II. ORIGIN AND END OF THINGS…

II. ORIGIN AND END OF THINGS

QUICHÉ CREATION-MYTH -- AZTEC ORIGIN-MYTHS -- THE PAPAGOS -- MONTEZUMA AND THE COYOTE -- THE MOQUIS -- THE GREAT SPIDER'S WEB OF THE PIMAS -- NAVAJO AND PUEBLO CREATIONS -- ORIGIN OF CLEAR LAKE AND LAKE TAHOE -- CHAREYA OF THE CAHROCS -- MOUNT SHASTA, THE WIGWAM OF THE GREAT SPIRIT -- IDAHO SPRINGS AND WATER FALLS -- HOW DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE OCCURRED -- YEHL, THE CREATOR OF THE THLINKEETS -- THE RAVEN AND THE DOG.

[Sidenote: THE POPOL VUH.]

Of all American peoples the Quichés, of Guatemala, have left us the richest mythological legacy. Their description of the creation as given in the Popol Vuh, which may be called the national book of the Quichés,[II-1] is, in its rude strange eloquence and poetic originality, one of the rarest relics of aboriginal thought. Although obliged in reproducing it to condense somewhat, I have endeavored to give not only the substance, but also, as far as possible, the peculiar style and phraseology of the original. It is with this primeval picture, whose simple silent sublimity is that of the inscrutable past, that we begin:--

And the heaven was formed, and all the signs thereof set in their angle and alignment, and its boundaries fixed towards the four winds by the Creator and Former, and Mother and Father of life and existence--he by whom all move and breathe, the Father and Cherisher of the peace of nations and of the civilization of his people--he whose wisdom has projected the excellence of all that is on the earth, or in the lakes, or in the sea.

Behold the first word and the first discourse. There was as yet no man, nor any animal, nor bird, nor fish, nor crawfish, nor any pit, nor ravine, nor green herb, nor any tree; nothing was but the firmament. The face of the earth had not yet appeared--only the peaceful sea and all the space of heaven. There was nothing yet joined together, nothing that clung to anything else; nothing that balanced itself, that made the least rustling, that made a sound in the heaven. There was nothing that stood up; nothing but the quiet water, but the sea, calm and alone in its boundaries: nothing existed; nothing but immobility and silence, in the darkness, in the night.[II-2]

[Sidenote: THE QUICHÉ IDEA OF CREATION.]

Alone also the Creator, the Former, the Dominator, the Feathered Serpent--those that engender, those that give being, they are upon the water, like a growing light. They are enveloped in green and blue; and therefore their name is Gucumatz.[II-3] Lo, now how the heavens exist, how exists also the Heart of Heaven; such is the name of God; it is thus that he is called. And they spake; they consulted together and meditated; they mingled their words and their opinion. And the creation was verily after this wise: Earth, they said, and on the instant it was formed; like a cloud or a fog was its beginning. Then the mountains rose over the water like great lobsters; in an instant the mountains and the plains were visible, and the cypress and the pine appeared. Then was the Gucumatz filled with joy, crying out: Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, Thunderbolt. Our work and our labor has accomplished its end.

The earth and its vegetation having thus appeared, it was peopled with the various forms of animal life. And the Makers said to the animals: Speak now our name, honor us, us your mother and father; invoke Hurakan, the Lightning-flash, the Thunderbolt that strikes, the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of the Earth, the Creator and Former, Him who begets, and Him who gives being--speak, call on us, salute us! So was it said to the animals. But the animals could not answer; they could not speak at all after the manner of men; they could only cluck, and croak, each murmuring after his kind in a different manner. This displeased the Creators, and they said to the animals: Inasmuch as ye can not praise us, neither call upon our names, your flesh shall be humiliated; it shall be broken with teeth; ye shall be killed and eaten.

Again the gods took counsel together; they determined to make man. So they made a man of clay; and when they had made him, they saw that it was not good. He was without cohesion, without consistence, motionless, strengthless, inept, watery; he could not move his head, his face looked but one way; his sight was restricted, he could not look behind him; he had been endowed with language, but he had no intelligence, so he was consumed in the water.

Again is there counsel in heaven: Let us make an intelligent being who shall adore and invoke us. It was decided that a man should be made of wood and a woman of a kind of pith. They were made; but the result was in no wise satisfactory. They moved about perfectly well, it is true; they increased and multiplied; they peopled the world with sons and daughters, little wooden mannikins like themselves; but still the heart and the intelligence were wanting; they held no memory of their Maker and Former; they led a useless existence, they lived as the beasts live; they forgot the Heart of Heaven. They were but an essay, an attempt at men; they had neither blood, nor substance, nor moisture, nor fat; their cheeks were shrivelled, their feet and hands dried up; their flesh languished.

[Sidenote: DESTRUCTION AND RE-CREATION OF MAN.]

Then was the Heart of Heaven wroth; and he sent ruin and destruction upon those ingrates; he rained upon them night and day from heaven with a thick resin; and the earth was darkened. And the men went mad with terror; they tried to mount upon the roofs and the houses fell; they tried to climb the trees and the trees shook them far from their branches; they tried to hide in the caves and dens of the earth, but these closed their holes against them. The bird Xecotcovach came to tear out their eyes; and the Camalotz cut off their head; and the Cotzbalam devoured their flesh; and the Tecumbalam broke and bruised their bones to powder. Thus were they all devoted to chastisement and destruction, save only a few who were preserved as memorials of the wooden men that had been; and these now exist in the woods as little apes.[II-4]

