PHYSICAL MYTHS.
SUN, MOON, AND STARS -- ECLIPSES -- THE MOON PERSONIFIED IN THE
LAND OF THE CRESCENT -- FIRE -- HOW THE COYOTE STOLE FIRE FOR
THE CAHROCS -- HOW THE FROG LOST HIS TAIL -- HOW THE COYOTE
STOLE FIRE FOR THE NAVAJOS -- WIND AND THUNDER -- THE FOUR
WINDS AND THE CROSS -- WATER, THE FIRST OF ELEMENTAL THINGS --
ITS SACRED AND CLEANSING POWER -- EARTH AND SKY -- EARTHQUAKES
AND VOLCANOES -- MOUNTAINS -- HOW THE HAWK AND CROW BUILT THE
COAST RANGE -- THE MOUNTAINS OF YOSEMITE.
Fetichism seems to be the physical philosophy of man in his most
primitive state. He looks on material things as animated by a life
analogous to his own, as having a personal consciousness and
character, as being severally the material body that contains some
immaterial essence or soul. A child or a savage strikes or chides any
object that hurts him, and caresses the gewgaw that takes his fancy,
talking to it much as to a companion.
[Sidenote: VAGARIES CONCERNING CELESTIAL BODIES.]
Let there be something peculiar, mysterious, or dangerous about the
thing and the savage worships it, deprecates its wrath and entreats
its favor, with such ceremonies, prayers, and sacrifices as he may
deem likely to win upon its regard. In considering such cases
mythologically, it will be necessary to examine the facts to see
whether we have to deal with simple fetichism or with idolatry. That
savage worships a fetich who worships the heaving sea as a great
living creature, or kneels to flame as to a hissing roaring animal;
but the Greeks in conceiving a separate anthropomorphic god of the sea
or of the fire, and in representing that god by figures of different
kinds, were only idolaters. The two things, however, are often so
merged into each other that it becomes difficult or impossible to say
in many instances whether a particular object, for example the sun, is
regarded as the deity or merely as the representation or symbol of the
deity. It is plain enough, however, that a tolerably distinct element
of fetichism underlies much of the Indian mythology. Speaking of this
mythology in the mass, the North American Review says: "A mysterious
and inexplicable power resides in inanimate things. They, too, can
listen to the voice of man, and influence his life for evil or for
good. Lakes, rivers, and waterfalls are sometimes the dwelling-place
of spirits, but more frequently they are themselves living beings, to
be propitiated by prayers and offerings."[III-1]
The explicit worship of the sun and more or less that of other
heavenly bodies, or at least a recognition of some supernatural power
resident in or connected with them, was widely spread through Mexico,
as well among the uncivilized as among the civilized tribes. The wild
Chichimecs or that portion of the wild tribes of Mexico to which
Alegre applied this name, owned the sun as their deity, as did also
the people of the Nayarit country.[III-2]
In what we may call civilized Mexico, the sun was definitely worshiped
under the name of Tonatiuh, the Sun in his substance, and under that
of Naolin, the Sun in his four motions. He was sometimes represented
by a human face surrounded with rays, at other times by a full-length
human figure, while again he often seems to be confused or connected
with the element fire and the god of fire. Sahagun, for instance,
usually speaks of the festival of the month Itzcalli as appertaining
to the god of fire, but in at least one place he describes it as
belonging to the sun and the fire.[III-3] The sun, it is tolerably
certain, held, if not the highest place, one not far removed from that
position in the Mexican pantheon. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Tylor,
Squier, and Schoolcraft agree in considering sun-worship the most
radical religious idea of all civilized American religions.[III-4]
Professor Müller considers the sun-god and the supreme Mexican Teotl
to be identical.[III-5] Dr. Brinton, as we shall see when we come to
notice the mythology of fire, while not denying the prominence of the
sun-cult, would refer that cult to a basal and original fire-worship.
Many interpreters of mythology see also the personification of the sun
in others of the Mexican gods besides Tonatiuh. More especially does
evidence seem to point strongly in this direction in the case of
Quetzalcoatl, as will be seen when we come to deal with this god.
The Mexicans were much troubled and distressed by an eclipse of the
sun. They thought that he was much disturbed and tossed about by
something, and that he was becoming seriously jaundiced. This was the
occasion of a general panic, women weeping aloud, and men howling and
shouting and striking the hand upon the mouth. There was an immediate
search for men with white hair and white faces, and these were
sacrificed to the sun, amid the din and tumult of singing and musical
instruments. It was thought that should the eclipse become once total,
there would be an end of the light, and that in the darkness the
demons would come down to the devouring of the people.[III-6]
[Sidenote: ECLIPSES, AND THEIR EFFECT ON MAN.]
