THE IDEA OF GOD.
An intuition common to the species.--Words expressing it in
American languages derived either from ideas of above in space, or
of life manifested by breath.--Examples.--No conscious monotheism,
and but little idea of immateriality discoverable.--Still less any
moral dualism of deities, the Great Good Spirit and the Great Bad
Spirit being alike terms and notions of foreign importation.
If we accept the definition that mythology is the idea of God expressed
in symbol, figure, and narrative, and always struggling toward a clearer
utterance, it is well not only to trace this idea in its very earliest
embodiment in language, but also, for the sake of comparison, to ask
what is its latest and most approved expression. The reply to this is
given us by Immanuel Kant. He has shown that our reason, dwelling on the
facts of experience, constantly seeks the principles which connect them
together, and only rests satisfied in the conviction that there is a
highest and first principle which reconciles all their discrepancies and
binds them into one. This he calls the Ideal of Reason. It must be true,
for it is evolved from the laws of reason, our only test of truth.
Furthermore, the sense of personality and the voice of conscience,
analyzed to their sources, can only be explained by the assumption of an
infinite personality and an absolute standard of right. Or, if to some
all this appears but wire-drawn metaphysical subtlety, they are welcome
to the definition of the realist, that the idea of God is the sum of
those intelligent activities which the individual, reasoning from the
analogy of his own actions, imagines to be behind and to bring about
natural phenomena.[44-1] If either of these be correct, it were hard to
conceive how any tribe or even any sane man could be without some notion
of divinity.
Certainly in America no instance of its absence has been discovered.
Obscure, grotesque, unworthy it often was, but everywhere man was
oppressed with a _sensus numinis_, a feeling that invisible, powerful
agencies were at work around him, who, as they willed, could help or
hurt him. In every heart was an altar to the Unknown God. Not that it
was customary to attach any idea of unity to these unseen powers. The
supposition that in ancient times and in very unenlightened conditions,
before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed, which afterwards at
various times was revived by reformers, is a belief that should have
passed away when the delights of savage life and the praises of a state
of nature ceased to be the themes of philosophers. We are speaking of a
people little capable of abstraction. The exhibitions of force in nature
seemed to them the manifestations of that mysterious power felt by their
self-consciousness; to combine these various manifestations and
recognize them as the operations of one personality, was a step not
easily taken. Yet He is not far from every one of us. "Whenever man
thinks clearly, or feels deeply, he conceives God as self-conscious
unity," says Carriere, with admirable insight; and elsewhere, "we have
monotheism, not in contrast to polytheism, not clear to the thought, but
in living intuition in the religious sentiments."[45-1]
Thus it was among the Indians. Therefore a word is usually found in
their languages analogous to none in any European tongue, a word
comprehending all manifestations of the unseen world, yet conveying no
sense of personal unity. It has been rendered spirit, demon, God, devil,
mystery, magic, but commonly and rather absurdly by the English and
French, "medicine." In the Algonkin dialects this word is _manito_ and
_oki_, in Iroquois _oki_ and _otkon_, the Dakota has _wakan_, the Aztec
_teotl_, the Quichua _huaca_, and the Maya _ku_. They all express in its
most general form the idea of the supernatural. And as in this word,
supernatural, we see a transfer of a conception of place, and that it
literally means that which is _above_ the natural world, so in such as
we can analyze of these vague and primitive terms the same trope appears
discoverable. _Wakan_ as an adverb means _above_, _oki_ is but another
orthography for _oghee_, and _otkon_ seems allied to _hetken_, both of
which have the same signification.[46-1]
The transfer is no mere figure of speech, but has its origin in the very
texture of the human mind. The heavens, the upper regions, are in every
religion the supposed abode of the divine. What is higher is always the
stronger and the nobler; a _superior_ is one who is better than we are,
and therefore a chieftain in Algonkin is called _oghee-ma_, the higher
one. There is, moreover, a naif and spontaneous instinct which leads man
in his ecstasies of joy, and in his paroxysms of fear or pain, to lift
his hands and eyes to the overhanging firmament. There the sun and
bright stars sojourn, emblems of glory and stability. Its azure vault
has a mysterious attraction which invites the eye to gaze longer and
longer into its infinite depths.[46-2] Its color brings thoughts of
serenity, peace, sunshine, and warmth. Even the rudest hunting tribes
felt these sentiments, and as a metaphor in their speeches, and as a
paint expressive of friendly design, blue was in wide use among
them.[47-1]
So it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to the heavens long
ere man asked himself, are the heavens material and God spiritual, is He
one, or is He many? Numerous languages bear trace of this. The Latin
Deus, the Greek Zeus, the Sanscrit Dyaus, the Chinese Tien, all
originally meant the sky above, and our own word heaven is often
employed synonymously with God. There is at first no personification in
these expressions. They embrace all unseen agencies, they are void of
personality, and yet to the illogical primitive man there is nothing
contradictory in making them the object of his prayers. The Mayas had
legions of gods; "_ku_," says their historian,[47-2] "does not signify
any particular god; yet their prayers are sometimes addressed to _kue_,"
which is the same word in the vocative case.