Once more are the gods in counsel; in the darkness, in the night of a desolated universe do they commune together; of what shall we make man? And the Creator and Former made four perfect men; and wholly of yellow and white maize was their flesh composed. These were the names of the four men that were made: the name of the first was Balam-Quitzé; of the second, Balam-Agab; of the third Mahucutah; and of the fourth, Iqi-Balam.[II-5] They had neither father nor mother, neither were they made by the ordinary agents in the work of creation; but their coming into existence was a miracle extraordinary, wrought by the special intervention of him who is preëminently The Creator. Verily, at last, were there found men worthy of their origin and their destiny; verily, at last, did the gods look on beings who could see with their eyes, and handle with their hands, and understand with their hearts. Grand of countenance and broad of limb the four sires of our race stood up under the white rays of the morning star--sole light as yet of the primeval world--stood up and looked. Their great clear eyes swept rapidly over all; they saw the woods and the rocks, the lakes and the sea, the mountains and the valleys, and the heavens that were above all; and they comprehended all and admired exceedingly. Then they returned thanks to those who had made the world and all that therein was: We offer up our thanks, twice--yea verily, thrice! We have received life; we speak, we walk, we taste; we hear and understand; we know both that which is near and that which is far off; we see all things, great and small, in all the heaven and earth. Thanks then, Maker and Former, Father and Mother of our life! we have been created; we are.

But the gods were not wholly pleased with this thing; Heaven they thought had overshot its mark; these men were too perfect; knew, understood, and saw too much. Therefore there was counsel again in heaven: What shall we do with man now? It is not good, this that we see; these are as gods; they would make themselves equal with us; lo, they know all things, great and small. Let us now contract their sight, so that they may see only a little of the surface of the earth and be content. Thereupon the Heart of Heaven breathed a cloud over the pupil of the eyes of men, and a veil came over it as when one breathes on the face of a mirror; thus was the globe of the eye darkened; neither was that which was far off clear to it any more, but only that which was near.

Then the four men slept, and there was counsel in heaven: and four women were made--to Balam-Quitzé was allotted Caha-Paluma to wife; to Balam-Agab, Chomiha; to Mahucutah, Tzununiha; and to Iqi-Balam, Cakixaha.[II-6] Now the women were exceedingly fair to look upon; and when the men awoke, their hearts were glad because of the women.

[Sidenote: THE QUICHÉS SET OUT FOR TULAN-ZUIVA.]

Next, as I interpret the narrative, there were other men created, the ancestors of other peoples, while the first four were the fathers of all the branches of the Quiché race. The different tribes at first, however, lived together amicably enough, in a primitive state; and increased and multiplied, leading happy lives under their bright and morning star, precursor of the yet unseen sun. They had as yet no worship save the breathing of the instinct of their soul, as yet no altars to the gods; only--and is there not a whole idyl in the simple words?--only they gazed up into heaven, not knowing what they had come so far to do![II-7] They were filled with love, with obedience, and with fear; and lifting their eyes towards heaven, they made their requests:--

Hail! O Creator, O Former! thou that hearest and understandest us! abandon us not, forsake us not! O God, thou that art in heaven and on the earth, O Heart of Heaven, O Heart of Earth! give us descendants and a posterity as long as the light endure. Give us to walk always in an open road, in a path without snares; to lead happy, quiet, and peaceable lives, free of all reproach. It was thus they spake, living tranquilly, invoking the return of the light, waiting the rising of the sun, watching the star of the morning, precursor of the sun. But no sun came, and the four men and their descendants grew uneasy: We have no person to watch over us, they said, nothing to guard our symbols. So the four men and their people set out for Tulan-Zuiva,[II-8] otherwise called the Seven-caves or Seven-ravines, and there they received gods, each man as head of a family, a god; though inasmuch as the fourth man, Iqi-Balam, had no children and founded no family, his god is not usually taken into the account. Balam-Quitzé received the god Tohil; Balam Agab received the god Avilix; and Mahucutah received the god Hacavitz; all very powerful gods, but Tohil seems to have been the chief, and in a general way, god of the whole Quiché nation. Other people received gods at the same time; and it had been for all a long march to Tulan.

Now the Quichés had as yet no fire, and as Tulan was a much colder climate than the happy eastern land they had left, they soon began to feel the want of it. The god Tohil who was the creator of fire had some in his possession; so to him, as was most natural, the Quichés applied, and Tohil in some way supplied them with fire.

But shortly after, there fell a great rain that extinguished all the fires of the land; and much hail also fell on the heads of the people; and because of the rain and the hail, their fires were utterly scattered and put out. Then Tohil created fire again by stamping with his sandal. Several times thus fire failed them, but Tohil always renewed it. Many other trials also they underwent in Tulan, famines and such things, and a general dampness and cold--for the earth was moist, there being as yet no sun.

Here also the language of all the families was confused so that no one of the first four men could any longer understand the speech of another. This also made them very sad. They determined to leave Tulan; and the greater part of them, under the guardianship and direction of Tohil, set out to see where they should take up their abode. They continued on their way amid the most extreme hardships for want of food; sustaining themselves at one time upon the mere smell of their staves, and by imagining that they were eating, when in verity and in truth, they ate nothing. Their heart, indeed, it is again and again said, was almost broken by affliction. Poor wanderers! they had a cruel way to go, many forests to pierce, many stern mountains to overpass and a long passage to make through the sea, along the shingle and pebbles and drifted sand--the sea being, however, parted for their passage.

[Sidenote: QUICHÉ ORIGIN OF THE SUN.]

At last they came to a mountain that they named Hacavitz, after one of their gods, and here they rested--for here they were by some means given to understand that they should see the sun. Then indeed, was filled with an exceeding joy the heart of Balam-Quitzé, of Balam-Agab, of Mahucutah, and of Iqi-Balam. It seemed to them that even the face of the morning star caught a new and more resplendent brightness. They shook their incense pans and danced for very gladness: sweet were their tears in dancing, very hot their incense--their precious incense. At last the sun commenced to advance: the animals, small and great, were full of delight; they raised themselves to the surface of the water; they fluttered in the ravines; they gathered at the edge of the mountains, turning their heads together toward that part from which the sun came. And the lion and the tiger roared. And the first bird that sang was that called the Queletzu. All the animals were beside themselves at the sight; the eagle and the kite beat their wings, and every bird, both small and great. The men prostrated themselves on the ground, for their hearts were full to the brim.

