she filled the place of a mother to the men-
children that the god had created. She watched over them, and
guarded them from all evil things of the night, standing at the door
of their lodge. The children grew up very happily, laying great store
by the love with which their guardians regarded them; but there
came a day when their heart saddened, in which they began to
notice that neither their god-creator nor their moon foster-mother
gave them any longer undivided affection and care, but that instead,
the two great ones seemed to waste much precious love upon each
other. The tall god began to steal out of their lodge at dusk, and
spend the night watches in the company of the white-haired moon,
who, on the other hand, did not seem on these occasions to pay
such absorbing attention to her sentinel duty as at other times. The
children grew sad at this, and bitter at the heart with a boyish
jealousy. But worse was yet to come: one night they were awakened
by a querulous wailing in their lodge, and the earliest dawn showed
them a strange thing, which they afterwards came to know was a
new-born infant, lying in the doorway. The god and the moon had
eloped together; their Great One had returned to his place beyond
the ether, and that he might not be separated from his paramour, he
had appointed her at the same time a lodge in the great firmament;
where she may yet be seen, with her gauzy robe and shining silver
hair, treading celestial paths. The child left on the earth was a girl.
She grew up very soft, very bright, very beautiful, like her mother;
but like her mother also, O so fickle and frail! She was the first of
woman-kind, from her are all other women descended, and from the
moon; and as the moon changes so they all change, say the
philosophers of Los Angeles.[II-47]
A much more prosaic and materialistic origin is
CENTRAL-
CALIFORNIAN
that accorded to the moon in the traditions of the
CREATION-MYTHS. Gallinomeros of Central California.[II-48] In the
beginning, they say, there was no light, but a thick
darkness covered all the earth. Man stumbled blindly against man
and against the animals, the birds clashed together in the air, and
confusion reigned everywhere. The Hawk happening by chance to fly
into the face of the Coyote, there followed mutual apologies and
afterwards a long discussion on the emergency of the situation.
Determined to make some effort toward abating the public evil, the
two set about a remedy. The Coyote gathered a great heap of tules,
rolled them into a ball, and gave it to the Hawk, together with some
pieces of flint. Gathering all together as well as he could, the Hawk
flew straight up into the sky, where he struck fire with the flints, lit
his ball of reeds, and left it there, whirling along all in a fierce red
glow as it continues to the present; for it is the sun. In the same
way the moon was made, but as the tules of which it was
constructed were rather damp, its light has been always somewhat
uncertain and feeble.[II-49]

In northern California, we find the Mattoles,[II-50] who connect a

tradition of a destructive flood with Taylor Peak, a mountain in their
locality, on which they say their forefathers took refuge. As to the
creation, they teach that a certain Big Man began by making the
naked earth, silent and bleak, with nothing of plant or animal
thereon, save one Indian, who roamed about in a wofully hungry
and desolate state. Suddenly there rose a terrible whirlwind, the air
grew dark and thick with dust and drifting sand, and the Indian fell
upon his face in sore dread. Then there came a great calm, and the
man rose and looked, and lo, all the earth was perfect and peopled;
the grass and the trees were green on every plain and hill; the
beasts of the fields, the fowls of the air, the creeping things, the
things that swim, moved everywhere in his sight. There is a limit set
to the number of the animals, which is this: only a certain number of
animal spirits are in existence; when one beast dies, his spirit
immediately takes up its abode in another body, so that the whole
number of animals is always the same, and the original spirits move
in an endless circle of earthy immortality.[II-51]
We pass now to a train of myths in which the
THE COYOTE OF
THE
Coyote again appears, figuring in many important
CALIFORNIANS. and somewhat mystical rôles—figuring in fact as
the great Somebody of many tribes. To him,
though involuntarily as it appears, are owing the fish to be found in
Clear Lake. The story runs that one summer long ago there was a
terrible drought in that region, followed by a plague of grasshoppers.
The Coyote ate a great quantity of these grasshoppers, and drank
up the whole lake to quench his thirst. After this he lay down to
sleep off the effects of his extraordinary repast, and while he slept a
man came up from the south country and thrust him through with a
spear. Then all the water he had drunk flowed back through his
wound into the lake, and with the water the grasshoppers he had
eaten; and these insects became fishes, the same that still swim in
Clear Lake.[II-52]
The Californians in most cases describe themselves as originating
from the Coyote, and more remotely, from the very soil they tread.
