The Myths of the New World Part 6

[87-3] Florida was also long supposed to be the site of this wondrous spring, and it is notorious that both Juan Ponce de Leon and De Soto had some lurking hope of discovering it in their expeditions thither. I have examined the myth somewhat at length in _Notes on the Floridian Peninsula, its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities_, pp. 99, 100: Philadelphia, 1859.

[88-1] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. iii. cap. iii.

[88-2] _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_, Introd., p. clviii.

[89-1] Memorial de Tecpan At.i.tlan, in Bra.s.seur, _Hist. du Mexique_, i. p.

167. The derivation of Tulan, or Tula, is extremely uncertain. The Abbe Bra.s.seur sees in it the _ultima Thule_ of the ancient geographers, which suits his idea of early American history. Hernando De Soto found a village of this name on the Mississippi, or near it. But on looking into Gallatin's vocabularies, _tulla_ turns out to be the Choctaw word for _stone_, and as De Soto was then in the Choctaw country, the coincidence is explained at once. Buschmann, who spells it _Tollan_, takes it from _tolin_, a rush, and translates, _juncetum_, _Ort der Binsen. Ueber die Aztekischen Orstnamen_,[TN-2] p. 682. Those who have attempted to make history from these mythological fables have been much puzzled about the location of this mystic land. Humboldt has placed it on the northwest coast, Cabrera at Palenque, Clavigero north of Anahuac, etc. etc. Aztlan, literally, the White Land, is another name of wholly mythical purport, which it would be equally vain to seek on the terrestrial globe. In the extract in the text, the word translated G.o.d is _Qabavil_, an old word for the highest G.o.d, either from a root meaning to open, to disclose, or from one of similar form signifying to wonder, to marvel; literally, therefore, the Revealer, or the Wondrous One (_Vocab. de la Lengua Quiche_, p. 209: Paris, 1862).

[90-1] Ximenes, _Or. de los Indios_, p. 80, _Le Livre Sacre_, p. 195.

[90-2] Garcia, _Origen de los Indios_, lib. iv. cap. 4.

[91-1] Compare the German expression _sich orientiren_, to right oneself by the east, to understand one's surroundings.

[92-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, p. 80.

[92-2] See Jacob Grimm, _Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache_, p. 681

[92-3] De Smet, Oregon Missions, p. 352.

[93-1] Bressani, _Relation Abrege_, p. 93.

[93-2] Venegas, _Hist. of California_, i. p. 91: London, 1759.

[93-3] Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. iii.

[93-4] Alexander von Humboldt has a.s.serted that the Quichuas had other and very circ.u.mstantial terms to express the cardinal points drawn from the positions of the son (_Ansichten der Natur_, ii. p. 368). But the distinguished naturalist overlooked the literal meaning of the phrases he quotes for north and south, _intip chaututa chayananpata_ and _intip chaupunchau chayananpata_, literally, the sun arriving toward the midnight, the sun arriving toward the midday. These are evidently translations of the Spanish _hacia la media noche_, _hacia el medio dia_, for they could not have originated among a people under or south of the equatorial line.

[94-1] Catlin, _Letters and Notes_, i., Letter 22; La Hontan, _Memoires_, ii. p. 151; Gumilla, _Hist. del Orinoco_, p. 159

[96-1] On the worship of the cross in Mexico and Yucatan and its invariable meaning as representing the G.o.ds of rain, consult Ixtlilxochitl, _Hist. des Chichimeques_, p. 5; Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. i. cap. ii.; Garcia, _Or. de los Indios_, lib. iii.

cap. vi. p. 109; Palacios, _Des. de la Prov. de Guatemala_, p. 29; Cogolludo, _Hist. de Yucathan_, lib. iv. cap. ix.; Villagutierre Sotomayor, _Hist. de el Itza y de el Lacandon_, lib. iii. cap. 8; and many others might be mentioned.

[96-2] Rivero and Tschudi, _Peruvian Antiquities_, p. 162, after J.

Acosta.

[96-3] Loskiel, _Ges. der Miss. der evang. Bruder_, p. 60.

[97-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, p. 75. Lapham and Pidgeon mention that in the State of Wisconsin many low mounds are found in the form of a cross with the arms directed to the cardinal points. They contain no remains. Were they not altars built to the Four Winds? In the mythology of the Dakotas, who inhabited that region, the winds were always conceived as birds, and for the cross they have a native name literally signifying "the musquito hawk spread out" (Riggs, _Dict. of the Dakota_, s. v.). Its Maya name is _vahom che_, the tree erected or set up, the adjective being drawn from the military language and implying as a defence or protection, as the warrior lifts his lance or shield (Landa, _Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan_, p. 65).

