The Myths of the New World Part 9

"O vierge, quand pourrai-je te posseder pour ma compagne cherie?

Combien de temps faut-il encore que tes vux soient accomplis?

Dis-moi le jour qui doit devancer la belle nuit ou tous deux, Alimenterons le feu qui nous fit naitre et que nous devons perpetuer."[147-1]

There is a bright as well as a dark side even to such a wors.h.i.+p. In Mexico, Peru, and Yucatan, the women who watched the flames must be undoubted virgins; they were usually of n.o.ble blood, and must vow eternal chast.i.ty, or at least were free to none but the ruler of the realm. As long as they were consecrated to the fire, so long any carnal ardor was degrading to their lofty duties. The sentiment of shame, one of the first we find developed, led to the belief that to forego fleshly pleasures was a meritorious sacrifice in the eyes of the G.o.ds. In this persuasion certain of the Aztec priests practised complete abscission or entire discerption of the virile parts, and a mutilation of females was not unknown similar to that immemorially a custom in Egypt.[147-2] Such enforced celibacy was, however, neither common nor popular.

Circ.u.mcision, if it can be proven to have existed among the red race--and though there are plenty of a.s.sertions to that effect, they are not satisfactory to an anatomist--was probably a symbolic renunciation of the l.u.s.ts of the flesh. The same cannot be said of the very common custom with the Aztec race of anointing their idols with blood drawn from the genitals, the tongue, and the ears. This was simply a form of those voluntary scarifications, universally employed to mark contrition or grief by savage tribes, and nowhere more in vogue than with the red race.

There was an ancient Christian heresy which taught that the true way to conquer the pa.s.sions was to satiate them, and therefore preached unbounded licentiousness. Whether this agreeable doctrine was known to the Indians I cannot say, but it is certainly the most creditable explanation that can be suggested for the miscellaneous congress which very often terminated their dances and ceremonies. Such orgies were of common occurrence among the Algonkins and Iroquois at a very early date, and are often mentioned in the Jesuit Relations; Venegas describes them as frequent among the tribes of Lower California; and Oviedo refers to certain festivals of the Nicaraguans, during which the women of all rank extended to whosoever wished just such privileges as the matrons of ancient Babylon, that mother of harlots and all abominations, used to grant even to slaves and strangers in the temple of Melitta, as one of the duties of religion. But in fact there is no ground whatever to invest these debauches with any recondite meaning. They are simply indications of the thorough and utter immorality which prevailed throughout the race. And a still more disgusting proof of it is seen in the frequent appearance among diverse tribes of men dressed as women and yielding themselves to indescribable vices.[149-1] There was at first nothing of a religious nature in such exhibitions. Lascivious priests chose at times to invest them with some such meaning for their own sensual gratification, just as in Brazil they still claim the _jus primae noctis_.[149-2] The pretended phallic wors.h.i.+p of the Natchez and of Culhuacan, cited by the Abbe Bra.s.seur, rests on no good authority, and if true, is like that of the Huastecas of Panuco, nothing but an unrestrained and boundless profligacy which it were an absurdity to call a religion.[149-3] That which Mr. Stephens attempts to show existed once in Yucatan,[149-4] rests entirely by his own statement on a fancied resemblance of no value whatever, and the arguments of Lafitau to the same effect are quite insufficient. There is a decided indecency in the remains of ancient American art, especially in Peru (Meyen), and great lubricity in many ceremonies, but the proof is altogether wanting to bind these with the recognition of a fecundating principle throughout nature, or, indeed, to suppose for them any other origin than the promptings of an impure fancy. I even doubt whether they often referred to fire as the deity of s.e.xual love.

By a flight of fancy inspired by a study of oriental mythology, the wors.h.i.+p of the reciprocal principle in America has been connected with that of the sun and moon, as the primitive pair from whose fecund union all creatures proceeded. It is sufficient to say if such a myth exists among the Indians--which is questionable--it justifies no such deduction; that the moon is often mentioned in their languages merely as the "night sun;" and that in such important stocks as the Iroquois, Athapascas, Cherokees, and Tupis, the sun is said to be a feminine noun; while the myths represent them more frequently as brother and sister than as man and wife; nor did at least the northern tribes regard the sun as the cause of fecundity in nature at all, but solely as giving light and warmth.[150-1]

In contrast to this, so much the more positive was their a.s.sociation of the THUNDER-STORM as that which brings both warmth and rain with the renewed vernal life of vegetation. The impressive phenomena which characterize it, the prodigious noise, the awful flash, the portentous gloom, the blast, the rain, have left a profound impression on the myths of every land. Fire from water, warmth and moisture from the destructive breath of the tempest, this was the riddle of riddles to the untutored mind. "Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness." It was the visible synthesis of all the divine manifestations, the winds, the waters, and the flames.

