Creation Myths of Primitive America Part 1

Creation Myths of Primitive America.

by Jeremiah Curtin.

DEDICATION

_To_

MAJOR J. W. POWELL,

_Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, LL.D.

of Harvard and Heidelberg:_

Sir,--You lost your right hand in fighting to save American unity; but though the hand went from you its cunning remained, with the power to plan and to execute.

The same kind of impulse that sent you to the field of battle to serve the country and the world, sent you to the field of science to serve as a geologist and an explorer in the majestic region of the Colorado, and finally brought you to found the Bureau of Ethnology. Through your labors, combined with those of the men whom you have a.s.sociated with you, the world has learned more of the great primitive race of our country than it learned from the discovery of the continent till the day when the Bureau was founded.

I beg to inscribe this book to you as a mark of my respect and friendship.

JEREMIAH CURTIN.

INTRODUCTION

[Decoration]

The creation myths of America form a complete system; they give a detailed and circ.u.mstantial account of the origin of this world and of all things and creatures contained in it. In the course of the various narratives which compose this myth system an earlier world is described to us, with an order of existence and a method of conduct on which the life of primitive man in America was patterned.

That earlier world had two periods of duration,--one of complete and perfect harmony; another of violence, collision, and conflict. The result and outcome of the second period was the creation of all that is animated on earth except man. Man, in the American scheme of creation, stands apart and separate; he is quite alone, peculiar, and special. Above all, he belongs to this continent. The white man was unknown to American myth-makers, as were also men of every other race and of every region outside of the Western Hemisphere.

Described briefly and by an Indian, the American myth system is as follows: "There was a world before this one in which we are living at present; that was the world of the first people, who were different from us altogether. Those people were very numerous, so numerous that if a count could be made of all the stars in the sky, all the feathers on birds, all the hairs and fur on animals, all the hairs of our own heads, they would not be so numerous as the first people."

These people lived very long in peace, in concord, in harmony, in happiness. No man knows, no man can tell, how long they lived in that way. At last the minds of all except a very small number were changed; they fell into conflict,--one offended another consciously or unconsciously, one injured another with or without intention, one wanted some special thing, another wanted that very thing also.

Conflict set in, and because of this came a time of activity and struggle, to which there was no end or stop till the great majority of the first people--that is, all except a small number--were turned into the various kinds of living creatures that are on earth now or have ever been on earth, except man,--that is, all kinds of beasts, birds, reptiles, fish, worms, and insects, as well as trees, plants, gra.s.ses, rocks, and some mountains; they were turned into everything that we see on the earth or in the sky.

That small number of the former people who did not quarrel, those great first people of the old time who remained of one mind and harmonious, "left the earth, sailed away westward, pa.s.sed that line where the sky comes down to the earth and touches it, sailed to places beyond; stayed there or withdrew to upper regions and lived in them happily, lived in agreement, live so to-day, and will live in the same way hereafter."

The American system, as we see, begins with an unknown great, indefinite number of uncreated beings,--in other words, of self-existent personages or divinities. Those divinities were everything at first; there was nothing except them, nothing aside from them, nothing beyond them. They existed unchanged through untold periods, or rather through a duration which would be periods were there a measure by which to divide it. They lived side by side in perfect concord, in the repose of a primeval chaos of quiescent mind which presents a most remarkable a.n.a.logy with the attenuated, quiescent, undifferentiated matter which, according to the nebular hypothesis, filled all points of s.p.a.ce in the physical universe before the first impulse of motion was given to it.

At last this long period is ended, there is mental difference among most of the first people, character is evolved and has become evident; rivalries, collisions, and conflicts begin.

The American creation myths, as far as we know them, form simply a series of accounts of the conflicts, happenings, and various methods by which the first world was changed into the world now existing. This change was effected in various ways. In the myths of certain tribes or nations, it is mainly by struggles between hostile personages. One G.o.d of great power and character overcomes a vast number of opponents, and changes each into some beast, bird, plant, or insect; but always the resultant beast or other creature corresponds in some power of mind or in some leading quality of character with the G.o.d from whose position it has fallen. In certain single cases opponents are closely matched, they are nearly equal in combat; the struggle between them is long, uncertain, and difficult. At last, when one side is triumphant, the victor says, "Hereafter you will be nothing but a ----"; and he tells what the vanquished is to be. But at this point the vanquished turns on the victor and sends his retort like a Parthian arrow, "You will be nothing but a ----"; and he declares what his enemy is to be. The metamorphosis takes place immediately on both sides, and each departs in the form which the enemy seemed to impose, but which really belonged to him.