And the sun, and the moon, and the stars were now all established. Yet was not the sun then in the beginning the same as now; his heat wanted force, and he was but as a reflection in a mirror; verily, say the histories, not at all the same sun as that of to-day. Nevertheless he dried up and warmed the surface of the earth, and answered many good ends.

Another wonder when the sun rose! The three tribal gods, Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz, were turned into stone, as were also the gods connected with the lion, the tiger, the viper, and other fierce and dangerous animals. Perhaps we should not be alive at this moment--continues the chronicle--because of the voracity of these fierce animals, of these lions, and tigers, and vipers; perhaps to-day our glory would not be in existence, had not the sun caused this petrification.

And the people multiplied on this Mount Hacavitz, and here they built their city. It is here also that they began to sing that song called Kamucu, 'we see.' They sang it, though it made their hearts ache, for this is what they said in singing: Alas! We ruined ourselves in Tulan, there lost we many of our kith and kin, they still remain there, left behind! We indeed have seen the sun, but they--now that his golden light begins to appear, where are they?

And they worshiped the gods that had become stone, Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz; and they offered them the blood of beasts, and of birds, and pierced their own ears and shoulders in honor of these gods, and collected the blood with a sponge, and pressed it out into a cup before them.

Toward the end of their long and eventful life Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam were impelled, apparently by a supernatural vision, to lay before their gods a more awful offering than the life of senseless beasts. They began to wet their altars with the heart's blood of human victims. From their mountain hold they watched for lonely travelers belonging to the surrounding tribes, seized, overpowered, and slew them for a sacrifice. Man after man was missing in the neighboring villages; and the people said: Lo! the tigers have carried them away--for wherever the blood was of a man slain, were always found the tracks of many tigers. Now this was the craft of the priests, and at last the tribes began to suspect the thing and to follow the tracks of the tigers. But the trails had been made purposely intricate, by steps returning on themselves and by the obliteration of steps; and the mountain region where the altars were was already covered with a thick fog and a small rain, and its paths flowed with mud.

The hearts of the villagers were thus fatigued within them, pursuing unknown enemies. At last, however, it became plain that the gods Tohil, Avilix and Hacavitz, and their worship, were in some way or other the cause of this bereavement: so the people of the villages conspired against them. Many attacks, both openly and by ruses, did they make on the gods, and on the four men, and on the children and people connected with them; but not once did they succeed, so great was the wisdom, and power, and courage of the four men and of their deities. And these three gods petrified, as we have told, could nevertheless resume a movable shape when they pleased; which indeed they often did, as will be seen hereafter.

At last the war was finished. By the miraculous aid of a horde of wasps and hornets, the Quichés utterly defeated and put to the rout in a general battle all their enemies. And the tribes humiliated themselves before the face of Balam-Quitzé, of Balam-Agab, and of Mahucutah: Unfortunates that we are, they said, spare to us at least our lives. Let it be so, it was answered, although you be worthy of death; you shall, however, be our tributaries and serve us, as long as the sun endure, as long as the light shall follow his course. This was the reply of our fathers and mothers, upon Mount Hacavitz; and thereafter they lived in great honor and peace, and their souls had rest, and all the tribes served them there.

[Sidenote: THE END OF THE QUICHÉ CREATION.]

Now it came to pass that the time of the death of Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam drew near. No bodily sickness nor suffering came upon them; but they were forewarned that their death and their end was at hand. Then they called their sons and their descendants round them to receive their last counsels.

And the heart of the old men was rent within them. In the anguish of their heart they sang the Kamucu, the old sad song that they had sung when the sun first rose, when the sun rose and they thought of the friends they had left in Tulan, whose face they should see no more forever. Then they took leave of their wives, one by one; and of their sons, one by one; of each in particular they took leave; and they said: We return to our people; already the King of the Stags is ready, he stretches himself through the heaven. Lo, we are about to return; our work is done; the days of our life are complete. Remember us well; let us never pass from your memory. You will see still our houses and our mountains; multiply in them, and then go on upon your way and see again the places whence we are come.

So the old men took leave of their sons and of their wives; and Balam-Quitzé spake again: Behold! he said, I leave you what shall keep me in remembrance. I have taken leave of you--and am filled with sadness, he added. Then instantly the four old men were not; but in their place was a great bundle; and it was never unfolded, neither could any man find seam therein on rolling it over and over. So it was called the Majesty Enveloped; and it became a memorial of these fathers, and was held very dear and precious in the sight of the Quichés; and they burned incense before it.[II-9]

Thus died and disappeared on Mount Hacavitz Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam, these first men who came from the east, from the other side of the sea. Long time had they been here when they died; and they were very old, and surnamed the Venerated and the Sacrificers.

* * * * *

Such is the Quiché account of the creation of the earth and its inhabitants and of the first years of the existence of mankind. Although we find here described in the plainest and least equivocal terms a supreme, all-powerful Creator of all things, there are joined with him in a somewhat perplexing manner a number of auxiliary deities and makers. It may be that those whose faith the Popol Vuh represents, conceiving and speaking of their supreme god under many aspects and as fulfilling many functions, came at times, either unconsciously or for dramatic effect, to bring this one great Being upon their mythic stage, sustaining at once many of his different parts and characters. Or perhaps, like the Hebrews, they believed that the Creator had made out of nothing or out of his own essence, in some mysterious way, angels and other beings to obey and to assist him in his sovereign designs, and that these 'were called gods.' That these Quiché notions seem foolishness to us, is no argument as to their adaptation to the life and thoughts of those who believed them; for, in the words of Professor Max Müller, "the thoughts of primitive humanity were not only different from our thoughts, but different also from what we think their thoughts ought to have been."[II-10]

[Sidenote: MEXICAN COSMOGONY.]