As the Latins called their united divinities _Superi_, those above, so
Captain John Smith found that the Powhatans of Virginia employed the
word _oki_, above, in the same sense, and it even had passed into a
definite personification among them in the shape of an "idol of wood
evil-favoredly carved." In purer dialects of the Algonkin it is always
indefinite, as in the terms _nipoon oki_, spirit of summer, _pipoon
oki_, spirit of winter. Perhaps the word was introduced into Iroquois
by the Hurons, neighbors and associates of the Algonkins. The Hurons
applied it to that demoniac power "who rules the seasons of the year,
who holds the winds and the waves in leash, who can give fortune to
their undertakings, and relieve all their wants."[48-1] In another and
far distant branch of the Iroquois, the Nottoways of southern Virginia,
it reappears under, the curious form _quaker_, doubtless a corruption of
the Powhatan _qui-oki_, lesser gods.[48-2] The proper Iroquois name of
him to whom they prayed was _garonhia_, which again turns out on
examination to be their common word for _sky_, and again in all
probability from the verbal root _gar_, to be above.[48-3] In the
legends of the Aztecs and Quiches such phrases as "Heart of the Sky,"
"Lord of the Sky," "Prince of the Azure Planisphere," "He above all,"
are of frequent occurrence, and by a still bolder metaphor, the
Araucanians, according to Molina, entitled their greatest god "The Soul
of the Sky."
This last expression leads to another train of thought. As the
philosopher, pondering on the workings of self-consciousness, recognizes
that various pathways lead up to God, so the primitive man, in forming
his language, sometimes trod one, sometimes another. Whatever else
sceptics have questioned, no one has yet presumed to doubt that if a God
and a soul exist at all, they are of like essence. This firm belief has
left its impress on language in the names devised to express the
supernal, the spiritual world. If we seek hints from languages more
familiar to us than the tongues of the Indians, and take for example
this word _spiritual_; we find it is from the Latin _spirare_, to blow,
to breathe. If in Latin again we look for the derivation of _animus_,
the mind, _anima_, the soul, they point to the Greek _anemos_, wind, and
_aemi_, to blow. In Greek the words for soul or spirit, _psuche_,
_pneuma_, _thumos_, all are directly from verbal roots expressing the
motion of the wind or the breath. The Hebrew word _ruah_ is translated
in the Old Testament sometimes by wind, sometimes by spirit, sometimes
by breath. Etymologically, in fact, ghosts and gusts, breaths and
breezes, the Great Spirit and the Great Wind, are one and the same. It
is easy to guess the reason of this. The soul is the life, the life is
the breath. Invisible, imponderable, quickening with vigorous motion,
slackening in rest and sleep, passing quite away in death, it is the
most obvious sign of life. All nations grasped the analogy and
identified the one with the other. But the breath is nothing but wind.
How easy, therefore, to look upon the wind that moves up and down and to
and fro upon the earth, that carries the clouds, itself unseen, that
calls forth the terrible tempests and the various seasons, as the
breath, the spirit of God, as God himself? So in the Mosaic record of
creation, it is said "a mighty wind" passed over the formless sea and
brought forth the world, and when the Almighty gave to the clay a living
soul, he is said to have breathed into it "the wind of lives."
Armed with these analogies, we turn to the primitive tongues of America,
and find them there as distinct as in the Old World. In Dakota _niya_ is
literally breath, figuratively life; in Netela _piuts_ is life, breath,
and soul; _silla_, in Eskimo, means air, it means wind, but it is also
the word that conveys the highest idea of the world as a whole, and the
reasoning faculty. The supreme existence they call _Sillam Innua_, Owner
of the Air, or of the All; or _Sillam Nelega_, Lord of the Air or Wind.
In the Yakama tongue of Oregon _wkrisha_ signifies there is wind,
_wkrishwit_, life; with the Aztecs, _ehecatl_ expressed both air, life,
and the soul, and personified in their myths it was said to have been
born of the breath of Tezcatlipoca, their highest divinity, who himself
is often called Yoalliehecatl, the Wind of Night.[50-1]
The descent is, indeed, almost imperceptible which leads to the
personification of the wind as God, which merges this manifestation of
life and power in one with its unseen, unknown cause. Thus it was a
worthy epithet which the Creeks applied to their supreme invisible
ruler, when they addressed him as ESAUGETUH EMISSEE, Master of Breath,
and doubtless it was at first but a title of equivalent purport which
the Cherokees, their neighbors, were wont to employ, OONAWLEH UNGGI,
Eldest of Winds, but rapidly leading to a complete identification of the
divine with the natural phenomena of meteorology. This seems to have
taken place in the same group of nations, for the original Choctaw word
for Deity was HUSHTOLI, the Storm Wind.[51-1] The idea, indeed, was
constantly being lost in the symbol. In the legends of the Quiches, the
mysterious creative power is HURAKAN, a name of no signification in
their language, one which their remote ancestors brought with them from
the Antilles, which finds its meaning in the ancient tongue of Haiti,
and which, under the forms of _hurricane_, _ouragan_, _orkan_, was
adopted into European marine languages as the native name of the
terrible tornado of the Caribbean Sea.[51-2] Mixcohuatl, the Cloud
Serpent, chief divinity of several tribes in ancient Mexico, is to this
day the correct term in their language for the tropical whirlwind, and
the natives of Panama worshipped the same phenomenon under the name
Tuyra.[52-1] To kiss the air was in Peru the commonest and simplest sign
of adoration to the collective divinities.[52-2]
Many writers on mythology have commented on the prominence so frequently
given to the winds. None have traced it to its true source. The facts of
meteorology have been thought all sufficient for a solution. As if man
ever did or ever could draw the idea of God from nature! In the identity
of wind with breath, of breath with life, of life with soul, of soul
with God, lies the far deeper and far truer reason, whose insensible
development I have here traced, in outline indeed, but confirmed by the
evidence of language itself.
Let none of these expressions, however, be construed to prove the
distinct recognition of One Supreme Being. Of monotheism either as
displayed in the one personal definite God of the Semitic races, or in
the dim pantheistic sense of the Brahmins, there was not a single
instance on the American continent. The missionaries found no word in
any of their languages fit to interpret _Deus_, God. How could they
expect it? The associations we attach to that name are the accumulated
fruits of nigh two thousand years of Christianity. The phrases Good
Spirit, Great Spirit, and similar ones, have occasioned endless
discrepancies in the minds of travellers. In most instances they are
entirely of modern origin, coined at the suggestion of missionaries,
applied to the white man's God. Very rarely do they bring any
conception of personality to the native mind, very rarely do they
signify any object of worship, perhaps never did in the olden times. The
Jesuit Relations state positively that there was no one immaterial god
recognized by the Algonkin tribes, and that the title, the Great Manito,
was introduced first by themselves in its personal sense.[53-1] The
supreme Iroquois Deity Neo or Hawaneu, triumphantly adduced by many
writers to show the monotheism underlying the native creeds, and upon
whose name Mr. Schoolcraft has built some philological reveries, turns
out on closer scrutiny to be the result of Christian instruction, and
the words themselves to be but corruptions of the French _Dieu_ and _le
bon Dieu_![53-2]
Innumerable mysterious forces are in activity around the child of
nature; he feels within him something that tells him they are not of his
kind, and yet not altogether different from him; he sums them up in one
word drawn from sensuous experience. Does he wish to express still more
forcibly this sentiment, he doubles the word, or prefixes an adjective,
or adds an affix, as the genius of his language may dictate. But it
still remains to him but an unapplied abstraction, a mere category of
thought, a frame for the All. It is never the object of veneration or
sacrifice, no myth brings it down to his comprehension, it is not
installed in his temples. Man cannot escape the belief that behind all
form is one essence; but the moment he would seize and define it, it
eludes his grasp, and by a sorcery more sadly ludicrous than that which
blinded Titania, he worships not the Infinite he thinks but a base idol
of his own making. As in the Zend Avesta behind the eternal struggle of
Ormuzd and Ahriman looms up the undisturbed and infinite Zeruana
Akerana, as in the pages of the Greek poets we here and there catch
glimpses of a Zeus who is not he throned on Olympus, nor he who takes
part in the wrangles of the gods, but stands far off and alone, one yet
all, "who was, who is, who will be," so the belief in an Unseen Spirit,
who asks neither supplication nor sacrifice, who, as the natives of
Texas told Joutel in 1684, "does not concern himself about things here
below,"[54-1] who has no name to call him by, and is never a figure in
mythology, was doubtless occasionally present to their minds. It was
present not more but far less distinctly and often not at all in the
more savage tribes, and no assertion can be more contrary to the laws of
religious progress than that which pretends that a purer and more
monotheistic religion exists among nations devoid of mythology. There
are only two instances on the American continent where the worship of an
immaterial God was definitely instituted, and these as the highest
conquests of American natural religions deserve especial mention.
