Glooskap

The ancient myths in which animals were gods were gradually transformed until nothing was left but an anecdote or superstition which had lost much of its meaning, and the stages of this transformation seem to coincide with the development of society. Nomadic peoples, hunting or herding in small groups, have preserved the most ancient forms of mysticism. As people settled down to farming and the group became larger, its life more complex, stories became complex too and began to lose their religious meaning.

This progression can be seen most clearly in the history of the myth of The Great Hare: god to hero or terrestrial giant, hero to unusual specimen of animal or man, unusual specimen to clever fellow who plays tricks on other animals or men.

The Hare that kept men and women in a bag until he had made the world fit for them to live in, remained their benefactor. [Wrote H. R. Schoolcraft in History of the Indian Tribes (1853)] “He taught men how to make aqakwuts (axes), lances and arrow-points, and all implements of bone and stone, and also how to make snares, and traps, and nets, to take animals, and birds, and fishes. . . . He killed the ancient monsters whose bones we now see under the earth.”

. . . Among the North Eastern Algonquins the name for the Great Hare was Glooskap.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
pp. 178-179

Opening image: “The Great Hare” by Nicola Slattery.