In the Algonquin legends of Manibozho, or Manobosbu, or Nanabojou, the great ancestor of all the Algic tribes, the hero man-god, we learn, had a terrific battle with “his brother Chakekenapok, the flint-stone, whom he broke in pieces, and scattered over the land, and changed his entrails into fruitful vines.  The conflict was long and terrible.  The face of nature was desolated as by a tornado, and the gigantic bowlders and loose rocks found on the prairies are the missiles hurled by the mighty combatants."[2]

We read in the Ute legends, given on page —–­, ante, that when the magical arrow of Ta-wats “struck the sun-god full in the face, the sun was shivered into a thousand fragments, which fell to the earth, causing a general conflagration."[3]

Here we have the same reference to matter falling on the earth from the heavens, associated with devouring fire.  And we have the same sequence of events, for we learn that when all of Ta-wats was consumed but the head, “his tears gushed forth in a flood, which spread over the earth and extinguished the fires.”

The Aleuts of the Aleutian Archipelago have a tradition that a certain Old Man, called Traghdadakh, created men “by casting stones on the earth; he flung also other stones into the air, the water, and over the land, thus making beasts, birds, and fishes."[4]

It is a general belief in many races that the stone axes and celts fell from the heavens.  In Japan, the stone

[1.  Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” p. 170.

2.  Ibid., p. 181.

3.  Major J. W. Powell, “Popular Science Monthly,” 1879, p. 799.

4 Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii, p. 104.]

{p. 259}

arrow-heads are rained from heaven by the flying spirits, who shoot them.  Similar beliefs are found in Brittany, in Madagascar, Ireland, Brazil, China, the Shetlands, Scotland, Portugal, etc.[1]

In the legends of Quetzalcoatl, the central figure of the Toltec mythology, we have a white man—­a bearded man—­from an eastern land, mixed up with something more than man.  He was the Bird-serpent, that is, the winged or flying serpent, the great snake of the air, the son of Iztac Mixcoatl, “the white-cloud serpent, the spirit of the tornado."[2] He created the world.  He was overcome by Tezcatlipoca, the spirit of the night.

“When he would promulgate his decrees, his herald proclaimed them from Tzatzitepec, the hill of shouting, with such a mighty voice that it could be heard a hundred leagues around.  The arrows which he shot transfixed great trees; the stones he threw leveled forests; and when he laid his hands on the rocks the mark was indelible."[3]

“His symbols were the bird, the serpent, the cross, and the flint."[4]

In the Aztec calendar the sign for the age of fire is the flint.

In the Chinese Encyclopædia of the Emperor Kang-hi, 1662, we are told: