MYTHS, TRADITIONS, AND LEGENDS
Persons who are obliged to rely on memory find that memory develops
with use and becomes more reliable. The Amerinds, having no written
language, if we except the Nahuatl and Mayan tribes, had no way of
preserving their tales, traditions, and legends except to remember
them, and there can be no doubt that everywhere on the continent memory
was highly developed. To assist in recalling them they had their
picture-writing, already described. The method is well illustrated in
the remarkable _Walam Olum_, or Red Score of the Lenapé, where a most
poetic account of the origin of things is recorded by means of a few
rude pictures made by lines and dots.[351] There has been some doubt
as to the genuineness of this score, first recorded by Rafinesque, but
Brinton, who was a scholar of fine intellect and calm judgment and
thoroughly versed in all the intricacies of the situation, accepted
it as a genuine Amerind production “which was repeated orally to
someone indifferently conversant with the Delaware language, who wrote
it down to the best of his ability. In its present form it can, as a
whole, lay no claim either to antiquity, or to purity of linguistic
form. Yet, as an authentic modern version, slightly coloured by
European teachings, of the ancient tribal traditions, it is well worth
preservation.... The narrator was probably one of the native chiefs or
priests, who had spent his life in the Ohio and Indiana towns of the
Lenapé, and who, though with some knowledge of Christian instruction,
preferred the pagan rites, legends, and myths of his ancestors.
Probably certain lines and passages were repeated in the archaic form
in which they had been handed down for generations.... The cosmogony
describes the formation of the world by the Great Manito, and its
subsequent despoliation by the spirit of the waters, under the form
of a serpent. The happy days are depicted, when men lived without
wars or sickness, and food was at all times abundant. Evil beings of
mysterious power introduced cold and war and sickness and premature
death. Then began strife and long wanderings.”[352] We can readily
understand how a few rude lines could recall to the Amerind mind a
whole story, and especially to the mind of one trained to exercise his
memory in such directions. It is not necessary for me to do more for
the Christian reader than write “_Xmas_,” and he can from it review the
whole wonderful story of Christ in all its details. So it was with the
Amerind. Those entrusted with the preservation of the legends, etc.,
learned them perfectly and year by year repeated them on the proper
occasion to their followers. Changes were probably sometimes made in
the text of some to suit them to changed conditions, but the accuracy
was so great that myths and legends have been found to contain archaic
words which the members of the tribe were unable to explain, and which
yielded only to the expert analysis of a white linguist.
[Illustration: TEOCALLI (TEMPLE) OF TEPOZTLAN, STATE OF MORELOS, MEXICO
This view is from the west or back and shows a stairway and also
the built up mound forming the foundation. The front is entered
by a broad flight of about fourteen steps. The construction is
stone. The site, formerly approached by flights of steps, is on the
summit of a high and dangerously precipitous mountain. The ground
plan, about 30 ft. square, is similar to the first plan on page
238, with a front like the second. The outer walls are 1 meter, 90
centimeters thick. They were covered with a smooth cement, which
was painted in different colors. See page 240.
_Monumental Records._ Photographed by M. H. Saville
]
[Illustration: KWAKIUTL WOOD CARVING OF THE SISUL, NORTH-WEST COAST
Worn in front of the stomach. Length, 42 in. See page 168
]
With the Amerind a group of myths, traditions, and legends developed
along with each particular stock. Each language had its own
accumulation of these tales, etc., relating to animals, to natural
forces personified, and sometimes to real personages. Savage races
worship animal gods and natural objects personified as animals.[353]
In the middle state called barbarism the religion becomes a worship
of the phenomena of nature, pure and simple, frequently personified
as animals or beings, as in the case of the thunder and lightning
generally attributed by the Amerinds to the mysterious “thunder-bird,”
which is also believed by some to be a great being who takes on the
form of a bird. In civilisation the worship of one God takes the place
of all the others, while the myths and legends of earlier days survive
in mythological literature and in unconscious thoughts and acts of
individuals. Looking at the moon over the right shoulder for luck,
objections to a certain number, the belief that one stone is lucky and
another unlucky, are all remnants of the era of zoötheism, physitheism,
and other early beliefs.[354] Races cannot shake off earlier beliefs
entirely, but continue them under changed forms. Thus we celebrate many
pagan rites in our holidays, and pay a tribute to the Druid priests
every time we suspend a branch of mistletoe in our parlours in the
season when the sun turns his course towards the vernal equinox.
