The Myths of the New World

14

The name Eskimo is from the Algonkin word Eskimantick, eaters of raw flesh. There is reason to believe that at one time they possessed the Atlantic coast considerably to the south. The Northmen, in the year 1000, found the natives of Vinland, probably near Rhode Island, of the same race as they were familiar with in Labrador. They call them Skralingar, chips, and describe them as numerous and short of stature (Eric Rothens Saga, in Mueller, Sagænbibliothek, p. 214). It is curious that the traditions of the Tuscaroras, who placed their arrival on the Virginian coast about 1300, spoke of the race they found there as eaters of raw flesh and ignorant of maize (Lederer, Account of North America, in Harris, Voyages).

15

Richardson, Arctic Expedition, p. 374.

16

The late Professor W. W. Turner of Washington, and Professor Buschmann of Berlin, are the two scholars who have traced the boundaries of this widely dispersed family. The name is drawn from Lake Athapasca in British America.

17

The Cherokee tongue has a limited number of words in common with the Iroquois, and its structural similarity is close. The name is of unknown origin. It should doubtless be spelled Tsalakie, a plural form, almost the same as that of the river Tellico, properly Tsaliko (Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, p. 87), on the banks of which their principal towns were situated. Adair’s derivation from cheera, fire, is worthless, as no such word exists in their language.

18

The term Algonkin may be a corruption of agomeegwin, people of the other shore. Algic, often used synonymously, is an adjective manufactured by Mr. Schoolcraft “from the words Alleghany and Atlantic” (Algic Researches, ii. p. 12). There is no occasion to accept it, as there is no objection to employing Algonkin both as substantive and adjective. Iroquois is a French compound of the native words hiro, I have said, and kouè, an interjection of assent or applause, terms constantly heard in their councils.

19

Apalachian, which should be spelt with one p, is formed of two Creek words, apala, the great sea, the ocean, and the suffix chi, people, and means those dwelling by the ocean. That the Natchez were offshoots of the Mayas I was the first to surmise and to prove by a careful comparison of one hundred Natchez words with their equivalents in the Maya dialects. Of these, five have affinities more or less marked to words peculiar to the Huastecas of the river Panuco (a Maya colony), thirteen to words common to Huasteca and Maya, and thirty-nine to words of similar meaning in the latter language. This resemblance may be exemplified by the numerals, one, two, four, seven, eight, twenty. In Natchez they are hu, ah, gan, uk-woh, upku-tepish, oka-poo: in Maya, hu, ca, can, uk, uapxæ, hunkal. (See the Am. Hist. Mag., New Series, vol. i. p. 16, Jan. 1867.)

20

Dakota, a native word, means friends or allies.

21

Rep. of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1854, p. 209.

22

According to Professor Buschmann Aztec is probably from iztac, white, and Nahuatlacatl signifies those who speak the language Nahuatl, clear sounding, sonorous. The Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg), on the other hand, derives the latter from the Quiche nawal, intelligent, and adds the amazing information that this is identical with the English know all!! (Hist. du Mexique, etc., i. p. 102). For in his theory several languages of Central America are derived from the same old Indo-Germanic stock as the English, German, and cognate tongues. Toltec, from Toltecatl, means inhabitant of Tollan, which latter may be from tolin, rush, and signify the place of rushes. The signification artificer, often assigned to Toltecatl, is of later date, and was derived from the famed artistic skill of this early folk (Buschmann, Aztek. Ortsnamen, p. 682: Berlin, 1852). The Toltecs are usually spoken of as anterior to the Nahuas, but the Tlascaltecs and natives of Cholollan or Cholula were in fact Toltecs, unless we assign to this latter name a merely mythical signification. The early migrations of the two Aztec bands and their relationship, it may be said in passing, are as yet extremely obscure. The Shoshonees when first known dwelt as far north as the head waters of the Missouri, and in the country now occupied by the Black Feet. Their language, which includes that of the Comanche, Wihinasht, Utah, and kindred bands, was first shown to have many and marked affinities with that of the Aztecs by Professor Buschmann in his great work, Ueber die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im nördlichen Mexico und höheren Amerikanischen Norden, p. 648: Berlin, 1854.

