The Myths of the New World Part 12

Messenger of Tlaloc, G.o.d of rains, he was figuratively said to sweep the road for him, since in that country violent winds are the precursors of the wet seasons. Wherever he went all manner of singing birds bore him company, emblems of the whistling breezes. When he finally disappeared in the far east, he sent back four trusty youths who had ever shared his fortunes, "incomparably swift and light of foot," with directions to divide the earth between them and rule it till he should return and resume his power. When he would promulgate his decrees, his herald proclaimed them from Tzatzitepec, the hill of shouting, with such a mighty voice that it could be heard a hundred leagues around. The arrows which he shot transfixed great trees, the stones he threw levelled forests, and when he laid his hands on the rocks the mark was indelible.

Yet as thus emblematic of the thunder-storm, he possessed in full measure its better attributes. By shaking his sandals he gave fire to men, and peace, plenty, and riches blessed his subjects. Tradition says he built many temples to Mictlanteuctli, the Aztec Pluto, and at the creation of the sun that he slew all the other G.o.ds, for the advancing dawn disperses the spectral shapes of night, and yet all its vivifying power does but result in increasing the number doomed to fell before the remorseless stroke of death.[183-1]

His symbols were the bird, the serpent, the cross, and the flint, representing the clouds, the lightning, the four winds, and the thunderbolt. Perhaps, as Huemac, the Strong Hand, he was G.o.d of the earthquakes. The Zapotecs worshipped such a deity under the image of this member carved from a precious stone,[183-2] calling to mind the "Kab ul," the Working Hand, adored by the Mayas,[183-3] and said to be one of the images of Zamna, their hero G.o.d. The human hand, "that divine tool," as it has been called, might well be regarded by the reflective mind as the teacher of the arts and the amulet whose magic power has won for man what vantage he has gained in his long combat with nature and his fellows.

I might next discuss the culture myth of the Muyscas, whose hero Bochica or Nemqueteba bore the other name SUA, the White One, the Day, the East, an appellation they likewise gave the Europeans on their arrival.

He had taught them in remotest times how to manufacture their clothing, build their houses, cultivate the soil, and reckon time. When he disappeared, he divided the land between four chiefs, and laid down many minute rules of government which ever after were religiously observed.[184-1] Or I might choose that of the Caribs, whose patron Tamu called Grandfather, and Old Man of the Sky, was a man of light complexion, who in the old times came from the east, instructed them in agriculture and arts, and disappeared in the same direction, promising them a.s.sistance in the future, and that at death he would receive their souls on the summit of the sacred tree, and transport them safely to his home in the sky.[184-2] Or from the more fragmentary mythology of ruder nations, proof might be brought of the well nigh universal reception of these fundamental views. As, for instance, when the Mandans of the Upper Missouri speak of their first ancestor as a son of the West, who preserved them at the flood, and whose garb was always of four milk-white wolf skins;[185-1] and when the Pimos, a people of the valley of the Rio Gila, relate that their birthplace was where the sun rises, that there for generations they led a joyous life, until their beneficent first parent disappeared in the heavens. From that time, say they, G.o.d lost sight of them, and they wandered west, and further west till they reached their present seats.[185-2] Or I might instance the Tupis of Brazil, who were named after the first of men, Tupa, he who alone survived the flood, who was one of four brothers, who is described as an old man of fair complexion, _un vieillard blanc_,[185-3] and who is now their highest divinity, ruler of the lightning and the storm, whose voice is the thunder, and who is the guardian of their nation. But is it not evident that these and all such legends are but variations of those already a.n.a.lyzed?

In thus removing one by one the wrappings of symbolism, and displaying at the centre and summit of these various creeds, He who is throned in the sky, who comes with the dawn, who manifests himself in the light and the storm, and whose ministers are the four winds, I set up no new G.o.d.

The ancient Israelites prayed to him who was seated above the firmament, who commanded the morning and caused the day-spring to know its place, who answered out of the whirlwind, and whose envoys were the four winds, the four cherubim described with such wealth of imagery in the introduction to the book of Ezekiel. The Mahometan adores "the clement and merciful Lord of the Daybreak," whose star is in the east, who rides on the storm, and whose breath is the wind. The primitive man in the New World also a.s.sociated these physical phenomena as products of an invisible power, conceived under human form, called by name, worshipped as one, and of whom all related the same myth differing but in unimportant pa.s.sages. This was the primeval religion. It was not monotheism, for there were many other G.o.ds; it was not pantheism, for there was no blending of the cause with the effects; still less was it fetichism, an adoration of sensuous objects, for these were recognized as effects. It teaches us that the idea of G.o.d neither arose from the phenomenal world nor was sunk in it, as is the shallow theory of the day, but is as Kant long ago defined it, a conviction of a highest and first principle which binds all phenomena into one.

