Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume I Part 18

178). I have examined his arguments in the Nineteenth Century, January, 1886, which may be consulted, and in Melusine, January, 1887. The hare appears to be one out of the countless primeval beast-culture heroes. A curious piece of magic in a tradition of the Dene Hareskins may seem to aid Dr. Brinton's theory: "Pendant la nuit il entra, jeta au feu une tete de lievre blanc et aussitot le jour se fit".--Pet.i.tot, Traditions Indiennes, p. 173. But I take it that the sacrifice of a white hare's head makes light magically, as sacrifice of black beasts and columns of black smoke make rainclouds.

Some of the degraded Digger Indians of California have the following myth of the origin of species. In this legend, it will be noticed, a species of evolution takes the place of a theory of creation. The story was told to Mr. Adam Johnston, who "drew" the narrator by communicating to a chief the Biblical narrative of the creation.(1) The chief said it was a strange story, and one that he had never heard when he lived at the Mission of St. John under the care of a Padre. According to this chief (he ruled over the Po-to-yan-te tribe or Coyotes), the first Indians were coyotes. When one of their number died, his body became full of little animals or spirits. They took various shapes, as of deer, antelopes, and so forth; but as some exhibited a tendency to fly off to the moon, the Po-to-yan-tes now usually bury the bodies of their dead, to prevent the extinction of species. Then the Indians began to a.s.sume the shape of man, but it was a slow transformation. At first they walked on all fours, then they would begin to develop an isolated human feature, one finger, one toe, one eye, like the ascidian, our first parent in the view of modern science. Then they doubled their organs, got into the habit of sitting up, and wore away their tails, which they unaffectedly regret, "as they consider the tail quite an ornament".

Ideas of the immortality of the soul are said to be confined to the old women of the tribe, and, in short, according to this version, the Digger Indians occupy the modern scientific position.

(1) Schoolcraft, vol. v.

The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,(1) are suspected of having been influenced by the Biblical narrative. They say that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found himself sitting in a chair. As he was all alone, he took a piece of his body and a piece of earth, and made a man. He next made a woman, steadied the earth by placing beasts beneath it at the corners, and created plants and animals. Other men he made out of bears. "He created the white man to make tools for the poor Indians"--a very pleasing example of a teleological hypothesis and of the doctrine of final causes as understood by the Winnebagoes. The Chaldean myth of the making of man is recalled by the legend that the Great Spirit cut out a piece of himself for the purpose; the Chaldean wisdom coincides, too, with the philosophical ac.u.men of the Po-to-yan-te or Coyote tribe of Digger Indians. Though the Chaldean theory is only connected with that of the Red Men by its savagery, we may briefly state it in this place.

(1) Ibid., iv. 228.

According to Berosus, as reported by Alexander Polyhistor, the universe was originally (as before Manabozho's time) water and mud. Herein all manner of mixed monsters, with human heads, goat's horns, four legs, and tails, bred confusedly. In place of the Iroquois Ataentsic, a woman called Omoroca presided over the mud and the menagerie. She, too, like Ataentsic, is sometimes recognised as the moon. Affairs being in this state, Bel-Maruduk arrived and cut Omoroca in two (Chokanipok destroyed Ataentsic), and out of Omoroca Bel made the world and the things in it.

We have already seen that in savage myth many things are fashioned out of a dead member of the extra-natural race. Lastly, Bel cut his own head off, and with the blood the G.o.ds mixed clay and made men. The Chaldeans inherited very savage fancies.(1)

(1) Cf. Syncellus, p. 29; Euseb., Chronic. Armen., ed. Mai, p. 10; Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, i. 506.

