American Hero-Myths Part 20

In his form as Bochica, he is represented as the supreme male divinity, whose female a.s.sociate is the Rainbow, Cuchaviva, G.o.ddess of rains and waters, of the fertility of the fields, of medicine, and of child-bearing in women, a relationship which I have already explained.[1]

[Footnote 1: The princ.i.p.al authority for the mythology of the Mayscas, or Chibchas, is Padre Pedro Simon, _Noticias Historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra Firme en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, Pt. iv, caps. ii, iii, iv, printed in Kingsborough, _Mexican Antiquities_, vol. viii, and Piedrahita as above quoted.]

Wherever the widespread Tupi-Guaranay race extended--from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the boundless plains of the Pampas, north to the northernmost islands of the West Indian Archipelago--the early explorers found the natives piously attributing their knowledge of the arts of life to a venerable and benevolent old man whom they called "Our Ancestor,"

_Tamu_, or _Tume_, or _Zume_.

The early Jesuit missionaries to the Guaranis and affiliated tribes of Paraguay and southern Brazil, have much to say of this personage, and some of them were convinced that he could have been no other than the Apostle St. Thomas on his proselytizing journey around the world.

The legend was that Pay Zume, as he was called in Paraguay (_Pay_ = magician, diviner, priest), came from the East, from the Sun-rising, in years long gone by. He instructed the people in the arts of hunting and agriculture, especially in the culture and preparation of the manioca plant, their chief source of vegetable food. Near the city of a.s.sumption is situated a lofty rock, around which, says the myth, he was accustomed to gather the people, while he stood above them on its summit, and delivered his instructions and his laws, just as did Quetzalcoatl from the top of the mountain Tzatzitepec, the Hill of Shouting. The spot where he stood is still marked by the impress of his feet, which the pious natives of a later day took pride in pointing out as a convincing proof that their ancestors received and remembered the preachings of St. Thomas.[1] This was not a suggestion of their later learning, but merely a christianized term given to their authentic ancient legend. As early as 1552, when Father Emanuel n.o.brega was visiting the missions of Brazil, he heard the legend, and learned of a locality where not only the marks of the feet, but also of the hands of the hero-G.o.d had been indelibly impressed upon the hard rock. Not satisfied with the mere report, he visited the spot and saw them with his own eyes, but indulged in some skepticism as to their origin.[2]

[Footnote 1: "Juxta Paraquariae metropolim rupes utc.u.mque cuspidata, sed in modicam planitiem desinens cernitur, in cujus summitate vestigia pedum humanorum saxo impressa adhuc manent, affirmantibus constanter indigenis, ex eo loco Apostolum Thomam mult.i.tudini undequaque ad eum audiendum confluenti solitum fuisse legem divinam tradere: et addunt mandiocae, ex qua farinam suam ligneam conficiunt, plantandae rationem ab eodem accep.i.s.se." P. Nicolao del Techo, _Historia Provincial Paraquariae Societatis Jesu_, Lib. vi, cap. iv (folio, Leodii, 1673).]

[Footnote 2: "Ipse abii," he writes in his well known Letter, "et propriis oculis inspexi, quatuor pedum et digitorum satis alte impressa vestigia, quae nonnunquam aqua excrescens cooperit." The reader will remember the similar event in the history of Quetzalcoatl (see above, chapter iii, --3)]

The story was that wherever this hero-G.o.d walked, he left behind him a well-marked path, which was permanent, and as the Muyscas of New Granada pointed out the path of Bochica, so did the Guaranays that of Zume, which the missionaries regarded "not without astonishment."[1] He lived a certain length of time with his people and then left them, going back over the ocean toward the East, according to some accounts. But according to others, he was driven away by his stiff-necked and unwilling auditors, who had become tired of his advice. They pursued him to the bank of a river, and there, thinking that the quickest riddance of him was to kill him, they discharged their arrows at him. But he caught the arrows in his hand and hurled them back, and dividing the waters of the river by his divine power he walked between them to the other bank, dry-shod, and disappeared from their view in the distance.

[Footnote 1: "E Brasilia in Guairaniam euntibus spectabilis adhuc semita viditur, quam ab Sancto Thoma ideo incolae vocant, quod per eam Apostolus iter fecisse credatur; quae semita quovis anni tempore eumdem statum conservat, modice in ea crescendibus herbis, ab adjacenti campo multum herbescenti prorsus dissimilibus, praebetque speciem viae artificiose ductae; quam Socii nostri Guairaniam excolentes persaepe non sine stupore perspexisse se testantur." Nicolao del Techo, _ubi supra_, Lib. vi, cap.

iv.

