The Myths of the New World Part 5

No one is ignorant how widely this belief was prevalent in the old world, nor how the quadrigesimal is still a sacred term with some denominations of Christianity. But a more striking parallelism awaits us. The symbol that beyond all others has fascinated the human mind, THE CROSS, finds here its source and meaning. Scholars have pointed out its sacredness in many natural religions, and have reverently accepted it as a mystery, or offered scores of conflicting and often debasing interpretations. It is but another symbol of the four cardinal points, the four winds of heaven. This will luminously appear by a study of its use and meaning in America.

The Catholic missionaries found it was no new object of adoration to the red race, and were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of Saint Thomas or the sacrilegious subtlety of Satan. It was the central object in the great temple of Cozumel, and is still preserved on the bas-reliefs of the ruined city of Palenque. From time immemorial it had received the prayers and sacrifices of the Aztecs and Toltecs, and was suspended as an august emblem from the walls of temples in Popoyan and Cundinamarca. In the Mexican tongue it bore the significant and worthy name "Tree of Our Life," or "Tree of our Flesh" (Tonacaquahuitl).

It represented the G.o.d of rains and of health, and this was everywhere its simple meaning. "Those of Yucatan," say the chroniclers, "prayed to the cross as the G.o.d of rains when they needed water." The Aztec G.o.ddess of rains bore one in her hand, and at the feast celebrated to her honor in the early spring victims were nailed to a cross and shot with arrows.

Quetzalcoatl, G.o.d of the winds, bore as his sign of office "a mace like the cross of a bishop;" his robe was covered with them strown like flowers, and its adoration was throughout connected with his wors.h.i.+p.[96-1] When the Muyscas would sacrifice to the G.o.ddess of waters they extended cords across the tranquil depths of some lake, thus forming a gigantic cross, and at their point of intersection threw in their offerings of gold, emeralds, and precious oils.[96-2] The arms of the cross were designed to point to the cardinal points and represent the four winds, the rain bringers. To confirm this explanation, let us have recourse to the simpler ceremonies of the less cultivated tribes, and see the transparent meaning of the symbol as they employed it.

When the rain maker of the Lenni Lenape would exert his power, he retired to some secluded spot and drew upon the earth the figure of a cross (its arms toward the cardinal points?), placed upon it a piece of tobacco, a gourd, a bit of some red stuff, and commenced to cry aloud to the spirits of the rains.[96-3] The Creeks at the festival of the Busk, celebrated, as we have seen, to the four winds, and according to their legends inst.i.tuted by them, commenced with making the new fire. The manner of this was "to place four logs in the centre of the square, end to end, forming a cross, the outer ends pointing to the cardinal points; in the centre of the cross the new fire is made."[97-1]

As the emblem of the winds who dispense the fertilizing showers it is emphatically the tree of our life, our subsistence, and our health. It never had any other meaning in America, and if, as has been said,[97-2]

the tombs of the Mexicans were cruciform, it was perhaps with reference to a resurrection and a future life as portrayed under this symbol, indicating that the buried body would rise by the action of the four spirits of the world, as the buried seed takes on a new existence when watered by the vernal showers. It frequently recurs in the ancient Egyptian writings, where it is interpreted _life_; doubtless, could we trace the hieroglyph to its source, it would likewise prove to be derived from the four winds.

While thus recognizing the natural origin of this consecrated symbol, while discovering that it is based on the sacredness of numbers, and this in turn on the structure and necessary relations of the human body, thus disowning the meaningless mysticism that Joseph de Maistre and his disciples have advocated, let us on the other hand be equally on our guard against accepting the material facts which underlie these beliefs as their deepest foundation and their exhaustive explanation.

That were but withered fruit for our labors, and it might well be asked, where is here the divine idea said to be dimly prefigured in mythology?

The universal belief in the sacredness of numbers is an instinctive faith in an immortal truth; it is a direct perception of the soul, akin to that which recognizes a G.o.d. The laws of chemical combination, of the various modes of motion, of all organic growth, show that simple numerical relations govern all the properties and are inherent to the very const.i.tution of matter; more marvellous still, the most recent and severe inductions of physicists show that precisely those two numbers on whose symbolical value much of the edifice of ancient mythology was erected, the _four_ and the _three_, regulate the molecular distribution of matter and preside over the symmetrical development of organic forms.