To primitive man night was a mysterious phenomenon, and dawn often
became personified to him as a bright and fair deliverer, a beneficent
being who comes out of the east bringing a train of blessings. Many
myths recounting the coming of a hero, prophet, and teacher among the
Amerinds and other races are accounted for as being dawn myths, but
there is danger of overworking this convenient hypothesis.
In our literature many Amerind myths and legends have become firmly
implanted, and they are now as much a part of it as the tale of
Orpheus, or of Theseus, or of Hercules. Some of them have been
beautified by the diction of our poets, and Longfellow’s rendering of
_Hiawatha_ is admired the world over. This is good literature, but it
is not good ethnology, because in it an Iroquois hero-god is placed
in a setting of Algonquin legends, but this was not Longfellow’s
mistake, but Schoolcraft’s, on whose work Longfellow based his poem.
Jeremiah Curtin says: “Schoolcraft, with his amazing propensity to
make mistakes, with his remarkable genius for missing the truth and
confusing everything with which he came in contact, gave the name
Hiawatha to his patchwork.... In the face of all this Schoolcraft
makes Hiawatha, who is peculiarly Iroquois, the leading personage in
his Algonkin conglomerate: Hiawatha being an Iroquois character of
Central New York (he is connected more particularly with the region
about Schenectady), while the actions to which Schoolcraft relates
him pertain to the Algonkin Chippewas near Lake Superior. It is as if
Europeans at some future age were to have placed before them a great
epic narrative of French heroic adventure in which Prince Bismarck
would appear as the chief and central Gallic figure in the glory and
triumph of France.”[355]
[Illustration: RUSHING EAGLE, 1872
Second chief of the Mandans and son of Four Bears, Catlin’s great
friend
]
[Illustration: FINE CLOTH PRESERVED BY COPPER BEADS]
But Hiawatha, nevertheless, is incorporated in our language and our
literature, and altogether the conquered race, as was inevitable, has
left an impress on our character, on our language, on our geography,
and on our literature which can never, even if desired, be effaced. The
mark of our contact with the red man is upon us indelibly and forever.
George Bancroft is not quite right when he says, “The memorials of
their former existence are found only in the names of the rivers and
the mountains.” These memorials have not only permeated our poetry and
literature generally, but they are perpetuated in our daily food, and
every mention of “succotash,” of “mush,” of “chocolate,” is a tribute
to their existence, while the fragrance of the “tobacco” we smoke is
incense to their memory. Mrs. Sigourney touched this subject prettily
in the little poem entitled _Indian Names_:
“Ye say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave;
That mid the forests where they roamed
There rings no hunter’s shout,
But their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.
“Ye say their cone-like cabins
That clustered o’er the vale
Have fled away like withered leaves
Before the autumn gale.
But their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore;
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore.”
And she might have added that their gods have seated themselves
with those of the Greeks in our libraries; that Michabo, Tlaloc,
Quetzalcohuatl, and others are now companions of Jupiter and Neptune;
in short, that their literature, which relied on oral transmission, has
to a large extent been crystallised in our printed pages.
The Amerind, not fortified by our modern knowledge and philosophy,
regarded the outer world in a far different way from what we do. To him
it was not a place where a gold mine might be found, or good grazing
or tillable soil, but he looked upon the far distance as the home of
magical beings. Did the wind blow? It was the breath of some monster
dwelling in a cave in the far west, or it was the beating of the wings
of giant birds living at the four quarters of the compass. It was not
to the sky alone that he looked for the abode of his gods; they came
to him from every direction, even from the bowels of the earth. We
know what the earth contains and we grope for the unknown. The Amerind
did not know what the earth contains; it was still to him the abode of
monsters and ghosts.