One point of these legends deserves closer attention for the influence it exerted on the historical fortunes of the race. The dawn heroes were conceived as of fair complexion, mighty in war, and though absent for a season, destined to return and claim their ancient power. Here was one of those unconscious prophecies, pointing to the advent of a white race from the east, that wrote the doom of the red man in letters of fire.

Historians have marvelled at the instantaneous collapse of the empires of Mexico, Peru, the Mayas, and the Natchez, before a handful of Spanish filibusters. The fact was, wherever the whites appeared they were connected with these ancient predictions of the spirit of the dawn returning to claim his own. Obscure and ominous prophecies, "texts of bodeful song," rose in the memory of the natives, and paralyzed their arms.

"For a very long time," said Montezuma, at his first interview with Cortes, "has it been handed down that we are not the original possessors of this land, but came hither from a distant region under the guidance of a ruler who afterwards left us and returned. We have ever believed that some day his descendants would come and resume dominion over us.

Inasmuch as you are from that direction, which is toward the rising of the sun, and serve so great a king as you describe, we believe that he is also our natural lord, and are ready to submit ourselves to him."[187-1]

The gloomy words of Nezahualcoyotl, a former prince of Tezcuco, foretelling the arrival of white and bearded men from the east, who would wrest the power from the hands of the rightful rulers and destroy in a day the edifice of centuries, were ringing in his ears. But they were not so gloomy to the minds of his down-trodden subjects, for that day was to liberate them from the thralls of servitude. Therefore when they first beheld the fair complexioned Spaniards, they rushed into the water to embrace the prows of their vessels, and despatched messengers throughout the land to proclaim the return of Quetzalcoatl.[188-1]

The n.o.ble Mexican was not alone in his presentiments. When Hernando de Soto on landing in Peru first met the Inca Huascar, the latter related an ancient prophecy which his father Huayna Capac had repeated on his dying bed, to the effect that in the reign of the thirteenth Inca, white men (_viracochas_) of surpa.s.sing strength and valor would come from their father the Sun and subject to their rule the nations of the world.

"I command you," said the dying monarch, "to yield them homage and obedience, for they will be of a nature superior to ours."[188-2]

The natives of Haiti told Columbus of similar predictions long anterior to his arrival.[188-3] And Father Lizana has preserved in the original Maya tongue several such foreboding chants. Doubtless he has adapted them somewhat to proselytizing purposes, but they seem very likely to be close copies of authentic aboriginal songs, referring to the return of Zamna or Kukulcan, lord of the dawn and the four winds, worshipped at Cozumel and Palenque under the sign of the cross. An extract will show their character:--

"At the close of the thirteenth Age of the world, While the cities of Itza and Tancah still flourish, The sign of the Lord of the Sky will appear, The light of the dawn will illumine the land, And the cross will be seen by the nations of men.

A father to you, will He be, Itzalanos, A brother to you, ye natives of Tancah; Receive well the bearded guests who are coming, Bringing the sign of the Lord from the daybreak, Of the Lord of the Sky, so clement yet powerful."[189-1]

The older writers, Gomara, Cogolludo, Villagutierre, have taken pains to collect other instances of this presentiment of the arrival and domination of a white race. Later historians, fashionably incredulous of what they cannot explain, have pa.s.sed them over in silence. That they existed there can be no doubt, and that they arose in the way I have stated, is almost proven by the fact that in Mexico, Bogota, and Peru, the whites were at once called from the proper names of the heroes of the Dawn, _Suas_, _Viracochas_, and _Quetzalcoatls_.

When the church of Rome had crushed remorselessly the religions of Mexico and Peru, all hope of the return of Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha perished with the inst.i.tutions of which they were the mythical founders.

But it was only to arise under new incarnations and later names. As well forbid the heart of youth to bud forth in tender love, as that of oppressed nationalities to cherish the faith that some ideal hero, some royal man, will yet arise, and break in fragments their fetters, and lead them to glory and honor.

When the name of Quetzalcoatl was no longer heard from the teocalli of Cholula, that of Montezuma took its place. From ocean to ocean, and from the river Gila to the Nicaraguan lake, nearly every aboriginal nation still cherishes the memory of Montezuma, not as the last unfortunate ruler of a vanished state, but as the prince of their golden era, their Saturnian age, lord of the winds and waters, and founder of their inst.i.tutions. When, in the depth of the tropical forests, the antiquary disinters some statue of earnest mien, the natives whisper one to the other, "Montezuma! Montezuma!"[190-1] In the legends of New Mexico he is the founder of the pueblos, and intrusted to their guardianship the sacred fire. Departing, he planted a tree, and bade them watch it well, for when that tree should fall and the fire die out, then he would return from the far East, and lead his loyal people to victory and power. When the present generation saw their land glide, mile by mile, into the rapacious hands of the Yankees--when new and strange diseases desolated their homes--finally, when in 1846 the sacred tree was prostrated, and the guardian of the holy fire was found dead on its cold ashes, then they thought the hour of deliverance had come, and every morning at earliest dawn a watcher mounted to the house-tops, and gazed long and anxiously in the lightening east, hoping to descry the n.o.ble form of Montezuma advancing through the morning beams at the head of a conquering army.[191-1]

