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.
The philosopher Machiavelli, commenting on the books of Livy, lays it
down as a general truth that every form and reform has been brought
about by a single individual. Since a remorseless criticism has shorn so
many heroes of their laurels, our faith in the maxim of the great
Florentine wavers, and the suspicion is created that the popular fancy
which personifies under one figure every social revolution is an
illusion. It springs from that tendency to hero worship, ineradicable in
the heart of the race, which leads every nation to have an ideal, the
imagined author of its prosperity, the father of his country, and the
focus of its legends. As has been hinted, history is not friendly to
their renown, and dissipates them altogether into phantoms of the brain,
or sadly dims the lustre of their fame. Arthur, bright star of chivalry,
dwindles into a Welsh subaltern; the Cid Campeador, defender of the
faith, sells his sword as often to Moslem as to Christian, and _sells_
it ever; while Siegfried and Feridun vanish into nothings.
As elsewhere the world over, so in America many tribes had to tell of
such a personage, some such august character, who taught them what they
knew, the tillage of the soil, the properties of plants, the art of
picture writing, the secrets of magic; who founded their institutions
and established their religions, who governed them long with glory
abroad and peace at home; and finally, did not die, but like Frederick
Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished
mysteriously, and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to
return to his beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness.
Such to the Algonkins was Michabo or Manibozho, to the Iroquois Ioskeha,
Wasi to the Cherokees, Tamoi to the Caribs; so the Mayas had Zamna, the
Toltecs Quetzalcoatl, the Muyscas Nemqueteba; such among the Aymaras was
Viracocha, among the Mandans Numock-muckenah, and among the natives of
the Orinoko Amalivaca; and the catalogue could be extended indefinitely.
It is not always easy to pronounce upon these heroes, whether they
belong to history or mythology, their nation's poetry or its prose. In
arriving at a conclusion we must remember that a fiction built on an
idea is infinitely more tenacious of life than a story founded on fact.
Further, that if a striking similarity in the legends of two such heroes
be discovered under circumstances which forbid the thought that one was
derived from the other, then both are probably mythical. If this is the
case in not two but in half a dozen instances, then the probability
amounts to a certainty, and the only task remaining is to explain such
narratives on consistent mythological principles. If after sifting out
all foreign and later traits, it appears that when first known to
Europeans, these heroes were assigned all the attributes of highest
divinity, were the imagined creators and rulers of the world, and
mightiest of spiritual powers, then their position must be set far
higher than that of deified men. They must be accepted as the supreme
gods of the red race, the analogues in the western continent of Jupiter,
Osiris, and Odin in the eastern, and whatever opinions contrary to this
may have been advanced by writers and travellers must be set down to the
account of that prevailing ignorance of American mythology which has
fathered so many other blunders. To solve these knotty points I shall
choose for analysis the culture myths of the Algonkins, the Iroquois,
the Toltecs of Mexico, and the Aymaras or Peruvians, guided in my choice
by the fact that these four families are the best known, and, in many
points of view, the most important on the continent.
From the remotest wilds of the northwest to the coast of the Atlantic,
from the southern boundaries of Carolina to the cheerless swamps of
Hudson's Bay, the Algonkins were never tired of gathering around the
winter fire and repeating the story of Manibozho or Michabo, the Great
Hare. With entire unanimity their various branches, the Powhatans of
Virginia, the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New
England, the Ottawas of the far north, and the western tribes perhaps
without exception, spoke of "this chimerical beast," as one of the old
missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem or clan
which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect. In many of
the tales which the whites have preserved of Michabo he seems half a
wizzard[TN-8], half a simpleton. He is full of pranks and wiles, but
often at a loss for a meal of victuals; ever itching to try his arts
magic on great beasts and often meeting ludicrous failures therein;
envious of the powers of others, and constantly striving to outdo them
in what they do best; in short, little more than a malicious buffoon
delighting in practical jokes, and abusing his superhuman powers for
selfish and ignoble ends. But this is a low, modern, and corrupt version
of the character of Michabo, bearing no more resemblance to his real and
ancient one than the language and acts of our Saviour and the apostles
in the coarse Mystery Plays of the Middle Ages do to those recorded by
the Evangelists.
What he really was we must seek in the accounts of older travellers, in
the invocations of the jossakeeds or prophets, and in the part assigned
to him in the solemn mysteries of religion. In these we find him
portrayed as the patron and founder of the meda worship,[162-1] the
inventor of picture writing, the father and guardian of their nation,
the ruler of the winds, even the maker and preserver of the world and
creator of the sun and moon. From a grain of sand brought from the
bottom of the primeval ocean, he fashioned the habitable land and set
it floating on the waters, till it grew to such a size that a strong
young wolf, running constantly, died of old age ere he reached its
limits. Under the name Michabo Ovisaketchak, the Great Hare who created
the Earth, he was originally the highest divinity recognized by them,
"powerful and beneficent beyond all others, maker of the heavens and the
world." He was founder of the medicine hunt in which after appropriate
ceremonies and incantations the Indian sleeps, and Michabo appears to
him in a dream, and tells him where he may readily kill game. He himself
was a mighty hunter of old; one of his footsteps measured eight leagues,
the Great Lakes were the beaver dams he built, and when the cataracts
impeded his progress he tore them away with his hands. Attentively
watching the spider spread its web to trap unwary flies, he devised the
art of knitting nets to catch fish, and the signs and charms he tested
and handed down to his descendants are of marvellous efficacy in the
chase. In the autumn, in "the moon of the falling leaf," ere he composes
himself to his winter's sleep, he fills his great pipe and takes a
god-like smoke. The balmy clouds float over the hills and woodlands,
filling the air with the haze of the "Indian summer."