Yet whatever be the inconsistencies that obscure the Popol Vuh, we find them multiplied in the Mexican cosmogony, a tangled string of meagre and apparently fragmentary traditions. There appear to have been two principal schools of opinion in Anáhuac, differing as to who was the Creator of the world, as well as on other points--two veins of tradition, perhaps of common origin, which often seem to run into one, and are oftener still considered as one by historians to whom these heathen vanities were matters of little importance. The more advanced school, ascribing its inspiration to Toltec sources, seems to have flourished notably in Tezcuco, especially while the famous Nezahualcoyotl reigned there, and to have had very definite monotheistic ideas. It taught, as is asserted in unmistakable terms, that all things had been made by one God, omnipotent and invisible; and to this school were probably owing the many gentle and beautiful ideas and rites, mingled with the hard, coarse, and prosaic cult of the mass of the people.[II-11]

The other school may be considered as more distinctively national, and as representing more particularly the ordinary Mexican mind. To it is to be ascribed by far the larger part of all we know about the Mexican religion.[II-12] According to the version of this school, Tezcatlipoca, a god whose birth and adventures are set forth hereafter, was the creator of the material heaven and earth, though not of mankind; and sometimes even the honor of this partial creation is disputed by others of the gods.

One Mexican nation, again, according to an ancient writer of their own blood, affirmed that the earth had been created by chance; and as for the heavens, they had always existed.[II-13]

[Sidenote: CHIMALPOPOCA MANUSCRIPT.]

From the fragments of the Chimalpopoca manuscript given by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg we learn that the Creator--whoever he may have been--produced his work in successive epochs. In the sign Tochtli, the earth was created; in the sign Acatl was made the firmament, and in the sign Tecpatl the animals. Man it is added, was made and animated out of ashes or dust by God on the seventh day, Ehecatl, but finished and perfected by that mysterious personage Quetzalcoatl. However this account may be reconciled with itself or with others, it further appears that man was four times made and four times destroyed.[II-14]

This may perhaps be looked upon as proceeding from what I have called for convenience the Toltecan school, though this particular fragment shows traces of Christian influence. What follows seems however to belong to a distinctively Mexican and ruder vein of thought. It is gathered from Mendieta, who was indebted again to Fray Andres de Olmos, one of the earliest missionaries among the Mexicans of whom he treats; and it is decidedly one of the most authentic accounts of such matters extant.

[Sidenote: AZTEC CREATION-MYTHS.]

The Mexicans in most of the provinces were agreed that there was a god in heaven called Citlalatonac, and a goddess called Citlalicue;[II-15] and that this goddess had given birth to a flint knife, Tecpatl. Now she had many sons living with her in heaven, who seeing this extraordinary thing were alarmed, and flung the flint down to the earth. It fell in a place called Chicomoztoc, that is to say the Seven Caves, and there immediately sprang up from it one thousand six hundred gods. These gods being alone on the earth--though as will hereafter appear, there had been men in the world at a former period--sent up their messenger Tlotli, the Hawk, to pray their mother to empower them to create men, so that they might have servants as became their lineage. Citlalicue seemed to be a little ashamed of these sons of hers, born in so strange a manner, and she twitted them cruelly enough on what they could hardly help: Had you been what you ought to have been, she exclaimed, you would still be in my company. Nevertheless she told them what to do in the matter of obtaining their desire: Go beg of Mictlanteuctli, Lord of Hades, that he may give you a bone or some ashes of the dead that are with him; which having received you shall sacrifice over it, sprinkling blood from your own bodies. And the fallen gods having consulted together, sent one of their number, called Xolotl,[II-16] down to hades as their mother had advised. He succeeded in getting a bone of six feet long from Mictlanteuctli; and then, wary of his grisly host, he took an abrupt departure, running at the top of his speed. Wroth at this, the infernal chief gave chase; not causing to Xolotl, however, any more serious inconvenience than a hasty fall in which the bone was broken in pieces. The messenger gathered up what he could in all haste, and despite his stumble made his escape. Reaching the earth, he put the fragments of bone into a basin, and all the gods drew blood from their bodies and sprinkled it into the vessel. On the fourth day there was a movement among the wetted bones and a boy lay there before all; and in four days more, the blood-letting and sprinkling being still kept up, a girl was lifted from the ghastly dish. The children were given to Xolotl to bring up; and he fed them on the juice of the maguey.[II-17] Increasing in stature, they became man and woman; and from them are the people of the present day descended, who, even as the primordial bone was broken into unequal pieces, vary in size and shape. The name of this first man was Iztacmixcuatl, and the name of his wife Ilancueitl,[II-18] and they had six sons born to them, whose descendants, with their god-masters, in process of time moved eastward from their original home, almost universally described as having been towards Jalisco.

Now there had been no sun in existence for many years; so the gods being assembled in a place called Teotihuacan, six leagues from Mexico, and gathered at the time round a great fire, told their devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that fire, should have the honor of being transformed into a sun. So one of them called Nanahuatzin--either as most say, out of pure bravery, or as Sahagun relates, because his life had become a burden to him through a syphilitic disease--flung himself into the fire. Then the gods began to peer through the gloom in all directions for the expected light and to make bets as to what part of heaven he should first appear in. And some said Here, and some said There; but when the sun rose they were all proved wrong, for not one of them had fixed upon the east.[II-19] And in that same hour, though they knew it not, the decree went forth that they should all die by sacrifice.

[Sidenote: HOW THE SUN WAS PLACED IN THE HEAVENS.]

