HODDENTIN, THE POLLEN OF THE TULE, THE SACRIFICIAL POWDER OF THE
APACHE; WITH REMARKS UPON SACRED POWDERS AND BREAD OFFERINGS IN
GENERAL.
"Trifles not infrequently lead to important results. In every walk of
science a trifle disregarded by incurious thousands has repaid the
inquisitiveness of a single observer with unhoped-for knowledge."[247]
The taciturnity of the Apache in regard to all that concerns their
religious ideas is a very marked feature of their character; probably
no tribe with which our people have come in contact has succeeded more
thoroughly in preserving from profane inquiry a complete knowledge of
matters relating to their beliefs and ceremonials. How much of this
ignorance is to be attributed to interpreters upon whom reliance has
necessarily been placed, and how much to the indisposition of the
Apache to reveal anything concerning himself, it would be fruitless to
inquire, but, in my own experience, when I first went among them in
New Mexico and Arizona twenty-three years ago, I was foolish enough to
depend greatly upon the Mexican captives who had lived among the
Apache since boyhood, and who might be supposed to know exactly what
explanation to give of every ceremony in which the Apache might
engage. Nearly every one of these captives, or escaped captives, had
married among the Apache, and had raised families of half-breed
children, and several of them had become more Apache than the Apache
themselves. Yet I was time and again assured by several of these
interpreters that the Apache had no religion, and even after I had
made some progress in my investigations, at every turn I was met by
the most contradictory statements, due to the interpreter's desire to
inject his own views and not to give a frank exposition of those
submitted by the Apache. Thus, an Apache god would be transmuted into
either a "santo" or a "diablo," according to the personal bias of the
Mexican who happened to be assisting me. "Assanutlije" assumed the
disguise of "Maria Santissima," while ceremonies especially sacred and
beneficent in the eyes of the savages were stigmatized as "brujeria"
and "hechiceria" (witchcraft) in open defiance of the fact that the
Apache have as much horror and dread of witches as the more
enlightened of their brethren who in past ages suffered from their
machinations in Europe and America. The interpreters had no intention
to deceive; they were simply unable to disengage themselves from their
own prejudices and their own ignorance; they could not, and they would
not, credit the existence of any such thing as religion, save and
excepting that taught them at their mothers' knees in the petty
hamlets of Sonora and of which they still preserved hazy and distorted
recollections. One of the first things to be noticed among the Apache,
in this connection, was the very general appearance of little bags of
buckskin, sometimes ornamented, sometimes plain, which were ordinarily
attached to the belts of the warriors, and of which they seemed to be
especially careful.[248]
[Illustration: FIG. 433.--Bag containing hoddentin.]
What follows in this chapter was not learned in an hour or a day, but
after a long course of examination and a comparison of statements
extracted from different authorities.
The bags spoken of revealed when opened a quantity of yellow colored
flour or powder, resembling cornmeal, to which the Apache gave the
name of "hoddentin," or "hadntin," the meaning of which word is "the
powder or pollen of the tule," a variety of the cat-tail rush, growing
in all the little ponds and cienegas of the Southwest.
I made it the touchstone of friendship that every scout or other Apache
who wished for a favor at my hands should relate something concerning
his religious belief. I did not care much what topic he selected; it
might be myths, clan laws, war customs, medicine--anything he pleased,
but it had to be something and it had to be accurate. Hoddentin having
first attracted my attention, I very naturally made many of my first
inquiries about it, and, while neglecting no opportunity for
independent observation, drew about me the most responsible men and
women, heard what each had to say, carefully compared and contrasted it
with the statements of the others, and now give the result.
I noticed that in the dances for the benefit of the sick the
medicine-men in the intervals between chants applied this yellow
powder to the forehead of the patient, then in form of a cross upon
his breast, then in a circle around his couch, then upon the heads of
the chanters and of sympathizing friends, and lastly upon their own
heads and into their own mouths. There is a considerable difference in
method, as medicine-men allow themselves great latitude, or a large
"personal equation," in all their dealings with the supernatural. No
Apache would, if it could be avoided, go on the warpath without a bag
of this precious powder somewhere upon his person, generally, as I
have said, attached to his ammunition belt. Whenever one was wounded,
hurt, or taken sick while on a scout, the medicine-man of the party
would walk in front of the horse or mule ridden by the patient and
scatter at intervals little pinches of hoddentin, that his path might
be made easier. As was said to me: "When we Apache go on the warpath,
hunt, or plant, we always throw a pinch of hoddentin to the sun,
saying 'with the favor of the sun, or permission of the sun, I am
going out to fight, hunt, or plant,' as the case may be, 'and I want
the sun to help me.'"
I have noticed that the Apache, when worn out with marching, put a
pinch of hoddentin on their tongues as a restorative.
"Hoddentin is eaten by sick people as a remedy."[249]
"Before starting out on the warpath, they take a pinch of hoddentin,
throw it to the sun, and also put a pinch on their tongues and one on
the crown of the head.... When they return, they hold a dance, and on
the morning of that day throw pinches of hoddentin to the rising sun,
and then to the east, south, west, and north, to the four winds."[250]
I am unable to assert that hoddentin is used in any way at the birth
of a child; but I know that as late as 1886 there was not a babe upon
the San Carlos reservation, no matter how tender its age, that did not
have a small bag of hoddentin attached to its neck or dangling from
its cradle. Neither can I assert anything about its use at time of
marriage, because, among the Apache, marriage is by purchase, and
attended with little, if any, ceremony. But when an Apache girl
attains the age of puberty, among other ceremonies performed upon her,
they throw hoddentin to the sun and strew it about her and drop on her
head flour of the piñon, which flour is called by the Chiricahua
Apache "nostchi," and by the Sierra Blanca Apache "opé."[251]
"Upon attaining the age of puberty, girls fast one whole day, pray,
and throw hoddentin to the sun."[252] When an Apache dies, if a
medicine-man be near, hoddentin is sprinkled upon the corpse. The
Apache buried in the clefts of rocks, but the Apache-Mohave cremated.
"Before lighting the fire the medicine-men of the Apache-Mohave put
hoddentin on the dead person's breast in the form of a cross, on the
forehead, shoulders, and scattered a little about."[253]
The very first thing an Apache does in the morning is to blow a little
pinch of hoddentin to the dawn. The Apache worship both dawn and
darkness, as well as the sun, moon, and several of the planets.
"When the sun rises we cast a pinch of hoddentin toward him, and we
do the same thing to the moon, but not to the stars, saying
'Gun-ju-le, chigo-na-ay, si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale,'
meaning 'Be good, O Sun, be good.' 'Dawn, long time let me live'; or,
'Don't let me die for a long time,' and at night, 'Gun-ju-le,
chil-jilt, si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale,' meaning 'Be good, O
Night; Twilight, be good; do not let me die.'" "In going on a hunt an
Apache throws hoddentin and says 'Gun-ju-le, chigo-na-ay, cha-ut-si,
ping, kladitza,' meaning 'Be good, O Sun, make me succeed deer to
kill.'"[254]
The name of the full moon in the Apache language is "klego-na-ay," but
the crescent moon is called "tzontzose" and hoddentin is always
offered to it.[255]
"Hoddentin is thrown to the sun, moon (at times), the morning star,
and occasionally to the wagon."[256] "The Apache offer much hoddentin
to 'Na-u-kuzze,' the Great Bear."[257] "Our custom is to throw a very
small pinch of hoddentin at dawn to the rising sun."[258] "The women
of the Chiricahua throw no hoddentin to the moon, but pray to it,
saying: 'Gun-ju-le, klego-na-ay,' (be good, O Moon)."[259]
When the Apache plant corn the medicine-men bury eagle-plume sticks in
the fields, scatter hoddentin, and sing. When the corn is partially
grown they scatter pinches of hoddentin over it.[260]
The "eagle-plume sticks" mentioned in the preceding paragraph suggests
the "ke-thawn" mentioned by Matthews in "The Mountain Chant."[261]
"When a person is very sick the Apache make a great fire, place the
patient near it, and dance in a circle around him and the fire, at the
same time singing and sprinkling him with hoddentin in the form of a
cross on head, breast, arms, and legs."[262]
In November, 1885, while at the San Carlos agency, I had an interview
with Nantadotash, an old blind medicine-man of the Akañe or Willow
gens, who had with him a very valuable medicine-hat which he refused
to sell, and only with great reluctance permitted me to touch. Taking
advantage of his infirmity, I soon had a picture drawn in my notebook,
and the text added giving the symbolism of all the ornamentation
attached. Upon discovering this, the old man became much excited, and
insisted upon putting a pinch of hoddentin upon the drawing, and then
recited a prayer, which I afterwards succeeded in getting verbatim.
After the prayer was finished, the old man arose and marked with
hoddentin the breast of his wife, of Moses, of Antonio, of other
Apache present, and then of myself, putting a large pinch over my
heart and upon each shoulder, and then placed the rest upon his own
tongue. He explained that I had taken the "life" out of his medicine
hat, and, notwithstanding the powers of his medicine, returned in less
than a month with a demand for $30 as damages. His hat never was the
same after I drew it. My suggestion that the application of a little
soap might wash away the clots of grease, soot, and earth adhering to
the hat, and restore its pristine efficacy were received with the
scorn due to the sneers of the scoffer.