The connection of this myth with the course of the sun in the sky, "the path of the bright G.o.d," as it is called in the Veda, appears obvious. So also in later legend we read of the wonderful slot or trail of the dragon Fafnir across the Glittering Heath, and many cognate instances, which mythologists now explain by the same reference.]

Like all the hero-G.o.ds, he left behind him the well-remembered promise that at some future day he should return to them, and that a race of men should come in time, to gather them into towns and rule them in peace.[1]

These predictions were carefully noted by the missionaries, and regarded as the "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" of the advent of Christianity; but to me they bear too unmistakably the stamp of the light-myth I have been following up in so many localities of the New World for me to entertain a doubt about their origin and meaning.

[Footnote 1: "Ilium quoque pollicitum fuisse, se aliquando has regiones revisurum." Father n.o.brega, _ubi supra_. For the other particulars I have given see Nicolao del Techo, _Historia Provinciae Paraquariae_, Lib. vi, cap. iv, "De D. Thomae Apostoli itineribus;" and P. Antonio Ruiz, _Conquista Espiritual hecha por los Religiosos de la Compania de Jesus en las Provincias del Paraguay, Parana, Uruguay y Tape_, fol. 29, 30 (4to., Madrid, 1639). The remarkable ident.i.ty of the words relating to their religious beliefs and observances throughout this widespread group of tribes has been demonstrated and forcibly commented on by Alcide D'Orbigny, _L'Homme Americain_, vol. ii, p. 277. The Vicomte de Porto Seguro identifies Zume with the _Cemi_ of the Antilles, and this etymology is at any rate not so fanciful as most of those he gives in his imaginative work, _L'Origine Touranienne des Americaines Tupis-Caribes_, p. 62 (Vienna, 1876).]

I have not yet exhausted the sources from which I could bring evidence of the widespread presence of the elements of this mythical creation in America. But probably I have said enough to satisfy the reader on this point. At any rate it will be sufficient if I close the list with some manifest fragments of the myth, picked out from the confused and generally modern reports we have of the religions of the Athabascan race. This stem is one of the most widely distributed in North America, extending across the whole continent south of the Eskimos, and scattered toward the warmer lat.i.tudes quite into Mexico. It is low down in the intellectual scale, its component tribes are usually migratory savages, and its dialects are extremely synthetic and of difficult phonetics, requiring as many as sixty-five letters for their proper orthography. No wonder, therefore, that we have but limited knowledge of their mental life.

Conspicuous in their myths is the tale of the Two Brothers. These mysterious beings are upon the earth before man appears. Though alone, they do not agree, and the one attacks and slays the other. Another brother appears on the scene, who seems to be the one slain, who has come to life, and the two are given wives by the Being who was the Creator of things. These two women were perfectly beautiful, but invisible to the eyes of mortals. The one was named, The Woman of the Light or The Woman of the Morning; the other was the Woman of Darkness or the Woman of Evening.

The brothers lived together in one tent with these women, who each in turn went out to work. When the Woman of Light was at work, it was daytime; when the Woman of Darkness was at her labors, it was night.

In the course of time one of the brothers disappeared and the other determined to select a wife from one of the two women, as it seems he had not yet chosen. He watched what the Woman of Darkness did in her absence, and discovered that she descended into the waters and enjoyed the embraces of a monster, while the Woman of Light pa.s.sed her time in feeding white birds. In course of time the former brought forth black man-serpents, while the Woman of Light was delivered of beautiful boys with white skins.

The master of the house killed the former with his arrows, but preserved the latter, and marrying the Woman of Light, became the father of the human race, and especially of the Dene Dindjie, who have preserved the memory of him.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Monographie des Dene Dindjie, par_ C.R.P.E. Pet.i.tot, pp.

84-87 (Paris, 1876). Elsewhere the writer says: "Tout d'abord je dois rappeler mon observation que presque toujours, dans les traditions Dene, le couple primitif se compose de _deux freres_." Ibid., p. 62.]

In another myth of this stock, clearly a version of the former, this father of the race is represented as a mighty bird, called _Yel_, or _Yale_, or _Orelbale_, from the root _ell_, a term they apply to everything supernatural. He took to wife the daughter of the Sun (the Woman of Light), and by her begat the race of man. He formed the dry land for a place for them to live upon, and stocked the rivers with salmon, that they might have food. When he enters his nest it is day, but when he leaves it it is night; or, according to another myth, he has the two women for wives, the one of whom makes the day, the other the night.

In the beginning Yel was white in plumage, but he had an enemy, by name _Cannook_, with whom he had various contests, and by whose machinations he was turned black. Yel is further represented as the G.o.d of the winds and storms, and of the thunder and lightning.[1]

[Footnote 1: For the extent and particulars of this myth, many of the details of which I omit, see Pet.i.tot, _ubi supra_, pp. 68, 87, note; Matthew Macfie. _Travels in Vancouver Island and British Columbia_, pp.