The Tlascaltecs, regarding the sun and the moon as husband and wife,
believed eclipses to be domestic quarrels, whose consequences were
likely to be fatal to the world if peace could not be made before
things proceeded to an extremity. To sooth the ruffled spirit of the
sun when he was eclipsed, a human sacrifice was offered to him of the
ruddiest victims that could be found; and when the moon was darkened
she was appeased with the blood of those white-complexioned persons
commonly known as Albinos.[III-7]
The idea of averting the evil by noise, in case of an eclipse either
of the sun or moon, seems to have been a common one among other
American tribes. Alegre ascribes it to the natives of Sonora in
general. Ribas tells how the Sinaloas held that the moon in an eclipse
was darkened with the dust of battle. Her enemy had come upon her, and
a terrible fight, big with consequence to those on earth, went on in
heaven. In wild excitement the people beat on the sides of their
houses, encouraging the moon and shooting flights of arrows up into
the sky to distract her adversary. Much the same as this was also done
by certain Californians.[III-8]
With regard to an eclipse of the moon the Mexicans seem to have had
rather special ideas as to its effects upon unborn children. At such
times, women who were with child became alarmed lest their infant
should be turned into a mouse, and to guard against such an
undesirable consummation they held a bit of obsidian, _iztli_, in
their mouth, or put a piece of it in their girdle, so that the child
should be born perfect and not lipless, or noseless, or wry-mouthed,
or squinting, or a monster.[III-9] These ideas are probably connected
with the fact that the Mexicans worshiped the moon under the name of
Meztli, as a deity presiding over human generations. This moon-god is
considered by Clavigero to be identical with Joaltecutli, god of
night.[III-10]
It is to the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, however, that we must turn
for a truly novel and cyclopean theory of Mexican lunolatry. He sees
back to a time when the forefathers of American civilization lived in
a certain Crescent Land in the Atlantic; here they practiced Sabaism.
Through some tremendous physical catastrophe their country was utterly
overwhelmed by the sea; and this inundation is considered by the abbé
to be the origin of the deluge-myths of the Central-American nations.
A remnant of these Crescent people saved themselves in the seven
principal islands of the Lesser Antilles; these are, he explains, the
seven mythical caves or grottoes celebrated in so many American
legends as the cradle of the nations. The saved remnant of the people
wept the loss of their friends and of their old land, making the
latter, with its crescent shape, memorable forever by adopting the
moon as their god. "It is the moon," writes the great Américaniste,
"male and female, Luna and Lunas, personified in the land of the
Crescent, engulfed in the abyss, that I believe I see at the
commencement of this amalgam of rites and symbols of every kind."[III-11]
I confess inability to follow the path by which the abbé has reached
this conclusion; but I have indicated its whereabouts, and future
students may be granted a further insight into this new labyrinth and
the subtleties of its industrious Dædalus.
[Sidenote: WHAT THE MEXICANS THOUGHT OF STARS AND COMETS.]
The Mexicans had many curious ideas about the stars, some of which
have come down to us. They particularly reverenced a certain group of
three called _mamalhoaztli_, in, or in the neighborhood of, the sign
Taurus of the zodiac. This name was the same as that of the sticks
from which fire was procured: a resemblance of some kind being
supposed to exist between them and these stars. Connected again with
this was the burning by every male Mexican of certain marks upon his
wrist, in honor of the same stars; it being believed that the man who
died without these marks should, on his arrival in hades, be forced to
draw fire from his wrist by boring upon it as on a fire-stick. The
planet Venus was worshiped as the first light that appeared in the
world, as the god of twilight, and, according to some, as being
identical with Quetzalcoatl. This star has been further said to borrow
its light from the moon, and to rise by four starts. Its first twinkle
was a bad augury, and to be closed out of all doors and windows; on
appearing for the third time, it began to give a steady light, and on
the fourth it shone forth in all its clearness and brilliancy.
