LEGENDS OF THE CAVE-LIFE.
I HAVE shown that man could only have escaped the fire, the poisonous
gases, and the falling stones and clay-dust, by taking refuge in the
water or in the deep caves of the earth.
And hence everywhere in the ancient legends we find the races
claiming that they came up out of the earth. Man was earth-born. The
Toltecs and Aztecs traced back their origin to "the seven caves." We
have seen the ancestors of the Peruvians emerging from the primeval
cave, _Pacarin-Tampu_; and the Aztec Nanahuatzin taking refuge in a
cave; and the ancestors of the Yurucares, the Takahlis, and the
Mbocobi of America, all biding themselves from the conflagration in a
cave; and we have seen the tyrannical and cruel race of the Tahoe
legend buried in a cave. And, passing to a far-distant region, we
find the Bungogees and Pankhoos, Hill tribes, of the most ancient
races of Chittagong, in British India, relating that "their ancestors
came out of a cave in the earth, under the guidance of a chief named
Tlandrokpah."[1]
We read in the Toltec legends that a dreadful hurricane visited the
earth in the early age, and carried away trees, mounds, horses, etc.,
and the people escaped by _seeking safety in caves_ and places where
the great hurricane
[1. Captain Lewin, "The Hill Tribes of Chittagong" p. 95, 1869.]
{p. 196}
could not reach them. After a few days they came forth "to see what
had become of the earth, when they found it all populated with
monkeys. All this time they were in darkness, without the light of
the sun Or the moon, which the wind had brought them."[1]
A North American tribe, a branch of the Tinneh of British America,
have a legend that "the earth existed first in a chaotic state, with
only one human inhabitant, a woman, _who dwelt in a cave_ and lived
on berries." She met one day a mysterious animal, like a dog, who
transformed himself into a handsome young man, and they became the
parents of a giant race."[2]
There seems to be an allusion to the cave-life in Ovid, where,
detailing the events that followed soon after the creation, he says:
"Then for the first time did the parched air _glow with sultry heat_,
and the _ice_, bound up by the winds, was pendent. Then for the first
time did men enter houses; those houses were _caverns_, and thick
shrubs, and twigs fastened together with bark."[3]
But it is in the legends of the Navajo Indians of North America that
we find the most complete account of the cave-life.
It is as follows:
"The Navajos, living north of the Pueblos, say that at one time all
the nations, Navajos, Pueblos, Coyoteros, and white people, lived
together tinder ground, in the heart of a mountain, near the river
San Juan. _Their food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all
kinds of game were closed up with them in their cave;_ but their
light was dim, and only endured for a few hours each day. There were,
happily, two dumb men among the Navajos, flute-players,
[1. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 239.
2. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 105.
3. "The Metamorphoses," Fable IV.]
{p. 197}
who enlivened the darkness with music. One of these, striking by
chance on the roof of the limbo with his flute, brought out a hollow
sound, upon which the elders of the tribe determined to bore in the
direction whence the sound came. The flute was then set up against
the roof, and the Raccoon sent up the tube _to dig a way out_, but he
could not. Then the Moth-worm mounted into the breach, and bored and
bored till he found himself suddenly on the outside of the mountain,
and _surrounded by water_."
We shall see hereafter that, in the early ages, mankind, all over the
world, was divided into totemic septs or families, bearing animal
names. It was out of this fact that the fables of animals possessing
human speech arose. When we are told that the Fox talked to the Crow
or the Wolf, it simply means that a man of the Fox totem talked to a
man of the Crow or Wolf totem. And, consequently, when we read, in
the foregoing legend, that the Raccoon went up to dig a way out of
the cave and could not, it signifies that a man of the Raccoon totem
made the attempt and failed, while a man of the Moth-worm totem
succeeded. We shall see hereafter that these totemic distinctions
probably represented original race or ethnic differences.
The Navajo legend continues:
"Under these novel circumstances, he, (the Moth-worm,) heaped up a
little mound, and set himself down on it to observe and ponder the
situation. A critical situation enough!--for from the four corners of
the universe four great white Swans bore down upon him, every one
with two arrows, one under each wing. The Swan from the north reached
him first, and, having pierced him with two arrows, drew them out and
examined their points, exclaiming, as the result, 'He is of my race.'
So, also, in succession, did all the others. Then they went away; and
toward the directions in which they departed, to the north, south,
east, and west, were found four great _arroyos_,
{p. 198}
by which _all the water flowed off, leaving only_ MUD. The Worm now
returned to the cave, and the Raccoon went up into the mud, _sinking
in it mid-leg deep_, as the marks on his fur show to this day. And
the wind began to rise, sweeping up the four great _arroyos_, and
_the mud was dried away_.
