We are here engaged with the problem which the origin of man
presented to the Kiché mind, and we shall find that its solution
bears a remarkable likeness to that of similar American myths. We
seldom hear of one first-created being. In the creation-myths of the
New World four brothers are usually the progenitors of the human
race. Man in these myths is nearly always earth-born. He and his
fellows emerge from some cavern or subterranean place, fully grown
and fully armed. Thus the Blackfoot Indians emerged from Nina-stahu,
a peak in the Rockies. In the centre of Nunne Chaha, the High Hill,
was a cavern, the house of the Master of Breath, whence came the
Choctaws. The Peruvians come from Pacari Tambu, the House of the Dawn,
near Cuzco, and an ancient legend of the Aztecâ states that they came
from Chicomoztoc, the Seven Caverns, to the north of Mexico.
We find the first Mayan men speedily engaged in migration. Such must
always be the life of the unsettled and unagricultural savage. He
multiplies. Gods are given to each tribe. These he bears to a new
country. In fact we have a complete migration myth in the Third
Book of the "Popol Vuh," and there are not wanting signs to show
that this migration took place from the cold north to the warm
south. The principal item of proof in favour of such a theory is,
of course, the statement that the sun was "not at first born," and
that at a later stage of the journey, when his beams appeared upon
the horizon, it was as a weaker and dimmer luminary that he seemed to
the wanderers than in after years. The allusion to "shining sand,"
by the aid of which they crossed rivers, may mean that they forded
them when covered with ice. The whole myth is so strikingly akin to
the Aztecân migration-myth given in the Mexican MS. in the Boturini
Collection (No. 14, sec. viii.) that we cannot refrain from appending
a short passage from the latter:
"This is the beginning of the record of the coming of the Mexicans
from the place called Aztlan. It is by means of the water that
they came this way, being four tribes, and in coming they rowed in
boats. They built their huts on piles at the place called the Grotto
of Quinevayan. It is there from which the eight tribes issued. The
first tribe is that of the Huexotzincos, the second tribe the Chalcas,
the third the Xochimilcas, the fourth the Cuitlavacas, the fifth the
Mallinalcas, the sixth the Chicimecas, the seventh the Tepanecas,
the eighth the Matlatzincas. It is there where they were founded in
Colhuacan. They were the colonists of it since they landed there,
coming from Aztlan.... It is there that they soon afterwards went
away from, carrying before them the god [20] Vitzillopochtli, which
they had adopted for their god.... They came out of four places,
when they went forward travelling this way.... There the eight tribes
opened up our road by water."
We find a similar myth in the Wallam Olum, or painted records of the
Lenape Indians. "After the flood," says this record, "the Lenape with
the manly turtle beings dwelt close together at the cave house and
dwelling of Talli.... They saw that the snake land was bright and
wealthy. Having all agreed, they went over the water of the frozen
sea to possess the land. It was wonderful when they all went over
the smooth deep water of the frozen sea at the gap of snake sea in
the great ocean"5.
We thus see that the Third Book of the "Popol Vuh" is a migration
saga of a type not uncommon in America. Asiatic tribes may have come
down from the Chi-Pixab of the "Popol Vuh" to British Columbia, and
thence by easy stages to Central America. And the Third Book of the
"Popol Vuh" may be the distant echo of a mighty wave of colonisation,
whose sound swept the entire surface of the New World.