Comets were called each _citlalinpopoca_, or the smoking star; their
appearance was considered as a public disaster, and as announcing
pest, dearth, or the death of some prince. The common people were
accustomed to say of one, This is our famine, and they believed it to
cast down certain darts, which falling on any animal, bred a maggot
that rendered the creature unfit for food. All possible precautions of
shelter were of course taken by persons in positions exposed to the
influence of these noxious rays. Besides the foregoing, there were
many stars or groups of stars whose names were identical with those of
certain gods; the following seem to belong to this class:
Tonacatlecutli or Citlalalatonalli, the milky way; Yzacatecutli,
Tlahvizcalpantecutli, Ceyacatl, Achitumetl, Xacupancalqui, Mixcoatl,
Tezcatlipoca, and Contemoctli.[III-12]
* * * * *
I have already noticed a prevailing tendency to connect the worship of
fire and that of the sun. The rites of a perpetual fire are found
closely connected with a sun-cult, and, whichever may be the older, it
is certain they are rarely found apart. "What," says Tylor, "the sea is
to Water-worship, in some measure the Sun is to Fire-worship."[III-13]
Brinton would reverse this and give to fire the predominance: in
short, he says, the sun "is always spoken of as a fire;" "and without
danger or error we can merge the consideration of its worship almost
altogether in this element."[III-14] This sounds rather extravagant and
is hardly needed in any case; for sufficient reason for its deification
can always be found in its mysterious nature and awful powers of
destruction, as well as in its kind and constantly renewed services,
if gratitude have any power in making a god. The mere guarding and
holding sacred a particular fire probably originated in the importance
of possessing an unfailing source of the element, and in the
difficulty of its production if allowed to die out, among men not
possessed of the appliances of civilization.
When we come to review the gods in general, those connected with fire
will be pointed out as they appear; for the present, let it suffice to
say that many American peoples had such gods, or had ceremonies
suggesting their existence and recognition, or lastly, had legends of
the origin or procurement of the fire they daily used on the altar or
on the hearth. In the Pueblos of New Mexico, and more especially among
the Pecos, sacred perpetual fires were kept up by special command of
their traditionary god and ruler Montezuma; but these fires were not
regarded as fetiches.[III-15] The Mexican fire-god was known by the name
of Xiuhtecutli, and by other names appertaining to the different
aspects in which he was viewed. While preserving his own well-marked
identity, he was evidently closely related also to the sun-god. Many
and various, even in domestic life, were the ceremonies by which he
was recognized; the most important ritual in connection with his
service being, perhaps, the lighting of the new fire, with which, as
we shall see, the beginning of every Mexican cycle was solemnized.[III-16]
There are various fables scattered up and down among the various
tribes regarding the origin or rather the procuring of fire. We know
how the Quichés received it from the stamp of the sandal of Tohil;
how, from the home of the cuttle-fish, a deer brought it to the Ahts
in a joint of his leg; how from a distant island the great Yehl of the
Thlinkeets fetched the brand in his beak that filled the flint and the
fire-stick with seeds of eternal fire.
[Sidenote: HOW THE CAHROCS OBTAINED FIRE.]
The Cahrocs hold that, when in the beginning the creator Chareya made
fire, he gave it into the custody of two old hags, lest the Cahrocs
should steal it. The Cahrocs, having exhausted every means to procure
the treasure, applied for help to their old friend the Coyote; who,
having maturely considered how the theft might best be accomplished,
set about the thing in this way: From the land of the Cahrocs to the
home of the old women he stationed a great company of animals, at
convenient distances; the strongest nearest the den of the old
beldames, the weakest farthest removed. Last of all he hid a Cahroc in
the neighborhood of the hut, and, having left the man precise
directions how to act, he trotted up to the door and asked to be let
in out of the cold. Suspecting nothing, the crones gave him
admittance; so he lay down in front of the fire, and made himself as
comfortable as possible, waiting for the further action of his human
accomplice without. In good time, the man made a furious attack on the
house and the old furies rushed out at once to drive off the invader.
This was the Coyote's opportunity. Instantly he seized a half-burnt
brand and fled like a comet down the trail; and the two hags, seeing
how they had been outwitted, turned after him in immediate and furious
chase. It had gone hard then with the hopes of the Cahrocs, if their
four-legged Prometheus had trusted to his single speed; but just as he
began to feel the pace tell on him, and just as the weird women
thought they were about to recover the brand, the Cougar relieved him
of it. Great was the satisfaction of our wise Coyote, as he sank down,
clearing his sooty eyes and throat, and catching his breath, to see
the great lithe cat leap away with the torch, and the hags gnash their
choppy gums as they rushed by, hard in pursuit, on the dim trail of
sparks. The Cougar passed the brand to the Bear, the Bear to his
neighbor, and so on to the end. Down the long line of carriers, the
panting crones plied their withered old legs in vain; only two mishaps
occurring among all the animals that made up the file. The squirrel,
last in the train but one, burned his tail so badly that it curled up
over his back, and even scorched the skin above his shoulders. Last of
all, the poor Frog, who received the brand when it had burned down to
a very little piece, hopped along so heavily that his pursuers gained
on him, gained fast and surely. In vain he gathered himself for every
spring, in vain he stretched at every leap till the jarred muscles
cracked again. He was caught. The smoke-dimmed eyes stood out from his
head, his little heart thumped like a club against the lean fingers
that closed upon his body--yet that wild croak was not the croak of
despair. Once more for the hope of the Cahrocs! one more struggle for
the Coyote that trusted him in this great thing! and with a gulp the
plucky little martyr swallowed the fire, tore himself from the hands
that held him, leaped into a river, and diving deep and long, gained
his goal; but gained it a mournful wreck, the handsome tail, which, of
all his race, only the tadpole should ever wear again, was utterly
gone, left, like that of an O'Shanter's mare, in the witch's grasp;
only the ghost of himself was left to spit out on some pieces of wood
the precious embers preserved at so great a cost. And it is because
the Frog spat out this fire upon these pieces of wood that it can
always be extracted again by rubbing them hard together.[III-17]
[Sidenote: FIRE, THE LIGHTNING, AND WIND.]
