CHAPTER I.

AMERICAN HERO-MYTHS.

A STUDY IN THE NATIVE RELIGIONS

OF THE WESTERN CONTINENT.

BY

DANIEL G. BRINTON, M.D.,

MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN

SOCIETY; THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILA., ETC.; AUTHOR OF

"THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD;" "THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT." ETC.

1882.

TO

ELI K. PRICE, ESQ.,

PRESIDENT OF THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, WHOSE

ENLIGHTENED INTEREST HAS FOR MANY YEARS, AND IN MANY WAYS, FURTHERED THE

PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE

AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

This little volume is a contribution to the comparative study of

religions. It is an endeavor to present in a critically correct light some

of the fundamental conceptions which are found in the native beliefs of

the tribes of America.

So little has heretofore been done in this field that it has yielded a

very scanty harvest for purposes of general study. It has not yet even

passed the stage where the distinction between myth and tradition has been

recognized. Nearly all historians continue to write about some of the

American hero-gods as if they had been chiefs of tribes at some

undetermined epoch, and the effort to trace the migrations and

affiliations of nations by similarities in such stories is of almost daily

occurrence. How baseless and misleading all such arguments must be, it is

one of my objects to set forth.

At the same time I have endeavored to be temperate in applying the

interpretations of mythologists. I am aware of the risk one runs in

looking at every legend as a light or storm myth. My guiding principle has

been that when the same, and that a very extraordinary, story is told by

several tribes wholly apart in language and location, then the

probabilities are enormous that it is not a legend but a myth, and must be

explained as such. It is a spontaneous production of the mind, not a

reminiscence of an historic event.

The importance of the study of myths has been abundantly shown of recent

years, and the methods of analyzing them have been established with

satisfactory clearness.

The time has long since passed, at least among thinking men, when the

religious legends of the lower races were looked upon as trivial fables,

or as the inventions of the Father of Lies. They are neither the one nor

the other. They express, in image and incident, the opinions of these

races on the mightiest topics of human thought, on the origin and destiny

of man, his motives for duty and his grounds of hope, and the source,

history and fate of all external nature. Certainly the sincere expressions

on these subjects of even humble members of the human race deserve our

most respectful heed, and it may be that we shall discover in their crude

or coarse narrations gleams of a mental light which their proud Aryan

brothers have been long in coming to, or have not yet reached.

The prejudice against all the lower faiths inspired by the claim of

Christianity to a monopoly of religious truth--a claim nowise set up by

its founder--has led to extreme injustice toward the so-called heathen

religions. Little effort has been made to distinguish between their good

and evil tendencies, or even to understand them. I do not know of a single

instance on this continent of a thorough and intelligent study of a native

religion made by a Protestant missionary.

So little real work has been done in American mythology that very diverse

opinions as to its interpretation prevail among writers. Too many of them

apply to it facile generalizations, such as "heliolatry," "animism,"

"ancestral worship," "primitive philosophizing," and think that such a

sesame will unloose all its mysteries. The result has been that while each

satisfies himself, he convinces no one else.

I have tried to avoid any such bias, and have sought to discover the

source of the myths I have selected, by close attention to two points:

first, that I should obtain the precise original form of the myth by a

rigid scrutiny of authorities; and, secondly, that I should bring to bear

upon it modern methods of mythological and linguistic analysis.

The first of these requirements has given me no small trouble. The sources

of American history not only differ vastly in merit, but many of them are

almost inaccessible. I still have by me a list of books of the first order

of importance for these studies, which I have not been able to find in any

public or private library in the United States.

I have been free in giving references for the statements in the text. The

growing custom among historians of omitting to do this must be deplored in

the interests of sound learning. It is better to risk the charge of

pedantry than to leave at fault those who wish to test an author's

accuracy or follow up the line of investigation he indicates.

On the other hand, I have exercised moderation in drawing comparisons with

Aryan, Semitic, Egyptian and other Old World mythologies. It would have

been easy to have noted apparent similarities to a much greater extent.

But I have preferred to leave this for those who write upon general

comparative mythology. Such parallelisms, to reach satisfactory results,

should be attempted only by those who have studied the Oriental religions

in their original sources, and thus are not to be deceived by superficial

resemblances.

The term "comparative mythology" reaches hardly far enough to cover all

that I have aimed at. The professional mythologist thinks he has completed

his task when he has traced a myth through its transformations in story

and language back to the natural phenomena of which it was the expression.

This external history is essential. But deeper than that lies the study of

the influence of the myth on the individual and national mind, on the

progress and destiny of those who believed it, in other words, its true

_religious_ import. I have endeavored, also, to take some account of this.

