The Myths of the New World

231

Le Livre Sacré, p. 9. The name of the lightning in Quiché is cak ul ha, literally, “fire coming from water.”

232

Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 158.

233

“El rayo, el relámpago, y el trueno.” Gama, Des. de las dos Piedras, etc., ii. p. 76: Mexico, 1832.

234

Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, lib. vi. cap. 23. Gama, ubi sup. ii. 76, 77.

235

Torquemada, ibid., lib. vi. cap. 41.

236

Senate Report on the Indian Tribes, p. 358: Washington, 1867.

237

Brasseur, Hist du Mexique, i. p. 201, and on the extent of his worship Waitz, Anthropol., iv. p. 144.

238

Oviedo, Hist. du Nicaragua, p. 47.

239

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.

240

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.

241

Science of Language, Second Series, p. 518.

242

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 analogy.

243

Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. pp. 135-142.

244

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.

245

Narrative of John Tanner, p. 351.

246

Schoolcraft, Algic Res., i. p. 216.

247

Narrative of John Tanner, p. 354.

248

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.

249

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.

250

The orthography of Brebeuf is aataentsic. This may be analyzed as follows: root aouen, water; prefix at, il y a quelque chose là dedans; ataouen, se baigner; from which comes the form ataouensere. (See Bruyas, Rad. Verb. Iroquæor., pp. 30, 31.) Here again the mythological role of the moon as the goddess of water comes distinctly to light.

251

This offers an instance of the uniformity which prevailed in symbolism in the New World. The Aztecs adored the goddess 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. (Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, i. p. 324.)

252

Rel. de la Nouv. France, 1636, p. 101.

253

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.

254

Ὁ Θεος φως εστι, The First Epistle General of John, i. 5. In curious analogy 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 Grönland aus einem Tagebuche vom Bischof Paul Egede, p. 157: Kopenhagen, 1790. The date of the entry is 1738.)

The last word is the second transition, present tense, of camani, while camac is its present participle.

255

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).

256

White light, remarks Goethe, has in it something cheerful and ennobling; it possesses “eine heitere, muntere, sanft reizende Eigenschaft.” Farbenlehre, sec’s 766, 770.

257

Hist. of the N. Am. Indians, p. 159.

258

La Hontan, Voy. dans l’Amér. Sept., ii. p. 42.

259

“Blanco pizote,” Ximenes, p. 4, Vocabulario Quiché, s. v. zak. In the far north the Eskimo tongue presents the same analogy. Day, morning, bright, light, lightning, all are from the same root (kau), signifying white (Richardson, Vocab. of Labrador Eskimo).

260

Some fragments of them may be found in Campanius, Acc. of New Sweden, 1650, book iii. chap. 11, and in Byrd, The Westover Manuscripts, 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.

261

Con or Cun I have already explained to mean thunder, Con tici, the mythical thunder vase. Pachacamà is doubtless, as M. Leonce Angrand has suggested, from ppacha, source, and camà, all, the Source of All things (Desjardins, Le Pérou avant la Conq. Espagnole, p. 23, note). But he and all other writers have been in error in considering this identical with Pachacámac, 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:—

262

Ulloa, Mémoires Philosophiques sur l’Amérique, i. p. 105.

263

Acosta, Hist. of the New World, bk. v. chap. 4, bk. vi. chap. 19, Eng. trans., 1704.

264

The name is derived from tampu, corrupted by the Spaniards to tambo, an inn, and paccari morning, or paccarin, it dawns, which also has the figurative signification, it is born. It may therefore mean either Lodgings of the Dawn, or as the Spaniards usually translated it, House of Birth, or Production, Casa de Producimiento.

265

The names given by Balboa (Hist. du Pérou, p. 4) and Montesinos (Ancien Pérou, p. 5) are Manco, Cacha, Auca, Uchu. The meaning of Manco is unknown. The others signify, in their order, messenger, enemy or traitor, and the little one. The myth of Viracocha is given in its most antique form by Juan de Betanzos, in the Historia de los Ingas, compiled in the first years of the conquest from the original songs and legends. It is quoted in Garcia, Origen de los Indios, lib. v. cap. 7. Balboa, Montesinos, Acosta, and others have also furnished me some incidents. Whether Atachuchu mentioned in the last chapter was not another name of Viracocha may well be questioned. It is every way probable.