The Navajos have a legend as to the procuring of fire, that has many
analogies to the foregoing. They tell how, when they first gained the
earth, they were without fire, and how the Coyote, the Bat, and the
Squirrel agreed to procure it for them. The object of their desire
seems to have been in the possession of the animals in general, in
some distant locality. The Coyote, having attached pine splinters to
his tail, ran quickly through the fire and fled with his lighted
prize. Being keenly pursued, however, by the other animals, he soon
tired; upon which the Bat relieved him, and dodging and flitting here
and there, carried the splinters still farther. Then the Squirrel came
to the assistance of the Bat, and succeeding him in his office,
contrived to reach the hearths of the Navajos with the coveted
embers.[III-18]
The natives of Mendocino county, California, believe that lightning is
the origin of fire, that a primeval bolt hurled down by the Man Above
fell upon certain wood, from which, consequently fire can always be
extracted by rubbing two pieces together.[III-19]
* * * * *
From fire let us turn for a moment to wind, whose phenomena, as might
be expected, have not been allowed to pass wholly unnoticed by the
mythologies with which we have to deal. When we come to examine ideas
connected with death and with the soul of man and its future, we shall
find the wind, or the air, often in use as the best name and figure
for the expression of primitive conceptions of that mysterious thing,
the vital essence or spirit. The wind too is often considered as a
god, or at least as the breath of a god, and in many American
languages the Great Spirit and the Great Wind are one and the same
both in word and signification. The name of the god Hurakan,
mentioned in Quiché myths, still signifies the Storm in many a
language strange to his worshipers, while in Quiché it may be
translated Spirit, or swiftly moving Spirit;[III-20] and the name of
the Mexican god Mixcoatl is said to be to this day the correct Mexican
term for the whirlwind.[III-21]
An interesting point here arises with regard to the division of the
heavens into four quarters and the naming of these after the names of
the wind. Dr. Brinton believes this fact to be at the bottom of the
sacredness and often occurrence of the number four in so many early
legends, and he connects these four winds and their embodiment in many
quaternions of deities, with the sacredness of the cross and its use
among widely separated nations, to whom its later Christian
signification was utterly unknown.[III-22]
If we may suppose that the Great Spirit and the wind are often
represented under the form of an enormous bird, we must connect with
them, as their most inseparable attributes, the thunder and the
lightning; the first, as we have so often seen, is the rustling or
stridor of the wings of the bird, the second is the flashing of his
eyes. The Raven of the Koniagas is not, however, as among most other
tribes of the great Northwest, the author of these things; but their
principal deity when he is angry sends down two dwarfs, who thunder
and lighten according to his command.[III-23] Of the god Hurakan, whom
we have noticed as the etymon of the word hurricane, the Popol Vuh says:
"The flash is the first sign of Hurakan; the second is the furrow of
the flash; the third is the thunderbolt that strikes;"[III-24] and to the
Mexican god, Tlaloc, are also attached the same three attributes.[III-25]
[Sidenote: WATER AS A PURIFYING ELEMENT.]
Turning to water, we find it regarded among many tribes as the first
of elemental things. It is from a primeval ocean of water that the
earth is generally supposed to come up. Water is obviously a first and
chief nourisher of vegetable life, and an indispensable prerequisite
of all fertility; from this it is but a short step to saying that it
is the mother of those that live by the earth's fertility. "Your
mother, Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water," is a phrase constantly
found in the midwife's mouth, in her address to the child, in the
Mexican washing or baptismal service.[III-26]
The use of water more or less sanctified or set apart or made worthy
the distinction 'holy;' the employment of this in a rite of avowed
purification from inherent sin, at the time of giving a
name--baptism, in one word--runs back to a period far pre-Christian
among the Mexican, Maya, and other American nations; as ancient
ceremonies to be hereafter described will show. That man sets out in
this life-journey of his with a terrible bias toward evil, with a sad
and pitiful liability to temptation, is a point upon which all
religions are practically unanimous. How else could they exist? Were
man born perfect he would remain perfect, otherwise the first element
of perfection would be wanting; and perfection admits of no
superlative, no greater, no god. Where there is a religion then, there
is generally a consciousness of sin voluntary and involuntary. How
shall I be cleansed? how shall my child be cleansed from this great
wickedness? is the cry of the idolater as well as of the monotheist.