One ought, perhaps, to apologise to the Chaldeans for inserting their myths among the fables of the least cultivated peoples; but it will scarcely be maintained that the Oriental myths differ in character from the Digger Indian and Iroquois explanations of the origin of things. The Ahts of Vancouver Island, whom Mr. Sproat knew intimately, and of whose ideas he gives a cautious account (for he was well aware of the limits of his knowledge), tell a story of the usual character.(1) They believe in a member of the extra-natural race, named Quawteaht, of whom we shall hear more in his heroic character. As a demiurge "he is undoubtedly represented as the general framer, I do not say creator, of all things, though some special things are excepted. He made the earth and water, the trees and rocks, and all the animals. Some say that Quawteaht made the sun and moon, but the majority of the Indians believe that he had nothing to do with their formation, and that they are deities superior to himself, though now distant and less active. He gave names to everything; among the rest, to all the Indian houses which then existed, although inhabited only by birds and animals. Quawteaht went away before the apparent change of the birds and beasts into Indians, which took place in the following manner:--

"The birds and beasts of old had the spirits of the Indians dwelling in them, and occupied the various coast villages, as the Ahts do at present. One day a canoe manned by two Indians from an unknown country approached the sh.o.r.e. As they coasted along, at each house at which they landed, the deer, bear, elk, and other brute inhabitants fled to the mountains, and the geese and other birds flew to the woods and rivers.

But in this flight, the Indians, who had hitherto been contained in the bodies of the various creatures, were left behind, and from that time they took possession of the deserted dwellings and a.s.sumed the condition in which we now see them."

(1) Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, pp. 210, 211.

Crossing the northern continent of America to the west, we are in the domains of various animal culture-heroes, ancestors and teachers of the human race and the makers, to some extent, of the things in the world.

As the eastern tribes have their Great Hare, so the western tribes have their wolf hero and progenitor, or their coyote, or their raven, or their dog. It is possible, and even certain in some cases, that the animal which was the dominant totem of a race became heir to any cosmogonic legends that were floating about.

The country of the Papagos, on the eastern side of the Gulf of California, is the southern boundary of the province of the coyote or prairie wolf. The realm of his influence as a kind of Prometheus, or even as a demiurge, extends very far northwards. In the myth related by Con Quien, the chief of the central Papagos,(1) the coyote acts the part of the fish in the Sanskrit legend of the flood, while Montezuma undertakes the role of Manu. This Montezuma was formed, like the Adams of so many races, out of potter's clay in the hands of the Great Spirit.

In all this legend it seems plain enough that the name of Montezuma is imported from Mexico, and has been arbitrarily given to the hero of the Papagos. According to Mr. Powers, whose ma.n.u.script notes Mr. Bancroft quotes (iii. 87), all the natives of California believe that their first ancestors were created directly from the earth of their present dwelling-places, and in very many cases these ancestors were coyotes.

(1) Davidson, Indian Affairs Report, 1865, p. 131; Bancroft, iii. 75.

The Pimas, a race who live near the Papagos on the eastern coast of the Gulf of California, say that the earth was made by a being named Earth-prophet. At first it appeared like a spider's web, reminding one of the West African legend that a great spider created the world.

Man was made by the Earth-prophet out of clay kneaded with sweat. A mysterious eagle and a deluge play a great part in the later mythical adventures of war and the world, as known to the Pimas.(1)

(1) Communicated to Mr. Bancroft by Mr. Stout of the Pima Agency.

In Oregon the coyote appears as a somewhat tentative demiurge, and the men of his creation, like the beings first formed by Praj.a.pati in the Sanskrit myth, needed to be reviewed, corrected and considerably augmented. The Chinooks of Oregon believe in the usual race of magnified non-natural men, who preceded humanity.

These semi-divine people were called Ulhaipa by the Chinooks, and Sehuiab by the Lummies. But the coyote was the maker of men. As the first of Nature's journeymen, he made men rather badly, with closed eyes and motionless feet. A kind being, named Ikanam, touched up the coyote's crude essays with a sharp stone, opening the eyes of men, and giving their hands and feet the powers of movement. He also acted as a "culture-hero," introducing the first arts. (1)

(1) (Frauchere's Narrative, 258; Gibb's Chinook Vocabulary; Parker's exploring Tour, i. 139;) Bancroft, iii. 96.