The usual statement is that tribes in the intellectual condition of those

I am dealing with rest their religion on a worship of external phenomena.

In contradiction to this, I advance various arguments to show that their

chief god was not identified with any objective natural process, but was

human in nature, benignant in character, loved rather than feared, and

that his worship carried with it the germs of the development of

benevolent emotions and sound ethical principles.

_Media, Pa., Oct., 1882._

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Some Kind of Religion Found among all Men--Classifications of

Religions--The Purpose of Religions--Religions of Rite and of Creed--The

Myth Grows in the First of these--Intent and Meaning of the Myth.

Processes of Myth Building in America--Personification, Paronyms and

Homonyms--Otosis--Polyonomy--Henotheism--Borrowing--Rhetorical

Figures--Abstract Expressions--Esoteric Teachings.

Outlines of the Fundamental American Myth--The White Culture-hero and the

Four Brothers--Interpretation of the Myth--Comparison with the Aryan

Hermes Myth--With the Aryo-Semitic Cadmus Myth--With Osirian Myths--The

Myth of the Virgin Mother--The Interpretation thus Supported.

CHAPTER II.

THE HERO-GODS OF THE ALGONKINS AND IROQUOIS.

§1. _The Algonkin Myth of Michabo._

The Myth of the Giant Rabbit--The Rabbit Creates the World--He Marries the

Muskrat--Becomes the All-Father--Derivation of Michabo--of Wajashk, the

Musk-rat--The Myth Explained--The Light-God as God of the East--The Four

Divine Brothers--Myth of the Huarochiris--The Day-Makers--Michabo's

Contests with His Father and Brother--Explanation of These--The Symbolic

Flint Stone--Michabo Destroys the Serpent King--Meaning of this

Myth--Relations of the Light-God and Wind-God--Michabo as God of Waters

and Fertility--Represented as a Bearded Man.

§2. _The Iroquois Myth of Ioskeha._

The Creation of the Earth--The Miraculous Birth of Ioskeha--He Overcomes

his Brother Tawiscara--Creates and Teaches Mankind--Visits his People--His

Grandmother Ataensic--Ioskeha as Father of his Mother--Similar Conceptions

in Egyptian Myths--Derivation of Ioskeha and Ataensic--Ioskeha as

Tharonhiawakon, the Sky Supporter--His Brother Tawiscara or Tehotennhiaron

Identified--Similarity to Algonkin Myths.

CHAPTER III.

THE HERO-GOD OP THE AZTEC TRIBES.

§1. _The Two Antagonists._

The Contest of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca--Quetzalcoatl the

Light-God--Derivation of His Name--Titles of Tezcatlipoca--Identified with

Darkness, Night and Gloom.

§2. _Quetzalcoatl the God._

Myth of the Four Brothers--The Four Suns and the Elemental Conflict--Names

of the Four Brothers.

§3. _Quetzalcoatl the Hero of Tula._

Tula, the City of the Sun--Who were the Toltecs?--Tlapallan and Xalac--The

Birth of the Hero God--His Virgin Mother Chimalmatl--His Miraculous

Conception--Aztlan, the Land of Seven Caves, and Colhuacan, the Bended

Mount--The Maid Xochitl and the Rose Garden of the Gods--Quetzalcoatl as

the White and Bearded Stranger.

The Glory of the Lord of Tula--The Subtlety of the Sorcerer

Tezcatlipoca--The Magic Mirror and the Mystic Draught--The Myth

Explained--The Promise of Rejuvenation--The Toveyo and the Maiden--The

Juggleries of Tezcatlipoca--Departure of Quetzalcoatl from

Tula--Quetzalcoatl at Cholula--His Death or Departure--The Celestial Game

of Ball and Tiger Skin--Quetzalcoatl as the Planet Venus.

§4. _Quetzalcoatl as Lord of the Winds._

The Lord of the Four Winds--His Symbols, the Wheel of the Winds, the

Pentagon and the Cross--Close Relation to the Gods of Rain and

Waters--Inventor of the Calendar--God of Fertility and

Conception--Recommends Sexual Austerity--Phallic Symbols--God of

Merchants--The Patron of Thieves--His Pictographic Representations.

§5. _The Return of Quetzalcoatl._

His Expected Re-appearance--The Anxiety of Montezuma--His Address to

Cortes--The General Expectation--Explanation of his Predicted Return.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HERO-GODS OF THE MAYAS.

