The Myths of the New World
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Title: The Myths of the New World
Author: Daniel G. Brinton
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Language: English
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Transcriber's Note
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maintained in this version of this book. They have been marked with a
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THE MYTHS
OF
THE NEW WORLD
A TREATISE ON THE
SYMBOLISM AND MYTHOLOGY
OF THE
RED RACE OF AMERICA
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, A. M., M. D.
_Memb. Hist. Soc. of Penn.; of Numismat. and
Antiq. Soc. of Philada.; Corresp. Memb.
Amer. Ethnolog. Soc.; author of
"Notes on the Floridian
Peninsula," Etc._
NEW YORK
LEYPOLDT & HOLT
LONDON: TRUeBNER & CO.
1868
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
DANIEL G. BRINTON,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
PREFACE.
I have written this work more for the thoughtful general reader than the
antiquary. It is a study of an obscure portion of the intellectual
history of our species as exemplified in one of its varieties.
What are man's earliest ideas of a soul and a God, and of his own origin
and destiny? Why do we find certain myths, such as of a creation, a
flood, an after-world; certain symbols, as the bird, the serpent, the
cross; certain numbers, as the three, the four, the seven--intimately
associated with these ideas by every race? What are the laws of growth
of natural religions? How do they acquire such an influence, and is this
influence for good or evil? Such are some of the universally interesting
questions which I attempt to solve by an analysis of the simple faiths
of a savage race.
If in so doing I succeed in investing with a more general interest the
fruitful theme of American ethnology, my objects will have been
accomplished.
PHILADELPHIA,
April, 1868.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE RED RACE.
PAGE
Natural religions the unaided attempts of man to find out God,
modified by peculiarities of race and nation.--The peculiarities of
the red race: 1. Its languages unfriendly to abstract ideas. Native
modes of writing by means of pictures, symbols, objects, and phonetic
signs. These various methods compared in their influence on the
intellectual faculties. 2. Its isolation, unique in the history of the
world. 3. Beyond all others, a hunting race.--Principal linguistic
subdivisions: 1. The Eskimos. 2. The Athapascas. 3. The Algonkins and
Iroquois. 4. The Apalachian tribes. 5. The Dakotas. 6. The Aztecs. 7.
The Mayas. 8. The Muyscas. 9. The Quichuas. 10. The Caribs and Tupis.
11. The Araucanians.--General course of migrations.--Age of man in
America.--Unity of type in the red race 1
CHAPTER II.
THE IDEA OF GOD.
An intuition common to the species.--Words expressing it in American
languages derived either from ideas of above in space, or of life
manifested by breath.--Examples.--No conscious monotheism, and but
little idea of immateriality discoverable.--Still less any moral
dualism of deities, the Great Good Spirit and the Great Bad Spirit
being alike terms and notions of foreign importation 43
CHAPTER III.
THE SACRED NUMBER, ITS ORIGIN AND APPLICATIONS.
The number Four sacred in all American religions, and the key to their
symbolism.--Derived from the CARDINAL POINTS.--Appears constantly in
government, arts, rites, and myths.--The Cardinal Points identified
with the Four Winds, who in myths are the four ancestors of the human
race, and the four celestial rivers watering the terrestrial
Paradise.--Associations grouped around each Cardinal Point.--From the
number four was derived the symbolic value of the number _Forty_ and
the _Sign of the Cross_ 66
CHAPTER IV.
THE SYMBOLS OF THE BIRD AND THE SERPENT.
Relations of man to the lower animals.--Two of these, the BIRD and the
SERPENT, chosen as symbols beyond all others.--The Bird throughout
America the symbol of the Clouds and Winds.--Meaning of certain
species.--The symbolic meaning of the Serpent derived from its mode of
locomotion, its poisonous bite, and its power of charming.--Usually
the symbol of the lightning and the Waters.--The Rattlesnake the
symbolic species in America.--The war charm.--The Cross of
Palenque.--The god of riches.--Both symbols devoid of moral
significance 99
CHAPTER V.
THE MYTHS OF WATER, FIRE, AND THE THUNDER-STORM.
Water the oldest element.--Its use in purification.--Holy water.--The
Rite of Baptism.--The Water of Life.--Its symbols.--The Vase.--The
Moon.--The latter the goddess of love and agriculture, but also of
sickness, night, and pain.--Often represented by a dog.--Fire worship
under the form of Sun worship.--The perpetual fire.--The new
fire.--Burning the dead.--A worship of the passions, but no sexual
dualism in myths, nor any phallic worship in America.--Synthesis of
the worship of Fire, Water, and the Winds in the THUNDER-STORM,
personified as Haokah, Tupa, Catequil, Contici, Heno, Tlaloc,
Mixcoatl, and other deities, many of them triune 122
CHAPTER VI.
THE SUPREME GODS OF THE RED RACE.
Analysis of American culture myths.--The Manibozho or Michabo of
the Algonkins shown to be an impersonation of LIGHT, a hero of the
Dawn, and their highest deity.--The myths of Ioskeha of the
Iroquois, Viracocha of the Peruvians, and Quetzalcoatl of the
Toltecs essentially the same as that of Michabo.--Other
examples.--Ante-Columbian prophecies of the advent of a white race
from the east as conquerors.--Rise of later culture myths under
similar forms 159
CHAPTER VII.
THE MYTHS OF THE CREATION, THE DELUGE, THE EPOCHS OF NATURE, AND THE
LAST DAY.
Cosmogonies usually portray the action of the SPIRIT on the
WATERS.--Those of the Muscogees, Athapascas, Quiches, Mixtecs,
Iroquois, Algonkins, and others.--The Flood-Myth an unconscious
attempt to reconcile a creation in time with the eternity of
matter.--Proof of this from American mythology.--Characteristics of
American Flood-Myths.--The person saved usually the first man.--The
number seven.--Their Ararats.--The role of birds.--The confusion of
tongues.--The Aztec, Quiche, Algonkin, Tupi, and earliest Sanscrit
flood-myths.--The belief in Epochs of Nature a further result of this
attempt at reconciliation.--Its forms among Peruvians, Mayas, and
Aztecs.--The expectation of the End of the World a corollary of this
belief.--Views of various nations 193
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ORIGIN OF MAN.
Usually man is the EARTH-BORN, both in language and
myths.--Illustrations from the legends of the Caribs, Apalachians,
Iroquois, Quichuas, Aztecs, and others.--The under-world.--Man the
product of one of the primal creative powers, the Spirit, or the
Water, in the myths of the Athapascas, Eskimos, Moxos, and
others--Never literally derived from an inferior species 222
CHAPTER IX.
THE SOUL AND ITS DESTINY.
Universality of the belief in a soul and a future state shown by the
aboriginal tongues, by expressed opinions, and by sepulchral rites.
The future world never a place of rewards and punishments.--The house
of the Son the heaven of the red man.--The terrestrial paradise and
the under-world.--Cupay.--Xibalba.--Mictlan.--Metempsychosis?--Belief
in a resurrection of the dead almost universal 233
CHAPTER X.
THE NATIVE PRIESTHOOD.
Their titles.--Practitioners of the healing art by supernatural
means.--Their power derived from natural magic and the exercise of the
clairvoyant and mesmeric faculties.--Examples.--Epidemic
hysteria.--Their social position.--Their duties as religious
functionaries.--Terms of admission to the Priesthood.--Inner
organization in various nations.--Their esoteric language and secret
societies 263
CHAPTER XI.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE NATIVE RELIGIONS ON THE MORAL
AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE RACE.
Natural religions hitherto considered of Evil rather than of
Good.--Distinctions to be drawn.--Morality not derived from
religion.--The positive side of natural religions in incarnations of
divinity.--Examples.--Prayers as indices of religious
progress.--Religion and social advancement.--Conclusion 287
THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE RED RACE.
Natural religions the unaided attempts of man to find out God,
modified by peculiarities of race and nation.--The peculiarities of
the red race: 1. Its languages unfriendly to abstract ideas. Native
modes of writing by means of pictures, symbols, objects, and
phonetic signs. These various methods compared in their influence
on the intellectual faculties. 2. Its isolation, unique in the
history of the world. 3. Beyond all others, a hunting
race.--Principal linguistic subdivisions: 1. The Eskimos. 2. The
Athapascas. 3. The Algonkins and Iroquois. 4. The Apalachian
tribes. 5. The Dakotas. 6. The Aztecs. 7. The Mayas. 8. The
Muyscas. 9. The Quichuas. 10. The Caribs and Tupis. 11. The
Araucanians.--General course of migrations.--Age of man in
America.--Unity of type in the red race.
When Paul, at the request of the philosophers of Athens, explained to
them his views on divine things, he asserted, among other startling
novelties, that "God has made of one blood all nations of the earth,
that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and
find him, though he is not far from every one of us."
Here was an orator advocating the unity of the human species, affirming
that the chief end of man is to develop an innate idea of God, and that
all religions, except the one he preached, were examples of more or
less unsuccessful attempts to do so. No wonder the Athenians, who
acknowledged no kinship to barbarians, who looked dubiously at the
doctrine of innate ideas, and were divided in opinion as to whether
their mythology was a shrewd device of legislators to keep the populace
in subjection, a veiled natural philosophy, or the celestial reflex of
their own history, mocked at such a babbler and went their ways. The
generations of philosophers that followed them partook of their doubts
and approved their opinions, quite down to our own times. But now, after
weighing the question maturely, we are compelled to admit that the
Apostle was not so wide of the mark after all--that, in fact, the latest
and best authorities, with no bias in his favor, support his position
and may almost be said to paraphrase his words. For according to a
writer who ranks second to none in the science of ethnology, the
severest and most recent investigations show that "not only do
acknowledged facts permit the assumption of the unity of the human
species, but this opinion is attended with fewer discrepancies, and has
greater inner consistency than the opposite one of specific
diversity."[2-1] And as to the religions of heathendom, the view of
Saint Paul is but expressed with a more poetic turn by a distinguished
living author when he calls them "not fables, but truths, though clothed
in a garb woven by fancy, wherein the web is the notion of God, the
ideal of reason in the soul of man, the thought of the Infinite."[2-2]
Inspiration and science unite therefore to bid us dismiss the effete
prejudice that natural religions either arise as the ancient
philosophies taught, or that they are, as the Dark Ages imagined, subtle
nets of the devil spread to catch human souls. They are rather the
unaided attempts of man to find out God; they are the efforts of the
reason struggling to define the infinite; they are the expressions of
that "yearning after the gods" which the earliest of poets discerned in
the hearts of all men. Studied in this sense they are rich in teachings.
Would we estimate the intellectual and aesthetic culture of a people,
would we generalize the laws of progress, would we appreciate the
sublimity of Christianity, and read the seals of its authenticity: the
natural conceptions of divinity reveal them. No mythologies are so
crude, therefore, none so barbarous, but deserve the attention of the
philosophic mind, for they are never the empty fictions of an idle
fancy, but rather the utterances, however inarticulate, of an immortal
and ubiquitous intuition.
These considerations embolden me to approach with some confidence even
the aboriginal religions of America, so often stigmatized as incoherent
fetichisms, so barren, it has been said, in grand or beautiful
creations. The task bristles with difficulties. Carelessness,
prepossessions, and ignorance have disfigured them with false colors and
foreign additions without number. The first maxim, therefore, must be to
sift and scrutinize authorities, and to reject whatever betrays the
plastic hand of the European. For the religions developed by the red
race, not those mixed creeds learned from foreign invaders, are to be
the subjects of our study. Then will remain the formidable undertaking
of reducing the authentic materials thus obtained to system and order,
and this not by any preconceived theory of what they ought to conform
to, but learning from them the very laws of religious growth they
illustrate. The historian traces the birth of arts, science, and
government to man's dependence on nature and his fellows for the means
of self-preservation. Not that man receives these endowments from
without, but that the stern step-mother, Nature, forces him by threats
and stripes to develop his own inherent faculties. So with religion: The
idea of God does not, and cannot, proceed from the external world, but,
nevertheless, it finds its _historical_ origin also in the desperate
struggle for life, in the satisfaction of the animal wants and passions,
in those vulgar aims and motives which possessed the mind of the
primitive man to the exclusion of everything else.
There is an ever present embarrassment in such inquiries. In dealing
with these matters beyond the cognizance of the senses, the mind is
forced to express its meaning in terms transferred from sensuous
perceptions, or under symbols borrowed from the material world. These
transfers must be understood, these symbols explained, before the real
meaning of a myth can be reached. He who fails to guess the riddle of
the sphynx, need not hope to gain admittance to the shrine. With
delicate ear the faint whispers of thought must be apprehended which
prompt the intellect when it names the immaterial from the material;
when it chooses from the infinity of visible forms those meet to shadow
forth Divinity.
Two lights will guide us on this venturesome path. Mindful of the
watchword of inductive science, to proceed from the known to the
unknown, the inquiry will be put whether the aboriginal languages of
America employ the same tropes to express such ideas as deity, spirit,
and soul, as our own and kindred tongues. If the answer prove
affirmative, then not only have we gained a firm foothold whence to
survey the whole edifice of their mythology; but from an unexpected
quarter arises evidence of the unity of our species far weightier than
any mere anatomy can furnish, evidence from the living soul, not from
the dead body. True that the science of American linguistics is still in
its infancy, and that a proper handling of the materials it even now
offers involves a more critical acquaintance with its innumerable
dialects than I possess; but though the gleaning be sparse, it is enough
that I break the ground. Secondly, religious rites are living
commentaries on religious beliefs. At first they are rude
representations of the supposed doings of the gods. The Indian
rain-maker mounts to the roof of his hut, and rattling vigorously a dry
gourd containing pebbles, to represent the thunder, scatters water
through a reed on the ground beneath, as he imagines up above in the
clouds do the spirits of the storm. Every spring in ancient Delphi was
repeated in scenic ceremony the combat of Apollo and the Dragon, the
victory of the lord of bright summer over the demon of chilling winter.
Thus do forms and ceremonies reveal the meaning of mythology, and the
origin of its fables.
Let it not be objected that this proposed method of analysis assumes
that religions begin and develop under the operation of inflexible laws.
The soul is shackled by no fatalism. Formative influences there are,
deep seated, far reaching, escaped by few, but like those which of yore
astrologers imputed to the stars, they potently incline, they do not
coerce. Language, pursuits, habits, geographical position, and those
subtle mental traits which make up the characteristics of races and
nations, all tend to deflect from a given standard the religious life of
the individual and the mass. It is essential to give these due weight,
and a necessary preface therefore to an analysis of the myths of the red
race is an enumeration of its peculiarities, and of its chief families
as they were located when first known to the historian.
Of all such modifying circumstances none has greater importance than the
means of expressing and transmitting intellectual action. The spoken and
the written language of a nation reveal to us its prevailing, and to a
certain degree its unavoidable mode of thought. Here the red race offers
a striking phenomenon. There is no other trait that binds together its
scattered clans, and brands them as members of one great family, so
unmistakably as this of language. From the Frozen Ocean to the Land of
Fire, without a single exception, the native dialects, though varying
infinitely in words, are marked by a peculiarity in construction which
is found nowhere else on the globe,[6-1] and which is so foreign to the
genius of _our_ tongue that it is no easy matter to explain it. It is
called by philologists the _polysynthetic_ construction. What it is will
best appear by comparison. Every grammatical sentence conveys one
leading idea with its modifications and relations. Now a Chinese would
express these latter by unconnected syllables, the precise bearing of
which could only be guessed by their position; a Greek or a German would
use independent words, indicating their relations by terminations
meaningless in themselves; an Englishman gains the same end chiefly by
the use of particles and by position. Very different from all these is
the spirit of a polysynthetic language. It seeks to unite in the most
intimate manner all relations and modifications with the leading idea,
to merge one in the other by altering the forms of the words themselves
and welding them together, to express the whole in one word, and to
banish any conception except as it arises in relation to others. Thus in
many American tongues there is, in fact, no word for father, mother,
brother, but only for my, your, his father, etc. This has advantages and
defects. It offers marvellous facilities for defining the perceptions of
the senses with the utmost accuracy, but regarding everything in the
concrete, it is unfriendly to the nobler labors of the mind, to
abstraction and generalization. In the numberless changes of these
languages, their bewildering flexibility, their variable forms, and
their rapid deterioration, they seem to betray a lack of individuality,
and to resemble the vague and tumultuous history of the tribes who
employ them. They exhibit an almost incredible laxity. It is nothing
uncommon for the two sexes to use different names for the same object,
and for nobles and vulgar, priests and people, the old and the young,
nay, even the married and single, to observe what seem to the European
ear quite different modes of expression. Families and whole villages
suddenly drop words and manufacture others in their places out of mere
caprice or superstition, and a few years' separation suffices to produce
a marked dialectic difference. In their copious forms and facility of
reproduction they remind one of those anomalous animals, in whom, when a
limb is lopped, it rapidly grows again, or even if cut in pieces each
part will enter on a separate life quite unconcerned about his fellows.
But as the naturalist is far from regarding this superabundant vitality
as a characteristic of a higher type, so the philologist justly assigns
these tongues a low position in the linguistic scale. Fidelity to form,
here as everywhere, is the test of excellence. At the outset, we divine
there can be nothing very subtle in the mythologies of nations with such
languages. Much there must be that will be obscure, much that is vague,
an exhausting variety in repetition, and a strong tendency to lose the
idea in the symbol.
What definiteness of outline might be preserved must depend on the care
with which the old stories of the gods were passed from one person and
one generation to another. The fundamental myths of a race have a
surprising tenacity of life. How many centuries had elapsed between the
period the Germanic hordes left their ancient homes in Central Asia, and
when Tacitus listened to their wild songs on the banks of the Rhine? Yet
we know that through those unnumbered ages of barbarism and aimless
roving, these songs, "their only sort of history or annals," says the
historian, had preserved intact the story of Mannus, the Sanscrit Manu,
and his three sons, and of the great god Tuisco, the Indian Dyu.[9-1] So
much the more do all means invented by the red race to record and
transmit thought merit our careful attention. Few and feeble they seem
to us, mainly shifts to aid the memory. Of some such, perhaps, not a
single tribe was destitute. The tattoo marks on the warrior's breast,
his string of gristly scalps, the bear's claws around his neck, were not
only trophies of his prowess, but records of his exploits, and to the
contemplative mind contain the rudiments of the beneficent art of
letters. Did he draw in rude outline on his skin tent figures of men
transfixed with arrows as many as he had slain enemies, his education
was rapidly advancing. He had mastered the elements of _picture
writing_, beyond which hardly the wisest of his race progressed. Figures
of the natural objects connected by symbols having fixed meanings make
up the whole of this art. The relative frequency of the latter marks its
advancement from a merely figurative to an ideographic notation. On what
principle of mental association a given sign was adopted to express a
certain idea, why, for instance, on the Chipeway scrolls a circle means
_spirits_, and a horned snake _life_, it is often hard to guess. The
difficulty grows when we find that to the initiated the same sign calls
up quite different ideas, as the subject of the writer varies from war
to love, or from the chase to religion. The connection is generally
beyond the power of divination, and the key to ideographic writing once
lost can never be recovered.
The number of such arbitrary characters in the Chipeway notation is said
to be over two hundred, but if the distinction between a figure and a
symbol were rigidly applied, it would be much reduced. This kind of
writing, if it deserves the name, was common throughout the continent,
and many specimens of it, scratched on the plane surfaces of stones,
have been preserved to the present day. Such is the once celebrated
inscription on Dighton Rock, Massachusetts, long supposed to be a record
of the Northmen of Vinland; such those that mark the faces of the cliffs
which overhang the waters of the Orinoco, and those that in Oregon,
Peru, and La Plata have been the subject of much curious speculation.
They are alike the mute and meaningless epitaphs of vanished
generations.
I would it could be said that in favorable contrast to our ignorance of
these inscriptions is our comprehension of the highly wrought
pictography of the Aztecs. No nation ever reduced it more to a system.
It was in constant use in the daily transactions of life. They
manufactured for writing purposes a thick, coarse paper from the leaves
of the agave plant by a process of maceration and pressure. An Aztec
book closely resembles one of our quarto volumes. It is made of a
single sheet, twelve to fifteen inches wide, and often sixty or seventy
feet long, and is not rolled, but folded either in squares or zigzags in
such a manner that on opening it there are two pages exposed to view.
Thin wooden boards are fastened to each of the outer leaves, so that the
whole presents as neat an appearance, remarks Peter Martyr, as if it had
come from the shop of a skilful bookbinder. They also covered buildings,
tapestries, and scrolls of parchment with these devices, and for
trifling transactions were familiar with the use of _slates_ of soft
stone from which the figures could readily be erased with water.[11-1]
What is still more astonishing, there is reason to believe, in some
instances, their figures were not painted, but actually _printed_ with
movable blocks of wood on which the symbols were carved in relief,
though this was probably confined to those intended for ornament only.
