Our first thought when we hear the word “deluge” is of Noah and his Ark, and the funny toy of our childhood rises to the mind’s eye. In that childhood we had no doubt that the flood described in the first book of the Old Testament covered the whole globe. Now we know that the story is a Semitic tradition, perhaps nothing more than a sun-myth in origin, although the actual occurrence of some extraordinary inundation may have got mixed with it and localized it. In fact, the belief in an all-submerging deluge, or, in what is its equivalent—namely, a time when the world was a plain of water with no land above its quiet surface—is a part of the mythology or theology, or both, of many diverse peoples in both hemispheres; and almost always birds are prominently associated with its incidents and the ensuing separation of land from water.

A surprising number of persons of ordinary intelligence even now, and in this enlightened country, continue to regard beds of water-worn gravels, and the fossil shells, etc., seen in the rocks, as relics of the Noachian deluge, and “diluvian” and “antediluvian” are terms that hardly yet have disappeared from popular geology.

The earliest available accounts of such a deluge as the Noachian are engraved on clay tablets recovered from the ruins of Babylonia, and written 2000 or more years before the beginning of the Christian era. Several narratives have been deciphered, agreeing in the facts of a vast destruction by water in Mesopotamia, and of a relatively huge house-boat built by a chosen family for the preservation of themselves and an extensive collection of livestock. After floating about for seven days this Babylonian ship grounded on a submerged hill-top, and seven days later the patriarchal shipmaster sent out as explorers a dove, a swallow, and a raven. The dove and the swallow returned, the raven did not.

The close similarity between this and the Biblical account of Noah’s voyage on a world of waters (which account appears to be a combination of two separate legends) leads to the opinion that the whole narrative is derived from some more ancient and widespread Oriental tradition; and there seems fair evidence that it does not describe any physical happening at all, but is a symbolical sun-myth, a hint of which is given, even in the Bible, by the incident of the rainbow. Let me quote the history in Genesis so far as it relates to our purpose:

“And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven which went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark; for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put forth his hand and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came in unto him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an olive-leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove, which returned not again unto him any more.”

As to the choice of these particular birds out of Noah’s great aviary, it is well to remember that doves were sacred in ancient Babylonia to Ishtar, who, as the deified (female) personification of productiveness, co-existent with the (male) Sun-god, was sometimes designated as Mother-goddess, or even as “Mother Earth”: so that it would be highly appropriate to send first a dove as a messenger to this incarnation of fruitful land. This falls in with Moncure D. Conway’s suggestion^[56] that the dove and raven were tribally “sacred” animals among the people affected by this Babylonian deluge. The choice of the swallow was natural, when one remembers its habit of flying long and far over bodies of water; and that the raven should not come back is in keeping with its character as much as is the quick return of the semidomestic dove and swallow. Dr. Laufer^[52] notes that St. Ambrose, in his treatise De Noe et Area, devotes a whole chapter to the “crow’s” impiety in not returning to the Ark. The Arabs, according to Keane,^[14] even yet call this bird “raven of separation,” meaning the separation of the water from the land at the close of the Flood. Another Arabic source, quoted by Baring-Gould from the medieval Chronicle of Abou-djafer TÁbari, transmits traditional particulars that considerably extend the too-laconic Biblical log of the Ark. “When Noah had left the Ark,” it relates, “he passed forty days on the mountain, till all the water had subsided into the sea.... Noah said to the raven, ‘Go and place your foot on the earth, and see what is the depth of the water.’ The raven departed, but having found a carcass it remained to devour it and did not return. Noah was provoked, and he cursed the raven, saying, ‘May God make thee contemptible among men, and let carrion be thy food.’”

Johann von Herder, the poet and friend of Goethe, either found or invented another story to account for the curse resting on the raven, which runs thus in the words of an old translator:

Anxiously did Noah look forth from his swimming ark, waiting to see the waters of the flood abate. Scarcely had the peaks of the highest mountains emerged from the waves, when he called all the fowls around him. “Who among you,” said he, “will be the messenger to go forth and see whether the time of our deliverance is nigh?” The raven with much noise crowded hastily in before all the rest: he longed ardently for his favorite food. Scarcely was the window open, when he flew away and returned no more. The ungrateful bird forgot his errand and the interests of his benefactor—he hung at his carcass! But punishment did not delay. The air was yet filled with poisonous fog, and heavy vapors hung over the putrid corpses; these blinded his eyes and darkened his feathers. As a punishment for his forgetfulness, his memory as well as his sight became dim; even his own young he did not recognize; and he experienced towards them no feelings of parental joy.

Quoting again the Arab chronicler Abou-djafer TÁbari: “After that Noah sent forth the dove. The dove departed, and without tarrying put her foot in the water. The water of the Flood scalded and pricked the legs of the dove. It was hot and briny and feathers would not grow on her legs any more, and the skin scaled off. Now, doves which have red and featherless legs are of the sort that Noah sent forth. The dove returning showed her legs to Noah, who said: ‘May God render thee well pleasing to men.’ For that reason the dove is dear to men’s hearts.”