They occurred, as we might expect, in the two most civilized nations,
the Quichuas of Peru, and the Nahuas of Tezcuco. It is related that
about the year 1440, at a grand religious council held at the
consecration of the newly-built temple of the Sun at Cuzco, the Inca
Yupanqui rose before the assembled multitude and spoke somewhat as
follows:--
"Many say that the Sun is the Maker of all things. But he who makes
should abide by what he has made. Now many things happen when the Sun is
absent; therefore he cannot be the universal creator. And that he is
alive at all is doubtful, for his trips do not tire him. Were he a
living thing, he would grow weary like ourselves; were he free, he would
visit other parts of the heavens. He is like a tethered beast who makes
a daily round under the eye of a master; he is like an arrow, which must
go whither it is sent, not whither it wishes. I tell you that he, our
Father and Master the Sun, must have a lord and master more powerful
than himself, who constrains him to his daily circuit without pause or
rest."[55-1]
To express this greatest of all existences, a name was proclaimed, based
upon that of the highest divinities known to the ancient Aymara race,
Illatici Viracocha Pachacamac, literally, the thunder vase, the foam of
the sea, animating the world, mysterious and symbolic names drawn from
the deepest religious instincts of the soul, whose hidden meanings will
be unravelled hereafter. A temple was constructed in a vale by the sea
near Callao, wherein his worship was to be conducted without images or
human sacrifices. The Inca was ahead of his age, however, and when the
Spaniards visited the temple of Pachacamac in 1525, they found not only
the walls adorned with hideous paintings, but an ugly idol of wood
representing a man of colossal proportions set up therein, and receiving
the prayers of the votaries.[56-1]
No better success attended the attempt of Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco,
which took place about the same time. He had long prayed to the gods of
his forefathers for a son to inherit his kingdom, and the altars had
smoked vainly with the blood of slaughtered victims. At length, in
indignation and despair, the prince exclaimed, "Verily, these gods that
I am adoring, what are they but idols of stone without speech or
feeling? They could not have made the beauty of the heaven, the sun, the
moon, and the stars which adorn it, and which light the earth, with its
countless streams, its fountains and waters, its trees and plants, and
its various inhabitants. There must be some god, invisible and unknown,
who is the universal creator. He alone can console me in my affliction
and take away my sorrow." Strengthened in this conviction by a timely
fulfilment of his heart's desire, he erected a temple nine stories high
to represent the nine heavens, which he dedicated "to the Unknown God,
the Cause of Causes." This temple, he ordained, should never be polluted
by blood, nor should any graven image ever be set up within its
precincts.[57-1]
In neither case, be it observed, was any attempt made to substitute
another and purer religion for the popular one. The Inca continued to
receive the homage of his subjects as a brother of the sun, and the
regular services to that luminary were never interrupted. Nor did the
prince of Tezcuco afterwards neglect the honors due his national gods,
nor even refrain himself from plunging the knife into the breasts of
captives on the altar of the god of war.[57-2] They were but expressions
of that monotheism which is ever present, "not in contrast to
polytheism, but in living intuition in the religious sentiments." If
this subtle but true distinction be rightly understood, it will excite
no surprise to find such epithets as "endless," "omnipotent,"
"invisible," "adorable," such appellations as "the Maker and Moulder of
All," "the Mother and Father of Life," "the One God complete in
perfection and unity," "the Creator of all that is," "the Soul of the
World," in use and of undoubted indigenous origin not only among the
civilized Aztecs, but even among the Haitians, the Araucanians, the
Lenni Lenape, and others.[57-3] It will not seem contradictory to hear
of them in a purely polytheistic worship; we shall be far from
regarding them as familiar to the popular mind, and we shall never be
led so far astray as to adduce them in evidence of a monotheism in
either technical sense of that word. In point of fact they were not
applied to any particular god even in the most enlightened nations, but
were terms of laudation and magniloquence used by the priests and
devotees of every several god to do him honor. They prove something in
regard to a consciousness of divinity hedging us about, but nothing at
all in favor of a recognition of one God; they exemplify how profound is
the conviction of a highest and first principle, but they do not offer
the least reason to surmise that this was a living reality in doctrine
or practice.