In these records we discern something higher than a mere symbolic
notation. They contain the germ of a phonetic alphabet, and represent
sounds of spoken language. The symbol is often not connected with the
_idea_ but with the _word_. The mode in which this is done corresponds
precisely to that of the rebus. It is a simple method, readily
suggesting itself. In the middle ages it was much in vogue in Europe for
the same purpose for which it was chiefly employed in Mexico at the same
time--the writing of proper names. For example, the English family
Bolton was known in heraldry by a _tun_ transfixed by a _bolt_.
Precisely so the Mexican emperor Ixcoatl is mentioned in the Aztec
manuscripts under the figure of a serpent _coatl_, pierced by obsidian
knives _ixtli_, and Moquauhzoma by a mouse-trap _montli_, an eagle
_quauhtli_, a lancet _zo_, and a hand _maitl_. As a syllable could be
expressed by any object whose name commenced with it, as few words can
be given the form of a rebus without some change, as the figures
sometimes represent their full phonetic value, sometimes only that of
their initial sound, and as universally the attention of the artist was
directed less to the sound than to the idea, the didactic painting of
the Mexicans, whatever it might have been to them, is a sealed book to
us, and must remain so in great part. Moreover, it is entirely
undetermined whether it should be read from the first to the last page,
or _vice versa_, whether from right to left or from left to right, from
bottom to top or from top to bottom, around the edges of the page toward
the centre, or each line in the opposite direction from the preceding
one. There are good authorities for all these methods,[12-1] and they
may all be correct, for there is no evidence that any fixed rule had
been laid down in this respect.
Immense masses of such documents were stored in the imperial archives of
ancient Mexico. Torquemada asserts that five cities alone yielded to the
Spanish governor on one requisition no less than sixteen thousand
volumes or scrolls! Every leaf was destroyed. Indeed, so thorough and
wholesale was the destruction of these memorials now so precious in our
eyes that hardly enough remain to whet the wits of antiquaries. In the
libraries of Paris, Dresden, Pesth, and the Vatican are, however, a
sufficient number to make us despair of deciphering them had we for
comparison all which the Spaniards destroyed.
Beyond all others the Mayas, resident on the peninsula of Yucatan, would
seem to have approached nearest a true phonetic system. They had a
regular and well understood alphabet of twenty seven elementary sounds,
the letters of which are totally different from those of any other
nation, and evidently original with themselves. But besides these they
used a large number of purely conventional symbols, and moreover were
accustomed constantly to employ the ancient pictographic method in
addition as a sort of commentary on the sound represented. What is more
curious, if the obscure explanation of an ancient writer can be depended
upon, they not only aimed to employ an alphabet after the manner of
ours, but to express the sound absolutely like our phonographic signs
do.[13-1] With the aid of this alphabet, which has fortunately been
preserved, we are enabled to spell out a few words on the Yucatecan
manuscripts and facades, but thus far with no positive results. The loss
of the ancient pronunciation is especially in the way of such studies.
In South America, also, there is said to have been a nation who
cultivated the art of picture writing, the Panos, on the river Ucayale.
A missionary, Narcisso Gilbar by name, once penetrated, with great toil,
to one of their villages. As he approached he beheld a venerable man
seated under the shade of a palm tree, with a great book open before him
from which he was reading to an attentive circle of auditors the wars
and wanderings of their forefathers. With difficulty the priest got a
sight of the precious volume, and found it covered with figures and
signs in marvellous symmetry and order.[14-1] No wonder such a romantic
scene left a deep impression on his memory.
The Peruvians adopted a totally different and unique system of records,
that by means of the _quipu_. This was a base cord, the thickness of the
finger, of any required length, to which were attached numerous small
strings of different colors, lengths, and textures, variously knotted
and twisted one with another. Each of these peculiarities represented a
certain number, a quality, quantity, or other idea, but _what_, not the
most fluent _quipu_ reader could tell unless he was acquainted with the
general topic treated of. Therefore, whenever news was sent in this
manner a person accompanied the bearer to serve as verbal commentator,
and to prevent confusion the _quipus_ relating to the various
departments of knowledge were placed in separate storehouses, one for
war, another for taxes, a third for history, and so forth. On what
principle or mnemotechnics the ideas were connected with the knots and
colors we are totally in the dark; it has even been doubted whether they
had any application beyond the art of numeration.[14-2] Each combination
had, however, a fixed ideographic value in a certain branch of
knowledge, and thus the _quipu_ differed essentially from the Catholic
rosary, the Jewish phylactery, or the knotted strings of the natives of
North America and Siberia, to all of which it has at times been
compared.
The _wampum_ used by the tribes of the north Atlantic coast was, in many
respects, analogous to the quipu. In early times it was composed chiefly
of bits of wood of equal size, but different colors. These were hung on
strings which were woven into belts and bands, the hues, shapes, sizes,
and combinations of the strings hinting their general significance. Thus
the lighter shades were invariable harbingers of peaceful or pleasant
tidings, while the darker portended war and danger. The substitution of
beads or shells in place of wood, and the custom of embroidering figures
in the belts were, probably, introduced by European influence.
Besides these, various simpler mnemonic aids were employed, such as
parcels of reeds of different lengths, notched sticks, knots in cords,
strings of pebbles or fruit-stones, circular pieces of wood or slabs
pierced with different figures which the English liken to "cony holes,"
and at a victory, a treaty, or the founding of a village, sometimes a
pillar or heap of stones was erected equalling in number the persons
present at the occasion, or the number of the fallen.
This exhausts the list. All other methods of writing, the hieroglyphs of
the Micmacs of Acadia, the syllabic alphabet of the Cherokees, the
pretended traces of Greek, Hebrew, and Celtiberic letters which have
from time to time been brought to the notice of the public, have been
without exception the products of foreign civilization or simply frauds.
Not a single coin, inscription, or memorial of any kind whatever, has
been found on the American continent showing the existence, either
generally or locally, of any other means of writing than those
specified.
Poor as these substitutes for a developed phonetic system seem to us,
they were of great value to the uncultivated man. In his legends their
introduction is usually ascribed to some heaven-sent benefactor, the
antique characters were jealously adhered to, and the pictured scroll of
bark, the quipu ball, the belt of wampum, were treasured with provident
care, and their import minutely expounded to the most intelligent of the
rising generation. In all communities beyond the stage of barbarism a
class of persons was set apart for this duty and no other. Thus, for
example, in ancient Peru, one college of priests styled _amauta_,
learned, had exclusive charge over the quipus containing the
mythological and historical traditions; a second, the _haravecs_,
singers, devoted themselves to those referring to the national ballads
and dramas; while a third occupied their time solely with those
pertaining to civil affairs. Such custodians preserved and prepared the
archives, learned by heart with their aid what their fathers knew, and
in some countries, as, for instance, among the Panos mentioned above,
and the Quiches of Guatemala,[16-1] repeated portions of them at times
to the assembled populace. It has even been averred by one of their
converted chiefs, long a missionary to his fellows, that the Chipeways
of Lake Superior have a college composed of ten "of the wisest and most
venerable of their nation," who have in charge the pictured records
containing the ancient history of their tribe. These are kept in an
underground chamber, and are disinterred every fifteen years by the
assembled guardians, that they may be repaired, and their contents
explained to new members of the society.[17-1]
In spite of these precautions, the end seems to have been very
imperfectly attained. The most distinguished characters, the weightiest
events in national history faded into oblivion after a few generations.
The time and circumstances of the formation of the league of the Five
Nations, the dispersion of the mound builders of the Ohio valley in the
fifteenth century, the chronicles of Peru or Mexico beyond a century or
two anterior to the conquest, are preserved in such a vague and
contradictory manner that they have slight value as history. Their
mythology fared somewhat better, for not only was it kept fresh in the
memory by frequent repetition; but being itself founded in nature, it
was constantly nourished by the truths which gave it birth.
Nevertheless, we may profit by the warning to remember that their myths
are myths only, and not the reflections of history or heroes.
Rising from these details to a general comparison of the symbolic and
phonetic systems in their reactions on the mind, the most obvious are
their contrasted effects on the faculty of memory. Letters represent
elementary sounds, which are few in any language, while symbols stand
for ideas, and they are numerically infinite. The transmission of
knowledge by means of the latter is consequently attended with most
disproportionate labor. It is almost as if we could quote nothing from
an author unless we could recollect his exact words. We have a right to
look for excellent memories where such a mode is in vogue, and in the
present instance we are not disappointed. "These savages," exclaims La
Hontan, "have the happiest memories in the world!" It was etiquette at
their councils for each speaker to repeat verbatim all his predecessors
had said, and the whites were often astonished and confused at the
verbal fidelity with which the natives recalled the transactions of long
past treaties. Their songs were inexhaustible. An instance is on record
where an Indian sang two hundred on various subjects.[18-1] Such a fact
reminds us of a beautiful expression of the elder Humboldt: "Man," he
says, "regarded as an animal, belongs to one of the singing species; but
his notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated
at the public schools of ancient Mexico--for that realm, so far from
neglecting the cause of popular education, established houses for
gratuitous instruction, and to a certain extent made the attendance upon
them obligatory--learned by rote long orations, poems, and prayers with
a facility astonishing to the conquerors, and surpassing anything they
were accustomed to see in the universities of Old Spain. A phonetic
system actually weakens the retentive powers of the mind by offering a
more facile plan for preserving thought. "_Ce que je mets sur papier, je
remets de ma memoire_" is an expression of old Montaigne which he could
never have used had he employed ideographic characters.
Memory, however, is of far less importance than a free activity of
thought, untrammelled by forms or precedents, and ever alert to novel
combinations of ideas. Give a race this and it will guide it to
civilization as surely as the needle directs the ship to its haven. It
is here that ideographic writing reveals its fatal inferiority. It is
forever specifying, materializing, dealing in minutiae. In the Egyptian
symbolic alphabet there is a figure for a virgin, another for a married
woman, for a widow without offspring, for a widow with one child, two
children, and I know not in how many other circumstances, but for
_woman_ there is no sign. It must be so in the nature of things, for the
symbol represents the object as it appears or is fancied to appear, and
not as it is _thought_. Furthermore, the constant learning by heart
infallibly leads to slavish repetition and mental servility.
A symbol when understood is independent of language, and is as
universally current as an Arabic numeral. But this divorce of spoken and
written language is of questionable advantage. It at once destroys all
permanent improvement in a tongue through elegance of style, sonorous
periods, or delicacy of expression, and the life of the language itself
is weakened when its forms are left to fluctuate uncontrolled. Written
poetry, grammar, rhetoric, all are impossible to the student who draws
his knowledge from such a source.
Finally, it has been justly observed by the younger Humboldt that the
painful fidelity to the antique figures transmitted from barbarous to
polished generations is injurious to the aesthetic sense, and dulls the
mind to the beautiful in art and nature.
The transmission of thought by figures and symbols would, on the whole,
therefore, foster those narrow and material tendencies which the genius
of polysynthetic languages would seem calculated to produce. Its one
redeeming trait of strengthening the memory will serve to explain the
strange tenacity with which certain myths have been preserved through
widely dispersed families, as we shall hereafter see.
Besides this of language there are two traits in the history of the red
man without parallel in that of any other variety of our species which
has achieved any notable progress in civilization.
The one is his _isolation_. Cut off time out of mind from the rest of
the world, he never underwent those crossings of blood and culture which
so modified and on the whole promoted the growth of the old world
nationalities. In his own way he worked out his own destiny, and what he
won was his with a more than ordinary right of ownership. For all those
old dreams of the advent of the Ten Lost Tribes, of Buddhist priests, of
Welsh princes, or of Phenician merchants on American soil, and there
exerting a permanent influence, have been consigned to the dustbin by
every unbiased student, and when we see such men as Mr. Schoolcraft and
the Abbe E. C. Brasseur essaying to resuscitate them, we regretfully
look upon it in the light of a literary anachronism.
The second trait is the entire absence of the herdsman's life with its
softening associations. Throughout the continent there is not a single
authentic instance of a pastoral tribe, not one of an animal raised for
its milk,[21-1] nor for the transportation of persons, and very few for
their flesh. It was essentially a hunting race. The most civilized
nations looked to the chase for their chief supply of meat, and the
courts of Cuzco and Mexico enacted stringent game and forest laws, and
at certain periods the whole population turned out for a general crusade
against the denizens of the forest. In the most densely settled
districts the conquerors found vast stretches of primitive woods.
If we consider the life of a hunter, pitting his skill and strength
against the marvellous instincts and quick perceptions of the brute,
training his senses to preternatural acuteness, but blunting his more
tender feelings, his sole aim to shed blood and take life, dependent on
luck for his food, exposed to deprivations, storms, and long
wanderings, his chief diet flesh, we may more readily comprehend that
conspicuous disregard of human suffering, those sanguinary rites, that
vindictive spirit, that inappeasable restlessness, which we so often
find in the chronicles of ancient America. The law with reason objects
to accepting a butcher as a juror on a trial for life; here is a whole
race of butchers.
The one mollifying element was agriculture. On the altar of Mixcoatl,
god of hunting, the Aztec priest tore the heart from the human victim
and smeared with the spouting blood the snake that coiled its lengths
around the idol; flowers and fruits, yellow ears of maize and clusters
of rich bananas decked the shrine of Centeotl, beneficent patroness of
agriculture, and bloodless offerings alone were her appropriate dues.
This shows how clear, even to the native mind, was the contrast between
these two modes of subsistence. By substituting a sedentary for a
wandering life, by supplying a fixed dependence for an uncertain
contingency, and by admonishing man that in preservation, not in
destruction, lies his most remunerative sphere of activity, we can
hardly estimate too highly the wide distribution of the zea mays. This
was their only cereal, and it was found in cultivation from the southern
extremity of Chili to the fiftieth parallel of north latitude, beyond
which limits the low temperature renders it an uncertain crop. In their
legends it is represented as the gift of the Great Spirit (Chipeways),
brought from the terrestrial Paradise by the sacred animals (Quiches),
and symbolically the mother of the race (Nahuas), and the material from
which was moulded the first of men (Quiches).
As the races, so the great families of man who speak dialects of the
same tongue are, in a sense, individuals, bearing each its own
physiognomy. When the whites first heard the uncouth gutturals of the
Indians, they frequently proclaimed that hundreds of radically diverse
languages, invented, it was piously suggested, by the Devil for the
annoyance of missionaries, prevailed over the continent. Earnest
students of such matters--Vater, Duponceau, Gallatin, and
Buschmann--have, however, demonstrated that nine-tenths of the area of
America, at its discovery, were occupied by tribes using dialects
traceable to ten or a dozen primitive stems. The names of these, their
geographical position in the sixteenth century, and, so far as it is
safe to do so, their individual character, I shall briefly mention.
Fringing the shores of the Northern Ocean from Mount St. Elias on the
west to the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the east, rarely seen a hundred
miles from the coast, were the Eskimos.[23-1] They are the connecting
link between the races of the Old and New Worlds, in physical appearance
and mental traits more allied to the former, but in language betraying
their near kinship to the latter. An amphibious race, born fishermen, in
their buoyant skin kayaks they brave fearlessly the tempests, make long
voyages, and merit the sobriquet bestowed upon them by Von Baer, "the
Phenicians of the north." Contrary to what one might suppose, they are,
amid their snows, a contented, light-hearted people, knowing no longing
for a sunnier clime, given to song, music, and merry tales. They are
cunning handicraftsmen to a degree, but withal wholly ingulfed in a
sensuous existence. The desperate struggle for life engrosses them, and
their mythology is barren.
South of them, extending in a broad band across the continent from
Hudson's Bay to the Pacific, and almost to the Great Lakes below, is the
Athapascan stock. Its affiliated tribes rove far north to the mouth of
the Mackenzie River, and wandering still more widely in an opposite
direction along both declivities of the Rocky Mountains, people portions
of the coast of Oregon south of the mouth of the Columbia, and spreading
over the plains of New Mexico under the names of Apaches, Navajos, and
Lipans, almost reach the tropics at the delta of the Rio Grande del
Norte, and on the shores of the Gulf of California. No wonder they
deserted their fatherland and forgot it altogether, for it is a very
_terra damnata_, whose wretched inhabitants are cut off alike from the
harvest of the sea and the harvest of the soil. The profitable culture of
maize does not extend beyond the fiftieth parallel of latitude, and less
than seven degrees farther north the mean annual temperature everywhere
east of the mountains sinks below the freezing point.[25-1] Agriculture
is impossible, and the only chance for life lies in the uncertain
fortunes of the chase and the penurious gifts of an arctic flora. The
denizens of these wilds are abject, slovenly, hopelessly savage, "at the
bottom of the scale of humanity in North America," says Dr. Richardson,
and their relatives who have wandered to the more genial climes of the
south are as savage as they, as perversely hostile to a sedentary life,
as gross and narrow in their moral notions. This wide-spread stock,
scattered over forty-five degrees of latitude, covering thousands of
square leagues, reaching from the Arctic Ocean to the confines of the
empire of the Montezumas, presents in all its subdivisions the same
mental physiognomy and linguistic peculiarities.[25-2]
Best known to us of all the Indians are the Algonkins and Iroquois, who,
at the time of the discovery, were the sole possessors of the region now
embraced by Canada and the eastern United States north of the
thirty-fifth parallel. The latter, under the names of the Five Nations,
Hurons, Tuscaroras, Susquehannocks, Nottoways and others, occupied much
of the soil from the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario to the Roanoke, and
perhaps the Cherokees, whose homes were in the secluded vales of East
Tennessee, were one of their early offshoots.[25-3] They were a race of
warriors, courageous, cruel, unimaginative, but of rare political
sagacity. They are more like ancient Romans than Indians, and are leading
figures in the colonial wars.
The Algonkins surrounded them on every side, occupying the rest of the
region mentioned and running westward to the base of the Rocky
Mountains, where one of their famous bands, the Blackfeet, still hunts
over the valley of the Saskatchewan. They were more genial than the
Iroquois, of milder manners and more vivid fancy, and were regarded by
these with a curious mixture of respect and contempt. Some writer has
connected this difference with their preference for the open prairie
country in contrast to the endless and sombre forests where were the
homes of the Iroquois. Their history abounds in great men, whose
ambitious plans were foiled by the levity of their allies and their want
of persistence. They it was who under King Philip fought the Puritan
fathers; who at the instigation of Pontiac doomed to death every white
trespasser on their soil; who led by Tecumseh and Black Hawk gathered
the clans of the forest and mountain for the last pitched battle of the
races in the Mississippi valley. To them belonged the mild mannered
Lenni Lenape, who little foreboded the hand of iron that grasped their
own so softly under the elm tree of Shackamaxon, to them the restless
Shawnee, the gypsy of the wilderness, the Chipeways of Lake Superior,
and also to them the Indian girl Pocahontas, who in the legend averted
from the head of the white man the blow which, rebounding, swept away
her father and all his tribe.[27-1]
Between their southernmost outposts and the Gulf of Mexico were a number
of clans, mostly speaking the Muscogee tongue, Creeks, Choctaws,
Chikasaws, and others, in later times summed up as Apalachian Indians,
but by early writers sometimes referred to as "The Empire of the
Natchez." For tradition says that long ago this small tribe, whose home
was in the Big Black country, was at the head of a loose confederation
embracing most of the nations from the Atlantic coast quite into Texas;
and adds that the expedition of De Soto severed its lax bonds and shook
it irremediably into fragments. Whether this is worth our credence or
not, the comparative civilization of the Natchez, and the analogy their
language bears to that of the Mayas of Yucatan, the builders of those
ruined cities which Stephens and Catherwood have made so familiar to the
world, attach to them a peculiar interest.[27-2]
North of the Arkansas River on the right bank of the Mississippi, quite
to its source, stretching over to Lake Michigan at Green Bay, and up the
valley of the Missouri west to the mountains, resided the Dakotas, an
erratic folk, averse to agriculture, but daring hunters and bold
warriors, tall and strong of body.[28-1] Their religious notions have
been carefully studied, and as they are remarkably primitive and
transparent, they will often be referred to. The Sioux and the
Winnebagoes are well-known branches of this family.
We have seen that Dr. Richardson assigned to a portion of the Athapascas
the lowest place among North American tribes, but there are some in New
Mexico who might contest the sad distinction, the Root Diggers,
Comanches and others, members of the Snake or Shoshonee family,
scattered extensively northwest of Mexico. It has been said of a part of
these that they are "nearer the brutes than probably any other portion
of the human race on the face of the globe."[28-2] Their habits in some
respects are more brutish than those of any brute, for there is no
limit to man's moral descent or ascent, and the observer might well be
excused for doubting whether such a stock ever had a history in the
past, or the possibility of one in the future. Yet these debased
creatures speak a related dialect, and are beyond a doubt largely of the
same blood as the famous Aztec race, who founded the empire of Anahuac,
and raised architectural monuments rivalling the most famous structures
of the ancient world. This great family, whose language has been traced
from Nicaragua to Vancouver's Island, and whose bold intellects colored
all the civilization of the northern continent, was composed in that
division of it found in New Spain chiefly of two bands, the Toltecs,
whose traditions point to the mountain ranges of Guatemala as their
ancient seat, and the Nahuas, who claim to have come at a later period
from the northwest coast, and together settled in and near the valley of
Mexico.[29-1] Outlying colonies on the shore of Lake Nicaragua and in
the mountains of Vera Paz rose to a civilization that rivalled that of
the Montezumas, while others remained in utter barbarism in the far
north.
