The Myths of the New World Part 11

[155-2] The latter is a compound of _tici_ or _ticcu_, a vase, and _ylla_, the root of _yllani_, to shine, _yllapantac_, it thunders and lightens. The former is from _tici_ and _cun_ or _con_, whence by reduplication _cun-un-un-an_, it thunders. From _cun_ and _tura_, brother, is probably derived _c.u.n.tur_, the condor, the flying thunder-cloud being looked upon as a great bird also. Dr. Waitz has pointed out that the Araucanians call by the t.i.tle _con_, the messenger who summons their chieftains to a general council.

[156-1] _Le Livre Sacre_, p. 9. The name of the lightning in Quiche is _cak ul ha_, literally, "fire coming from water."

[156-2] Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 158.

[157-1] "El rayo, el relampago, y el trueno." Gama, _Des. de las dos Piedras_, etc., ii. p. 76: Mexico, 1832.

[157-2] Torquemada, _Monarquia Indiana_, lib. vi. cap. 23. Gama, ubi sup.

ii. 76, 77.

[158-1] Torquemada, ibid., lib. vi. cap. 41.

[158-2] _Senate Report on the Indian Tribes_, p. 358: Washington, 1867.

[158-3] Bra.s.seur, _Hist[TN-7] du Mexique_, i. p. 201, and on the extent of his worship Waitz, _Anthropol._, iv. p. 144.

[158-4] Oviedo, _Hist. du Nicaragua_, p. 47.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SUPREME G.o.dS OF THE RED RACE.

a.n.a.lysis of American culture myths.--The Manibozho or Michabo of the Algonkins shown to be an impersonation of LIGHT, a hero of the Dawn, and their highest deity.--The myths of Ioskeha of the Iroquois, Viracocha of the Peruvians, and Quetzalcoatl of the Toltecs essentially the same as that of Michabo.--Other examples.--Ante-Columbian prophecies of the advent of a white race from the east as conquerors.--Rise of later culture myths under similar forms.

The philosopher Machiavelli, commenting on the books of Livy, lays it down as a general truth that every form and reform has been brought about by a single individual. Since a remorseless criticism has shorn so many heroes of their laurels, our faith in the maxim of the great Florentine wavers, and the suspicion is created that the popular fancy which personifies under one figure every social revolution is an illusion. It springs from that tendency to hero worship, ineradicable in the heart of the race, which leads every nation to have an ideal, the imagined author of its prosperity, the father of his country, and the focus of its legends. As has been hinted, history is not friendly to their renown, and dissipates them altogether into phantoms of the brain, or sadly dims the l.u.s.tre of their fame. Arthur, bright star of chivalry, dwindles into a Welsh subaltern; the Cid Campeador, defender of the faith, sells his sword as often to Moslem as to Christian, and _sells_ it ever; while Siegfried and Feridun vanish into nothings.

As elsewhere the world over, so in America many tribes had to tell of such a personage, some such august character, who taught them what they knew, the tillage of the soil, the properties of plants, the art of picture writing, the secrets of magic; who founded their inst.i.tutions and established their religions, who governed them long with glory abroad and peace at home; and finally, did not die, but like Frederick Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished mysteriously, and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to return to his beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness.

Such to the Algonkins was Michabo or Manibozho, to the Iroquois Ioskeha, Wasi to the Cherokees, Tamoi to the Caribs; so the Mayas had Zamna, the Toltecs Quetzalcoatl, the Muyscas Nemqueteba; such among the Aymaras was Viracocha, among the Mandans Numock-muckenah, and among the natives of the Orinoko Amalivaca; and the catalogue could be extended indefinitely.

It is not always easy to p.r.o.nounce upon these heroes, whether they belong to history or mythology, their nation's poetry or its prose. In arriving at a conclusion we must remember that a fiction built on an idea is infinitely more tenacious of life than a story founded on fact.

Further, that if a striking similarity in the legends of two such heroes be discovered under circ.u.mstances which forbid the thought that one was derived from the other, then both are probably mythical. If this is the case in not two but in half a dozen instances, then the probability amounts to a certainty, and the only task remaining is to explain such narratives on consistent mythological principles. If after sifting out all foreign and later traits, it appears that when first known to Europeans, these heroes were a.s.signed all the attributes of highest divinity, were the imagined creators and rulers of the world, and mightiest of spiritual powers, then their position must be set far higher than that of deified men. They must be accepted as the supreme G.o.ds of the red race, the a.n.a.logues in the western continent of Jupiter, Osiris, and Odin in the eastern, and whatever opinions contrary to this may have been advanced by writers and travellers must be set down to the account of that prevailing ignorance of American mythology which has fathered so many other blunders. To solve these knotty points I shall choose for a.n.a.lysis the culture myths of the Algonkins, the Iroquois, the Toltecs of Mexico, and the Aymaras or Peruvians, guided in my choice by the fact that these four families are the best known, and, in many points of view, the most important on the continent.