There is in some respects so great a similarity between the myths of
the New World and those of the Old, that it was at first assumed that
there must have been early communication with Europe, but more careful
analysis has shown that this is but another evidence of what may be
called the parallelism of human development. Even where the similarity
is greatest there is nothing to prove that the myths did not originate
independently, and they are merely the results of similar thoughts, in
similar stages of ignorance, about the sun, the sky, and natural forces.
The _Popol Vuh_, the great collection of Quiche myths, presents
Gukumatz as one of the four principal gods who created the world.
Gukumatz means shining or brilliant snake, and hence seems to be
the same character as that known to the Nahuatls, or Aztecs, as
Quetzalcohuatl, whose name also means bright or shining snake. But
among the Aztecs Quetzalcohuatl is represented as a man, while Gukumatz
is purely a god. Quetzalcohuatl was the third of the four Mexican or
Aztec gods, and to him is ascribed all the wisdom which came to the
Aztecs. He appears under two forms, as a god and as an historical
personage. He has been frequently identified with the dawn, but there
seems to be good reason for believing that he was a real character, who
became deified as his good deeds passed down to successive generations.
Such prophets and teachers rise up in all times, in all ages, by the
wayside of tribal or national development, like some rare and favoured
tree of the forest which out-tops all the others. A divine origin may
be claimed for these teachers and prophets, but generally they are only
men endowed with an extremely fine moral sense and with a perception
and knowledge beyond their time. “Among the Tzendals of Chiapas, the
tradition of Votan, who is said to have been the first founder of
that tribe, bears great resemblance to Quetzalcohuatl.”[356] After an
admirable discussion of the subject of the character and origin of
Quetzalcohuatl, Bandelier sifts the matter down to this: that he was “a
prominent gifted Indian leader, who certainly preceded the coming of
those Nahuatl tribes that subsequently formed the valley confederacy,
as well as that of the later tribe of Tlaxcallan. The claim to his
origin accordingly rests between the so-called Toltecs on one side
and the Olmeca and Xicalanca on the other.”[357] Brinton believed
that Quetzalcohuatl was a pure personification of the dawn myth,[358]
but there is too much testimony on the opposite side to permit the
acceptance of this opinion as final. It must not be forgotten that
there were very good, extremely good, almost saintly, men, and women,
too, among the Amerinds. The historical Mexican tribes were preceded
by other tribes, some of which had apparently reached a higher state
of culture than the Aztecs, and Quetzalcohuatl possibly came from one
of them as a teacher to the newer and less cultivated people; newer
in the sense of having come into that region from some distance off.
There is nothing preposterous in supposing that there were teachers
and moralists in the early days of this continent. The character of
a high-thinking teacher is not incompatible with some of the tribes
that have lived and died on North-American soil. As stated previously,
never were all the tribes of the continent in one culture condition;
there were always tribes that could teach something to other tribes,
and undoubtedly philanthropic individuals sometimes attempted the
rôle of missionaries, just as they do in other races to-day. In fact,
the recent “Resurrection Dance” or “Ghost Dance” had its prophet who
preached to the natives that “the earth was to be all good hereafter;
that we must be friends with one another.” Fighting, he declared, was
“bad and all must keep from it.” “There is no doubt that his religious
teachings rest on a well-ordained religious system, and in spite of
the numerous false reports that are spread about him, he does not
claim to be either God or Jesus Christ, the Messiah, or any divine,
superhuman being whatever. ‘I am the annunciator of God’s message from
the spiritual world and a prophet for the Indian people,’ is the way he
defines the scope of his work among men.... Thus he considers himself a
messenger of God appointed in a dream, and has on that account compared
himself to St. John the Baptist.”[359] This man is a full-blood, and
it is evident that such an inspiration might have seized a man of a
similar temperament at any period of Amerind history, and given rise
finally to legends and worship that would incorrectly be ascribed to
the myth of the dawn.