452-455 (London, 1865); and J.K. Lord, _The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia_ (London, 1866). It is referred to by Mackenzie and other early writers.]

Thus we find, even in this extremely low specimen of the native race, the same basis for their mythology as in the most cultivated nations of Central America. Not only this; it is the same basis upon which is built the major part of the sacred stories of all early religions, in both continents; and the excellent Father Pet.i.tot, who is so much impressed by these resemblances that he founds upon them a learned argument to prove that the Dene are of oriental extraction,[1] would have written more to the purpose had his acquaintance with American religions been as extensive as it was with those of Asiatic origin.

[Footnote 1: See his "Essai sur l'Origine des Dene-Dindjie," in his _Monographie_, above quoted.]

There is one point in all these myths which I wish to bring out forcibly.

That is, the distinction which is everywhere drawn between the G.o.d of Light and the Sun. Unless this distinction is fully comprehended, American mythology loses most of its meaning.

The a.s.sertion has been so often repeated, even down to the latest writers, that the American Indians were nearly all sun-worshipers, that I take pains formally to contradict it. Neither the Sun nor the Spirit of the Sun was their chief divinity.

Of course, the daily history of the appearance and disappearance of light is intimately connected with the apparent motion of the sun. Hence, in the myths there is often a seeming identification of the two, which I have been at no pains to avoid. But the ident.i.ty is superficial only; it entirely disappears in other parts of the myth, and the conceptions, as fundamentally distinct, must be studied separately, to reach accurate results. It is an easy, but by no means a profound method of treating these religions, to dismiss them all by the facile explanations of "animism," and "sun and moon worship."

I have said, and quoted strong authority to confirm the opinion, that the native tribes of America have lost ground in morals and have retrograded in their religious life since the introduction of Christianity. Their own faiths, though lower in form, had in them the germs of a religious and moral evolution, more likely, with proper regulation, to lead these people to a higher plane of thought than the Aryan doctrines which were forced upon them.

This may seem a daring, even a heterodox a.s.sertion, but I think that most modern ethnologists will agree that it is no more possible for races in all stages of culture and of widely different faculties to receive with benefit any one religion, than it is for them to thrive under one form of government, or to adopt with advantage one uniform plan of building houses. The moral and religious life is a growth, and the brash wood of ancient date cannot be grafted on the green stem. It is well to remember that the heathendoms of America were very far from wanting living seeds of sound morality and healthy mental education. I shall endeavor to point this out in a few brief paragraphs.

In their origin in the human mind, religion and morality have nothing in common. They are even antagonistic. At the root of all religions is the pa.s.sionate desire for the widest possible life, for the most unlimited exercise of all the powers. The basis of all morality is self-sacrifice, the willingness to give up our wishes to the will of another. The criterion of the power of a religion is its ability to command this sacrifice; the criterion of the excellence of a religion is the extent to which its commands coincide with the good of the race, with the lofty standard of the "categorical imperative."

With these axioms well in mind, we can advance with confidence to examine the claims of a religion. It will rise in the scale just in proportion as its behests, were they universally adopted, would permanently increase the happiness of the human race.

In their origin, as I have said, morality and religion are opposites; but they are opposites which inevitably attract and unite. The first lesson of all religions is that we gain by giving, that to secure any end we must sacrifice something. This, too, is taught by all social intercourse, and, therefore, an acute German psychologist has set up the formula," All manners are moral,"[1] because they all imply a subjection of the personal will of the individual to the general will of those who surround him, as expressed in usage and custom.

[Footnote 1: "Alle Sitten sind sittlich." Lazarus, _Ursprung der Sitte_, S. 5, quoted by Roskoff. I hardly need mention that our word _morality_, from _mos_, means by etymology, simply what is customary and of current usage. The moral man is he who conforms himself to the opinions of the majority. This is also at the basis of Robert Browning's definition of a people: "A people is but the attempt of many to rise to the completer life of one" (_A Soul's Tragedy_).]

Even the religion which demands b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, which forces its votaries to futile and abhorrent rites, is at least training its adherents in the virtues of obedience and renunciation, in endurance and confidence.

But concerning American religions I need not have recourse to such a questionable vindication. They held in them far n.o.bler elements, as is proved beyond cavil by the words of many of the earliest missionaries themselves. Bigoted and bitter haters of the native faiths, as they were, they discovered in them so much that was good, so much that approximated to the purer doctrines that they themselves came to teach, that they have left on record many an attempt to prove that there must, in some remote and unknown epoch, have come Christian teachers to the New World, St.

Thomas, St. Bartholomew, monks from Ireland, or Asiatic disciples, to acquaint the natives with such salutary doctrines. It is precisely in connection with the myths which I have been relating in this volume that these theories were put forth, and I have referred to them in various pa.s.sages.