23

His opinion was founded on an analysis of fifteen words of the secret language of the Incas preserved in the Royal Commentaries of Garcilasso de la Vega. On examination, they all proved to be modified forms from the lengua general (Meyen, Ueber die Ureinwohner von Peru, p. 6). The Quichuas of Peru must not be confounded with the Quiches of Guatemala. Quiche is the name of a place, and means “many trees;” the derivation of Quichua is unknown. Muyscas means “men.” This nation also called themselves Chibchas.

24

The significance of Carib is probably warrior. It may be the same word as Guarani, which also has this meaning. Tupi or Tupa is the name given the thunder, and can only be understood mythically.

25

The Araucanians probably obtained their name from two Quichua words, ari auccan, yes! they fight; an idiom very expressive of their warlike character. They had had long and terrible wars with the Incas before the arrival of Pizarro.

26

Since writing the text I have received the admirable work of Dr. von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika’s zumal Brasilians, Leipzig, 1867, in which I observe that that profound student considers that there is no doubt but that the Island Caribs, and the Galibis of the main land are descendants from the same stock as the Tupis and Guaranis.

27

Comptes Rendus, vol. xxi. p. 1368 sqq.

28

The two best authorities are Daniel Wilson, The American Cranial Type, in Ann. Rep. of the Smithson. Inst., 1862, p. 240, and J. A. Meigs, Cranial Forms of the Amer. Aborigs.: Phila. 1866. They accord in the views expressed in the text and in the rejection of those advocated by Dr. S. G. Morton in the Crania Americana.

29

Second Visit to the United States, i. p. 252.

30

Martius, Von dem Rechtzustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 80: Muenchen, 1832; recently republished in his Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika’s: Leipzig, 1867.

31

Athapaskische Sprachstamm, p. 164: Berlin, 1856.

32

Martius, Von dem Rechtzustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 77.

33

But there is no ground for the most positive of philosophers to reject the doctrine of innate ideas when put in a certain way. The instincts and habits of the lower animals by which they obtain food, migrate, and perpetuate their kind, are in obedience to particular congenital impressions, and correspond to definite anatomical and morphological relations. No one pretends their knowledge is experimental. Just so the human cerebrum has received, by descent or otherwise, various sensory impressions peculiar to man as a species, which are just as certain to guide his thoughts, actions, and destiny, as is the cerebrum of the insectivorous aye-aye to lead it to hunt successfully for larvæ.

34

Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung, i. pp. 50, 252.

35

I offer these derivations with a certain degree of reserve, for such an extraordinary similarity in the sound of these words is discoverable in North and portions of South America, that one might almost be tempted to claim for them one original form. Thus in the Maya dialects it is ku, vocative â kue, in Natchez kue-ya, in the Uchee of West Florida kauhwu, in Otomi okha, in Mandan okee, Sioux ogha, waughon, wakan, in Quichua waka, huaca, in Iroquois quaker, oki, Algonkin oki, okee, Eskimo aghatt, which last has a singular likeness in sound to the German or Norse, O Gott, as some of the others have to the corresponding Finnish word ukko. Ku in the Carib tongue means house, especially a temple or house of the gods. The early Spanish explorers adopted the word with the orthography cue, and applied it to the sacred edifices of whatever nation they discovered. For instance, they speak of the great cemetery of Teotihuacan, near Tezcuco, as the Llano de los Cues.

36

“As the high heavens, the far-off mountains look to us blue, so a blue superficies seems to recede from us. As we would fain pursue an attractive object that flees from us, so we like to gaze at the blue, not that it urges itself upon us, but that it draws us after it.” Goethe, Farbenlehre, secs. 780, 781.

37

Loskiel, Geschichte der Mission der Evang. Brueder, p. 63: Barby, 1789.

38

Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, lib. iv. cap. vii.

39

Rel. de la Nouv. France. An 1636, p. 107.

40

This word is found in Gallatin’s vocabularies (Transactions of the Am. Antiq. Soc., vol. ii.), and may have partially induced that distinguished ethnologist to ascribe, as he does in more than one place, whatever notions the eastern tribes had of a Supreme Being to the teachings of the Quakers.

41

Bruyas, Radices Verborum Iroquæorum, p. 84. This work is in Shea’s Library of American Linguistics, and is a most valuable contribution to philology. The same etymology is given by Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvages, etc., Germ. trans., p. 65.