[Illustration: ANCIENT FABRIC-MARKED POTSHERDS, WITH CLAY CASTS BY
HOLMES
See page 108
Potsherd
Clay Cast
Potsherd
Clay Cast
]
Quetzalcohuatl at length departed with a promise to return, and it
was the belief that he would return that caused Montezuma to at first
mistake the bearded Spaniards for his emissaries. Quetzalcohuatl also
wore a beard.
Michabo, the Algonquin counterpart of Quetzalcohuatl, was considered to
be the ancestor of the whole tribe, the founder of their ceremonies,
the inventor of picture-writing, the ruler of the weather, the
creator and preserver of earth and heaven. “From a grain of sand,” says
Brinton, “brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean he fashioned
the habitable land and set it floating on the waters till it grew to
such a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly, died of old
age ere he reached its limits.”
[Illustration: EHTOHKPAHSHEPEESHAH, THE BLACK MOCCASIN, CHIEF OF THE
MINATAREES
OVER 100 YEARS OLD
George Catlin, 1832
]
Among the Iroquois the hero-god was called Ioskeha, and he possessed
many of the qualities of Michabo and Quetzalcohuatl, etc., though in
his case as well as that of Michabo there seems to be no historical
evidence of existence, as there is with Quetzalcohuatl, and therefore
they may be, as claimed by Brinton and others, merely dawn myths. It
is possible that they may be compounds of a dawn myth and one or more
actual personages.
The hero-god of the Mayas was Itzamna, and he was a beneficent
personage like the others. Like Cadmus, he invented letters, and he
also devised their calendar. He is spoken of as an historical personage
and “is intimately associated with the noble edifices of Itzamal,
which he laid out and constructed, and over which he ruled, enacting
wise laws and extending the power and happiness of his people for an
indefinite period.”[360] Brinton identifies him with the dawn myth, but
here again it is not conclusive. It seems quite as probable that he was
a real person, upon whose history certain myths have been engrafted.
In putting the Amerind stories into other languages, embellishments and
variations have often been introduced, or the translators have been
deceived by interpreters or by the Amerinds themselves, while sometimes
both causes have operated to colour or to alter the tales. Schoolcraft
has generally been regarded as a faithful recorder, but in some
instances he has gone considerably astray. In his time the Amerinds
were not so well understood, nor were they, in all their various
stocks, so accessible as now.
Formerly the European was prepared to find in the Amerind rites
evidences of the Lost Tribes of Israel, of the Chinese, or some other
extraordinary or romantic idea. He was not content to take things as
they were. Marquette on arriving at Green Bay was delighted with what
he believed to be an evidence of Christianity, a large cross set up
in the middle of the village, adorned with skins, bows, etc., which
the people were offering to their gods. It was only one of the symbols
of the Midē society, and was in use long before the Discovery. In the
same way Coronado found crosses in New Mexico, and there were also in
Yucatan the tablets of the cross referred to in a previous chapter. The
early Spaniards turned loose their own myths in the New World and then
started in pursuit of them. Columbus himself was the first to float
the Amazon myth to these shores, for in a letter to Rafael Sanchez he
speaks of an island inhabited solely by women, and the Spaniards had a
long and fruitless chase after it.[361] Thus they also pursued the myth
of the _Seven Cities_, _El Dorado_, and similar tales. _El Dorado_, or,
“The Gilded Man,” really existed in a ceremony in New Granada, where a
man was sprinkled with gold dust, but when the Spaniards had taken all
the gold from these people they went on hunting for El Dorado just the
same, though they never found him again.