The confusion of these distinct ideas has led to much misconception of
the native creeds. But another and more fatal error was that which
distorted them into a dualistic form, ranging on one hand the good
spirit with his legions of angels, on the other the evil one with his
swarms of fiends, representing the world as the scene of their unending
conflict, man as the unlucky football who gets all the blows. This
notion, which has its historical origin among the Parsees of ancient
Iran, is unknown to savage nations. "The idea of the Devil," justly
observes Jacob Grimm, "is foreign to all primitive religions." Yet
Professor Mueller, in his voluminous work on those of America, after
approvingly quoting this saying, complacently proceeds to classify the
deities as good or bad spirits![59-1]
This view, which has obtained without question in every work on the
native religions of America, has arisen partly from habits of thought
difficult to break, partly from mistranslations of native words, partly
from the foolish axiom of the early missionaries, "The gods of the
gentiles are devils." Yet their own writings furnish conclusive proof
that no such distinction existed out of their own fancies. The same word
(_otkon_) which Father Bruyas employs to translate into Iroquois the
term "devil," in the passage "the Devil took upon himself the figure of
a serpent," he is obliged to use for "spirit" in the phrase, "at the
resurrection we shall be spirits,"[59-2] which is a rather amusing
illustration how impossible it was by any native word to convey the idea
of the spirit of evil. When, in 1570, Father Rogel commenced his labors
among the tribes near the Savannah River, he told them that the deity
they adored was a demon who loved all evil things, and they must hate
him; whereupon his auditors replied, that so far from this being the
case, whom he called a wicked being was the power that sent them all
good things, and indignantly left the missionary to preach to the
winds.[60-1]
A passage often quoted in support of this mistaken view is one in
Winslow's "Good News from New England," written in 1622. The author says
that the Indians worship a good power called Kiehtan, and another "who,
as farre as wee can conceive, is the Devill," named Hobbamock, or
Hobbamoqui. The former of these names is merely the word "great," in
their dialect of Algonkin, with a final _n_, and is probably an
abbreviation of Kittanitowit, the great manito, a vague term mentioned
by Roger Williams and other early writers, not the appellation of any
personified deity.[60-2] The latter, so far from corresponding to the
power of evil, was, according to Winslow's own statement, the kindly god
who cured diseases, aided them in the chase, and appeared to them in
dreams as their protector. Therefore, with great justice, Dr. Jarvis has
explained it to mean "the _oke_ or tutelary deity which each Indian
worships," as the word itself signifies.[61-1]
So in many instances it turns out that what has been reported to be the
evil divinity of a nation, to whom they pray to the neglect of a better
one, is in reality the highest power they recognize. Thus Juripari,
worshipped by certain tribes of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and said to
be their wicked spirit, is in fact the only name in their language for
spiritual existence in general; and Aka-kanet, sometimes mentioned as
the father of evil in the mythology of the Araucanians, is the benign
power appealed to by their priests, who is throned in the Pleiades, who
sends fruits and flowers to the earth, and is addressed as
"grandfather."[61-2] The Cupay of the Peruvians never was, as Prescott
would have us believe, "the shadowy embodiment of evil," but simply and
solely their god of the dead, the Pluto of their pantheon, corresponding
to the Mictla of the Mexicans.
The evidence on the point is indeed conclusive. The Jesuit missionaries
very rarely distinguish between good and evil deities when speaking of
the religion of the northern tribes; and the Moravian Brethren among the
Algonkins and Iroquois place on record their unanimous testimony that
"the idea of a devil, a prince of darkness, they first received in
later times through the Europeans."[62-1] So the Cherokees, remarks an
intelligent observer, "know nothing of the Evil One and his domains,
except what they have learned from white men."[62-2] The term Great
Spirit conveys, for instance, to the Chipeway just as much the idea of a
bad as of a good spirit; he is unaware of any distinction until it is
explained to him.[62-3] "I have never been able to discover from the
Dakotas themselves," remarks the Rev. G. H. Pond, who had lived among
them as a missionary for eighteen years,[62-4] "the least degree of
evidence that they divide the gods into classes of good and evil, and am
persuaded that those persons who represent them as doing so, do it
inconsiderately, and because it is so natural to subscribe to a long
cherished popular opinion."
