The Culture Gods or heroes appear in vari ous forms in American myth from the cold northern regions to the far southern lands; but they have ever the same characteristics. They are always the personification of the winds or of one of them and they are the messengers of some higher power which has sent them upon earth to instruct man. Through them man kind has learned all that he knows. The cul ture gods go about the earth teaching and generally doing good. About them, however, there have collected, in the course of time, many stories that show plainly they are the invention of the various storytellers through which the original myth has passed in the course of its long history. The American cul ture myths have not been studied comparatively as they deserve, but such studies as have been made would seem to ir.dicate that they are all, or nearly all, closely related. Almost every where, in addition to being the patrons of learn ing, of the arts and of all knowledge, they are also the special divinities of games of chance and, curiously enough, the patrons of thieves. The shadowy figure of the culture god stalks through the history of all the more cultured races of the American continents. He was the great patron divinity of the Toltecs, the most cultured of all the American races and the superstition of his second coming paralyzed the hand of the warlike Moctezuma and made it possible for a handful of Spaniards to con quer the greatest empire of the Western World.
Hiawatha, Nanabozho, Wakiash, Quetzalcoatl, Yucano, Awonawilona, Glooskap, Poia, Ku kulkan, Gucumatz and a score of other heroic figures stand prominent out from the lives of the various Indian races as the great in structors of their people. Of these the greatest in the United States is Nanabozho, whom Long fellow hasrimmortalized as Hiawatha. See also AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY.
Brinton, D. G., Hero-Myths' (Philadelphia 1882) ; Canfield, W. (The Legends of the Iroquois' (New York 1902) ; Curtis, E. S., (Indian Days of the Long Ago' (New York 1914) •, Curtis, Natalie, (The Indian Book' (New York 1907) ; Dorsey, J. O., (Osage Traditions' (Washington 1888) ; Dunn, J. P., (True Indian Stories' (Indian apolis. 1908) ; Fynn, A. J., (The American Indian' (Boston 1907) ; Grinnell, G. B., (Paw nee Hero-stories and Folk-tales' (New York 1889) ; 'Blackfoot Lodge Tales' (New York 1892) ; Hodge, F. W., (Handbook of the American Indians' (Washington 1907) ; Long fellow, H. W., (The Song of Hiawatha) ; Lumis, C. F., (The Man who Married the Moon and other Pueblo Indian Folk-stories' (New York 1894) ; Skinner, C. M., and Legends of our own Land' (Philadelphia and London 1896) ; Smith, E. A., 'Myths of the Iroquois' (Washington 1883) • Swanton. I. R., (Haida Texts and Myths' (Washington 1905) ; 'Tlingit Myths and Texts' (Washington 1909).