Civilization of the Mayas--Whence it Originated--Duplicate Traditions

§1. _The Culture Hero Itzamna._

Itzamna as Ruler, Priest and Teacher--As Chief God and Creator of the

World--Las Casas' Supposed Christ Myth--The Four Bacabs--Itzamna as Lord

of the Winds and Rains--The Symbol of the Cross--As Lord of the Light and

Day--Derivation of his Various Names.

§2. _The Culture Hero Kukulcan._

Kukulcan as Connected with the Calendar--Meaning of the Name--The Myth of

the Four Brothers--Kukulcan's Happy Rule and Miraculous

Disappearance--Relation to Quetzalcoatl--Aztec and Maya

Mythology--Kukulcan a Maya Divinity--The Expected Return of the

Hero-god--The Maya Prophecies--Their Explanation.

CHAPTER V.

THE QQICHUA HERO-GOD VIRACOCHA.

Viracocha as the First Cause--His name Illa Ticci--Qquichua Prayers--Other

Names and Titles of Viracocha--His Worship a True Monotheism--The Myth of

the Four Brothers--Myth of the Twin Brothers.

Viracocha as Tunapa, He who Perfects--Various Incidents in His

Life--Relation to Manco Capac--He Disappears in the West.

Viracocha Rises from Lake Titicaca and Journeys to the West--Derivation of

His Name--He was Represented as White and Bearded--The Myth of Con and

Pachacamac--Contice Viracocha--Prophecies of the Peruvian Seers The White

Men Called Viracochas--Similarities to Aztec Myths.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EXTENSION AND INFLUENCE OP THE TYPICAL HERO-MYTH.

The Typical Myth found in many parts of the Continent--Difficulties in

Tracing it--Religious Evolution in America Similar to that in the Old

World--Failure of Christianity in the Red Race.

The Culture Myth of the Tarascos of Mechoacan--That of the Kiches of

Guatemala.--The Votan Myth of the Tzendals of Chiapas--A Fragment of a

Mixe Myth--The Hero-God of the Muyscas of New Granada--Of the

Tupi-Guaranay Stem of Paraguay and Brazil--Myths of the Dènè of British

America.

Sun Worship in America--Germs of Progress in American Religions--Relation

of Religion and Morality--The Light-God A Moral and Beneficent

Creation--His Worship was Elevating--Moral Condition of Native Societies

before the Conquest--Progress in the Definition of the Idea of God in

Peru, Mexico and Yucatan--Erroneous Statements about the Morals of the

Natives--Evolution of their Ethical Principles.

INDEX.

AMERICAN HERO-MYTHS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

SOME KIND OF RELIGION FOUND AMONG ALL MEN--CLASSIFICATIONS OF

RELIGIONS--THE PURPOSE OF RELIGIONS--RELIGIONS OF RITE AND OF CREED--THE

MYTH GROWS IN THE FIRST OF THESE--INTENT AND MEANING OF THE MYTH.

PROCESSES OF MYTH-BUILDING IN AMERICA--PERSONIFICATION. PARONYMS AND

HOMONYMS--OTOSIS--POLYONOMY--HENOTHEISM--BORROWING--RHETORICAL

FIGURES--ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONS. ESOTERIC TEACHINGS.

OUTLINES OF THE FUNDAMENTAL AMERICAN MYTH--THE WHITE CULTURE-HERO AND THE

FOUR BROTHERS--INTERPRETATION OF THE MYTH--COMPARISON WITH THE ARYAN

HERMES MYTH--WITH THE ARYO-SEMITIC CADMUS MYTH--WITH OSIRIAN MYTHS--THE

MYTH OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER--THE INTERPRETATION THUS SUPPORTED.

The time was, and that not so very long ago, when it was contended by some

that there are tribes of men without any sort of religion; nowadays the

effort is to show that the feeling which prompts to it is common, even

among brutes.

This change of opinion has come about partly through an extension of the

definition of religion. It is now held to mean any kind of belief in

spiritual or extra-natural agencies. Some learned men say that we had

better drop the word "religion," lest we be misunderstood. They would

rather use "daimonism," or "supernaturalism," or other such new term; but

none of these seems to me so wide and so exactly significant of what I

mean as "religion."

All now agree that in this very broad sense some kind of religion exists

in every human community.[1]

[Footnote 1: I suppose I am not going too far in saying "all agree;" for I

think that the latest study of this subject, by Gustav Roskoff, disposes

of Sir John Lubbock's doubts, as well as the crude statements of the

author of _Kraft und Stoff_, and such like compilations. Gustav Roskoff,

_Das Religionswesen der Rohesten Naturvölker_, Leipzig, 1880.]