The Aztecs not only conquered a Maya colony, and founded the empire of
the Quiches in Central America, a complete body of whose mythology has
been brought to light in late years, but seem to have made a marked
imprint on the Mayas themselves. These possessed, as has already been
said, the peninsula of Yucatan. There is some reason to suppose they
came thither originally from the Greater Antilles, and none to doubt but
that the Huastecas who lived on the river Panuco and the Natchez of
Louisiana were offshoots from them. Their language is radically distinct
from that of the Aztecs, but their calendar and a portion of their
mythology are common property. They seem an ancient race of mild manners
and considerable polish. No American nation offers a more promising
field for study. Their stone temples still bear testimony to their
uncommon skill in the arts. A trustworthy tradition dates the close of
the golden age of Yucatan a century anterior to its discovery by
Europeans. Previously it had been one kingdom, under one ruler, and
prolonged peace had fostered the growth of the fine arts; but when
their capital Mayapan fell, internal dissensions ruined most of their
cities.
No connection whatever has been shown between the civilization of North
and South America. In the latter continent it was confined to two
totally foreign tribes, the Muyscas, whose empire, called that of the
Zacs, was in the neighborhood of Bogota, and the Peruvians, who in their
two related divisions of Quichuas and Aymaras extended their language
and race along the highlands of the Cordilleras from the equator to the
thirtieth degree of south latitude. Lake Titicaca seems to have been the
cradle of their civilization, offering another example how inland seas
and well-watered plains favor the change from a hunting to an
agricultural life. These four nations, the Aztecs, the Mayas, the
Muyscas and the Peruvians, developed spontaneously and independently
under the laws of human progress what civilization was found among the
red race. They owed nothing to Asiatic or European teachers. The Incas
it was long supposed spoke a language of their own, and this has been
thought evidence of foreign extraction; but Wilhelm von Humboldt has
shown conclusively that it was but a dialect of the common tongue of
their country.[31-1]
When Columbus first touched the island of Cuba, he was regaled with
horrible stories of one-eyed monsters who dwelt on the other islands,
but plundered indiscriminately on every hand. These turned out to be the
notorious Caribs, whose other name, _Cannibals_, has descended as a
common noun to our language, expressive of one of their inhuman
practices. They had at that time seized many of the Antilles, and had
gained a foothold on the coast of Honduras and Darien, but pointed for
their home to the mainland of South America. This they possessed along
the whole northern shore, inland at least as far as the south bank of
the Amazon, and west nearly to the Cordilleras. It is still an open
question whether the Tupis and Guaranis who inhabit the vast region
between the Amazon and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres are affined to them.
The traveller D'Orbigny zealously maintains the affirmative, and there
is certainly some analogy of language, but withal an inexplicable
contrast of character. The latter were, and are, in the main, a
peaceable, inoffensive, apathetic set, dull and unambitious, while the
Caribs won a terrible renown as bold warriors, daring navigators,
skilful in handicrafts; and their poisoned arrows, cruel and disgusting
habits, and enterprise, rendered them a terror and a by-word for
generations.[32-1]
Our information of the natives of the Pampas, Patagonia, and the Land of
Fire, is too vague to permit their positive identification with the
Araucanians of Chili; but there is much to render the view plausible.
Certain physical peculiarities, a common unconquerable love of freedom,
and a delight in war, bring them together, and at the same time place
them both in strong contrast to their northern neighbors.[33-1]
There are many tribes whose affinities remain to be decided, especially
on the Pacific coast. The lack of inland water communication, the
difficult nature of the soil, and perhaps the greater antiquity of the
population there, seem to have isolated and split up beyond recognition
the indigenous families on that shore of the continent; while the great
river systems and broad plains of the Atlantic slope facilitated
migration and intercommunication, and thus preserved national
distinctions over thousands of square leagues.
These natural features of the continent, compared with the actual
distribution of languages, offer our only guides in forming an opinion
as to the migrations of these various families in ancient times. Their
traditions, take even the most cultivated, are confused, contradictory,
and in great part manifestly fabulous. To construct from them by means
of daring combinations and forced interpretations a connected account of
the race during the centuries preceding Columbus were with the aid of a
vivid fancy an easy matter, but would be quite unworthy the name of
history. The most that can be said with certainty is that the general
course of migrations in both Americas was from the high latitudes toward
the tropics, and from the great western chain of mountains toward the
east. No reasonable doubt exists but that the Athapascas, Algonkins,
Iroquois, Apalachians, and Aztecs all migrated from the north and west
to the regions they occupied. In South America, curiously enough, the
direction is reversed. If the Caribs belong to the Tupi-Guaranay stem,
and if the Quichuas belong to the Aymaras, as there is strong
likelihood,[34-1] then nine-tenths of the population of that vast
continent wandered forth from the steppes and valleys at the head waters
of the Rio de la Plata toward the Gulf of Mexico, where they came in
collision with that other wave of migration surging down from high
northern latitudes. For the banks of the river Paraguay and the steppes
of the Bolivian Cordilleras are unquestionably the earliest traditional
homes of both Tupis and Aymaras.
These movements took place not in large bodies under the stimulus of a
settled purpose, but step by step, family by family, as the older
hunting grounds became too thickly peopled. This fact hints unmistakably
at the gray antiquity of the race. It were idle even to guess how great
this must be, but it is possible to set limits to it in both directions.
On the one hand, not a tittle of evidence is on record to carry the age
of man in America beyond the present geological epoch. Dr. Lund examined
in Brazil more than eight hundred caverns, out of which number only six
contained human bones, and of these six only one had with the human
bones those of animals now extinct. Even in that instance the original
stratification had been disturbed, and probably the bones had been
interred there.[35-1] This is strong negative evidence. So in every
other example where an unbiased and competent geologist has made the
examination, the alleged discoveries of human remains in the older
strata have proved erroneous.
The cranial forms of the American aborigines have by some been supposed
to present anomalies distinguishing their race from all others, and even
its chief families from one another. This, too, falls to the ground
before a rigid analysis. The last word of craniology, which at one time
promised to revolutionize ethnology and even history, is that no one form
of the skull is peculiar to the natives of the New World; that in the
same linguistic family one glides into another by imperceptible degrees;
and that there is as much diversity, and the same diversity among them in
this respect as among the races of the Old Continent.[35-2] Peculiarities
of structure, though they may pass as general truths, offer no firm
foundation whereon to construct a scientific ethnology. Anatomy shows
nothing unique in the Indian, nothing demanding for its development any
special antiquity, still less an original diversity of type.
On the other hand, the remains of primeval art and the impress he made
upon nature bespeak for man a residence in the New World coeval with the
most distant events of history. By remains of art I do not so much refer
to those desolate palaces which crumble forgotten in the gloom of
tropical woods, nor even the enormous earthworks of the Mississippi
valley covered with the mould of generations of forest trees, but rather
to the humbler and less deceptive relics of his kitchens and his hunts.
On the Atlantic coast one often sees the refuse of Indian villages,
where generation after generation have passed their summers in fishing,
and left the bones, shells, and charcoal as their only epitaph. How many
such summers would it require for one or two hundred people to thus
gradually accumulate a mound of offal eight or ten feet high and a
hundred yards across, as is common enough? How many generations to heap
up that at the mouth of the Altamaha River, examined and pronounced
exclusively of this origin by Sir Charles Lyell,[36-1] which is about
this height, and covers ten acres of ground? Those who, like myself,
have tramped over many a ploughed field in search of arrow-heads must
have sometimes been amazed at the numbers which are sown over the face
of our country, betokening a most prolonged possession of the soil by
their makers. For a hunting population is always sparse, and the
collector finds only those arrow-heads which lie upon the surface.
Still more forcibly does nature herself bear witness to this antiquity
of possession. Botanists declare that a very lengthy course of
cultivation is required so to alter the form of a plant that it can no
longer be identified with the wild species; and still more protracted
must be the artificial propagation for it to lose its power of
independent life, and to rely wholly on man to preserve it from
extinction. Now this is precisely the condition of the maize, tobacco,
cotton, quinoa, and mandioca plants, and of that species of palm called
by botanists the _Gulielma speciosa_; all have been cultivated from
immemorial time by the aborigines of America, and, except cotton, by no
other race; all no longer are to be identified with any known wild
species; several are sure to perish unless fostered by human care.[37-1]
What numberless ages does this suggest? How many centuries elapsed ere
man thought of cultivating Indian corn? How many more ere it had spread
over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude, and lost all semblance to its
original form? Who has the temerity to answer these questions? The
judicious thinker will perceive in them satisfactory reasons for
dropping once for all the vexed inquiry, "how America was peopled," and
will smile at its imaginary solutions, whether they suggest Jews,
Japanese, or, as the latest theory is, Egyptians.
While these and other considerations testify forcibly to that isolation
I have already mentioned, they are almost equally positive for an
extensive intercourse in very distant ages between the great families of
the race, and for a prevalent unity of mental type, or perhaps they hint
at a still visible oneness of descent. In their stage of culture, the
maize, cotton, and tobacco could hardly have spread so widely by
commerce alone. Then there are verbal similarities running through wide
families of languages which, in the words of Professor Buschmann, are
"calculated to fill us with bewildering amazement,"[38-1] some of which
will hereafter be pointed out; and lastly, passing to the psychological
constitution of the race, we may quote the words of a sharp-sighted
naturalist, whose monograph on one of its tribes is unsurpassed for
profound reflections: "Not only do all the primitive inhabitants of
America stand on one scale of related culture, but that mental condition
of all in which humanity chiefly mirrors itself, to wit, their religious
and moral consciousness, this source of all other inner and outer
conditions, is one with all, however diverse the natural influences
under which they live."[38-2]
Penetrated with the truth of these views, all artificial divisions into
tropical or temperate, civilized or barbarous, will in the present work,
so far as possible, be avoided, and the race will be studied as a unit,
its religion as the development of ideas common to all its members, and
its myths as the garb thrown around these ideas by imaginations more or
less fertile, but seeking everywhere to embody the same notions.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
As the subject of American mythology is a new one to most readers,
and as in its discussion everything depends on a careful selection
of authorities, it is well at the outset to review very briefly
what has already been written upon it, and to assign the relative
amount of weight that in the following pages will be given to the
works most frequently quoted. The conclusions I have arrived at are
so different from those who have previously touched upon the topic
that such a step seems doubly advisable.
The first who undertook a philosophical survey of American
religions was Dr. Samuel Farmer Jarvis, in 1819 (A Discourse on the
Religion of the Indian Tribes of North America, Collections of the
New York Historical Society, vol. iii., New York, 1821). He
confined himself to the tribes north of Mexico, a difficult portion
of the field, and at that time not very well known. The notion of a
state of primitive civilization prevented Dr. Jarvis from forming
any correct estimate of the native religions, as it led him to look
upon them as deteriorations from purer faiths instead of
developments. Thus he speaks of them as having "departed less than
among any other nation from the form of primeval truth," and also
mentions their "wonderful uniformity" (pp. 219, 221).
The well-known American ethnologist, Mr. E. G. Squier, has also
published a work on the subject, of wider scope than its title
indicates (The Serpent Symbol in America, New York, 1851). Though
written in a much more liberal spirit than the preceding, it is
wholly in the interests of one school of mythology, and it the
rather shallow physical one, so fashionable in Europe half a
century ago. Thus, with a sweeping generalization, he says, "The
religions or superstitions of the American nations, however
different they may appear to the superficial glance, are
rudimentally the same, and are only modifications of that primitive
system which under its physical aspect has been denominated Sun or
Fire worship" (p. 111). With this he combines the favorite and (may
I add?) characteristic French doctrine, that the chief topic of
mythology is the adoration of the generative power, and to rescue
such views from their materializing tendencies, imagines to
counterbalance them a clear, universal monotheism. "We claim to
have shown," he says (p. 154), "that the grand conception of a
Supreme Unity and the doctrine of the reciprocal principles existed
in America in a well defined and clearly recognized form;" and
elsewhere that "the monotheistic idea stands out clearly in _all_
the religions of America" (p. 151).
If with a hope of other views we turn to our magnificent national
work on the Indians (History, Conditions, and Prospects of the
Indian Tribes of the United States: Washington, 1851-9), a great
disappointment awaits us. That work was unfortunate in its editor.
It is a monument of American extravagance and superficiality. Mr.
Schoolcraft was a man of deficient education and narrow prejudices,
pompous in style, and inaccurate in statements. The information
from original observers it contains is often of real value, but the
general views on aboriginal history and religion are shallow and
untrustworthy in the extreme.
A German professor, Dr. J. G. Mueller, has written quite a
voluminous work on American Primitive Religions (_Geschichte der
Amerikanischen Ur-religionen_, pp. 707: Basel, 1855). His theory is
that "at the south a worship of nature with the adoration of the
sun as its centre, at the north a fear of spirits combined with
fetichism, made up the two fundamental divisions of the religion of
the red race" (pp. 89, 90). This imaginary antithesis he traces out
between the Algonkin and Apalachian tribes, and between the Toltecs
of Guatemala and the Aztecs of Mexico. His quotations are nearly
all at second hand, and so little does he criticize his facts as to
confuse the Vaudoux worship of the Haitian negroes with that of
Votan in Chiapa. His work can in no sense be considered an
authority.
Very much better is the Anthropology of the late Dr. Theodore Waitz
(_Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_: Leipzig, 1862-66). No more
comprehensive, sound, and critical work on the indigenes of America
has ever been written. But on their religions the author is
unfortunately defective, being led astray by the hasty and
groundless generalizations of others. His great anxiety, moreover,
to subject all moral sciences to a realistic philosophy, was
peculiarly fatal to any correct appreciation of religious growth,
and his views are neither new nor tenable.
For a different reason I must condemn in the most unqualified
manner the attempt recently made by the enthusiastic and
meritorious antiquary, the Abbe E. Charles Brasseur (de Bourbourg),
to explain American mythology after the example of Euhemerus, of
Thessaly, as the apotheosis of history. This theory, which has been
repeatedly applied to other mythologies with invariable failure, is
now disowned by every distinguished student of European and
Oriental antiquity; and to seek to introduce it into American
religions is simply to render them still more obscure and
unattractive, and to deprive them of the only general interest they
now have, that of illustrating the gradual development of the
religious ideas of humanity.
But while thus regretting the use he has made of them, all
interested in American antiquity cannot too much thank this
indefatigable explorer for the priceless materials he has unearthed
in the neglected libraries of Spain and Central America, and laid
before the public. For the present purpose the most significant of
these is the Sacred National Book of the Quiches, a tribe of
Guatemala. This contains their legends, written in the original
tongue, and transcribed by Father Francisco Ximenes about 1725. The
manuscripts of this missionary were used early in the present
century, by Don Felix Cabrera, but were supposed to be entirely
lost even by the Abbe Brasseur himself in 1850 (_Lettre a M. le Duc
de Valmy_, Mexique, Oct. 15, 1850). Made aware of their importance
by the expressions of regret used in the Abbe's letters, Dr. C.
Sherzer, in 1854, was fortunate enough to discover them in the
library of the University of San Carlos in the city of Guatemala.
The legends were in Quiche with a Spanish translation and scholia.
The Spanish was copied by Dr. Scherzer and published in Vienna, in
1856, under the title _Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de
Guatemala, por el R. P. F. Francisco Ximenes_. In 1855 the Abbe
Brasseur took a copy of the original which he brought out at Paris
in 1861, with a translation of his own, under the title _Vuh Popol:
Le Livre Sacre des Quiches et les Mythes de l'Antiquite Americaine_.
Internal evidence proves that these legends were written down by a
converted native some time in the seventeenth century. They carry
the national history back about two centuries, beyond which all is
professedly mythical. Although both translations are colored by the
peculiar views of their makers, this is incomparably the most
complete and valuable work on American mythology extant.
Another authority of inestimable value has been placed within the
reach of scholars during the last few years. This is the _Relations
de la Nouvelle France_, containing the annual reports of the
Jesuit missionaries among the Iroquois and Algonkins from and
after 1611. My references to this are always to the reprint at
Quebec, 1858. Of not less excellence for another tribe, the Creeks,
is the brief "Sketch of the Creek Country," by Col. Benjamin
Hawkins, written about 1800, and first published in full by the
Georgia Historical Society in 1848. Most of the other works to
which I have referred are too well known to need any special
examination here, or will be more particularly mentioned in the
foot-notes when quoted.
FOOTNOTES:
[2-1] Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_, i. p. 256.
[2-2] Carriere, _Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung_, i. p.
66.
[6-1] It is said indeed that the Yebus, a people on the west coast of
Africa, speak a polysynthetic language, and _per contra_, that the Otomis
of Mexico have a monosyllabic one like the Chinese. Max Mueller goes
further, and asserts that what is called the process of agglutination in
the Turanian languages is the same as what has been named polysynthesis
in America. This is not to be conceded. In the former the root is
unchangeable, the formative elements follow it, and prefixes are not
used; in the latter prefixes are common, and the formative elements are
blended with the root, both undergoing changes of structure. Very
important differences.
[9-1] Grimm, _Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache_, p. 571.
[11-1] Peter Martyr, _De Insulis nuper Repertis_, p. 354: Colon. 1574.
[12-1] They may be found in Waitz, _Anthrop. der Naturvoelker_, iv. p.
173.
[13-1] The only authority is Diego de Landa, _Relacion de las Cosas de
Yucatan_, ed. Brasseur, Paris, 1864, p. 318. The explanation is extremely
obscure in the original. I have given it in the only sense in which the
author's words seem to have any meaning.
[14-1] Humboldt, _Vues des Cordilleres_, p. 72.
[14-2] Desjardins, _Le Perou avant la Conquete Espagnole_, p. 122: Paris,
1858.
[16-1] An instance is given by Ximenes, _Origen de los Indios de
Guatemala_, p. 186: Vienna, 1856.
[17-1] George Copway, _Traditional History of the Ojibway Nation_, p.
130: London, 1850.
[18-1] Morse, _Report on the Indian Tribes_, App. p. 352.
[21-1] Gomara states that De Ayllon found tribes on the Atlantic shore
not far from Cape Hatteras keeping flocks of deer (_ciervos_) and from
their milk making cheese (_Hist. de las Indias_, cap. 43). I attach no
importance to this statement, and only mention it to connect it with some
other curious notices of the tribe now extinct who occupied that
locality. Both De Ayllon and Lawson mention their very light complexions,
and the latter saw many with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fair skin;
they cultivated when first visited the potato (or the groundnut),
tobacco, and cotton (Humboldt); they reckoned time by disks of wood
divided into sixty segments (Lederer); and just in this latitude the most
careful determination fixes the mysterious White-man's-land, or Great
Ireland of the Icelandic Sagas (see the _American Hist. Mag._, ix. p.
364), where the Scandinavian sea rovers in the eleventh century found men
of their own color, clothed in long woven garments, and not less
civilized than themselves.
[23-1] The name Eskimo is from the Algonkin word _Eskimantick_, eaters of
raw flesh. There is reason to believe that at one time they possessed the
Atlantic coast considerably to the south. The Northmen, in the year 1000,
found the natives of Vinland, probably near Rhode Island, of the same
race as they were familiar with in Labrador. They call them _Skralingar_,
chips, and describe them as numerous and short of stature (Eric Rothens
Saga, in Mueller, _Sagaenbibliothek_, p. 214). It is curious that the
traditions of the Tuscaroras, who placed their arrival on the Virginian
coast about 1300, spoke of the race they found there as eaters of raw
flesh and ignorant of maize (Lederer, _Account of North America_, in
Harris, Voyages).
[25-1] Richardson, _Arctic Expedition_, p. 374.
[25-2] The late Professor W. W. Turner of Washington, and Professor
Buschmann of Berlin, are the two scholars who have traced the boundaries
of this widely dispersed family. The name is drawn from Lake Athapasca in
British America.
[25-3] The Cherokee tongue has a limited number of words in common with
the Iroquois, and its structural similarity is close. The name is of
unknown origin. It should doubtless be spelled _Tsalakie_, a plural form,
almost the same as that of the river Tellico, properly Tsaliko (Ramsey,
_Annals of Tennessee_, p. 87), on the banks of which their principal
towns were situated. Adair's derivation from _cheera_, fire, is
worthless, as no such word exists in their language.