"_Then the men and the animals began to come up from their cave_, and
their coming up required several days. First came the Navajos, and no
sooner had they reached the surface than they commenced gaming at
_patole_, their favorite game. Then came the Pueblos and other
Indians, who _crop their hair and build houses_. Lastly came _the
white people_, who started off at once _for the rising sun_, and were
lost sight of for many winters.
"When these nations lived under ground they all _spake one tongue_;
but, with the light of day and the level of earth, came many
languages. The earth was at this time very small, and _the light was
quite as scanty as it had been down below, for there was as yet no
heaven, no sun, nor moon, nor stars_. So another council of the
ancients was held, and a committee of their number appointed to
manufacture these luminaries."[1]
Here we have the same story:
In an ancient age, before the races of men had differentiated, a
remnant of mankind was driven, by some great event, into a cave; all
kinds of animals had sought shelter in. the same place;
something--the Drift--had closed up the mouth of the cavern; the men
subsisted on the animals. At last they dug their way out, to find the
world covered with mud and water. Great winds cut the mud into deep
valleys, by which the waters ran off. The mud was everywhere;
gradually it dried up. But outside the cave it was nearly as dark as
it was within it; the clouds covered the world; neither sun, moon,
nor stars could be seen; the earth was very small, that is, but
little of it was above the waste of waters.
[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 81.]
{p. 199}
And here we have the people longing for the return of the sun. The
legend proceeds to give an account of the making of the sun and moon.
The dumb fluter, who had charge of the construction of the sun,
through his clumsiness, _came near setting fire to the world_.
"_The old men_, however, either more lenient than Zeus, or lacking
his thunder, contented themselves with forcing the offender back by
puffing the smoke of their pipes into his face."
Here we have the event, which properly should have preceded the
cave-story, brought in subsequent to it. The sun nearly burns up the
earth, and the earth is saved amid the smoke of incense from the
pipes of the old men--the gods. And we are told that the increasing
size of the earth has four times rendered it necessary that the sun
should be put farther back from the earth. The clearer the
atmosphere, the farther away the sun has appeared.
"At night, also, the other dumb man issues from this cave, bearing
the moon under his arm, and lighting up such part of the world as he
can. Next, the old men set to work to make the heavens, intending to
_broider in the stars in beautiful patterns of bears, birds, and such
things_."
That is to say, a civilized race 'began to divide up the heavens into
constellations, to which they gave the names of the Great and Little
Bear, the Wolf, the Serpent, the Dragon, the Eagle, the Swan, the
Crane, the Peacock, the Toucan, the Crow, etc.; some of which names
they retain among ourselves to this day.
"But, just as they had made a beginning, a prairie-wolf rushed in,
and, crying out, 'Why all this trouble and embroidery?' scattered the
pile of stars over all the floor of heaven, just as they still lie."
This iconoclastic and unæsthetical prairie-wolf represents a
barbarian's incapacity to see in the arrangement
{p. 200}
of the stars any such constellations, or, in fact, anything but an
unmeaning jumble of cinders.
And then we learn how the tribes of men separated:
"The old men" (the civilized race, the gods) "prepared two earthen
_tinages_, or water-jars, and having decorated one with bright
colors, filled it with trifles; while the other was left plain on the
outside, but filled within with flocks and herds and riches of all
kinds. These jars being covered, and presented to the Navajos and
Pueblos, the former chose the gaudy but paltry jar; while the Pueblos
received the plain and rich vessel--each nation showing, in its
choice, traits which characterize it to this day."
In the legends of the Lenni-Lenape,--the Delaware Indians,--mankind
was once buried in the earth with a wolf; and they owed their release
to the wolf, who scratched away the soil and dug out a means of
escape for the men and for himself. The Root-Diggers of California
were released in the same way by a coyote."[1]
"The Tonkaways, a wild people of Texas, still celebrate this early
entombment of the race in a most curious fashion. They have a grand
annual dance. One of them, naked as he was born, is _buried in the
earth_; the others, clothed in wolf-skins, walk over him, snuff
around him, howl in lupine style, and finally dig _him up with their
nails_."[2]
Compare this American custom with the religious ceremony of an
ancient Italian tribe:
"Three thousand years ago the Hirpani, or Wolves, an ancient Sabine
tribe of Italy, were wont to collect on Mount Soracte, and there go
through certain rites, in memory of an oracle which predicted their
extinction when they ceased to gain their living as wolves do, by
violence and plunder. Therefore they dressed in wolf-skins,
[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 247.
2. Ibid.]
{p. 201}
_ran with barks and howls over burning coals_, and gnawed wolfishly
whatever they could seize."[1]
All the tribes of the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and
Natchez, who, according to tradition, were in remote times banded
into one common confederacy, unanimously located their earliest
ancestry near an artificial eminence in the valley of the Big Black
River, in the Natchez country, whence they pretended to have emerged.