The attempt has often been made to classify these various faiths under

some few general headings. The scheme of Auguste Comte still has

supporters. He taught that man begins with fetichism, advances to

polytheism, and at last rises to monotheism. More in vogue at present is

the theory that the simplest and lowest form of religion is individual;

above it are the national religions; and at the summit the universal or

world religions.

Comte's scheme has not borne examination. It is artificial and sterile.

Look at Christianity. It is the highest of all religions, but it is not

monotheism. Look at Buddhism. In its pure form it is not even theism. The

second classification is more fruitful for historical purposes.

The psychologist, however, inquires as to the essence, the real purpose of

religions. This has been differently defined by the two great schools of

thought.

All religions, says the idealist, are the efforts, poor or noble,

conscious or blind, to develop the Idea of God in the soul of man.

No, replies the rationalist, it is simply the effort of the human mind to

frame a Theory of Things; at first, religion is an early system of natural

philosophy; later it becomes moral philosophy. Explain the Universe by

physical laws, point out that the origin and aim of ethics are the

relations of men, and we shall have no more religions, nor need any.

The first answer is too intangible, the second too narrow. The rude savage

does not philosophize on phenomena; the enlightened student sees in them

but interacting forces: yet both may be profoundly religious. Nor can

morality be accepted as a criterion of religions. The bloody scenes in the

Mexican teocalli were merciful compared with those in the torture rooms of

the Inquisition. Yet the religion of Jesus was far above that of

Huitzilopochtli.

What I think is the essence, the principle of vitality, in religion, and

in all religions, is _their supposed control over the destiny of the

individual_, his weal or woe, his good or bad hap, here or hereafter, as

it may be. Rooted infinitely deep in the sense of personality, religion

was recognized at the beginning, it will be recognized at the end, as the

one indestructible ally in the struggle for individual existence. At

heart, all prayers are for preservation, the burden of all litanies is a

begging for Life.

This end, these benefits, have been sought by the cults of the world

through one of two theories.

The one, that which characterizes the earliest and the crudest religions,

teaches that man escapes dangers and secures safety by the performance or

avoidance of certain actions. He may credit this or that myth, he may hold

to one or many gods; this is unimportant; but he must not fail in the

penance or the sacred dance, he must not touch that which is _taboo_, or

he is in peril. The life of these cults is the Deed, their expression is

the Rite.

Higher religions discern the inefficacy of the mere Act. They rest their

claim on Belief. They establish dogmas, the mental acceptance of which is

the one thing needful. In them mythology passes into theology; the act is

measured by its motive, the formula by the faith back of it. Their life is

the Creed.

The Myth finds vigorous and congenial growth only in the first of these

forms. There alone the imagination of the votary is free, there alone it

is not fettered by a symbol already defined.

To the student of religions the interest of the Myth is not that of an

infantile attempt to philosophize, but as it illustrates the intimate and

immediate relations which the religion in which it grew bore to the

individual life. Thus examined, it reveals the inevitable destinies of men

and of nations as bound up with their forms of worship.

These general considerations appear to me to be needed for the proper

understanding of the study I am about to make. It concerns itself with

some of the religions which were developed on the American continent

before its discovery. My object is to present from them a series of myths

curiously similar in features, and to see if one simple and general

explanation of them can be found.

The processes of myth-building among American tribes were much the same as

elsewhere. These are now too generally familiar to need specification

here, beyond a few which I have found particularly noticeable.

At the foundation of all myths lies the mental process of

_personification_, which finds expression in the rhetorical figure of

_prosopopeia_. The definition of this, however, must be extended from the

mere representation of inanimate things as animate, to include also the

representation of irrational beings as rational, as in the "animal myths,"

a most common form of religious story among primitive people.

Some languages favor these forms of personification much more than others,

and most of the American languages do so in a marked manner, by the broad

grammatical distinctions they draw between animate and inanimate objects,

which distinctions must invariably be observed. They cannot say "the boat

moves" without specifying whether the boat is an animate object or not, or

whether it is to be considered animate, for rhetorical purposes, at the

time of speaking.

The sounds of words have aided greatly in myth building. Names and words

which are somewhat alike in sound, _paronyms_, as they are called by

grammarians, may be taken or mistaken one for the other. Again, many myths

spring from _homonymy_, that is, the sameness in sound of words with

difference in signification. Thus _coatl_, in the Aztec tongue, is a word

frequently appearing in the names of divinities. It has three entirely

different meanings, to wit, a serpent, a guest and twins. Now, whichever

one of these was originally meant, it would be quite certain to be

misunderstood, more or less, by later generations, and myths would arise

to explain the several possible interpretations of the word--as, in fact,

we find was the case.