[27-1] The term Algonkin may be a corruption of _agomeegwin_, people of
the other shore. Algic, often used synonymously, is an adjective
manufactured by Mr. Schoolcraft "from the words Alleghany and Atlantic"
(Algic Researches, ii. p. 12). There is no occasion to accept it, as
there is no objection to employing Algonkin both as substantive and
adjective. Iroquois is a French compound of the native words _hiro_, I
have said, and _koue_, an interjection of assent or applause, terms
constantly heard in their councils.
[27-2] Apalachian, which should be spelt with one p, is formed of two
Creek words, _apala_, the great sea, the ocean, and the suffix _chi_,
people, and means those dwelling by the ocean. That the Natchez were
offshoots of the Mayas I was the first to surmise and to prove by a
careful comparison of one hundred Natchez words with their equivalents in
the Maya dialects. Of these, _five_ have affinities more or less marked
to words peculiar to the Huastecas of the river Panuco (a Maya colony),
_thirteen_ to words common to Huasteca and Maya, and _thirty-nine_ to
words of similar meaning in the latter language. This resemblance may be
exemplified by the numerals, one, two, four, seven, eight, twenty. In
Natchez they are _hu_, _ah_, _gan_, _uk-woh_, _upku-tepish_, _oka-poo_:
in Maya, _hu_, _ca_, _can_, _uk_, _uapxae_, _hunkal_. (See the Am. Hist.
Mag., New Series, vol. i. p. 16, Jan. 1867.)
[28-1] Dakota, a native word, means friends or allies.
[28-2] Rep. of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1854, p. 209.
[29-1] According to Professor Buschmann Aztec is probably from _iztac_,
white, and Nahuatlacatl signifies those who speak the language _Nahuatl_,
clear sounding, sonorous. The Abbe Brasseur (de Bourbourg), on the other
hand, derives the latter from the Quiche _nawal_, intelligent, and adds
the amazing information that this is identical with the English _know
all_!! (_Hist. du Mexique_, etc., i. p. 102). For in his theory several
languages of Central America are derived from the same old Indo-Germanic
stock as the English, German, and cognate tongues. Toltec, from
_Toltecatl_, means inhabitant of Tollan, which latter may be from
_tolin_, rush, and signify the place of rushes. The signification
_artificer_, often assigned to Toltecatl, is of later date, and was
derived from the famed artistic skill of this early folk (Buschmann,
_Aztek. Ortsnamen_, p. 682: Berlin, 1852). The Toltecs are usually spoken
of as anterior to the Nahuas, but the Tlascaltecs and natives of
Cholollan or Cholula were in fact Toltecs, unless we assign to this
latter name a merely mythical signification. The early migrations of the
two Aztec bands and their relationship, it may be said in passing, are as
yet extremely obscure. The Shoshonees when first known dwelt as far north
as the head waters of the Missouri, and in the country now occupied by
the Black Feet. Their language, which includes that of the Comanche,
Wihinasht, Utah, and kindred bands, was first shown to have many and
marked affinities with that of the Aztecs by Professor Buschmann in his
great work, _Ueber die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im noerdlichen
Mexico und hoeheren Amerikanischen Norden_, p. 648: Berlin, 1854.
[31-1] His opinion was founded on an analysis of fifteen words of the
secret language of the Incas preserved in the Royal Commentaries of
Garcilasso de la Vega. On examination, they all proved to be modified
forms from the _lengua general_ (Meyen, _Ueber die Ureinwohner von Peru_,
p. 6). The Quichuas of Peru must not be confounded with the Quiches of
Guatemala. Quiche is the name of a place, and means "many trees;" the
derivation of Quichua is unknown. Muyscas means "men." This nation also
called themselves Chibchas.
[32-1] The significance of Carib is probably warrior. It may be the same
word as Guarani, which also has this meaning. Tupi or Tupa is the name
given the thunder, and can only be understood mythically.
[33-1] The Araucanians probably obtained their name from two Quichua
words, _ari auccan_, yes! they fight; an idiom very expressive of their
warlike character. They had had long and terrible wars with the Incas
before the arrival of Pizarro.
[34-1] Since writing the text I have received the admirable work of Dr.
von Martius, _Beitraege zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's zumal
Brasilians_, Leipzig, 1867, in which I observe that that profound student
considers that there is no doubt but that the Island Caribs, and the
Galibis of the main land are descendants from the same stock as the Tupis
and Guaranis.
[35-1] _Comptes Rendus_, vol. xxi. p. 1368 sqq.
[35-2] The two best authorities are Daniel Wilson, _The American Cranial
Type_, in _Ann. Rep. of the Smithson. Inst._, 1862, p. 240, and J. A.
Meigs, _Cranial Forms of the Amer. Aborigs._: Phila. 1866. They accord in
the views expressed in the text and in the rejection of those advocated
by Dr. S. G. Morton in the Crania Americana.
[36-1] _Second Visit to the United States_, i. p. 252.
[37-1] Martius, _Von dem Rechtzustande unter den Ureinwohnern
Brasiliens_, p. 80: Muenchen, 1832; recently republished in his _Beitraege
zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's_: Leipzig, 1867.
[38-1] _Athapaskische Sprachstamm_, p. 164: Berlin, 1856.
[38-2] Martius, _Von dem Rechtzustande unter den Ureinwohnern
Brasiliens_, p. 77.
CHAPTER II.
THE IDEA OF GOD.
An intuition common to the species.--Words expressing it in
American languages derived either from ideas of above in space, or
of life manifested by breath.--Examples.--No conscious monotheism,
and but little idea of immateriality discoverable.--Still less any
moral dualism of deities, the Great Good Spirit and the Great Bad
Spirit being alike terms and notions of foreign importation.
If we accept the definition that mythology is the idea of God expressed
in symbol, figure, and narrative, and always struggling toward a clearer
utterance, it is well not only to trace this idea in its very earliest
embodiment in language, but also, for the sake of comparison, to ask
what is its latest and most approved expression. The reply to this is
given us by Immanuel Kant. He has shown that our reason, dwelling on the
facts of experience, constantly seeks the principles which connect them
together, and only rests satisfied in the conviction that there is a
highest and first principle which reconciles all their discrepancies and
binds them into one. This he calls the Ideal of Reason. It must be true,
for it is evolved from the laws of reason, our only test of truth.
Furthermore, the sense of personality and the voice of conscience,
analyzed to their sources, can only be explained by the assumption of an
infinite personality and an absolute standard of right. Or, if to some
all this appears but wire-drawn metaphysical subtlety, they are welcome
to the definition of the realist, that the idea of God is the sum of
those intelligent activities which the individual, reasoning from the
analogy of his own actions, imagines to be behind and to bring about
natural phenomena.[44-1] If either of these be correct, it were hard to
conceive how any tribe or even any sane man could be without some notion
of divinity.
Certainly in America no instance of its absence has been discovered.
Obscure, grotesque, unworthy it often was, but everywhere man was
oppressed with a _sensus numinis_, a feeling that invisible, powerful
agencies were at work around him, who, as they willed, could help or
hurt him. In every heart was an altar to the Unknown God. Not that it
was customary to attach any idea of unity to these unseen powers. The
supposition that in ancient times and in very unenlightened conditions,
before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed, which afterwards at
various times was revived by reformers, is a belief that should have
passed away when the delights of savage life and the praises of a state
of nature ceased to be the themes of philosophers. We are speaking of a
people little capable of abstraction. The exhibitions of force in nature
seemed to them the manifestations of that mysterious power felt by their
self-consciousness; to combine these various manifestations and
recognize them as the operations of one personality, was a step not
easily taken. Yet He is not far from every one of us. "Whenever man
thinks clearly, or feels deeply, he conceives God as self-conscious
unity," says Carriere, with admirable insight; and elsewhere, "we have
monotheism, not in contrast to polytheism, not clear to the thought, but
in living intuition in the religious sentiments."[45-1]
Thus it was among the Indians. Therefore a word is usually found in
their languages analogous to none in any European tongue, a word
comprehending all manifestations of the unseen world, yet conveying no
sense of personal unity. It has been rendered spirit, demon, God, devil,
mystery, magic, but commonly and rather absurdly by the English and
French, "medicine." In the Algonkin dialects this word is _manito_ and
_oki_, in Iroquois _oki_ and _otkon_, the Dakota has _wakan_, the Aztec
_teotl_, the Quichua _huaca_, and the Maya _ku_. They all express in its
most general form the idea of the supernatural. And as in this word,
supernatural, we see a transfer of a conception of place, and that it
literally means that which is _above_ the natural world, so in such as
we can analyze of these vague and primitive terms the same trope appears
discoverable. _Wakan_ as an adverb means _above_, _oki_ is but another
orthography for _oghee_, and _otkon_ seems allied to _hetken_, both of
which have the same signification.[46-1]
The transfer is no mere figure of speech, but has its origin in the very
texture of the human mind. The heavens, the upper regions, are in every
religion the supposed abode of the divine. What is higher is always the
stronger and the nobler; a _superior_ is one who is better than we are,
and therefore a chieftain in Algonkin is called _oghee-ma_, the higher
one. There is, moreover, a naif and spontaneous instinct which leads man
in his ecstasies of joy, and in his paroxysms of fear or pain, to lift
his hands and eyes to the overhanging firmament. There the sun and
bright stars sojourn, emblems of glory and stability. Its azure vault
has a mysterious attraction which invites the eye to gaze longer and
longer into its infinite depths.[46-2] Its color brings thoughts of
serenity, peace, sunshine, and warmth. Even the rudest hunting tribes
felt these sentiments, and as a metaphor in their speeches, and as a
paint expressive of friendly design, blue was in wide use among
them.[47-1]
So it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to the heavens long
ere man asked himself, are the heavens material and God spiritual, is He
one, or is He many? Numerous languages bear trace of this. The Latin
Deus, the Greek Zeus, the Sanscrit Dyaus, the Chinese Tien, all
originally meant the sky above, and our own word heaven is often
employed synonymously with God. There is at first no personification in
these expressions. They embrace all unseen agencies, they are void of
personality, and yet to the illogical primitive man there is nothing
contradictory in making them the object of his prayers. The Mayas had
legions of gods; "_ku_," says their historian,[47-2] "does not signify
any particular god; yet their prayers are sometimes addressed to _kue_,"
which is the same word in the vocative case.
As the Latins called their united divinities _Superi_, those above, so
Captain John Smith found that the Powhatans of Virginia employed the
word _oki_, above, in the same sense, and it even had passed into a
definite personification among them in the shape of an "idol of wood
evil-favoredly carved." In purer dialects of the Algonkin it is always
indefinite, as in the terms _nipoon oki_, spirit of summer, _pipoon
oki_, spirit of winter. Perhaps the word was introduced into Iroquois
by the Hurons, neighbors and associates of the Algonkins. The Hurons
applied it to that demoniac power "who rules the seasons of the year,
who holds the winds and the waves in leash, who can give fortune to
their undertakings, and relieve all their wants."[48-1] In another and
far distant branch of the Iroquois, the Nottoways of southern Virginia,
it reappears under, the curious form _quaker_, doubtless a corruption of
the Powhatan _qui-oki_, lesser gods.[48-2] The proper Iroquois name of
him to whom they prayed was _garonhia_, which again turns out on
examination to be their common word for _sky_, and again in all
probability from the verbal root _gar_, to be above.[48-3] In the
legends of the Aztecs and Quiches such phrases as "Heart of the Sky,"
"Lord of the Sky," "Prince of the Azure Planisphere," "He above all,"
are of frequent occurrence, and by a still bolder metaphor, the
Araucanians, according to Molina, entitled their greatest god "The Soul
of the Sky."
This last expression leads to another train of thought. As the
philosopher, pondering on the workings of self-consciousness, recognizes
that various pathways lead up to God, so the primitive man, in forming
his language, sometimes trod one, sometimes another. Whatever else
sceptics have questioned, no one has yet presumed to doubt that if a God
and a soul exist at all, they are of like essence. This firm belief has
left its impress on language in the names devised to express the
supernal, the spiritual world. If we seek hints from languages more
familiar to us than the tongues of the Indians, and take for example
this word _spiritual_; we find it is from the Latin _spirare_, to blow,
to breathe. If in Latin again we look for the derivation of _animus_,
the mind, _anima_, the soul, they point to the Greek _anemos_, wind, and
_aemi_, to blow. In Greek the words for soul or spirit, _psuche_,
_pneuma_, _thumos_, all are directly from verbal roots expressing the
motion of the wind or the breath. The Hebrew word _ruah_ is translated
in the Old Testament sometimes by wind, sometimes by spirit, sometimes
by breath. Etymologically, in fact, ghosts and gusts, breaths and
breezes, the Great Spirit and the Great Wind, are one and the same. It
is easy to guess the reason of this. The soul is the life, the life is
the breath. Invisible, imponderable, quickening with vigorous motion,
slackening in rest and sleep, passing quite away in death, it is the
most obvious sign of life. All nations grasped the analogy and
identified the one with the other. But the breath is nothing but wind.
How easy, therefore, to look upon the wind that moves up and down and to
and fro upon the earth, that carries the clouds, itself unseen, that
calls forth the terrible tempests and the various seasons, as the
breath, the spirit of God, as God himself? So in the Mosaic record of
creation, it is said "a mighty wind" passed over the formless sea and
brought forth the world, and when the Almighty gave to the clay a living
soul, he is said to have breathed into it "the wind of lives."
Armed with these analogies, we turn to the primitive tongues of America,
and find them there as distinct as in the Old World. In Dakota _niya_ is
literally breath, figuratively life; in Netela _piuts_ is life, breath,
and soul; _silla_, in Eskimo, means air, it means wind, but it is also
the word that conveys the highest idea of the world as a whole, and the
reasoning faculty. The supreme existence they call _Sillam Innua_, Owner
of the Air, or of the All; or _Sillam Nelega_, Lord of the Air or Wind.
In the Yakama tongue of Oregon _wkrisha_ signifies there is wind,
_wkrishwit_, life; with the Aztecs, _ehecatl_ expressed both air, life,
and the soul, and personified in their myths it was said to have been
born of the breath of Tezcatlipoca, their highest divinity, who himself
is often called Yoalliehecatl, the Wind of Night.[50-1]
The descent is, indeed, almost imperceptible which leads to the
personification of the wind as God, which merges this manifestation of
life and power in one with its unseen, unknown cause. Thus it was a
worthy epithet which the Creeks applied to their supreme invisible
ruler, when they addressed him as ESAUGETUH EMISSEE, Master of Breath,
and doubtless it was at first but a title of equivalent purport which
the Cherokees, their neighbors, were wont to employ, OONAWLEH UNGGI,
Eldest of Winds, but rapidly leading to a complete identification of the
divine with the natural phenomena of meteorology. This seems to have
taken place in the same group of nations, for the original Choctaw word
for Deity was HUSHTOLI, the Storm Wind.[51-1] The idea, indeed, was
constantly being lost in the symbol. In the legends of the Quiches, the
mysterious creative power is HURAKAN, a name of no signification in
their language, one which their remote ancestors brought with them from
the Antilles, which finds its meaning in the ancient tongue of Haiti,
and which, under the forms of _hurricane_, _ouragan_, _orkan_, was
adopted into European marine languages as the native name of the
terrible tornado of the Caribbean Sea.[51-2] Mixcohuatl, the Cloud
Serpent, chief divinity of several tribes in ancient Mexico, is to this
day the correct term in their language for the tropical whirlwind, and
the natives of Panama worshipped the same phenomenon under the name
Tuyra.[52-1] To kiss the air was in Peru the commonest and simplest sign
of adoration to the collective divinities.[52-2]
Many writers on mythology have commented on the prominence so frequently
given to the winds. None have traced it to its true source. The facts of
meteorology have been thought all sufficient for a solution. As if man
ever did or ever could draw the idea of God from nature! In the identity
of wind with breath, of breath with life, of life with soul, of soul
with God, lies the far deeper and far truer reason, whose insensible
development I have here traced, in outline indeed, but confirmed by the
evidence of language itself.
Let none of these expressions, however, be construed to prove the
distinct recognition of One Supreme Being. Of monotheism either as
displayed in the one personal definite God of the Semitic races, or in
the dim pantheistic sense of the Brahmins, there was not a single
instance on the American continent. The missionaries found no word in
any of their languages fit to interpret _Deus_, God. How could they
expect it? The associations we attach to that name are the accumulated
fruits of nigh two thousand years of Christianity. The phrases Good
Spirit, Great Spirit, and similar ones, have occasioned endless
discrepancies in the minds of travellers. In most instances they are
entirely of modern origin, coined at the suggestion of missionaries,
applied to the white man's God. Very rarely do they bring any
conception of personality to the native mind, very rarely do they
signify any object of worship, perhaps never did in the olden times. The
Jesuit Relations state positively that there was no one immaterial god
recognized by the Algonkin tribes, and that the title, the Great Manito,
was introduced first by themselves in its personal sense.[53-1] The
supreme Iroquois Deity Neo or Hawaneu, triumphantly adduced by many
writers to show the monotheism underlying the native creeds, and upon
whose name Mr. Schoolcraft has built some philological reveries, turns
out on closer scrutiny to be the result of Christian instruction, and
the words themselves to be but corruptions of the French _Dieu_ and _le
bon Dieu_![53-2]
Innumerable mysterious forces are in activity around the child of
nature; he feels within him something that tells him they are not of his
kind, and yet not altogether different from him; he sums them up in one
word drawn from sensuous experience. Does he wish to express still more
forcibly this sentiment, he doubles the word, or prefixes an adjective,
or adds an affix, as the genius of his language may dictate. But it
still remains to him but an unapplied abstraction, a mere category of
thought, a frame for the All. It is never the object of veneration or
sacrifice, no myth brings it down to his comprehension, it is not
installed in his temples. Man cannot escape the belief that behind all
form is one essence; but the moment he would seize and define it, it
eludes his grasp, and by a sorcery more sadly ludicrous than that which
blinded Titania, he worships not the Infinite he thinks but a base idol
of his own making. As in the Zend Avesta behind the eternal struggle of
Ormuzd and Ahriman looms up the undisturbed and infinite Zeruana
Akerana, as in the pages of the Greek poets we here and there catch
glimpses of a Zeus who is not he throned on Olympus, nor he who takes
part in the wrangles of the gods, but stands far off and alone, one yet
all, "who was, who is, who will be," so the belief in an Unseen Spirit,
who asks neither supplication nor sacrifice, who, as the natives of
Texas told Joutel in 1684, "does not concern himself about things here
below,"[54-1] who has no name to call him by, and is never a figure in
mythology, was doubtless occasionally present to their minds. It was
present not more but far less distinctly and often not at all in the
more savage tribes, and no assertion can be more contrary to the laws of
religious progress than that which pretends that a purer and more
monotheistic religion exists among nations devoid of mythology. There
are only two instances on the American continent where the worship of an
immaterial God was definitely instituted, and these as the highest
conquests of American natural religions deserve especial mention.