42

My authorities are Riggs, Dict. of the Dakota, Boscana, Account of New California, Richardson’s and Egede’s Eskimo Vocabularies, Pandosy, Gram. and Dict. of the Yakama (Shea’s Lib. of Am. Linguistics), and the Abbé Brasseur for the Aztec.

43

These terms are found in Gallatin’s vocabularies. The last mentioned is not, as Adair thought, derived from issto ulla or ishto hoollo, great man, for in Choctaw the adjective cannot precede the noun it qualifies. Its true sense is visible in the analogous Creek words ishtali, the storm wind, and hustolah, the windy season.

44

Webster derives hurricane from the Latin furio. But Oviedo tells us in his description of Hispaniola that “Hurakan, in lingua di questa isola vuole dire propriamente fortuna tempestuosa molto eccessiva, perche en effetto non è altro que un grandissimo vento è pioggia insieme.” Historia dell’ Indie, lib. vi. cap. iii. It is a coincidence—perhaps something more—that in the Quichua language huracan, third person singular present indicative of the verbal noun huraca, means “a stream of water falls perpendicularly.” (Markham, Quichua Dictionary, p. 132.)

45

Oviedo, Rel. de la Prov. de Cueba, p. 141, ed. Ternaux-Compans.

46

Garcia, Origen de los Indios, lib. iv. cap. xxii.

47

See the Rel. de la Nouv. France pour l’An 1637, p. 49.

48

Mr. Morgan, in his excellent work, The League of the Iroquois, has been led astray by an ignorance of the etymology of these terms. For Schoolcraft’s views see his Oneota, p. 147. The matter is ably discussed in the Etudes Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de l’Amérique, p. 14: Montreal, 1866; but comp. Shea, Dict. Français-Onontagué, preface.

49

“Qui ne prend aucun soin des choses icy bas.” Jour. Hist. d’un Voyage de l’Amérique, p. 225: Paris, 1713.

50

In attributing this speech to the Inca Yupanqui, I have followed Balboa, who expressly says this was the general opinion of the Indians (Hist. du Pérou, p. 62, ed. Ternaux-Compans). Others assign it to other Incas. See Garcilasso de la Vega, Hist. des Incas, lib. viii. chap. 8, and Acosta, Nat. and Morall Hist. of the New World, chap. 5. The fact and the approximate time are beyond question.

51

Xeres, Rel. de la Conq. du Pérou, p. 151, ed. Ternaux-Compans.

52

Prescott, Conq. of Mexico, i. pp. 192, 193, on the authority of Ixtlilxochitl.

53

Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, iii. p. 297, note.

54

Of very many authorities that I have at hand, I shall only mention Heckewelder, Acc. of the Inds. p. 422, Duponceau, Mém. sur les Langues de l’Amér. du Nord, p. 310, Peter Martyr De Rebus Oceanicis, Dec. i., cap. 9, Molina, Hist. of Chili, ii. p. 75, Ximenes, Origen de los Indios de Guatemala, pp. 4, 5, Ixtlilxochitl, Rel. des Conq. du Mexique, p. 2. These terms bear the severest scrutiny. The Aztec appellation of the Supreme Being Tloque nahuaque is compounded of tloc, together, with, and nahuac, at, by, with, with possessive forms added, giving the signification, Lord of all existence and coexistence (alles Mitseyns und alles Beiseyns, bei welchem das Seyn aller Dinge ist. Buschmann, Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen, p. 642). The Algonkin term Kittanittowit is derived from kitta, great, manito, spirit, wit, an adjective termination indicating a mode of existence, and means the Great Living Spirit (Duponceau, u. s.). Both these terms are undoubtedly of native origin. In the Quiche legends the Supreme Being is called Bitol, the substantive form of bit, to make pottery, to form, and Tzakol, substantive form of tzak, to build, the Creator, the Constructor. The Arowacks of Guyana applied the term Aluberi to their highest conception of a first cause, from the verbal form alin, he who makes (Martius, Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika’s, i. p. 696).

55

Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 403.

56

Bruyas, Rad. Verb. Iroquæorum, p. 38.

57

Alcazar, Chrono-historia de la Prov. de Toledo, Dec. iii., Año viii., cap. iv: Madrid, 1710. This rare work contains the only faithful copies of Father Rogel’s letters extant. Mr. Shea, in his History of Catholic Missions, calls him erroneously Roger.

