But when we are informed that Dog–chases–etc. had two wives from the Spear Black Duck Clan
and one from the Native Companion Clan, one of them being blind, that he had four children
with such and such names, that he had a broken wrist and was left handed, all because his
ancestor had exactly these same attributes, then we know [though he apparently didn’t] that the
present has influenced the past, that the mythical world has been somewhat adjusted to meet the
exigencies and accidents of the inescapably real present.
There was thus in Yir Yoront ideology a nice balance in which the mythical was adjusted in part
to the real world, the real world in part to the ideal pre–existing mythical world, the adjustments
occurring to maintain a fundamental tenet of native faith that the present must be a mirror of the
past. Thus the stone axe in all its respects, uses, and associations was integrated into the context
of Yir Yoront technology and conduct because a myth, a set of as, had put it there.