CHAPTER I.

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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.