The Dakotas conceived it as a struggle between the G.o.d of waters and the thunder bird for the command of their nation,[150-2] and as a bird, one of those which make a whirring sound with their wings, the turkey, the pheasant, or the nighthawk, it was very generally depicted by their neighbors, the Athapascas, Iroquois, and Algonkins.[151-1] As the herald of the summer it was to them a good omen and a friendly power. It was the voice of the Great Spirit of the four winds speaking from the clouds and admonis.h.i.+ng them that the time of corn planting was at hand.[151-2] The flames kindled by the lightning were of a sacred nature, proper to be employed in lighting the fires of the religious rites, but on no account to be profaned by the base uses of daily life.

When the flash entered the ground it scattered in all directions those stones, such as the flint, which betray their supernal origin by a gleam of fire when struck. These were the thunderbolts, and from such an one, significantly painted red, the Dakotas averred their race had proceeded.[151-3] For are we not all in a sense indebted for our lives to fire? "There is no end to the fancies entertained by the Sioux concerning thunder," observes Mrs. Eastman. They typified the paradoxical nature of the storm under the character of the giant Haokah.

To him cold was heat, and heat cold; when sad he laughed, when merry groaned; the sides of his face and his eyes were of different colors and expressions; he wore horns or a forked headdress to represent the lightning, and with his hands he hurled the meteors. His manifestations were fourfold, and one of the four winds was the drum-stick he used to produce the thunder.[152-1]

Omitting many others, enough that the sameness of this conception is ill.u.s.trated by the myth of Tupa, highest G.o.d and first man of the Tupis of Brazil. During his incarnation, he taught them agriculture, gave them fire, the cane, and the pisang, and now in the form of a huge bird sweeps over the heavens, watching his children and watering their crops, admonis.h.i.+ng them of his presence by the mighty sound of his voice, the rustling of his wings, and the flash of his eye. These are the thunder, the lightning, and the roar of the tempest. He is depicted with horns; he was one of four brothers, and only after a desperate struggle did he drive his fraternal rivals from the field. In his wors.h.i.+p, the priests place pebbles in a dry gourd, deck it with feathers and arrows, and rattling it vigorously, reproduce in miniature the tremendous drama of the storm.[152-2]

As nations rose in civilization these fancies put on a more complex form and a more poetic fulness. Throughout the realm of the Incas the Peruvians venerated as creator of all things, maker of heaven and earth, and ruler of the firmament, the G.o.d Ataguju. The legend was that from him proceeded the first of mortals, the man Guamansuri, who descended to the earth and there seduced the sister of certain Guachemines, rayless ones, or Darklings, who then possessed it. For this crime they destroyed him, but their sister proved pregnant, and died in her labor, giving birth to two eggs. From these emerged the twin brothers, Apocatequil and Piguerao. The former was the more powerful. By touching the corpse of his mother he brought her to life, he drove off and slew the Guachemines, and, directed by Ataguju, released the race of Indians from the soil by turning it up with a spade of gold. For this reason they adored him as their maker. He it was, they thought, who produced the thunder and the lightning by hurling stones with his sling; and the thunderbolts that fall, said they, are his children. Few villages were willing to be without one or more of these. They were in appearance small, round, smooth stones, but had the admirable properties of securing fertility to the fields, protecting from lightning, and, by a transition easy to understand, were also adored as G.o.ds of the Fire, as well material as of the pa.s.sions, and were capable of kindling the dangerous flames of desire in the most frigid bosom. Therefore they were in great esteem as love charms.

Apocatequil's statue was erected on the mountains, with that of his mother on one hand, and his brother on the other. "He was Prince of Evil and the most respected G.o.d of the Peruvians. From Quito to Cuzco not an Indian but would give all he possessed to conciliate him. Five priests, two stewards, and a crowd of slaves served his image. And his chief temple was surrounded by a very considerable village whose inhabitants had no other occupation than to wait on him." In memory of these brothers, twins in Peru were deemed always sacred to the lightning, and when a woman or even a llama brought them forth, a fast was held and sacrifices offered to the two pristine brothers, with a chant commencing: _A chuchu cachiqui_, O Thou who causest twins, words mistaken by the Spaniards for the name of a deity.[154-1]

Garcila.s.so de la Vega, a descendant of the Incas, has preserved an ancient indigenous poem of his nation, presenting the storm myth in a different form, which as undoubtedly authentic and not devoid of poetic beauty I translate, preserving as much as possible the trochaic tetrasyllabic verse of the original Quichua:--

"Beauteous princess, Lo, thy brother Breaks thy vessel Now in fragments.