Still another Arabic version, given by Gustav Weil, is that Noah blessed the dove, and since then she has borne a necklace of green feathers; but the raven he cursed, that its flight should be crooked—never direct like that of other birds. This is also a Jewish legend. A more modern addendum is that the magpie, one of the same group of birds, was not permitted to enter the ark, but was compelled to perch on the roof because it gabbled so incessantly. A quaint 14th-century manuscript quoted by Hulme^[38] says of the raven’s exit from the ark:

To this list of messengers medieval tradition added a fourth—the kingfisher, which in Europe is blue-green above and rich chestnut on the breast. At that time, however, it was a plain gray bird. This scout flew straight up to heaven, in order to get a wide survey of the waters, and went so near the sun that its breast was scorched to its present tint and its back assumed the color of the sky overhead. (This recalls Thoreau’s saying that our bluebird carries the sky on its back and the earth on its breast.)

Faith in a general flood long ago is shown by primitive documents to have prevailed not only in Asia Minor and eastward, but in Persia, India and Greece. It did not prevail in Europe generally, nor in Africa. On the other hand missionaries report traditions of it in Polynesia—where, curiously, geographers find evidence of great subsidences since the archipelagoes affected have been inhabited; and certainly it was a part of the mythical prehistory of many tribes among the aborigines of North America, where birds were often connected with the adventures of the few or solitary survivors by means of whom the world was repeopled. Thus scores, perhaps hundreds, of varying traditions and fables exist of the creation of the earth out of a chaos of water, or of its restoration after having been drowned in a universal flood; and often it is hard to distinguish the creation-myth from the deluge-tale.

The American story-material of this nature may be divided into groups that would correspond roughly to the various aboriginal language-stocks, betraying a family likeness in each group, but showing tribal variations as a rule connected with each particular tribal or mythical “first man,” or with the totemic ancestor.

The creation-legends, as such, do not concern us much. They are of purely mythical, supernatural beings of various sorts, descending from the sky or coming up out of the underworld, and either finding a readymade earth to dwell upon or else creating one by magic. Some Southern darkies will tell you that the bluejay made the earth. “When all de worl’ was water he brung de fust grit er dirt.” The strangest conception of this kind is not American but that of the Ainus of northern Japan, who say that the earth originally was a sterile, cold, uninhabitable and dreadful quagmire. The creator existed aloft, however, and finally made and despatched a water-wagtail to construct a place habitable for men. The bird fluttered over the water-spaces, trampled the thin mud and beat it down with its feet. Thus ground was gradually hardened and elevated in spots, the water steadily drained away and good soil was left. Hence the Ainus hold the little wagtail in almost worshipful esteem.

Let us, however, restrict the inquiry to North America, and to the deluge-story proper—that is, the destruction of human life by water overwhelming a flourishing world, and the subsequent restoration.

The widely spread Algonkin stock has many such legends, in which one or several persons and animals survive by floating in a canoe or raft, and at their behest a beaver or a muskrat—the most natural agents—bring up from the bottom a little mud, which is expanded by magic into a new continent; but frequently birds do this service or otherwise help to form livable conditions. The Lenni Lenape (Delawares) had a tradition of a universal deluge in the far distant past, which Dr. Brinton^[27] recounted as follows, assuring us that it is unmixed with any teaching by white missionaries: “The few people that survived had taken refuge on the back of a turtle who had reached so great an age that his shell was mossy, like the bank of a runlet. In this forlorn condition a loon flew that way, which they asked to dive and bring up land. He complied but found no bottom. Then he flew away and returned with a small quantity of earth in his bill. Guided by him, the turtle swam to a place where a spot of dry land was found. There the survivors settled and re-peopled the land.”

Few legends explain how or why the flood occurred. The Ojibways, however, say that it was the result of the malice of an underground monster visualized as a huge serpent (recalling the earth-dragon of the Chinese), which throughout all their mythology is the antagonist of the good, constructive genius represented by their tribal hero Manabozho.

The Beaver Indians of the Mackenzie Valley offer a more materialistic and more picturesque explanation. They told George Keith, one of the fur-traders there a century ago, whose Letters are printed in Masson’s collection of northern archives,^[99] that the deluge resulted from the sudden melting of a snowfall so deep that tall trees were buried. This disastrous melting was produced by the release of the sun from a bug in which it had been hidden by sorcery. Then the sun flew away and began to shed its heat. There’s a sun-myth for you!

In the resulting freshet so philosophically accounted for the few persons who had been left unburied in the world of snow fled toward a high mountain, but only a man and a woman reached it. On this mountain were gathered pairs of all the kinds of animals in the country. The flood persisted, and there was nothing to eat. Then the mallard, the little grebe, or hell-diver, and the buzzard (?) were sent to dive into the sea and try to find its bottom. All failed repeatedly, but the buzzard dived again a few days later, and came up with his bill full of earth, which showed that the flood was subsiding. Finally the waters drained away or dried up, but the soil had been so ruined by submergence that not even roots could be found to serve as food. When everybody was nearly starved, however, the human pair and the animals succeeded in finding the home of Raven, who lived far away, and from his stores they obtained food. Then a new world of life began.

