In the story of the Iroquois, (see p. 173, ante,) we are told that the White One, [the Light One, the Sun,] after he had destroyed the monster who covered the earth with

[1.  “Frost and Fire,” vol. ii, p. 190.]

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blood and stones, then destroyed the gigantic frog.  The frog, a cold-blooded, moist reptile, was always the emblem of water and cold; it represented the great ice-fields that squatted, frog-like, on the face of the earth.  It had “swallowed all the waters,” says the Iroquois legend; that is, “the waters were congealed in it; and when it was killed great and destructive torrents broke forth and devastated the land, and Manibozho, the White One, the beneficent Sun, guided these waters into smooth streams and lakes.”  The Aztecs adored the goddess of water under the figure of a great green frog carved from a single emerald.[1]

In the Omaha we have the fable of “How the Rabbit killed the Winter,” told in the Indian manner.  The Rabbit was probably a reminiscence of the Great Hare, Manabozho; and he, probably, as we shall see, a recollection of a great race, whose totem was the Hare.

I condense the Indian story: 

“The Rabbit in the past time moving came where the Winter was.  The Winter said:  ‘You have not been here lately; sit down.’  The Rabbit said he came because his grandmother had altogether beaten the life out of him” (the fallen débris?).  “The Winter went hunting.  It was very cold:  there was a snow-storm.  The Rabbit seared up a deer.  ‘Shoot him,’ said the Rabbit.  ’No; I do not hunt such things as that,’ said the Winter.  They came upon some men.  That was the Winter’s game.  He killed the men and boiled them for supper,” (cave-cannibalism).  “The Rabbit refused to eat the human flesh.  The Winter went hunting again.  The Rabbit found out from the Winter’s wife that the thing the Winter dreaded most of all the world was the head of a Rocky Mountain sheep.  The Rabbit procured one. It was dark.  He threw it suddenly at the Winter, saying, ’Uncle, that round thing by you is the head of a Rocky Mountain

[1.  Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” p. 185.]

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sheep.’  The Winter became altogether dead.  Only the woman remained. Therefore from that time it has not been very cold.”

Of course, any attempt to interpret such a crude myth must be guess-work.  It shows, however, that the Indians believed that there was a time when the winter was much more severe than it is now; it was very cold and dark.  Associated with it is the destruction of men and cannibalism.  At last the Rabbit brings a round object, (the Sun?), the head of a Rocky Mountain sheep, and the Winter looks on it, and perishes.

Even tropical Peru has its legend of the Age of Ice.

Garcilaso de la Vega, a descendant of the Incas, has preserved an ancient indigenous poem of his nation, which seems to allude to a great event, the breaking to fragments of some large object, associated with ice and snow.  Dr. Brinton translates it from the Quichua, as follows