From the remotest wilds of the northwest to the coast of the Atlantic, from the southern boundaries of Carolina to the cheerless swamps of Hudson's Bay, the Algonkins were never tired of gathering around the winter fire and repeating the story of Manibozho or Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity their various branches, the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far north, and the western tribes perhaps without exception, spoke of "this chimerical beast," as one of the old missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem or clan which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect. In many of the tales which the whites have preserved of Michabo he seems half a wizzard[TN-8], half a simpleton. He is full of pranks and wiles, but often at a loss for a meal of victuals; ever itching to try his arts magic on great beasts and often meeting ludicrous failures therein; envious of the powers of others, and constantly striving to outdo them in what they do best; in short, little more than a malicious buffoon delighting in practical jokes, and abusing his superhuman powers for selfish and ign.o.ble ends. But this is a low, modern, and corrupt version of the character of Michabo, bearing no more resemblance to his real and ancient one than the language and acts of our Saviour and the apostles in the coa.r.s.e Mystery Plays of the Middle Ages do to those recorded by the Evangelists.

What he really was we must seek in the accounts of older travellers, in the invocations of the jossakeeds or prophets, and in the part a.s.signed to him in the solemn mysteries of religion. In these we find him portrayed as the patron and founder of the meda worship,[162-1] the inventor of picture writing, the father and guardian of their nation, the ruler of the winds, even the maker and preserver of the world and creator of the sun and moon. From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean, he fashioned the habitable land and set it floating on the waters, till it grew to such a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly, died of old age ere he reached its limits. Under the name Michabo Ovisaketchak, the Great Hare who created the Earth, he was originally the highest divinity recognized by them, "powerful and beneficent beyond all others, maker of the heavens and the world." He was founder of the medicine hunt in which after appropriate ceremonies and incantations the Indian sleeps, and Michabo appears to him in a dream, and tells him where he may readily kill game. He himself was a mighty hunter of old; one of his footsteps measured eight leagues, the Great Lakes were the beaver dams he built, and when the cataracts impeded his progress he tore them away with his hands. Attentively watching the spider spread its web to trap unwary flies, he devised the art of knitting nets to catch fish, and the signs and charms he tested and handed down to his descendants are of marvellous efficacy in the chase. In the autumn, in "the moon of the falling leaf," ere he composes himself to his winter's sleep, he fills his great pipe and takes a G.o.d-like smoke. The balmy clouds float over the hills and woodlands, filling the air with the haze of the "Indian summer."

Sometimes he was said to dwell in the skies with his brother the snow, or, like many great spirits, to have built his wigwam in the far north on some floe of ice in the Arctic Ocean, while the Chipeways localized his birthplace and former home to the Island Michilimakinac at the outlet of Lake Superior. But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries he was alleged to reside toward the east, and in the holy formulae of the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, the east is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and there, at the edge of the earth, where the sun rises, on the sh.o.r.e of the infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house and sends the luminaries forth on their daily journies.[164-1]

It is pa.s.sing strange that such an insignificant creature as the rabbit should have received this apotheosis. No explanation of it in the least satisfactory has ever been offered. Some have pointed it out as a senseless, meaningless brute worship. It leads to the suspicion that there may lurk here one of those confusions of words which have so often led to confusion of ideas in mythology. Manibozho, Nanibojou, Missibizi, Michabo, Messou, all variations of the same name in different dialects rendered according to different orthographies, scrutinize them closely as we may, they all seem compounded according to well ascertained laws of Algonkin euphony from the words corresponding to _great_ and _hare_ or _rabbit_, or the first two perhaps from _spirit_ and _hare_ (_michi_, great, _wabos_, hare, _manito wabos_, spirit hare, Chipeway dialect), and so they have invariably been translated even by the Indians themselves. But looking more narrowly at the second member of the word, it is clearly capable of another and very different interpretation, of an interpretation which discloses at once the origin and the secret meaning of the whole story of Michabo, in the light of which it appears no longer the incoherent fable of savages, but a true myth, instinct with nature, pregnant with matter, nowise inferior to those which fascinate in the chants of the Rig Veda, or the weird pages of the Edda.