The sun had risen indeed, and with a glory of the cruel fire about him that not even the eyes of the gods could endure; but he moved not. There he lay on the horizon; and when the deities sent Tlotli their messenger to him, with orders that he should go on upon his way, his ominous answer was, that he would never leave that place till he had destroyed and put an end to them all. Then a great fear fell upon some, while others were moved only to anger; and among the latter was one Citli, who immediately strung his bow and advanced against the glittering enemy. By quickly lowering his head the Sun avoided the first arrow shot at him; but the second and third had attained his body in quick succession, when, filled with fury, he seized the last and launched it back upon his assailant. And the brave Citli laid shaft to string nevermore, for the arrow of the sun pierced his forehead.

Then all was dismay in the assembly of the gods, and despair filled their heart, for they saw that they could not prevail against the shining one; and they agreed to die, and to cut themselves open through the breast. Xolotl was appointed minister, and he killed his companions one by one, and last of all he slew himself also.[II-20] So they died like gods; and each left to the sad and wondering men who were his servants, his garments for a memorial. And these servants made up, each party, a bundle of the raiment that had been left to them, binding it about a stick into which they had bedded a small green stone to serve as a heart. These bundles were called tlaquimilloli, and each bore the name of that god whose memorial it was; and these things were more reverenced than the ordinary gods of stone and wood of the country. Fray Andres de Olmos found one of these relics in Tlalmanalco, wrapped up in many cloths, and half rotten with being kept hid so long.[II-21]

Immediately on the death of the gods the sun began his motion in the heavens; and a man called Tecuzistecatl, or Tezcociztecatl, who, when Nanahuatzin leaped into the fire, had retired into a cave, now emerged from his concealment as the moon. Others say that instead of going into a cave, this Tecuzistecatl, had leaped into the fire after Nanahuatzin, but that, the heat of the fire being somewhat abated, he had come out less brilliant than the sun. Still another variation is, that the sun and moon came out equally bright, but this not seeming good to the gods, one of them took a rabbit by the heels and slung it into the face of the moon, dimming its lustre with a blotch whose mark may be seen to this day.

After the gods had died in the way herein related, leaving their garments behind as relics, those servants went about everywhere, bearing these relics like bundles upon their shoulders, very sad and pensive and wondering if ever again they would see their departed gods. Now the name of one of these deceased deities was Tezcatlipoca, and his servant having arrived at the sea coast, was favored with an apparition of his master in three different shapes. And Tezcatlipoca spake to his servant saying: Come hither, thou that lovest me so well, that I may tell thee what thou hast to do. Go now to the House of the Sun and fetch thence singers and instruments so that thou mayest make me a festival; but first call upon the whale, and upon the siren, and upon the tortoise, and they shall make thee a bridge to the sun.

Then was all this done; and the messenger went across the sea upon his living bridge, towards the House of the Sun, singing what he had to say. And the Sun heard the song, and he straitly charged his people and servants, saying: See now that ye make no response to this chant, for whoever replies to it must be taken away by the singer. But the song was so exceeding sweet that some of them could not but answer, and they were lured away, bearing with them the drum, teponaztli, and the kettle-drum, vevetl. Such was the origin of the festivals and the dances to the gods; and the songs sung during these dances they held as prayers, singing them always with great accuracy of intonation and time.

[Sidenote: THE TEZCUCAN ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION.]

In their oral traditions, the Tezcucans agreed with the usual Mexican account of creation--the falling of the flint from heaven to earth, and so on--but what they afterward showed in a picture, and explained to Fray Andres de Olmos as the manner of the creation of mankind, was this: The event took place in the land of Aculma, on the Tezcucan boundary at a distance of two leagues from Tezcuco and of five from Mexico. It is said that the sun, being at the hour of nine, cast a dart into the earth at the place we have mentioned and made a hole; from this hole a man came out, the first man and somewhat imperfect withal, as there was no more of him than from the arm-pits up, much like the conventional European cherub, only without wings. After that the woman came up out of the hole. The rest of the story was not considered proper for printing by Mendieta; but at any rate from these two are mankind descended. The name of the first man was Aculmaitl--that is to say, aculli, shoulder, and maitl, hand or arm--and from him the town of Aculma is said to take its name.[II-22] And this etymology seems to make it probable that the details of this myth are derived, to some extent, from the name of the place in which it was located; or that the name of the first man belonging to an early phase of the language, has been misunderstood, and that to the false etymology the details of the myth are owing.

As already stated there had been men on the earth previous to that final and perfect creation of man from the bone supplied by Mictlanteuctli, and wetted by the gods with their own blood at the place of the Seven Caves. These men had been swept away by a succession of great destructions. With regard to the number of these destructions it is hard to speak positively, as on no single point in the wide range of early American religion, does there exist so much difference of opinion. All the way from twice to five times, following different accounts, has the world been desolated by tremendous convulsions of nature. I follow most closely the version of the Tezcucan historian Ixtlilxochitl, as being one of the earliest accounts, as, prima facie, from its origin, one of the most authentic, and as being supported by a majority of respectable historians up to the time of Humboldt.

[Sidenote: THE AGES OR SUNS OF THE MEXICANS.]

Of the creation which ushered in the first age we know nothing; we are only told by Boturini, that giants then began to appear on the earth. This First Age; or 'sun,' was called the Sun of the Water, and it was ended by a tremendous flood in which every living thing perished, or was transformed, except, following some accounts, one man and one woman of the giant race, of whose escape more hereafter. The Second Age, called the Sun of the Earth, was closed with earthquakes, yawnings of the earth, and the overthrow of the highest mountains. Giants, or Quinamés, a powerful and haughty race still appear to be the only inhabitants of the world. The Third Age was the Sun of the Air. It was ended by tempests and hurricanes, so destructive that few indeed of the inhabitants of the earth were left; and those that were saved, lost, according to the Tlascaltec account, their reason and speech, becoming monkeys.

