The maiden is the dawn from whose virgin womb rises the sun
in the fullness of his glory and might, but with his advent the dawn
itself disappears and dies. The battle lasts all day, beginning when the
earliest rays gild the mountain tops, and continues until the West is
driven to the edge of the world. As the evening precedes the morning, so
the West, by a figure of speech, may be said to fertilize the Dawn.
In another form of the story the West was typified as a flint stone, and
the twin brother of Michabo. The feud between them was bitter, and the
contest long and dreadful. The face of the land was seamed and torn by the
wrestling of the mighty combatants, and the Indians pointed out the huge
boulders on the prairies as the weapons hurled at each other by the
enraged brothers. At length Michabo mastered his fellow twin and broke him
into pieces. He scattered the fragments over the earth, and from them grew
fruitful vines.
A myth which, like this, introduces the flint stone as in some way
connected with the early creative forces of nature, recurs at other
localities on the American continent very remote from the home of the
Algonkins. In the calendar of the Aztecs the day and god Tecpatl, the
Flint-Stone, held a prominent position. According to their myths such a
stone fell from heaven at the beginning of things and broke into sixteen
hundred pieces, each of which became a god.
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