Is it strange that the analogy between corporal and spiritual
pollution should independently suggest itself to both? Surely not.
Wash and be clean, is to all the world a parable needing no
interpreter.[III-27]
The ceremonial use of water followed the Mexican through all his
life; though for the present we shall only notice one more custom
connected with it, the last of all. When a body was buried, a vase of
clean, sweet water was let down into the tomb; bright, clear,
life-giving and preserving water--hope and love, dumb and
inarticulate, stretching vague hand toward a resurrection.
The Mexican rain and water god was Tlaloc, sender of thunder and
lightning, lord of the earthly paradise, and fertilizer of earth; his
wife was the Chalchiuhtlicue, already mentioned.[III-28] Like Tlaloc was
Quiateot, the Nicaraguan rain-god, master of thunderbolts and general
director of meteorological phenomena.[III-29]
The Navajos puffed tobacco smoke straight up toward heaven to bring
rain, and those of them that carried a corpse to burial were unclean
till washed in water.[III-30] In a deep and lonely cañon near Fort
Defiance there is a spring that this tribe hold sacred, approaching it
only with much reverence and the performance of certain mystic
ceremonies. They say it was once a boiling spring, and that even yet
if approached heedlessly or by a bad Indian, its waters will seethe up
and leap forth to overwhelm the intruder.[III-31]
The Zuñis had also a sacred spring; sacred to the rain-god, who, as we
see by implication, is Montezuma the great Pueblo deity himself. No
animal might taste of its sacred waters, and it was cleansed annually
with vessels also sacred--most ancient vases that had been
transmitted from generation to generation since times to which even
tradition went not back. These vessels were kept ranged on the wall of
the well. The frog, the rattlesnake, and the tortoise were depicted
upon them, and were sacred to the great patron of the place, whose
terrible lightning should consume the sacrilegious hand that touched
these hallowed relics.[III-32]
[Sidenote: THE EARTH, THE SEA, THE SKY.]
We have seen how the Californian tribes believe themselves descended
from the very earth, how the bodiless ancestor of the Tezcucans came
up from the soil, how the Guatemaltecs, Papagos, and Pimas were molded
from the clay they tread, and how the Navajos came to light from the
bowels of a great mountain near the river San Juan. It seems long ago
and often to have come into men's mind that the over-arching heaven or
something there and the all-producing earth are, as it were, a father
and mother to all living creatures. The Comanches call on the earth as
their mother, and on the Great Spirit as their father. The Mexicans
used to pray: Be pleased, O our Lord, that the nobles who may die in
the war be peacefully and pleasingly received by the sun and the
earth, who are the father and mother of all.[III-33] It was probably,
again, with some reference to the motherly function of the earth that
the same people, when an earthquake came, took their children by the
head or hand, and lifted them up saying: The earthquake will make them
grow.[III-34] Sometimes they specified a particular part of the earth as
closer to them in this relation than other parts. It is said that on
the tenth day of the month Quecholli, the citizens of Mexico and those
of Tlatelolco were wont to visit a hill called Cacatepec, for they
said it was their mother.[III-35]
As to the substance, arrangement, and so on of the earth and sky there
remain one or two ideas not already given in connection with the
general creation. The Tlascaltecs, and perhaps others of the Anáhuac
peoples, believed that the earth was flat, and ending with the
sea-shore, was borne up by certain divinities, who when fatigued
relieved each other, and that as the burden was shifted from shoulder
to shoulder earthquakes occurred. The sea and sky were considered as
of one material, the sea being more highly condensed; and the rain was
thought to fall not from clouds but from the very substance of heaven
itself.[III-36] The Southern Californians believed that when the Creator
made the world he fixed it on the back of seven giants, whose
movements, as in the preceding myth, caused earthquakes.[III-37] The sky,
according to certain of the Yucatecs, was held up by four brothers
called each of them Bacab, in addition to their several names, which
seem to have been Kan, Muluc, Ix, and Cauac. These four, God had
placed at the four corners of the world when he created it, and they
had escaped when all else were destroyed by flood.[III-38]
In the interior of the earth, in volcanoes, subterranean gods were
often supposed to reside. The Koniagas, for example, held that the
craters of Alaska were inhabited by beings mightier then men, and that
these sent forth fire and smoke when they heated their sweat-houses or
cooked their food.[III-39]
* * * * *
The rugged majesty of hills and mountains has not been without its
effect on the reverential mind of the American aborigines. Direct
worship was unusual, but several incidents must have already informed