On a previous page I have emphasized with what might have seemed superfluous force, how prominent in primitive mythology is the east, the source of the morning, the day-spring on high, the cardinal point which determines and controls all others. But I did not lay as much stress on it as others have. "The whole theogony and philosophy of the ancient world," says Max Muller, "centred in the Dawn, the mother of the bright G.o.ds, of the Sun in his various aspects, of the morn, the day, the spring; herself the brilliant image and visage of immortality."[165-1]

Now it appears on attentively examining the Algonkin root _wab_, that it gives rise to words of very diverse meaning, that like many others in all languages while presenting but one form it represents ideas of wholly unlike origin and application, that in fact there are two distinct roots having this sound. One is the initial syllable of the word translated hare or rabbit, but the other means _white_, and from it is derived the words for the east, the dawn, the light, the day and the morning.[165-2] Beyond a doubt this is the compound in the names Michabo and Manibozho which therefore mean the Great Light, the Spirit of Light, of the Dawn, or the East, and in the literal sense of the word the Great White One, as indeed he has sometimes been called.

In this sense all the ancient and authentic myths concerning him are plain and full of meaning. They divide themselves into two distinct cycles. In the one Michabo is the spirit of light who dispels the darkness; in the other as chief of the cardinal points he is lord of the winds, prince of the powers of the air, whose voice is the thunder, whose weapon the lightning, the supreme figure in the encounter of the air currents, in the unending conflict which the Dakotas described as waged by the waters and the winds.

In the first he is grandson of the moon, his father is the West Wind, and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of conception. For the moon is the G.o.ddess of night, the Dawn is her daughter, who brings forth the morning and perishes herself in the act, and the West, the spirit of darkness as the East is of light, precedes and as it were begets the latter as the evening does the morning.

Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural father to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long and desperate struggle. "It began on the mountains. The West was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he, 'my son, you know my power and that it is impossible to kill me.'"[167-1] What is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried on from what time "the jocund morn stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops," across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that knows no end, for both the opponents are immortal?

In the second, and evidently to the native mind more important cycle of legends, he was represented as one of four brothers, the North, the South, the East, and the West, all born at a birth, whose mother died in ushering them into the world;[167-2] for hardly has the kindling orient served to fix the cardinal points than it is lost and dies in the advancing day. Yet it is clear that he was something more than a personification of the east or the east wind, for it is repeatedly said that it was he who a.s.signed their duties to all the winds, to that of the east as well as the others. This is a blending of his two characters. Here too his life is a battle. No longer with his father, indeed, but with his brother Chakekenapok, the flint-stone, whom he broke in pieces and scattered over the land, and changed his entrails into fruitful vines. The conflict was long and terrible. The face of nature was desolated as by a tornado, and the gigantic boulders and loose rocks found on the prairies are the missiles hurled by the mighty combatants. Or else his foe was the glittering prince of serpents whose abode was the lake; or was the shining Manito whose home was guarded by fiery serpents and a deep sea; or was the great king of fishes; all symbols of the atmospheric waters, all figurative descriptions of the wars of the elements. In these affrays the thunder and lightning are at his command, and with them he destroys his enemies. For this reason the Chipeway pictography represents him brandishing a rattlesnake, the symbol of the electric flash,[168-1] and sometimes they called him the Northwest Wind, which in the region they inhabit usually brings the thunder-storms.

As ruler of the winds he was, like Quetzalcoatl, father and protector of all species of birds, their symbols.[168-2] He was patron of hunters, for their course is guided by the cardinal points. Therefore, when the medicine hunt had been successful, the prescribed sign of grat.i.tude to him was to scatter a handful of the animal's blood toward each of these.[168-3] As daylight brings vision, and to see is to know, it was no fable that gave him as the author of their arts, their wisdom, and their inst.i.tutions.