From the blow come Thunder, lightning, Strokes of lightning.

And thou, princess, Tak'st the water, With it rainest, And the hail, or Snow dispensest.

Viracocha, World constructor, World enliv'ner, To this office Thee appointed, Thee created."[155-1]

In this pretty waif that has floated down to us from the wreck of a literature now forever lost, there is more than one point to attract the notice of the antiquary. He may find in it a hint to decipher those names of divinities so common in Peruvian legends, Contici and Illatici.

Both mean "the Thunder Vase," and both doubtless refer to the conception here displayed of the phenomena of the thunder-storm.[155-2]

Again, twice in this poem is the triple nature of the storm adverted to.

This is observable in many of the religions of America. It const.i.tutes a sort of Trinity, not in any point resembling that of Christianity, nor yet the Trimurti of India, but the only one in the New World the least degree authenticated, and which, as half seen by ignorant monks, has caused its due amount of sterile astonishment. Thus, in the Quiche legends we read: "The first of Hurakan is the lightning, the second the track of the lightning, and the third the stroke of the lightning; and these three are Hurakan, the Heart of the Sky."[156-1] It reappears with characteristic uniformity of outline in Iroquois mythology. Heno, the thunder, gathers the clouds and pours out the warm rains. Therefore he was the patron of husbandry. He was invoked at seed time and harvest; and as purveyor of nourishment he was addressed as grandfather, and his wors.h.i.+ppers styled themselves his grandchildren. He rode through the heavens on the clouds, and the thunderbolts which split the forest trees were the stones he hurled at his enemies. _Three_ a.s.sistants were a.s.signed him, whose names have unfortunately not been recorded, and whose offices were apparently similar to those of the three companions of Hurakan.[156-2]

So also the Aztecs supposed that Tlaloc, G.o.d of rains and the waters, ruler of the terrestrial paradise and the season of summer, manifested himself under the three attributes of the flash, the thunderbolt, and the thunder.[157-1]

But this conception of three in one was above the comprehension of the ma.s.ses, and consequently these deities were also spoken of as fourfold in nature, three _and_ one. Moreover, as has already been pointed out, the thunder G.o.d was usually ruler of the winds, and thus another reason for his quadruplicate nature was suggested. Hurakan, Haokah, Tlaloc, and probably Heno, are plural as well as singular nouns, and are used as nominatives to verbs in both numbers. Tlaloc was appealed to as inhabiting each of the cardinal points and every mountain top. His statue rested on a square stone pedestal, facing the east, and had in one hand a serpent of gold. Ribbons of silver, crossing to form squares, covered the robe, and the s.h.i.+eld was composed of feathers of four colors, yellow, green, red, and blue. Before it was a vase containing all sorts of grain; and the clouds were called his companions, the winds his messengers.[157-2] As elsewhere, the thunderbolts were believed to be flints, and thus, as the emblem of fire and the storm, this stone figures conspicuously in their myths. Tohil, the G.o.d who gave the Quiches fire by shaking his sandals, was represented by a flint-stone.

He is distinctly said to be the same as Quetzalcoatl, one of whose commonest symbols was a flint (tecpatl). Such a stone, in the beginning of things, fell from heaven to earth, and broke into 1600 pieces, each of which sprang up a G.o.d;[158-1] an ancient legend, which shadows forth the subjection of all things to him who gathers the clouds from the four corners of the earth, who thunders with his voice, who satisfies with his rain "the desolate and waste ground, and causes the tender herb to spring forth." This is the germ of the adoration of stones as emblems of the fecundating rains. This is why, for example, the Navajos use as their charm for rain certain long round stones, which they think fall from the cloud when it thunders.[158-2]

Mixcoatl, the Cloud Serpent, or Iztac-Mixcoatl, the White or Gleaming Cloud Serpent, said to have been the only divinity of the ancient Chichimecs, held in high honor by the Nahuas, Nicaraguans, and Otomis, and identical with Taras, supreme G.o.d of the Tarascos and Camaxtli, G.o.d of the Teo-Chichimecs, is another personification of the thunder-storm.