the reader that a kind of sanctity is often attached to great
elevations in nature. A predilection for hills and mounds as landmarks
and fanes of tradition, and as places of worship, was as common among
the Americans as among the people of the old world. The Choles of the
province of Itza had a hill in their country that they regarded as the
god of all the mountains, and on which they burned a perpetual
fire.[III-40] The Mexicans, praying for rain, were accustomed to vow
that they would make images of the mountains if their petitions were
favorably received;[III-41] and, in other points connected with their
religion to show, as has appeared and will appear both with them and
with other people, their recognition of a divinity abiding on or
hedging about the great peaks. What wonder, indeed, that to the rude
and awe-struck mind, the everlasting hills seemed nearer and liker
heaven than the common-place level of earth? and that the wild man
should kneel or go softly there, as in the peculiar presence of the
Great Spirit? This is hardly a new feeling, it seems an instinct and
custom as old as religion. Where went Abraham in that awful hour,
counted to him for righteousness through all the centuries? Where
smoked the thunderings and lightnings that heralded the delivery of
the Law, when the son of Amram talked with Jehovah face to face, as a
man talketh with his friend? Whence saw a greater than Moses the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them? whence, in the all-nights
that came after, did the prayers of the Christ ascend? and where stood
he when his raiment became as no fuller on earth could white it; Moses
and Elias talking with him, and Peter so sore afraid?
[Sidenote: HILLS AND MOUNTAIN RANGES.]
Where hills were not found conveniently situated for purposes of
worship, they seem to have been counterfeited after man's feeble
fashion: from high-place and mound, from pyramid and teocalli, since
the morning stars sang together, the smoke of the altar and the censer
has not ceased to ascend. But the day begins to broaden out, and the
mists of the morning flee away; though the hills be not lowered, God
is lifted up. Yet they have their glory and their charm still even to
us, and to the savage they often appear as the result of a special and
several creation. We remember how the Great Spirit made Mount Shasta
as his only worthy abiding-place on earth; and I give here another
legend of a much more trivial sort than the first, telling how, not
Mount Shasta alone, but all the mountains of California were built and
put into position:--[III-42] At a time when the world was covered with
water there existed a Hawk and a Crow and a very small Duck. The
latter, after diving to the bottom and bringing up a beakful of mud,
died; whereupon the Crow and the Hawk took each a half of the mud that
had been brought up, and set to work to make the mountains. Beginning
at a place called Teheechaypah Pass, they built northwards, the Hawk
working on the eastern range and the Crow on the western. It was a
long and weary toil, but in time the work was finished, and as they
laid the last peak the workers met at Mount Shasta. Then the Hawk saw
that there had been foul play somewhere, for the western range was
bigger than his; and he charged the Crow with stealing some of his
mud. But the smart bird laughed a hoarse guffaw in the face of his
eastern brother, not even taking the trouble to disown the theft, and
chuckled hugely over his own success and western enterprise. The
honest Hawk was at his wits' end, and he stood thinking with his head
on one side for quite a long time; then in an absent kind of way he
picked up a leaf of Indian tobacco and began to chew, and wisdom came
with chewing. And he strengthened himself mightily, and fixed his
claws in the mountains, and turned the whole chain in the water like a
great floating wheel, till the range of his rival had changed places
with his, and the Sierra Nevada was on the east and the Coast Range on
the west, as they remain to this day.
This legend is not without ingenuity in its way but there is more of
human interest in the following pretty story of the Yosemite nations,
as to the origin of the names and present appearance of certain peaks
and other natural features of their valley:--
[Sidenote: TOTOKÓNULA AND TISAYAC OF YOSEMITE.]
A certain Totokónula was once chief of the people here: a mighty
hunter and a good husbandman, his tribe never wanted food while he
attended to their welfare. But a change came; while out hunting one
day, the young man met a spirit-maid, the guardian angel of the
valley, the beautiful Tisayac. She was not as the dusky beauties of
his tribe, but white and fair, with rolling yellow tresses that fell
over her shoulders like sunshine, and blue eyes with a light in them
like the sky where the sun goes down. White, cloudlike wings were
folded behind her shoulders, and her voice was sweeter than the song
of birds; no wonder the strong chief loved her with a mad and instant
love. He reached toward her, but the snowy wings lifted her above his
sight, and he stood again alone upon the dome, where she had been.
