[Footnote 1:  Monographie des Dene Dindjie, par C.R.P.E.  Petitot, pp. 84-87 (Paris, 1876).  Elsewhere the writer says:  “Tout d’abord je dois rappeler mon observation que presque toujours, dans les traditions Dene, le couple primitif se compose de deux freres.”  Ibid., p. 62.]

In another myth of this stock, clearly a version of the former, this father of the race is represented as a mighty bird, called Yel, or Yale, or Orelbale, from the root ell, a term they apply to everything supernatural.  He took to wife the daughter of the Sun (the Woman of Light), and by her begat the race of man.  He formed the dry land for a place for them to live upon, and stocked the rivers with salmon, that they might have food.  When he enters his nest it is day, but when he leaves it it is night; or, according to another myth, he has the two women for wives, the one of whom makes the day, the other the night.

In the beginning Yel was white in plumage, but he had an enemy, by name Cannook, with whom he had various contests, and by whose machinations he was turned black.  Yel is further represented as the god of the winds and storms, and of the thunder and lightning.[1]

[Footnote 1:  For the extent and particulars of this myth, many of the details of which I omit, see Petitot, ubi supra, pp. 68, 87, note; Matthew Macfie. Travels in Vancouver Island and British Columbia, pp. 452-455 (London, 1865); and J.K.  Lord, The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia (London, 1866).  It is referred to by Mackenzie and other early writers.]

Thus we find, even in this extremely low specimen of the native race, the same basis for their mythology as in the most cultivated nations of Central America.  Not only this; it is the same basis upon which is built the major part of the sacred stories of all early religions, in both continents; and the excellent Father Petitot, who is so much impressed by these resemblances that he founds upon them a learned argument to prove that the Dene are of oriental extraction,[1] would have written more to the purpose had his acquaintance with American religions been as extensive as it was with those of Asiatic origin.

[Footnote 1:  See his “Essai sur l’Origine des Dene-Dindjie,” in his Monographie, above quoted.]

There is one point in all these myths which I wish to bring out forcibly.  That is, the distinction which is everywhere drawn between the God of Light and the Sun.  Unless this distinction is fully comprehended, American mythology loses most of its meaning.

The assertion has been so often repeated, even down to the latest writers, that the American Indians were nearly all sun-worshipers, that I take pains formally to contradict it.  Neither the Sun nor the Spirit of the Sun was their chief divinity.