Groaning under the iron rule of the Spaniards, the Peruvians would not believe that the last of the Incas had perished an outcast and a wanderer in the forests of the Cordilleras. For centuries they clung to the persuasion that he had but retired to another mighty kingdom beyond the mountains, and in due time would return and sweep the haughty Castilian back into the ocean. In 1781, a mestizo, Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, of the province of Tinta, took advantage of this strong delusion, and binding around his forehead the scarlet fillet of the Incas, proclaimed himself the long lost Inca Tupac Amaru, and a true child of the sun. Thousands of Indians flocked to his standard, and at their head he took the field, vowing the extermination of every soul of the hated race. Seized at last by the Spaniards, and condemned to a public execution, so profound was the reverence with which he had inspired his followers, so full their faith in his claims, that, undeterred by the threats of the soldiery, they prostrated themselves on their faces before this last of the children of the sun, as he pa.s.sed on to a felon's death.[191-2]

These fancied reminiscences, these unfounded hopes, so vague, so child-like, let no one dismiss them as the babblings of ignorance.

Contemplated in their broadest meaning as characteristics of the race of man, they have an interest higher than any history, beyond that of any poetry. They point to the recognized discrepancy between what man is, and what he feels he should be, must be; they are the indignant protests of the race against acquiescence in the world's evil as the world's law; they are the incoherent utterances of those yearnings for n.o.bler conditions of existence, which no savagery, no ignorance, nothing but a false and lying enlightenment can wholly extinguish.

FOOTNOTES:

[162-1] The _meda_ worship is the ordinary religious ritual of the Algonkins. It consists chiefly in exhibitions of legerdemain, and in conjuring and exorcising demons. A _jossakeed_ is an inspired prophet who derives his power directly from the higher spirits, and not as the _medawin_, by instruction and practice.

[164-1] For these particulars see the _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1667, p.

12, 1670, p. 93; Charlevoix, _Journal Historique_, p. 344; Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, v. pp. 420 sqq., and Alex. Henry, _Travs. in Canada and the Ind. Territories_, pp. 212 sqq. These are decidedly the best references of the many that could be furnished. Peter Jones' _History of the Ojibway Indians_, p. 35, may also be consulted.

[165-1] _Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 518.

[165-2] Dialectic forms in Algonkin for white, are _wabi_, _wape_, _wompi_, _waubish_, _oppai_; for morning, _wapan_, _wapaneh_, _opah_; for east, _wapa_, _waubun_, _waubamo_; for dawn, _wapa_, _waubun_; for day, _wompan_, _oppan_; for light, _oppung_; and many others similar. In the Abnaki dialect, _wanbighen_, it is white, is the customary idiom to express the breaking of the day (Vetromile, _The Abnakis and their History_, p. 27: New York, 1866). The loss in composition of the vowel sound represented by the English w, and in the French writers by the figure 8, is supported by frequent a.n.a.logy.

[167-1] Schoolcraft, _Algic Researches_, i. pp. 135-142.

[167-2] The names of the four brothers, Wabun, Kabun, Kabibonokka, and Shawano, express in Algonkin both the cardinal points and the winds which blow from them. In another version of the legend, first reported by Father De Smet and quoted by Schoolcraft without acknowledgment, they are Nanaboojoo, Chipiapoos, Wabosso, and Chakekenapok. See for the support of the text, Schoolcraft, _Algic Res._, ii. p. 214; De Smet, _Oregon Missions_, p. 347.

[168-1] _Narrative of John Tanner_, p. 351.

[168-2] Schoolcraft, _Algic Res._, i. p. 216.

[168-3] _Narrative of John Tanner_, p. 354.

[169-1] Compare the _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1634 p. 14, 1637, p. 46, with Schoolcraft, _Ind. Tribes_, v. p. 419. _Kichigouai_ is the same word as _Gizhigooke_, according to a different orthography.

