Excerpt from “Displaced Gods: Mythology Connections Amongst Forgotten Peoples,” Dr. James W. Heyer; Bristol Press, St. John’s Fields, 1917

Of an interesting parallel between certain vanished African, Inuit, and Asian native groups, is a creation story gathered from the oral tradition of the Moneton tribe in West Virginia; where this creation story breaks from the others, however, is that it seems not a world- and mankind-creation story, but a very geographic- and tribe- specific location. Another way it differs from the others in the “Shining One” arc, is that it makes little mention of Shining One’s people or home (which in other stories, is always mentioned as being ‘above the clouds,’ or ‘beyond the moon’ [Kleiner, 1903]).

Little is known of the Moneton, save for isolated instances of trading “pelts of strange and curious nature” [Alvord, 1911], and having what local legend described as a “curious and hesitant nature — uneasy was their approach, and always did they seem to listen for sounds unheard” [Bidgood and Heyer, 1909].

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