The Cheyennes and the Arikarees say that at the height of the flood “a person” (masculine) was floating in the water with all sorts of aquatic birds swimming about him. He asked that one of them dive and get some earth. All tried it and failed until a small duck brought up a little mud in its beak and gave it to the man. He kneaded it with his fingers until it was dry, then made little piles of it on the surface of the water, which enlarged and coalesced into a wide plain.

The Chitimacha Indians of northern Louisiana used to relate that a great deluge came, whereupon the redheaded woodpecker went up to the sky and hung by his claws to escape drowning, but his tail hung down into the dirty water and was stained black, as you now see it. The Pimas and other tribes of Arizona tell similar stories of certain birds, one clan of Pueblo Indians putting it on the turkey. They say that a flood was produced by the god Baholi Konga to punish tribal wickedness. The good persons in the community escaped this punishment by means of the fact that Baholi Konga had clothed them in turkey-skins, enabling them to fly to the high mountains. They flew too low, however, and the tails of their dresses dragged in the water, the stain of which is still visible.

With one more and a rather pretty tale from the traditions of the Paiute Indians, whose home is in the region of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, I must close this glance at aboriginal legends of a deluge here in America. These Indians relate that formerly the whole world was under water save the summit of Mt. Grant, on which existed a fire. It was the only fire in the universe, and it would have been extinguished when the wind blew hard and the waves were dashed against the peak had not the sage-hen settled down there and fanned away the water with her wings; but while doing this inestimable service to mankind the heat of the precious flame scorched her breast, and that accounts for its present blackness.

A curiously similar story, which illustrates the primitive savage’s perception that obtaining fire was the most important, the first, thing to do in beginning or reconstituting a habitable world, appears in the folklore of the Arawaks of British Guiana, and may well be told among deluge myths. They assure you that the world was once engulfed in a flood that left exposed only a hilltop where grew some tall cocoanut palms. The heavenly leader, Sigu, conducted all the animals to this hill and made such as could go up the trees, while others were placed in a cave sealed water-tight with wax. (It was during that long, distressful waiting in the palm-tops that the howling-monkeys perfected the agonizing quality of their terrific voices.) Finally the waters subsided and the agami (the trumpeter, Psophia crepitans) ventured too soon upon the ground in search of food; thereupon hordes of starved ants, issuing from their half-drowned nests, swarmed upon its legs, then of respectable size, and so nearly devoured them that only the sticklike shanks now characteristic of the bird remained. Sigu rescued the unfortunate agami, and then with infinite trouble kindled a fire with a spark that the maroodie (or guan, a fellow-bird with the agami of South-American barnyards) had snapped up in mistake for a shining red insect. The guan tried to shift the blame for this sinful error upon the alligator but failed to do so, for his own guilt was betrayed by the glowing spark that had stuck in his throat, as one may see by looking at any guan to-day.

Another instance of the misfortunes of the trumpeter is related by Leo Miller^[53] as he heard it among the Maquritari Indians who live on the headwaters of the Orinoco:

In the very beginning of things a trumpeter and a curassow [a near cousin of the guan] decided upon a matrimonial alliance, but domestic troubles soon broke out, and there was no possibility of a reconciliation; it was thereupon decided to lay the case before the gods who live on the summit of Mount Duida. The wise gods ordered them to fight it out. In the course of the combat that followed the curassow pushed the trumpeter into the fire, burning off the feathers of the latter’s tail. The trumpeter promptly retaliated by pushing her mate into the fire, singeing his crest. Thereupon the gods decided that they should remain in this humiliating plight for the rest of their days, and so ... the curassow wears a curled crest and the trumpeter has a very short tail.

I am tempted, in spite of my intention to stop here, to annex an elaborate and somewhat amusing creation-myth of the Yocut Indians of southern California, because it is both appropriate and picturesque. It is thus set down by Powers:^[19]

Once there was a time when there was nothing in the world but water. About the place where Tulare Lake now is, there was a pole standing far up out of the water, and on this pole, perched a hawk and a crow ... for many ages. At length they wearied of the lonesomeness, and they created the birds which prey on fish, such as the kingfisher, eagle, pelican, and others. Among them was a very small duck, which dived down to the bottom of the water, picked its beak full of mud, came up, died, and lay floating on the water. The hawk and crow then fell to work and gathered from the duck’s beak the earth which it had brought up, and commenced making the mountains. They began at the place now known as Ta-hi-cha-pa Pass, and the hawk made the east range, while the crow made the west one. Little by little, as they dropped in the earth, the great mountains grew athwart the face of the waters pushing north. It was a work of many years, but finally they met at Mt. Shasta, and their labors were ended.

But behold, when they compared their mountains it was found that the crow’s was a great deal the larger. Then the hawk said to the crow. “How did this happen, you rascal? I warrant you have been stealing the earth from my bill, and that is why your mountains are the biggest.” It was a fact, and the crow laughed in his claws. Then the hawk went and got some Indian tobacco and chewed it and it made him exceedingly wise. So he took hold of the mountains and turned them around in a circle, putting his range in place of the crow’s; and that is why the Sierra Nevada is larger than the Coast Range.