The present is the Fourth Age. To it appear to belong the falling of the goddess-born flint from heaven, the birth of the sixteen hundred heroes from that flint, the birth of mankind from the bone brought from hades, the transformation of Nanahuatzin into the sun, the transformation of Tezcatecatl into the moon, and the death of the sixteen hundred heroes or gods. It is called the Sun of Fire, and is to be ended by a universal conflagration.[II-23]

Connected with the great flood of water, there is a Mexican tradition presenting some analogies to the story of Noah and his ark. In most of the painted manuscripts supposed to relate to this event, a kind of boat is represented floating over the waste of water, and containing a man and a woman. Even the Tlascaltecs, the Zapotecs, the Miztecs, and the people of Michoacan are said to have had such pictures. The man is variously called Coxcox, Teocipactli, Tezpi, and Nata; the woman Xochiquetzal and Nena.[II-24]

[Sidenote: THE TOWER OF BABEL.]

The following has been usually accepted as the ordinary Mexican version of this myth: In Atonatiuh, the Age of Water, a great flood covered all the face of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof were turned into fishes. Only one man and one woman escaped, saving themselves in the hollow trunk of an ahahuete or bald cypress; the name of the man being Coxcox, and that of his wife Xochiquetzal. On the waters abating a little they grounded their ark on the Peak of Colhuacan, the Ararat of Mexico. Here they increased and multiplied, and children began to gather about them, children who were all born dumb. And a dove came and gave them tongues, innumerable languages. Only fifteen of the descendants of Coxcox, who afterward became heads of families, spake the same language or could at all understand each other; and from these fifteen are descended the Toltecs, the Aztecs, and the Acolhúas. This dove is not the only bird mentioned in these deluvial traditions, and must by no means be confounded with the birds of another palpably Christianized story. For in Michoacan a tradition was preserved, following which the name of the Mexican Noah was Tezpi. With better fortune than that ascribed to Coxcox, he was able to save, in a spacious vessel, not only himself and his wife, but also his children, several animals, and a quantity of grain for the common use. When the waters began to subside, he sent out a vulture that it might go to and fro on the earth and bring him word again when the dry land began to appear. But the vulture fed upon the carcasses that were strewed in every part, and never returned. Then Tezpi sent out other birds, and among these was a humming-bird. And when the sun began to cover the earth with a new verdure, the humming-bird returned to its old refuge bearing green leaves. And Tezpi saw that his vessel was aground near the mountain of Colhuacan and he landed there.

The Mexicans round Cholula had a special legend, connecting the escape of a remnant from the great deluge with the often-mentioned story of the origin of the people of Anáhuac from Chicomoztoc, or the Seven Caves. At the time of the cataclysm, the country, according to Pedro de los Rios, was inhabited by giants. Some of these perished utterly; others were changed into fishes; while seven brothers of them found safety by closing themselves into certain caves in a mountain called Tlaloc. When the waters were assuaged, one of the giants, Xelhua, surnamed the Architect, went to Cholula and began to build an artificial mountain, as a monument and a memorial of the Tlaloc that had sheltered him and his when the angry waters swept through all the land. The bricks were made in Tlamanalco, at the foot of the Sierra de Cocotl, and passed to Cholula from hand to hand along a file of men--whence these came is not said--stretching between the two places. Then were the jealousy and the anger of the gods aroused, as the huge pyramid rose slowly up, threatening to reach the clouds and the great heaven itself; and the gods launched their fire upon the builders and slew many, so that the work was stopped.[II-25] But the half-finished structure, afterwards dedicated by the Cholultecs to Quetzalcoatl, still remains to show how well Xelhua, the giant, deserved his surname of the Architect.

[Sidenote: THE MEXICAN DELUGE.]

Yet another record remains to us of a traditional Mexican deluge, in the following extract from the Chimalpopoca Manuscript. Its words seem to have a familiar sound; but it would hardly be scientific to draw from such a fragment any very sweeping conclusion as to its relationship, whether that be Quiché or Christian:--

When the Sun, or Age, Nahui-Atl came, there had passed already four hundred years; then came two hundred years, then seventy and six, and then mankind were lost and drowned and turned into fishes. The waters and the sky drew near each other; in a single day all was lost; the day Four Flower consumed all that there was of our flesh. And this year was the year Ce-Calli; on the first day, Nahui-Atl, all was lost. The very mountains were swallowed up in the flood and the waters remained, lying tranquil during fifty and two spring-times. But before the flood began, Titlacahuan had warned the man Nata and his wife Nena, saying: Make now no more pulque, but hollow out to yourselves a great cypress, into which you shall enter when, in the month Tozoztli, the waters shall near the sky. Then they entered into it, and when Titlacahuan had shut them in, he said to the man: Thou shalt eat but a single ear of maize, and thy wife but one also. And when they had finished eating, each an ear of maize, they prepared to set forth, for the waters remained tranquil and their log moved no longer; and opening it they began to see the fishes. Then they lit a fire, rubbing pieces of wood together, and they roasted fish. And behold the deities Citlallinicué and Citlallatonac looking down from above, cried out: O divine Lord! what is this fire that they make there? wherefore do they so fill the heaven with smoke? And immediately Titlacahuan Tetzcatlipoca came down, and set himself to grumble, saying: What does this fire here? Then he seized the fishes and fashioned them behind and before, and changed them into dogs.[II-26]

We turn now to the traditions of some nations situated on the outskirts of the Mexican Empire, traditions differing from those of Mexico, if not in their elements, at least in the combination of those elements. Following our usual custom, I give the following legend belonging to the Miztecs just as they themselves were accustomed to depict and to interpret it in their primitive scrolls:--[II-27]

[Sidenote: THE FLYING HEROES OF MIZTECA.]

In the year and in the day of obscurity and darkness, yea even before the days or the years were, when the world was in a great darkness and chaos, when the earth was covered with water and there was nothing but mud and slime on all the face of the earth--behold a god became visible, and his name was the Deer, and his surname was the Lion-Snake. There appeared also a very beautiful goddess called the Deer, and surnamed the Tiger-Snake.[II-28] These two gods were the origin and beginning of all the gods.

