grow white," that is, to become light, to dawn. _Ataensic_ is from the
root _aouen_, water, and means literally, "she who is in the water."[1]
Plainly expressed, the sense of the story is that the orb of light rises
daily out of the boundless waters which are supposed to surround the land,
preceded by the dawn, which fades away as soon as the sun has risen. Each
day the sun disappears in these waters, to rise again from them the
succeeding morning. As the approach of the sun causes the dawn, it was
merely a gross way of stating this to say that the solar god was the
father of his own mother, the husband of his grandmother.

[Footnote 1: I have analyzed these words in a note to another work, and
need not repeat the matter here, the less so, as I am not aware that the
etymology has been questioned. See _Myths of the New World_, 2d Ed., p.
183, note.]

The position of Ioskeha in mythology is also shown by the other name under
which he was, perhaps, even more familiar to most of the Iroquois. This is
_Tharonhiawakon_, which is also a verbal form of the third person, with
the dual sign, and literally means, "He holds (or holds up) the sky with
his two arms."[1] In other words, he is nearly allied to the ancient Aryan
Dyâus, the Sky, the Heavens, especially the Sky in the daytime.

[Footnote 1: A careful analysis of this name is given by Father J.A. Cuoq,
probably the best living authority on the Iroquois, in his _Lexique de la
Langue Iroquoise_, p. 180 (Montreal, 1882). Here also the Iroquois
followed precisely the line of thought of the ancient Egyptians. Shu, in
the religion of Heliopolis, represented the cosmic light and warmth, the
quickening, creative principle. It is he who, as it is stated in the
inscriptions, "holds up the heavens," and he is depicted on the monuments
as a man with uplifted arms who supports the vault of heaven, because it