This asks no faith, but only knowledge; it is science, not revelation.

In view of such facts is it presumptuous to predict that experiment itself will prove the truth of Kepler's beautiful saying: "The universe is a harmonious whole, the soul of which is G.o.d; numbers, figures, the stars, all nature, indeed, are in unison with the mysteries of religion"?

FOOTNOTES:

[67-1] Buckingham Smith, _Gram. Notices of the Heve Language_, p. 26 (Shea's Lib. Am. Linguistics).

[68-1] I refer to thefour "ultimate elementary particles" of Empedocles. The number was sacred to Hermes, and lay at the root of the physical philosophy of Pythagoras. The quotation in the text is from the "Golden Verses," given in Pa.s.sow's lexicon under the word tet?a?t??: ?a? a t?? ?ete?? ????

pa?ad??ta tet?a?t??, pa?a? ae?a?? f?se??. "The most sacred of all things," said this famous teacher, "is Number; and next to it, that which gives Names;" a truth that the lapse of three thousand years is just enabling us to appreciate.

[68-2] Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios_, etc., p. 5.

[68-3] See Sepp, _Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung fur das Christenthum_, i. p. 464 sqq., a work full of learning, but written in the wildest vein of Joseph de Maistre's school of Romanizing mythology.

[69-1] Bra.s.seur, _Hist. du Mexique_, ii. p. 227, _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_, introd. p. ccxlii. The four provinces of Peru were Anti, c.u.n.ti, Chincha, and Colla. The meaning of these names has been lost, but to repeat them, says La Vega, was the same as to use our words, east, west, north, and south (_Hist. des Incas_, lib. ii. cap. 11).

[69-2] Humboldt, _Polit. Essay on New Spain_, ii. p. 44.

[70-1] This custom has been often mentioned among the Iroquois.

Algonkins, Dakotas, Creeks, Natchez, Araucanians, and other tribes.

Nuttall points out its recurrence among the Tartars of Siberia also.

(_Travels_, p. 175.)

[71-1] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, v. pp. 424 et seq.

[71-2] _Letters on the North American Indians_, vol. i., Letter 22.

[71-3] Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, iv. p. 643 sq. "Four is their sacred number," says Mr. Pond (p. 646). Their neighbors, the p.a.w.nees, though not the most remote affinity can be detected between their languages, coincide with them in this sacred number, and distinctly identified it with the cardinal points. See De Smet, _Oregon Missions_, pp. 360, 361.

[72-1] Benj. Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, pp. 75, 78: Savannah, 1848. The description he gives of the ceremonies of the Creeks was transcribed word for word and published in the first volume of the American Antiquarian Society's Transactions as of the Shawnees of Ohio.

This literary theft has not before been noticed.

[72-2] Palacios, _Des. de la Prov. de Guatemala_, pp. 31, 32, ed.

Ternaux-Compans.

[73-1] All familiar with Mexican antiquity will recall many such examples. I may particularly refer to Kingsborough, _Antiqs. of Mexico_, v. p. 480, Ternaux-Compans' _Recueil de pieces rel. a la Conq. du Mexique_, pp. 307, 310, and Gama, _Des. de las dos Piedras que se hallaron en la plaza princ.i.p.al de Mexico_, ii. sec. 126 (Mexico, 1832), who gives numerous instances beyond those I have cited, and directs with emphasis the attention of the reader to this constant repet.i.tion.

[74-1] Albert Gallatin, _Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc._, ii. p. 316, from the Codex Vatica.n.u.s, No. 3738.

[75-1] Riggs, _Gram. and Dict. of the Dakota Lang._, s. v.

[75-2] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, in Kingsborough, v. p. 375.

[76-1] Egede, _Nachrichten von Gronland_, pp. 137, 173, 285. (Kopenhagen, 1790.)

[77-1] Schoolcraft, _Algic Researches_, i. p. 139, and _Indian Tribes_, iv. p. 229.

[78-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, pp. 81, 82, and Blomes, _Acc. of his Majesty's Colonies_, p. 156, London, 1687, in Castiglioni, _Viaggi nelle Stati Uniti_, i. p. 294.