[97-2] Squier, _The Serpent Symbol in America_, p. 98.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SYMBOLS OF THE BIRD AND THE SERPENT.

Relations of man to the lower animals.--Two of these, the BIRD and the SERPENT, chosen as symbols beyond all others.--The Bird throughout America the symbol of the Clouds and Winds.--Meaning of certain species.--The symbolic meaning of the Serpent derived from its mode of locomotion, its poisonous bite, and its power of charming.--Usually the symbol of the Lightning and the Waters.--The Rattlesnake the symbolic species in America.--The war charm.--The Cross of Palenque.--The G.o.d of riches.--Both symbols devoid of moral significance.

Those stories which the Germans call _Thierfabeln_, wherein the actors are different kinds of brutes, seem to have a particular relish for children and uncultivated nations. Who cannot recall with what delight he nourished his childish fancy on the pranks of Reynard the Fox, or the tragic adventures of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf? Every nation has a congeries of such tales, and it is curious to mark how the same animal reappears with the same imputed physiognomy in all of them. The fox is always cunning, the wolf ravenous, the owl wise, and the a.s.s foolish. The question has been raised whether such traits were at first actually ascribed to animals, or whether their introduction in story was intended merely as an agreeable figure of speech for cla.s.ses of men. We cannot doubt but that the former was the case. Going back to the dawn of civilization, we find these relations not as amusing fictions, but as myths, embodying religious tenets, and the brute heroes held up as the ancestors of mankind, even as rightful claimants of man's prayers and praises.

Man, the paragon of animals, praying to the beast, is a spectacle so humiliating that, for the sake of our common humanity, we may seek the explanation of it least degrading to the dignity of our race. We must remember that as a hunter the primitive man was always matched against the wild creatures of the woods, so superior to him in their dumb certainty of instinct, their swift motion, their muscular force, their permanent and sufficient clothing. Their ways were guided by a wit beyond his divination, and they gained a living with little toil or trouble. They did not mind the darkness so terrible to him, but through the night called one to the other in a tongue whose meaning he could not fathom, but which, he doubted not, was as full of purport as his own. He did not recognize in himself those G.o.d-like qualities destined to endow him with the royalty of the world, while far more clearly than we do he saw the sly and strange faculties of his antagonists. They were to him, therefore, not inferiors, but equals--even superiors. He doubted not that once upon a time he had possessed their instinct, they his language, but that some necromantic spell had been flung on them both to keep them asunder. None but a potent sorcerer could break this charm, but such an one could understand the chants of birds and the howls of savage beasts, and on occasion transform himself into one or another animal, and course the forest, the air, or the waters, as he saw fit.

Therefore, it was not the beast that he worshipped, but that share of the omnipresent deity which he thought he perceived under its form.[101-1]

Beyond all others, two subdivisions of the animal kingdom have so riveted the attention of men by their unusual powers, and enter so frequently into the myths of every nation of the globe, that a right understanding of their symbolic value is an essential preliminary to the discussion of the divine legends. They are the BIRD and the SERPENT. We shall not go amiss if we seek the reasons of their pre-eminence in the facility with which their peculiarities offered sensuous images under which to convey the idea of divinity, ever present in the soul of man, ever striving at articulate expression.

The bird has the incomprehensible power of flight; it floats in the atmosphere, it rides on the winds, it soars toward heaven where dwell the G.o.ds; its plumage is stained with the hues of the rainbow and the sunset; its song was man's first hint of music; it spurns the clouds that impede his footsteps, and flies proudly over the mountains and moors where he toils wearily along. He sees no more enviable creature; he conceives the G.o.ds and angels must also have wings; and pleases himself with the fancy that he, too, some day will shake off this coil of clay, and rise on pinions to the heavenly mansions. All living beings, say the Eskimos, have the faculty of soul (_tarrak_), but especially the birds.[101-2] As messengers from the upper world and interpreters of its decrees, the flight and the note of birds have ever been anxiously observed as omens of grave import. "There is one bird especially," remarks the traveller Coreal, of the natives of Brazil, "which they regard as of good augury. Its mournful chant is heard rather by night than day. The savages say it is sent by their deceased friends to bring them news from the other world, and to encourage them against their enemies."[102-1] In Peru and in Mexico there was a College of Augurs, corresponding in purpose to the auspices of ancient Rome, who practised no other means of divination than watching the course and professing to interpret the songs of fowls. So natural and so general is such a superst.i.tion, and so wide-spread is the respect it still obtains in civilized and Christian lands, that it is not worth while to summon witnesses to show that it prevailed universally among the red race also.