They occurred, as we might expect, in the two most civilized nations,
the Quichuas of Peru, and the Nahuas of Tezcuco. It is related that
about the year 1440, at a grand religious council held at the
consecration of the newly-built temple of the Sun at Cuzco, the Inca
Yupanqui rose before the assembled multitude and spoke somewhat as
follows:--
"Many say that the Sun is the Maker of all things. But he who makes
should abide by what he has made. Now many things happen when the Sun is
absent; therefore he cannot be the universal creator. And that he is
alive at all is doubtful, for his trips do not tire him. Were he a
living thing, he would grow weary like ourselves; were he free, he would
visit other parts of the heavens. He is like a tethered beast who makes
a daily round under the eye of a master; he is like an arrow, which must
go whither it is sent, not whither it wishes. I tell you that he, our
Father and Master the Sun, must have a lord and master more powerful
than himself, who constrains him to his daily circuit without pause or
rest."[55-1]
To express this greatest of all existences, a name was proclaimed, based
upon that of the highest divinities known to the ancient Aymara race,
Illatici Viracocha Pachacamac, literally, the thunder vase, the foam of
the sea, animating the world, mysterious and symbolic names drawn from
the deepest religious instincts of the soul, whose hidden meanings will
be unravelled hereafter. A temple was constructed in a vale by the sea
near Callao, wherein his worship was to be conducted without images or
human sacrifices. The Inca was ahead of his age, however, and when the
Spaniards visited the temple of Pachacamac in 1525, they found not only
the walls adorned with hideous paintings, but an ugly idol of wood
representing a man of colossal proportions set up therein, and receiving
the prayers of the votaries.[56-1]
No better success attended the attempt of Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco,
which took place about the same time. He had long prayed to the gods of
his forefathers for a son to inherit his kingdom, and the altars had
smoked vainly with the blood of slaughtered victims. At length, in
indignation and despair, the prince exclaimed, "Verily, these gods that
I am adoring, what are they but idols of stone without speech or
feeling? They could not have made the beauty of the heaven, the sun, the
moon, and the stars which adorn it, and which light the earth, with its
countless streams, its fountains and waters, its trees and plants, and
its various inhabitants. There must be some god, invisible and unknown,
who is the universal creator. He alone can console me in my affliction
and take away my sorrow." Strengthened in this conviction by a timely
fulfilment of his heart's desire, he erected a temple nine stories high
to represent the nine heavens, which he dedicated "to the Unknown God,
the Cause of Causes." This temple, he ordained, should never be polluted
by blood, nor should any graven image ever be set up within its
precincts.[57-1]
In neither case, be it observed, was any attempt made to substitute
another and purer religion for the popular one. The Inca continued to
receive the homage of his subjects as a brother of the sun, and the
regular services to that luminary were never interrupted. Nor did the
prince of Tezcuco afterwards neglect the honors due his national gods,
nor even refrain himself from plunging the knife into the breasts of
captives on the altar of the god of war.[57-2] They were but expressions
of that monotheism which is ever present, "not in contrast to
polytheism, but in living intuition in the religious sentiments." If
this subtle but true distinction be rightly understood, it will excite
no surprise to find such epithets as "endless," "omnipotent,"
"invisible," "adorable," such appellations as "the Maker and Moulder of
All," "the Mother and Father of Life," "the One God complete in
perfection and unity," "the Creator of all that is," "the Soul of the
World," in use and of undoubted indigenous origin not only among the
civilized Aztecs, but even among the Haitians, the Araucanians, the
Lenni Lenape, and others.[57-3] It will not seem contradictory to hear
of them in a purely polytheistic worship; we shall be far from
regarding them as familiar to the popular mind, and we shall never be
led so far astray as to adduce them in evidence of a monotheism in
either technical sense of that word. In point of fact they were not
applied to any particular god even in the most enlightened nations, but
were terms of laudation and magniloquence used by the priests and
devotees of every several god to do him honor. They prove something in
regard to a consciousness of divinity hedging us about, but nothing at
all in favor of a recognition of one God; they exemplify how profound is
the conviction of a highest and first principle, but they do not offer
the least reason to surmise that this was a living reality in doctrine
or practice.
The confusion of these distinct ideas has led to much misconception of
the native creeds. But another and more fatal error was that which
distorted them into a dualistic form, ranging on one hand the good
spirit with his legions of angels, on the other the evil one with his
swarms of fiends, representing the world as the scene of their unending
conflict, man as the unlucky football who gets all the blows. This
notion, which has its historical origin among the Parsees of ancient
Iran, is unknown to savage nations. "The idea of the Devil," justly
observes Jacob Grimm, "is foreign to all primitive religions." Yet
Professor Mueller, in his voluminous work on those of America, after
approvingly quoting this saying, complacently proceeds to classify the
deities as good or bad spirits![59-1]
This view, which has obtained without question in every work on the
native religions of America, has arisen partly from habits of thought
difficult to break, partly from mistranslations of native words, partly
from the foolish axiom of the early missionaries, "The gods of the
gentiles are devils." Yet their own writings furnish conclusive proof
that no such distinction existed out of their own fancies. The same word
(_otkon_) which Father Bruyas employs to translate into Iroquois the
term "devil," in the passage "the Devil took upon himself the figure of
a serpent," he is obliged to use for "spirit" in the phrase, "at the
resurrection we shall be spirits,"[59-2] which is a rather amusing
illustration how impossible it was by any native word to convey the idea
of the spirit of evil. When, in 1570, Father Rogel commenced his labors
among the tribes near the Savannah River, he told them that the deity
they adored was a demon who loved all evil things, and they must hate
him; whereupon his auditors replied, that so far from this being the
case, whom he called a wicked being was the power that sent them all
good things, and indignantly left the missionary to preach to the
winds.[60-1]
A passage often quoted in support of this mistaken view is one in
Winslow's "Good News from New England," written in 1622. The author says
that the Indians worship a good power called Kiehtan, and another "who,
as farre as wee can conceive, is the Devill," named Hobbamock, or
Hobbamoqui. The former of these names is merely the word "great," in
their dialect of Algonkin, with a final _n_, and is probably an
abbreviation of Kittanitowit, the great manito, a vague term mentioned
by Roger Williams and other early writers, not the appellation of any
personified deity.[60-2] The latter, so far from corresponding to the
power of evil, was, according to Winslow's own statement, the kindly god
who cured diseases, aided them in the chase, and appeared to them in
dreams as their protector. Therefore, with great justice, Dr. Jarvis has
explained it to mean "the _oke_ or tutelary deity which each Indian
worships," as the word itself signifies.[61-1]
So in many instances it turns out that what has been reported to be the
evil divinity of a nation, to whom they pray to the neglect of a better
one, is in reality the highest power they recognize. Thus Juripari,
worshipped by certain tribes of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and said to
be their wicked spirit, is in fact the only name in their language for
spiritual existence in general; and Aka-kanet, sometimes mentioned as
the father of evil in the mythology of the Araucanians, is the benign
power appealed to by their priests, who is throned in the Pleiades, who
sends fruits and flowers to the earth, and is addressed as
"grandfather."[61-2] The Cupay of the Peruvians never was, as Prescott
would have us believe, "the shadowy embodiment of evil," but simply and
solely their god of the dead, the Pluto of their pantheon, corresponding
to the Mictla of the Mexicans.
The evidence on the point is indeed conclusive. The Jesuit missionaries
very rarely distinguish between good and evil deities when speaking of
the religion of the northern tribes; and the Moravian Brethren among the
Algonkins and Iroquois place on record their unanimous testimony that
"the idea of a devil, a prince of darkness, they first received in
later times through the Europeans."[62-1] So the Cherokees, remarks an
intelligent observer, "know nothing of the Evil One and his domains,
except what they have learned from white men."[62-2] The term Great
Spirit conveys, for instance, to the Chipeway just as much the idea of a
bad as of a good spirit; he is unaware of any distinction until it is
explained to him.[62-3] "I have never been able to discover from the
Dakotas themselves," remarks the Rev. G. H. Pond, who had lived among
them as a missionary for eighteen years,[62-4] "the least degree of
evidence that they divide the gods into classes of good and evil, and am
persuaded that those persons who represent them as doing so, do it
inconsiderately, and because it is so natural to subscribe to a long
cherished popular opinion."
Very soon after coming in contact with the whites, the Indians caught
the notion of a bad and good spirit, pitted one against the other in
eternal warfare, and engrafted it on their ancient traditions. Writers
anxious to discover Jewish or Christian analogies, forcibly construed
myths to suit their pet theories, and for indolent observers it was
convenient to catalogue their gods in antithetical classes. In Mexican
and Peruvian mythology this is so plainly false that historians no
longer insist upon it, but as a popular error it still holds its ground
with reference to the more barbarous and less known tribes.
Perhaps no myth has been so often quoted in its confirmation as that of
the ancient Iroquois, which narrates the conflict between the first two
brothers of our race. It is of undoubted native origin and venerable
antiquity. The version given by the Tuscarora chief Cusic in 1825,
relates that in the beginning of things there were two brothers,
Enigorio and Enigohahetgea, names literally meaning the Good Mind and
the Bad Mind.[63-1] The former went about the world furnishing it with
gentle streams, fertile plains, and plenteous fruits, while the latter
maliciously followed him creating rapids, thorns, and deserts. At length
the Good Mind turned upon his brother in anger, and crushed him into the
earth. He sank out of sight in its depths, but not to perish, for in the
dark realms of the underworld he still lives, receiving the souls of the
dead and being the author of all evil. Now when we compare this with the
version of the same legend given by Father Brebeuf, missionary to the
Hurons in 1636, we find its whole complexion altered; the moral dualism
vanishes; the names Good Mind and Bad Mind do not appear; it is the
struggle of Ioskeha, the White one, with his brother Tawiscara, the Dark
one, and we at once perceive that Christian influence in the course of
two centuries had given the tale a meaning foreign to its original
intent.
So it is with the story the Algonkins tell of their hero Manibozho, who,
in the opinion of a well-known writer, "is always placed in antagonism
to a great serpent, a spirit of evil."[64-1] It is to the effect that
after conquering many animals, this famous magician tried his arts on
the prince of serpents. After a prolonged struggle, which brought on the
general deluge and the destruction of the world, he won the victory. The
first authority we have for this narrative is even later than Cusic; it
is Mr. Schoolcraft in our own day; the legendary cause of the deluge as
related by Father Le Jeune, in 1634, is quite dissimilar, and makes no
mention of a serpent; and as we shall hereafter see, neither among the
Algonkins nor any other Indians, was the serpent usually a type of evil,
but quite the reverse.[64-2]
The comparatively late introduction of such views into the native
legends finds a remarkable proof in the myths of the Quiches, which were
committed to writing in the seventeenth century. They narrate the
struggles between the rulers of the upper and the nether world, the
descent of the former into Xibalba, the Realm of Phantoms, and their
victory over its lords, One Death and Seven Deaths. The writer adds of
the latter, who clearly represent to his mind the Evil One and his
adjutants, "in the old times they did not have much power; they were but
annoyers and opposers of men, and in truth they were not regarded as
gods. But when they appeared it was terrible. They were of evil, they
were owls, fomenting trouble and discord." In this passage, which, be it
said, seems to have impressed the translators very differently, the
writer appears to compare the great power assigned by the Christian
religion to Satan and his allies, with the very much less potency
attributed to their analogues in heathendom, the rulers of the world of
the dead.[65-1]
A little reflection will convince the most incredulous that any such
dualism as has been fancied to exist in the native religions, could not
have been of indigenous growth. The gods of the primitive man are beings
of thoroughly human physiognomy, painted with colors furnished by
intercourse with his fellows. These are his enemies or his friends, as
he conciliates or insults them. No mere man, least of all a savage, is
kind and benevolent in spite of neglect and injury, nor is any man
causelessly and ceaselessly malicious. Personal, family, or national
feuds render some more inimical than others, but always from a desire to
guard their own interests, never out of a delight in evil for its own
sake. Thus the cruel gods of death, disease, and danger, were never of
Satanic nature, while the kindliest divinities were disposed to punish,
and that severely, any neglect of their ceremonies. Moral dualism can
only arise in minds where the ideas of good and evil are not synonymous
with those of pleasure and pain, for the conception of a wholly good or
a wholly evil nature requires the use of these terms in their higher,
ethical sense. The various deities of the Indians, it may safely be said
in conclusion, present no stronger antithesis in this respect than those
of ancient Greece and Rome.
FOOTNOTES:
[44-1] But there is no ground for the most positive of philosophers to
reject the doctrine of innate ideas when put in a certain way. The
instincts and habits of the lower animals by which they obtain food,
migrate, and perpetuate their kind, are in obedience to particular
congenital impressions, and correspond to definite anatomical and
morphological relations. No one pretends their knowledge is experimental.
Just so the human cerebrum has received, by descent or otherwise, various
sensory impressions peculiar to man as a species, which are just as
certain to guide his thoughts, actions, and destiny, as is the cerebrum
of the insectivorous aye-aye to lead it to hunt successfully for larvae.
[45-1] _Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung_, i. pp. 50,
252.
[46-1] I offer these derivations with a certain degree of reserve, for
such an extraordinary similarity in the sound of these words is
discoverable in North and portions of South America, that one might
almost be tempted to claim for them one original form. Thus in the Maya
dialects it is _ku_, vocative _a kue_, in Natchez _kue-ya_, in the Uchee
of West Florida _kauhwu_, in Otomi _okha_, in Mandan _okee_, Sioux
_ogha_, _waughon_, _wakan_, in Quichua _waka_, _huaca_, in Iroquois
_quaker_, _oki_, Algonkin _oki_, _okee_, Eskimo _aghatt_, which last has
a singular likeness in sound to the German or Norse, _O Gott_, as some of
the others have to the corresponding Finnish word _ukko_. _Ku_ in the
Carib tongue means _house_, especially a temple or house of the gods. The
early Spanish explorers adopted the word with the orthography _cue_, and
applied it to the sacred edifices of whatever nation they discovered. For
instance, they speak of the great cemetery of Teotihuacan, near Tezcuco,
as the _Llano de los Cues_.
[46-2] "As the high heavens, the far-off mountains look to us blue, so a
blue superficies seems to recede from us. As we would fain pursue an
attractive object that flees from us, so we like to gaze at the blue, not
that it urges itself upon us, but that it draws us after it." Goethe,
_Farbenlehre_, secs. 780, 781.
[47-1] Loskiel, _Geschichte der Mission der Evang. Brueder_, p. 63:
Barby, 1789.
[47-2] Cogolludo, _Historia de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. vii.
[48-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France._ An 1636, p. 107.
[48-2] This word is found in Gallatin's vocabularies (_Transactions of
the Am. Antiq. Soc._, vol. ii.), and may have partially induced that
distinguished ethnologist to ascribe, as he does in more than one place,
whatever notions the eastern tribes had of a Supreme Being to the
teachings of the Quakers.
[48-3] Bruyas, _Radices Verborum Iroquaeorum_, p. 84. This work is in
Shea's Library of American Linguistics, and is a most valuable
contribution to philology. The same etymology is given by Lafitau,
_Moeurs des Sauvages_, etc., Germ. trans., p. 65.
[50-1] My authorities are Riggs, _Dict. of the Dakota_, Boscana, _Account
of New California_, Richardson's and Egede's Eskimo Vocabularies,
Pandosy, _Gram. and Dict. of the Yakama_ (Shea's Lib. of Am.
Linguistics), and the Abbe Brasseur for the Aztec.
[51-1] These terms are found in Gallatin's vocabularies. The last
mentioned is not, as Adair thought, derived from _issto ulla_ or _ishto
hoollo_, great man, for in Choctaw the adjective cannot precede the noun
it qualifies. Its true sense is visible in the analogous Creek words
_ishtali_, the storm wind, and _hustolah_, the windy season.
[51-2] Webster derives hurricane from the Latin _furio_. But Oviedo tells
us in his description of Hispaniola that "Hurakan, in lingua di questa
isola vuole dire propriamente fortuna tempestuosa molto eccessiva, perche
en effetto non e altro que un grandissimo vento e pioggia insieme."
_Historia dell' Indie_, lib. vi. cap. iii. It is a coincidence--perhaps
something more--that in the Quichua language _huracan_, third person
singular present indicative of the verbal noun _huraca_, means "a stream
of water falls perpendicularly." (Markham, _Quichua Dictionary_, p. 132.)
[52-1] Oviedo, _Rel. de la Prov. de Cueba_, p. 141, ed. Ternaux-Compans.
[52-2] Garcia, _Origen de los Indios_, lib. iv. cap. xxii.
[53-1] See the _Rel. de la Nouv. France pour l'An 1637_, p. 49.
[53-2] Mr. Morgan, in his excellent work, _The League of the Iroquois_,
has been led astray by an ignorance of the etymology of these terms. For
Schoolcraft's views see his _Oneota_, p. 147. The matter is ably
discussed in the _Etudes Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de
l'Amerique_, p. 14: Montreal, 1866; but comp. Shea, _Dict.
Francais-Onontague_, preface.
[54-1] "Qui ne prend aucun soin des choses icy bas." _Jour. Hist. d'un
Voyage de l'Amerique_, p. 225: Paris, 1713.
[55-1] In attributing this speech to the Inca Yupanqui, I have followed
Balboa, who expressly says this was the general opinion of the Indians
(_Hist. du Perou_, p. 62, ed. Ternaux-Compans). Others assign it to other
Incas. See Garcilasso de la Vega, _Hist. des Incas_, lib. viii. chap. 8,
and Acosta, _Nat. and Morall Hist. of the New World_, chap. 5. The fact
and the approximate time are beyond question.
[56-1] Xeres, _Rel. de la Conq. du Perou_, p. 151, ed. Ternaux-Compans.
[57-1] Prescott, _Conq. of Mexico_, i. pp. 192, 193, on the authority of
Ixtlilxochitl.
[57-2] Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, iii. p. 297, note.
[57-3] Of very many authorities that I have at hand, I shall only mention
Heckewelder, _Acc. of the Inds._[TN-1] p. 422, Duponceau, _Mem. sur les
Langues de l'Amer. du Nord_, p. 310, Peter Martyr _De Rebus Oceanicis_,
Dec. i., cap. 9, Molina, _Hist. of Chili_, ii. p. 75, Ximenes, _Origen de
los Indios de Guatemala_, pp. 4, 5, Ixtlilxochitl, _Rel. des Conq. du
Mexique_, p. 2. These terms bear the severest scrutiny. The Aztec
appellation of the Supreme Being _Tloque nahuaque_ is compounded of
_tloc_, together, with, and _nahuac_, at, by, with, with possessive forms
added, giving the signification, Lord of all existence and coexistence
(alles Mitseyns und alles Beiseyns, bei welchem das Seyn aller Dinge ist.
Buschmann, _Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen_, p. 642). The Algonkin term
_Kittanittowit_ is derived from _kitta_, great, _manito_, spirit, _wit_,
an adjective termination indicating a mode of existence, and means the
Great Living Spirit (Duponceau, u. s.). Both these terms are undoubtedly
of native origin. In the Quiche legends the Supreme Being is called
_Bitol_, the substantive form of _bit_, to make pottery, to form, and
_Tzakol_, substantive form of _tzak_, to build, the Creator, the
Constructor. The Arowacks of Guyana applied the term _Aluberi_ to their
highest conception of a first cause, from the verbal form _alin_, he who
makes (Martius, _Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's_, i. p. 696).
[59-1] _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 403.
[59-2] Bruyas, _Rad. Verb. Iroquaeorum_, p. 38.
[60-1] Alcazar, _Chrono-historia de la Prov. de Toledo_, Dec. iii., Ano
viii., cap. iv: Madrid, 1710. This rare work contains the only faithful
copies of Father Rogel's letters extant. Mr. Shea, in his History of
Catholic Missions, calls him erroneously Roger.
[60-2] It is fully analyzed by Duponceau, _Langues de l'Amerique du
Nord_, p. 309.
[61-1] _Discourse on the Religion of the Ind. Tribes of N. Am._, p. 252
in the Trans. N. Y. Hist. Soc.
[61-2] Mueller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, pp. 265, 272, 274. Well may he
remark: "The dualism is not very striking among these tribes;" as a few
pages previous he says of the Caribs, "The dualism of gods is anything
but rigidly observed. The good gods do more evil than good. Fear is the
ruling religious sentiment." To such a lame conclusion do these venerable
prepossessions lead. "_Grau ist alle Theorie_."
[62-1] Loskiel, _Ges. der Miss. der evang. Brueder_, p. 46.
[62-2] Whipple, _Report on the Ind. Tribes_, p. 33: Washington, 1855.
Pacific Railroad Docs.
[62-3] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, i. p. 359.
[62-4] In Schoolcraft, _Ibid._, iv. p. 642.
[63-1] Or more exactly, the Beautiful Spirit, the Ugly Spirit. In
Onondaga the radicals are _onigonra_, spirit, _hio_ beautiful, _ahetken_
ugly. _Dictionnaire Francais-Onontague, edite par Jean-Marie Shea_: New
York, 1859.
[64-1] Squier, _The Serpent Symbol in America_.
[64-2] Both these legends will be analyzed in a subsequent chapter, and
an attempt made not only to restore them their primitive form, but to
explain their meaning.
[65-1] Compare the translation and remarks of Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios
de Guat._, p. 76, with those of Brasseur, _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_,
p. 189.
CHAPTER III.
THE SACRED NUMBER, ITS ORIGIN AND APPLICATIONS.
The number FOUR sacred in all American religions, and the key to
their symbolism.--Derived from the CARDINAL POINTS.--Appears
constantly in government, arts, rites, and myths.--The Cardinal
Points identified with the Four Winds, who in myths are the four
ancestors of the human race, and the four celestial rivers watering
the terrestrial Paradise.--Associations grouped around each
Cardinal Point.--From the number four was derived the symbolic
value of the number _Forty_, and the _Sign of the Cross_.
Every one familiar with the ancient religions of the world must have
noticed the mystic power they attach to certain numbers, and how these
numbers became the measures and formative quantities, as it were, of
traditions and ceremonies, and had a symbolical meaning nowise connected
with their arithmetical value. For instance, in many eastern religions,
that of the Jews among the rest, _seven_ was the most sacred number, and
after it, _four_ and _three_. The most cursory reader must have observed
in how many connections the seven is used in the Hebrew Scriptures,
occurring, in all, something over three hundred and sixty times, it is
said. Why these numbers were chosen rather than others has not been
clearly explained. Their sacred character dates beyond the earliest
history, and must have been coeval with the first expressions of the
religious sentiment. Only one of them, the FOUR, has any prominence in
the religions of the red race, but this is so marked and so universal,
that at a very early period in my studies I felt convinced that if the
reason for its adoption could be discovered, much of the apparent
confusion which reigns among them would be dispelled.