This hill is an elevation of earth about half a mile square and
fifteen or twenty feet high. From its northeast corner a wall of
equal height extends for nearly half a mile to the high land. This
was the _Nunne Chaha_, properly _Nanih waiya_, sloping hill, famous
in Choctaw story, and which Captain Gregg found they had not yet
forgotten in their Western home.
"The legend was, that in its center was a cave, the house of the
Master of Breath. Here he made the first men from the _clay around
him, and, as at that time the waters covered the earth_, he raised
the wall to dry them on. When the soft mud had hardened into elastic
flesh and firm bone, he _banished the waters to their channels and
beds_, and gave the dry land to his creatures."[2]
Here, again, we have the beginnings of the present race of men in a
cave, surrounded by clay and water, which covered the earth, and we
have the water subsiding into its channels and beds, and the dry land
appearing, whereupon the men emerged from the cave.
A parallel to this Southern legend occurs among the Six Nations of
the North. They with one consent looked to a mountain near the falls
of the Oswego River, in the State of New York, as the locality where
their forefathers saw the light of day; and their name, Oneida,
signifies _the people of the stone_.
[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 217.
2. Ibid., p. 242.]
{p. 202}
The cave of Pacarin-Tampu, already alluded to, the Lodgings of the
Dawn, or the Place of Birth of the Peruvians, was five leagues
distant from Cuzco, surrounded by a sacred grove, and inclosed with
temples of great antiquity.
"From its hallowed recesses the mythical civilizers, of Peru, tile
first of men, emerged, and in it, during the time of the flood, the
remnants of the race escaped the fury of the waves."[1]
We read in the legends of Oraibi, hereafter quoted more fully, that
the people climbed up a ladder from a lower world to this--that is,
they ascended from the cave in which they had taken refuge. This was
in an age of cold and darkness; there was yet no sun or moon.
The natives in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta, in Northern
California, have a strange legend which refers to the age of Caves
and Ice.
They say the Great Spirit made Mount Shasta first:
"_Boring a hole in the sky_," (the heavens cleft in twain of the
Edda?) "using a _large stone_ as an auger," (the fall of stones and
pebbles?) "he pushed down _snow and ice until they reached the
desired height;_ then he stepped from cloud to cloud down to _the
great icy pile_, and from it to the earth, where he planted the first
trees by merely putting his finger into the soil here and there. _The
sun began to melt the snow; the snow produced water; the water ran
down the sides of the mountains_, refreshed the trees, and made
rivers. The Creator gathered the leaves that fell from the trees,
blew upon them, and they became birds," etc.[2]
This is a representation of the end of the Glacial Age.
But the legends of these Indians of Mount Shasta go still further.
After narrating, as above, the fall of a
[1. Balboa, "Histoire du Pérou," p. 4.
2. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 90.]
{p. 203}
stone from heaven, and the formation of immense masses of ice, which
subsequently melted and formed rivers, and after the Creator had made
trees, birds,. and animals, especially the grizzly bear, then we have
a legend which reminds us of the cave-life which accompanied the
great catastrophe:
"Indeed, this animal" (the grizzly bear) "was then so large, strong,
and cunning, that the Creator somewhat feared him, and hollowed out
Mount Shasta as a wigwam for himself, where he might reside while on
earth in the most perfect security and comfort. So the smoke was soon
to be seen curling up from the mountain where the Great Spirit and
his family lived, and still live, though their hearth-fire is alive
no longer, now that the white-man is in the land."
Here the superior race seeks shelter in a cave on Mount Shasta, and
their camp-fire is associated with the smoke which once went forth
out of the volcano; while an inferior race, a Neanderthal race, dwell
in the plains at the foot of the mountain.
"This was thousands of snows ago, and there came after this a late
and severe spring-time, in which a memorable storm blew up from the
sea, shaking the huge lodge" (Mount Shasta) "to its base."
(Another recollection of the Ice Age.)
"The Great Spirit commanded his daughter, little more than an infant,
to go up and bid the wind to be still, cautioning her, at the same
time, in his fatherly way, not to put her head out into the blast,
but only to thrust out her little red arm and make a sign, before she
delivered her message."[1]
Here we seem to have a reminiscence of the cave-dwellers, looking out
at the terrible tempest from their places of shelter.
[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 91.]
{p. 204}
The child of the Great Spirit exposes herself too much, is caught by
the wind and blown down the mountain-side, where she is found,
shivering on the snow, by a family of grizzly bears. These grizzly
bears evidently possessed some humane as well as human traits: "They
walked then on their hind-legs like men, and talked, and carried
clubs, using the fore-limbs as men use their arms." They represent in
their bear-skins the rude, fur-clad race that were developed during
the intense cold of the Glacial Age.
The child of the Great Spirit, the superior race, intermarries with
one of the grizzly bears, and _from this union came the race of men_,
to wit, the Indians.