No more Totokónula led in the chase or heeded the crops in the valley;
he wandered here and there like a man distraught, ever seeking that
wonderful shining vision that had made all else on earth stale and
unprofitable in his sight. The land began to languish, missing the
industrious directing hand that had tended it so long; the pleasant
garden became a wilderness where the drought laid waste, and the wild
beast spoiled what was left, and taught his cubs to divide the prey.
When the fair spirit returned at last to visit her valley, she wept to
see the desolation, and she knelt upon the dome, praying to the Great
Spirit for succor. God heard, and stooping from his place, he clove
the dome upon which she stood, and the granite was riven beneath her
feet, and the melted snows of the Nevada rushed through the gorge,
bearing fertility upon their cool bosom. A beautiful lake was formed
between the cloven walls of the mountain, and a river issued from it
to feed the valley for ever. Then sang the birds as of old, laving
their bodies in the water, and the odor of flowers rose like a
pleasant incense, and the trees put forth their buds, and the corn
shot up to meet the sun and rustled when the breeze crept through the
tall stalks.
Tisayac moved away as she had come, and none knew whither she went;
but the people called the dome by her name, as it is indeed known to
this day. After her departure the chief returned from his weary
quest; and as he heard that the winged one had visited the valley, the
old madness crept up into his eyes and entered, seven times worse than
at the first, into his empty soul; he turned his back on the lodges of
his people. His last act was to cut with his hunting-knife the outline
of his face upon a lofty rock, so that if he never returned his
memorial at least should remain with them forever. He never did return
from that hopeless search, but the graven rock was called Totokónula,
after his name, and it may be still seen, three thousand feet high,
guarding the entrance of the beautiful valley.[III-43]
Leaving this locality and subject, I may remark that the natives have
named the Póhono Fall, in the same valley, after an evil spirit; many
persons having been swept over and dashed to pieces there. No native
of the vicinity will so much as point at this fall when going through
the valley, nor could anything tempt one of them to sleep near it; for
the ghosts of the drowned are tossing in its spray, and their wail is
heard forever above the hiss of its rushing waters.[III-44]
FOOTNOTES:
[III-1] _North Am. Rev._, vol. ciii., p. 1.
[III-2] _Alegre_, _Hist. Comp. de Jesus_, tom. i., p. 279; _Apostólicos
Afanes_, p. 68.
[III-3] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. i., lib. ii., pp. 74-5, 200-18;
_Explicacion del Codex Telleriano-Remensis_, parte ii., lam. x., in
_Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq._, vol. v., p. 139; _Spiegazione delle
Tavole del Codice Mexicano_ (Vaticano), tav. xxv. and xxxiii., in
_Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq._, vol. v., pp. 178, 181-2; _Mendieta_,
_Hist. Ecles._, pp. 80-1; _Clavigero_, _Storia Ant. del Messico_, tom.
ii., pp. 9, 11, 17, 34-5.
[III-4] _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _Hist. des Nat. Civ._, tom. iii., p.
301; _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _Quatre Lettres_, p. 156; _Tylor's Prim.
Cult._, vol. ii., pp. 259, 262-3; _Squier's Serpent Symbol_, pp.
18-20; _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. iii., p. 60, vol. iv., p. 639, vol.
v., pp. 29-87, vol. vi., pp. 594, 626, 636.
[III-5] _Müller_, _Amerikanische Urreligionen_, p. 474.
[III-6] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. vii., pp. 244-5. In
Campeche, in 1834, M. Waldeck witnessed an eclipse of the moon during
which the Yucatecs conducted themselves much as their fathers might
have done in their gentile days, howling frightfully and making every
effort to part the celestial combatants. The only apparent advance
made on the old customs was the firing off of muskets, 'to prove' in
the words of the sarcastic artist, 'that the Yucatecs of to-day are
not strangers to the progress of civilization.' _Waldeck_, _Voy.
Pitt._, p. 14.
[III-7] _Camargo_, _Hist. de Tlaxcallan_, in _Nouvelles Annales des
Voy._, 1843, tom. xcvii., p. 193.
[III-8] _Alegre_, _Hist. Comp. de Jesus_, tom. ii., p. 218; _Ribas_,
_Hist. de los Triumphos_, p. 202; _Boscana_, in _Robinson's Life in
Cal._, pp. 296-300.
[III-9] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. viii., p. 250.
[III-10] _Explicacion del Codex Telleriano-Remensis_, part. ii., lam. x.,
in _Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq._, vol. v., p. 139; _Spiegazione delle
Tavole del Codice Mexicano_ (Vaticano), tav. xxvi., in
_Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq._, vol. v., p. 179; _Sahagun_, _Hist.