Such a reason must take its rise from some essential relation of man to
nature, everywhere prominent, everywhere the same. It is found in the
_adoration of the cardinal points_.
The red man, as I have said, was a hunter; he was ever wandering through
pathless forests, coursing over boundless prairies. It seems to the
white race not a faculty, but an instinct that guides him so unerringly.
He is never at a loss. Says a writer who has deeply studied his
character: "The Indian ever has the points of the compass present to his
mind, and expresses himself accordingly in words, although it shall be
of matters in his own house."[67-1]
The assumption of precisely four cardinal points is not of chance; it is
recognized in every language; it is rendered essential by the anatomical
structure of the body; it is derived from the immutable laws of the
universe. Whether we gaze at the sunset or the sunrise, or whether at
night we look for guidance to the only star of the twinkling thousands
that is constant to its place, the anterior and posterior planes of our
bodies, our right hands and our left coincide with the parallels and
meridians. Very early in his history did man take note of these four
points, and recognizing in them his guides through the night and the
wilderness, call them his gods. Long afterwards, when centuries of slow
progress had taught him other secrets of nature--when he had discerned
in the motions of the sun, the elements of matter, and the radicals of
arithmetic a repetition of this number--they were to him further
warrants of its sacredness. He adopted it as a regulating quantity in
his institutions and his arts; he repeated it in its multiples and
compounds; he imagined for it novel applications; he constantly
magnified its mystic meaning; and finally, in his philosophical
reveries, he called it the key to the secrets of the universe, "the
source of ever-flowing nature."[68-1]
In primitive geography the figure of the earth is a square plain; in the
legend of the Quiche's it is "shaped as a square, divided into four
parts, marked with lines, measured with cords, and suspended from the
heavens by a cord to its four corners and its four sides."[68-2] The
earliest divisions of territory were in conformity to this view. Thus it
was with ancient Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and China;[68-3] and in the
new world, the states of Peru, Araucania, the Muyscas, the Quiches, and
Tlascala were tetrarchies divided in accordance with, and in the first
two instances named after, the cardinal points. So their chief
cities--Cuzco, Quito, Tezcuco, Mexico, Cholula--were quartered by
streets running north, south, east, and west. It was a necessary result
of such a division that the chief officers of the government were four
in number, that the inhabitants of town and country, that the whole
social organization acquired a quadruplicate form. The official title of
the Incas was "Lord of the four quarters of the earth," and the
venerable formality in taking possession of land, both in their domain
and that of the Aztecs, was to throw a stone, to shoot an arrow, or to
hurl a firebrand to each of the cardinal points.[69-1] They carried out
the idea in their architecture, building their palaces in squares with
doors opening, their tombs with their angles pointing, their great
causeways running in these directions. These architectural principles
repeat themselves all over the continent; they recur in the sacred
structures of Yucatan, in the ancient cemetery of Teo-tihuacan near
Mexico, where the tombs are arranged along avenues corresponding exactly
to the parallels and meridians of the central tumuli of the sun and
moon;[69-2] and however ignorant we are about the mound builders of the
Mississippi valley, we know that they constructed their earthworks with
a constant regard to the quarters of the compass.
Nothing can be more natural than to take into consideration the regions
of the heavens in the construction of buildings; I presume that at any
time no one plans an edifice of pretensions without doing so. Yet this
is one of those apparently trifling transactions which in their origin
and applications have exerted a controlling influence on the history of
the human race.
When we reflect how indissolubly the mind of the primitive man is welded
to his superstitions, it were incredible that his social life and his
architecture could thus be as it were in subjection to one idea, and his
rites and myths escape its sway. As one might expect, it reappears in
these latter more vividly than anywhere else. If there is one formula
more frequently mentioned by travellers than another as an indispensable
preliminary to all serious business, it is that of smoking, and the
prescribed and traditional rule was that the first puff should be to the
sky, and then one to each of the corners of the earth, or the cardinal
points.[70-1] These were the spirits who made and governed the earth,
and under whatever difference of guise the uncultivated fancy portrayed
them, they were the leading figures in the tales and ceremonies of
nearly every tribe of the red race. These were the divine powers
summoned by the Chipeway magicians when initiating neophytes into the
mysteries of the meda craft. They were asked to a lodge of four poles,
to four stones that lay before its fire, there to remain four days, and
attend four feasts. At every step of the proceeding this number or its
multiples were repeated.[71-1] With their neighbors the Dakotas the
number was also distinctly sacred; it was intimately inwoven in all
their tales concerning the wakan power and the spirits of the air, and
their religious rites. The artist Catlin has given a vivid description
of the great annual festival of the Mandans, a Dakota tribe, and brings
forward with emphasis the ceaseless reiteration of this number from
first to last.[71-2] He did not detect its origin in the veneration of
the cardinal points, but the information that has since been furnished
of the myths of this stock leaves no doubt that such was the case.[71-3]
Proximity of place had no part in this similarity of rite. In the grand
commemorative festival of the Creeks called the Busk, which wiped out
the memory of all crimes but murder, which reconciled the proscribed
criminal to his nation and atoned for his guilt, when the new fire was
kindled and the green corn served up, every dance, every invocation,
every ceremony, was shaped and ruled by the application of the number
four and its multiples in every imaginable relation. So it was at that
solemn probation which the youth must undergo to prove himself worthy of
the dignities of manhood and to ascertain his guardian spirit; here
again his fasts, his seclusions, his trials, were all laid down in
fourfold arrangement.[72-1]
Not alone among these barbarous tribes were the cardinal points thus the
foundation of the most solemn mysteries of religion. An excellent
authority relates that the Aztecs of Micla, in Guatemala, celebrated
their chief festival four times a year, and that four priests solemnized
its rites. They commenced by invoking and offering incense to the sky
and the four cardinal points; they conducted the human victim four times
around the temple, then tore out his heart, and catching the blood in
four vases scattered it in the same directions.[72-2] So also the
Peruvians had four principal festivals annually, and at every new moon
one of four days' duration. In fact the repetition of the number in all
their religious ceremonies is so prominent that it has been a subject of
comment by historians. They have attributed it to the knowledge of the
solstices and equinoxes, but assuredly it is of more ancient date than
this. The same explanation has been offered for its recurrence among the
Nahuas of Mexico, whose whole lives were subjected to its operation. At
birth the mother was held unclean for four days, a fire was kindled and
kept burning for a like length of time, at the baptism of the child an
arrow was shot to each of the cardinal points. Their prayers were
offered four times a day, the greatest festivals were every fourth year,
and their offerings of blood were to the four points of the compass. At
death food was placed on the grave, as among the Eskimos, Creeks, and
Algonkins, for four days (for all these nations supposed that the
journey to the land of souls was accomplished in that time), and
mourning for the dead was for four months or four years.[73-1]
It were fatiguing and unnecessary to extend the catalogue much further.
Yet it is not nearly exhausted. From tribes of both continents and all
stages of culture, the Muyscas of Columbia and the Natchez of Louisiana,
the Quiches of Guatemala and the Caribs of the Orinoko, instance after
instance might be marshalled to illustrate how universally a sacred
character was attached to this number, and how uniformly it is traceable
to a veneration of the cardinal points. It is sufficient that it be
displayed in some of its more unusual applications.
It is well known that the calendar common to the Aztecs and Mayas
divides the month into four weeks, each containing a like number of
secular days; that their indiction is divided into four periods; and
that they believed the world had passed through four cycles. It has not
been sufficiently emphasized that in many of the picture writings these
days of the week are placed respectively north, south, east, and west,
and that in the Maya language the quarters of the indiction still bear
the names of the cardinal points, hinting the reason of their
adoption.[74-1] This cannot be fortuitous. Again, the division of the
year into four seasons--a division as devoid of foundation in nature as
that of the ancient Aryans into three, and unknown among many tribes,
yet obtained in very early times among Algonkins, Cherokees, Choctaws,
Creeks, Aztecs, Muyscas, Peruvians, and Araucanians. They were supposed
to be produced by the unending struggles and varying fortunes of the
four aerial giants who rule the winds.
We must seek in mythology the key to the monotonous repetition and the
sanctity of this number; and furthermore, we must seek it in those
natural modes of expression of the religious sentiment which are above
the power of blood or circumstance to control. One of these modes, we
have seen, was that which led to the identification of the divinity with
the wind, and this it is that solves the enigma in the present instance.
Universally the spirits of the cardinal points were imagined to be in
the winds that blew from them. The names of these directions and of the
corresponding winds are often the same, and when not, there exists an
intimate connection between them. For example, take the languages of the
Mayas, Huastecas, and Moscos of Central America; in all of them the word
for _north_ is synonymous with _north wind_, and so on for the other
three points of the compass. Or again, that of the Dakotas, and the word
_tate-ouye-toba_, translated "the four quarters of the heavens," means
literally, "whence the four winds come."[75-1] It were not difficult to
extend the list; but illustrations are all that is required. Let it be
remembered how closely the motions of the air are associated in thought
and language with the operations of the soul and the idea of God; let it
further be considered what support this association receives from the
power of the winds on the weather, bringing as they do the lightning and
the storm, the zephyr that cools the brow, and the tornado that levels
the forest; how they summon the rain to fertilize the seed and refresh
the shrivelled leaves; how they aid the hunter to stalk the game, and
usher in the varying seasons; how, indeed, in a hundred ways, they
intimately concern his comfort and his life; and it will not seem
strange that they almost occupied the place of all other gods in the
mind of the child of nature. Especially as those who gave or withheld
the rains were they objects of his anxious solicitation. "Ye who dwell
at the four corners of the earth--at the north, at the south, at the
east, and at the west," commenced the Aztec prayer to the Tlalocs, gods
of the showers.[75-2] For they, as it were, hold the food, the life of
man in their power, garnered up on high, to grant or deny, as they see
fit. It was from them that the prophet of old was directed to call back
the spirits of the dead to the dry bones of the valley. "Prophesy unto
the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord
God, come forth from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these
slain, that they may live." (Ezek. xxxvii. 9.)
In the same spirit the priests of the Eskimos prayed to _Sillam Innua_,
the Owner of the Winds, as the highest existence; the abode of the dead
they called _Sillam Aipane_, the House of the Winds; and in their
incantations, when they would summon a new soul to the sick, or order
back to its home some troublesome spirit, their invocations were ever
addressed to the winds from the cardinal points--to Pauna the East and
Sauna the West, to Kauna the South and Auna the North.[76-1]
As the rain-bringers, as the life-givers, it were no far-fetched
metaphor to call them the fathers of our race. Hardly a nation on the
continent but seems to have had some vague tradition of an origin from
four brothers, to have at some time been led by four leaders or princes,
or in some manner to have connected the appearance and action of four
important personages with its earliest traditional history. Sometimes
the myth defines clearly these fabled characters as the spirits of the
winds, sometimes it clothes them in uncouth, grotesque metaphors,
sometimes again it so weaves them into actual history that we are at a
loss where to draw the line that divides fiction from truth.
I shall attempt to follow step by step the growth of this myth from its
simplest expression, where the transparent drapery makes no pretence to
conceal its true meaning, through the ever more elaborate narratives,
the more strongly marked personifications of more cultivated nations,
until it assumes the outlines of, and has palmed itself upon the world
as actual history.
This simplest form is that which alone appears among the Algonkins and
Dakotas. They both traced their lives back to four ancestors, personages
concerned in various ways with the first things of time, not rightly
distinguished as men or gods, but very positively identified with the
four winds. Whether from one or all of these the world was peopled,
whether by process of generation or some other more obscure way, the old
people had not said, or saying, had not agreed.[77-1]
It is a shade more complex when we come to the Creeks. They told of four
men who came from the four corners of the earth, who brought them the
sacred fire, and pointed out the seven sacred plants. They were called
the Hi-you-yul-gee. Having rendered them this service, the kindly
visitors disappeared in a cloud, returning whence they came. When
another and more ancient legend informs us that the Creeks were at first
divided into four clans, and alleged a descent from four female
ancestors, it will hardly be venturing too far to recognize in these
four ancestors the four friendly patrons from the cardinal points.[78-1]
The ancient inhabitants of Haiti, when first discovered by the
Spaniards, had a similar genealogical story, which Peter Martyr relates
with various excuses for its silliness and exclamations at its
absurdity. Perhaps the fault lay less in its lack of meaning than in his
want of insight. It was to the effect that men lived in caves, and were
destroyed by the parching rays of the sun, and were destitute of means
to prolong their race, until they caught and subjected to their use four
women who were swift of foot and slippery as eels. These were the
mothers of the race of men. Or again, it was said that a certain king
had a huge gourd which contained all the waters of the earth; four
brothers, who coming into the world at one birth had cost their mother
her life, ventured to the gourd to fish, picked it up, but frightened by
the old king's approach, dropped it on the ground, broke it into
fragments, and scattered the waters over the earth, forming the seas,
lakes, and rivers, as they now are. These brothers in time became the
fathers of a nation, and to them they traced their lineage.[78-2] With
the previous examples before our eyes, it asks no vivid fancy to see in
these quaternions once more the four winds, the bringers of rain, so
swift and so slippery.
The Navajos are a rude tribe north of Mexico. Yet even they have an
allegory to the effect that when the first man came up from the ground
under the figure of the moth-worm, the four spirits of the cardinal
points were already there, and hailed him with the exclamation, "Lo, he
is of our race."[79-1] It is a poor and feeble effort to tell the same
old story.
The Haitians were probably relatives of the Mayas of Yucatan. Certainly
the latter shared their ancestral legends, for in an ancient manuscript
found by Mr. Stephens during his travels, it appears they looked back to
four parents or leaders called the Tutul Xiu. But, indeed, this was a
trait of all the civilized nations of Central America and Mexico. An
author who would be very unwilling to admit any mythical interpretation
of the coincidence, has adverted to it in tones of astonishment: "In all
the Aztec and Toltec histories there are four characters who constantly
reappear; either as priests or envoys of the gods, or of hidden and
disguised majesty; or as guides and chieftains of tribes during their
migrations; or as kings and rulers of monarchies after their foundation;
and even to the time of the conquest, there are always four princes who
compose the supreme government, whether in Guatemala, or in
Mexico."[79-2] This fourfold division points not to a common history,
but to a common nature. The ancient heroes and demigods, who, four in
number, figure in all these antique traditions, were not men of flesh
and blood, but the invisible currents of air who brought the fertilizing
showers.
They corresponded to the four gods Bacab, who in the Yucatecan mythology
were supposed to stand one at each corner of the world, supporting, like
gigantic caryatides, the overhanging firmament. When at the general
deluge all other gods and men were swallowed by the waters they alone
escaped to people it anew. These four, known by the names of Kan, Muluc,
Ix, and Cauac, represented respectively the east, north, west, and
south, and as in Oriental symbolism, so here each quarter of the compass
was distinguished by a color, the east by yellow, the south by red, the
west by black, and the north by white. The names of these mysterious
personages, employed somewhat as we do the Dominical letters, adjusted
the calendar of the Mayas, and by their propitious or portentous
combinations was arranged their system of judicial astrology. They were
the gods of rain, and under the title Chac, the Red Ones, were the chief
ministers of the highest power. As such they were represented in the
religious ceremonies by four old men, constant attendants on the high
priest in his official functions.[80-1] In this most civilized branch
of the red race, as everywhere else, we thus find four mythological
characters prominent beyond all others, giving a peculiar physiognomy to
the national legends, arts, and sciences, and in them once more we
recognize by signs infallible, personifications of the four cardinal
points and the four winds.
They rarely lose altogether their true character. The Quiche legends
tell us that the four men who were first created by the Heart of Heaven,
Hurakan, the Air in Motion, were infinitely keen of eye and swift of
foot, that "they measured and saw all that exists at the four corners
and the four angles of the sky and the earth;" that they did not fulfil
the design of their maker "to bring forth and produce when the season of
harvest was near," until he blew into their eyes a cloud, "until their
faces were obscured as when one breathes on a mirror." Then he gave them
as wives the four mothers of our species, whose names were Falling
Water, Beautiful Water, Water of Serpents, and Water of Birds.[81-1]
Truly he who can see aught but a transparent myth in this recital, is a
realist that would astonish Euhemerus himself.
There is in these Aztec legends a quaternion besides this of the first
men, one that bears marks of a profound contemplation on the course of
nature, one that answers to the former as the heavenly phase of the
earthly conception. It is seen in the four personages, or perhaps we
should say modes of action, that make up the one Supreme Cause of All,
Hurakan, the breath, the wind, the Divine Spirit. They are He who
creates, He who gives Form, He who gives Life, and He who
reproduces.[82-1] This acute and extraordinary analysis of the origin
and laws of organic life, clothed under the ancient belief in the action
of the winds, reveals a depth of thought for which we were hardly
prepared, and is perhaps the single instance of anything like
metaphysics among the red race. It is clearly visible in the earlier
portions of the legends of the Quiches, and is the more surely of native
origin as it has been quite lost on both their translators.
Go where we will, the same story meets us. The empire of the Incas was
attributed in the sacred chants of the Amautas, the priests assigned to
take charge of the records, to four brothers and their wives. These
mythical civilizers are said to have emerged from a cave called _Pacari
tampu_, which may mean "the House of Subsistence," reminding us of the
four heroes who in Aztec legend set forth to people the world from
Tonacatepec, the mountain of our subsistence; or again it may mean--for
like many of these mythical names it seems to have been designedly
chosen to bear a double construction--the Lodgings of the Dawn,
recalling another Aztec legend which points for the birthplace of the
race to Tula in the distant orient. The cave itself suggests to the
classical reader that of Eolus, or may be paralleled with that in which
the Iroquois fabled the winds were imprisoned by their lord.[83-1] These
brothers were of no common kin. Their voices could shake the earth and
their hands heap up mountains. Like the thunder god, they stood on the
hills and hurled their sling-stones to the four corners of the earth.
When one was overpowered he fled upward to the heaven or was turned into
stone, and it was by their aid and counsel that the savages who
possessed the land renounced their barbarous habits and commenced to
till the soil. There can be no doubt but that this in turn is but
another transformation of the Protean myth we have so long
pursued.[83-2]
There are traces of the same legend among many other tribes of the
continent, but the trustworthy reports we have of them are too scanty to
permit analysis. Enough that they are mentioned in a note, for it is
every way likely that could we resolve their meaning they too would
carry us back to the four winds.[83-3]
Let no one suppose, however, that this was the only myth of the origin
of man. Far from it. It was but one of many, for, as I shall hereafter
attempt to show, the laws that governed the formations of such myths not
only allowed but enjoined great divergence of form. Equally far was it
from being the only image which the inventive fancy hit upon to express
the action of the winds as the rain bringers. They too were many, but
may all be included in a twofold division, either as the winds were
supposed to flow in from the corners of the earth or outward from its
central point. Thus they are spoken of under such figures as four
tortoises at the angles of the earthly plane who vomit forth the
rains,[85-1] or four gigantic caryatides who sustain the heavens and
blow the winds from their capacious lungs,[85-2] or more frequently as
four rivers flowing from the broken calabash on high, as the Haitians,
draining the waters of the primitive world,[85-3] as four animals who
bring from heaven the maize,[85-4] as four messengers whom the god of
air sends forth, or under a coarser trope as the spittle he ejects
toward the cardinal points which is straightway transformed into wild
rice, tobacco, and maize.[85-5]
Constantly from the palace of the lord of the world, seated on the high
hill of heaven, blow four winds, pour four streams, refreshing and
fecundating the earth. Therefore, in the myths of ancient Iran there is
mention of a celestial fountain, Arduisur, the virgin daughter of
Ormuzd, whence four all nourishing rivers roll their waves toward the
cardinal points; therefore the Thibetans believe that on the sacred
mountain Himavata grows the tree of life Zampu, from whose foot once
more flow the waters of life in four streams to the four quarters of the
world; and therefore it is that the same tale is told by the Chinese of
the mountain Kouantun, by the Brahmins of Mount Meru, and by the Parsees
of Mount Albors in the Caucasus.[85-6] Each nation called their sacred
mountain "the navel of the earth;" for not only was it the supposed
centre of the habitable world, but through it, as the foetus through
the umbilical cord, the earth drew her increase. Beyond all other spots
were they accounted fertile, scenes of joyous plaisance, of repose, and
eternal youth; there rippled the waters of health, there blossomed the
tree of life; they were fit trysting spots of gods and men. Hence came
the tales of the terrestrial paradise, the rose garden of Feridun, the
Eden gardens of the world. The name shows the origin, for paradise (in
Sanscrit, _para desa_) means literally _high land_. There, in the
unanimous opinion of the Orient, dwelt once in unalloyed delight the
first of men; thence driven by untoward fate, no more anywhere could
they find the path thither. Some thought that in the north among the
fortunate Hyperboreans, others that in the mountains of the moon where
dwelt the long lived Ethiopians, and others again that in the furthest
east, underneath the dawn, was situate the seat of pristine happiness;
but many were of opinion that somewhere in the western sea, beyond the
pillars of Hercules and the waters of the Outer Ocean, lay the garden of
the Hesperides, the Islands of the Blessed, the earthly Elysion.