The facts are as stated, but the credit of developing these elevated moral conceptions must not be refused to the red race. They are its own property, the legitimate growth of its own religious sense.

The hero-G.o.d, the embodiment of the Light of Day, is essentially a moral and beneficent creation. Whether his name be Michabo, Ioskeha, or Quetzalcoatl, Itzamna, Viracocha or Tamu, he is always the giver of laws, the instructor in the arts of social life, the founder of commonwealths, the patron of agriculture. He casts his influence in favor of peace, and against wars and deeds of violence. He punishes those who pursue iniquity, and he favors those who work for the good of the community.

In many instances he sets an example of chaste living, of strict temperance, of complete subjection of the l.u.s.ts and appet.i.tes. I have but to refer to what I have already said of the Maya Kukulcan and the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, to show this. Both are particularly noted as characters free from the taint of indulgence.

Thus it occurred that the early monks often express surprise that these, whom they chose to call savages and heathens, had developed a moral law of undeniable purity. "The matters that Bochica taught," says the chronicler Piedrahita, "were certainly excellent, inasmuch as these natives hold as right to do just the same that we do." "The priests of these Muyscas," he goes on to say, "lived most chastely and with great purity of life, insomuch that even in eating, their food was simple and of small quant.i.ty, and they refrained altogether from women and marriage. Did one transgress in this respect, he was dismissed from the priesthood."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Las cosas que el Bochica les ensenaba eran buenas, siendo a.s.si, que tenian por malo lo mismo que nosotros tenemos por tal."

Piedrahita, _Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, Lib. i, Cap. iii.]

The prayers addressed to these deities breathe as pure a spirit of devotion as many now heard in Christian lands. Change the names, and some of the formulas preserved by Christobal de Molina and Sahagun would not jar on the ears of a congregation in one of our own churches.

Although sanguinary rites were common, they were not usual in the worship of these highest divinities, but rather as propitiations to the demons of the darkness, or the spirits of the terrible phenomena of nature. The mild G.o.d of light did not demand them.

To appreciate the effect of all this on the mind of the race, let it be remembered that these culture-heroes were also the creators, the primal and most potent of divinities, and that usually many temples and a large corps of priests were devoted to their worship, at least in the nations of higher civilization. These votaries were engaged in keeping alive the myth, in impressing the supposed commands of the deity on the people, and in imitating him in example and precept. Thus they had formed a lofty ideal of man, and were publishing this ideal to their fellows. Certainly this could not fail of working to the good of the nation, and of elevating and purifying its moral conceptions.

That it did so we have ample evidence in the authentic accounts of the ancient society as it existed before the Europeans destroyed and corrupted it, and in the collections of laws, all distinctly stamped with the seal of religion, which have been preserved, as they were in vogue in Anahuac, Utatlan, Peru and other localities.[1] Any one who peruses these will see that the great moral principles, the radical doctrines of individual virtue, were clearly recognized and deliberately enforced as divine and civil precepts in these communities. Moreover, they were generally and cheerfully obeyed, and the people of many of these lands were industrious, peaceable, moral, and happy, far more so than they have ever been since.

[Footnote 1: The reader willing to pursue the argument further can find these collections of ancient American laws in Sahagun, _Historia de Nueva Espana_, for Mexico; in Geronimo Roman, _Republica de las Indias Occidentales_, for Utatlan and other nations; for Peru in the _Relacion del Origen, Descendencia, Politica, y Gobierno de los Incas, por el licenciado Fernando de Santillan_ (published at Madrid. 1879); and for the Muyscas, in Piedrahita, _Hist. Gen. del Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, Lib. ii, cap. v.]

There was also a manifest progress in the definition of the idea of G.o.d, that is, of a single infinite intelligence as the source and controlling power of phenomena. We have it on record that in Peru this was the direct fruit of the myth of Viracocha. It is related that the Inca Yupangui published to his people that to him had appeared Viracocha, with admonition that he alone was lord of the world, and creator of all things; that he had made the heavens, the sun, and man; and that it was not right that these, his works, should receive equal homage with himself.

Therefore, the Inca decreed that the image of Viracocha should thereafter be a.s.signed supremacy to those of all other divinities, and that no tribute nor sacrifice should be paid to him, for He was master of all the earth, and could take from it as he chose.[1] This was evidently a direct attempt on the part of an enlightened ruler to lift his people from a lower to a higher form of religion, from idolatry to theism. The Inca even went so far as to banish all images of Viracocha from his temples, so that this, the greatest of G.o.ds, should be worshiped as an immaterial spirit only.

[Footnote 1: P. Joseph de Acosta, _Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias_, Lib. vi, cap. 31 (Barcelona, 1591).]