What imprinted it with redoubled force on their imagination was the common belief that birds were not only divine nuncios, but the visible spirits of their departed friends. The Powhatans held that a certain small wood bird received the souls of their princes at death, and they refrained religiously from doing it harm;[102-2] while the Aztecs and various other nations thought that all good people, as a reward of merit, were metamorphosed at the close of life into feathered songsters of the grove, and in this form pa.s.sed a certain term in the umbrageous bowers of Paradise.

But the usual meaning of the bird as a symbol looks to a different a.n.a.logy--to that which appears in such familiar expressions as "the wings of the wind," "the flying clouds." Like the wind, the bird sweeps through the aerial s.p.a.ces, sings in the forests, and rustles on its course; like the cloud, it floats in mid-air and casts its shadow on the earth; like the lightning, it darts from heaven to earth to strike its unsuspecting prey. These tropes were truths to savage nations, and led on by that law of language which forced them to conceive everything as animate or inanimate, itself the product of a deeper law of thought which urges us to ascribe life to whatever has motion, they found no animal so appropriate for their purpose here as the bird. Therefore the Algonkins say that birds always make the winds, that they create the water spouts, and that the clouds are the spreading and agitation of their wings;[103-1] the Navajos, that at each cardinal point stands a white swan, who is the spirit of the blasts which blow from its dwelling; and the Dakotas, that in the west is the house of the Wakinyan, the Flyers, the breezes that send the storms. So, also, they frequently explain the thunder as the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings, and the lightning as the fire that flashes from his tracks, like the sparks which the buffalo scatters when he scours over a stony plain.[103-2] The thunder cloud was also a bird to the Caribs, and they imagined it produced the lightning in true Carib fashion by blowing it through a hollow reed, just as they to this day hurl their poisoned darts.[104-1] Tupis, Iroquois, Athapascas, for certain, perhaps all the families of the red race, were the subject pursued, partook of this persuasion; among them all it would probably be found that the same figures of speech were used in comparing clouds and winds with the feathered species as among us, with however this most significant difference, that whereas among us they are figures and nothing more, to them they expressed literal facts.

How important a symbol did they thus become! For the winds, the clouds, producing the thunder and the changes that take place in the ever-shifting panorama of the sky, the rain bringers, lords of the seasons, and not this only, but the primary type of the soul, the life, the breath of man and the world, these in their role in mythology are second to nothing. Therefore as the symbol of these august powers, as messenger of the G.o.ds, and as the embodiment of departed spirits, no one will be surprised if they find the bird figure most prominently in the myths of the red race.

Sometimes some particular species seems to have been chosen as most befitting these dignified attributes. No citizen of the United States will be apt to a.s.sert that their instinct led the indigenes of our territory astray when they chose with nigh unanimous consent the great American eagle as that fowl beyond all others proper to typify the supreme control and the most admirable qualities. Its feathers composed the war flag of the Creeks, and its images carved in wood or its stuffed skin surmounted their council lodges (Bartram); none but an approved warrior dare wear it among the Cherokees (Timberlake); and the Dakotas allowed such an honor only to him who had first touched the corpse of the common foe (De Smet). The Natchez and Akanzas seem to have paid it even religious honors, and to have installed it in their most sacred shrines (Sieur de Tonty, Du Pratz); and very clearly it was not so much for ornament as for a mark of dignity and a recognized sign of worth that its plumes were so highly prized. The natives of Zuni, in New Mexico, employed four of its feathers to represent the four winds in their invocations for rain (Whipple), and probably it was the eagle which a tribe in Upper California (the Acagchemem) worshipped under the name Panes. Father Geronimo Boscana describes it as a species of vulture, and relates that one of them was immolated yearly, with solemn ceremony, in the temple of each village. Not a drop of blood was spilled, and the body burned. Yet with an amount of faith that staggered even the Romanist, the natives maintained and believed that it was the same individual bird they sacrificed each year; more than this, that the same bird was slain by each of the villages![105-1]

The owl was regarded by Aztecs, Quiches, Mayas, Peruvians, Araucanians, and Algonkins as sacred to the lord of the dead. "The Owl" was one of the names of the Mexican Pluto, whose realm was in the north,[106-1] and the wind from that quarter was supposed by the Chipeways to be made by the owl as the south by the b.u.t.terfly.[106-2] As the bird of night, it was the fit emissary of him who rules the darkness of the grave.