266

Hist. des Incas, liv. iii. chap. 25.

267

It is compounded of vira, fat, foam (which perhaps is akin to yurac, white), and cocha, a pond or lake.

268

See Desjardins, Le Pérou avant la Conq. Espagnole, p. 67.

269

Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 119, in Müller.

270

Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, i. p. 302.

271

There is no reason to lay any stress upon this feature. Beard was nothing uncommon among the Aztecs and many other nations of the New World. It was held to add dignity to the appearance, and therefore Sahagun, in his description of the Mexican idols, repeatedly alludes to their beards, and Müller quotes various authorities to show that the priests wore them long and full (Amer. Urreligionen, p. 429). Not only was Quetzalcoatl himself reported to have been of fair complexion—white indeed—but the Creole historian Ixtlilxochitl says the old legends asserted that all the Toltecs, natives of Tollan, or Tula, as their name signifies, were so likewise. Still more, Aztlan, the traditional home of the Nahuas, or Aztecs proper, means literally the white land, according to one of our best authorities (Buschmann, Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen, 612: Berlin, 1852).

272

Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, v. p. 109.

273

The myth of Quetzalcoatl I have taken chiefly from Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. i. cap. 5; lib. iii. caps. 3, 13, 14; lib. x. cap. 29; and Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, lib. vi. cap. 24. It must be remembered that the Quiché legends identify him positively with the Tohil of Central America (Le Livre Sacré, p. 247).

274

Padilla Davila, Hist. de la Prov. de Santiago de Mexico, lib. ii. cap. 89.

275

Cogolludo, Hist. de Yucathan, lib. iv. cap. 8.

276

He is also called Idacanzas and Nemterequetaba. Some have maintained a distinction between Bochica and Sua, which, however, has not been shown. The best authorities on the mythology of the Muyscas are Piedrahita, Hist. de las Conq. del Nuevo Reyno de Granada, 1668 (who is copied by Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, pp. 246 sqq.), and Simon, Noticias de Tierra Firme, Parte ii., in Kingsborough’s Mexico.

277

D’Orbigny, L’Homme Américain, ii. p. 319, and Rochefort, Hist. des Isles Antilles, p. 482 (Waitz). The name has various orthographies, Tamu, Tamöi, Tamou, Itamoulou, etc. Perhaps the Ama-livaca of the Orinoko Indians is another form. This personage corresponds even minutely in many points with the Tamu of the island Caribs.

278

Catlin, Letters and Notes, Letter 22.

279

Journal of Capt. Johnson, in Emory, Reconnoissance of New Mexico, p. 601.

280

M. De Charency, in the Revue Américaine, ii. p. 317. Tupa it may be observed means in Quichua, lord, or royal. Father Holguin gives as an example â tupa Dios, O Lord God (Vocabulario Quichua, p. 348: Ciudad de los Reyes, 1608). In the Quiché dialects tepeu is one of the common appellations of divinity and is also translated lord or ruler. We are not yet sufficiently advanced in the study of American philology to draw any inference from these resemblances, but they should not be overlooked.

281

Cortes, Carta Primera, pp. 113, 114.

282

Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. xii. caps. 2, 3.

283

La Vega, Hist. des Incas, lib. ix. cap. 15.

284

Peter Martyr, De Reb. Oceanicis, Dec. iii. lib. vii.

285

Lizana, Hist. de Nuestra Señora de Itzamal, lib. ii. cap. i. in Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, ii. p. 605. The prophecies are of the priest who bore the title—not name—chilan balam, and whose offices were those of divination and astrology. The verse claims to date from about 1450, and was very well known throughout Yucatan, so it is said. The number thirteen which in many of these prophecies is the supposed limit of the present order of things, is doubtless derived from the observation that thirteen moons complete one solar year.

