NOAH’S MESSENGERS
Our first thought when we hear the word “deluge” is of Noah and his Ark,
and the funny toy of our childhood rises to the mind’s eye. In that
childhood we had no doubt that the flood described in the first book of
the Old Testament covered the whole globe. Now we know that the story is
a Semitic tradition, perhaps nothing more than a sun-myth in origin,
although the actual occurrence of some extraordinary inundation may have
got mixed with it and localized it. In fact, the belief in an
all-submerging deluge, or, in what is its equivalent—namely, a time when
the world was a plain of water with no land above its quiet surface—is a
part of the mythology or theology, or both, of many diverse peoples in
both hemispheres; and almost always birds are prominently associated
with its incidents and the ensuing separation of land from water.
A surprising number of persons of ordinary intelligence even now, and in
this enlightened country, continue to regard beds of water-worn gravels,
and the fossil shells, etc., seen in the rocks, as relics of the
Noachian deluge, and “diluvian” and “antediluvian” are terms that hardly
yet have disappeared from popular geology.
The earliest available accounts of such a deluge as the Noachian are
engraved on clay tablets recovered from the ruins of Babylonia, and
written 2000 or more years before the beginning of the Christian era.
Several narratives have been deciphered, agreeing in the facts of a vast
destruction by water in Mesopotamia, and of a relatively huge house-boat
built by a chosen family for the preservation of themselves and an
extensive collection of livestock. After floating about for seven days
this Babylonian ship grounded on a submerged hill-top, and seven days
later the patriarchal shipmaster sent out as explorers a dove, a
swallow, and a raven. The dove and the swallow returned, the raven did
not.
The close similarity between this and the Biblical account of Noah’s
voyage on a world of waters (which account appears to be a combination
of two separate legends) leads to the opinion that the whole narrative
is derived from some more ancient and widespread Oriental tradition; and
there seems fair evidence that it does not describe any physical
happening at all, but is a symbolical sun-myth, a hint of which is
given, even in the Bible, by the incident of the rainbow. Let me quote
the history in Genesis so far as it relates to our purpose:
“And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the
window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven which
went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the
earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were
abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest
for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark;
for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put
forth his hand and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the
ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the
dove out of the ark. And the dove came in unto him in the evening,
and, lo, in her mouth was an olive-leaf plucked off: so Noah knew
that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet
other seven days, and sent forth the dove, which returned not again
unto him any more.”
As to the choice of these particular birds out of Noah’s great aviary,
it is well to remember that doves were sacred in ancient Babylonia to
Ishtar, who, as the deified (female) personification of productiveness,
co-existent with the (male) Sun-god, was sometimes designated as
Mother-goddess, or even as “Mother Earth”: so that it would be highly
appropriate to send first a dove as a messenger to this incarnation of
fruitful land. This falls in with Moncure D. Conway’s suggestion[56]
that the dove and raven were tribally “sacred” animals among the people
affected by this Babylonian deluge. The choice of the swallow was
natural, when one remembers its habit of flying long and far over bodies
of water; and that the raven should not come back is in keeping with its
character as much as is the quick return of the semidomestic dove and
swallow. Dr. Laufer[52] notes that St. Ambrose, in his treatise _De Noe
et Area_, devotes a whole chapter to the “crow’s” impiety in not
returning to the Ark. The Arabs, according to Keane,[14] even yet call
this bird “raven of separation,” meaning the separation of the water
from the land at the close of the Flood. Another Arabic source, quoted
by Baring-Gould from the medieval _Chronicle_ of Abou-djafer Tábari,
transmits traditional particulars that considerably extend the
too-laconic Biblical log of the Ark. “When Noah had left the Ark,” it
relates, “he passed forty days on the mountain, till all the water had
subsided into the sea.... Noah said to the raven, ‘Go and place your
foot on the earth, and see what is the depth of the water.’ The raven
departed, but having found a carcass it remained to devour it and did
not return. Noah was provoked, and he cursed the raven, saying, ‘May God
make thee contemptible among men, and let carrion be thy food.’”