In effect, his story is a world-wide truth, veiled under a thin garb of fancy. It is but a variation of that narrative which every race has to tell, out of grat.i.tude to that beneficent Father who everywhere has cared for His children. Michabo, giver of life and light, creator and preserver, is no apotheosis of a prudent chieftain, still less the fabrication of an idle fancy or a designing priestcraft, but in origin, deeds, and name the not unworthy personification of the purest conceptions they possessed concerning the Father of All. To Him at early dawn the Indian stretched forth his hands in prayer; and to the sky or the sun as his homes, he first pointed the pipe in his ceremonies, rites often misinterpreted by travellers as indicative of sun worship. As later observers tell us to this day the Algonkin prophet builds the medicine lodge to face the sunrise, and in the name of Michabo, who there has his home, summons the spirits of the four quarters of the world and Gizhigooke, the day maker, to come to his fire and disclose the hidden things of the distant and the future: so the earliest explorers relate that when they asked the native priests who it was they invoked, what demons or familiars, the invariable reply was, "the Kichigouai, the genii of light, those who make the day."[169-1]

Our authorities on Iroquois traditions, though numerous enough, are not so satisfactory. The best, perhaps, is Father Brebeuf, a Jesuit missionary, who resided among the Hurons in 1626. Their culture myth, which he has recorded, is strikingly similar to that of the Algonkins.

Two brothers appear in it, Ioskeha and Tawiscara, names which find their meaning in the Oneida dialect as the White one and the Dark one.[170-1]

They are twins, born of a virgin mother, who died in giving them life.

Their grandmother was the moon, called by the Hurons Ataensic, a word which signifies literally _she bathes herself_, and which, in the opinion of Father Bruyas, a most competent authority, is derived from the word for water.[170-2]

The brothers quarrelled, and finally came to blows; the former using the horns of a stag, the latter the wild rose. He of the weaker weapon was very naturally discomfited and sorely wounded. Fleeing for life, the blood gushed from him at every step, and as it fell turned into flint-stones. The victor returned to his grandmother, and established his lodge in the far east, on the borders of the great ocean, whence the sun comes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special guardian of the Iroquois. The earth was at first arid and sterile, but he destroyed the gigantic frog which had swallowed all the waters, and guided the torrents into smooth streams and lakes.[171-1] The woods he stocked with game; and having learned from the great tortoise, who supports the world, how to make fire, taught his children, the Indians, this indispensable art. He it was who watched and watered their crops; and, indeed, without his aid, says the old missionary, quite out of patience with such puerilities, "they think they could not boil a pot."

Sometimes they spoke of him as the sun, but this only figuratively.[171-2]

From other writers of early date we learn that the essential outlines of this myth were received by the Tuscaroras and the Mohawks, and as the proper names of the two brothers are in the Oneida dialect, we cannot err in considering this the national legend of the Iroquois stock. There is strong likelihood that the Taronhiawagon, he who comes from the Sky, of the Onondagas, who was their supreme G.o.d, who spoke to them in dreams, and in whose honor the chief festival of their calendar was celebrated about the winter solstice, was, in fact, Ioskeha under another name.[172-1] As to the legend of the Good and Bad Minds given by Cusic, to which I have referred in a previous chapter, and the later and wholly spurious myth of Hiawatha, first made public by Mr. Clark in his History of Onondaga (1849), and which, in the graceful poem of Longfellow, is now familiar to the world, they are but pale and incorrect reflections of the early native traditions.

So strong is the resemblance Ioskeha bears to Michabo, that what has been said in explanation of the latter will be sufficient for both. Yet I do not imagine that the one was copied or borrowed from the other. We cannot be too cautious in adopting such a conclusion. The two nations were remote in everything but geographical position. I call to mind another similar myth. In it a mother is also said to have brought forth twins, or a pair of twins, and to have paid for them with her life.

Again the one is described as the bright, the other as the dark twin; again it is said that they struggled one with the other for the mastery.

Scholars, likewise, have interpreted the mother to mean the Dawn, the twins either Light and Darkness, or the Four Winds. Yet this is not Algonkin theology; nor is it at all related to that of the Iroquois. It is the story of Sarama in the Rig Veda, and was written in Sanscrit, under the shadow of the Himalayas, centuries before Homer.

Such uniformity points not to a common source in history, but in psychology. Man, chiefly cognizant of his soul through his senses, thought with an awful horror of the night which deprived him of the use of one and foreshadowed the loss of all. Therefore _light_ and _life_ were to him synonymous; therefore all religions promise to lead

"From night to light, From night to heavenly light;"

therefore He who rescues is ever the Light of the World; therefore it is said "to the upright ariseth light in darkness;" therefore everywhere the kindling East, the pale Dawn, is the embodiment of his hopes and the centre of his reminiscences. Who shall say that his instinct led him here astray? For is not, in fact, all life dependent on light? Do not all those marvellous and subtle forces known to the older chemists as the imponderable elements, without which not even the inorganic crystal is possible, proceed from the rays of light? Let us beware of that shallow science so ready to shout Eureka, and reverently acknowledge a mysterious intuition here displayed which joins with the latest conquests of the human mind to repeat and emphasize that message which the Evangelist heard of the Spirit and declared unto men, that "G.o.d is Light."[173-1]