In the language of Mr. Powers—whose extended personal
investigations give him the right to speak with authority—"All the
aboriginal inhabitants of California, without exception, believe that
their first ancestors were created directly from the earth of their
respective present dwelling-places, and, in very many cases, that
these ancestors were coyotes."[II-53]
The Potoyantes give an ingenious account of the transformation of
the first coyotes into men: There was an age in which no men
existed, nothing but coyotes. When one of these animals died, his
body used to breed a multitude of little animals, much as the carcass
of the huge Ymir, rotting in Ginnunga-gap, bred the maggots that
turned to dwarfs. The little animals of our story were in reality
spirits, which, after crawling about for a time on the dead coyote,
and taking all kinds of shapes, ended by spreading wings and
floating off to the moon. This evidently would not do; the earth was
in danger of becoming depopulated; so the old coyotes took counsel
together if perchance they might devise a remedy. The result was a
general order that, for the time to come, all bodies should be
incinerated immediately after death. Thus originated the custom of
burning the dead, a custom still kept up among these people. We
next learn—what indeed might have been expected of animals of
such wisdom and parts—that these primeval coyotes began by
degrees to assume the shape of men. At first, it is true, with many
imperfections; but, a toe, an ear, a hand, bit by bit, they were
gradually builded up into the perfect form of man looking upward.
For one thing they still grieve, however, of all their lost estate—their
tails are gone. An acquired habit of sitting upright, has utterly erased
and destroyed that beautiful member. Lost is indeed lost, and gone
is gone for ever, yet still when in dance and festival, the Potoyante
throws off the weary burden of hard and utilitarian care, he attaches
to himself, as nearly as may be in the ancient place, an artificial tail,
and forgets for a happy hour the degeneracy of the present in
simulating the glory of the past.[II-54]
The Californians tell again of a great flood, or at least of a time
when the whole country, with the exception of Mount Diablo and
Reed Peak, was covered with water. There was a Coyote on the
peak, the only living thing the wide world over, and there was a
single feather tossing about on the rippled water. The Coyote was
looking at the feather, and even as he looked, flesh and bones and
other feathers, came and joined themselves to the first, and became
an Eagle. There was a stir on the water, a rush of broad pinions, and
before the widening circles reached the island-hill, the bird stood
beside the astonished Coyote. The two came soon to be acquainted
and to be good friends, and they made occasional excursions
together to the other hill, the Eagle flying leisurely overhead while
the Coyote swam. After a time they began to feel lonely, so they
created men; and as the men multiplied the waters abated, till the
dry land came to be much as it is at present.
Now, also, the Sacramento River and the San
HOW THE GOLDEN
GATE WAS
Joaquin began to find their way into the Pacific,
OPENED. through the mountains which, up to this time, had
stretched across the mouth of San Francisco Bay.
No Poseidon clove the hills with his trident, as when the pleasant
vale of Tempe was formed, but a strong earthquake tore the rock
apart and opened the Golden Gate between the waters within and
those without. Before this there had existed only two outlets for the
drainage of the whole country; one was the Russian River, and the
other the San Juan.[II-55]
The natives in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe, ascribe its origin to a great
natural convulsion. There was a time, they say, when their tribe
possessed the whole earth, and were strong, numerous, and rich;
but a day came in which a people rose up stronger than they, and
defeated and enslaved them. Afterwards the Great Spirit sent an
immense wave across the continent from the sea, and this wave
engulfed both the oppressors and the oppressed, all but a very small
remnant. Then the taskmasters made the remaining people raise up
a great temple, so that they, of the ruling caste, should have a
refuge in case of another flood, and on the top of this temple the
masters worshiped a column of perpetual fire.