"In time of much lightning, the Apache throw hoddentin and say:
'Gun-ju-le, ittindi,' be good, Lightning."[263]
[Illustration: FIG. 434.--Nan-ta-do-tash's medicine hat.]
Tzit-jizinde, "the Man who likes Everybody," who said he belonged to
the Inoschujochin--Manzanita or Bearberry clan--showed me how to pray
with hoddentin in time of lightning or storm or danger of any kind.
Taking a small pinch in his fingers, he held it out at arm's length,
standing up, and repeated his prayer, and then blew his breath hard. I
was once with a party of Apache while a comet was visible. I called
their attention to it, but they did not seem to care. On the other
hand, Antonio told me that the "biggest dance" the Apache ever had was
during the time that "the stars all fell out of the sky" (1833).
"The only act of a religious character which I observed ... was
shortly after crossing the river they [i.e., the American officers]
were met by a small party of the Indians, one of whom chalked a cross
on the breast of each, with a yellow earth, which he carried in a
satchel at his belt. Previous to doing so he muttered some words very
solemnly with his hands uplifted and eyes thrown upwards. Again, on
arriving at the camp of the people, the chief and others in greeting
them took a similar vow, touching thereafter the yellow chalked cross.
Sonora may have furnished them with some of their notions of a
Deity."[264]
"The yellow earth," seen by Dr. Smart was, undoubtedly, hoddentin,
carried in a medicine bag at the belt of a medicine-man. Some years
ago I went out with Al. Seiber and a small party of Apache to examine
three of their "sacred caves" in the Sierra Pinal and Sierra Ancha. No
better opportunity could have been presented for noting what they did.
The very last thing at night they intoned a "medicine" song, and at
early dawn they were up to throw a pinch of hoddentin to the east.
Moses and John, two of the Apache mentioned above, requested
permission to go off in the mountains after deer and bear, supposed to
be plentiful in the higher altitudes. Before leaving camp, Moses blew
a pinch of hoddentin toward the sun, repeating his prayer for success,
and ending it with a sharp, snappy "ek," as if to call attention. In
one of the sacred caves visited on this trip, the Apache medicine-men
assembled for the purpose of holding their snake dance. This I have
never seen among the Apache, but that they celebrate it and that it is
fully the equal of the repulsive rite which I have witnessed and noted
among the Tusayan[265] I am fully assured. I may make reference to
some of its features in the chapter upon animal worship and ophic
rites.
From a multiplicity of statements, the following are taken: Concepcion
had seen the snake dance over on the Carrizo, near Camp Apache; the
medicine-men threw hoddentin upon the snakes. He said: "After getting
through with the snake, the medicine-man suffered it to glide off,
covered with the hoddentin, thrown by admiring devotees."
Mike Burns had no remembrance of seeing hoddentin thrown to the sun.
He had seen it thrown to the snake, "in a kind of worship."
Nott and Antonio stated that "when they find that a snake has wriggled
across the trail, especially the trail to be followed by a war party,
they throw hoddentin upon the trail." Nott took a pinch of hoddentin,
showed how to throw it upon the snake, and repeated the prayer, which
I recorded.
Corbusier instances a remedy in use among the Tonto Apache. This
consisted in applying a rattlesnake to the head or other part
suffering from pain. He continues: "After a time the medicine-man
rested the snake on the ground again, and, still retaining his hold of
it with his right hand, put a pinch of yellow pollen into its mouth
with his left, and rubbed some along its belly."[266]
"He then held his hand out to a man, who took a pinch of the powder
and rubbed it on the crown of a boy's head. Yellow pollen treated in
this manner is a common remedy for headache, and may frequently be
seen on the crowns of the heads of men and boys."[267]
Hoddentin is used in the same manner as a remedy for headache among
the San Carlos Apache, but the medicine-men apply a snake to the
person of a patient only when their "diagnosis" has satisfied them
that he has been guilty of some unkindness to a snake, such as
stepping upon it, in which case they pretend that they can cure the
man by applying to the part affected the portion of the reptile's body
upon which he trampled.
The Apache state that when their medicine-men go out to catch snakes
for their snake dance, they recite a prayer and lay their left hand,
in which is some hoddentin, at the opening of the snake's den, through
which the reptile must crawl, and, after a short time the snake will
come out and allow himself to be handled.
Hoddentin is also offered to other animals, especially the bear, of
which the Apache, like their congeners the Navajo, stand in great awe
and reverence. When a bear is killed, the dance which is held becomes
frenzied; the skin is donned by all the men, and much hoddentin is
thrown, if it can be obtained. One of these dances which I saw in the
Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, lasted all night, without a moment's
cessation in the singing and prancing of the participants.
A great deal of hoddentin is offered to the "ka-chu" (great or jack
rabbit).[268]
The Apache medicine-man, Nakay-do-klunni, called by the whites
"Bobbydoklinny," exercised great influence over his people at Camp
Apache, in 1881. He boasted of his power to raise the dead, and
predicted that the whites should soon be driven from the land. He also
drilled the savages in a peculiar dance, the like of which had never
been seen among them. The participants, men and women, arranged
themselves in files, facing a common center, like the spokes of a
wheel, and while thus dancing hoddentin was thrown upon them in
profusion. This prophet or "doctor" was killed in the engagement in
the Cibicu canyon, August 30, 1881.
In a description of the "altars" made by the medicine-men of the
Apache-Yuma at or near Camp Verde, Arizona, it is shown that this
sacred powder is freely used. Figures were drawn upon the ground to
represent the deities of the tribe, and the medicine-men dropped on
all, except three of them, a pinch of yellow powder (hoddentin) which
was taken from a small buckskin bag. This powder was put upon the
head, chest, or other part of the body of the patient.
Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army,[269] says that the ceremony just
described was "a most sacred one and entered into for the purpose of
averting the diseases with which the Apache at Camp Verde had been
afflicted the summer previous."
I am not sure that the Apache-Yuma have not borrowed the use of
hoddentin from the Apache. My reason for expressing this opinion is
that I have never seen an Apache without a little bag of hoddentin
when it was possible for him to get it, whereas I have never seen an
Apache-Yuma with it except when he was about to start out on the
warpath. The "altars" referred to by Corbusier are made also by the
Apache, Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan. Those of the Apache, as might be
inferred from their nomadic state, were the crudest; those of the
Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan display a wonderful degree of artistic
excellence. The altars of the Navajo have been described and
illustrated by Dr. Washington Matthews,[270] and those of the Tusayan
by myself.[271]
Moses Henderson, wishing me to have a profitable interview with his
father, who was a great snake doctor among the Apache, told me that
when he brought him to see me I should draw two lines across each
other on his right foot, and at their junction place a bead of the
chalchihuitl, the cross to be drawn with hoddentin. The old man would
then tell me all he knew.
The Apache, I learned, at times offer hoddentin to fire, an example of
pyrodulia for which I had been on the lookout, knowing that the Navajo
have fire dances, the Zuñi the Feast of the Little God of Fire, and
the Apache themselves are not ignorant of the fire dance.
Hoddentin seems to be used to strengthen all solemn compacts and to
bind faith. I had great trouble with a very bright medicine-man named
Na-a-cha, who obstinately refused to let me look at the contents of a
phylactery which he constantly wore until I let him know that I, too,
was a medicine-man of eminence. The room in which we had our
conversation was the quarters of the post surgeon, at that time absent
on scout. The chimney piece was loaded with bottles containing all
kinds of drugs and medicines. I remarked carelessly to Na-a-cha that
if he doubted my powers I would gladly burn a hole through his tongue
with a drop of fluid from the vial marked "Acid, nitric," but he
concluded that my word was sufficient, and after the door was locked
to secure us from intrusion he consented to let me open and examine
the phylactery and make a sketch of its contents. To guard against all
possible trouble, he put a pinch of hoddentin on each of my shoulders,
on the crown of my head, and on my chest and back. The same
performance was gone through with in his own case. He explained that
hoddentin was good for men to eat, that it was good medicine for the
bear, and that the bear liked to eat it. I thought that herein might
be one clew to the reason why the Apache used it as a medicine. The
bear loves the tule swamp, from which, in days primeval, he sallied
out to attack the squaws and children gathering the tule powder or
tule bulb. Poorly armed, as they then were, the Apache must have had
great trouble in resisting him; hence they hope to appease him by
offering a sacrifice acceptable to his palate. If acceptable to the
chief animal god, as the bear seems to have been, as he certainly was
the most dangerous, then it would have been also acceptable to the
minor deities like the puma, snake, eagle, etc., and, by an easy
transition, to the sun, moon, and other celestial powers. This opinion
did not last long, as will be shown. From its constant association
with all sacrifices and all acts of worship, hoddentin would naturally
become itself sanctified and an object of worship, just as rattles,
drums, standards, holy grails, etc., in different parts of the world
have become fetichistic. I was not in the least surprised when I heard
Moses Henderson reciting a prayer, part of which ran thus: "Hoddentin
eshkin, bi hoddentin ashi" ("Hoddentin child, you hoddentin I offer"),
and to learn that it was a personification of hoddentin.
The fact that the myths of the Apache relate that Assanut-li-je
spilled hoddentin over the surface of the sky to make the Milky Way
may be looked upon as an inchoate form of a calendar, just as the
Aztecs transferred to their calendar the reed, rabbit, etc.
So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a
religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin
schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular
performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred
pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least,
I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to
record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the
Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood
had been shed, and everything they did--the bathing in the sweat
lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon
their heads by the Apache-Yuma--had a reference to the lustration or
purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women
may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail
rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida,
gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me
by one of the women who gathered it.
Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the
use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder
or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.
THE "KUNQUE" OF THE ZUÑI AND OTHERS.
The term "kunque" as it appears in this chapter is one of convenience
only. Each pueblo, or rather each set of pueblos, has its own name in
its own language, as, for example, the people of Laguna and Acoma, who
employ it in all their ceremonies as freely as do the Zuñi, call it in
their tongue "hinawa." In every pueblo which I visited--and I visited
them all, from Oraibi of Tusayan, on the extreme west, to Picuris, on
the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del Sur, in
Texas--I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quantities and
so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both astonished and
gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the
Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the
ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to
discover a lever which I could employ in prying into the meaning of
other usages and ceremonials.
Behind the main door in the houses at Santa Clara, San Ildefonso,
Picuris, Laguna, Acoma, San Felipe, Jemez, and other towns, there is a
niche containing a bowl or saucer filled with this sacred meal, of
which the good housewife is careful to throw a pinch to the sun at
early dawn and to the twilight at eventide. In every ceremony among
the Pueblos naturally enough, more particularly among those who have
been living farthest from the Mexicans, the lavish scattering of
sacred meal is the marked feature of the occasion. At the snake dance
of the Tusayan, in 1881, the altars were surrounded with baskets of
pottery and with flat plaques of reeds, which were heaped high with
kunque. When the procession moved out from under the arcade and began
to make the round of the sacred stone the air was white with meal, and
in my imagination I could see that it was a procession of Druids
circling about a "sacred stone" in Ireland previous to the coming of
St. Patrick. When the priests threw the snakes down upon the ground it
was within a circle traced with kunque, and soon the snakes were
covered with the same meal flung upon them by the squaws. There was
only one scalp left among the Tusayan in 1881, but there were several
among the Zuñi, and one or two each at Acoma and Laguna. In every one
of these towns kunque was offered to the scalps.
At the feast of the Little God of Fire among the Zuñi, in 1881, my
personal notes relate that "the moment the head of the procession
touched the knoll upon which the pueblo is built the mass of people
began throwing kunque upon the Little God and those with him as well
as on the ground in front of, beside, and behind them. This kunque was
contained in sacred basket-shaped bowls of earthenware. The spectators
kept the air fairly misty with clouds of the sacred kunque. This
procession passed around the boundaries of the pueblo of Zuñi,
stopping at eight holes in the ground for the purpose of enacting a
ceremonial of consecration suggestive of the 'terminalia' of the
Romans. They visited each of the holes, which were 18 inches deep and
12 inches square, with a sandstone slab to serve as a cover. Each hole
was filled with kunque and sacrificial plumes. * * * 'Every morning of
the year, when the sky is clear, at the rising of Lucero [the morning
star], at the crowing of the cock, we throw corn flour [kunque] to the
sun. I am never without my bag of kunque; here it is [drawing it from
his belt]. Every Zuñi has one. We offer it to the sun for good rain
and good crops.'"[272]
Subsequently Pedro went on to describe in detail a phallic dance and
ceremony, in which there was a sort of divination. The young maiden
who made the lucky guess was richly rewarded, while her less fortunate
companions were presented with a handful of kunque, which they kept
during the ensuing year. This dance is called "ky'áklu," and is
independent of the great phallic dance occurring in the month of
December. Pedro also stated that until very recently the Zuñi were in
the habit of celebrating a fire dance at Noche Buena (Christmas).
There were four piles of wood gathered for the occasion, and upon each
the medicine-men threw kunque in profusion. This dance, as Pedro
described it, closely resembled one mentioned by Landa in his Cosas de
Yucatan. High up on the vertical face of the precipice of Tâaiyalana
there is a phallic shrine of the Zuñi to which I climbed with Mr.
Frank Cushing. We found that the place had been visited by young
brides who were desirous of becoming mothers. The offerings in every
case included kunque.
In the account given in the National Tribune, Washington, District of
Columbia, May 20, 1886, of the mode of life of the Zuñi woman Wehwa
while in the national capital, and while engaged in the kirmes, we
read:
She also strewed sacred corn meal along on her way to the
theater to bring good luck to her and the other dancers. * * *
She has gone from her comfortable room to pray in the street
at daylight every morning, whatever the weather has been.
* * * At such times she strews corn meal all around her
until the front-door steps and the sidewalk are much daubed
with dough. But this is not the corn meal in common use in
the United States, but is sacred meal ground in Zuñi with
sacred stones.[273]
So long a time has elapsed since any of the Pueblos have been on the
warpath that no man can describe their actual war customs except from
the dramatic ceremonial of their dances or from the stories told him
by the "old men." The following from an eyewitness will therefore be
of interest: "Before the Pueblos reached the heights they were ordered
to scale they halted on the way to receive from their chiefs some
medicine from the medicine bags which each of them carried about his
person. This they rubbed upon their heart, as they said, to make it
big and brave, and they also rubbed it upon other parts of their
bodies and upon their rifles for the same purpose."[274]
The constant use of kunque by the different Pueblo tribes has been
noticed from the first days of European contact. In the relation of
Don Antonio de Espejo (1583) we are told that upon the approach of the
Spaniards to the town of Zaguato, lying 28 leagues west of Zuñi, "a
great multitude of Indians came forth to meete them, and among the
rest their Caçiques, with so great demonstration of joy and gladnes,
that they cast much meale of Maiz upon the ground for the horses to
tread upon."[275]
I am under the impression that the ruins of this village are those
near the ranch of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, at Keam's Canyon, Arizona,
called by the Navajo "Talla-hogandi," meaning "singing house," in
reference to the Spanish mission which formerly existed there. This
village is, as I have hitherto shown, the ruin of the early pueblo of
Awátubi.
In his poem descriptive of the conquest of New Mexico, entitled "Nueva
Mejico," Alcala de Henares, 1610, Villagrá uses the following
language:[276]
Passando à Mohoçe, Zibola, y Zuni,
Por cuias nobles tierras descubrimos,
Una gran tropa de Indios que venia,
Con cantidad harina que esparcian,
Sobre la gente toda muy apriessa,
Y entrando assi en los pueblos las mugeres
Dieron en arrojarnos tantá della,
Que dimos en tomarles los costales,
De donde resultò tener con ellas,
Unas carnestolendas bien reñidas.
It is gratifying to observe that the Spanish writer in the remote
wilds of America struck upon an important fact in ethnology: that the
throwing of "harina" or flour by the people of Tusayan (Mohoçe or
Moqui), Cibola, and Zuñi (observe the odd separation of "Zibola" from
either Moqui or Zuñi) was identical with the "carnestolendas" of
Spain, in which, on Shrove Tuesday, the women and girls cover all the
men they meet with flour. The men are not at all backward in returning
the compliment, and the streets are at times filled with the
farinaceous dust.
"Harina de maiz azul" is used by Mexicans in their religious
ceremonies, especially those connected with the water deities.[277]
The Peruvians, when they bathed and sacrificed to cure themselves of
sickness, "untandose primero con Harina de Maiz, i con otras cosas,
con muchas, i diversas ceremonias, i lo mismo hacen en los
Baños."[278] The kunque of the Peruvians very closely resembled that
of the Zuñi. We read that it was a compound of different-colored maize
ground up with sea shells.[279] The Peruvians had a Priapic idol
called Hua-can-qui, of which we read: "On offre à cette idole une
corbeille ornée de plumes de diverses couleurs et remplie d'herbes
odoriférantes; on y met aussi de _la farine de maïs_ que l'on
renouvelle tous les mois, et les femmes se lavent la figure avec
celle que l'on ôte, en accompagnant cette ablution de plusieurs
cérémonies superstitieuses."[280]
The tribes seen on the Rio Colorado in 1540 by Alarcon "carry also
certaine little long bagges about an hand broade tyed to their left
arme, which serve them also instead of brasers for their bowes, full
of the powder of a certaine herbe, whereof they make a certaine
beverage."[281] We are at a loss to know what this powder was, unless
hoddentin. The Indians came down to receive the son of the sun, as
Alarcon led them to believe him to be, in full gala attire, and no
doubt neglected nothing that would add to their safety.
"Ils mirent dans leur bouche du maïs et d'autres semences, et les
lancèrent vers moi en disant que c'était la manière dont ils faisaient
les sacrifices au soleil."[282]
Kohl speaks of seeing inside the medicine wigwam, during the great
medicine ceremonies of the Ojibwa, "a snow-white powder."[283] In an
address delivered by Dr. W. J. Hoffman before the Anthropological
Society of Washington, D. C., May 2, 1888, upon the symbolism of the
Midēᐟ, Jesᐟsakkid, and Wâbeno of the Ojibwa of Minnesota, he
stated in reply to a question from me that he had not been able to
find any of the "snow-white powder" alluded to by Kohl in
Kitchi-gami.[284]
In Yucatan, when children were baptized, one of the ceremonies was
that the chac, or priest in charge, should give the youngster a pinch
of corn meal, which the boy threw in the fire. These chacs were
priests of the god who presided over baptism and over hunting.[285]
At the coronation of their kings the Aztecs had a sacred unction, and
a holy water, drawn from a sacred spring, and "about his neck is tied
a small gourd, containing a certain powder, which is esteemed a strong
preservative against disease, sorcery, and treason."[286]
"At the entrance to one of the narrow defiles of the Cordilleras ... a
large mass of rock with small cavities upon its surface, into which
the Indians, when about to enter the pass, generally deposit a few
glass beads, a handful of meal, or some other propitiatory offering to
the 'genius' supposed to preside over the spot and rule the storm."