Very soon after coming in contact with the whites, the Indians caught
the notion of a bad and good spirit, pitted one against the other in
eternal warfare, and engrafted it on their ancient traditions. Writers
anxious to discover Jewish or Christian analogies, forcibly construed
myths to suit their pet theories, and for indolent observers it was
convenient to catalogue their gods in antithetical classes. In Mexican
and Peruvian mythology this is so plainly false that historians no
longer insist upon it, but as a popular error it still holds its ground
with reference to the more barbarous and less known tribes.
Perhaps no myth has been so often quoted in its confirmation as that of
the ancient Iroquois, which narrates the conflict between the first two
brothers of our race. It is of undoubted native origin and venerable
antiquity. The version given by the Tuscarora chief Cusic in 1825,
relates that in the beginning of things there were two brothers,
Enigorio and Enigohahetgea, names literally meaning the Good Mind and
the Bad Mind.[63-1] The former went about the world furnishing it with
gentle streams, fertile plains, and plenteous fruits, while the latter
maliciously followed him creating rapids, thorns, and deserts. At length
the Good Mind turned upon his brother in anger, and crushed him into the
earth. He sank out of sight in its depths, but not to perish, for in the
dark realms of the underworld he still lives, receiving the souls of the
dead and being the author of all evil. Now when we compare this with the
version of the same legend given by Father Brebeuf, missionary to the
Hurons in 1636, we find its whole complexion altered; the moral dualism
vanishes; the names Good Mind and Bad Mind do not appear; it is the
struggle of Ioskeha, the White one, with his brother Tawiscara, the Dark
one, and we at once perceive that Christian influence in the course of
two centuries had given the tale a meaning foreign to its original
intent.
So it is with the story the Algonkins tell of their hero Manibozho, who,
in the opinion of a well-known writer, "is always placed in antagonism
to a great serpent, a spirit of evil."[64-1] It is to the effect that
after conquering many animals, this famous magician tried his arts on
the prince of serpents. After a prolonged struggle, which brought on the
general deluge and the destruction of the world, he won the victory. The
first authority we have for this narrative is even later than Cusic; it
is Mr. Schoolcraft in our own day; the legendary cause of the deluge as
related by Father Le Jeune, in 1634, is quite dissimilar, and makes no
mention of a serpent; and as we shall hereafter see, neither among the
Algonkins nor any other Indians, was the serpent usually a type of evil,
but quite the reverse.[64-2]
The comparatively late introduction of such views into the native
legends finds a remarkable proof in the myths of the Quiches, which were
committed to writing in the seventeenth century. They narrate the
struggles between the rulers of the upper and the nether world, the
descent of the former into Xibalba, the Realm of Phantoms, and their
victory over its lords, One Death and Seven Deaths. The writer adds of
the latter, who clearly represent to his mind the Evil One and his
adjutants, "in the old times they did not have much power; they were but
annoyers and opposers of men, and in truth they were not regarded as
gods. But when they appeared it was terrible. They were of evil, they
were owls, fomenting trouble and discord." In this passage, which, be it
said, seems to have impressed the translators very differently, the
writer appears to compare the great power assigned by the Christian
religion to Satan and his allies, with the very much less potency
attributed to their analogues in heathendom, the rulers of the world of
the dead.[65-1]
A little reflection will convince the most incredulous that any such
dualism as has been fancied to exist in the native religions, could not
have been of indigenous growth. The gods of the primitive man are beings
of thoroughly human physiognomy, painted with colors furnished by
intercourse with his fellows. These are his enemies or his friends, as
he conciliates or insults them. No mere man, least of all a savage, is
kind and benevolent in spite of neglect and injury, nor is any man
causelessly and ceaselessly malicious. Personal, family, or national
feuds render some more inimical than others, but always from a desire to
guard their own interests, never out of a delight in evil for its own
sake. Thus the cruel gods of death, disease, and danger, were never of
Satanic nature, while the kindliest divinities were disposed to punish,
and that severely, any neglect of their ceremonies. Moral dualism can
only arise in minds where the ideas of good and evil are not synonymous
with those of pleasure and pain, for the conception of a wholly good or
a wholly evil nature requires the use of these terms in their higher,
ethical sense. The various deities of the Indians, it may safely be said
in conclusion, present no stronger antithesis in this respect than those
of ancient Greece and Rome.
FOOTNOTES:
[44-1] But there is no ground for the most positive of philosophers to
reject the doctrine of innate ideas when put in a certain way. The
instincts and habits of the lower animals by which they obtain food,
migrate, and perpetuate their kind, are in obedience to particular
congenital impressions, and correspond to definite anatomical and
morphological relations. No one pretends their knowledge is experimental.
