It originally meant the Great Light, the Mighty Seer, the Orient, the Dawn--which you please, as all distinctly refer to the one original idea, the Bringer of Light and Sight, of knowledge and life.

In time this meaning became obscured, and the idea of the rabbit, whose name was drawn probably from the same root, as in the northern winters its fur becomes white, was substituted, and so the myth of light degenerated into an animal fable.
I believe that a similar analysis will explain the part which the muskrat plays in the story.

She it is who brings up the speck of mud from the bottom of the primal ocean, and from this speck the world is formed by him whom we now see was the Lord of the Light and the Day, and subsequently she becomes the mother of his sons.

The word for muskrat in Algonkin is _wajashk_, the first letter of which often suffers elision, as in _nin nod-ajashkwe_, I hunt muskrats.

But this is almost the word for mud, wet earth, soil, _ajishki_.