Closely allied to this is what has been called _otosis_. This is the

substitution of a familiar word for an archaic or foreign one of similar

sound but wholly diverse meaning. This is a very common occurrence and

easily leads to myth making. For example, there is a cave, near

Chattanooga, which has the Cherokee name Nik-a-jak. This the white

settlers have transformed into Nigger Jack, and are prepared with a

narrative of some runaway slave to explain the cognomen. It may also occur

in the same language. In an Algonkin dialect _missi wabu_ means "the great

light of the dawn;" and a common large rabbit was called _missabo_; at

some period the precise meaning of the former words was lost, and a

variety of interesting myths of the daybreak were transferred to a

supposed huge rabbit! Rarely does there occur a more striking example of

how the deteriorations of language affect mythology.

_Aztlan_, the mythical land whence the Aztec speaking tribes were said to

have come, and from which they derived their name, means "the place of

whiteness;" but the word was similar to _Aztatlan_, which would mean "the

place of herons," some spot where these birds would love to congregate,

from _aztatl_, the heron, and in after ages, this latter, as the plainer

and more concrete signification, came to prevail, and was adopted by the

myth-makers.

_Polyonomy_ is another procedure often seen in these myths. A divinity has

several or many titles; one or another of these becomes prominent, and at

last obscures in a particular myth or locality the original personality of

the hero of the tale. In America this is most obvious in Peru.

Akin to this is what Prof. Max Müller has termed _henotheism_. In this

mental process one god or one form of a god is exalted beyond all others,

and even addressed as the one, only, absolute and supreme deity. Such

expressions are not to be construed literally as evidences of a

monotheism, but simply that at that particular time the worshiper's mind

was so filled with the power and majesty of the divinity to whom he

appealed, that he applied to him these superlatives, very much as he would

to a great ruler. The next day he might apply them to another deity,

without any hypocrisy or sense of logical contradiction. Instances of this

are common in the Aztec prayers which have been preserved.

One difficulty encountered in Aryan mythology is extremely rare in

America, and that is, the adoption of foreign names. A proper name without

a definite concrete significance in the tongue of the people who used it

is almost unexampled in the red race. A word without a meaning was

something quite foreign to their mode of thought. One of our most eminent

students[1] has justly said: "Every Indian synthesis--names of persons and

places not excepted--must preserve the consciousness of its roots, and

must not only have a meaning, but be so framed as to convey that meaning

with precision, to all who speak the language to which it belongs." Hence,

the names of their divinities can nearly always be interpreted, though for

the reasons above given the most obvious and current interpretation is not

in every case the correct one.

[Footnote 1: J. Hammond Trumbull, _On the Composition of Indian

Geographical Names_, p. 3 (Hartford, 1870).]

As foreign names were not adopted, so the mythology of one tribe very

rarely influenced that of another. As a rule, all the religions were

tribal or national, and their votaries had no desire to extend them. There

was little of the proselytizing spirit among the red race. Some exceptions

can be pointed out to this statement, in the Aztec and Peruvian

monarchies. Some borrowing seems to have been done either by or from the

Mayas; and the hero-myth of the Iroquois has so many of the lineaments of

that of the Algonkins that it is difficult to believe that it was wholly

independent of it. But, on the whole, the identities often found in

American myths are more justly attributable to a similarity of

surroundings and impressions than to any other cause.

The diversity and intricacy of American mythology have been greatly

fostered by the delight the more developed nations took in rhetorical

figures, in metaphor and simile, and in expressions of amplification and

hyperbole. Those who imagine that there was a poverty of resources in

these languages, or that their concrete form hemmed in the mind from the

study of the abstract, speak without knowledge. One has but to look at the

inexhaustible synonymy of the Aztec, as it is set forth by Olmos or

Sahagun, or at its power to render correctly the refinements of scholastic

theology, to see how wide of the fact is any such opinion. And what is

true of the Aztec, is not less so of the Qquichua and other tongues.

I will give an example, where the English language itself falls short of

the nicety of the Qquichua in handling a metaphysical tenet. _Cay_ in

Qquichua expresses the real being of things, the _essentia_; as, _runap

caynin_, the being of the human race, humanity in the abstract; but to

convey the idea of actual being, the _existentia_ as united to the

_essentia_, we must add the prefix _cascan_, and thus have

_runap-cascan-caynin_, which strictly means "the essence of being in

general, as existent in humanity."[1] I doubt if the dialect of German

metaphysics itself, after all its elaboration, could produce in equal

compass a term for this conception. In Qquichua, moreover, there is

nothing strained and nothing foreign in this example; it is perfectly

pure, and in thorough accord with the genius of the tongue.