[78-2] Peter Martyr, _De Reb. Ocean._, Dec. i. lib. ix. The story is also told more at length by the Brother Romain Pane, in the essay on the ancient histories of the natives he drew up by the order of Columbus. It has been reprinted with notes by the Abbe Bra.s.seur, Paris, 1864, p. 438 sqq.

[79-1] Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, iv. p. 89.

[79-2] Bra.s.seur, _Le Liv. Sac._, Introd., p. cxvii.

[80-1] Diego de Landa, _Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan_, pp. 160, 206, 208, ed. Bra.s.seur. The learned editor, in a note to p. 208, states erroneously the disposition of the colors, as may be seen by comparing the doc.u.ment on p. 395. This dedication of colors to the cardinal points is universal in Central Asia. The geographical names of the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the Yellow Sea or Persian Gulf, and the White Sea or the Mediterranean, are derived from this a.s.sociation. The cities of China, many of them at least, have their gates which open toward the cardinal points painted of certain colors, and precisely these four, the white, the black, the red, and the yellow, are those which in Oriental myth the mountain in the centre of Paradise shows to the different cardinal points. (Sepp, _Heidenthum und Christenthum_, i. p. 177.) The coincidence furnishes food for reflection.

[81-1] _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_, pp. 203-5, note.

[82-1] The a.n.a.logy is remarkable between these and the "quatre actes de la puissance generatrice jusqu'a l'entier developpement des corps organises," portrayed by four globes in the Mycenean bas-reliefs. See Guigniaut, _Religions de l'Antiquite_, i. p. 374. It were easy to multiply the instances of such parallelism in the growth of religious thought in the Old and New World, but I designedly refrain from doing so.

They have already given rise to false theories enough, and moreover my purpose in this work is not "comparative mythology."

[83-1] Muller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, p. 105, after Strahlheim, who is, however, no authority.

[83-2] Muller, _ubi supra_, pp. 308 sqq., gives a good resume of the different versions of the myth of the four brothers in Peru.

[83-3] The Tupis of Brazil claim a descent from four brothers, three of whose names are given by Hans Staden, a prisoner among them about 1550, as Krimen, Hermittan, and Coem; the latter he explains to mean the morning, the east (_le matin_, printed by mistake _le mutin_, _Relation de Hans Staden de Homberg_, p. 274, ed. Ternaux-Compans, compare Dias, _Dicc. da Lingua Tupy_, p. 47). Their southern relatives, the Guaranis of Paraguay, also spoke of the four brothers and gave two of their names as Tupi and Guarani, respectively parents of the tribes called after them (Guevara, _Hist. del Paraguay_, lib. i. cap. ii., in Waitz). The fourfold division of the Muyscas of Bogota was traced back to four chieftains created by their hero G.o.d Nemqueteba (A. von Humboldt, _Vues des Cordilleres_, p. 246). The Nahuas of Mexico much more frequently spoke of themselves as descendants of four or eight original families than of seven (Humboldt, _ibid._, p. 317, and others in Waitz, _Anthropologie_, iv. pp. 36, 37). The Sacs or Sauks of the Upper Mississippi supposed that two men and two women were first created, and from these four sprang all men (Morse, _Rep. on Ind. Affairs_, App. p. 138). The Ottoes, p.a.w.nees, "and other Indians," had a tradition that from eight ancestors all nations and races were descended (Id., p. 249). This duplication of the number probably arose from a.s.signing the first four men four women as wives. The division into clans or totems which prevails in most northern tribes rests theoretically on descent from different ancestors. The Shawnees and Natchez were divided into four such clans, the Choctaws, Navajos, and Iroquois into eight, thus proving that in those tribes also the myth I have been discussing was recognized.

[85-1] Mandans in Catlin, _Letts. and Notes_, i. p. 181.

[85-2] The Mayas, Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. 8.

[85-3] The Navajos, Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, iv. p. 89.

[85-4] The Quiches, Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios_, p. 79.

[85-5] The Iroquois, Muller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, p. 109.

[85-6] For these myths see Sepp, _Das Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung fur das Christenthum_, i. p. 111 sqq. The interpretation is of course my own.

[87-1] Peter Martyr, _De Reb. Ocean._, Dec. iii., lib. ix. p. 195; Colon, 1574.

[87-2] Ibid., Dec. iii., lib. x. p. 202.