Just so the human cerebrum has received, by descent or otherwise, various
sensory impressions peculiar to man as a species, which are just as
certain to guide his thoughts, actions, and destiny, as is the cerebrum
of the insectivorous aye-aye to lead it to hunt successfully for larvae.
[45-1] _Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung_, i. pp. 50,
252.
[46-1] I offer these derivations with a certain degree of reserve, for
such an extraordinary similarity in the sound of these words is
discoverable in North and portions of South America, that one might
almost be tempted to claim for them one original form. Thus in the Maya
dialects it is _ku_, vocative _a kue_, in Natchez _kue-ya_, in the Uchee
of West Florida _kauhwu_, in Otomi _okha_, in Mandan _okee_, Sioux
_ogha_, _waughon_, _wakan_, in Quichua _waka_, _huaca_, in Iroquois
_quaker_, _oki_, Algonkin _oki_, _okee_, Eskimo _aghatt_, which last has
a singular likeness in sound to the German or Norse, _O Gott_, as some of
the others have to the corresponding Finnish word _ukko_. _Ku_ in the
Carib tongue means _house_, especially a temple or house of the gods. The
early Spanish explorers adopted the word with the orthography _cue_, and
applied it to the sacred edifices of whatever nation they discovered. For
instance, they speak of the great cemetery of Teotihuacan, near Tezcuco,
as the _Llano de los Cues_.
[46-2] "As the high heavens, the far-off mountains look to us blue, so a
blue superficies seems to recede from us. As we would fain pursue an
attractive object that flees from us, so we like to gaze at the blue, not
that it urges itself upon us, but that it draws us after it." Goethe,
_Farbenlehre_, secs. 780, 781.
[47-1] Loskiel, _Geschichte der Mission der Evang. Brueder_, p. 63:
Barby, 1789.
[47-2] Cogolludo, _Historia de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. vii.
[48-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France._ An 1636, p. 107.
[48-2] This word is found in Gallatin's vocabularies (_Transactions of
the Am. Antiq. Soc._, vol. ii.), and may have partially induced that
distinguished ethnologist to ascribe, as he does in more than one place,
whatever notions the eastern tribes had of a Supreme Being to the
teachings of the Quakers.
[48-3] Bruyas, _Radices Verborum Iroquaeorum_, p. 84. This work is in
Shea's Library of American Linguistics, and is a most valuable
contribution to philology. The same etymology is given by Lafitau,
_Moeurs des Sauvages_, etc., Germ. trans., p. 65.
[50-1] My authorities are Riggs, _Dict. of the Dakota_, Boscana, _Account
of New California_, Richardson's and Egede's Eskimo Vocabularies,
Pandosy, _Gram. and Dict. of the Yakama_ (Shea's Lib. of Am.
Linguistics), and the Abbe Brasseur for the Aztec.
[51-1] These terms are found in Gallatin's vocabularies. The last
mentioned is not, as Adair thought, derived from _issto ulla_ or _ishto
hoollo_, great man, for in Choctaw the adjective cannot precede the noun
it qualifies. Its true sense is visible in the analogous Creek words
_ishtali_, the storm wind, and _hustolah_, the windy season.
[51-2] Webster derives hurricane from the Latin _furio_. But Oviedo tells
us in his description of Hispaniola that "Hurakan, in lingua di questa
isola vuole dire propriamente fortuna tempestuosa molto eccessiva, perche
en effetto non e altro que un grandissimo vento e pioggia insieme."
_Historia dell' Indie_, lib. vi. cap. iii. It is a coincidence--perhaps
something more--that in the Quichua language _huracan_, third person
singular present indicative of the verbal noun _huraca_, means "a stream
of water falls perpendicularly." (Markham, _Quichua Dictionary_, p. 132.)
[52-1] Oviedo, _Rel. de la Prov. de Cueba_, p. 141, ed. Ternaux-Compans.
[52-2] Garcia, _Origen de los Indios_, lib. iv. cap. xxii.
[53-1] See the _Rel. de la Nouv. France pour l'An 1637_, p. 49.
[53-2] Mr. Morgan, in his excellent work, _The League of the Iroquois_,
has been led astray by an ignorance of the etymology of these terms. For
Schoolcraft's views see his _Oneota_, p. 147. The matter is ably
discussed in the _Etudes Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de
l'Amerique_, p. 14: Montreal, 1866; but comp. Shea, _Dict.
Francais-Onontague_, preface.