58

It is fully analyzed by Duponceau, Langues de l’Amérique du Nord, p. 309.

59

Discourse on the Religion of the Ind. Tribes of N. Am., p. 252 in the Trans. N. Y. Hist. Soc.

60

Mueller, Amer. Urreligionen, pp. 265, 272, 274. Well may he remark: “The dualism is not very striking among these tribes;” as a few pages previous he says of the Caribs, “The dualism of gods is anything but rigidly observed. The good gods do more evil than good. Fear is the ruling religious sentiment.” To such a lame conclusion do these venerable prepossessions lead. “Grau ist alle Theorie.”

61

Loskiel, Ges. der Miss. der evang. Brueder, p. 46.

62

Whipple, Report on the Ind. Tribes, p. 33: Washington, 1855. Pacific Railroad Docs.

63

Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, i. p. 359.

64

In Schoolcraft, Ibid., iv. p. 642.

65

Or more exactly, the Beautiful Spirit, the Ugly Spirit. In Onondaga the radicals are onigonra, spirit, hio beautiful, ahetken ugly. Dictionnaire Français-Onontagué, édité par Jean-Marie Shea: New York, 1859.

66

Squier, The Serpent Symbol in America.

67

Both these legends will be analyzed in a subsequent chapter, and an attempt made not only to restore them their primitive form, but to explain their meaning.

68

Compare the translation and remarks of Ximenes, Or. de los Indios de Guat., p. 76, with those of Brasseur, Le Livre Sacré des Quichés, p. 189.

69

Buckingham Smith, Gram. Notices of the Heve Language, p. 26 (Shea’s Lib. Am. Linguistics).

70

I refer to the four “ultimate elementary particles” of Empedocles. The number was sacred to Hermes, and lay at the root of the physical philosophy of Pythagoras. The quotation in the text is from the “Golden Verses,” given in Passow’s lexicon under the word τετρακτὺς: ναι μα τον ἁμετερᾳ ψυχᾳ παραδοντα τετρακτυν, παγαν αεναου φυσεως “The most sacred of all things,” said this famous teacher, “is Number; and next to it, that which gives Names;” a truth that the lapse of three thousand years is just enabling us to appreciate.

71

Ximenes, Or. de los Indios, etc., p. 5.

72

See Sepp, Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung für das Christenthum, i. p. 464 sqq., a work full of learning, but written in the wildest vein of Joseph de Maistre’s school of Romanizing mythology.

73

Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, ii. p. 227, Le Livre Sacré des Quichés, introd. p. ccxlii. The four provinces of Peru were Anti, Cunti, Chincha, and Colla. The meaning of these names has been lost, but to repeat them, says La Vega, was the same as to use our words, east, west, north, and south (Hist. des Incas, lib. ii. cap. 11).

74

Humboldt, Polit. Essay on New Spain, ii. p. 44.

75

This custom has been often mentioned among the Iroquois. Algonkins, Dakotas, Creeks, Natchez, Araucanians, and other tribes. Nuttall points out its recurrence among the Tartars of Siberia also. (Travels, p. 175.)

76

Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v. pp. 424 et seq.

77

Letters on the North American Indians, vol. i., Letter 22.

78

Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iv. p. 643 sq. “Four is their sacred number,” says Mr. Pond (p. 646). Their neighbors, the Pawnees, though not the most remote affinity can be detected between their languages, coincide with them in this sacred number, and distinctly identified it with the cardinal points. See De Smet, Oregon Missions, pp. 360, 361.

79

Benj. Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, pp. 75, 78: Savannah, 1848. The description he gives of the ceremonies of the Creeks was transcribed word for word and published in the first volume of the American Antiquarian Society’s Transactions as of the Shawnees of Ohio. This literary theft has not before been noticed.

80

Palacios, Des. de la Prov. de Guatemala, pp. 31, 32, ed. Ternaux-Compans.

81

All familiar with Mexican antiquity will recall many such examples. I may particularly refer to Kingsborough, Antiqs. of Mexico, v. p. 480, Ternaux-Compans’ Recueil de pièces rel. à la Conq. du Mexique, pp. 307, 310, and Gama, Des. de las dos Piedras que se hallaron en la plaza principal de Mexico, ii. sec. 126 (Mexico, 1832), who gives numerous instances beyond those I have cited, and directs with emphasis the attention of the reader to this constant repetition.