Half a moon had not elapsed, however, before the earth was again
troubled, this time with strong convulsions and thunderings, upon
which the masters took refuge in their great tower, closing the
people out. The poor slaves fled to the Humboldt River, and getting
into canoes paddled for life from the awful sight behind them. For
the land was tossing like a troubled sea, and casting up fire, smoke,
and ashes. The flames went up to the very heaven and melted many
stars, so that they rained down in molten metal upon the earth,
forming the ore that the white men seek. The Sierra was mounded
up from the bosom of the earth; while the place where the great fort
stood sank, leaving only the dome on the top exposed above the
waters of Lake Tahoe. The inmates of the temple-tower clung to this
dome to save themselves from drowning; but the Great Spirit walked
upon the waters in his wrath, and took the oppressors one by one
like pebbles, and threw them far into the recesses of a great cavern,
on the east side of the lake, called to this day the Spirit Lodge,
where the waters shut them in. There must they remain till a last
great volcanic burning, which is to overturn the whole earth, shall
again set them free. In the depths of their cavern-prison they may
still be heard, wailing and moaning, when the snows melt and the
waters swell in the lake.[II-56]
We again meet the Coyote among the Cahrocs of Klamath River in
Northern California. These Cahrocs believe in a certain Chareya, Old
Man Above, who made the world, sitting the while upon a certain
stool now in the possession of the high-priest, or chief medicine-
man. After the creation of the earth, Chareya first made fishes, then
the lower animals, and lastly man, upon whom was conferred the
power of assigning to each animal its respective duties and position.
The man determined to give each a bow, the length of which should
denote the rank of the receiver. So he called all the animals together,
and told them that next day, early in the morning, the distribution of
bows would take place. Now the Coyote greatly desired the longest
bow; and, in order to be in first at the division, he determined to
remain awake all night. His anxiety sustained him for some time; but
just before morning he gave way, and fell into a sound sleep. The
consequence was, he was last at the rendezvous, and got the
shortest bow of all. The man took pity on his distress, however, and
brought the matter to the notice of Chareya, who, on considering
the circumstances, decreed that the Coyote should become the most
cunning of animals, as he remains to this time. The Coyote was very
grateful to the man for his intercession, and he became his friend
and the friend of his children, and did many things to aid mankind as
we shall see hereafter.[II-57]
The natives in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta,
MOUNT SHASTA
THE WIGWAM OF
in Northern California, say that the Great Spirit
THE GREAT SPIRIT. made this mountain first of all. Boring a hole in
the sky, using a large stone as an auger, he
pushed down snow and ice until they had reached the desired
height; then he stepped from cloud to cloud down to the great icy
pile, and from it to the earth, where he planted the first trees by
merely putting his finger into the soil here and there. The sun began
to melt the snow; the snow produced water; the water ran down the
sides of the mountains, refreshed the trees, and made rivers. The
Creator gathered the leaves that fell from the trees, blew upon
them, and they became birds. He took a stick and broke it into
pieces; of the small end he made fishes; and of the middle of the
stick he made animals—the grizzly bear excepted, which he formed
from the big end of his stick, appointing him to be master over all
the others. Indeed this animal was then so large, strong, and
cunning, that the Creator somewhat feared him, and hollowed out
Mount Shasta as a wigwam for himself, where he might reside while
on earth, in the most perfect security and comfort. So the smoke
was soon to be seen curling up from the mountain, where the Great
Spirit and his family lived, and still live, though their hearth-fire is
alight no longer, now that the white man is in the land. This was
thousands of snows ago, and there came after this a late and severe
spring-time, in which a memorable storm blew up from the sea,
shaking the huge lodge to its base. The Great Spirit commanded his
daughter, little more than an infant, to go up and bid the wind to be
still, cautioning her at the same time in his fatherly way, not to put
her head out into the blast, but only to thrust out her little red arm
and make a sign before she delivered her message. The eager child
hastened up to the hole in the roof, did as she was told, and then
turned to descend; but the Eve was too strong in her to leave
without a look at the forbidden world outside and the rivers and the
trees, at the far ocean and the great waves that the storm had made
as hoary as the forests when the snow is on the firs. She stopped,
she put out her head to look; instantly the storm took her by the
long hair, and blew her down to the earth, down the mountain side,
over the smooth ice and soft snow, down to the land of the grizzly
bears.
Now the grizzly bears were somewhat different then from what they
are at present. In appearance they were much the same it is true;
but they walked then on their hind legs like men, and talked, and
carried clubs, using the fore-limbs as men use their arms.