Again, "on receiving a plate of broth, an Indian, before eating,
spills a little upon the ground; he scatters broadcast a few pinches
of the meal that is given him, and pours out a libation before raising
the wine cup to his lips, as acts of thanksgiving for the blessings he
receives."[287]
When Capt. John Smith was captured by the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia
in 1607 he was taken to "a long house," where, on the morning
following "a great grim fellow" came skipping in, "all painted over
with coale, mingled with oyle. With most strange gestures and passions
he began his invocation, and environed the fire with a circle of
meale." This priest was followed by six others, who "with their
rattles began a song, which ended, the chiefe priest layd downe five
wheat cornes." This ceremony was apparently continued during the day
and repeated on the following two days.[288] Capt. Smith's reception
by the medicine-men of the Virginians is described by Picart.[289]
These medicine-men are called "prêtres," and we are informed that they
sang "des chants magiques." The grains of wheat ("grains de blé") were
"rangez cinq à cinq."
Gomara tells us that in the religious festivals of Nicaragua there
were used certain "taleguillas con polvos," but he does not tell what
these "polvos" were; he only says that when the priests sacrifice
themselves they cured the wounds, "curan las heridas con polvo de
herbas ó carbon."[290]
While the Baron de Graffenreid was a prisoner in the hands of the
Tuscarora, on the Neuse River, in 1711, the conjurer or high priest
("the priests are generally magicians and even conjure up the devil")
"made two white rounds, whether of flour or white sand, I do not know,
just in front of us."[291]
Lafitau says of one of the medicine-women of America: "Elle commença
d'abord par préparer un espace de terrain qu'elle nétoya bien &
qu'elle couvrit de farine, ou de cendre très-bien bluttée (je ne me
souviens pas exactement laquelle des deux)."[292]
In a description of the ceremonial connected with the first appearance
of the catamenia in a Navajo squaw, there is no reference to a use of
anything like hoddentin, unless it may be the corn which was ground
into meal for a grand feast, presided over by a medicine-man.[293]
When a woman is grinding corn or cooking, and frequently when any of
the Navajo, male or female, are eating, a handful of corn meal is put
in the fire as an offering (to the sun).[294]
The Pueblos of New Mexico are described as offering sacrifices of food
to their idols. "Los Indios del Norte tienan multitud de Idolos, en
pequeños Adoratorios, donde los ponen de comer."[295]
Maj. Backus, U. S. Army, describes certain ceremonies which he saw
performed by the Navajo at a sacred spring near Fort Defiance,
Arizona, which seems to have once been a geyser:
I once visited it with three other persons and an Indian
doctor, who carried with him five small bags, each containing
some vegetable or mineral substance, all differing in color.
At the spring each bag was opened and a small quantity of its
contents was put into the right hand of each person present.
Each visitor, in succession, was then required to kneel down
by the spring side, to place his closed hand in the water up
to his elbow, and after a brief interval to open his hand and
let fall its contents into the spring. The hand was then
slowly withdrawn and each one was then permitted to drink and
retire.[296]
Columbus in his fourth voyage touched the mainland, going down near
Brazil. He says:
In Cariay and the neighboring country there are great
enchanters of a very fearful character. They would have given
the world to prevent my remaining there an hour. When I
arrived they sent me immediately two girls very showily
dressed; the eldest could not be more than eleven years of
age and the other seven, and both exhibited so much immodesty
that more could not be expected from public women. They
carried concealed about them a magic powder.[297]
The expedition of La Salle noticed, among the Indians on the
Mississippi, the Natchez, and others, "todos los dias, que se
detuvieren en aquel Pueblo, ponia la Cacica, encima de la Sepultura de
Marle [i.e., a Frenchman who had been drowned], una Cestilla llena de
Espigas de Maíz, tostado."[298]
"He showed me, as a special favor, that which give him his power--a
bag with some reddish powder in it. He allowed me to handle it and
smell this mysterious stuff, and pointed out two little dolls or
images, which, he said, gave him authority over the souls of others;
it was for their support that flour and water were placed in small
birch-rind saucers in front."[299]
On page 286, narrative of the Jeannette Arctic expedition, Dr. Newcomb
says: "One day, soon after New Year's, I was out walking with one of
the Indians. Noticing the new moon, he stopped, faced it, and, blowing
out his breath, he spoke to it, invoking success in hunting. The moon,
he said, was 'Tyunne,' or ruler of deers, bears, seals, and walrus."
The ceremony herein described I have no doubt was analogous in every
respect to hoddentin-throwing. As the Indians mentioned were
undoubtedly Tinneh, my surmise seems all the more reasonable.[300]
Tanner relates that among the Ojibwa the two best hunters of the band
had "each a little leather sack of medicine, consisting of certain
roots pounded fine and mixed with red paint, to be applied to the
little images or figures of the animals we wish to kill."[301]
"In the parish of Walsingham, in Surrey, there is or was a custom
which seems to refer to the rites performed in honor of Pomona. Early
in the spring the boys go round to the several orchards in the parish
and whip the apple trees.... The good woman gives them some
meal."[302]
Among the rustics of Great Britain down to a very recent period there
were in use certain "love powders," the composition of which is not
known, a small quantity of which had to be sprinkled upon the food of
the one beloved.[303]
Attached to the necklace of human fingers before described, captured
from one of the chief medicine-men of the Cheyenne Indians, is a bag
containing a powder very closely resembling hoddentin, if not
hoddentin itself.
It is said that the Asinai made sacrifice to the scalps of their
enemies, as did the Zuñi as late as 1881. "Ofrecen á las calaveras
pinole molido y de otras cosas comestibles."[304]
Perrot says the Indians of Canada had large medicine bags, which he
calls "pindikossan," which, among other things, contained "des racines
ou des poudres pour leur servir de médecines."[305]
In an article on the myth of Manibozho, by Squier, in American
Historical Magazine Review, 1848, may be found an account of the
adventures of two young heroes, one of whom is transferred to the list
of gods. He commissioned his comrade to bring him offerings of a white
wolf, a polecat, some pounded maize, and eagles' tails.
Laplanders sprinkle cow and calf with flour.[306]
Cameron met an old chief on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, of whom he
says: "His forehead and hair were daubed with vermilion, yellow, and
white powder, the pollen of flowers."[307]
In the incantations made by the medicine-men of Africa, near the head
of the Congo, to preserve his expedition from fire, Cameron saw the
sacrifice of a goat and a hen, and among other features a use of
powdered bark closely resembling hoddentin: "Scraping the bark off the
roots and sticks, they placed it in the wooden bowl and reduced it to
powder." The head medicine-man soon after "took up a handful of the
powdered bark and blew some toward the sun and the remainder in the
opposite direction."[308]
The magic powder, called "uganga," used as the great weapon of
divination of the mganga, or medicine-men of some of the African
tribes, as mentioned by Speke,[309] must be identical with the powder
spoken of by Cameron.
Near the village of Kapéka, Cameron was traveling with a caravan in
which the principal man was a half-breed Portuguese named Alvez. "On
Alvez making his entry he was mobbed by women, who shrieked and yelled
in honor of the event and pelted him with flour." This was Alvez's own
home and all this was a sign of welcome.[310]
Speke describes a young chief wearing on his forehead "antelope horns,
stuffed with magic powder to keep off the evil eye."[311]
After describing an idol, in the form of a man, in a small temple on
the Lower Congo, Stanley says: "The people appear to have considerable
faith in a whitewash of cassava meal, with which they had sprinkled
the fences, posts, and lintels of doors."[312]
"According to Consul Hutchinson (in his interesting work 'Impressions
of Western Africa'), the Botikaimon [a medicine-man], previous to the
ceremony of coronation, retires into a deep cavern, and there, through
the intermediary of a 'rukaruka' (snake demon), consults the demon
Maon. He brings back to the king the message he receives, sprinkles
him with a yellow powder called 'tsheoka,' and puts upon his head the
hat his father wore."[313] In a note, it is stated that: "Tsheoka is a
vegetable product, obtained, according to Hutchinson, by collecting a
creamy coat that is found on the waters at the mouth of some small
rivers, evaporating the water, and forming a chalky mass of the
residue."[314] Schultze says[315] that the Congo negroes "appease the
hurricane" by "casting meal into the air."
The voudoo ceremonies of the negroes of New Orleans, which would seem
to have been transplanted from Africa, include a sprinkling of the
congregation with a meal which has been blessed by the head
medicine-man or conjurer.
At the feast of Huli, at the vernal equinox (our April fool's day),
the Hindu throw a purple powder (abir) upon each other with much
sportive pleasantry. A writer in "Asiatick Researches"[316] says they
have the idea of representing the return of spring, which the Romans
called "purple."