[54-1] "Qui ne prend aucun soin des choses icy bas." _Jour. Hist. d'un
Voyage de l'Amerique_, p. 225: Paris, 1713.
[55-1] In attributing this speech to the Inca Yupanqui, I have followed
Balboa, who expressly says this was the general opinion of the Indians
(_Hist. du Perou_, p. 62, ed. Ternaux-Compans). Others assign it to other
Incas. See Garcilasso de la Vega, _Hist. des Incas_, lib. viii. chap. 8,
and Acosta, _Nat. and Morall Hist. of the New World_, chap. 5. The fact
and the approximate time are beyond question.
[56-1] Xeres, _Rel. de la Conq. du Perou_, p. 151, ed. Ternaux-Compans.
[57-1] Prescott, _Conq. of Mexico_, i. pp. 192, 193, on the authority of
Ixtlilxochitl.
[57-2] Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, iii. p. 297, note.
[57-3] Of very many authorities that I have at hand, I shall only mention
Heckewelder, _Acc. of the Inds._[TN-1] p. 422, Duponceau, _Mem. sur les
Langues de l'Amer. du Nord_, p. 310, Peter Martyr _De Rebus Oceanicis_,
Dec. i., cap. 9, Molina, _Hist. of Chili_, ii. p. 75, Ximenes, _Origen de
los Indios de Guatemala_, pp. 4, 5, Ixtlilxochitl, _Rel. des Conq. du
Mexique_, p. 2. These terms bear the severest scrutiny. The Aztec
appellation of the Supreme Being _Tloque nahuaque_ is compounded of
_tloc_, together, with, and _nahuac_, at, by, with, with possessive forms
added, giving the signification, Lord of all existence and coexistence
(alles Mitseyns und alles Beiseyns, bei welchem das Seyn aller Dinge ist.
Buschmann, _Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen_, p. 642). The Algonkin term
_Kittanittowit_ is derived from _kitta_, great, _manito_, spirit, _wit_,
an adjective termination indicating a mode of existence, and means the
Great Living Spirit (Duponceau, u. s.). Both these terms are undoubtedly
of native origin. In the Quiche legends the Supreme Being is called
_Bitol_, the substantive form of _bit_, to make pottery, to form, and
_Tzakol_, substantive form of _tzak_, to build, the Creator, the
Constructor. The Arowacks of Guyana applied the term _Aluberi_ to their
highest conception of a first cause, from the verbal form _alin_, he who
makes (Martius, _Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's_, i. p. 696).
[59-1] _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 403.
[59-2] Bruyas, _Rad. Verb. Iroquaeorum_, p. 38.
[60-1] Alcazar, _Chrono-historia de la Prov. de Toledo_, Dec. iii., Ano
viii., cap. iv: Madrid, 1710. This rare work contains the only faithful
copies of Father Rogel's letters extant. Mr. Shea, in his History of
Catholic Missions, calls him erroneously Roger.
[60-2] It is fully analyzed by Duponceau, _Langues de l'Amerique du
Nord_, p. 309.
[61-1] _Discourse on the Religion of the Ind. Tribes of N. Am._, p. 252
in the Trans. N. Y. Hist. Soc.
[61-2] Mueller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, pp. 265, 272, 274. Well may he
remark: "The dualism is not very striking among these tribes;" as a few
pages previous he says of the Caribs, "The dualism of gods is anything
but rigidly observed. The good gods do more evil than good. Fear is the
ruling religious sentiment." To such a lame conclusion do these venerable
prepossessions lead. "_Grau ist alle Theorie_."
[62-1] Loskiel, _Ges. der Miss. der evang. Brueder_, p. 46.
[62-2] Whipple, _Report on the Ind. Tribes_, p. 33: Washington, 1855.
Pacific Railroad Docs.
[62-3] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, i. p. 359.
[62-4] In Schoolcraft, _Ibid._, iv. p. 642.
[63-1] Or more exactly, the Beautiful Spirit, the Ugly Spirit. In
Onondaga the radicals are _onigonra_, spirit, _hio_ beautiful, _ahetken_
ugly. _Dictionnaire Francais-Onontague, edite par Jean-Marie Shea_: New
York, 1859.
[64-1] Squier, _The Serpent Symbol in America_.
[64-2] Both these legends will be analyzed in a subsequent chapter, and
an attempt made not only to restore them their primitive form, but to
explain their meaning.
[65-1] Compare the translation and remarks of Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios
de Guat._, p. 76, with those of Brasseur, _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_,
p. 189.