Gen._, tom. ii., lib. vii., p. 250; _Clavigero_, _Storia Ant. del
Messico_, tom. ii., pp. 9-17.
[III-11] _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _Quatre Lettres_, pp. 155-6.
[III-12] _Explicacion delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano_, part. i., lam.
ii., part. ii., lam. xiv., in _Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq._, vol. v.,
pp. 132, 140; _Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano_
(Vaticano), tav. xvii., xxxi., _Ib._, vol. v., pp. 175, 181;
_Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. vii., pp. 250-252; _Camargo_,
_Hist. de Tlaxcallan_, in _Nouvelles Annales des Voy._, 1843, tom.
xcviii., p. 193; _Mendieta_, _Hist. Ecles._, p. 81. The word _tecutli_
is of frequent occurrence as a termination in the names of Mexican
gods. It signifies 'lord' and is written with various spellings. I
follow that given by Molina's Vocabulary.
[III-13] _Tylor's Prim. Cult._, vol. ii., p. 259.
[III-14] _Brinton's Myths_, p. 143.
[III-15] _Ward_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1864, p. 193.
[III-16] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. i., lib. i., p. 16; _Torquemada_,
_Monarq. Ind._, tom. ii., pp. 56-7; _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _Hist.
des Nat. Civ._, tom. iii., pp. 491-2.
[III-17] _Powers' Pomo_, MS.
[III-18] _Eaton_, in _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. iv., pp. 218-19.
[III-19] _Powers' Pomo_, MS.
[III-20] _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _S'il Existe des Sources de l'Hist.
Prim. du Mexique_, p. 101.
[III-21] _Brasseur de Bourbourg_, _Hist. Nat. Civ._, tom. iii., p. 485;
_Brinton's Myths_, p. 51.
[III-22] _Brinton's Myths_, pp. 66-98.
[III-23] _Holmberg_, _Ethn. Skiz._, p. 141.
[III-24] _Ximenez_, _Hist. Ind. Guat._, p. 6; _Brasseur de Bourbourg_,
_Popol Vuh_, p. 9.
[III-25] _Gama_, _Dos Piedras_, pt. ii., p. 76.
[III-26] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 197.
[III-27] Singularly apt in this connection are the wise words that
Carlyle, _Past and Present Chartism_, book i., p. 233, puts into the
mouth of his mythical friend Sauerteig--'Strip thyself, go into the
bath, or were it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there
wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man.
This consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that to thy skin there
now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, how it radiates in on
thee with cunning symbolic influences, to the very soul!... It remains
a religious duty from oldest time in the East.... Even the dull
English feel something of this; they have a saying, "cleanliness is
near of kin to Godliness."'
[III-28] _Clavigero_, _Storia Ant. del Messico_, tom. ii., pp. 15-16.
'Era conosciuta con altri nomi assai espressive, i quali o
significavano i diversi effetti, che cagionano l'acque, o le diverse
apparenze, colori, che formano col loro moto. I Tlascallesi la
chiamavano Matlalcueje, cioè, vestita di gonna turchina.' See also
_Müller_, _Reisen in Mex._, tom. iii., p. 89.
[III-29] _Oviedo_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. iv., pp. 46, 55.
[III-30] _Ten Broeck_, in _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. iv., p. 91;
_Bristol_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1867, p. 358.
[III-31] _Backus_, in _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. iv., p. 213.
[III-32] _Whipple_, in _Pac. R. R. Rept._, vol. iii., p. 39.
[III-33] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 43.
[III-34] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. v., ap., pp. 21-2.
[III-35] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. i., lib. ii., p. 70.
[III-36] _Camargo_, _Hist. de Tlaxcallan_, in _Nouvelles Annales des
Voy._, 1834, tom. xcviii., p. 192.
[III-37] _Reid_, in _Los Angeles Star_.
[III-38] _Landa_, _Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan_, p. 206.
[III-39] _Holmberg_, _Ethn. Skiz._, p. 141.
[III-40] _Villagutierre_, _Hist. Conq. de Itza_, pp. 151-2.
[III-41] _Sahagun_, _Hist. Gen._, tom. i., lib. ii., p. 177.
[III-42] _Powers' Pomo_, MS. This is a tradition of the Yocuts, a
Californian tribe, occupying the Kern and Tulare basins, the middle
San Joaquin, and the various streams running into Lake Tulare.
[III-43] _Hutchings' Cal. Mag._, vol. iv., pp. 197-9.
[III-44] _Hutchings' Cal. Mag._, vol. iv., p. 243.