During the month of Phalgoonu, there is a festival in honor of
Krishna, when the "Hindus spend the night in singing and dancing and
wandering about the streets besmeared with the dolu (a red) powder, in
the daytime carrying a quantity of the same powder about with them,
which, with much noise and rejoicing, they throw over the different
passengers they may meet in their rambles. Music, dancing, fireworks,
singing, and many obscenities take place on this occasion."[317]
On pages 434-435 of my work, "Scatalogic Rites of all Nations," are to
be found extracts from various authorities in regard to the Hindu
feast of Holi or Hulica, in which this statement occurs: "Troops of
men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the
streets, carrying sacks full of bright-red vegetable powder. With this
they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which
soon dyes their clothes a startling color."
"Red powder (gulál) is a sign of a bad design of an adulterous
character. During the Holi holidays, the Maháráj throws gulál on the
breasts of female and male devotees."[318]
"In India, the devotees throw red powder on one another at the
festival of the Huli, or vernal equinox. This red powder, the Hindoos
say, is the imitation of the pollen of plants, the principle of
fructification, the flower of the plant."[319]
The women of the East Indies (Brahmins), on the 18th of January,
celebrate a feast in honor of the goddess Parvati: "Leur but est
d'obtenir une longue vie pour leurs maris, & qu'elles ne deviennent
jamais veuves. Elles font une Image de Parvati avec de la farine de
riz & du grain rouge qu'elles y mêlent; elles l'ornent d'habits & de
fleurs & après l'avoir ainsi servie pendant neuf jours, elles la
portent le dixiéme dans un Palenquin hors de la Ville. Une foule de
femmes mariées la suivent, on la jette ensuite dans un des étangs
sacrez, où on la laisse, & chacune s'en retourne chez elle."[320]
Speaking of the methods in use among the Lamas for curing disease,
Rev. James Gilmour says: "Throwing about small pinches of millet seed
is a usual part of such a service."[321]
Dr. W. W. Rockhill described to me a Tibetan festival, which includes
a procession of the God of Mercy, in which procession there are masked
priests, holding blacksnake whips in their hands, and carrying bags of
flour which they throw upon the people.
The use of these sacred powders during so many different religious
festivals and ceremonies would seem to resemble closely that made by
the Apache of hoddentin and the employment of kunque by the Zuñi and
others; and from Asia it would seem that practices very similar in
character found their way into Europe. Of the Spanish witches it is
related:
When they entered people's houses they threw a powder on the
faces of the inmates, who were thrown thereby into so deep a
slumber that nothing could wake them, until the witches were
gone.... Sometimes they threw these powders on the fruits of
the field and produced hail which destroyed them. On these
occasions the demon accompanied them in the form of a
husbandman, and when they threw the powders they said:
"Polvos, polvos,
Pierda se tado,
Queden los nuestros,
Y abrasense otros."[322]
Higgins says: "The flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the
Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχᾰριστία."[323]
What relation these powders have had to the "carnestolendas" of the
Spanish and Portuguese, already alluded to, and the throwing of
"confetti" by the Italians, which is a modification, it would be hard
to say. Some relation would appear to be suggested.
USE OF POLLEN BY THE ISRAELITES AND EGYPTIANS.
There are some suggestions of a former use of pollen among the
Israelites and Egyptians.
Manna, which we are assured was at one time a source of food to the
Hebrews, was afterward retained as an offering in the temples.
Forlong, however, denies that it ever could have entered into general
consumption. He says:
Manna, as food, is an absurdity, but we have the well-known
produce of the desert oak or ash--Fraxinus.... An omer of
this was precious, and in this quantity, at the spring
season, not difficult to get; it was a specially fit tribute
to be "laid up" before any Phallic Jah, as it was the pollen
of the tree of Jove and of Life, and in this sense the tribe
lived spiritually on such "spiritual manna" as this god
supplied or was supplied with.[324]
The detestation in which the bean was held by the high-caste people of
Egypt does not demonstrate that the bean was not an article of food to
a large part of the population, any more than the equal detestation of
the occupation of swineherd would prove that none of the poor made use
of swine's flesh. The priesthood of Egypt were evidently exerting
themselves to stamp out the use of a food once very common among their
people, and to supersede it with wheat or some other cereal. They held
a man accursed who in passing through a field planted with beans had
his clothing soiled with their pollen. Speke must have encountered a
survival of this idea when he observed in equatorial Africa, near the
sources of the Nile, and among people whose features proclaimed their
Abyssinian origin, the very same aversion. He was unable to buy food,
simply because he and some of his followers had eaten "the bean called
maharagŭé." Such a man, the natives believed, "if he tasted the
products of their cows, would destroy their cattle."[325]
One other point should be dwelt upon in describing the kunque of the
Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos. It is placed upon one of the sacred
flat baskets and packed down in such a manner that it takes the form
of one of the old-fashioned elongated cylindro-conical cheeses. It
should be noted also that by something more than a coincidence this
form was adhered to by the peoples farther to the south when they
arranged their sacred meal upon baskets.
At the festival of the god Teutleco the Aztecs made "de harina de
maiz un montecillo muy tupido de la forma de un queso."[326] This
closely resembles the corn meal heaps seen at the snake dance of the
Tusayan.
The Zuñi, in preparing kunque or sacred meal for their religious
festivals, invariably made it in the form of a pyramid resting upon
one of their flat baskets. It then bore a striking resemblance to the
pyramids or phalli which the Egyptians offered to their deities, and
which Forlong thinks must have been "just such Lingham-like
sweet-bread as we still see in Indian Sivaic temples."[327] Again,
"the orthodox Hislop, in his Two Babylons, tells us that 'bouns,'
buns, or bread offered to the gods from the most ancient times were
similar to our 'hotcross' buns of Good Friday, that ... the buns known
by that identical name were used in the worship of the Queen of
Heaven, the goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarti) as early as the days of
Kekrops, the founder of Athens, 1500 years B. C."[328]
Forlong[329] quotes Capt. Wilford in Asiatick Researches, vol. 8, p.
365, as follows:
When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to goddesses,
they offered cakes called _mulloi_, shaped like the female
organ; and Dulare tells us that the male organ was similarly
symbolised in pyramidal cakes at Easter by the pious
Christians of Saintogne, near Rochelle, and handed about from
house to house; that even in his day the festival of Palm
Sunday was called _La Fête des Pinnes_, showing that this
fête was held to be on account of both organs, although, of
course, principally because the day was sacred to the palm,
the ancient tree Phallus.... We may believe that the Jewish
cakes and show bread were also emblematic.
Mr. Frank H. Cushing informs me that there is an annual feast among
the Zuñi in which are to be seen cakes answering essentially to the
preceding description.
HODDENTIN A PREHISTORIC FOOD.
The peculiar manner in which the medicine-men of the Apache use the
hoddentin (that is, by putting a pinch upon their own tongues); the
fact that men and women make use of it in the same way, as a
restorative when exhausted; its appearance in myth in connection with
Assanutlije, the goddess who supplied the Apache and Navajo with so
many material benefits, all combine to awaken the suspicion that in
hoddentin we have stumbled upon a prehistoric food now reserved for
sacrificial purposes only. That the underlying idea of sacrifice is a
food offered to some god is a proposition in which Herbert Spencer and
W. Robertson Smith concur. In my opinion, this definition is
incomplete; a perfect sacrifice is that in which a _prehistoric_ food
is offered to a god, and, although in the family oblations of everyday
life we meet with the food of the present generation, it would not be
difficult to show that where the whole community unites in a function
of exceptional importance the propitiation of the deities will be
effected by foods whose use has long since faded away from the memory
of the laity.
The sacred feast of stewed puppy and wild turnips forms a prominent
part of the sun dance of the Sioux, and had its parallel in a
collation of boiled puppy (catullus), of which the highest civic and
ecclesiastical dignitaries of pagan Rome partook at stated intervals.
The reversion of the Apache to the food of his ancestors--the
hoddentin--as a religious offering has its analogue in the unleavened
bread and other obsolete farinaceous products which the ceremonial of
more enlightened races has preserved from oblivion. Careful
consideration of the narrative of Cabeza de Vaca sustains this
conclusion. In the western portion of his wanderings we learn that for
from thirty to forty days he and his comrades passed through tribes
which for one-third of the year had to live on "the powder of straw"
(on the powder of bledos), and that afterwards the Spaniards came
among people who raised corn. At that time, Vaca, whether we believe
that he ascended the Rio Concho or kept on up the Rio Grande, was in a
region where he would certainly have encountered the ancestors of our
Apache tribe and their brothers the Navajo. The following is Herrera's
account of that part of Vaca's wanderings: "Padeciendo mucha hambre en
treinta i quatro Jornadas, pasando por una Gente que la tercera parte
del Año comen polvos de paja, i los huvieron de comer, por haver
llegado en tal ocasion."[330]
This powder (polvo) of paja or grass might at first sight seem to be
grass seeds; but why not say "flour," as on other occasions? The
phrase is an obscure one, but not more obscure than the description of
the whole journey. In the earlier writings of the Spaniards there is
ambiguity because the new arrivals endeavored to apply the names of
their own plants and animals to all that they saw in the western
continent. Neither Castañeda nor Cabeza de Vaca makes mention of
hoddentin, but Vaca does say that when he had almost ended his
journey: "La côte ne possède pas de maïs; on n'y mange que de la
poudre de paille de blette." "Blette" is the same as the Spanish
"bledos."[331] "Nous parvînmes chez une peuplade qui, pendant le tiers
de l'année, ne vit que de poudre de paille." "We met with a people,
who the third part of the yeere eate no other thing save the powder of
straw."[332]
Davis, who seems to have followed Herrera, says: "These Indians lived
one-third of the year on the powder of a certain straw.... After
leaving this people they again arrived in a country of permanent
habitations, where they found an abundance of maize.... The
inhabitants gave them maize both in grain and flour."[333]
The Tusayan Indians were formerly in the habit of adding a trifle of
chopped straw to their bread, but more as our own bakers would use
bran than as a regular article of diet.