Johann von Herder, the poet and friend of Goethe, either found or
invented another story to account for the curse resting on the raven,
which runs thus in the words of an old translator:
Anxiously did Noah look forth from his swimming ark, waiting to see
the waters of the flood abate. Scarcely had the peaks of the highest
mountains emerged from the waves, when he called all the fowls
around him. “Who among you,” said he, “will be the messenger to go
forth and see whether the time of our deliverance is nigh?” The
raven with much noise crowded hastily in before all the rest: he
longed ardently for his favorite food. Scarcely was the window open,
when he flew away and returned no more. The ungrateful bird forgot
his errand and the interests of his benefactor—he hung at his
carcass! But punishment did not delay. The air was yet filled with
poisonous fog, and heavy vapors hung over the putrid corpses; these
blinded his eyes and darkened his feathers. As a punishment for his
forgetfulness, his memory as well as his sight became dim; even his
own young he did not recognize; and he experienced towards them no
feelings of parental joy.
Quoting again the Arab chronicler Abou-djafer Tábari: “After that Noah
sent forth the dove. The dove departed, and without tarrying put her
foot in the water. The water of the Flood scalded and pricked the legs
of the dove. It was hot and briny and feathers would not grow on her
legs any more, and the skin scaled off. Now, doves which have red and
featherless legs are of the sort that Noah sent forth. The dove
returning showed her legs to Noah, who said: ‘May God render thee well
pleasing to men.’ For that reason the dove is dear to men’s hearts.”
Still another Arabic version, given by Gustav Weil, is that Noah blessed
the dove, and since then she has borne a necklace of green feathers; but
the raven he cursed, that its flight should be crooked—never direct like
that of other birds. This is also a Jewish legend. A more modern
addendum is that the magpie, one of the same group of birds, was not
permitted to enter the ark, but was compelled to perch on the roof
because it gabbled so incessantly. A quaint 14th-century manuscript
quoted by Hulme[38] says of the raven’s exit from the ark:
Then opin Noe his window
Let ut a rauen and forth he flew
Dune and vp sought heare and thare
A stede to sett upon somequar.
Vpon the water sone he fand
A drinkled best ther flotand
Of that flees was he so fain
To ship came he never again.
To this list of messengers medieval tradition added a fourth—the
kingfisher, which in Europe is blue-green above and rich chestnut on the
breast. At that time, however, it was a plain gray bird. This scout flew
straight up to heaven, in order to get a wide survey of the waters, and
went so near the sun that its breast was scorched to its present tint
and its back assumed the color of the sky overhead. (This recalls
Thoreau’s saying that our bluebird carries the sky on its back and the
earth on its breast.)
Faith in a general flood long ago is shown by primitive documents to
have prevailed not only in Asia Minor and eastward, but in Persia, India
and Greece. It did not prevail in Europe generally, nor in Africa. On
the other hand missionaries report traditions of it in Polynesia—where,
curiously, geographers find evidence of great subsidences since the
archipelagoes affected have been inhabited; and certainly it was a part
of the mythical prehistory of many tribes among the aborigines of North
America, where birds were often connected with the adventures of the few
or solitary survivors by means of whom the world was repeopled. Thus
scores, perhaps hundreds, of varying traditions and fables exist of the
creation of the earth out of a chaos of water, or of its restoration
after having been drowned in a universal flood; and often it is hard to
distinguish the creation-myth from the deluge-tale.
The American story-material of this nature may be divided into groups
that would correspond roughly to the various aboriginal language-stocks,
betraying a family likeness in each group, but showing tribal variations
as a rule connected with each particular tribal or mythical “first man,”
or with the totemic ancestor.
The creation-legends, as such, do not concern us much. They are of
purely mythical, supernatural beings of various sorts, descending from
the sky or coming up out of the underworld, and either finding a
readymade earth to dwell upon or else creating one by magic. Some
Southern darkies will tell you that the bluejay made the earth. “When
all de worl’ was water he brung de fust grit er dirt.” The strangest
conception of this kind is not American but that of the Ainus of
northern Japan, who say that the earth originally was a sterile, cold,
uninhabitable and dreadful quagmire. The creator existed aloft, however,
and finally made and despatched a water-wagtail to construct a place
habitable for men. The bird fluttered over the water-spaces, trampled
the thin mud and beat it down with its feet. Thus ground was gradually
hardened and elevated in spots, the water steadily drained away and good
soil was left. Hence the Ainus hold the little wagtail in almost
worshipful esteem.
