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Show 256 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 and it is this Messianic doctrine which gives the numerous Indian prophets their main hold and influence. In many tribes there are several transformers, who appear successively but whose functions are similar. \ l t is this being who is the great hero of the Indians and who was the great spirit or manitou to whom the early writers so frequently refer. \ A puzzling incongruity in his character is the fact that he is almost invariably a trickster and one who gains his ends by petty and despicable means. While usually triumphant in his various encounters, he is nevertheless often worsted or made ridiculous. In short, he is not at all the venerable personage one might expect. Two explanations have been offered to account for this psychological incongruity, neither of which is sufficient. One holds that the buffoonery and trickery are late introductions and that the present myths are in a state of degeneration from a higher and purer form ;* and the other that the transformer devises the arts and obtains the benefits for his own ends, to assist him in his own difficulties, and that man is only incidentally the beneficiary; and that the Indian feels himself under no obligation to venerate the transformer, since the latter had no altruistic purpose in mind. 2 With regard to the 1 Brinton, Myths of the New World. 1 Boas, in introduction to Tcit, Thompson River Indian Traditions. |