Barcia[334] makes no allusion to anything resembling hoddentin or
"polvos de bledos" in his brief account of Vaca's journey. But
Buckingham Smith, in his excellent translation of Vaca's narrative,
renders "polvos de paja" thus: "It was probably the seed of grass
which they ate. I am told by a distinguished explorer that the Indians
to the west collect it of different kinds and from the powder make
bread, some of which is quite palatable." And for "polvos de bledos":
"The only explanation I can offer for these words is little
satisfactory. It was the practice of the Indians of both New Spain and
New Mexico to beat the ear of young maize, while in the milk, to a
thin paste, hang it in festoons in the sun, and, being thus dried, was
preserved for winter use."
This explanation is very unsatisfactory. Would not Vaca have known it
was corn and have said so? On the contrary, he remarks in that very
line in Smith's own translation: "There is no maize on the coast."
The appearance of all kinds of grass seeds in the food of nearly all
the aborigines of our southwestern territory is a fact well known, but
what is to be demonstrated is the extensive use of the "powder" of the
tule or cat-tail rush. Down to our day, the Apache have used not only
the seeds of various grasses, but the bulb of the wild hyacinth and
the bulb of the tule. The former can be eaten either raw or cooked,
but the tule bulb is always roasted between hot stones. The taste of
the hyacinth bulb is somewhat like that of raw chestnuts. That of the
roasted tule bulb is sweet and not at all disagreeable.[335]
Father Jacob Baegert[336] enumerates among the foods of the Indians of
southern California "the roots of the common reed" (i.e., of the
tule).
Father Alegre, speaking of the tribes living near the Laguna San
Pedro,[337] in latitude 28° north--two hundred leagues north of the
City of Mexico--says that they make their bread of the root, which is
very frequent in their lakes, and which is like the plant called the
"anea" or rush in Spain. "Forman el pan de una raiz muy frecuente en
sus lagunas, semejante á las que llaman aneas en España."[338]
The Indians of the Atlantic Slope made bread of the bulb of a plant
which Capt. John Smith[339] says "grew like a flag in marshes." It was
roasted and made into loaves called "tuckahoe."[340]
Kalm, in his Travels in North America,[341] says of the tuckahoe:
It grows in several swamps and marshes and is commonly
plentiful. The hogs greedily dig up its roots with their
noses in such places, and the Indians of Carolina likewise
gather it in their rambles in the woods, dry it in the sun,
grind, and make bread of it. Whilst the root is fresh it is
harsh and acrid, but, being dried, it loses the greater part
of its acrimony. To judge by these qualities, the tuckahoe
may very likely be the Arum virginianum.
The Shoshoni and Bannock of Idaho and Montana eat the tule bulb.[342]
Something analogous to hoddentin is mentioned by the chronicler of
Drake's voyage along the California coast about A. D. 1540. Speaking
of the decorations of the chiefs of the Indians seen near where San
Francisco now stands, he says another mark of distinction was "a
certain downe, which groweth up in the countrey upon an herbe much
like our lectuce, which exceeds any other downe in the world for
finenesse and beeing layed upon their cawles, by no winds can be
removed. Of such estimation is this herbe amongst them that the downe
thereof is not lawfull to be worne, but of such persons as are about
the king, ... and the seeds are not used but onely in sacrifice to
their gods."[343]
Mr. Cushing informs me that hoddentin is mentioned as a food in the
myths of the Zuñi under the name of oneya, from oellu, "food."
In Kamtchatka the people dig and cook the bulbs of the Kamtchatka
lily, which seems to be some sort of a tuber very similar to that of
the tule.
"Bread is now made of rye, which the Kamtchadals raise and grind for
themselves; but previous to the settlement of the country by the
Russians the only native substitute for bread was a sort of baked
paste, consisting chiefly of the grated tubers of the purple
Kamtchatkan lily."[344]
HODDENTIN THE YIAUHTLI OF THE AZTECS.
There would seem to be the best of reason for an identification of
hoddentin with the "yiauhtli" which Sahagun and Torquemada tell us was
thrown by the Aztecs in the faces of victims preparatory to
sacrificing them to the God of Fire, but the explanation given by
those authors is not at all satisfactory. The Aztecs did not care much
whether the victim suffered or not; he was sprinkled with this sacred
powder because he had assumed a sacred character.
Padre Sahagun[345] says that the Aztecs, when about to offer human
sacrifice, threw "a powder named 'yiauhtli' on the faces of those whom
they were about to sacrifice, that they might become deprived of
sensation and not suffer much pain in dying."
In sacrificing slaves to the God of Fire, the Aztec priests "tomaban
ciertos polvos de una semilla, llamada Yauhtli, y polvoreaban las
caras con ellas, para que perdiesen el sentido, y no sintiesen tanto
la muerte cruel, que las daban."[346]
Guautli, generally spelled "yuautli," one of the foods paid to
Montezuma as tribute, may have been tule pollen. Gallatin says: "I can
not discover what is meant by the guautli. It is interpreted as being
_semilla de Bledo_; but I am not aware of any other native grain than
maize having been, before the introduction of European cereales, an
article of food of such general use, as the quantity mentioned seems
to indicate."[347]
Among the articles which the king of Atzapotzalco compelled the Aztecs
to raise for tribute is mentioned "ahuauhtli (que es como
bledos)."[348]
"BLEDOS" OF ANCIENT WRITERS--ITS MEANING.
Lafitau[349] gives a description of the Iroquois mode of preparing for
the warpath. He says that the Iroquois and Huron called war
"n'ondoutagette" and "gaskenragette." "Le terme _Ondouta_ signifie le
duvet qu'on tire de l'épy des Roseaux de Marais & signifie aussi la
plante toute entiere, dont ils se servent pour faire les nattes sur
quoi ils couchent, de sorte qu'il y a apparence qu'ils avoient affecté
ce terme pour la Guerre, parce que chaque Guerrier portoit avec soy sa
natte dans ces sortes d'expeditions."
This does not seem to be the correct explanation. Rather, it was
because they undoubtedly made some sacrificial meal of this "duvet,"
or pollen, and used it as much as the Apache do hoddentin, their
sacred meal made of the pollen of the tule, which is surely a species
of "roseaux de marais."
The great scarcity of corn among the people passed while en route to
Cibola is commented upon in an account of Coronado's expedition to
Cibola, in Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos, relativos al
descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas
de América y Oceanía.[350]
We are also informed[351] that the people of Cibola offered to their
idols "polbos amarillos de flores."
Castañeda speaks of the people beyond Chichilticale making a bread of
the mesquite which kept good for a whole year. He seems to have been
well informed regarding the vegetable foods of the tribes passed
through by Coronado's expedition.[352]
That the "blettes" or "bledos" did not mean the same as grass is a
certainty after we have examined the old writers, who each and all
show that the bledos meant a definite kind of plant, although exactly
what this plant was they fail to inform us. It can not be intended for
the sunflower, which is mentioned distinctly by a number of writers as
an article of diet among the Indians of the Southwest.[353]
TZOALLI.
An examination of the Spanish writers who most carefully transmitted
their observations upon the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs and
other nations in Mexico and South America brings out two most
interesting features in this connection. The first is that there were
commemorative feasts of prehistoric foods, and the second that one or
more of these foods has played an important part in the religion of
tribes farther north. The first of these foods is the "tzoalli," which
was the same as "bledos," which latter would seem beyond question to
have been hoddentin or yiauhtli. Brasseur de Bourbourg's definition
simply states that the tzoalli was a compound of leguminous grains
peculiar to Mexico and eaten in different ways: "Le Tzohualli était un
composé de graines légumineuses particulières au Mexique, qu'on
mangeait de diverses manières."[354]
In the month called Tepeilhuitl the Aztecs made snakes of twigs and
covered them with dough of bledos (a kind of grain or hay seed). Upon
these they placed figures, representing mountains, but shaped like
young children.[355] This month was the thirteenth on the Mexican
calendar, which began on our February 1. This would put it October 1,
or thereabout.
Squier cites Torquemada's description of the sacrifices called
Ecatotontin, offered to the mountains by the Mexicans. In these they
made figures of serpents and children and covered them with "dough,"
named by them tzoalli, composed of the seeds of bledos.[356]
A dramatic representation strongly resembling those described in the
two preceding paragraphs was noted among the Tusayan of Arizona by Mr.