It is not without design that I recall this early dream of the religious
fancy. When Christopher Columbus, fired by the hope of discovering this
terrestrial paradise, broke the enchantment of the cloudy sea and found
a new world, it was but to light upon the same race of men, deluding
themselves with the same hope of earthly joys, the same fiction of a
long lost garden of their youth. They told him that still to the west,
amid the mountains of Paria, was a spot whence flowed mighty streams
over all lands, and which in sooth was the spot he sought;[87-1] and
when that baseless fabric had vanished, there still remained the fabled
island of Boiuca, or Bimini, hundreds of leagues north of Hispaniola,
whose glebe was watered by a fountain of such noble virtue as to restore
youth and vigor to the worn out and the aged.[87-2] This was no fiction
of the natives to rid themselves of burdensome guests. Long before the
white man approached their shores, families had started from Cuba,
Yucatan, and Honduras in search of these renovating waters, and not
returning, were supposed by their kindred to have been detained by the
delights of that enchanted land, and to be revelling in its seductive
joys, forgetful of former ties.[87-3]
Perhaps it was but another rendering of the same belief that pointed to
the impenetrable forests of the Orinoko, the ancient homes of the Caribs
and Arowacks, and there located the famous realm of El Dorado with its
imperial capital Manoa, abounding in precious metals and all manner of
gems, peopled by a happy race, and governed by an equitable ruler.
The Aztec priests never chanted more regretful dirges than when they
sang of Tulan, the cradle of their race, where once it dwelt in peaceful
indolent happiness, whose groves were filled with birds of sweet voices
and gay plumage, whose generous soil brought forth spontaneously maize,
cocoa, aromatic gums, and fragrant flowers. "Land of riches and plenty,
where the gourds grow an arm's length across, where an ear of corn is a
load for a stout man, and its stalks are as high as trees; land where
the cotton ripens of its own accord of all rich tints; land abounding
with limpid emeralds, turquoises, gold, and silver."[88-1] This land was
also called Tlalocan, from Tlaloc, the god of rain, who there had his
dwelling place, and Tlapallan, the land of colors, or the red land, for
the hues of the sky at sunrise floated over it. Its inhabitants were
surnamed children of the air, or of Quetzalcoatl, and from its centre
rose the holy mountain Tonacatepec, the mountain of our life or
subsistence. Its supposed location was in the east, whence in that
country blow the winds that bring mild rains, says Sahagun, and that
missionary was himself asked, as coming from the east, whether his home
was in Tlapallan; more definitely by some it was situated among the
lofty peaks on the frontiers of Guatemala, and all the great rivers that
water the earth were supposed to have their sources there.[88-2] But
here, as elsewhere, its site was not determined. "There is a Tulan,"
says an ancient authority, "where the sun rises, and there is another in
the land of shades, and another where the sun reposes, and thence came
we; and still another where the sun reposes, and there dwells
God."[89-1]
The myth of the Quiches but changes the name of this pleasant land. With
them it was _Pan-paxil-pa-cayala_, where the waters divide in falling,
or between the waters parcelled out and mucky. This was "an excellent
land, full of pleasant things, where was store of white corn and yellow
corn, where one could not count the fruits, nor estimate the quantity of
honey and food." Over it ruled the lord of the air, and from it the
four sacred animals carried the corn to make the flesh of men.[90-1]
Once again, in the legends of the Mixtecas, we hear the old story
repeated of the garden where the first two brothers dwelt. It lay
between a meadow and that lofty peak which supports the heavens and the
palaces of the gods. "Many trees were there, such as yield flowers and
roses, very luscious fruits, divers herbs, and aromatic spices." The
names of the brothers were the Wind of Nine Serpents and the Wind of
Nine Caverns. The first was as an eagle, and flew aloft over the waters
that poured around their enchanted garden; the second was as a serpent
with wings, who proceeded with such velocity that he pierced rocks and
walls. They were too swift to be seen by the sharpest eye, and were one
near as they passed, he was only aware of a whisper and a rustling like
that of the wind in the leaves.[90-2]
Wherever, in short, the lust of gold lured the early adventurers, they
were told of some nation a little further on, some wealthy and
prosperous land, abundant and fertile, satisfying the desire of the
heart. It was sometimes deceit, and it was sometimes the credited
fiction of the earthly paradise, that in all ages has with a promise of
perfect joy consoled the aching heart of man.
It is instructive to study the associations that naturally group
themselves around each of the cardinal points, and watch how these are
mirrored on the surface of language, and have directed the current of
thought. Jacob Grimm has performed this task with fidelity and beauty as
regards the Aryan race, but the means are wanting to apply his searching
method to the indigenous tongues of America. Enough if in general terms
their mythological value be determined.
When the day begins, man wakes from his slumbers, faces the rising sun,
and prays. The east is before him; by it he learns all other directions;
it is to him what the north is to the needle; with reference to it he
assigns in his mind the position of the three other cardinal
points.[91-1] There is the starting place of the celestial fires, the
home of the sun, the womb of the morning. It represents in space the
beginning of things in time, and as the bright and glorious creatures of
the sky come forth thence, man conceits that his ancestors also in
remote ages wandered from the orient; there in the opinion of many in
both the old and new world was the cradle of the race; there in Aztec
legend was the fabled land of Tlapallan, and the wind from the east was
called the wind of Paradise, Tlalocavitl.
From this direction came, according to the almost unanimous opinion of
the Indian tribes, those hero gods who taught them arts and religion,
thither they returned, and from thence they would again appear to resume
their ancient sway. As the dawn brings light, and with light is
associated in every human mind the ideas of knowledge, safety,
protection, majesty, divinity, as it dispels the spectres of night, as
it defines the cardinal points, and brings forth the sun and the day,
it occupied the primitive mind to an extent that can hardly be magnified
beyond the truth. It is in fact the central figure in most natural
religions.
The west, as the grave of the heavenly luminaries, or rather as their
goal and place of repose, brings with it thoughts of sleep, of death, of
tranquillity, of rest from labor. When the evening of his days was come,
when his course was run, and man had sunk from sight, he was supposed to
follow the sun and find some spot of repose for his tired soul in the
distant west. There, with general consent, the tribes north of the Gulf
of Mexico supposed the happy hunting grounds; there, taught by the same
analogy, the ancient Aryans placed the Nerriti, the exodus, the land of
the dead. "The old notion among us," said on one occasion a
distinguished chief of the Creek nation, "is that when we die, the
spirit goes the way the sun goes, to the west, and there joins its
family and friends who went before it."[92-1]
In the northern hemisphere the shadows fall to the north, thence blow
cold and furious winds, thence come the snow and early thunder. Perhaps
all its primitive inhabitants, of whatever race, thought it the seat of
the mighty gods.[92-2] A floe of ice in the Arctic Sea was the home of
the guardian spirit of the Algonkins;[92-3] on a mountain near the north
star the Dakotas thought Heyoka dwelt who rules the seasons; and the
realm of Mictla, the Aztec god of death, lay where the shadows pointed.
From that cheerless abode his sceptre reached over all creatures, even
the gods themselves, for sooner or later all must fall before him. The
great spirit of the dead, said the Ottawas, lives in the dark
north,[93-1] and there, in the opinion of the Monquis of California,
resided their chief god, Gumongo.[93-2]
Unfortunately the makers of vocabularies have rarely included the words
north, south, east, and west, in their lists, and the methods of
expressing these ideas adopted by the Indians can only be partially
discovered. The east and west were usually called from the rising and
setting of the sun as in our words orient and occident, but occasionally
from traditional notions. The Mayas named the west the greater, the east
the lesser debarkation; believing that while their culture hero Zamna
came from the east with a few attendants, the mass of the population
arrived from the opposite direction.[93-3] The Aztecs spoke of the east
as "the direction of Tlalocan," the terrestrial paradise. But for north
and south there were no such natural appellations, and consequently the
greatest diversity is exhibited in the plans adopted to express them.
The north in the Caddo tongue is "the place of cold," in Dakota "the
situation of the pines," in Creek "the abode of the (north) star," in
Algonkin "the home of the soul," in Aztec "the direction of Mictla" the
realm of death, in Quiche and Quichua, "to the right hand;"[93-4] while
for the south we find such terms as in Dakota "the downward direction,"
in Algonkin "the place of warmth," in Quiche "to the left hand," while
among the Eskimos, who look in this direction for the sun, its name
implies "before one," just as does the Hebrew word _kedem_, which,
however, this more southern tribe applied to the east.
We can trace the sacredness of the number four in other curious and
unlooked-for developments. Multiplied into the number of the
fingers--the arithmetic of every child and ignorant man--or by adding
together the first four members of its arithmetical series (4 + 8 + 12 +
16), it gives the number forty. This was taken as a limit to the sacred
dances of some Indian tribes, and by others as the highest number of
chants to be employed in exorcising diseases. Consequently it came to be
fixed as a limit in exercises of preparation or purification. The
females of the Orinoko tribes fasted forty days before marriage, and
those of the upper Mississippi were held unclean the same length of time
after childbirth; such was the term of the Prince of Tezcuco's fast when
he wished an heir to his throne, and such the number of days the Mandans
supposed it required to wash clean the world at the deluge.[94-1]
No one is ignorant how widely this belief was prevalent in the old
world, nor how the quadrigesimal is still a sacred term with some
denominations of Christianity. But a more striking parallelism awaits
us. The symbol that beyond all others has fascinated the human mind, THE
CROSS, finds here its source and meaning. Scholars have pointed out its
sacredness in many natural religions, and have reverently accepted it as
a mystery, or offered scores of conflicting and often debasing
interpretations. It is but another symbol of the four cardinal points,
the four winds of heaven. This will luminously appear by a study of its
use and meaning in America.
The Catholic missionaries found it was no new object of adoration to the
red race, and were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious
labors of Saint Thomas or the sacrilegious subtlety of Satan. It was the
central object in the great temple of Cozumel, and is still preserved on
the bas-reliefs of the ruined city of Palenque. From time immemorial it
had received the prayers and sacrifices of the Aztecs and Toltecs, and
was suspended as an august emblem from the walls of temples in Popoyan
and Cundinamarca. In the Mexican tongue it bore the significant and
worthy name "Tree of Our Life," or "Tree of our Flesh" (Tonacaquahuitl).
It represented the god of rains and of health, and this was everywhere
its simple meaning. "Those of Yucatan," say the chroniclers, "prayed to
the cross as the god of rains when they needed water." The Aztec goddess
of rains bore one in her hand, and at the feast celebrated to her honor
in the early spring victims were nailed to a cross and shot with arrows.
Quetzalcoatl, god of the winds, bore as his sign of office "a mace like
the cross of a bishop;" his robe was covered with them strown like
flowers, and its adoration was throughout connected with his
worship.[96-1] When the Muyscas would sacrifice to the goddess of waters
they extended cords across the tranquil depths of some lake, thus
forming a gigantic cross, and at their point of intersection threw in
their offerings of gold, emeralds, and precious oils.[96-2] The arms of
the cross were designed to point to the cardinal points and represent
the four winds, the rain bringers. To confirm this explanation, let us
have recourse to the simpler ceremonies of the less cultivated tribes,
and see the transparent meaning of the symbol as they employed it.
When the rain maker of the Lenni Lenape would exert his power, he
retired to some secluded spot and drew upon the earth the figure of a
cross (its arms toward the cardinal points?), placed upon it a piece of
tobacco, a gourd, a bit of some red stuff, and commenced to cry aloud to
the spirits of the rains.[96-3] The Creeks at the festival of the Busk,
celebrated, as we have seen, to the four winds, and according to their
legends instituted by them, commenced with making the new fire. The
manner of this was "to place four logs in the centre of the square, end
to end, forming a cross, the outer ends pointing to the cardinal points;
in the centre of the cross the new fire is made."[97-1]
As the emblem of the winds who dispense the fertilizing showers it is
emphatically the tree of our life, our subsistence, and our health. It
never had any other meaning in America, and if, as has been said,[97-2]
the tombs of the Mexicans were cruciform, it was perhaps with reference
to a resurrection and a future life as portrayed under this symbol,
indicating that the buried body would rise by the action of the four
spirits of the world, as the buried seed takes on a new existence when
watered by the vernal showers. It frequently recurs in the ancient
Egyptian writings, where it is interpreted _life_; doubtless, could we
trace the hieroglyph to its source, it would likewise prove to be
derived from the four winds.
While thus recognizing the natural origin of this consecrated symbol,
while discovering that it is based on the sacredness of numbers, and
this in turn on the structure and necessary relations of the human
body, thus disowning the meaningless mysticism that Joseph de Maistre
and his disciples have advocated, let us on the other hand be equally on
our guard against accepting the material facts which underlie these
beliefs as their deepest foundation and their exhaustive explanation.
That were but withered fruit for our labors, and it might well be asked,
where is here the divine idea said to be dimly prefigured in mythology?
The universal belief in the sacredness of numbers is an instinctive
faith in an immortal truth; it is a direct perception of the soul, akin
to that which recognizes a God. The laws of chemical combination, of the
various modes of motion, of all organic growth, show that simple
numerical relations govern all the properties and are inherent to the
very constitution of matter; more marvellous still, the most recent and
severe inductions of physicists show that precisely those two numbers on
whose symbolical value much of the edifice of ancient mythology was
erected, the _four_ and the _three_, regulate the molecular distribution
of matter and preside over the symmetrical development of organic forms.
This asks no faith, but only knowledge; it is science, not revelation.
In view of such facts is it presumptuous to predict that experiment
itself will prove the truth of Kepler's beautiful saying: "The universe
is a harmonious whole, the soul of which is God; numbers, figures, the
stars, all nature, indeed, are in unison with the mysteries of
religion"?
FOOTNOTES:
[67-1] Buckingham Smith, _Gram. Notices of the Heve Language_, p. 26
(Shea's Lib. Am. Linguistics).
[68-1] I refer to the four "ultimate elementary particles" of
Empedocles. The number was sacred to Hermes, and lay at the root of the
physical philosophy of Pythagoras. The quotation in the text is from the
"Golden Verses," given in Passow's lexicon under the word ~tetraktys:
nai ma ton hametera psycha paradonta tetraktyn, pagan aenaou physeos~.
"The most sacred of all things," said this famous teacher, "is Number;
and next to it, that which gives Names;" a truth that the lapse of three
thousand years is just enabling us to appreciate.
[68-2] Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios_, etc., p. 5.
[68-3] See Sepp, _Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung fuer das Christenthum_,
i. p. 464 sqq., a work full of learning, but written in the wildest vein
of Joseph de Maistre's school of Romanizing mythology.
[69-1] Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, ii. p. 227, _Le Livre Sacre des
Quiches_, introd. p. ccxlii. The four provinces of Peru were Anti, Cunti,
Chincha, and Colla. The meaning of these names has been lost, but to
repeat them, says La Vega, was the same as to use our words, east, west,
north, and south (_Hist. des Incas_, lib. ii. cap. 11).
[69-2] Humboldt, _Polit. Essay on New Spain_, ii. p. 44.
[70-1] This custom has been often mentioned among the Iroquois.
Algonkins, Dakotas, Creeks, Natchez, Araucanians, and other tribes.
Nuttall points out its recurrence among the Tartars of Siberia also.
(_Travels_, p. 175.)
[71-1] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, v. pp. 424 et seq.
[71-2] _Letters on the North American Indians_, vol. i., Letter 22.
[71-3] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, iv. p. 643 sq. "Four is their sacred
number," says Mr. Pond (p. 646). Their neighbors, the Pawnees, though not
the most remote affinity can be detected between their languages,
coincide with them in this sacred number, and distinctly identified it
with the cardinal points. See De Smet, _Oregon Missions_, pp. 360, 361.
[72-1] Benj. Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, pp. 75, 78:
Savannah, 1848. The description he gives of the ceremonies of the Creeks
was transcribed word for word and published in the first volume of the
American Antiquarian Society's Transactions as of the Shawnees of Ohio.
This literary theft has not before been noticed.
[72-2] Palacios, _Des. de la Prov. de Guatemala_, pp. 31, 32, ed.
Ternaux-Compans.
[73-1] All familiar with Mexican antiquity will recall many such
examples. I may particularly refer to Kingsborough, _Antiqs. of Mexico_,
v. p. 480, Ternaux-Compans' _Recueil de pieces rel. a la Conq. du
Mexique_, pp. 307, 310, and Gama, _Des. de las dos Piedras que se
hallaron en la plaza principal de Mexico_, ii. sec. 126 (Mexico, 1832),
who gives numerous instances beyond those I have cited, and directs with
emphasis the attention of the reader to this constant repetition.
[74-1] Albert Gallatin, _Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc._, ii. p. 316, from the
Codex Vaticanus, No. 3738.
[75-1] Riggs, _Gram. and Dict. of the Dakota Lang._, s. v.
[75-2] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, in Kingsborough, v. p. 375.
[76-1] Egede, _Nachrichten von Groenland_, pp. 137, 173, 285. (Kopenhagen,
1790.)
[77-1] Schoolcraft, _Algic Researches_, i. p. 139, and _Indian Tribes_,
iv. p. 229.
[78-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, pp. 81, 82, and Blomes,
_Acc. of his Majesty's Colonies_, p. 156, London, 1687, in Castiglioni,
_Viaggi nelle Stati Uniti_, i. p. 294.
[78-2] Peter Martyr, _De Reb. Ocean._, Dec. i. lib. ix. The story is also
told more at length by the Brother Romain Pane, in the essay on the
ancient histories of the natives he drew up by the order of Columbus. It
has been reprinted with notes by the Abbe Brasseur, Paris, 1864, p. 438
sqq.
[79-1] Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, iv. p. 89.
[79-2] Brasseur, _Le Liv. Sac._, Introd., p. cxvii.
[80-1] Diego de Landa, _Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan_, pp. 160, 206, 208,
ed. Brasseur. The learned editor, in a note to p. 208, states erroneously
the disposition of the colors, as may be seen by comparing the document
on p. 395. This dedication of colors to the cardinal points is universal
in Central Asia. The geographical names of the Red Sea, the Black Sea,
the Yellow Sea or Persian Gulf, and the White Sea or the Mediterranean,
are derived from this association. The cities of China, many of them at
least, have their gates which open toward the cardinal points painted of
certain colors, and precisely these four, the white, the black, the red,
and the yellow, are those which in Oriental myth the mountain in the
centre of Paradise shows to the different cardinal points. (Sepp,
_Heidenthum und Christenthum_, i. p. 177.) The coincidence furnishes food
for reflection.
[81-1] _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_, pp. 203-5, note.
[82-1] The analogy is remarkable between these and the "quatre actes de
la puissance generatrice jusqu'a l'entier developpement des corps
organises," portrayed by four globes in the Mycenean bas-reliefs. See
Guigniaut, _Religions de l'Antiquite_, i. p. 374. It were easy to
multiply the instances of such parallelism in the growth of religious
thought in the Old and New World, but I designedly refrain from doing so.
They have already given rise to false theories enough, and moreover my
purpose in this work is not "comparative mythology."
[83-1] Mueller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, p. 105, after Strahlheim, who is,
however, no authority.
[83-2] Mueller, _ubi supra_, pp. 308 sqq., gives a good resume of the
different versions of the myth of the four brothers in Peru.
[83-3] The Tupis of Brazil claim a descent from four brothers, three of
whose names are given by Hans Staden, a prisoner among them about 1550,
as Krimen, Hermittan, and Coem; the latter he explains to mean the
morning, the east (_le matin_, printed by mistake _le mutin_, _Relation
de Hans Staden de Homberg_, p. 274, ed. Ternaux-Compans, compare Dias,
_Dicc. da Lingua Tupy_, p. 47). Their southern relatives, the Guaranis of
Paraguay, also spoke of the four brothers and gave two of their names as
Tupi and Guarani, respectively parents of the tribes called after them
(Guevara, _Hist. del Paraguay_, lib. i. cap. ii., in Waitz). The fourfold
division of the Muyscas of Bogota was traced back to four chieftains
created by their hero god Nemqueteba (A. von Humboldt, _Vues des
Cordilleres_, p. 246). The Nahuas of Mexico much more frequently spoke of
themselves as descendants of four or eight original families than of
seven (Humboldt, _ibid._, p. 317, and others in Waitz, _Anthropologie_,
iv. pp. 36, 37). The Sacs or Sauks of the Upper Mississippi supposed that
two men and two women were first created, and from these four sprang all
men (Morse, _Rep. on Ind. Affairs_, App. p. 138). The Ottoes, Pawnees,
"and other Indians," had a tradition that from eight ancestors all
nations and races were descended (Id., p. 249). This duplication of the
number probably arose from assigning the first four men four women as
wives. The division into clans or totems which prevails in most northern
tribes rests theoretically on descent from different ancestors. The
Shawnees and Natchez were divided into four such clans, the Choctaws,
Navajos, and Iroquois into eight, thus proving that in those tribes also
the myth I have been discussing was recognized.
[85-1] Mandans in Catlin, _Letts. and Notes_, i. p. 181.
[85-2] The Mayas, Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. 8.
[85-3] The Navajos, Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, iv. p. 89.
[85-4] The Quiches, Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios_, p. 79.
[85-5] The Iroquois, Mueller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, p. 109.
[85-6] For these myths see Sepp, _Das Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung fuer
das Christenthum_, i. p. 111 sqq. The interpretation is of course my own.
[87-1] Peter Martyr, _De Reb. Ocean._, Dec. iii., lib. ix. p. 195; Colon,
1574.
[87-2] Ibid., Dec. iii., lib. x. p. 202.
[87-3] Florida was also long supposed to be the site of this wondrous
spring, and it is notorious that both Juan Ponce de Leon and De Soto had
some lurking hope of discovering it in their expeditions thither. I have
examined the myth somewhat at length in _Notes on the Floridian
Peninsula, its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities_, pp. 99,
100: Philadelphia, 1859.
[88-1] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. iii. cap. iii.
[88-2] _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_, Introd., p. clviii.
[89-1] Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan, in Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, i. p.
167. The derivation of Tulan, or Tula, is extremely uncertain. The Abbe
Brasseur sees in it the _ultima Thule_ of the ancient geographers, which
suits his idea of early American history. Hernando De Soto found a
village of this name on the Mississippi, or near it. But on looking into
Gallatin's vocabularies, _tulla_ turns out to be the Choctaw word for
_stone_, and as De Soto was then in the Choctaw country, the coincidence
is explained at once. Buschmann, who spells it _Tollan_, takes it from
_tolin_, a rush, and translates, _juncetum_, _Ort der Binsen. Ueber die
Aztekischen Orstnamen_,[TN-2] p. 682. Those who have attempted to make
history from these mythological fables have been much puzzled about the
location of this mystic land. Humboldt has placed it on the northwest
coast, Cabrera at Palenque, Clavigero north of Anahuac, etc. etc. Aztlan,
literally, the White Land, is another name of wholly mythical purport,
which it would be equally vain to seek on the terrestrial globe. In the
extract in the text, the word translated God is _Qabavil_, an old word
for the highest god, either from a root meaning to open, to disclose, or
from one of similar form signifying to wonder, to marvel; literally,
therefore, the Revealer, or the Wondrous One (_Vocab. de la Lengua
Quiche_, p. 209: Paris, 1862).
[90-1] Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios_, p. 80, _Le Livre Sacre_, p. 195.
[90-2] Garcia, _Origen de los Indios_, lib. iv. cap. 4.
[91-1] Compare the German expression _sich orientiren_, to right oneself
by the east, to understand one's surroundings.
[92-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, p. 80.
[92-2] See Jacob Grimm, _Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache_, p. 681
[92-3] De Smet, Oregon Missions, p. 352.
[93-1] Bressani, _Relation Abrege_, p. 93.
[93-2] Venegas, _Hist. of California_, i. p. 91: London, 1759.
[93-3] Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. iii.
[93-4] Alexander von Humboldt has asserted that the Quichuas had other
and very circumstantial terms to express the cardinal points drawn from
the positions of the son (_Ansichten der Natur_, ii. p. 368). But the
distinguished naturalist overlooked the literal meaning of the phrases he
quotes for north and south, _intip chaututa chayananpata_ and _intip
chaupunchau chayananpata_, literally, the sun arriving toward the
midnight, the sun arriving toward the midday. These are evidently
translations of the Spanish _hacia la media noche_, _hacia el medio dia_,
for they could not have originated among a people under or south of the
equatorial line.
[94-1] Catlin, _Letters and Notes_, i., Letter 22; La Hontan, _Memoires_,
ii. p. 151; Gumilla, _Hist. del Orinoco_, p. 159
[96-1] On the worship of the cross in Mexico and Yucatan and its
invariable meaning as representing the gods of rain, consult
Ixtlilxochitl, _Hist. des Chichimeques_, p. 5; Sahagun, _Hist. de la
Nueva Espana_, lib. i. cap. ii.; Garcia, _Or. de los Indios_, lib. iii.
cap. vi. p. 109; Palacios, _Des. de la Prov. de Guatemala_, p. 29;
Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. ix.; Villagutierre
Sotomayor, _Hist. de el Itza y de el Lacandon_, lib. iii. cap. 8; and
many others might be mentioned.
[96-2] Rivero and Tschudi, _Peruvian Antiquities_, p. 162, after J.
Acosta.
[96-3] Loskiel, _Ges. der Miss. der evang. Brueder_, p. 60.
[97-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, p. 75. Lapham and Pidgeon
mention that in the State of Wisconsin many low mounds are found in the
form of a cross with the arms directed to the cardinal points. They
contain no remains. Were they not altars built to the Four Winds? In the
mythology of the Dakotas, who inhabited that region, the winds were
always conceived as birds, and for the cross they have a native name
literally signifying "the musquito hawk spread out" (Riggs, _Dict. of the
Dakota_, s. v.). Its Maya name is _vahom che_, the tree erected or set
up, the adjective being drawn from the military language and implying as
a defence or protection, as the warrior lifts his lance or shield (Landa,
_Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan_, p. 65).
[97-2] Squier, _The Serpent Symbol in America_, p. 98.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SYMBOLS OF THE BIRD AND THE SERPENT.
Relations of man to the lower animals.--Two of these, the BIRD and
the SERPENT, chosen as symbols beyond all others.--The Bird
throughout America the symbol of the Clouds and Winds.--Meaning of
certain species.--The symbolic meaning of the Serpent derived from
its mode of locomotion, its poisonous bite, and its power of
charming.--Usually the symbol of the Lightning and the Waters.--The
Rattlesnake the symbolic species in America.--The war charm.--The
Cross of Palenque.--The god of riches.--Both symbols devoid of
moral significance.
Those stories which the Germans call _Thierfabeln_, wherein the actors
are different kinds of brutes, seem to have a particular relish for
children and uncultivated nations. Who cannot recall with what delight
he nourished his childish fancy on the pranks of Reynard the Fox, or the
tragic adventures of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf? Every nation
has a congeries of such tales, and it is curious to mark how the same
animal reappears with the same imputed physiognomy in all of them. The
fox is always cunning, the wolf ravenous, the owl wise, and the ass
foolish. The question has been raised whether such traits were at first
actually ascribed to animals, or whether their introduction in story was
intended merely as an agreeable figure of speech for classes of men. We
cannot doubt but that the former was the case. Going back to the dawn of
civilization, we find these relations not as amusing fictions, but as
myths, embodying religious tenets, and the brute heroes held up as the
ancestors of mankind, even as rightful claimants of man's prayers and
praises.
Man, the paragon of animals, praying to the beast, is a spectacle so
humiliating that, for the sake of our common humanity, we may seek the
explanation of it least degrading to the dignity of our race. We must
remember that as a hunter the primitive man was always matched against
the wild creatures of the woods, so superior to him in their dumb
certainty of instinct, their swift motion, their muscular force, their
permanent and sufficient clothing. Their ways were guided by a wit
beyond his divination, and they gained a living with little toil or
trouble. They did not mind the darkness so terrible to him, but through
the night called one to the other in a tongue whose meaning he could not
fathom, but which, he doubted not, was as full of purport as his own. He
did not recognize in himself those god-like qualities destined to endow
him with the royalty of the world, while far more clearly than we do he
saw the sly and strange faculties of his antagonists. They were to him,
therefore, not inferiors, but equals--even superiors. He doubted not
that once upon a time he had possessed their instinct, they his
language, but that some necromantic spell had been flung on them both to
keep them asunder. None but a potent sorcerer could break this charm,
but such an one could understand the chants of birds and the howls of
savage beasts, and on occasion transform himself into one or another
animal, and course the forest, the air, or the waters, as he saw fit.
Therefore, it was not the beast that he worshipped, but that share of
the omnipresent deity which he thought he perceived under its
form.[101-1]
Beyond all others, two subdivisions of the animal kingdom have so
riveted the attention of men by their unusual powers, and enter so
frequently into the myths of every nation of the globe, that a right
understanding of their symbolic value is an essential preliminary to the
discussion of the divine legends. They are the BIRD and the SERPENT. We
shall not go amiss if we seek the reasons of their pre-eminence in the
facility with which their peculiarities offered sensuous images under
which to convey the idea of divinity, ever present in the soul of man,
ever striving at articulate expression.
The bird has the incomprehensible power of flight; it floats in the
atmosphere, it rides on the winds, it soars toward heaven where dwell
the gods; its plumage is stained with the hues of the rainbow and the
sunset; its song was man's first hint of music; it spurns the clouds
that impede his footsteps, and flies proudly over the mountains and
moors where he toils wearily along. He sees no more enviable creature;
he conceives the gods and angels must also have wings; and pleases
himself with the fancy that he, too, some day will shake off this coil
of clay, and rise on pinions to the heavenly mansions. All living
beings, say the Eskimos, have the faculty of soul (_tarrak_), but
especially the birds.[101-2] As messengers from the upper world and
interpreters of its decrees, the flight and the note of birds have ever
been anxiously observed as omens of grave import. "There is one bird
especially," remarks the traveller Coreal, of the natives of Brazil,
"which they regard as of good augury. Its mournful chant is heard rather
by night than day. The savages say it is sent by their deceased friends
to bring them news from the other world, and to encourage them against
their enemies."[102-1] In Peru and in Mexico there was a College of
Augurs, corresponding in purpose to the auspices of ancient Rome, who
practised no other means of divination than watching the course and
professing to interpret the songs of fowls. So natural and so general is
such a superstition, and so wide-spread is the respect it still obtains
in civilized and Christian lands, that it is not worth while to summon
witnesses to show that it prevailed universally among the red race also.
What imprinted it with redoubled force on their imagination was the
common belief that birds were not only divine nuncios, but the visible
spirits of their departed friends. The Powhatans held that a certain
small wood bird received the souls of their princes at death, and they
refrained religiously from doing it harm;[102-2] while the Aztecs and
various other nations thought that all good people, as a reward of
merit, were metamorphosed at the close of life into feathered songsters
of the grove, and in this form passed a certain term in the umbrageous
bowers of Paradise.
But the usual meaning of the bird as a symbol looks to a different
analogy--to that which appears in such familiar expressions as "the
wings of the wind," "the flying clouds." Like the wind, the bird sweeps
through the aerial spaces, sings in the forests, and rustles on its
course; like the cloud, it floats in mid-air and casts its shadow on the
earth; like the lightning, it darts from heaven to earth to strike its
unsuspecting prey. These tropes were truths to savage nations, and led
on by that law of language which forced them to conceive everything as
animate or inanimate, itself the product of a deeper law of thought
which urges us to ascribe life to whatever has motion, they found no
animal so appropriate for their purpose here as the bird. Therefore the
Algonkins say that birds always make the winds, that they create the
water spouts, and that the clouds are the spreading and agitation of
their wings;[103-1] the Navajos, that at each cardinal point stands a
white swan, who is the spirit of the blasts which blow from its
dwelling; and the Dakotas, that in the west is the house of the
Wakinyan, the Flyers, the breezes that send the storms. So, also, they
frequently explain the thunder as the sound of the cloud-bird flapping
his wings, and the lightning as the fire that flashes from his tracks,
like the sparks which the buffalo scatters when he scours over a stony
plain.[103-2] The thunder cloud was also a bird to the Caribs, and they
imagined it produced the lightning in true Carib fashion by blowing it
through a hollow reed, just as they to this day hurl their poisoned
darts.[104-1] Tupis, Iroquois, Athapascas, for certain, perhaps all the
families of the red race, were the subject pursued, partook of this
persuasion; among them all it would probably be found that the same
figures of speech were used in comparing clouds and winds with the
feathered species as among us, with however this most significant
difference, that whereas among us they are figures and nothing more, to
them they expressed literal facts.
How important a symbol did they thus become! For the winds, the clouds,
producing the thunder and the changes that take place in the
ever-shifting panorama of the sky, the rain bringers, lords of the
seasons, and not this only, but the primary type of the soul, the life,
the breath of man and the world, these in their role in mythology are
second to nothing. Therefore as the symbol of these august powers, as
messenger of the gods, and as the embodiment of departed spirits, no one
will be surprised if they find the bird figure most prominently in the
myths of the red race.
Sometimes some particular species seems to have been chosen as most
befitting these dignified attributes. No citizen of the United States
will be apt to assert that their instinct led the indigenes of our
territory astray when they chose with nigh unanimous consent the great
American eagle as that fowl beyond all others proper to typify the
supreme control and the most admirable qualities. Its feathers composed
the war flag of the Creeks, and its images carved in wood or its stuffed
skin surmounted their council lodges (Bartram); none but an approved
warrior dare wear it among the Cherokees (Timberlake); and the Dakotas
allowed such an honor only to him who had first touched the corpse of
the common foe (De Smet). The Natchez and Akanzas seem to have paid it
even religious honors, and to have installed it in their most sacred
shrines (Sieur de Tonty, Du Pratz); and very clearly it was not so much
for ornament as for a mark of dignity and a recognized sign of worth
that its plumes were so highly prized. The natives of Zuni, in New
Mexico, employed four of its feathers to represent the four winds in
their invocations for rain (Whipple), and probably it was the eagle
which a tribe in Upper California (the Acagchemem) worshipped under the
name Panes. Father Geronimo Boscana describes it as a species of
vulture, and relates that one of them was immolated yearly, with solemn
ceremony, in the temple of each village. Not a drop of blood was
spilled, and the body burned. Yet with an amount of faith that staggered
even the Romanist, the natives maintained and believed that it was the
same individual bird they sacrificed each year; more than this, that the
same bird was slain by each of the villages![105-1]
The owl was regarded by Aztecs, Quiches, Mayas, Peruvians, Araucanians,
and Algonkins as sacred to the lord of the dead. "The Owl" was one of
the names of the Mexican Pluto, whose realm was in the north,[106-1] and
the wind from that quarter was supposed by the Chipeways to be made by
the owl as the south by the butterfly.[106-2] As the bird of night, it
was the fit emissary of him who rules the darkness of the grave.
Something in the looks of the creature as it sapiently stares and blinks
in the light, or perhaps that it works while others sleep, got for it
the character of wisdom. So the Creek priests carried with them as the
badge of their learned profession the stuffed skin of one of these
birds, thus modestly hinting their erudite turn of mind,[106-3] and the
culture hero of the Monquis of California was represented, like Pallas
Athene, having one as his inseparable companion (Venegas).
As the associate of the god of light and air, and as the antithesis
therefore of the owl, the Aztecs reverenced a bird called _quetzal_,
which I believe is a species of parroquet. Its plumage is of a bright
green hue, and was prized extravagantly as a decoration. It was one of
the symbols and part of the name of Quetzalcoatl, their mythical
civilizer, and the prince of all sorts of singing birds, myriads of whom
were fabled to accompany him on his journeys.
The tender and hallowed associations that have so widely shielded the
dove from harm, which for instance Xenophon mentions among the ancient
Persians, were not altogether unknown to the tribes of the New World.
Neither the Hurons nor Mandans would kill them, for they believed they
were inhabited by the souls of the departed,[107-1] and it is said, but
on less satisfactory authority, that they enjoyed similar immunity among
the Mexicans. Their soft and plaintive note and sober russet hue widely
enlisted the sympathy of man, and linked them with his more tender
feelings.
"As wise as the serpent, as harmless as the dove," is an antithesis that
might pass current in any human language. They are the emblems of
complementary, often contrasted qualities. Of all animals, the serpent
is the most mysterious. No wonder it possessed the fancy of the
observant child of nature. Alone of creatures it swiftly progresses
without feet, fins, or wings. "There be three things which are too
wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not," said wise King Solomon;
and the chief of them were, "the way of an eagle in the air, the way of
a serpent upon a rock."
Its sinuous course is like to nothing so much as that of a winding
river, which therefore we often call serpentine. So did the Indians.
Kennebec, a stream in Maine, in the Algonkin means snake, and Antietam,
the creek in Maryland of tragic celebrity, in an Iroquois dialect has
the same significance. How easily would savages, construing the figure
literally, make the serpent a river or water god! Many species being
amphibious would confirm the idea. A lake watered by innumerable
tortuous rills wriggling into it, is well calculated for the fabled
abode of the king of the snakes. Thus doubtless it happened that both
Algonkins and Iroquois had a myth that in the great lakes dwelt a
monster serpent, of irascible temper, who unless appeased by meet
offerings raised a tempest or broke the ice beneath the feet of those
venturing on his domain, and swallowed them down.[108-1]
The rattlesnake was the species almost exclusively honored by the red
race. It is slow to attack, but venomous in the extreme, and possesses
the power of the basilisk to attract within reach of its spring small
birds and squirrels. Probably this much talked of fascination is nothing
more than by its presence near their nests to incite them to attack, and
to hazard near and nearer approaches to their enemy in hope to force him
to retreat, until once within the compass of his fell swoop they fall
victims to their temerity. I have often watched a cat act thus. Whatever
explanation may be received, the fact cannot be questioned, and is ever
attributed by the unreflecting, to some diabolic spell cast upon them by
the animal. They have the same strange susceptibility to the influence
of certain sounds as the vipers, in which lies the secret of snake
charming. Most of the Indian magicians were familiar with this
singularity. They employed it with telling effect to put beyond question
their intercourse with the unseen powers, and to vindicate the potency
of their own guardian spirits who thus enabled them to handle with
impunity the most venomous of reptiles.[109-1] The well-known antipathy
of these serpents to certain plants, for instance the hazel, which bound
around the ankles is an efficient protection against their attacks, and
perhaps some antidote to their poison used by the magicians, led to
their frequent introduction in religious ceremonies. Such exhibitions
must have made a profound impression on the spectators, and redounded in
a corresponding degree to the glory of the performer. "Who is a manito?"
asks the mystic meda chant of the Algonkins. "He," is the reply, "he who
walketh with a serpent, walking on the ground, he is a manito."[109-2]
And the intimate alliance of this symbol with the most sacred mysteries
of religion, the darkest riddles of the Unknown, is reflected in their
language, and also in that of their neighbors the Dakotas, in both of
which the same words _manito_, _wakan_, which express divinity in its
broadest sense, are also used as generic terms signifying this species
of animals! This strange fact is not without a parallel, for in both
Arabic and Hebrew, the word for serpent has many derivatives, meaning to
have intercourse with demoniac powers, to practise magic, and to consult
familiar spirits.[110-1]
The pious founder of the Moravian brotherhood, the Count of Zinzendorf,
owed his life on one occasion to this deeply rooted superstition. He was
visiting a missionary station among the Shawnees, in the Wyoming valley.
Recent quarrels with the whites had unusually irritated this unruly
folk, and they resolved to make him their first victim. After he had
retired to his secluded hut, several of their braves crept upon him, and
cautiously lifting the corner of the lodge, peered in. The venerable man
was seated before a little fire, a volume of the Scriptures on his
knees, lost in the perusal of the sacred words. While they gazed, a huge
rattlesnake, unnoticed by him, trailed across his feet, and rolled
itself into a coil in the comfortable warmth of the fire. Immediately
the would-be murderers forsook their purpose and noiselessly retired,
convinced that this was indeed a man of God.
A more unique trait than any of these is its habit of casting its skin
every spring, thus as it were renewing its life. In temperate latitudes
the rattlesnake, like the leaves and flowers, retires from sight during
the cold season, and at the return of kindly warmth puts on a new and
brilliant coat. Its cast-off skin was carefully collected by the savages
and stored in the medicine bag as possessing remedial powers of high
excellence. Itself thus immortal, they thought it could impart its
vitality to them. So when the mother was travailing in sore pain, and
the danger neared that the child would be born silent, the attending
women hastened to catch some serpent and give her its blood to
drink.[111-1]
It is well known that in ancient art this animal was the symbol of
AEsculapius, and to this day, Professor Agassiz found that the Maues
Indians, who live between the upper Tapajos and Madeira Rivers in
Brazil, whenever they assign a form to any "remedio," give it that of a
serpent.[111-2]
Probably this notion that it was annually rejuvenated led to its
adoption as a symbol of Time among the Aztecs; or, perchance, as they
reckoned by suns, and the figure of the sun, a circle, corresponds to
nothing animate but a serpent with its tail in its mouth, eating itself,
as it were, this may have been its origin. Either of them is more likely
than that the symbol arose from the recondite reflection that time is
"never ending,
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