Something in the looks of the creature as it sapiently stares and blinks in the light, or perhaps that it works while others sleep, got for it the character of wisdom. So the Creek priests carried with them as the badge of their learned profession the stuffed skin of one of these birds, thus modestly hinting their erudite turn of mind,[106-3] and the culture hero of the Monquis of California was represented, like Pallas Athene, having one as his inseparable companion (Venegas).

As the a.s.sociate of the G.o.d of light and air, and as the ant.i.thesis therefore of the owl, the Aztecs reverenced a bird called _quetzal_, which I believe is a species of parroquet. Its plumage is of a bright green hue, and was prized extravagantly as a decoration. It was one of the symbols and part of the name of Quetzalcoatl, their mythical civilizer, and the prince of all sorts of singing birds, myriads of whom were fabled to accompany him on his journeys.

The tender and hallowed a.s.sociations that have so widely shielded the dove from harm, which for instance Xenophon mentions among the ancient Persians, were not altogether unknown to the tribes of the New World.

Neither the Hurons nor Mandans would kill them, for they believed they were inhabited by the souls of the departed,[107-1] and it is said, but on less satisfactory authority, that they enjoyed similar immunity among the Mexicans. Their soft and plaintive note and sober russet hue widely enlisted the sympathy of man, and linked them with his more tender feelings.

"As wise as the serpent, as harmless as the dove," is an ant.i.thesis that might pa.s.s current in any human language. They are the emblems of complementary, often contrasted qualities. Of all animals, the serpent is the most mysterious. No wonder it possessed the fancy of the observant child of nature. Alone of creatures it swiftly progresses without feet, fins, or wings. "There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not," said wise King Solomon; and the chief of them were, "the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock."

Its sinuous course is like to nothing so much as that of a winding river, which therefore we often call serpentine. So did the Indians.

Kennebec, a stream in Maine, in the Algonkin means snake, and Antietam, the creek in Maryland of tragic celebrity, in an Iroquois dialect has the same significance. How easily would savages, construing the figure literally, make the serpent a river or water G.o.d! Many species being amphibious would confirm the idea. A lake watered by innumerable tortuous rills wriggling into it, is well calculated for the fabled abode of the king of the snakes. Thus doubtless it happened that both Algonkins and Iroquois had a myth that in the great lakes dwelt a monster serpent, of irascible temper, who unless appeased by meet offerings raised a tempest or broke the ice beneath the feet of those venturing on his domain, and swallowed them down.[108-1]

The rattlesnake was the species almost exclusively honored by the red race. It is slow to attack, but venomous in the extreme, and possesses the power of the basilisk to attract within reach of its spring small birds and squirrels. Probably this much talked of fascination is nothing more than by its presence near their nests to incite them to attack, and to hazard near and nearer approaches to their enemy in hope to force him to retreat, until once within the compa.s.s of his fell swoop they fall victims to their temerity. I have often watched a cat act thus. Whatever explanation may be received, the fact cannot be questioned, and is ever attributed by the unreflecting, to some diabolic spell cast upon them by the animal. They have the same strange susceptibility to the influence of certain sounds as the vipers, in which lies the secret of snake charming. Most of the Indian magicians were familiar with this singularity. They employed it with telling effect to put beyond question their intercourse with the unseen powers, and to vindicate the potency of their own guardian spirits who thus enabled them to handle with impunity the most venomous of reptiles.[109-1] The well-known antipathy of these serpents to certain plants, for instance the hazel, which bound around the ankles is an efficient protection against their attacks, and perhaps some antidote to their poison used by the magicians, led to their frequent introduction in religious ceremonies. Such exhibitions must have made a profound impression on the spectators, and redounded in a corresponding degree to the glory of the performer. "Who is a manito?"

asks the mystic meda chant of the Algonkins. "He," is the reply, "he who walketh with a serpent, walking on the ground, he is a manito."[109-2]

And the intimate alliance of this symbol with the most sacred mysteries of religion, the darkest riddles of the Unknown, is reflected in their language, and also in that of their neighbors the Dakotas, in both of which the same words _manito_, _wakan_, which express divinity in its broadest sense, are also used as generic terms signifying this species of animals! This strange fact is not without a parallel, for in both Arabic and Hebrew, the word for serpent has many derivatives, meaning to have intercourse with demoniac powers, to practise magic, and to consult familiar spirits.[110-1]

The pious founder of the Moravian brotherhood, the Count of Zinzendorf, owed his life on one occasion to this deeply rooted superst.i.tion. He was visiting a missionary station among the Shawnees, in the Wyoming valley.

