Note 20 — NOTES AND PARALLELS TO MYTHS

A tuft of down—In the Omaha story, “The Corn Woman and the Buffalo Woman” (Dorsey, Contributions to North American Ethnology, VI, 1890), the magician changes himself into a feather and allows himself to be blown about by the wind in order to accomplish his purpose. The wolf does the same in a Thompson River myth.20 The self-transformation of the hero into a tuft of bird’s down, a feather, a leaf, or some other light object, which is then carried by the wind wherever he wishes to go, is very common in Indian myth.