Both these heroes, let it be observed, live in the uttermost east; both are the mythical fathers of the race. To the east, therefore, should these nations have pointed as their original dwelling place. This they did in spite of history. Cusic, who takes up the story of the Iroquois a thousand years before the Christian era, locates them first in the most eastern region they ever possessed. While the Algonkins with one voice called those of their tribes living nearest the rising sun _Abnakis_, our ancestors at the east, or at the dawn; literally our _white_ ancestors.[174-1] I designedly emphasize this literal rendering. It reminds one of the white twin of Iroquois legend, and ill.u.s.trates how the color white came to be intimately a.s.sociated with the morning light and its beneficent effects. Moreover color has a specific effect on the mind; there is a music to the eye as well as to the ear; and white, which holds all hues in itself, disposes the soul to all pleasant and elevating emotions.[174-2] Not fashion alone bids the bride wreathe her brow with orange flowers, nor was it a mere figure of speech that led the inspired poet to call his love "fairest among women," and to prophecy a Messiah "fairer than the children of men," fulfilled in that day when He appeared "in garments so white as no fuller on earth could white them." No nation is free from the power of this law. "White,"

observes Adair of the southern Indians, "is their fixed emblem of peace, friendship, happiness, prosperity, purity, and holiness."[175-1] Their priests dressed in white robes, as did those of Peru and Mexico; the kings of the various species of animals were all supposed to be white;[175-2] the cities of refuge established as asylums for alleged criminals by the Cherokees in the manner of the Israelites were called "white towns," and for sacrifices animals of this color were ever most highly esteemed. All these sentiments were linked to the dawn. Language itself is proof of it. Many Algonkin words for east, morning, dawn, day, light, as we have already seen, are derived from a radical signifying _white_. Or we can take a tongue nowise related, the Quiche, and find its words for east, dawn, morning, light, bright, glorious, happy, n.o.ble, all derived from _zak_, white. We read in their legends of the earliest men that they were "white children," "white sons," leading "a white life beyond the dawn," and the creation itself is attributed to the Dawn, the White One, the White Sacrificer of Blood.[175-3] But why insist upon the point when in European tongues we find the daybreak called _l'aube_, _alva_, from _albus_, white? Enough for the purpose if the error of those is manifest, who, in such expressions, would seek support for any theory of ancient European immigration; enough if it displays the true meaning of those traditions of the advent of benevolent visitors of fair complexion in ante-Columbian times, which both Algonkins and Iroquois[176-1] had in common with many other tribes of the western continent. Their explanation will not be found in the annals of j.a.pan, the triads of the Cymric bards, nor the sagas of Icelandic skalds, but in the propensity of the human mind to attribute its own origin and culture to that white-shining orient where sun, moon, and stars, are daily born in renovated glory, to that fair mother, who, at the cost of her own life, gives light and joy to the world, to the brilliant womb of Aurora, the glowing bosom of the Dawn.

Even the complicated mythology of Peru yields to the judicious application of these principles of interpretation. Its peculiar obscurity arises from the policy of the Incas to blend the religions of conquered provinces with their own. Thus about 1350 the Inca Pachacutec subdued the country about Lima where the worship of Con and Pachacama prevailed.[176-2] The local myth represented these as father and son, or brothers, children of the sun. They were without flesh or blood, impalpable, invisible, and incredibly swift of foot. Con first possessed the land, but Pachacama attacked and drove him to the north. Irritated at his defeat he took with him the rain, and consequently to this day the sea-coast of Peru is largely an arid desert. Now when we are informed that the south wind, that in other words which blows to the north, is the actual cause of the aridity of the low-lands,[177-1] and consider the light and airy character of these antagonists, we cannot hesitate to accept this as a myth of the winds. The name of _Con tici_, the Thunder Vase, was indeed applied to Viracocha in later times, but they were never identical. Viracocha was the culture hero of the ancient Aymara-Quichua stock. He was more than that, for in their creed he was creator and possessor of all things. Lands and herds were a.s.signed to other G.o.ds to support their temples, and offerings were heaped on their altars, but to him none. For, asked the Incas: "Shall the Lord and Master of the whole world need these things from us?" To him, says Acosta, "they did attribute the chief power and commandement over all things;" and elsewhere "in all this realm the chief idoll they did worship was Viracocha, and _after him_ the Sunne."[178-1]