There are cases in which the hero transforms numerous and mighty enemies indirectly through a special wish which he possesses. For example, a certain myth hero brings it about that a large company of the first people are invited to a feast, and while all are eating with great relish he slips out unnoted, walks around the house, and utters, as he goes, the magic formula: "I wish the walls of this house to be flint, the roof also." Next moment the whole house is flint-walled, the roof is flint also. After that he says, "I wish this house to be red-hot." It is red-hot immediately. His enemies inside are in a dreadful predicament; they rush about wildly, they roar, they look for an opening; there is none, they see no escape, they find no issue.

Their heads burst from heat. Out of one head springs an owl, and flies away through the smoke-hole; out of another a buzzard, which escapes through the same place; out of the third comes a hawk, which follows the other two; out of a fourth some other bird. Thus the action continues till every head in the flint house bursts open and lets out its occupant. All fly away, and thus the whole company is metamorphosed. Each turns into that which his qualities called for, which his nature demanded; he becomes outwardly and visibly that which before he had been internally and in secret.

The hero in the above case could not wish his opponents metamorphosed directly, he could not wish this whenever he pleased or wherever he met the great company; he had to induce them to enter the house, which he turned by his wish into flint and then heated. When the moment of terrible anguish came on them, the true nature of each of those people grew evident; each head burst open, and out sprang the real person.

All those of the first people whose minds had been modified, who, so to speak, had grown specialized internally, who were different from that which they had been to start with, were forced to change also externally, and could not escape or avoid that great power whose shadow was approaching; their destiny was on them, and they felt it.

In the Wintu system, one of the two which are set forth in this volume, nearly all changes were effected by Olelbis; but there are examples of agents with other means. Tulchuherris turns old Tichelis into a ground-squirrel at the climax of his perfidy. He changes Hawt, the porter at the dangerous river, into a lamprey eel, whose children are to be eaten by Indians in the future. Old Sas, the false and vain chief in Saskewil, is beaten by his son-in-law, and receives his present form of sun and moon at the end of a long and bitter struggle, in which strength, wit, and keenness use the very last of their resources.

There are cases in which some of the first people are so modified mentally that they are conscious of what has happened within them.

They are ready for the change, they are willing to undergo it; but there is no immediate occasion, no impending struggle in which an opponent could have the chance to transform them. These people transform themselves by the utterance of a wish, and produce their own metamorphoses. There are still others who know, as do all, that a new race is coming, that they will be changed when it comes unless they are changed some time earlier. They know that they must be changed as soon as they see the new people or a sign or a mark of their coming.

These unchanged first people, few in number comparatively, attempt to escape; but their attempts are vain, their efforts are useless. In the distant east they see smoke from the fires of the advancing new people, the Indians of America, or hear the barking of the dogs of this people, and that instant they receive the forms which are due them. Others escape for a season and hide in dark places; but the Indians go everywhere, and the metamorphoses continue till the career of the first people is ended.

I have in mind at this moment a representative picture of this last group of persons who were unwilling to be metamorphosed and strove to avoid the new race, the inevitable Indians. They had no desire to see men, and they fled to all sorts of lonely retreats and remote forest places. At a certain point on the Klamath is a rough mountain slope which rises abruptly from the water; far up, well toward the ridge, about seven-eighths of the way from the river to the summit, is a bulky high stone which seen from a distance looks much like a statue.

Close behind is another stone, somewhat smaller, which leans forward in the posture of a person hastening eagerly. Both are white and shining; they have the appearance of quartz rock. These were two sisters hastening, rushing away to escape the coming change. When they reached the points where they are standing at present, the foremost sister looked toward the east and saw smoke; the second did not look, but she heard the distant barking of dogs which came from the place where the smoke was; both were changed into stone that same instant.

With the transformation of the last of the first people or divinities, which was finished only when the Indians or some sign of them appeared in every remote nook and corner in which a remnant of the first people had taken refuge, the present order of things is established completely. There are now in the world individualities of three distinct sets and orders. First, that small number of the first people whose minds had never changed, those G.o.ds who withdrew and who live in their original integrity and harmony, who retired to places outside the sky or above it; second, the great majority of the G.o.ds, who have become everything in the present world save and except only Indians.