Recent quarrels with the whites had unusually irritated this unruly folk, and they resolved to make him their first victim. After he had retired to his secluded hut, several of their braves crept upon him, and cautiously lifting the corner of the lodge, peered in. The venerable man was seated before a little fire, a volume of the Scriptures on his knees, lost in the perusal of the sacred words. While they gazed, a huge rattlesnake, unnoticed by him, trailed across his feet, and rolled itself into a coil in the comfortable warmth of the fire. Immediately the would-be murderers forsook their purpose and noiselessly retired, convinced that this was indeed a man of G.o.d.

A more unique trait than any of these is its habit of casting its skin every spring, thus as it were renewing its life. In temperate lat.i.tudes the rattlesnake, like the leaves and flowers, retires from sight during the cold season, and at the return of kindly warmth puts on a new and brilliant coat. Its cast-off skin was carefully collected by the savages and stored in the medicine bag as possessing remedial powers of high excellence. Itself thus immortal, they thought it could impart its vitality to them. So when the mother was travailing in sore pain, and the danger neared that the child would be born silent, the attending women hastened to catch some serpent and give her its blood to drink.[111-1]

It is well known that in ancient art this animal was the symbol of aesculapius, and to this day, Professor Aga.s.siz found that the Maues Indians, who live between the upper Tapajos and Madeira Rivers in Brazil, whenever they a.s.sign a form to any "remedio," give it that of a serpent.[111-2]

Probably this notion that it was annually rejuvenated led to its adoption as a symbol of Time among the Aztecs; or, perchance, as they reckoned by suns, and the figure of the sun, a circle, corresponds to nothing animate but a serpent with its tail in its mouth, eating itself, as it were, this may have been its origin. Either of them is more likely than that the symbol arose from the recondite reflection that time is "never ending, still beginning, still creating, still destroying," as has been suggested.

Only, however, within the last few years has the significance of the serpent symbol in its length and breadth been satisfactorily explained, and its frequent recurrence accounted for. By a searching a.n.a.lysis of Greek and German mythology, Dr. Schwarz, of Berlin, has shown that the meaning which is paramount to all others in this emblem is _the lightning_; a meaning drawn from the close a.n.a.logy which the serpent in its motion, its quick spring, and mortal bite, has to the zigzag course, the rapid flash, and sudden stroke of the electric discharge. He even goes so far as to imagine that by this resemblance the serpent first acquired the veneration of men. But this is an extravagance not supported by more thorough research. He has further shown with great aptness of ill.u.s.tration how, by its dread effects, the lightning, the heavenly serpent, became the G.o.d of terror and the opponent of such heroes as Beowulf, St. George, Thor, Perseus, and others, mythical representations of the fearful war of the elements in the thunder storm; how from its connection with the advancing summer and fertilizing showers it bore the opposite character of the deity of fruitfulness, riches, and plenty; how, as occasionally kindling the woods where it strikes, it was a.s.sociated with the myths of the descent of fire from heaven, and as in popular imagination where it falls it scatters the thunderbolts in all directions, the flint-stones which flash when struck were supposed to be these fragments, and gave rise to the stone worship so frequent in the old world; and how, finally, the prevalent myth of a king of serpents crowned with a glittering stone or wearing a horn is but another type of the lightning.[113-1] Without accepting unreservedly all these conclusions, I shall show how correct they are in the main when applied to the myths of the New World, and thereby ill.u.s.trate how the red race is of one blood and one faith with our own remote ancestors in heathen Europe and Central Asia.

It asks no elaborate effort of the imagination to liken the lightning to a serpent. It does not require any remarkable acuteness to guess the conundrum of Schiller:--

"Unter allen Schlangen ist eine Auf Erden nicht gezeugt, Mit der an Schnelle keine, An Wuth sich keine vergleicht."