Let us, however, restrict the inquiry to North America, and to the
deluge-story proper—that is, the destruction of human life by water
overwhelming a flourishing world, and the subsequent restoration.
The widely spread Algonkin stock has many such legends, in which one or
several persons and animals survive by floating in a canoe or raft, and
at their behest a beaver or a muskrat—the most natural agents—bring up
from the bottom a little mud, which is expanded by magic into a new
continent; but frequently birds do this service or otherwise help to
form livable conditions. The Lenni Lenape (Delawares) had a tradition of
a universal deluge in the far distant past, which Dr. Brinton[27]
recounted as follows, assuring us that it is unmixed with any teaching
by white missionaries: “The few people that survived had taken refuge on
the back of a turtle who had reached so great an age that his shell was
mossy, like the bank of a runlet. In this forlorn condition a loon flew
that way, which they asked to dive and bring up land. He complied but
found no bottom. Then he flew away and returned with a small quantity of
earth in his bill. Guided by him, the turtle swam to a place where a
spot of dry land was found. There the survivors settled and re-peopled
the land.”
Few legends explain how or why the flood occurred. The Ojibways,
however, say that it was the result of the malice of an underground
monster visualized as a huge serpent (recalling the earth-dragon of the
Chinese), which throughout all their mythology is the antagonist of the
good, constructive genius represented by their tribal hero Manabozho.
The Beaver Indians of the Mackenzie Valley offer a more materialistic
and more picturesque explanation. They told George Keith, one of the
fur-traders there a century ago, whose Letters are printed in Masson’s
collection of northern archives,[99] that the deluge resulted from the
sudden melting of a snowfall so deep that tall trees were buried. This
disastrous melting was produced by the release of the sun from a bug in
which it had been hidden by sorcery. Then the sun flew away and began to
shed its heat. There’s a sun-myth for you!
In the resulting freshet so philosophically accounted for the few
persons who had been left unburied in the world of snow fled toward a
high mountain, but only a man and a woman reached it. On this mountain
were gathered pairs of all the kinds of animals in the country. The
flood persisted, and there was nothing to eat. Then the mallard, the
little grebe, or hell-diver, and the buzzard (?) were sent to dive into
the sea and try to find its bottom. All failed repeatedly, but the
buzzard dived again a few days later, and came up with his bill full of
earth, which showed that the flood was subsiding. Finally the waters
drained away or dried up, but the soil had been so ruined by submergence
that not even roots could be found to serve as food. When everybody was
nearly starved, however, the human pair and the animals succeeded in
finding the home of Raven, who lived far away, and from his stores they
obtained food. Then a new world of life began.
The Cheyennes and the Arikarees say that at the height of the flood “a
person” (masculine) was floating in the water with all sorts of aquatic
birds swimming about him. He asked that one of them dive and get some
earth. All tried it and failed until a small duck brought up a little
mud in its beak and gave it to the man. He kneaded it with his fingers
until it was dry, then made little piles of it on the surface of the
water, which enlarged and coalesced into a wide plain.
The Chitimacha Indians of northern Louisiana used to relate that a great
deluge came, whereupon the redheaded woodpecker went up to the sky and
hung by his claws to escape drowning, but his tail hung down into the
dirty water and was stained black, as you now see it. The Pimas and
other tribes of Arizona tell similar stories of certain birds, one clan
of Pueblo Indians putting it on the turkey. They say that a flood was
produced by the god Baholi Konga to punish tribal wickedness. The good
persons in the community escaped this punishment by means of the fact
that Baholi Konga had clothed them in turkey-skins, enabling them to fly
to the high mountains. They flew too low, however, and the tails of
their dresses dragged in the water, the stain of which is still visible.
With one more and a rather pretty tale from the traditions of the Paiute
Indians, whose home is in the region of the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, I must close this glance at aboriginal legends of a deluge
here in America. These Indians relate that formerly the whole world was
under water save the summit of Mt. Grant, on which existed a fire. It
was the only fire in the universe, and it would have been extinguished
when the wind blew hard and the waves were dashed against the peak had
not the sage-hen settled down there and fanned away the water with her
wings; but while doing this inestimable service to mankind the heat of
the precious flame scorched her breast, and that accounts for its
present blackness.
A curiously similar story, which illustrates the primitive savage’s
perception that obtaining fire was the most important, the first, thing
to do in beginning or reconstituting a habitable world, appears in the
folklore of the Arawaks of British Guiana, and may well be told among
deluge myths. They assure you that the world was once engulfed in a
flood that left exposed only a hilltop where grew some tall cocoanut
palms. The heavenly leader, Sigu, conducted all the animals to this hill
and made such as could go up the trees, while others were placed in a
cave sealed water-tight with wax. (It was during that long, distressful
waiting in the palm-tops that the howling-monkeys perfected the
agonizing quality of their terrific voices.) Finally the waters subsided
and the agami (the trumpeter, _Psophia crepitans_) ventured too soon
upon the ground in search of food; thereupon hordes of starved ants,
issuing from their half-drowned nests, swarmed upon its legs, then of
respectable size, and so nearly devoured them that only the sticklike
shanks now characteristic of the bird remained. Sigu rescued the
unfortunate agami, and then with infinite trouble kindled a fire with a
spark that the maroodie (or guan, a fellow-bird with the agami of
South-American barnyards) had snapped up in mistake for a shining red
insect. The guan tried to shift the blame for this sinful error upon the
alligator but failed to do so, for his own guilt was betrayed by the
glowing spark that had stuck in his throat, as one may see by looking at
any guan to-day.
Another instance of the misfortunes of the trumpeter is related by Leo
Miller[53] as he heard it among the Maquritari Indians who live on the
headwaters of the Orinoco:
In the very beginning of things a trumpeter and a curassow [a near
cousin of the guan] decided upon a matrimonial alliance, but
domestic troubles soon broke out, and there was no possibility of a
reconciliation; it was thereupon decided to lay the case before the
gods who live on the summit of Mount Duida. The wise gods ordered
them to fight it out. In the course of the combat that followed the
curassow pushed the trumpeter into the fire, burning off the
feathers of the latter’s tail. The trumpeter promptly retaliated by
pushing her mate into the fire, singeing his crest. Thereupon the
gods decided that they should remain in this humiliating plight for
the rest of their days, and so ... the curassow wears a curled crest
and the trumpeter has a very short tail.
I am tempted, in spite of my intention to stop here, to annex an
elaborate and somewhat amusing creation-myth of the Yocut Indians of
southern California, because it is both appropriate and picturesque. It
is thus set down by Powers:[19]
Once there was a time when there was nothing in the world but water.
About the place where Tulare Lake now is, there was a pole standing
far up out of the water, and on this pole, perched a hawk and a crow
... for many ages. At length they wearied of the lonesomeness, and
they created the birds which prey on fish, such as the kingfisher,
eagle, pelican, and others. Among them was a very small duck, which
dived down to the bottom of the water, picked its beak full of mud,
came up, died, and lay floating on the water. The hawk and crow then
fell to work and gathered from the duck’s beak the earth which it
had brought up, and commenced making the mountains. They began at
the place now known as Ta-hi-cha-pa Pass, and the hawk made the east
range, while the crow made the west one. Little by little, as they
dropped in the earth, the great mountains grew athwart the face of
the waters pushing north. It was a work of many years, but finally
they met at Mt. Shasta, and their labors were ended.
But behold, when they compared their mountains it was found that the
crow’s was a great deal the larger. Then the hawk said to the crow.
“How did this happen, you rascal? I warrant you have been stealing
the earth from my bill, and that is why your mountains are the
biggest.” It was a fact, and the crow laughed in his claws. Then the
hawk went and got some Indian tobacco and chewed it and it made him
exceedingly wise. So he took hold of the mountains and turned them
around in a circle, putting his range in place of the crow’s; and
that is why the Sierra Nevada is larger than the Coast Range.