Ere sun or moon was made, he rose from the bosom of Lake t.i.ticaca, and presided over the erection of those wondrous cities whose ruins still dot its islands and western sh.o.r.es, and whose history is totally lost in the night of time. He himself constructed these luminaries and placed them in the sky, and then peopled the earth with its present inhabitants. From the lake he journeyed westward, not without adventures, for he was attacked with murderous intent by the beings whom he had created. When, however, scorning such unequal combat, he had manifested his power by hurling the lightning on the hill-sides and consuming the forests, they recognized their maker, and humbled themselves before him. He was reconciled, and taught them arts and agriculture, inst.i.tutions and religion, meriting the t.i.tle they gave him of _Pachayachachic_, teacher of all things. At last he disappeared in the western ocean. Four personages, companions or sons, were closely connected with him. They rose together with him from the lake, or else were his first creations. These are the four mythical civilizers of Peru, who another legend a.s.serts emerged from the cave Pacarin tampu the Lodgings of the Dawn.[179-1] To these Viracocha gave the earth, to one the north, to another the south, to a third the east, to a fourth the west. Their names are very variously given, but as they have already been identified with the four winds, we can omit their consideration here.[179-2] Tradition, as has rightly been observed by the Inca Garcila.s.so de la Vega,[179-3] transferred a portion of the story of Viracocha to Manco Capac, first of the historical Incas. King Manco, however, was a real character, the Rudolph of Hapsburg of their reigning family, and flourished about the eleventh century.

There is a general resemblance between this story and that of Michabo.

Both precede and create the sun, both journey to the west, overcoming opposition with the thunderbolt, both divide the world between the four winds, both were the fathers, G.o.ds, and teachers of their nations. Nor does it cease here. Michabo, I have shown, is the white spirit of the Dawn. Viracocha, all authorities translate "the fat or foam of the sea."

The idea conveyed is of whiteness, foam being called fat from its color.[180-1] So true is this that to-day in Peru white men are called _viracochas_, and the early explorers constantly received the same epithet.[180-2] The name is a metaphor. The dawn rises above the horizon as the snowy foam on the surface of a lake. As the Algonkins spoke of the Abnakis, their white ancestors, as in Mexican legends the early Toltecs were of fair complexion, so the Aymaras sometimes called the first four brothers, _viracochas_, white men.[180-3] It is the ancient story how

"Light Sprang from the deep, and from her native east To journey through the airy gloom began."

The central figure of Toltec mythology is Quetzalcoatl. Not an author on ancient Mexico but has something to say about the glorious days when he ruled over the land. No one denies him to have been a G.o.d, the G.o.d of the air, highest deity of the Toltecs, in whose honor was erected the pyramid of Cholula, grandest monument of their race. But many insist that he was at first a man, some deified king. There were in truth many Quetzalcoatls, for his high priest always bore his name, but he himself is a pure creation of the fancy, and all his alleged history is nothing but a myth.

His emblematic name, the Bird-Serpent, and his rebus and cross at Palenque, I have already explained. Others of his t.i.tles were, Ehecatl, the air; Yolcuat, the rattlesnake; Tohil, the rumbler; Huemac, the strong hand; Nani he hecatle, lord of the four winds. The same dualism reappears in him that has been noted in his a.n.a.logues elsewhere; He is both lord of the eastern light and the winds.

As the former, he was born of a virgin in the land of Tula or Tlapallan, in the distant Orient, and was high priest of that happy realm. The morning star was his symbol, and the temple of Cholula was dedicated to him expressly as the author of light.[181-1] As by days we measure time, he was the alleged inventor of the calendar. Like all the dawn heroes, he too was represented as of white complexion, clothed in long white robes, and, as most of the Aztec G.o.ds, with a full and flowing beard.[181-2] When his earthly-work was done he too returned to the east, a.s.signing as a reason that the sun, the ruler of Tlapallan, demanded his presence. But the real motive was that he had been overcome by Tezcatlipoca, otherwise called Yoalliehecatl, the wind or spirit of night, who had descended from heaven by a spider's web and presented his rival with a draught pretended to confer immortality, but, in fact, producing uncontrollable longing for home. For the wind and the light both depart when the gloaming draws near, or when the clouds spread their dark and shadowy webs along the mountains, and pour the vivifying rain upon the fields.

In his other character, he was begot of the breath of Tonacateotl, G.o.d of our flesh or subsistence,[182-1] or (according to Gomara) was the son of Iztac Mixcoatl, the white cloud serpent, the spirit of the tornado.