Moving up the West Pacific coast we reach British Columbia, where the coyote is not supposed to have been so active as our old friend the musk-rat in the great work of the creation. According to the Tacullies, nothing existed in the beginning but water and a musk-rat. As the animal sought his food at the bottom of the water, his mouth was frequently filled with mud. This he spat out, and so gradually formed by alluvial deposit an island. This island was small at first, like earth in the Sanskrit myth in the Satapatha Brahmana, but gradually increased in bulk. The Tacullies have no new light to throw on the origin of man.(1)

(1) Bancroft, iii. 98; Harmon's Journey, pp. 302, 303.

The Thlinkeets, who are neighbours of the Tacullies on the north, incline to give crow or raven the chief role in the task of creation, just as some Australians allot the same part to the eagle-hawk, and the Yakuts to a hawk, a crow and a teal-duck. We shall hear much of Yehl later, as one of the mythical heroes of the introduction of civilisation. North of the Thlinkeets, a bird and a dog take the creative duties, the Aleuts and Koniagas being descended from a dog.

Among the more northern Tinnehs, the dog who was the progenitor of the race had the power of a.s.suming the shape of a handsome young man. He supplied the protoplasm of the Tinnehs, as Purusha did that of the Aryan world, out of his own body. A giant tore him to pieces, as the G.o.ds tore Purusha, and out of the fragments thrown into the rivers came fish, the fragments tossed into the air took life as birds, and so forth.(1) This recalls the Australian myth of the origin of fish and the Ananzi stories of the origin of whips.(2)

(1) Hearne, pp. 342, 343; Bancroft, iii. 106.

(2) See "Divine Myths of Lower Races". M. Cosquin, in Contes de Lorraine, vol. i. p. 58, gives the Ananzi story.

Between the cosmogonic myths of the barbarous or savage American tribes and those of the great cultivated American peoples, Aztecs, Peruvians and Quiches, place should be found for the legends of certain races in the South Pacific. Of these, the most important are the Maoris or natives of New Zealand, the Mangaians and the Samoans. Beyond the usual and world-wide correspondences of myth, the divine tales of the various South Sea isles display resemblances so many and essential that they must be supposed to spring from a common and probably not very distant centre. As it is practically impossible to separate Maori myths of the making of things from Maori myths of the G.o.ds and their origin, we must pa.s.s over here the metaphysical hymns and stories of the original divine beings, Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, and of their cruel but necessary divorce by their children, who then became the usual t.i.tanic race which constructs and "airs" the world for the reception of man.(1) Among these beings, more fully described in our chapter on the G.o.ds of the lower races, is Tiki, with his wife Marikoriko, twilight. Tane (male) is another of the primordial race, children of earth and heaven, and between him and Tiki lies the credit of having made or begotten humanity. Tane adorned the body of his father, heaven (Rangi), by sticking stars all over it, as disks of pearl-sh.e.l.ls are stuck all over images. He was the parent of trees and birds, but some trees are original and divine beings. The first woman was not born, but formed out of the sun and the echo, a pretty myth. Man was made by Tiki, who took red clay, and kneaded it with his own blood, or with the red water of swamps. The habits of animals, some of which are G.o.ds, while others are descended from G.o.ds, follow from their conduct at the moment when heaven and earth were violently divorced. New Zealand itself, or at least one of the isles, was a huge fish caught by Maui (of whom more hereafter).

Just as Pund-jel, in Australia, cut out the gullies and vales with his knife, so the mountains and dells of New Zealand were produced by the knives of Maui's brothers when they crimped his big fish.(2) Quite apart from those childish ideas are the astonishing metaphysical hymns about the first stirrings of light in darkness, of "becoming" and "being,"

which remind us of Hegel and Herac.l.i.tus, or of the most purely speculative ideas in the Rig-Veda.(3) Scarcely less metaphysical are the myths of Mangaia, of which Mr. Gill(4) gives an elaborate account.