There was a family of these grizzlies living at the
THE GRIZZLY
FAMILY OF MOUNT
foot of the mountain, at the place where the child
SHASTA. was blown to. The father was returning from the
hunt with his club on his shoulder and a young elk
in his hand, when he saw the little shivering waif lying on the snow
with her hair all tangled about her. The old Grizzly, pitying and
wondering at the strange forlorn creature, lifted it up, and carried it
in to his wife to see what should be done. She too was pitiful, and
she fed it from her own breast, bringing it up quietly as one of her
family. So the girl grew up, and the eldest son of the old Grizzly
married her, and their offspring was neither grizzly nor Great Spirit,
but man. Very proud indeed were the whole grizzly nation of the
new race, and uniting their strength from all parts of the country,
they built the young mother and her family a mountain wigwam near
that of the Great Spirit; and this structure of theirs is now known as
Little Mount Shasta. Many years passed away, and at last the old
grandmother Grizzly became very feeble and felt that she must soon
die. She knew that the girl she had adopted was the daughter of the
Great Spirit, and her conscience troubled her that she had never let
him know anything of the fate of his child. So she called all the
grizzlies together to the new lodge, and sent her eldest grandson up
on a cloud to the summit of Mount Shasta, to tell the father that his
daughter yet lived. When the Great Spirit heard that, he was so glad
that he immediately ran down the mountain, on the south side,
toward where he had been told his daughter was; and such was the
swiftness of his pace that the snow was melted here and there along
his course, as it remains to this day. The grizzlies had prepared him
an honorable reception, and as he approached his daughter's home,
he found them standing in thousands in two files, on either side of
the door, with their clubs under their arms. He had never pictured
his daughter as aught but the little child he had loved so long ago;
but when he found that she was a mother, and that he had been
betrayed into the creation of a new race, his anger overcame him;
he scowled so terribly on the poor old grandmother Grizzly that she
died upon the spot. At this all the bears set up a fearful howl, but
the exasperated father, taking his lost darling on his shoulder, turned
to the armed host, and in his fury cursed them. Peace! he said. Be
silent for ever! Let no articulate word ever again pass your lips,
neither stand any more upright; but use your hands as feet, and
look downward until I come again! Then he drove them all out; he
drove out also the new race of men, shut to the door of Little Mount
Shasta, and passed away to his mountain, carrying his daughter;
and her or him no eye has since seen. The grizzlies never spoke
again, nor stood up; save indeed when fighting for their life, when
the Great Spirit still permits them to stand as in the old time, and to
use their fists like men. No Indian tracing his descent from the spirit
mother and the grizzly, as here described, will kill a grizzly bear; and
if by an evil chance a grizzly kill a man in any place, that spot
becomes memorable, and every one that passes casts a stone there
till a great pile is thrown up.[II-58]
Let us now pass on, and going east and north, enter the Shoshone
country. In Idaho there are certain famous Soda Springs whose
origin the Snakes refer to the close of their happiest age. Long ago,
the legend runs, when the cotton-woods on the Big River were no
larger than arrows, all red men were at peace, the hatchet was
everywhere buried, and hunter met hunter in the game-lands of the
one or the other, with all hospitality and good-will. During this state
of things, two chiefs, one of the Shoshone, the other of the
Comanche nation, met one day at a certain spring. The Shoshone
had been successful in the chase, and the Comanche very unlucky,
which put the latter in rather an ill humor. So he got up a dispute
with the other as to the importance of their respective and related
tribes, and ended by making an unprovoked and treacherous attack
on the Shoshone, striking him into the water from behind, when he
had stooped to drink. The murdered man fell forward into the water,
and immediately a strange commotion was observable there; great
bubbles and spirts of gas shot up from the bottom of the pool, and
amid a cloud of vapor there arose also an old white-haired Indian,
armed with a ponderous club of elk-horn. Well the assassin knew
who stood before him; the totem on the breast was that of
Wankanaga, the father both of the Shoshone and of the Comanche
nations, an ancient famous for his brave deeds, and celebrated in
the hieroglyphic pictures of both peoples. Accursed of two nations!
cried the old man, this day hast thou put death between the two
greatest peoples under the sun; see, the blood of this Shoshone
cries out to the Great Spirit for vengeance. And he dashed out the
brains of the Comanche with his club, and the murderer fell there
beside his victim into the spring. After that the spring became foul
and bitter, nor even to this day can any one drink of its nauseous
water. Then Wankanaga, seeing that it had been defiled, took his
club and smote a neighboring rock, and the rock burst forth into
clear bubbling water, so fresh and so grateful to the palate that no
other water can even be compared to it.[II-59]
Passing into Washington, we find an account of
THE GIANTS OF
THE PALOUSE
the origin of the falls of Palouse River and of
RIVER. certain native tribes. There lived here at one time
a family of giants, four brothers and a sister. The
sister wanted some beaver-fat and she begged her brothers to get it
for her—no easy task, as there was only one beaver in the country,
and he an animal of extraordinary size and activity. However, like
four gallant fellows, the giants set out to find the monster, soon
catching sight of him near the mouth of the Palouse, then a peaceful
gliding river with an even though winding channel. They at once
gave chase, heading him up the river. A little distance up-stream
they succeeded in striking him for the first time with their spears,
but he shook himself clear, making in his struggle the first rapids of
the Palouse, and dashed on up-stream. Again the brothers overtook
him, pinning him to the river-bed with their weapons, and again the
vigorous beast writhed away, making thus the second falls of the
Palouse. Another chase, and, in a third and fatal attack, the four
spear-shafts are struck again through the broad wounded back.