Sometimes he was said to dwell in the skies with his brother the snow,
or, like many great spirits, to have built his wigwam in the far north
on some floe of ice in the Arctic Ocean, while the Chipeways localized
his birthplace and former home to the Island Michilimakinac at the
outlet of Lake Superior. But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries
he was alleged to reside toward the east, and in the holy formulae of
the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, the
east is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and
there, at the edge of the earth, where the sun rises, on the shore of
the infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house and sends
the luminaries forth on their daily journies.[164-1]
It is passing strange that such an insignificant creature as the rabbit
should have received this apotheosis. No explanation of it in the least
satisfactory has ever been offered. Some have pointed it out as a
senseless, meaningless brute worship. It leads to the suspicion that
there may lurk here one of those confusions of words which have so often
led to confusion of ideas in mythology. Manibozho, Nanibojou, Missibizi,
Michabo, Messou, all variations of the same name in different dialects
rendered according to different orthographies, scrutinize them closely
as we may, they all seem compounded according to well ascertained laws
of Algonkin euphony from the words corresponding to _great_ and _hare_
or _rabbit_, or the first two perhaps from _spirit_ and _hare_ (_michi_,
great, _wabos_, hare, _manito wabos_, spirit hare, Chipeway dialect),
and so they have invariably been translated even by the Indians
themselves. But looking more narrowly at the second member of the word,
it is clearly capable of another and very different interpretation, of
an interpretation which discloses at once the origin and the secret
meaning of the whole story of Michabo, in the light of which it appears
no longer the incoherent fable of savages, but a true myth, instinct
with nature, pregnant with matter, nowise inferior to those which
fascinate in the chants of the Rig Veda, or the weird pages of the Edda.
On a previous page I have emphasized with what might have seemed
superfluous force, how prominent in primitive mythology is the east, the
source of the morning, the day-spring on high, the cardinal point which
determines and controls all others. But I did not lay as much stress on
it as others have. "The whole theogony and philosophy of the ancient
world," says Max Mueller, "centred in the Dawn, the mother of the bright
gods, of the Sun in his various aspects, of the morn, the day, the
spring; herself the brilliant image and visage of immortality."[165-1]
Now it appears on attentively examining the Algonkin root _wab_, that it
gives rise to words of very diverse meaning, that like many others in
all languages while presenting but one form it represents ideas of
wholly unlike origin and application, that in fact there are two
distinct roots having this sound. One is the initial syllable of the
word translated hare or rabbit, but the other means _white_, and from it
is derived the words for the east, the dawn, the light, the day and the
morning.[165-2] Beyond a doubt this is the compound in the names
Michabo and Manibozho which therefore mean the Great Light, the Spirit
of Light, of the Dawn, or the East, and in the literal sense of the word
the Great White One, as indeed he has sometimes been called.
In this sense all the ancient and authentic myths concerning him are
plain and full of meaning. They divide themselves into two distinct
cycles. In the one Michabo is the spirit of light who dispels the
darkness; in the other as chief of the cardinal points he is lord of the
winds, prince of the powers of the air, whose voice is the thunder,
whose weapon the lightning, the supreme figure in the encounter of the
air currents, in the unending conflict which the Dakotas described as
waged by the waters and the winds.
In the first he is grandson of the moon, his father is the West Wind,
and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of
conception. For the moon is the goddess of night, the Dawn is her
daughter, who brings forth the morning and perishes herself in the act,
and the West, the spirit of darkness as the East is of light, precedes
and as it were begets the latter as the evening does the morning.
Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural
father to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long and
desperate struggle. "It began on the mountains. The West was forced to
give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and
lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he,
'my son, you know my power and that it is impossible to kill
me.'"[167-1] What is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness,
carried on from what time "the jocund morn stands tiptoe on the misty
mountain tops," across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that
knows no end, for both the opponents are immortal?
In the second, and evidently to the native mind more important cycle of
legends, he was represented as one of four brothers, the North, the
South, the East, and the West, all born at a birth, whose mother died in
ushering them into the world;[167-2] for hardly has the kindling orient
served to fix the cardinal points than it is lost and dies in the
advancing day. Yet it is clear that he was something more than a
personification of the east or the east wind, for it is repeatedly said
that it was he who assigned their duties to all the winds, to that of
the east as well as the others. This is a blending of his two
characters. Here too his life is a battle. No longer with his father,
indeed, but with his brother Chakekenapok, the flint-stone, whom he
broke in pieces and scattered over the land, and changed his entrails
into fruitful vines. The conflict was long and terrible. The face of
nature was desolated as by a tornado, and the gigantic boulders and
loose rocks found on the prairies are the missiles hurled by the mighty
combatants. Or else his foe was the glittering prince of serpents whose
abode was the lake; or was the shining Manito whose home was guarded by
fiery serpents and a deep sea; or was the great king of fishes; all
symbols of the atmospheric waters, all figurative descriptions of the
wars of the elements. In these affrays the thunder and lightning are at
his command, and with them he destroys his enemies. For this reason the
Chipeway pictography represents him brandishing a rattlesnake, the
symbol of the electric flash,[168-1] and sometimes they called him the
Northwest Wind, which in the region they inhabit usually brings the
thunder-storms.
As ruler of the winds he was, like Quetzalcoatl, father and protector of
all species of birds, their symbols.[168-2] He was patron of hunters,
for their course is guided by the cardinal points. Therefore, when the
medicine hunt had been successful, the prescribed sign of gratitude to
him was to scatter a handful of the animal's blood toward each of
these.[168-3] As daylight brings vision, and to see is to know, it was
no fable that gave him as the author of their arts, their wisdom, and
their institutions.
In effect, his story is a world-wide truth, veiled under a thin garb of
fancy. It is but a variation of that narrative which every race has to
tell, out of gratitude to that beneficent Father who everywhere has
cared for His children. Michabo, giver of life and light, creator and
preserver, is no apotheosis of a prudent chieftain, still less the
fabrication of an idle fancy or a designing priestcraft, but in origin,
deeds, and name the not unworthy personification of the purest
conceptions they possessed concerning the Father of All. To Him at early
dawn the Indian stretched forth his hands in prayer; and to the sky or
the sun as his homes, he first pointed the pipe in his ceremonies, rites
often misinterpreted by travellers as indicative of sun worship. As
later observers tell us to this day the Algonkin prophet builds the
medicine lodge to face the sunrise, and in the name of Michabo, who
there has his home, summons the spirits of the four quarters of the
world and Gizhigooke, the day maker, to come to his fire and disclose
the hidden things of the distant and the future: so the earliest
explorers relate that when they asked the native priests who it was they
invoked, what demons or familiars, the invariable reply was, "the
Kichigouai, the genii of light, those who make the day."[169-1]
Our authorities on Iroquois traditions, though numerous enough, are not
so satisfactory. The best, perhaps, is Father Brebeuf, a Jesuit
missionary, who resided among the Hurons in 1626. Their culture myth,
which he has recorded, is strikingly similar to that of the Algonkins.