(1) See "Divine Myths of Lower Races".

(2) Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 115-121; Bastian, Heilige Sage der Polynesier, pp. 36-50; Shortland, Traditions of New Zealanders.

(3) See chapter on "Divine Myths of the Lower Races," and on "Indian Cosmogonic Myths"

(4) Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, pp. 1-22.

The Mangaian ideas of the world are complex, and of an early scientific sort. The universe is like the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut sh.e.l.l, divided into many imaginary circles like those of mediaeval speculation. There is a demon at the stem, as it were, of the cocoa-nut, and, where the edges of the imaginary sh.e.l.l nearly meet, dwells a woman demon, whose name means "the very beginning". In this system we observe efforts at metaphysics and physical speculation. But it is very characteristic of rude thought that such extremely abstract conceptions as "the very beginning" are represented as possessing life and human form. The woman at the bottom of the sh.e.l.l was anxious for progeny, and therefore plucked a bit out of her own right side, as Eve was made out of the rib of Adam. This piece of flesh became Vatea, the father of G.o.ds and men.

Vatea (like Oannes in the Chaldean legend) was half man, half fish. "The Very Beginning" begat other children in the same manner, and some of these became departmental G.o.ds of ocean, noon-day, and so forth.

Curiously enough, the Mangaians seem to be sticklers for primogeniture.

Vatea, as the first-born son, originally had his domain next above that of his mother. But she was pained by the thought that his younger brothers each took a higher place than his; so she pushed his land up, and it is now next below the solid crust on which mortals live in Mangaia. Vatea married a woman from one of the under worlds named Papa, and their children had the regular human form. One child was born either from Papa's head, like Athene from the head of Zeus, or from her armpit, like Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus. Another child may be said, in the language of dog-breeders, to have "thrown back," for he wears the form of a white or black lizard. In the Mangaian system the sky is a solid vault of blue stone. In the beginning of things the sky (like Ouranos in Greece and Rangi in New Zealand) pressed hard on earth, and the G.o.d Ru was obliged to thrust the two asunder, or rather he was engaged in this task when Maui tossed both Ru and the sky so high up that they never came down again. Ru is now the Atlas of Mangaia, "the sky-supporting Ru".(1) His lower limbs fell to earth, and became pumice-stone. In these Mangaian myths we discern resemblances to New Zealand fictions, as is natural, and the tearing of the body of "the Very Beginning" has numerous counterparts in European, American and Indian fable. But on the whole, the Mangaian myths are more remarkable for their semi-scientific philosophy than for their coincidences with the fancies of other early peoples.

(1) Gill, p. 59.

The Samoans, like the Maoris and Greeks, hold that heaven at first fell down and lay upon earth.(1) The arrowroot and another plant pushed up heaven, and "the heaven-pushing place" is still known and pointed out.

Others say the G.o.d Ti-iti-i pushed up heaven, and his feet made holes six feet deep in the rocks during this exertion. The other Samoan myths chiefly explain the origin of fire, and the causes of the characteristic forms and habits of animals and plants. The Samoans, too, possess a semi-mythical, metaphysical cosmogony, starting from NOTHING, but rapidly becoming the history of rocks, clouds, hills, dew and various animals, who intermarried, and to whom the royal family of Samoa trace their origin through twenty-three generations. So personal are Samoan abstract conceptions, that "s.p.a.cE had a long-legged stool," on to which a head fell, and grew into a companion for s.p.a.ce. Yet another myth says that the G.o.d Tangaloa existed in s.p.a.ce, and made heaven and earth, and sent down his daughter, a snipe. Man he made out of the mussel-fish. So confused are the doctrines of the Samoans.(2)

(1) Turner's Samoa, p. 198.