286

Squier, Travels in Nicaragua, ii. p. 35.

287

Whipple, Report on the Ind. Tribes, p. 36. Emory, Recon. of New Mexico, p. 64. The latter adds that among the Pueblo Indians, the Apaches, and Navajos, the name of Montezuma is “as familiar as Washington to us.” This is the more curious, as neither the Pueblo Indians nor either of the other tribes are in any way related to the Aztec race by language, as has been shown by Dr. Buschman, Die Voelker und Sprachen Neu Mexico’s, p. 262.

288

Humboldt, Essay on New Spain, bk. ii. chap. vi, Eng. trans.; Ansichten der Natur, ii. pp. 357, 386.

289

So far as this applies to the Eskimos, it might be questioned on the authority of Paul Egede, whose valuable Nachrichten von Grönland contains several flood-myths, &c. But these Eskimos had had for generations intercourse with European missionaries and sailors, and as the other tribes of their stock were singularly devoid of corresponding traditions, it is likely that in Greenland they were of foreign origin.

290

Pictet, Origines Indo-Européennes in Michelet, La Mer. The latter has many eloquent and striking remarks on the impressions left by the great ocean.

291

“Spiritus Dei incubuit superficei aquarum” is the translation of one writer. The word for spirit in Hebrew, as in Latin, originally meant wind, as I have before remarked.

292

Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, i. p. 266.

293

Mackenzie, Hist. of the Fur Trade, p. 83; Richardson, Arctic Expedition, p. 239.

294

Ximenes, Or. de los Ind. de Guat., pp. 5-7. I translate freely, following Ximenes rather than Brasseur.

295

Garcia, Or. de los Indios, lib. v. cap. 4.

296

Doc. Hist. of New York, iv. p. 130 (circ. 1650).

297

Rel. de la Nouv. France, An 1636, p. 101.

298

Rel. de la Nouv. France, An 1634, p. 13.

299

Conquest of Mexico, i. p. 61.

300

For instance, Epictetus favors the opinion that at the solstices of the great year not only all human beings, but even the gods, are annihilated; and speculates whether at such times Jove feels lonely (Discourses, bk. iii. chap. 13). Macrobius, so far from coinciding with him, explains the great antiquity of Egyptian civilization by the hypothesis that that country is so happily situated between the pole and equator, as to escape both the deluge and conflagration of the great cycle (Somnium Scipionis, lib. ii. cap. 10).

301

Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, iii. p. 263, iv. p. 230.

302

Oviedo, Hist. du Nicaragua, pp. 22, 27.

303

Müller, Amer. Urrelig., p. 254, from Max and Denis.

304

Morse, Rep. on the Ind. Tribes, App. p. 346; D’Orbigny, Frag. d’un Voyage dans l’Amér. Mérid., p. 512.

305

When, as in the case of one of the Mexican Noahs, Coxcox, this does not seem to hold good, it is probably owing to a loss of the real form of the myth. Coxcox is also known by the name of Cipactli, Fish-god, and Huehue tonaca cipactli, Old Fish-god of Our Flesh.

306

My knowledge of the Sanscrit form of the flood-myth is drawn principally from the dissertation of Professor Felix Nève, entitled La Tradition Indienne du Deluge dans sa Forme la plus ancienne, Paris, 1851. There is in the oldest versions no distinct reference to an antediluvian race, and in India Manu is by common consent the Adam as well as the Noah of their legends.

307

Prescott, Conquest of Peru, i. p. 88; Codex Vaticanus, No. 3776, in Kingsborough.

308

And also various peculiarities of style and language lost in translation. The two accounts of the Deluge are given side by side in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible under the word Pentateuch.

309

See the dissertation of Prof. Nève referred to above.

310

American State Papers, Indian Affairs, i. p. 729. Date of legend, 1801.

311

Molina, Hist. of Chili, ii. p. 82.

312

Richardson, Arctic Expedition, p. 239.