[Illustration: LACANDON (MAYAN) AMERIND FROM CHOCOLHAO, YUCATAN
Photographed by M. H. Saville
]
Certain resemblances between the myths of the Amerinds and those of
the Israelites increased the belief that the American race is the
Lost Tribes. The Mormons specially hold to this opinion. But there is
positively no ground for the belief. The peculiar interest, however,
which attaches to a comparison of Amerind and Israelite myths lies
in the fact that they resemble each other, not only genetically, but
specifically. They are alike in their details. Mallery has given much
attention to this subject, and he says that “an Ojibway tradition
tells the adventures of eight, ten, and sometimes twelve brothers, the
youngest of whom is the wisest and the most beloved of their father,
and especially favoured by the high powers. He delivers his brothers
from many difficulties which were brought about by their folly and
disobedience. Particularly he supplies them with corn.... The Chahta
have an elaborate story of their migrations, in which they were
guided by a pole leaning in the direction which they should take, and
remaining vertical at each place where they should encamp. A still
closer resemblance to the guidance of the Israelites in the desert by
a pillar of fire is found in the legendary migrations of the Tusayan
(Mokis), when indication was made by the movement and the halting
of a star. The Pai Utes were sustained in a great march through the
desert by water that continually filled the magic cup given to the
Sokus Waiunats in a dream until all were satisfied; and a similarly
miraculous supply of food to the starving multitude is reported by the
same people. In the genesis myth of the Tusayan, the culture hero was
enabled to pass dry-shod through lakes and rivers by throwing a staff
upon the waters, which were at once divided as by walls.... Mr. W. W.
Warren, in his _History of the Ojibway Nation_, tells that he sometimes
translated parts of Bible history to the old Ojibway men, and their
expression invariably was, ‘The book must be true, for our ancestors
have told us similar stories generation after generation since the
earth was new.’” There is also a strong resemblance between many of the
Amerind myths and stories, and those of the negro, as anyone may see
who will compare them with Harris’s delightful _Uncle Remus_.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE BUILDINGS OF THE PALENQUE GROUP
House “C” on Maudsley’s plan
Construction: stone. Site: tropical forest, Chiapas, Yucatan.
Abandoned in prehistoric time. There was but one room with the
five openings as shown. Stucco ornamentation. See page 244 and
Frontispiece
Photographed by M. H. Saville
]
All races have malignant sprites that haunt rocks and watering places,
and the Amerind was no exception. The Uinkarets of Arizona declared
that a certain water-pocket where we camped was a favourite resort of
the Woonupits, a little elf that is full of mischief, and Chuar one
night insisted that he heard one whistling in the forest. He fired a
shot out into the darkness to drive it away. He did this with great
solemnity and deliberation, and there was no question as to his faith
in the belief. The same little elf crops out in the Moki country in
the form of the Kwokwuli, a malignant sprite lurking in out-of-the-way
places. He is about knee-high and conceals himself behind a rock or
bush, like the Breton Korrigans inhabiting the Dolmens, and when a Moki
appears he calls out in a shrill falsetto voice, “_Kwo-kwul-i-ul-i_.”
If the hearer gives no heed to the cry he may pass by in safety, but
should he willingly or unwillingly express any notice he must approach
the elf, who immediately climbs on his back and holds fast round
his neck—Sindbad’s Old-Man-of-the-Sea over again. The elf has only
rudimentary legs and no wings, and this is his method of journeying
from place to place.
The Amerinds of the straits of Fuca have distinct traditions of the
Eskimo as a race of dwarfs, who live in the “always dark country,”
on the ice, dive and catch whales with their hands, and produce the
aurora by boiling out the blubber, the fires reflecting on the sky.
The Iroquois had legends of great giants, as also had other tribes,
which were due probably to the same cause as the dwarf Eskimo myths:
ignorance of the outside world. These were stone giants, and they
inhabited the west. Once upon a time they started to come and destroy
the Senecas, and a war party of the latter proceeded to the encounter.
Before the battle came off a mighty wind came out of the west and
swept all the giants into a vast abyss from which they could not
escape, and because of this friendly act the West Wind became one of
the Seneca gods, and was revered ever after. And the Eskimo, while
themselves furnishing the material for more southerly tribes to build
myths on, have their own tales of a tribe called Ardnainiq, living in
the extreme North-west. The men of this people are small as children,
but entirely covered with hair. They are carried about in the hoods
of their wives like babies, the wives being of normal size. They have
also stories of a race of women. The Iroquois believed that there was
a strange creature consisting simply of a head with large eyes and
long hair, called “Great Head.” When he saw any live thing he growled,
“I see thee, I see thee, thou shalt die.” They also had their race of
dwarfs with wonderful powers, who carved the cliffs and caves and could
destroy monster animals.