This cycle finished, there is a new point of departure, and we meet a second group of myths concerning the existent world as it is now with its happenings,--myths containing accounts of conflicts which are ever recurrent, which began before all the first people were metamorphosed, conflicts which are going on at present and which will go on forever; struggles between light and darkness, heat and cold, summer and winter, struggles between winds which blow in opposite directions,--in fact, accounts of various phenomena and processes which attract the attention of savage men more than others because savage men are living face to face with them always.

This second group contains a large number of myths, many of them exceedingly beautiful and, so far as they are known, highly pleasing to cultivated people. Unfortunately few of these myths have been given to the world yet, for the sole and simple reason that comparatively few have been collected from the Indians.

The first cycle of myths--that is, those which refer to creation, in other words to the metamorphoses of the first people or G.o.ds into everything which is in the world, including the world itself--is succeeded by another in which are described the various changes, phenomena, and processes observed throughout nature.

In this second cycle, as I have just stated, light and darkness, heat and cold, opposing winds, heavenly bodies appear as heroes and leading actors. For ages the reverence, sympathy, and enthusiasm of primitive men have been given to those heroes, and are given to them yet, by every tribe which preserves its ancient beliefs and ideas.

In this cycle is one small group of myths which to the Indian is very sacred, a group which in many tribes is revered beyond others. This group a.s.sociates the earth with the sky and sun considered as one person, or the sky and sun considered as distinct from each other. To these are added one, and sometimes two personages born of the earth.

In the simplest version of this myth the earth maiden through being looked at by the sun becomes a mother, gives birth to a great hero, the chief benefactor of Indians. This hero gives the race all gifts that support existence, and it is through him that men live and prosper. Under whatever name he appears this benefactor is really that warm light which we see quivering, waving, and dancing above the earth in fine weather. He is the son of the virgin earth, of that mother who has never known a consort save the one who looked from the height of heaven on her.

The lives of the first people are described in creation myths, and presented as models upon which faithful Indians are to fashion their lives at all times and places. All inst.i.tutions of primitive man in America were patterned upon those of "the first people." Every act of an Indian in peace or in war, as an individual or as a member of a tribe, had its only sanction in the world of the first people, the American divinities.

There was not on this continent one inst.i.tution, observance, right, or custom which was not G.o.d-given, theoretically. The Indians of America always acted in a prescribed manner on a given occasion, because the G.o.ds of the world which preceded this had acted in the same manner in similar conditions and circ.u.mstances.

No people could be more religious than those of this continent, for there was no act of any kind in life during which they were free of religious direction. The source of this religion is in the myths, and in the explanations concerning them given by wise men,--in other words, by sorcerers.

What shall we say of this Indian system, and what is its value?

The first to be said is that it is complete, and for every Indian believer well-founded and symmetrically developed. In the primitive religion of America there is no speculation, all is simple statement; there are no abstractions, qualities are always connected with persons.

Indians believe that the whole immense body of myths was delivered to them by the first people in one place or another. Among the Iroquois there is a detailed account of how myths were told to an ancient chief and an a.s.sembly of the people on a circular open s.p.a.ce in a deep forest. On this s.p.a.ce was a large wheel-shaped stone. From beneath this stone came a voice which told the tale of the former world, told how the first people had become what they are at present.

Day after day the chief and the people came to the stone, sat, and listened till the whole cycle of tales was narrated.

On the Lower Klamath is a very old, immense tree, which has given an account of the first world and people. This tree itself is one of the first people metamorphosed; no one knows what its age is. Sorcerers go to it yearly, hold converse, put questions, receive answers. Each year a small stone is added to a pile in which there are thousands of pebbles, apparently. This pile stands near the tree; no one is permitted to count the stones in it. The pile is sacred; once a stone is placed with the others, it must stay there forever.

This sacred tree has told tales of the first world,--the tales known to Weitspekan Indians and revered by them.

On the Upper Columbia is a great rock which resembles an elk somewhat.

This rock is also an oracle, one of the first people; like the round stone of the Iroquois, it has told of the first world, and its tales all belong to the Shahaptians.

The Indian system has its plain and clear revelation; for believers it has tangible and undoubted connection with the world which preceded the present one. Its narratives explain how in one place and another the first people revealed the tale of the world's transformation.