[63-1] The former went about the world furnishing it with
gentle streams, fertile plains, and plenteous fruits, while the latter
maliciously followed him creating rapids, thorns, and deserts. At length
the Good Mind turned upon his brother in anger, and crushed him into the
earth. He sank out of sight in its depths, but not to perish, for in the
dark realms of the underworld he still lives, receiving the souls of the
dead and being the author of all evil. Now when we compare this with the
version of the same legend given by Father Brebeuf, missionary to the
Hurons in 1636, we find its whole complexion altered; the moral dualism
vanishes; the names Good Mind and Bad Mind do not appear; it is the
struggle of Ioskeha, the White one, with his brother Tawiscara, the Dark
one, and we at once perceive that Christian influence in the course of
two centuries had given the tale a meaning foreign to its original
intent.
So it is with the story the Algonkins tell of their hero Manibozho, who,
in the opinion of a well-known writer, "is always placed in antagonism
to a great serpent, a spirit of evil.
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