"But the Great Spirit punished the grizzly bears by depriving them of
the power of speech, and of standing erect--in short, by making true
bears of them. But no Indian will, to this day, kill a grizzly bear,
recognizing as he does the tie of blood."
Again, we are told:
"The inhabitants of central Europe and the Teutonic races who came
late to England place their mythical heroes under ground in caves, in
vaults beneath enchanted castles, or _in mounds_ which rise up and
open, and show their buried inhabitants alive and busy about the
avocations of earthly men. . . . In Morayshire the buried race are
_supposed to be under the sandhills_, as they are in some parts of
Brittany."[1]
Associated with these legends we find many that refer to the time of
great cold, and snow, and ice. I give one or two specimens:
In the story of the Iroquois, (see p. 173, _ante_,) we are told that
the White One, [the Light One, the Sun,] after he had destroyed the
monster who covered the earth with
[1. "Frost and Fire," vol. ii, p. 190.]
{p. 205}
blood and stones, then destroyed the gigantic frog. The frog, a
cold-blooded, moist reptile, was always the emblem of water and cold;
it represented the great ice-fields that squatted, frog-like, on the
face of the earth. It had "swallowed all the waters," says the
Iroquois legend; that is, "the waters were congealed in it; and when
it was killed great and destructive torrents broke forth and
devastated the land, and Manibozho, the White One, the beneficent
Sun, guided these waters into smooth streams and lakes." The Aztecs
adored the goddess of water under the figure of a great green frog
carved from a single emerald.[1]
In the Omaha we have the fable of "How the Rabbit killed the Winter,"
told in the Indian manner. The Rabbit was probably a reminiscence of
the Great Hare, Manabozho; and he, probably, as we shall see, a
recollection of a great race, whose totem was the Hare.
I condense the Indian story:
"The Rabbit in the past time moving came where the Winter was. The
Winter said: 'You have not been here lately; sit down.' The Rabbit
said he came because his grandmother had altogether _beaten the life
out of him_" (the fallen _débris_?). "The Winter went hunting. It was
_very cold: there was a snow-storm_. The Rabbit seared up a deer.
'Shoot him,' said the Rabbit. 'No; I do not hunt such things as
that,' said the Winter. They came upon some men. That was the
Winter's game. He killed the men and _boiled them for supper_,"
(cave-cannibalism). "The Rabbit refused to eat the human flesh. The
Winter went hunting again. The Rabbit found out from the Winter's
wife that the thing the Winter dreaded most of all the world was the
head of a Rocky Mountain sheep. The Rabbit procured one. _It was
dark_. He threw it suddenly at the Winter, saying, 'Uncle, that
_round thing_ by you is the head of a Rocky Mountain
[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 185.]
{p. 206}
sheep.' The Winter became altogether dead. Only the woman remained.
_Therefore from that time it has not been very cold_."
Of course, any attempt to interpret such a crude myth must be
guess-work. It shows, however, that the Indians believed that there
was a time when the winter was much more severe than it is now; it
was very cold and dark. Associated with it is the destruction of men
and cannibalism. At last the Rabbit brings a round object, (the
Sun?), the head of a Rocky Mountain sheep, and the Winter looks on
it, and perishes.
Even tropical Peru has its legend of the Age of Ice.
Garcilaso de la Vega, a descendant of the Incas, has preserved an
ancient indigenous poem of his nation, which seems to allude to a
great event, the breaking to fragments of some large object,
associated with ice and snow. Dr. Brinton translates it from the
Quichua, as follows
"Beauteous princess,
Lo, thy brother
_Breaks thy vessel
Now in fragments_.
From the blow come
Thunder, lightning,
Strokes of lightning
And thou, princess,
Tak'st the water,
With it raineth,
And _the hail_, or
_Snow dispenseth_.
Viracocha,
World-constructor,
World-enlivener,
To this office
Thee appointed,
Thee created."[1]
[1. "Myths of the New World," p. 167.]
{p. 207}
But it may be asked, How in such a period of terror and calamity--as
we must conceive the comet to have caused-would men think of finding
refuge in caves?
The answer is plain: either they or their ancestors had lived in
caves.
Caves were the first shelters of uncivilized men. It was not
necessary to fly to the caves through the rain of falling _débris_;
many were doubtless already in them when the great world-storm broke,
and others naturally sought their usual dwelling-places.
"The cavern," says Brinton, "dimly lingered in the memories of
nations."
Man is born of the earth; he is made of the clay like Adam, created--
"Of good red clay,
Haply from Mount Aornus, beyond sweep
Of the black eagle's wing."
The cave-temples of India-the oldest temples, probably, on earth--are
a reminiscence of this cave-life.
We shall see hereafter that Lot and his daughters "dwelt in a cave";
and we shall find Job bidden away in the "narrow-mouthed bottomless"
pit or cave.
[1. "Myths of the New World," p. 244.]
{p. 208}