[Footnote 1: "El ser existente de hombre, que es el modo de estar el

primer ser que es la essentia que en Dios y los Angeles y el hombre es

modo personal." Diego Gonzalez Holguin, _Vocabvlario de la Lengva Qqichua,

o del Inca; sub voce, Cay_. (Ciudad de los Reyes, 1608.)]

I take some pains to impress this fact, for it is an important one in

estimating the religious ideas of the race. We must not think we have

grounds for skepticism if we occasionally come across some that astonish

us by their subtlety. Such are quite in keeping with the psychology and

languages of the race we are studying.

Yet, throughout America, as in most other parts of the world, the teaching

of religious tenets was twofold, the one popular, the other for the

initiated, an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine. A difference in dialect

was assiduously cultivated, a sort of "sacred language" being employed to

conceal while it conveyed the mysteries of faith. Some linguists think

that these dialects are archaic forms of the language, the memory of which

was retained in ceremonial observances; others maintain that they were

simply affectations of expression, and form a sort of slang, based on the

every day language, and current among the initiated. I am inclined to the

latter as the correct opinion, in many cases.

Whichever it was, such a sacred dialect is found in almost all tribes.

There are fragments of it from the cultivated races of Mexico, Yucatan and

Peru; and at the other end of the scale we may instance the Guaymis, of

Darien, naked savages, but whose "chiefs of the law," we are told, taught

"the doctrines of their religion in a peculiar idiom, invented for the

purpose, and very different from the common language."[1]

[Footnote 1: Franco, _Noticia de los Indios Guaymies y de sus Costumbres_,

p. 20, in Pinart, _Coleccion de Linguistica y Etnografia Americana_. Tom.

iv.]

This becomes an added difficulty in the analysis of myths, as not only

were the names of the divinities and of localities expressed in terms in

the highest degree metaphorical, but they were at times obscured by an

affected pronunciation, devised to conceal their exact derivation.

The native tribes of this Continent had many myths, and among them there

was one which was so prominent, and recurred with such strangely similar

features in localities widely asunder, that it has for years attracted my

attention, and I have been led to present it as it occurs among several

nations far apart, both geographically and in point of culture. This myth

is that of the national hero, their mythical civilizer and teacher of the

tribe, who, at the same time, was often identified with the supreme deity

and the creator of the world. It is the fundamental myth of a very large

number of American tribes, and on its recognition and interpretation

depends the correct understanding of most of their mythology and religious

life.

The outlines of this legend are to the effect that in some exceedingly

remote time this divinity took an active part in creating the world and in

fitting it to be the abode of man, and may himself have formed or called

forth the race. At any rate, his interest in its advancement was such that

he personally appeared among the ancestors of the nation, and taught them

the useful arts, gave them the maize or other food plants, initiated them

into the mysteries of their religious rites, framed the laws which

governed their social relations, and having thus started them on the road

to self development, he left them, not suffering death, but disappearing

in some way from their view. Hence it was nigh universally expected that

at some time he would return.

The circumstances attending the birth of these hero-gods have great

similarity. As a rule, each is a twin or one of four brothers born at one

birth; very generally at the cost of their mother's life, who is a virgin,

or at least had never been impregnated by mortal man. The hero is apt to

come into conflict with his brother, or one of his brothers, and the long

and desperate struggle resulting, which often involved the universe in

repeated destructions, constitutes one of the leading topics of the

myth-makers. The duel is not generally--not at all, I believe, when we can

get at the genuine native form of the myth--between a morally good and an

evil spirit, though, undoubtedly, the one is more friendly and favorable

to the welfare of man than the other.

The better of the two, the true hero-god, is in the end triumphant, though

the national temperament represented this variously. At any rate, his

people are not deserted by him, and though absent, and perhaps for a while

driven away by his potent adversary, he is sure to come back some time or

other.

The place of his birth is nearly always located in the East; from that

quarter he first came when he appeared as a man among men; toward that

point he returned when he disappeared; and there he still lives, awaiting

the appointed time for his reappearance.