Taylor, a missionary, in 1881, and has been mentioned at length in The
Snake Dance of the Moquis. Clavigero relates that the Mexican priests
"all eat a certain kind of gruel which they call _Etzalli_."[357]
Torquemada relates that the Mexicans once each year made an idol or
statue of Huitzlipotchli of many grains and the seeds of bledos and
other vegetables which they kneaded with the blood of boys who were
sacrificed for the purpose. "Juntaban muchos granos y semilla de
Bledos, y otras legumbres, y molianlas con mucha devocion, y recato,
y de ellas amasaban, y formaban la dicha Estatua, del tamaño y
estatura de un Hombre. El licor, con que se resolbian y desleian
aquellas harinas era sangre de Niños, que para este fin se
sacrificaban."[358]
It is remarkable the word "maiz" does not occur in this paragraph.
Huitzlipotchli being the God of War, it was natural that the ritual
devoted to his service should conserve some, if not all, of the foods,
grains, and seeds used by the Mexicans when on the warpath in the
earliest days of their history; and that this food should be made into
a dough with the blood of children sacrificed as a preliminary to
success is also perfectly in accordance with all that we know of the
mode of reasoning of this and other primitive peoples. Torquemada goes
on to say that this statue was carried in solemn procession to the
temple and idol of Huitzlipotchli and there adorned with precious
jewels (chalchihuitl), embedded in the soft mass. Afterward it was
carried to the temple of the god Paynalton, preceded by a priest
carrying a snake in the manner that the priests in Spain carried the
cross in the processions of the church. "Con una Culebra mui grande, y
gruesa en las manos, tortuosa, y con muchas bueltas, que iba delante,
levantada en alto, á manera de Cruz, en nuestras Procesiones."[359]
This dough idol, he says, was afterwards broken into "migajas"
(crumbs) and distributed among the males only, boys as well as men,
and by them eaten after the manner of communion; "este era su manera
de comunion."[360] Herrera, speaking of this same idol of
Vitzliputzli, as he calls him, says it was made by the young women of
the temple, of the flour of bledos and of toasted maize, with honey,
and that the eyes were of green, white, or blue beads, and the teeth
of grains of corn. After the feast was over, the idol was broken up
and distributed to the faithful, "á manera de comunion." "Las
Doncellas recogidas en el templo, dos Dias antes de la Fiesta,
amasaban harina de Bledos, i de Maiz tostado, con miel, y de la masa
hacian un Idolo grande, con los ojos de cuentas grandes, verdes,
açules, ò blancas; i por dientes granos de maiz."[361]
H. H. Bancroft speaks of the festival in honor of Huitzilopochtli,
"the festival of the wafer or cake." He says: "They made a cake of the
meal of bledos, which is called tzoalli," which was afterward divided
in a sort of communion.[362] Diego Duran remarks that at this feast
the chief priest carried an idol of dough called "tzoally," which is
made of the seeds of bledos and corn made into a mass with honey.[363]
"Un ydolo de masa, de una masa que llaman tzoally, la cual se hace de
semilla de bledos y maiz amasado con miel." This shows that "bledos"
and "maiz" were different things.[364] A few lines farther on Duran
tells us that this cake, or bread, was made by the nuns of the temple,
"las mozas del recogimiento de este templo," and that they ground up a
great quantity of the seed of bledos, which they call huauhtly,
together with toasted maize. "Molian mucha cantidad de semilla de
bledos que ellos llaman huauhtly juntamente con maiz tostado."[365] He
then shows that the "honey" (miel) spoken of by the other writers was
the thick juice of the maguey. "Despues de molido, amasabanlo con miel
negra de los magueis."
Acosta describes a Mexican feast, held in our month of May, in which
appeared an idol called Huitzlipotchli, made of "mays rosty," "semence
de blettes," and "amassoient avec du miel."[366]
In the above citations it will be seen that huauhtly or yuauhtli and
tzoally were one and the same. We also find some of the earliest if
not the very earliest references to the American popped corn.
That the Mexicans should have had such festivals or feasts in honor of
their god of battles is no more extraordinary than that in our own
country all military reunions make it a point to revert to the "hard
tack" issued during the campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Many
other references to the constant use as a food, or at least as a
sacrificial food, of the bledos might be supplied if needed. Thus
Diego Duran devotes the twelfth chapter of his third book to an
obscure account of a festival among the Tepanecs, in which appeared
animal gods made of "masa de semilla de bledos," which were afterwards
broken and eaten.
Torquemada speaks of such idols employed in the worship of snakes and
mountains.[367] In still another place this authority tells us that
similar figures were made and eaten by bride and groom at the Aztec
marriage ceremony.[368]
The ceremonial manner in which these seeds were ground recalls the
fact that the Zuñi regard the stones used for grinding kunque as
sacred and will not employ them for any other purpose.
Idols made of dough much after the fashion of the Aztecs are to be
found among the Mongols. Meignan speaks of seeing "an idol, quite open
to the sky and to the desert, representing the deity of travelers. It
was made of compressed bread, covered over with some bituminous
substance, and perched on a horse of the same material, and held in
its hand a lance in Don Quixote attitude. Its horrible features were
surmounted with a shaggy tuft of natural hair. A great number of
offerings of all kinds were scattered on the ground all around. Five
or six images, formed also of bread, were bending in an attitude of
prayer before the deity."[369]
Dr. Edwin James, the editor of Tanner's Narrative,[370] cites the
"Calica Puran" to show that medicinal images are employed by the
people of the East Indies when revenge is sought upon an enemy; "water
must be sprinkled on the meal or earthen victim which represents the
sacrificer's enemy."
In those parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished, a
substitutive ceremony was practiced "by forming a human figure of
flour-paste, or clay, which they carry into the temples, and there cut
off its head or mutilate it, in various ways, in presence of the
idols."[371]
Gomara describes the festival in honor of the Mexican God of Fire,
called "Xocothuecl," when an idol was used made of every kind of seed
and was then enwrapped in sacred blankets to keep it from breaking.
"Hacian aquella noche un ídolo de toda suerte de semillas, envolvíanlo
en mantas benditas, y liábanlo, porque no se deshiciese."[372]
These blessed blankets are also to be seen at the Zuñi feast of the
Little God of Fire, which occurs in the month of December. It is a
curious thing that the blessed blankets of the Zuñi are decorated with
the butterfly, which appeared upon the royal robes of Montezuma.
What other seeds were used in the fabrication of these idols is not
very essential to our purpose, but it may be pointed out that one of
them was the seed of the "agenjo," which was the "chenopodium" or
"artemisia," known to us as the "sagebrush."
Of the Mexicans we learn from a trustworthy author: "Tambien usaban
alguna manera de comunion ó recepcion del sacramento, y es que hacian
unos idolitos chiquitos de semilla de bledos ó cenizos, ó de otras
yerbas, y ellos mismos se los recibian, como cuerpo ó memoria de sus
dioses."[373]
Mendieta wrote his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana in 1596, "al tiempo
que esto escribo (que es por Abril del año de noventa y seis)"[374]
and again,[375] "al tiempo que yo esto escribo."
The Mexicans, in the month of November, had a festival in honor of
Tezcatlipuca. "Hacian unos bollos de masa de maíz y semejante de
agenjos, aunque son de otra suerte que los de acá, y echábanlos á
cocer en ollas con agua sola. Entre tanto que hervian y se cocian los
bollos, tañian los muchachos un atabal ... y después comíanselos con
gran devocion."[376]
Gomara's statement, that while these cakes of maize and wormwood seed
were cooking the young men were beating on drums, would find its
parallel in any account that might be written of the behavior of the
Zuñi, while preparing for their sacred feasts. The squaws grind the
meal to be used on these occasions to the accompaniment of singing by
the medicine-men and much drumming by a band of assistants selected
from among the young men and boys.
Mr. Francis La Flèche, a nearly full-blood Omaha Indian, read before
the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., in 1888, a paper
descriptive of the funeral customs of his people, in which he related
that when an Indian was supposed to be threatened with death the
medicine-men would go in a lodge sweat-bath with him and sing, and at
the same time "pronouncing certain incantations and sprinkling the
body of the client with the powder of the artemisia, supposed to be
the food of the ghosts."[377]
To say that a certain powder is the food of the ghosts of a tribe is
to say indirectly that the same powder was once the food of the
tribe's ancestors.
The Peruvians seem to have made use of the same kind of sacrificial
cakes kneaded with the blood of the human victim. We are told that in
the month of January no strangers were allowed to enter the city of
Cuzco, and that there was then a distribution of corn cakes made with
the blood of the victim, which were to be eaten as a mark of alliance
with the Inca. "Les daban unos Bollos de Maíz, con sangre de el
sacrificio, que comian, en señal de confederacion con el Inga."[378]
Balboa says that the Peruvians had a festival intended to signalize
the arrival of their young men at manhood, in which occurred a sort of
communion consisting of bread kneaded by the young virgins of the sun
with the blood of victims. This same kind of communion was also noted
at another festival occurring in our month of September of each year.