There is a last stubborn struggle at the spot since marked by the
great falls called Aputaput, a tearing of earth and a lashing of water
in the fierce death-flurry, and the huge Beaver is dead. The brothers
having secured the skin and fat, cut up the body and threw the
pieces in various directions. From these pieces have originated the
various tribes of the country, as the Cayuses, the Nez Percés, the
Walla Wallas, and so on. The Cayuses sprang from the beaver's
heart, and for this reason they are more energetic, daring, and
successful than their neighbors.[II-60]
In Oregon the Chinooks and neighboring people tell of a pre-human
demon race, called Ulháipa by the Chinooks, and Sehuiáb by the
Clallams and Lummis. The Chinooks say that the human race was
created by Italapas, the Coyote. The first men were sent into the
world in a very lumpish and imperfect state, their mouth and eyes
were closed, their hands and feet immovable. Then a kind and
powerful spirit called Ikánam, took a sharp stone, opened the eyes
of these poor creatures, and gave motion to their hands and feet. He
taught them how to make canoes as well as all other implements
and utensils; and he threw great rocks into the rivers and made falls,
to obstruct the salmon in their ascent, so that they might be easily
caught.[II-61]
Farther north among the Ahts of Vancouver Island, perhaps the
commonest notion of origin is that men at first existed as birds,
animals, and fishes. We are told of a certain Quawteaht, represented
somewhat contradictorily, as the first Aht that ever lived, thickset
and hairy-limbed, and as the chief Aht deity, a purely supernatural
being, if not the creator, at least the maker and shaper of most
things, the maker of the land and the water, and of the animals that
inhabit the one or the other. In each of these animals as at first
created, there resided the embryo or essence of a man. One day a
canoe came down the coast, paddled by two personages in the, at
that time, unknown form of men. The animals were frightened out
of their wits, and fled, each from his house, in such haste that he
left behind him the human essence that he usually carried in his
body. These embryos rapidly developed into men; they multiplied,
made use of the huts deserted by the animals, and became in every
way as the Ahts are now. There exists another account of the origin
of the Ahts, which would make them the direct descendants of
Quawteaht and an immense bird that he married—the great
Thunder Bird, Tootooch, with which, under a different name and in a
different sex, we shall become more familiar presently. The flapping
of Tootooch's wings shook the hills with thunder, tootah; and when
she put out her forked tongue, the lightning quivered across the sky.
The Ahts have various legends of the way in which fire was first
obtained, which legends may be reduced to the following:
Quawteaht withheld fire, for some reason or other, from the
creatures that he had brought into the world, with one exception; it
was always to be found burning in the home of the cuttle-fish,
telhoop. The other beasts attempted to steal this fire, but only the
deer succeeded; he hid a little of it in the joint of his hind leg, and
escaping, introduced the element to general use.
Not all animals, it would appear, were produced in the general
creation; the loon and the crow had a special origin, being
metamorphosed men. Two fishermen, being out at sea in their
canoes, fell to quarreling, the one ridiculing the other for his small
success in fishing. Finally the unsuccessful man became so infuriated
by the taunts of his companion that he knocked him on the head,
and stole his fish, cutting out his tongue before he paddled off, lest
by any chance the unfortunate should recover his senses and gain
the shore. The precaution was well taken, for the mutilated man
reached the land and tried to denounce his late companion. No
sound however could he utter but something resembling the cry of a
loon, upon which the Great Spirit, Quawteaht, became so
indiscriminatingly angry at the whole affair that he changed the poor
mute into a loon, and his assailant into a crow. So when the
mournful voice of the loon is heard from the silent lake or river, it is
still the poor fisherman that we hear, trying to make himself
understood and to tell the hard story of his wrongs.[II-62]
The general drift of many of the foregoing myths
NOOTKA AND
SALISH CREATION-
would go to indicate a wide-spread belief in the
MYTHS. theory of an evolution of man from animals.[II-63]
Traditions are not wanting, however, whose
teaching is precisely the reverse. The Salish, the Nisquallies, and the
Yakimas of Washington, all hold that beasts, fishes, and even edible
roots are descended from human originals. One account of this
inverse Darwinian development is this: The son of the Sun—whoever
he may have been—caused certain individuals to swim through a
lake of magic oil, a liquid of such Circean potency that the
unfortunates immersed were transformed as above related. The
peculiarities of organism of the various animals, are the results of
incidents of their passage; the bear dived, and is therefore fat all
over; the goose swam high, and is consequently fat only up to the
water-line; and so on through all the list.[II-64]
Moving north to the Tacullies of British Columbia, we find the Musk-
rat an active agent in the work of creation. The flat earth, following
the Tacully cosmogony, was at first wholly covered with water. On
the water a Musk-rat swam to and fro, seeking food. Finding none
there, he dived to the bottom and brought up a mouthful of mud,
but only to spit it out again when he came to the surface. All this he
did again and again till quite an island was formed and by degrees
the whole earth. In some unexplained way this earth became
afterwards peopled in every part, and so remained, until a fierce fire
of several days' duration swept over it, destroying all life, with two
exceptions; one man and one woman hid themselves in a deep cave
in the heart of a mountain, and from these two has the world been
since repeopled.[II-65]
From the Tacully country we pass north and west
YEHL, THE
to the coast inhabited by the Thlinkeets, among
CREATOR OF THE
THLINKEETS. whom the myth of a great Bird, or of a great hero-
deity, whose favorite disguise is the shape of a
bird, assumes the most elaborate proportions and importance. Here
the name of this great Somebody is Yehl, the Crow or Raven, creator
of most things, and especially of the Thlinkeets. Very dark, damp,
and chaotic was the world in the beginning; nothing with breath or
body moved there except Yehl; in the likeness of a raven he brooded
over the mist, his black wings beat down the vast confusion, the
waters went back before him and the dry land appeared. The
Thlinkeets were placed on the earth—though how or when does not
exactly appear—while the world was still in darkness, and without
sun or moon or stars. A certain Thlinkeet, we are further informed,
had a wife and a sister. Of the wife he was devouringly jealous, and
when employed in the woods at his trade of building canoes, he had
her constantly watched by eight red birds of the kind called kun. To
make assurance surer, he even used to coop her up in a kind of box
every time he left home. All this while his sister, a widow it would
appear, was bringing up certain sons she had, fine tall fellows,
rapidly approaching manhood. The jealous uncle could not endure
the thought of their being in the neighborhood of his wife. So he
inveigled them one by one, time after time, out to sea with him on
pretense of fishing, and drowned them there. The poor mother was
left desolate, she went to the sea-shore to weep for her children. A
dolphin—some say a whale—saw her there, and pitied her; the beast
told her to swallow a small pebble and drink some sea-water. She
did so, and in eight months was delivered of a child. That child was
Yehl, who thus took upon himself a human shape, and grew up a
mighty hunter and notable archer. One day a large bird appeared to
him, having a long tail like a magpie, and a long glittering bill as of
metal; the name of the bird was Kutzghatushl, that is, Crane that
can soar to heaven. Yehl shot the bird, skinned it, and whenever he
wished to fly used to clothe himself in its skin.
Now Yehl had grown to manhood, and he determined to avenge
himself upon his uncle for the death of his brothers; so he opened
the box in which the well-guarded wife was shut up. Instantly the
eight faithful birds flew off and told the husband, who set out for his
home in a murderous mood. Most cunning, however, in his patience,
he greeted Yehl with composure, and invited him into his canoe for a
short trip to sea. Having paddled out some way, he flung himself on
the young man and forced him overboard: Then he put his canoe
about and made leisurely for the land, rid as he thought of another
enemy. But Yehl swam in quietly another way, and stood up in his
uncle's house. The baffled murderer was beside himself with fury, he
imprecated with a potent curse a deluge upon all the earth, well
content to perish himself so he involved his rival in the common
destruction, for jealousy is cruel as the grave. The flood came, the
waters rose and rose; but Yehl clothed himself in his bird-skin, and
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