[170-1] The names _I8skeha_ and _Ta8iscara_ I venture to identify with the Oneida _owisske_ or _owiska_, white, and _tetiucalas_ (_tyokaras_, _tewhgarlars_, Mohawk), dark or darkness. The prefix i to _owisske_ is the impersonal third person singular; the suffix _ha_ gives a future sense, so that _i-owisske-ha_ or _iouskeha_ means "it is going to become white." Brebeuf gives a similar example of _gaon_, old; _a-gaon-ha_, _il va devenir vieux_ (_Rel. Nouv. France_, 1636, p. 99). But "it is going to become white," meant to the Iroquois that the dawn was about to appear, just as _wanbighen_, it is white, did to the Abnakis (see note on page 166), and as the Eskimos say, _kau ma wok_, it is white, to express that it is daylight (Richardson's Vocab. of Labrador Eskimo in his _Arctic Expedition_). Therefore, that Ioskeha is an impersonation of the light of the dawn admits of no dispute.

[170-2] The orthography of Brebeuf is _aataentsic_. This may be a.n.a.lyzed as follows: root _aouen_, water; prefix _at_, _il y a quelque chose la dedans_; _ataouen_, _se baigner_; from which comes the form _ataouensere_. (See Bruyas, _Rad. Verb. Iroquaeor._, pp. 30, 31.) Here again the mythological role of the moon as the G.o.ddess of water comes distinctly to light.

[171-1] This offers an instance of the uniformity which prevailed in symbolism in the New World. The Aztecs adored the G.o.ddess of water under the figure of a frog carved from a single emerald; or of human form, but holding in her hand the leaf of a water lily ornamented with frogs.

(Bra.s.seur, _Hist. du Mexique_, i. p. 324.)

[171-2] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1636, p. 101.

[172-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1671, p. 17. Cusic spells it _Tarenyawagon_, and translates it Holder of the Heavens. But the name is evidently a compound of _garonhia_, sky, softened in the Onondaga dialect to _taronhia_ (see Gallatin's Vocabs. under the word sky), and _wagin_, I come.

[173-1] ? Te?? f?? est?, The First Epistle General of John, i. 5. In curious a.n.a.logy to these myths is that of the Eskimos of Greenland. In the beginning, they relate, were two brothers, one of whom said: "There shall be night and there shall be day, and men shall die, one after another." But the second said, "There shall be no day, but only night all the time, and men shall live forever." They had a long struggle, but here once more he who loved darkness rather than light was worsted, and the day triumphed. (_Nachrichten von Gronland aus einem Tagebuche vom Bischof Paul Egede_, p. 157: Kopenhagen, 1790. The date of the entry is 1738.)

[174-1] I accept without hesitation the derivation of this word, proposed and defended by that accomplished Algonkin scholar, the Rev. Eugene Vetromile, from _wanb_, white or east, and _naghi_ ancestors (_The Abnakis and their History_, p. 29: New York, 1866).

[174-2] White light, remarks Goethe, has in it something cheerful and enn.o.bling; it possesses "eine heitere, muntere, sanft reizende Eigenschaft." _Farbenlehre_, sec's 766, 770.

[175-1] _Hist. of the N. Am. Indians_, p. 159.

[175-2] La Hontan, _Voy. dans l'Amer. Sept._, ii. p. 42.

[175-3] "Blanco pizote," Ximenes, p. 4, _Vocabulario Quiche_, s. v.

_zak_. In the far north the Eskimo tongue presents the same a.n.a.logy. Day, morning, bright, light, lightning, all are from the same root (_kau_), signifying white (Richardson, Vocab. of Labrador Eskimo).

[176-1] Some fragments of them may be found in Campanius, _Acc. of New Sweden_, 1650, book iii. chap. 11, and in Byrd, _The Westover Ma.n.u.scripts_, 1733, p. 82. They were in both instances alleged to have been white and bearded men, the latter probably a later trait in the legend.

[176-2] _Con_ or _Cun_ I have already explained to mean thunder, _Con tici_, the mythical thunder vase. Pachacama is doubtless, as M. Leonce Angrand has suggested, from _ppacha_, source, and _cama_, all, the Source of All things (Desjardins, _Le Perou avant la Conq. Espagnole_, p. 23, note). But he and all other writers have been in error in considering this identical with _Pachacamac_, nor can the latter mean _creator of the world_, as it has constantly been translated. It is a participial adjective from _pacha_, place, especially the world, and _camac_, present participle of _camani_, I animate, from which also comes _camakenc_, the soul, and means _animating the world_. It was never used as a proper name. The following trochaic lines from the Quichua poem translated in the previous chapter, show its true meaning and correct accent:--

Pacha rurac, World creating, Pacha camac, World animating, Viracocha, Viracocha, Camasunqui, He animates thee.

The last word is the second transition, present tense, of _camani_, while _camac_ is its present participle.

[177-1] Ulloa, _Memoires Philosophiques sur l'Amerique_, i. p. 105.

[178-1] Acosta, _Hist. of the New World_, bk. v. chap. 4, bk. vi. chap.

19, Eng. trans., 1704.