Whenever the personal appearance of this hero-god is described, it is,

strangely enough, represented to be that of one of the white race, a man

of fair complexion, with long, flowing beard, with abundant hair, and

clothed in ample and loose robes. This extraordinary fact naturally

suggests the gravest suspicion that these stories were made up after the

whites had reached the American shores, and nearly all historians have

summarily rejected their authenticity, on this account. But a most careful

scrutiny of their sources positively refutes this opinion. There is

irrefragable evidence that these myths and this ideal of the hero-god,

were intimately known and widely current in America long before any one of

its millions of inhabitants had ever seen a white man. Nor is there any

difficulty in explaining this, when we divest these figures of the

fanciful garbs in which they have been clothed by the religious

imagination, and recognize what are the phenomena on which they are based,

and the physical processes whose histories they embody. To show this I

will offer, in the most concise terms, my interpretation of their main

details.

The most important of all things to life is _Light_. This the primitive

savage felt, and, personifying it, he made Light his chief god. The

beginning of the day served, by analogy, for the beginning of the world.

Light comes before the sun, brings it forth, creates it, as it were. Hence

the Light-God is not the Sun-God, but his Antecedent and Creator.

The light appears in the East, and thus defines that cardinal point, and

by it the others are located. These points, as indispensable guides to the

wandering hordes, became, from earliest times, personified as important

deities, and were identified with the winds that blew from them, as wind

and rain gods. This explains the four brothers, who were nothing else than

the four cardinal points, and their mother, who dies in producing them, is

the eastern light, which is soon lost in the growing day. The East, as

their leader, was also the supposed ruler of the winds, and thus god of

the air and rain. As more immediately connected with the advent and

departure of light, the East and West are twins, the one of which sends

forth the glorious day-orb, which the other lies in wait to conquer. Yet

the light-god is not slain. The sun shall rise again in undiminished

glory, and he lives, though absent.

By sight and light we see and learn. Nothing, therefore, is more natural

than to attribute to the light-god the early progress in the arts of

domestic and social life. Thus light came to be personified as the

embodiment of culture and knowledge, of wisdom, and of the peace and

prosperity which are necessary for the growth of learning.

The fair complexion of these heroes is nothing but a reference to the

white light of the dawn. Their ample hair and beard are the rays of the

sun that flow from his radiant visage. Their loose and large robes typify

the enfolding of the firmament by the light and the winds.

This interpretation is nowise strained, but is simply that which, in Aryan

mythology, is now universally accepted for similar mythological creations.

Thus, in the Greek Phoebus and Perseus, in the Teutonic Lif, and in the

Norse Baldur, we have also beneficent hero-gods, distinguished by their

fair complexion and ample golden locks. "Amongst the dark as well as

amongst the fair races, amongst those who are marked by black hair and

dark eyes, they exhibit the same unfailing type of blue-eyed heroes whose

golden locks flow over their shoulders, and whose faces gleam as with the

light of the new risen sun."[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir George W. Cox, _An Introduction to the Science of

Comparative Mythology and Folk-Lore_, p. 17.]

Everywhere, too, the history of these heroes is that of a struggle against

some potent enemy, some dark demon or dragon, but as often against some

member of their own household, a brother or a father.

The identification of the Light-God with the deity of the winds is also

seen in Aryan mythology. Hermes, to the Greek, was the inventor of the

alphabet, music, the cultivation of the olive, weights and measures, and

such humane arts. He was also the messenger of the gods, in other words,

the breezes, the winds, the air in motion. His name Hermes, Hermeias, is

but a transliteration of the Sanscrit Sarameyas, under which he appears in

the Vedic songs, as the son of Sarama, the Dawn. Even his character as the

master thief and patron saint of the light-fingered gentry, drawn from the

way the winds and breezes penetrate every crack and cranny of the house,

is absolutely repeated in the Mexican hero-god Quetzalcoatl, who was also

the patron of thieves. I might carry the comparison yet further, for as

Sarameyas is derived from the root _sar_, to creep, whence _serpo_,

serpent, the creeper, so the name Quetzalcoatl can be accurately

translated, "the wonderful serpent." In name, history and functions the

parallelism is maintained throughout.

Or we can find another familiar myth, partly Aryan, partly Semitic, where

many of the same outlines present themselves. The Argive Thebans

attributed the founding of their city and state to Cadmus. He collected

their ancestors into a community, gave them laws, invented the alphabet of

sixteen letters, taught them the art of smelting metals, established

oracles, and introduced the Dyonisiac worship, or that of the reproductive

principle. He subsequently left them and lived for a time with other

nations, and at last did not die, but was changed into a dragon and

carried by Zeus to Elysion.