[Illustration: COSTUME WORN IN THE KWAKIUTL FESTIVALS CALLED LAŌLAXA,
NORTH-WEST COAST]
The coyote, the bear, the sun, and all the animals are endowed with
speech and great cunning, the coyote especially so among some of the
Western tribes, and are conceived as possessing human attributes, like
the “Brer Rabbit” and other animals whose prowess is related by Uncle
Remus. But the Eskimo, according to A. L. Kroeber, have comparatively
few animal stories. Examples of these animal stories may be found in
the reports of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology and other publications.
Lack of space prevents me from introducing any here.
The slightest misunderstood noise is sufficient to rouse the Amerind
imagination, of which I had an illustration in Arizona. I arrived
at an out-of-the-way mine one night with two Amerind guides. It was
winter and a stone cabin was placed at my disposal, to which I sent
the natives while my white companions and I visited the men in charge.
The natives presently came in, saying there was something wrong at
the cabin, and they would not stay in it or even near it. When we
investigated we discovered that the whole trouble arose from the
ticking of a small clock, which we forthwith stopped; but nevertheless
they would not remain there alone.
Flood stories are numerous with all tribes, and whether they arose
in local inundations or in some vast and general flood cannot now be
determined. If in the latter, it would be melting ice of the glacial
period. A fabulous being in Eskimo mythology is Kalopaling, who lives
in the sea. His body is like that of a human being and he wears
clothing made out of eider ducks’ skins. His jacket has an enormous
hood, into which he thrusts any boatman that may be drowned. He cannot
speak, but merely cry, “Be! be! be! be!” An Eskimo flood tale relates
how the ocean long ago rose till it covered the whole land, even to the
tops of the mountains, till the ice drifted over them. When the flood
subsided the ice stranded and has ever since formed a cap on their
summits.
The keepers of the mythological tales were the shamans, and they are
the real powers, generally, in a tribe. Had Cortes understood this
point he would have seized, not the war-chief, Montezuma, but one of
the shamans, who would have been more valuable as a hostage. Many of
the shamans are believed to be able to pass through fire unharmed,
and to handle it with impunity; to be able to change themselves into
coyotes, etc., and then return to their normal shape, all at their own
pleasure.
A legend of Montezuma’s coming has been attributed to the Pueblos of
New Mexico, but this is an error, for they knew nothing about Montezuma
till the whites came into the country. There are a great many legends
concerning the occupation of this or that place, and one of these, the
legend of the former occupation of the _Mesa Encantada_, or, “Enchanted
Mesa,” New Mexico, has recently caused a lively discussion between two
distinguished ethnologists, as to whether some Puebloans did or did not
once live on top of the mesa as related. Both succeeded in reaching the
top. One found no evidence of any continued occupation of the mesa top;
the other found what he accepted as sufficient evidence of the truth of
the legend that Pueblos had once lived there and had been cut off from
the world below and destroyed by a fearful storm.
Large portions of the Maya chronicles relate the predictions of the
astrologers, seers, or prophets, and after the habit of the class
they foretold all manner of evil, but strangely enough they seem to
have foretold the arrival of the Spaniards, for they said that white
and bearded strangers would come and control the land and alter the
prevailing religion. What was it that instilled them with this faith
or fear? Was it coincidence, or was it what is now termed telepathy?
Whatever it was, the terrible fulfilment came upon their race like a
cyclone; and when one more century has passed away the Amerind race
will be more truly even than now, the North-Americans of Yesterday.[362]
[Illustration: GOD-HOUSES OF THE HUICHOLS AT TEAKÁTA, NEAR SANTA
CATARINA, STATE OF JALISCO, MEXICO
Photographed by Lumholtz
]
[Illustration: ESKIMO MASK OF WOOD, PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND, ALASKA]