Two brothers appear in it, Ioskeha and Tawiscara, names which find their
meaning in the Oneida dialect as the White one and the Dark one.[170-1]
They are twins, born of a virgin mother, who died in giving them life.
Their grandmother was the moon, called by the Hurons Ataensic, a word
which signifies literally _she bathes herself_, and which, in the
opinion of Father Bruyas, a most competent authority, is derived from
the word for water.[170-2]
The brothers quarrelled, and finally came to blows; the former using the
horns of a stag, the latter the wild rose. He of the weaker weapon was
very naturally discomfited and sorely wounded. Fleeing for life, the
blood gushed from him at every step, and as it fell turned into
flint-stones. The victor returned to his grandmother, and established
his lodge in the far east, on the borders of the great ocean, whence
the sun comes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special
guardian of the Iroquois. The earth was at first arid and sterile, but
he destroyed the gigantic frog which had swallowed all the waters, and
guided the torrents into smooth streams and lakes.[171-1] The woods he
stocked with game; and having learned from the great tortoise, who
supports the world, how to make fire, taught his children, the Indians,
this indispensable art. He it was who watched and watered their crops;
and, indeed, without his aid, says the old missionary, quite out of
patience with such puerilities, "they think they could not boil a pot."
Sometimes they spoke of him as the sun, but this only figuratively.[171-2]
From other writers of early date we learn that the essential outlines of
this myth were received by the Tuscaroras and the Mohawks, and as the
proper names of the two brothers are in the Oneida dialect, we cannot
err in considering this the national legend of the Iroquois stock. There
is strong likelihood that the Taronhiawagon, he who comes from the Sky,
of the Onondagas, who was their supreme God, who spoke to them in
dreams, and in whose honor the chief festival of their calendar was
celebrated about the winter solstice, was, in fact, Ioskeha under
another name.[172-1] As to the legend of the Good and Bad Minds given
by Cusic, to which I have referred in a previous chapter, and the later
and wholly spurious myth of Hiawatha, first made public by Mr. Clark in
his History of Onondaga (1849), and which, in the graceful poem of
Longfellow, is now familiar to the world, they are but pale and
incorrect reflections of the early native traditions.
So strong is the resemblance Ioskeha bears to Michabo, that what has
been said in explanation of the latter will be sufficient for both. Yet
I do not imagine that the one was copied or borrowed from the other. We
cannot be too cautious in adopting such a conclusion. The two nations
were remote in everything but geographical position. I call to mind
another similar myth. In it a mother is also said to have brought forth
twins, or a pair of twins, and to have paid for them with her life.
Again the one is described as the bright, the other as the dark twin;
again it is said that they struggled one with the other for the mastery.
Scholars, likewise, have interpreted the mother to mean the Dawn, the
twins either Light and Darkness, or the Four Winds. Yet this is not
Algonkin theology; nor is it at all related to that of the Iroquois. It
is the story of Sarama in the Rig Veda, and was written in Sanscrit,
under the shadow of the Himalayas, centuries before Homer.
Such uniformity points not to a common source in history, but in
psychology. Man, chiefly cognizant of his soul through his senses,
thought with an awful horror of the night which deprived him of the use
of one and foreshadowed the loss of all. Therefore _light_ and _life_
were to him synonymous; therefore all religions promise to lead
"From night to light,
From night to heavenly light;"
therefore He who rescues is ever the Light of the World; therefore it is
said "to the upright ariseth light in darkness;" therefore everywhere
the kindling East, the pale Dawn, is the embodiment of his hopes and the
centre of his reminiscences. Who shall say that his instinct led him
here astray? For is not, in fact, all life dependent on light? Do not
all those marvellous and subtle forces known to the older chemists as
the imponderable elements, without which not even the inorganic crystal
is possible, proceed from the rays of light? Let us beware of that
shallow science so ready to shout Eureka, and reverently acknowledge a
mysterious intuition here displayed which joins with the latest
conquests of the human mind to repeat and emphasize that message which
the Evangelist heard of the Spirit and declared unto men, that "God is
Light."[173-1]
Both these heroes, let it be observed, live in the uttermost east; both
are the mythical fathers of the race. To the east, therefore, should
these nations have pointed as their original dwelling place. This they
did in spite of history. Cusic, who takes up the story of the Iroquois a
thousand years before the Christian era, locates them first in the most
eastern region they ever possessed. While the Algonkins with one voice
called those of their tribes living nearest the rising sun _Abnakis_,
our ancestors at the east, or at the dawn; literally our _white_
ancestors.[174-1] I designedly emphasize this literal rendering. It
reminds one of the white twin of Iroquois legend, and illustrates how
the color white came to be intimately associated with the morning light
and its beneficent effects. Moreover color has a specific effect on the
mind; there is a music to the eye as well as to the ear; and white,
which holds all hues in itself, disposes the soul to all pleasant and
elevating emotions.[174-2] Not fashion alone bids the bride wreathe her
brow with orange flowers, nor was it a mere figure of speech that led
the inspired poet to call his love "fairest among women," and to
prophecy a Messiah "fairer than the children of men," fulfilled in that
day when He appeared "in garments so white as no fuller on earth could
white them." No nation is free from the power of this law. "White,"
observes Adair of the southern Indians, "is their fixed emblem of peace,
friendship, happiness, prosperity, purity, and holiness."[175-1] Their
priests dressed in white robes, as did those of Peru and Mexico; the
kings of the various species of animals were all supposed to be
white;[175-2] the cities of refuge established as asylums for alleged
criminals by the Cherokees in the manner of the Israelites were called
"white towns," and for sacrifices animals of this color were ever most
highly esteemed. All these sentiments were linked to the dawn. Language
itself is proof of it. Many Algonkin words for east, morning, dawn, day,
light, as we have already seen, are derived from a radical signifying
_white_. Or we can take a tongue nowise related, the Quiche, and find
its words for east, dawn, morning, light, bright, glorious, happy,
noble, all derived from _zak_, white. We read in their legends of the
earliest men that they were "white children," "white sons," leading "a
white life beyond the dawn," and the creation itself is attributed to
the Dawn, the White One, the White Sacrificer of Blood.[175-3] But why
insist upon the point when in European tongues we find the daybreak
called _l'aube_, _alva_, from _albus_, white? Enough for the purpose if
the error of those is manifest, who, in such expressions, would seek
support for any theory of ancient European immigration; enough if it
displays the true meaning of those traditions of the advent of
benevolent visitors of fair complexion in ante-Columbian times, which
both Algonkins and Iroquois[176-1] had in common with many other tribes
of the western continent. Their explanation will not be found in the
annals of Japan, the triads of the Cymric bards, nor the sagas of
Icelandic skalds, but in the propensity of the human mind to attribute
its own origin and culture to that white-shining orient where sun, moon,
and stars, are daily born in renovated glory, to that fair mother, who,
at the cost of her own life, gives light and joy to the world, to the
brilliant womb of Aurora, the glowing bosom of the Dawn.