To this day this is the familiar name of the tropical tornado in the Mexican language.[158-3] He was represented, like Jove, with a bundle of arrows in his hand, the thunderbolts. Both the Nahuas and Tarascos related legends in which he figured as father of the race of man. Like other lords of the lightning he was wors.h.i.+pped as the dispenser of riches and the patron of traffic; and in Nicaragua his image is described as being "engraved stones,"[158-4] probably the supposed products of the thunder.

FOOTNOTES:

[124-1] A. D'Orbigny, _L'Homme Americain_, i. p. 240.

[125-1] Rivero and Tschudi, _Peruvian Antiquities_, 162, after J. Acosta.

[125-2] Narrative of _Oceola Nikkanoche, Prince of Econchatti_, p. 141; Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, iv. p. 650.

[126-1] The term in Maya is _caput zihil_, corresponding exactly to the Latin _renasci_, to be re-born, Landa, _Rel. de Yucatan_, p. 144.

[126-2] Dumont, _Mems. Hist. sur la Louisiane_, i. p. 233.

[127-1] Acosta, _Hist. of the New World_, lib. v. cap. 25.

[127-2] _Senate Report on Condition of Indian Tribes_, p. 358: Was.h.i.+ngton, 1867.

[128-1] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. vi. cap. 37.

[128-2] Ternaux-Compans, _Pieces rel. a la Conq. du Mexique_, p. 233.

[128-3] Velasco, _Hist. de la Royaume de Quito_, p. 106, and others.

[128-4] Whipple, _Rep. on the Indian Tribes_, p. 35. I am not sure that this practice was of native growth to the Cherokees. This people have many customs and traditions strangely similar to those of Christians and Jews. Their cosmogony is a paraphrase of that of Genesis (Squier, _Serp.

Symbol_, from Payne's MSS.); the number seven is as sacred with them as it was with the Chaldeans (Whipple, u. s.); and they have improved and increased by contact with the whites. Significant in this connection is the remark of Bartram, who visited them in 1773, that some of their females were "nearly as fair and blooming as European women," and generally that their complexion was lighter than their neighbors (_Travels_, p. 485). Two explanations of these facts may be suggested.

They may be descendants in part of the ancient white race near Cape Hatteras, to whom I have referred in a previous note. More probably they derived their peculiarities from the Spaniards of Florida. Mr. Shea is of opinion that missions were established among them as early as 1566 and 1643 (_Hist. of Catholic Missions in the U. S._, pp. 58, 73). Certainly in the latter half of the seventeenth century the Spaniards were prosecuting mining operations in their territory (See _Am. Hist. Mag._, x. p. 137).

[129-1] Sprague, _Hist. of the Florida War_, p. 328.

[129-2] Basanier, _Histoire Notable de la Floride_, p. 10.

[130-1] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. iii. app. cap. i.; Meyen, _Ueber die Ureinwohner von Peru_, p. 29.

[130-2] Gabriel Thomas, _Hist. of West New Jersey_, p. 6: London, 1698.

[131-1] Gama, _Des. de las dos Piedras_, etc., i. p. 36.

[131-2] Garcia, _Or. de los Indios_, p. 109.

[131-3] Oviedo, _Rel. de la Prov. de Nicaragua_, p. 41. The name is a corruption of the Aztec _Quiauhteotl_, Rain-G.o.d.

[132-1] Gumilla, _Hist. del Orinoco_, ii. cap. 23.

[132-2] _Doc. Hist. of New York_, iv. p. 130.

[132-3] Gama, _Des. de las dos Piedras_, ii. p. 41; Gallatin, _Trans. Am.

Ethnol. Soc._, i. p. 343.

[133-1] Adrian Van Helmont, _Workes_, p. 142, fol.: London, 1662.

[133-2] The moon is _nipa_ or _nipaz_; _nipa_, I sleep; _nipawi_, night; _nip_, I die; _nepua_, dead; _nipanoue_, cold. This odd relations.h.i.+p was first pointed out by Volney (Duponceau, _Langues de l'Amerique du Nord_, p. 317). But the kins.h.i.+p of these words to that for water, _nip_, _nipi_, _nepi_, has not before been noticed. This proves the a.s.sociation of ideas on which I lay so much stress in mythology. A somewhat similar relations.h.i.+p exists in the Aztec and cognate languages, _miqui_, to die, _micqui_, dead, _mictlan_, the realm of death, _te-miqui_, to dream, _cec-miqui_, to freeze. Would it be going too far to connect these with _metzli_, moon? (See Buschmann, _Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im Nordlichen Mexico_, p. 80.)

[133-3] Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, vol. iii. p. 485.

[134-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1634, p. 16.