313

Dumont, Mems. Hist. sur la Louisiane, i. p. 163.

314

Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, v. p. 686.

315

Desjardins, Le Pérou avant la Conq. Espagn., p. 27.

316

Cod. Chimalpopoca, in Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, Pièces Justificatives.

317

These four birds, whose names have lost their signification, represent doubtless the four winds, or the four rivers, which, as in so many legends, are the active agents in overwhelming the world in its great crises.

318

The word rendered mill-stone, in the original means those large hollowed stones on which the women were accustomed to bruise the maize. The imitative sounds for which I have substituted others in English, are in Quiché, holi, holi, huqui, huqui.

319

Brasseur translates “quoique nous ne sentissions rien,” but Ximenes, “nos quemasteis, y sentimos el dolor.” As far as I can make out the original, it is the negative conditional as I have given it in the text.

320

Le Livre Sacré, p. 27; Ximenes, Or. de los Indios, p. 13.

321

The American nations among whom a distinct and well-authenticated myth of the deluge was found are as follows: Athapascas, Algonkins, Iroquois, Cherokees, Chikasaws, Caddos, Natchez, Dakotas, Apaches, Navajos, Mandans, Pueblo Indians, Aztecs, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Tlascalans, Mechoacans, Toltecs, Nahuas, Mayas, Quiches, Haitians, natives of Darien and Popoyan, Muyscas, Quichuas, Tuppinambas, Achaguas, Araucanians, and doubtless others. The article by M. de Charency in the Revue Américaine, Le Deluge, d’après les Traditions Indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord, contains some valuable extracts, but is marred by a lack of criticism of sources, and makes no attempt at analysis, nor offers for their existence a rational explanation.

322

Une Fête Brésilienne célébré à Rouen en 1550, par M. Ferdinand Denis, p. 82 (quoted in the Revue Américaine, ii. p. 317). The native words in this account guarantee its authenticity. In the Tupi language, tata means fire; parana, ocean; Monan, perhaps from monáne, to mingle, to temper, as the potter the clay (Dias, Diccionario da Lingua Tupy: Lipsia, 1858). Irin monge may be an old form from mongat-iron, to set in order, to restore, to improve (Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika’s, ii. p. 70).

323

Professor Nève, ubi supra, from the Zatapatha Brahmana.

324

Avendano, Sermones, Lima, 1648, in Rivero and Tschudi, Peruv. Antiqs., p. 114. In the year 1600, Oñate found on the coast of California a tribe whose idol held in one hand a shell containing three eggs, in the other an ear of maize, while before it was placed a cup of water. Vizcaino, who visited the same people a few years afterwards, mentions that they kept in their temples tame ravens, and looked upon them as sacred birds (Torquemada, Mon. Ind., lib. v. cap. 40 in Waitz). Thus, in all parts of the continent do we find the bird, as a symbol of the clouds, associated with the rains and the harvests.

325

The deluge was called hun yecil, which, according to Cogolludo, means the inundation of the trees, for all the forests were swept away (Hist. de Yucathan, lib. iv. cap. 5). Bishop Landa adds, to substantiate the legend, that all the woods of the peninsula appear as if they had been planted at one time, and that to look at them one would say they had been trimmed with scissors (Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan, 58, 60).

326

Vues des Cordillères, p. 202.

327

Ubi sup., p. 207.

328

The Scandinavians believed the universe had been destroyed nine times:—

Ni Verdener yeg husker,Og ni Himle,

says the Voluspa (i. 2, in Klee, Le Deluge, p. 220). I observe some English writers have supposed from these lines that the Northmen believed in the existence of nine abodes for the blessed. Such is not the sense of the original.

329

At least this is the doctrine of one of the Shastas. The race, it teaches, has been destroyed four times; first by water, secondly by winds, thirdly the earth swallowed them, and lastly fire consumed them (Sepp., Heidenthum und Christenthum, i. p. 191).

330

Echevarria y Veitia, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. i. cap. 4, in Waitz.