Even the complicated mythology of Peru yields to the judicious
application of these principles of interpretation. Its peculiar
obscurity arises from the policy of the Incas to blend the religions of
conquered provinces with their own. Thus about 1350 the Inca Pachacutec
subdued the country about Lima where the worship of Con and Pachacama
prevailed.[176-2] The local myth represented these as father and son,
or brothers, children of the sun. They were without flesh or blood,
impalpable, invisible, and incredibly swift of foot. Con first possessed
the land, but Pachacama attacked and drove him to the north. Irritated
at his defeat he took with him the rain, and consequently to this day
the sea-coast of Peru is largely an arid desert. Now when we are
informed that the south wind, that in other words which blows to the
north, is the actual cause of the aridity of the low-lands,[177-1] and
consider the light and airy character of these antagonists, we cannot
hesitate to accept this as a myth of the winds. The name of _Con tici_,
the Thunder Vase, was indeed applied to Viracocha in later times, but
they were never identical. Viracocha was the culture hero of the ancient
Aymara-Quichua stock. He was more than that, for in their creed he was
creator and possessor of all things. Lands and herds were assigned to
other gods to support their temples, and offerings were heaped on their
altars, but to him none. For, asked the Incas: "Shall the Lord and
Master of the whole world need these things from us?" To him, says
Acosta, "they did attribute the chief power and commandement over all
things;" and elsewhere "in all this realm the chief idoll they did
worship was Viracocha, and _after him_ the Sunne."[178-1]
Ere sun or moon was made, he rose from the bosom of Lake Titicaca, and
presided over the erection of those wondrous cities whose ruins still
dot its islands and western shores, and whose history is totally lost in
the night of time. He himself constructed these luminaries and placed
them in the sky, and then peopled the earth with its present
inhabitants. From the lake he journeyed westward, not without
adventures, for he was attacked with murderous intent by the beings whom
he had created. When, however, scorning such unequal combat, he had
manifested his power by hurling the lightning on the hill-sides and
consuming the forests, they recognized their maker, and humbled
themselves before him. He was reconciled, and taught them arts and
agriculture, institutions and religion, meriting the title they gave him
of _Pachayachachic_, teacher of all things. At last he disappeared in
the western ocean. Four personages, companions or sons, were closely
connected with him. They rose together with him from the lake, or else
were his first creations. These are the four mythical civilizers of
Peru, who another legend asserts emerged from the cave Pacarin tampu the
Lodgings of the Dawn.[179-1] To these Viracocha gave the earth, to one
the north, to another the south, to a third the east, to a fourth the
west. Their names are very variously given, but as they have already
been identified with the four winds, we can omit their consideration
here.[179-2] Tradition, as has rightly been observed by the Inca
Garcilasso de la Vega,[179-3] transferred a portion of the story of
Viracocha to Manco Capac, first of the historical Incas. King Manco,
however, was a real character, the Rudolph of Hapsburg of their reigning
family, and flourished about the eleventh century.
There is a general resemblance between this story and that of Michabo.
Both precede and create the sun, both journey to the west, overcoming
opposition with the thunderbolt, both divide the world between the four
winds, both were the fathers, gods, and teachers of their nations. Nor
does it cease here. Michabo, I have shown, is the white spirit of the
Dawn. Viracocha, all authorities translate "the fat or foam of the sea."
The idea conveyed is of whiteness, foam being called fat from its
color.[180-1] So true is this that to-day in Peru white men are called
_viracochas_, and the early explorers constantly received the same
epithet.[180-2] The name is a metaphor. The dawn rises above the horizon
as the snowy foam on the surface of a lake. As the Algonkins spoke of
the Abnakis, their white ancestors, as in Mexican legends the early
Toltecs were of fair complexion, so the Aymaras sometimes called the
first four brothers, _viracochas_, white men.[180-3] It is the ancient
story how
"Light
Sprang from the deep, and from her native east
To journey through the airy gloom began."
The central figure of Toltec mythology is Quetzalcoatl. Not an author on
ancient Mexico but has something to say about the glorious days when he
ruled over the land. No one denies him to have been a god, the god of
the air, highest deity of the Toltecs, in whose honor was erected the
pyramid of Cholula, grandest monument of their race. But many insist
that he was at first a man, some deified king. There were in truth many
Quetzalcoatls, for his high priest always bore his name, but he himself
is a pure creation of the fancy, and all his alleged history is nothing
but a myth.
His emblematic name, the Bird-Serpent, and his rebus and cross at
Palenque, I have already explained. Others of his titles were, Ehecatl,
the air; Yolcuat, the rattlesnake; Tohil, the rumbler; Huemac, the
strong hand; Nani he hecatle, lord of the four winds. The same dualism
reappears in him that has been noted in his analogues elsewhere; He is
both lord of the eastern light and the winds.
As the former, he was born of a virgin in the land of Tula or Tlapallan,
in the distant Orient, and was high priest of that happy realm. The
morning star was his symbol, and the temple of Cholula was dedicated to
him expressly as the author of light.[181-1] As by days we measure time,
he was the alleged inventor of the calendar. Like all the dawn heroes,
he too was represented as of white complexion, clothed in long white
robes, and, as most of the Aztec gods, with a full and flowing
beard.[181-2] When his earthly-work was done he too returned to the
east, assigning as a reason that the sun, the ruler of Tlapallan,
demanded his presence. But the real motive was that he had been
overcome by Tezcatlipoca, otherwise called Yoalliehecatl, the wind or
spirit of night, who had descended from heaven by a spider's web and
presented his rival with a draught pretended to confer immortality, but,
in fact, producing uncontrollable longing for home. For the wind and the
light both depart when the gloaming draws near, or when the clouds
spread their dark and shadowy webs along the mountains, and pour the
vivifying rain upon the fields.