Now when these two gods became visible in the world, they made, in their knowledge and omnipotence, a great rock, upon which they built a very sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they made their abode upon earth. On the highest part of this building there was an axe of copper, the edge being uppermost, and on this axe the heavens rested.

This rock and the palace of the gods were on a mountain in the neighborhood of the town of Apoala in the province of Mizteca Alta. The rock was called The Place of Heaven; there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and darkness.

The father and mother of all the gods being here in their place, two sons were born to them, very handsome and very learned in all wisdom and arts. The first was called the Wind of Nine Snakes, after the name of the day on which he was born; and the second was called, in like manner, the Wind of Nine Caves. Very daintily indeed were these youths brought up. When the elder wished to amuse himself, he took the form of an eagle, flying thus far and wide; the younger turned himself into a small beast of a serpent shape, having wings that he used with such agility and sleight that he became invisible, and flew through rocks and walls even as through the air. As they went, the din and clamor of these brethren was heard by those over whom they passed. They took these figures to manifest the power that was in them, both in transforming themselves and in resuming again their original shape. And they abode in great peace in the mansion of their parents, so they agreed to make a sacrifice and an offering to these gods, to their father and to their mother. Then they took each a censer of clay, and put fire therein, and poured in ground beleño for incense; and this offering was the first that had ever been made in the world. Next the brothers made to themselves a garden, in which they put many trees, and fruit-trees, and flowers, and roses, and odorous herbs of different kinds. Joined to this garden they laid out a very beautiful meadow, which they fitted up with all things necessary for offering sacrifice to the gods. In this manner the two brethren left their parents' house, and fixed themselves in this garden to dress it and to keep it, watering the trees and the plants and the odorous herbs, multiplying them, and burning incense of powder of beleño in censers of clay to the gods, their father and mother. They made also vows to these gods, and promises, praying that it might seem good to them to shape the firmament and lighten the darkness of the world, and to establish the foundation of the earth, or rather to gather the waters together so that the earth might appear--as they had no place to rest in save only one little garden. And to make their prayers more obligatory upon the gods, they pierced their ears and tongues with flakes of flint, sprinkling the blood that dropped from the wounds over the trees and plants of the garden with a willow branch, as a sacred and blessed thing. After this sort they employed themselves, postponing pleasure till the time of the granting of their desire, remaining always in subjection to the gods, their father and mother, and attributing to them more power and divinity than they really possessed.

Fray Garcia here makes a break in the relation--that he may not weary his readers with so many absurdities--but it would appear that the firmament was arranged and the earth made fit for mankind, who about that time must also have made their appearance. For there came a great deluge afterwards, wherein perished many of the sons and daughters that had been born to the gods; and it is said that when the deluge was passed the human race was restored as at the first, and the Miztec kingdom populated, and the heavens and the earth established.

This we may suppose to have been the traditional origin of the common people; but the governing family of Mizteca proclaimed themselves the descendants of two youths born from two majestic trees that stood at the entrance of the gorge of Apoala, and that maintained themselves there despite a violent wind continually rising from a cavern in the vicinity.

[Sidenote: THE DUEL WITH THE SUN.]

Whether the trees of themselves produced these youths, or whether some primeval Æsir, as in the Scandinavian story, gave them shape and blood and breath and sense, we know not. We are only told that soon or late the youths separated, each going his own way to conquer lands for himself. The braver of the two coming to the vicinity of Tilantongo, armed with buckler and bow, was much vexed and oppressed by the ardent rays of the sun, which he took to be the lord of that district striving to prevent his entrance therein. Then the young warrior strung his bow, and advanced his buckler before him, and drew shafts from his quiver. He shot there against the great light even till the going down of the same; then he took possession of all that land, seeing he had grievously wounded the sun, and forced him to hide behind the mountains. Upon this story is founded the lordship of all the caciques of Mizteca, and upon their descent from this mighty archer their ancestor. Even to this day, the chiefs of the Miztecs blazon as their arms a plumed chief with bow, arrows, and shield, and the sun in front of him setting behind gray clouds.[II-29]

Of the origin of the Zapotecs, a people bordering on these Miztecs, Burgoa says, with a touching simplicity, that he could find no account worthy of belief. Their historical paintings he ascribes to the invention of the devil, affirming hotly that these people were blinder in such vanities than the Egyptians and the Chaldeans. Some, he said, to boast of their valor made themselves out the sons of lions and divers wild beasts; others, grand lords of ancient lineage, were produced by the greatest and most shady trees; while still others of an unyielding and obstinate nature, were descended from rocks. Their language, continues the worthy Provincial, striking suddenly and by an undirected shot the very center of mythological interpretation--their language was full of metaphors; those who wished to persuade spake always in parables, and in like manner painted their historians.[II-30]

In Guatemala, according to the relations given to Father Gerónimo Roman by the natives, it was believed there was a time when nothing existed but a certain divine Father called Xchmel, and a divine Mother called Xtmana. To these were born three sons,[II-31] the eldest of whom, filled with pride and presumption, set about a creation contrary to the will of his parents. But he could create nothing save old vessels fit for mean uses, such as earthen pots, jugs, and things still more despicable; and he was hurled into hades. Then the two younger brethren, called respectively Hunchevan and Hunavan, prayed their parents for permission to attempt the work in which their brother had failed so signally. And they were granted leave, being told at the same time, that inasmuch as they had humbled themselves, they would succeed in their undertaking. Then they made the heavens, and the earth with the plants thereon, and fire and air, and out of the earth itself they made a man and a woman--presumably the parents of the human race.