("Un festin composé de pain pétri par les jeunes vierges du Soleil
avec le sang des victimes."[379]) There were other ceremonial usages
among the Aztecs, in which the tule rush itself, "espadaña," was
employed, as at childbirth, marriage, the festivals in honor of
Tlaloc, and in the rough games played by boys. It is possible that
from being a prehistoric food the pollen of the tule, or the plant
which furnished it, became associated with the idea of sustenance,
fertility, reproduction, and therefore very properly formed part of
the ritual necessary in weddings or connected with the earliest hours
of a child's life, much as rice has been used so freely in other parts
of the world.[380]
Among the Aztecs the newly born babe was laid upon fresh green tule
rushes, with great ceremony, while its name was given to it.[380]
Gomara says that the mats used in the marriage ceremonies of the
Aztecs were made of tules. "Esteras verdes de espadañas."[381]
"They both sat down upon a new and curiously wrought mat, which was
spread in the middle of the chamber close to the fire." The marriage
bed was made "of mats of rushes, covered with small sheets, with
certain feathers, and a gem of chalchihuitl in the middle of
them."[382]
The third festival of Tlaloc was celebrated in the sixth month, which
would about correspond to our 6th of June.[383] But there was another
festival in honor of the Tlaloc, which seems very hard to understand.
A full description is given by Bancroft.[384] To celebrate this it was
incumbent upon the priests to cut and carry to the temples bundles of
the tule, which were woven into a sacred mat, after which there was a
ceremonial procession to a tule swamp in which all bathed.
The Aztecs, like the Apache, had myths showing that they sprang
originally from a reed swamp. There was an Aztec god, Napatecutli, who
was the god of the tule and of the mat-makers.[385] This rush was also
strewn as part of several of their religious ceremonies.
Fosbrooke[386] has this to say about certain ceremonies in connection
with the churches in Europe: "At certain seasons the Choir was strewed
with hay, at others with sand. On Easter sabbath with ivy-leaves; at
other times with rushes." He shows that hay was used at Christmas and
the vigil of All Saints, at Pentecost, Athelwold's Day, Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin, and Ascension, etc.
The Mexican populace played a game closely resembling our "blind man's
buff" in their seventeenth month, which was called Tititl and
corresponded to the winter solstice. In this game, called
"nechichiquavilo," men and boys ran through the streets hitting every
one whom they met with small bags or nets ("taleguillas ó redecillas")
filled with tule powder or fine paper ("llenas de flor de las
espadañas ó de algunos papeles rotos").[387]
The same thing is narrated by other early Spanish writers upon Mexico.
In the myths of Guatemala it is related that there were several
distinct generations of men. The first were made of wood, without
heart or brains, with worm-eaten feet and hands. The second generation
was an improvement upon this, and the women are represented as made of
tule. "Las mugeres fueron hechas de corazon de espadaña."[388]
Picart, enumerating the tree gods of the Romans, says that they had
deified "les Roseaux pour les Rivieres."[389]
GENERAL USE OF THE POWDER AMONG INDIANS.
This very general dissemination among the Indians of the American
continent of the sacred use of the powder of the tule, of images,
idols, or sacrificial cakes made of such prehistoric foods, certainly
suggests that the Apache and the Aztecs, among whom they seem to have
been most freely used on ceremonial occasions, were invaders in the
country they respectively occupied, comparatively recent in their
arrival among the contiguous tribes like the Zuñi and Tusayan who on
corresponding occasions offered to their gods a cultivated food like
corn. The Tlascaltec were known in Mexico as the "bread people,"
possibly because they had been acquainted with the cultivation of the
cereals long before the Aztecs. Similarly, there was a differentiation
of the Apache from the sedentary Pueblos. The Apache were known to all
the villages of the Pueblos as a "corn-buying tribe," as will
presently be shown. It is true that in isolated cases and in widely
separated sections the Apache have for nearly two centuries been a
corn-planting people, because we find accounts in the Spanish
chronicles of the discovery and destruction by their military
expeditions of "trojes" or magazines of Apache corn near the San
Francisco (or Verde) River, in the present Territory of Arizona, as
early as the middle of the last century. But the general practice of
the tribe was to purchase its bread or meal from the Pueblos at such
times as hostilities were not an obstacle to free trade. There was
this difference to be noted between the Apache and the Aztecs: The
latter had been long enough in the valley of Anahuac to learn and
adopt many new foods, as we learn from Duran, who relates that at
their festivals in honor of Tezcatlipoca, or those made in pursuance
of some vow, the women cooked an astonishing variety of bread, just
as, at the festivals of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos in our
own time, thirty different kinds of preparations of corn may be
found.[390] I was personally informed by old Indians in the pueblos
along the Rio Grande that they had been in the habit of trading with
the Apache and Comanche of the Staked Plains of Texas until within
very recent years; in fact, I remember seeing such a party of Pueblos
on its return from Texas in 1869, as it reached Fort Craig, New
Mexico, where I was then stationed. I bought a buffalo robe from them.
The principal article of sale on the side of the Pueblos was cornmeal.
The Zuñi also carried on this mixed trade and hunting, as I was
informed by the old chief Pedro Pino and others. The Tusayan denied
that they had ever traded with the Apache so far to the east as the
buffalo country, but asserted that the Comanche had once sent a large
body of their people over to Walpi to trade with the Tusayan, among
whom they remained for two years. There was one buffalo robe among the
Tusayan at their snake dance in 1881, possibly obtained from the Ute
to the north of them.
The trade carried on by the "buffalo" Indians with the Pueblos was
noticed by Don Juan de Oñate as early as 1599. He describes them as
"dressed in skins, which they also carried into the settled provinces
to sell, and brought back in return cornmeal."[391]
Gregg[392] speaks of the "Comancheros" or Mexicans and Pueblos who
ventured out on the plains to trade with the Comanche, the principal
article of traffic being bread. Whipple[393] refers to this trade as
carried on with all the nomadic tribes of the Llano Estacado, one of
which we know to have been the eastern division of the Apache. The
principal article bartered with the wild tribes was flour, i.e.,
cornmeal.
In another place he tells us of "Pueblo Indians from Santo Domingo,
with flour and bread to barter with the Kái-ò-wàs and Comanches for
buffalo robes and horses."[394] Again, Mexicans were seen with flour,
bread, and tobacco, "bound for Comanche land to trade. We had no
previous idea of the extent of this Indian trade."[395] Only one other
reference to this intertribal commerce will be introduced.
Vetancurt[396] mentions that the Franciscan friars, between 1630 and
1680, had erected a magnificent "temple" to "Our Lady of the Angels of
Porciúncula," and that the walls were so thick that offices were
established in their concavities. On each side of this temple, which
was erected in the pueblo of Pecos (situated at or near the head of
the Pecos River, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fé, New Mexico, on
the eastern rim of the Llano Estacado), were three towers. At the foot
of the hill was a plain about one league in circumference, to which
the Apache resorted for trade. These were the Apache living on the
plains of Texas. They brought with them buffalo robes, deer skins and
other things to exchange for corn. They came with their dog-trains
loaded, and there were more than five hundred traders arriving each
year.
Observe that here we have the first and only reference to the use of
dog trains by the Apache who in every other case make their women
carry all plunder in baskets on their backs. In this same extract from
Vetancurt there is a valuable remark about Quivira: "Este es el paso
para los reinos de la Quivira."
ANALOGUES OF HODDENTIN.
In the citation from the Spanish poet Villagrá, already given, the
suggestion occurs that some relationship existed between the powder
scattered so freely during the Spanish "carnestolendas" and the
"kunque" thrown by the people of Tusayan upon the Spaniards and their
horses when the Spaniards first entered that country. This analogy is
a very striking one, even though the Spaniards have long since lost
all idea of the meaning of the practice which they still follow. It is
to be noted, however, that one of the occasions when this flour is
most freely used is the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en), when the
ghosts or ancestors of the community were to be the recipients of
every attention.[397]
In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the
"gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli,
which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox.
There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder
identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to
cure and rejuvenate.
In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C.
200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is
related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which
had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth,
wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and
spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will
certainly be restored to its original state."[398]
There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the
sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would
appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact
that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the
plant.
No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are
the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews[399] has referred to it
under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially
the pollen of corn."
This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise
between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or
sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the
original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio
Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to
seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish.
The Apache, we have shown, offer up in sacrifice their traditional
food, the pollen of the tule. The Zuñi, as we have also shown, offer
up their traditional food, the meal of corn, to which there have since
been added sea shells and other components with a symbolical
significance. The Navajo, the progeny of both, naturally seek to
effect a combination or compromise of the two systems and make use of
the pollen of the corn. Kohl narrates an Ojibwa legend to the effect
that their god Menaboju, returning from the warpath, painted his face
with "pleasant yellow stripes ... of the yellow foam that covers the
water in spring," and he adds that this is "probably the yellow pollen
that falls from the pine." He quotes[400] another legend of the magic
red powder for curing diseases once given by the snake spirit of the
waters to an Ojibwa.
Godfrey Higgins[401] has this to say of the use of pollen by the
ancients which he recognizes as connected with the principle of
fertility:
Αρωμα, the sweet smell, means also a flower, that is Pushpa or
Pushto. This was the language of the followers of the Phasah
or the Lamb--it was the language of the Flower, of the Natzir,
of the Flos-floris of Flora, of the Arouma, and of the flour
of Ceres, or the Eucharistia. It was the language of the
pollen, the pollen of plants, the principle of generation, of
the Pole or Phallus.
Again he says: