They are
strictly meteorological in their meaning. And when in later Algonkin
tradition the hero Michabo appears in conflict with the shining prince
of serpents who lives in the lake and floods the earth with its waters,
and destroys the reptile with a dart, and further when the conqueror
clothes himself with the skin of his foe and drives the rest of the
serpents to the south where in that latitude the lightnings are last
seen in the autumn;[116-2] or when in the traditional history of the
Iroquois we hear of another great horned serpent rising out of the lake
and preying upon the people until a similar hero-god destroys it with a
thunderbolt,[116-3] we cannot be wrong in rejecting any historical or
ethical interpretation, and in construing them as allegories which at
first represented the atmospheric changes which accompany the advancing
seasons and the ripening harvests. They are narratives conveying under
agreeable personifications the tidings of that unending combat which the
Dakotas said was being waged with varying fortunes by Unktahe against
Wauhkeon, the God of Waters against the Thunder Bird.
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