82

Albert Gallatin, Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc., ii. p. 316, from the Codex Vaticanus, No. 3738.

83

Riggs, Gram. and Dict. of the Dakota Lang., s. v.

84

Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, in Kingsborough, v. p. 375.

85

Egede, Nachrichten von Grönland, pp. 137, 173, 285. (Kopenhagen, 1790.)

86

Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. p. 139, and Indian Tribes, iv. p. 229.

87

Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, pp. 81, 82, and Blomes, Acc. of his Majesty’s Colonies, p. 156, London, 1687, in Castiglioni, Viaggi nelle Stati Uniti, i. p. 294.

88

Peter Martyr, De Reb. Ocean., Dec. i. lib. ix. The story is also told more at length by the Brother Romain Pane, in the essay on the ancient histories of the natives he drew up by the order of Columbus. It has been reprinted with notes by the Abbé Brasseur, Paris, 1864, p. 438 sqq.

89

Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, iv. p. 89.

90

Brasseur, Le Liv. Sac., Introd., p. cxvii.

91

Diego de Landa, Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan, pp. 160, 206, 208, ed. Brasseur. The learned editor, in a note to p. 208, states erroneously the disposition of the colors, as may be seen by comparing the document on p. 395. This dedication of colors to the cardinal points is universal in Central Asia. The geographical names of the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the Yellow Sea or Persian Gulf, and the White Sea or the Mediterranean, are derived from this association. The cities of China, many of them at least, have their gates which open toward the cardinal points painted of certain colors, and precisely these four, the white, the black, the red, and the yellow, are those which in Oriental myth the mountain in the centre of Paradise shows to the different cardinal points. (Sepp, Heidenthum und Christenthum, i. p. 177.) The coincidence furnishes food for reflection.

92

Le Livre Sacré des Quichés, pp. 203-5, note.

93

The analogy is remarkable between these and the “quatre actes de la puissance generatrice jusqu’à l’entier developpément des corps organisés,” portrayed by four globes in the Mycenean bas-reliefs. See Guigniaut, Religions de l’Antiquité, i. p. 374. It were easy to multiply the instances of such parallelism in the growth of religious thought in the Old and New World, but I designedly refrain from doing so. They have already given rise to false theories enough, and moreover my purpose in this work is not “comparative mythology.”

94

Müller, Amer. Urreligionen, p. 105, after Strahlheim, who is, however, no authority.

95

Müller, ubi supra, pp. 308 sqq., gives a good résumé of the different versions of the myth of the four brothers in Peru.

96

The Tupis of Brazil claim a descent from four brothers, three of whose names are given by Hans Staden, a prisoner among them about 1550, as Krimen, Hermittan, and Coem; the latter he explains to mean the morning, the east (le matin, printed by mistake le mutin, Relation de Hans Staden de Homberg, p. 274, ed. Ternaux-Compans, compare Dias, Dicc. da Lingua Tupy, p. 47). Their southern relatives, the Guaranis of Paraguay, also spoke of the four brothers and gave two of their names as Tupi and Guarani, respectively parents of the tribes called after them (Guevara, Hist. del Paraguay, lib. i. cap. ii., in Waitz). The fourfold division of the Muyscas of Bogota was traced back to four chieftains created by their hero god Nemqueteba (A. von Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 246). The Nahuas of Mexico much more frequently spoke of themselves as descendants of four or eight original families than of seven (Humboldt, ibid., p. 317, and others in Waitz, Anthropologie, iv. pp. 36, 37). The Sacs or Sauks of the Upper Mississippi supposed that two men and two women were first created, and from these four sprang all men (Morse, Rep. on Ind. Affairs, App. p. 138). The Ottoes, Pawnees, “and other Indians,” had a tradition that from eight ancestors all nations and races were descended (Id., p. 249). This duplication of the number probably arose from assigning the first four men four women as wives. The division into clans or totems which prevails in most northern tribes rests theoretically on descent from different ancestors. The Shawnees and Natchez were divided into four such clans, the Choctaws, Navajos, and Iroquois into eight, thus proving that in those tribes also the myth I have been discussing was recognized.