A Further note on Pygmies and Cranes in North America

Abstract

THE purpose of this brief note is to relate some points I made in an earlier discussion of this subject' to R. Dangel's 'Der Kampf der Kraniche mit den Pygmaen bei den Indianern Nordamerikas' in Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni, 7 (1931), 128-35. A footnote referring to this article was accidentally omitted from my discussion when it was printed. Dangel briefly discussed variants of the Pygmy tale among the following North American Indians: Qatlk'ltq, Tlatlasik'oala, Tsimshian, SitkaTlingit, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Crow and Zunii.2 He also summarizes a Central Asiatic version of the tale: 'In einer Geschichte der Karagassen kommt ein Mann am Rand der Welt zu einem Volk, das auf Hasen reitet; es sind also Zwerge; wie auch daraus hervorgeht, dass sie von ihren Feinden, den Zobeln, getotet werden. Der Mann totet einen Zobel und erringt dadurch ihre Freudschaft' (p. 133). On the same page Dangel goes on to assert that the Pygmy tale originated in Central or North Asia 'von wo es einerseits in den Lebensraum der antiken Kultur, anderseits nach Nordwestamerika gewandert ist'. Y. H. Toivonen, in his 'Pygmaen und Zugvogel' Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 24 (1937), reviewed Dangel's North American Indian evidence (pp. 112-15) without offering an alternative to Dangel's theory about the geographical area in which the tale might have originated and its possible avenues of dissemination, but he correctly observes (p. 126) that D's theory is not proven. It would indeed be an attractive hypothesis that posited the spread of the tale from Central Asia to the Far East and from there to the north-west Pacific coast of America, perhaps via Bering Strait. However, one apparently isolated Central Asiatic variant is clearly insufficient to support such a theory, and, as I explained on page 123f of my article, the earliest Chinese variants of the tale situate the action of their respective narratives in the area of the Mediterranean (Roman Syria) which in itself strongly suggests a line ofdiffusion from West to East. Dangel's Central Asiatic variant is therefore probably only one more link in this chain of variants stretching from (Homeric) Greece to China.3