The birthplace of this culture hero was somewhere far to the eastward of

Greece, somewhere in "the purple land" (Phoenicia); his mother was "the

far gleaming one" (Telephassa); he was one of four children, and his

sister was Europe, the Dawn, who was seized and carried westward by Zeus,

in the shape of a white bull. Cadmus seeks to recover her, and sets out,

following the westward course of the sun. "There can be no rest until the

lost one is found again. The sun must journey westward until he sees again

the beautiful tints which greeted his eyes in the morning."[1] Therefore

Cadmus leaves the purple land to pursue his quest. It is one of toil and

struggle. He has to fight the dragon offspring of Ares and the bands of

armed men who spring from the dragon's teeth which were sown, that is, the

clouds and gloom of the overcast sky. He conquers, and is rewarded, but

does not recover his sister.

[Footnote 1: Sir George W. Cox, _Ibid._, p. 76.]

When we find that the name Cadmus is simply the Semitic word _kedem_, the

east, and notice all this mythical entourage, we see that this legend is

but a lightly veiled account of the local source and progress of the light

of day, and of the advantages men derive from it. Cadmus brings the

letters of the alphabet from the east to Greece, for the same reason that

in ancient Maya myth Itzamna, "son of the mother of the morning," brought

the hieroglyphs of the Maya script also from the east to Yucatan--because

both represent the light by which we see and learn.

Egyptian mythology offers quite as many analogies to support this

interpretation of American myths as do the Aryan god-stories.

The heavenly light impregnates the virgin from whom is born the sun-god,

whose life is a long contest with his twin brother. The latter wins, but

his victory is transient, for the light, though conquered and banished by

the darkness, cannot be slain, and is sure to return with the dawn, to the

great joy of the sons of men. This story the Egyptians delighted to repeat

under numberless disguises. The groundwork and meaning are the same,

whether the actors are Osiris, Isis and Set, Ptah, Hapi and the Virgin

Cow, or the many other actors of this drama. There, too, among a brown

race of men, the light-god was deemed to be not of their own hue, but

"light colored, white or yellow," of comely countenance, bright eyes and

golden hair. Again, he is the one who invented the calendar, taught the

arts, established the rituals, revealed the medical virtues of plants,

recommended peace, and again was identified as one of the brothers of the

cardinal points.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Dr. C.P. Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, pp.

93, 95, 99, et al.]

The story of the virgin-mother points, in America as it did in the old

world, to the notion of the dawn bringing forth the sun. It was one of the

commonest myths in both continents, and in a period of human thought when

miracles were supposed to be part of the order of things had in it nothing

difficult of credence. The Peruvians, for instance, had large

establishments where were kept in rigid seclusion the "virgins of the

sun." Did one of these violate her vow of chastity, she and her fellow

criminal were at once put to death; but did she claim that the child she

bore was of divine parentage, and the contrary could not be shown, then

she was feted as a queen, and the product of her womb was classed among

princes, as a son of the sun. So, in the inscription at Thebes, in the

temple of the virgin goddess Mat, we read where she says of herself: "My

garment no man has lifted up; the fruit that I have borne was begotten of

the sun."[1]

[Footnote 1: "[Greek: Ton emon chitona oudeis apechaluphen on ego charpon

etechan, aelios egeneto.]" Proclus, quoted by Tiele, ubi suprá, p. 204,

note.]

I do not venture too much in saying that it were easy to parallel every

event in these American hero-myths, every phase of character of the

personages they represent, with others drawn from Aryan and Egyptian

legends long familiar to students, and which now are fully recognized as

having in them nothing of the substance of history, but as pure creations

of the religious imagination working on the processes of nature brought

into relation to the hopes and fears of men.

If this is so, is it not time that we dismiss, once for all, these

American myths from the domain of historical traditions? Why should we try

to make a king of Itzamna, an enlightened ruler of Quetzalcoatl, a

cultured nation of the Toltecs, when the proof is of the strongest, that

every one of these is an absolutely baseless fiction of mythology? Let it

be understood, hereafter, that whoever uses these names in an historical

sense betrays an ignorance of the subject he handles, which, were it in

the better known field of Aryan or Egyptian lore, would at once convict

him of not meriting the name of scholar.

In European history the day has passed when it was allowable to construct

primitive chronicles out of fairy tales and nature myths. The science of

comparative mythology has assigned to these venerable stories a different,

though not less noble, interpretation. How much longer must we wait to see

the same canons of criticism applied to the products of the religious

fancy of the red race?

Furthermore, if the myths of the American nations are shown to be capable

of a consistent interpretation by the principles of comparative mythology,

let it be recognized that they are neither to be discarded because they

resemble some familiar to their European conquerors, nor does that

similarity mean that they are historically derived, the one from the

other. Each is an independent growth, but as each is the reflex in a

common psychical nature of the same phenomena, the same forms of

expression were adopted to convey them.