In his other character, he was begot of the breath of Tonacateotl, god
of our flesh or subsistence,[182-1] or (according to Gomara) was the son
of Iztac Mixcoatl, the white cloud serpent, the spirit of the tornado.
Messenger of Tlaloc, god of rains, he was figuratively said to sweep the
road for him, since in that country violent winds are the precursors of
the wet seasons. Wherever he went all manner of singing birds bore him
company, emblems of the whistling breezes. When he finally disappeared
in the far east, he sent back four trusty youths who had ever shared his
fortunes, "incomparably swift and light of foot," with directions to
divide the earth between them and rule it till he should return and
resume his power. When he would promulgate his decrees, his herald
proclaimed them from Tzatzitepec, the hill of shouting, with such a
mighty voice that it could be heard a hundred leagues around. The arrows
which he shot transfixed great trees, the stones he threw levelled
forests, and when he laid his hands on the rocks the mark was indelible.
Yet as thus emblematic of the thunder-storm, he possessed in full
measure its better attributes. By shaking his sandals he gave fire to
men, and peace, plenty, and riches blessed his subjects. Tradition says
he built many temples to Mictlanteuctli, the Aztec Pluto, and at the
creation of the sun that he slew all the other gods, for the advancing
dawn disperses the spectral shapes of night, and yet all its vivifying
power does but result in increasing the number doomed to fell before the
remorseless stroke of death.[183-1]
His symbols were the bird, the serpent, the cross, and the flint,
representing the clouds, the lightning, the four winds, and the
thunderbolt. Perhaps, as Huemac, the Strong Hand, he was god of the
earthquakes. The Zapotecs worshipped such a deity under the image of
this member carved from a precious stone,[183-2] calling to mind the
"Kab ul," the Working Hand, adored by the Mayas,[183-3] and said to be
one of the images of Zamna, their hero god. The human hand, "that divine
tool," as it has been called, might well be regarded by the reflective
mind as the teacher of the arts and the amulet whose magic power has won
for man what vantage he has gained in his long combat with nature and
his fellows.
I might next discuss the culture myth of the Muyscas, whose hero Bochica
or Nemqueteba bore the other name SUA, the White One, the Day, the
East, an appellation they likewise gave the Europeans on their arrival.
He had taught them in remotest times how to manufacture their clothing,
build their houses, cultivate the soil, and reckon time. When he
disappeared, he divided the land between four chiefs, and laid down many
minute rules of government which ever after were religiously
observed.[184-1] Or I might choose that of the Caribs, whose patron Tamu
called Grandfather, and Old Man of the Sky, was a man of light
complexion, who in the old times came from the east, instructed them in
agriculture and arts, and disappeared in the same direction, promising
them assistance in the future, and that at death he would receive their
souls on the summit of the sacred tree, and transport them safely to his
home in the sky.[184-2] Or from the more fragmentary mythology of ruder
nations, proof might be brought of the well nigh universal reception of
these fundamental views. As, for instance, when the Mandans of the Upper
Missouri speak of their first ancestor as a son of the West, who
preserved them at the flood, and whose garb was always of four
milk-white wolf skins;[185-1] and when the Pimos, a people of the valley
of the Rio Gila, relate that their birthplace was where the sun rises,
that there for generations they led a joyous life, until their
beneficent first parent disappeared in the heavens. From that time, say
they, God lost sight of them, and they wandered west, and further west
till they reached their present seats.[185-2] Or I might instance the
Tupis of Brazil, who were named after the first of men, Tupa, he who
alone survived the flood, who was one of four brothers, who is described
as an old man of fair complexion, _un vieillard blanc_,[185-3] and who
is now their highest divinity, ruler of the lightning and the storm,
whose voice is the thunder, and who is the guardian of their nation. But
is it not evident that these and all such legends are but variations of
those already analyzed?
In thus removing one by one the wrappings of symbolism, and displaying
at the centre and summit of these various creeds, He who is throned in
the sky, who comes with the dawn, who manifests himself in the light and
the storm, and whose ministers are the four winds, I set up no new god.
The ancient Israelites prayed to him who was seated above the firmament,
who commanded the morning and caused the day-spring to know its place,
who answered out of the whirlwind, and whose envoys were the four winds,
the four cherubim described with such wealth of imagery in the
introduction to the book of Ezekiel. The Mahometan adores "the clement
and merciful Lord of the Daybreak," whose star is in the east, who rides
on the storm, and whose breath is the wind. The primitive man in the New
World also associated these physical phenomena as products of an
invisible power, conceived under human form, called by name, worshipped
as one, and of whom all related the same myth differing but in
unimportant passages. This was the primeval religion. It was not
monotheism, for there were many other gods; it was not pantheism, for
there was no blending of the cause with the effects; still less was it
fetichism, an adoration of sensuous objects, for these were recognized
as effects. It teaches us that the idea of God neither arose from the
phenomenal world nor was sunk in it, as is the shallow theory of the
day, but is as Kant long ago defined it, a conviction of a highest and
first principle which binds all phenomena into one.
One point of these legends deserves closer attention for the influence
it exerted on the historical fortunes of the race. The dawn heroes were
conceived as of fair complexion, mighty in war, and though absent for a
season, destined to return and claim their ancient power. Here was one
of those unconscious prophecies, pointing to the advent of a white race
from the east, that wrote the doom of the red man in letters of fire.
Historians have marvelled at the instantaneous collapse of the empires
of Mexico, Peru, the Mayas, and the Natchez, before a handful of Spanish
filibusters. The fact was, wherever the whites appeared they were
connected with these ancient predictions of the spirit of the dawn
returning to claim his own. Obscure and ominous prophecies, "texts of
bodeful song," rose in the memory of the natives, and paralyzed their
arms.
"For a very long time," said Montezuma, at his first interview with
Cortes, "has it been handed down that we are not the original possessors
of this land, but came hither from a distant region under the guidance
of a ruler who afterwards left us and returned. We have ever believed
that some day his descendants would come and resume dominion over us.
Inasmuch as you are from that direction, which is toward the rising of
the sun, and serve so great a king as you describe, we believe that he
is also our natural lord, and are ready to submit ourselves to
him."[187-1]
The gloomy words of Nezahualcoyotl, a former prince of Tezcuco,
foretelling the arrival of white and bearded men from the east, who
would wrest the power from the hands of the rightful rulers and destroy
in a day the edifice of centuries, were ringing in his ears. But they
were not so gloomy to the minds of his down-trodden subjects, for that
day was to liberate them from the thralls of servitude. Therefore when
they first beheld the fair complexioned Spaniards, they rushed into the
water to embrace the prows of their vessels, and despatched messengers
throughout the land to proclaim the return of Quetzalcoatl.[188-1]
The noble Mexican was not alone in his presentiments. When Hernando de
Soto on landing in Peru first met the Inca Huascar, the latter related
an ancient prophecy which his father Huayna Capac had repeated on his
dying bed, to the effect that in the reign of the thirteenth Inca, white
men (_viracochas_) of surpassing strength and valor would come from
their father the Sun and subject to their rule the nations of the world.
"I command you," said the dying monarch, "to yield them homage and
obedience, for they will be of a nature superior to ours."[188-2]
The natives of Haiti told Columbus of similar predictions long anterior
to his arrival.[188-3] And Father Lizana has preserved in the original
Maya tongue several such foreboding chants. Doubtless he has adapted
them somewhat to proselytizing purposes, but they seem very likely to be
close copies of authentic aboriginal songs, referring to the return of
Zamna or Kukulcan, lord of the dawn and the four winds, worshipped at
Cozumel and Palenque under the sign of the cross. An extract will show
their character:--
"At the close of the thirteenth Age of the world,
While the cities of Itza and Tancah still flourish,
The sign of the Lord of the Sky will appear,
The light of the dawn will illumine the land,
And the cross will be seen by the nations of men.
A father to you, will He be, Itzalanos,
A brother to you, ye natives of Tancah;
Receive well the bearded guests who are coming,
Bringing the sign of the Lord from the daybreak,
Of the Lord of the Sky, so clement yet powerful."[189-1]
The older writers, Gomara, Cogolludo, Villagutierre, have taken pains to
collect other instances of this presentiment of the arrival and
domination of a white race. Later historians, fashionably incredulous of
what they cannot explain, have passed them over in silence. That they
existed there can be no doubt, and that they arose in the way I have
stated, is almost proven by the fact that in Mexico, Bogota, and Peru,
the whites were at once called from the proper names of the heroes of
the Dawn, _Suas_, _Viracochas_, and _Quetzalcoatls_.
When the church of Rome had crushed remorselessly the religions of
Mexico and Peru, all hope of the return of Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha
perished with the institutions of which they were the mythical founders.
But it was only to arise under new incarnations and later names. As well
forbid the heart of youth to bud forth in tender love, as that of
oppressed nationalities to cherish the faith that some ideal hero, some
royal man, will yet arise, and break in fragments their fetters, and
lead them to glory and honor.
When the name of Quetzalcoatl was no longer heard from the teocalli of
Cholula, that of Montezuma took its place. From ocean to ocean, and from
the river Gila to the Nicaraguan lake, nearly every aboriginal nation
still cherishes the memory of Montezuma, not as the last unfortunate
ruler of a vanished state, but as the prince of their golden era, their
Saturnian age, lord of the winds and waters, and founder of their
institutions. When, in the depth of the tropical forests, the antiquary
disinters some statue of earnest mien, the natives whisper one to the
other, "Montezuma! Montezuma!"[190-1] In the legends of New Mexico he is
the founder of the pueblos, and intrusted to their guardianship the
sacred fire. Departing, he planted a tree, and bade them watch it well,
for when that tree should fall and the fire die out, then he would
return from the far East, and lead his loyal people to victory and
power. When the present generation saw their land glide, mile by mile,
into the rapacious hands of the Yankees--when new and strange diseases
desolated their homes--finally, when in 1846 the sacred tree was
prostrated, and the guardian of the holy fire was found dead on its cold
ashes, then they thought the hour of deliverance had come, and every
morning at earliest dawn a watcher mounted to the house-tops, and gazed
long and anxiously in the lightening east, hoping to descry the noble
form of Montezuma advancing through the morning beams at the head of a
conquering army.[191-1]
Groaning under the iron rule of the Spaniards, the Peruvians would not
believe that the last of the Incas had perished an outcast and a
wanderer in the forests of the Cordilleras. For centuries they clung to
the persuasion that he had but retired to another mighty kingdom beyond
the mountains, and in due time would return and sweep the haughty
Castilian back into the ocean. In 1781, a mestizo, Jose Gabriel
Condorcanqui, of the province of Tinta, took advantage of this strong
delusion, and binding around his forehead the scarlet fillet of the
Incas, proclaimed himself the long lost Inca Tupac Amaru, and a true
child of the sun. Thousands of Indians flocked to his standard, and at
their head he took the field, vowing the extermination of every soul of
the hated race. Seized at last by the Spaniards, and condemned to a
public execution, so profound was the reverence with which he had
inspired his followers, so full their faith in his claims, that,
undeterred by the threats of the soldiery, they prostrated themselves on
their faces before this last of the children of the sun, as he passed on
to a felon's death.[191-2]
These fancied reminiscences, these unfounded hopes, so vague, so
child-like, let no one dismiss them as the babblings of ignorance.
Contemplated in their broadest meaning as characteristics of the race of
man, they have an interest higher than any history, beyond that of any
poetry. They point to the recognized discrepancy between what man is,
and what he feels he should be, must be; they are the indignant protests
of the race against acquiescence in the world's evil as the world's law;
they are the incoherent utterances of those yearnings for nobler
conditions of existence, which no savagery, no ignorance, nothing but a
false and lying enlightenment can wholly extinguish.
FOOTNOTES:
[162-1] The _meda_ worship is the ordinary religious ritual of the
Algonkins. It consists chiefly in exhibitions of legerdemain, and in
conjuring and exorcising demons. A _jossakeed_ is an inspired prophet who
derives his power directly from the higher spirits, and not as the
_medawin_, by instruction and practice.
[164-1] For these particulars see the _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1667, p.
12, 1670, p. 93; Charlevoix, _Journal Historique_, p. 344; Schoolcraft,
_Indian Tribes_, v. pp. 420 sqq., and Alex. Henry, _Travs. in Canada and
the Ind. Territories_, pp. 212 sqq. These are decidedly the best
references of the many that could be furnished. Peter Jones' _History of
the Ojibway Indians_, p. 35, may also be consulted.
[165-1] _Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 518.
[165-2] Dialectic forms in Algonkin for white, are _wabi_, _wape_,
_wompi_, _waubish_, _oppai_; for morning, _wapan_, _wapaneh_, _opah_; for
east, _wapa_, _waubun_, _waubamo_; for dawn, _wapa_, _waubun_; for day,
_wompan_, _oppan_; for light, _oppung_; and many others similar. In the
Abnaki dialect, _wanbighen_, it is white, is the customary idiom to
express the breaking of the day (Vetromile, _The Abnakis and their
History_, p. 27: New York, 1866). The loss in composition of the vowel
sound represented by the English w, and in the French writers by the
figure 8, is supported by frequent analogy.
[167-1] Schoolcraft, _Algic Researches_, i. pp. 135-142.
[167-2] The names of the four brothers, Wabun, Kabun, Kabibonokka, and
Shawano, express in Algonkin both the cardinal points and the winds which
blow from them. In another version of the legend, first reported by
Father De Smet and quoted by Schoolcraft without acknowledgment, they are
Nanaboojoo, Chipiapoos, Wabosso, and Chakekenapok. See for the support of
the text, Schoolcraft, _Algic Res._, ii. p. 214; De Smet, _Oregon
Missions_, p. 347.
[168-1] _Narrative of John Tanner_, p. 351.
[168-2] Schoolcraft, _Algic Res._, i. p. 216.
[168-3] _Narrative of John Tanner_, p. 354.
[169-1] Compare the _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1634 p. 14, 1637, p. 46,
with Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, v. p. 419. _Kichigouai_ is the same word
as _Gizhigooke_, according to a different orthography.
[170-1] The names _I8skeha_ and _Ta8iscara_ I venture to identify with
the Oneida _owisske_ or _owiska_, white, and _tetiucalas_ (_tyokaras_,
_tewhgarlars_, Mohawk), dark or darkness. The prefix i to _owisske_ is
the impersonal third person singular; the suffix _ha_ gives a future
sense, so that _i-owisske-ha_ or _iouskeha_ means "it is going to become
white." Brebeuf gives a similar example of _gaon_, old; _a-gaon-ha_, _il
va devenir vieux_ (_Rel. Nouv. France_, 1636, p. 99). But "it is going to
become white," meant to the Iroquois that the dawn was about to appear,
just as _wanbighen_, it is white, did to the Abnakis (see note on page
166), and as the Eskimos say, _kau ma wok_, it is white, to express that
it is daylight (Richardson's Vocab. of Labrador Eskimo in his _Arctic
Expedition_). Therefore, that Ioskeha is an impersonation of the light of
the dawn admits of no dispute.
[170-2] The orthography of Brebeuf is _aataentsic_. This may be analyzed
as follows: root _aouen_, water; prefix _at_, _il y a quelque chose la
dedans_; _ataouen_, _se baigner_; from which comes the form
_ataouensere_. (See Bruyas, _Rad. Verb. Iroquaeor._, pp. 30, 31.) Here
again the mythological role of the moon as the goddess of water comes
distinctly to light.
[171-1] This offers an instance of the uniformity which prevailed in
symbolism in the New World. The Aztecs adored the goddess of water under
the figure of a frog carved from a single emerald; or of human form, but
holding in her hand the leaf of a water lily ornamented with frogs.
(Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, i. p. 324.)
[171-2] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1636, p. 101.
[172-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1671, p. 17. Cusic spells it
_Tarenyawagon_, and translates it Holder of the Heavens. But the name is
evidently a compound of _garonhia_, sky, softened in the Onondaga dialect
to _taronhia_ (see Gallatin's Vocabs. under the word sky), and _wagin_, I
come.
[173-1] ~Ho Theos phos esti~, The First Epistle General of John, i. 5.
In curious analogy to these myths is that of the Eskimos of Greenland.
In the beginning, they relate, were two brothers, one of whom said:
"There shall be night and there shall be day, and men shall die, one
after another." But the second said, "There shall be no day, but only
night all the time, and men shall live forever." They had a long
struggle, but here once more he who loved darkness rather than light was
worsted, and the day triumphed. (_Nachrichten von Groenland aus einem
Tagebuche vom Bischof Paul Egede_, p. 157: Kopenhagen, 1790. The date of
the entry is 1738.)
[174-1] I accept without hesitation the derivation of this word, proposed
and defended by that accomplished Algonkin scholar, the Rev. Eugene
Vetromile, from _wanb_, white or east, and _naghi_ ancestors (_The
Abnakis and their History_, p. 29: New York, 1866).
[174-2] White light, remarks Goethe, has in it something cheerful and
ennobling; it possesses "eine heitere, muntere, sanft reizende
Eigenschaft." _Farbenlehre_, sec's 766, 770.
[175-1] _Hist. of the N. Am. Indians_, p. 159.
[175-2] La Hontan, _Voy. dans l'Amer. Sept._, ii. p. 42.
[175-3] "Blanco pizote," Ximenes, p. 4, _Vocabulario Quiche_, s. v.
_zak_. In the far north the Eskimo tongue presents the same analogy. Day,
morning, bright, light, lightning, all are from the same root (_kau_),
signifying white (Richardson, Vocab. of Labrador Eskimo).
[176-1] Some fragments of them may be found in Campanius, _Acc. of New
Sweden_, 1650, book iii. chap. 11, and in Byrd, _The Westover
Manuscripts_, 1733, p. 82. They were in both instances alleged to have
been white and bearded men, the latter probably a later trait in the
legend.
[176-2] _Con_ or _Cun_ I have already explained to mean thunder, _Con
tici_, the mythical thunder vase. Pachacama is doubtless, as M. Leonce
Angrand has suggested, from _ppacha_, source, and _cama_, all, the Source
of All things (Desjardins, _Le Perou avant la Conq. Espagnole_, p. 23,
note). But he and all other writers have been in error in considering
this identical with _Pachacamac_, nor can the latter mean _creator of the
world_, as it has constantly been translated. It is a participial
adjective from _pacha_, place, especially the world, and _camac_, present
participle of _camani_, I animate, from which also comes _camakenc_, the
soul, and means _animating the world_. It was never used as a proper
name. The following trochaic lines from the Quichua poem translated in
the previous chapter, show its true meaning and correct accent:--
P[=a]ch[)a] r[=u]r[)a]c, World creating,
P[=a]ch[)a] c[=a]m[)a]c, World animating,
Viracocha, Viracocha,
Camasunqui, He animates thee.
The last word is the second transition, present tense, of _camani_, while
_camac_ is its present participle.
[177-1] Ulloa, _Memoires Philosophiques sur l'Amerique_, i. p. 105.
[178-1] Acosta, _Hist. of the New World_, bk. v. chap. 4, bk. vi. chap.
19, Eng. trans., 1704.
[179-1] The name is derived from _tampu_, corrupted by the Spaniards to
_tambo_, an inn, and _paccari_ morning, or _paccarin_, it dawns, which
also has the figurative signification, it is born. It may therefore mean
either Lodgings of the Dawn, or as the Spaniards usually translated it,
House of Birth, or Production, _Casa de Producimiento_.
[179-2] The names given by Balboa (_Hist. du Perou_, p. 4) and Montesinos
(_Ancien Perou_, p. 5) are Manco, Cacha, Auca, Uchu. The meaning of Manco
is unknown. The others signify, in their order, messenger, enemy or
traitor, and the little one. The myth of Viracocha is given in its most
antique form by Juan de Betanzos, in the _Historia de los Ingas_,
compiled in the first years of the conquest from the original songs and
legends. It is quoted in Garcia, _Origen de los Indios_, lib. v. cap. 7.
Balboa, Montesinos, Acosta, and others have also furnished me some
incidents. Whether Atachuchu mentioned in the last chapter was not
another name of Viracocha may well be questioned. It is every way
probable.
[179-3] _Hist. des Incas_, liv. iii. chap. 25.
[180-1] It is compounded of _vira_, fat, foam (which perhaps is akin to
_yurac_, _white_), and _cocha_, a pond or lake.
[180-2] See Desjardins, _Le Perou avant la Conq. Espagnole_, p. 67.
[180-3] Gomara, _Hist. de las Indias_, cap. 119, in Mueller.
[181-1] Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, i. p. 302.
[181-2] There is no reason to lay any stress upon this feature. Beard was
nothing uncommon among the Aztecs and many other nations of the New
World. It was held to add dignity to the appearance, and therefore
Sahagun, in his description of the Mexican idols, repeatedly alludes to
their beards, and Mueller quotes various authorities to show that the
priests wore them long and full (_Amer. Urreligionen_, p. 429). Not only
was Quetzalcoatl himself reported to have been of fair complexion--white
indeed--but the Creole historian Ixtlilxochitl says the old legends
asserted that all the Toltecs, natives of Tollan, or Tula, as their name
signifies, were so likewise. Still more, Aztlan, the traditional home of
the Nahuas, or Aztecs proper, means literally the white land, according
to one of our best authorities (Buschmann, _Ueber die Aztekischen
Ortsnamen_, 612: Berlin, 1852).
[182-1] Kingsborough, _Antiquities of Mexico_, v. p. 109.
[183-1] The myth of Quetzalcoatl I have taken chiefly from Sahagun,
_Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. i. cap. 5; lib. iii. caps. 3, 13, 14;
lib. x. cap. 29; and Torquemada, _Monarquia Indiana_, lib. vi. cap. 24.
It must be remembered that the Quiche legends identify him positively
with the Tohil of Central America (_Le Livre Sacre_, p. 247).
[183-2] Padilla Davila, _Hist. de la Prov. de Santiago de Mexico_, lib.
ii. cap. 89.
[183-3] Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. 8.
[184-1] He is also called Idacanzas and Nemterequetaba. Some have
maintained a distinction between Bochica and Sua, which, however, has not
been shown. The best authorities on the mythology of the Muyscas are
Piedrahita, _Hist. de las Conq. del Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, 1668 (who is
copied by Humboldt, _Vues des Cordilleres_, pp. 246 sqq.), and Simon,
_Noticias de Tierra Firme_, Parte ii., in Kingsborough's _Mexico_.
[184-2] D'Orbigny, _L'Homme Americain_, ii. p. 319, and Rochefort,
_Hist. des Isles Antilles_, p. 482 (Waitz). The name has various
orthographies, Tamu, Tamoei, Tamou, Itamoulou, etc. Perhaps the Ama-livaca
of the Orinoko Indians is another form. This personage corresponds even
minutely in many points with the Tamu of the island Caribs.
[185-1] Catlin, _Letters and Notes_, Letter 22.
[185-2] Journal of Capt. Johnson, in Emory, _Reconnoissance of New
Mexico_, p. 601.
[185-3] M. De Charency, in the _Revue Americaine_, ii. p. 317. _Tupa_ it
may be observed means in Quichua, lord, or royal. Father Holguin gives as
an example _a tupa Dios_, O Lord God (_Vocabulario Quichua_, p. 348:
Ciudad de los Reyes, 1608). In the Quiche dialects _tepeu_ is one of the
common appellations of divinity and is also translated lord or ruler. We
are not yet sufficiently advanced in the study of American philology to
draw any inference from these resemblances, but they should not be
overlooked.
[187-1] Cortes, _Carta Primera_, pp. 113, 114.
[188-1] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. xii. caps. 2, 3.
[188-2] La Vega, _Hist. des Incas_, lib. ix. cap. 15.
[188-3] Peter Martyr, _De Reb. Oceanicis_, Dec. iii. lib. vii.
[189-1] Lizana, _Hist. de Nuestra Senora de Itzamal_, lib. ii. cap. i. in
Brasseur, _Hist. du Mexique_, ii. p. 605. The prophecies are of the
priest who bore the title--not name--_chilan balam_, and whose offices
were those of divination and astrology. The verse claims to date from
about 1450, and was very well known throughout Yucatan, so it is said.
The number thirteen which in many of these prophecies is the supposed
limit of the present order of things, is doubtless derived from the
observation that thirteen moons complete one solar year.
[190-1] Squier, _Travels in Nicaragua_, ii. p. 35.
[191-1] Whipple, _Report on the Ind. Tribes_, p. 36. Emory, _Recon. of
New Mexico_, p. 64. The latter adds that among the Pueblo Indians, the
Apaches, and Navajos, the name of Montezuma is "as familiar as Washington
to us." This is the more curious, as neither the Pueblo Indians nor
either of the other tribes are in any way related to the Aztec race by
language, as has been shown by Dr. Buschman, _Die Voelker und Sprachen
Neu Mexico's_, p. 262.
[191-2] Humboldt, _Essay on New Spain_, bk. ii. chap. vi, Eng. trans.;
_Ansichten der Natur_, ii. pp. 357, 386.