According to Torquemada, there was a deluge some time after this, and after the deluge the people continued to invoke as god the great Father and the great Mother already mentioned. But at last a principal woman[II-32] among them, having received a revelation from heaven, taught them the true name of God, and how that name should be adored; all this, however, they afterward forgot.[II-33]

In Nicaragua, a country where the principal language was a Mexican dialect, it was believed that ages ago the world was destroyed by a flood in which the most part of mankind perished. Afterward the teotes, or gods, restocked the earth as at the beginning. Whence came the teotes, no one knows; but the names of two of them who took a principal part in the creation were Tamagostat and Cipattonal.[II-34]

[Sidenote: THE COYOTE OF THE PAPAGOS.]

Leaving now the Central American region we pass north into the Papago country, lying south of the Gila, with the river Santa Cruz on the east and the Gulf of California on the west. Here we meet for the first time the coyote, or prairie wolf; we find him much more than an animal, something more even than a man, only a little lower than the gods. In the following Papago myth[II-35] he figures as a prophet, and as a minister and assistant to a certain great hero-god Montezuma, whom we are destined to meet often, and in many characters, as a central figure in the myths of the Gila valley:--

[Sidenote: LEGEND OF MONTEZUMA.]

The Great Spirit made the earth and all living things, before he made man. And he descended from heaven, and digging in the earth, found clay such as the potters use, which, having again ascended into the sky, he dropped into the hole that he had dug. Immediately there came out Montezuma and, with the assistance of Montezuma, the rest of the Indian tribes in order. Last of all came the Apaches, wild from their natal hour, running away as fast as they were created. Those first days of the world were happy and peaceful days. The sun was nearer the earth than he is now; his grateful rays made all the seasons equal, and rendered garments unnecessary. Men and beasts talked together, a common language made all brethren. But an awful destruction ended this happy age. A great flood destroyed all flesh wherein was the breath of life; Montezuma and his friend the Coyote alone escaping. For before the flood began, the Coyote prophesied its coming, and Montezuma took the warning and hollowed out a boat to himself, keeping it ready on the topmost summit of Santa Rosa. The Coyote also prepared an ark; gnawing down a great cane by the river bank, entering it, and stopping up the end with a certain gum. So when the waters rose these two saved themselves, and met again at last on dry land after the flood had passed away. Naturally enough Montezuma was now anxious to know how much dry land had been left, and he sent the Coyote off on four successive journeys, to find exactly where the sea lay toward each of the four winds. From the west and from the south, the answer swiftly came: The sea is at hand. A longer search was that made towards the east, but at last there too was the sea found. On the north only was no water found, though the faithful messenger almost wearied himself out with searching. In the meantime the Great Spirit, aided by Montezuma, had again repeopled the world, and animals and men began to increase and multiply. To Montezuma had been allotted the care and government of the new race; but puffed up with pride and self importance, he neglected the most important duties of his onerous position, and suffered the most disgraceful wickedness to pass unnoticed among the people. In vain the Great Spirit came down to earth and remonstrated with his vicegerent, who only scorned his laws and advice, and ended at last by breaking out into open rebellion. Then indeed the Great Spirit was filled with anger, and he returned to heaven, pushing back the sun on his way, to that remote part of the sky he now occupies. But Montezuma hardened his heart, and collecting all the tribes to aid him, set about building a house that should reach up to heaven itself. Already it had attained a great height, and contained many apartments lined with gold, silver, and precious stones, the whole threatening soon to make good the boast of its architect, when the Great Spirit launched his thunder, and laid its glory in ruins. Still Montezuma hardened himself; proud and inflexible, he answered the thunderer out of the haughty defiance of his heart; he ordered the temple-houses to be desecrated, and the holy images to be dragged in the dust, he made them a scoff and byword for the very children in the village streets. Then the Great Spirit prepared his supreme punishment. He sent an insect flying away towards the east, towards an unknown land, to bring the Spaniards. When these came, they made war upon Montezuma and destroyed him, and utterly dissipated the idea of his divinity.[II-36]

[Sidenote: DELUGE OF THE PIMAS.]

The Pimas,[II-37] a neighboring and closely allied people to the Papagos, say that the earth was made by a certain Chiowotmahke, that is to say Earth-prophet. It appeared in the beginning like a spider's web, stretching far and fragile across the nothingness that was. Then the Earth-prophet flew over all lands in the form of a butterfly, till he came to the place he judged fit for his purpose, and there he made man. And the thing was after this wise: The Creator took clay in his hands, and mixing it with the sweat of his own body, kneaded the whole into a lump. Then he blew upon the lump till it was filled with life and began to move; and it became man and woman. This Creator had a son called Szeukha, who, when the world was beginning to be tolerably peopled, lived in the Gila valley, where lived also at the same time a great prophet, whose name has been forgotten. Upon a certain night when the prophet slept, he was wakened by a noise at the door of his house, and when he looked, a great Eagle stood before him. And the Eagle spake: Arise, thou that healest the sick, thou that shouldest know what is to come, for behold a deluge is at hand. But the prophet laughed the bird to scorn and gathered his robes about him and slept. Afterwards the Eagle came again and warned him of the waters near at hand; but he gave no ear to the bird at all. Perhaps he would not listen because this Eagle had an exceedingly bad reputation among men, being reported to take at times the form of an old woman that lured away girls and children to a certain cliff so that they were never seen again; of this, however, more anon. A third time, the Eagle came to warn the prophet, and to say that all the valley of the Gila should be laid waste with water; but the prophet gave no heed. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, and even as the flapping of the Eagle's wings died away into the night, there came a peal of thunder and an awful crash; and a green mound of water reared itself over the plain. It seemed to stand upright for a second, then, cut incessantly by the lightning, goaded on like a great beast, it flung itself upon the prophet's hut. When the morning broke there was nothing to be seen alive but one man--if indeed he were a man; Szeukha, the son of the Creator, had saved himself by floating on a ball of gum or resin. On the waters falling a little, he landed near the mouth of the Salt River, upon a mountain where there is a cave that can still be seen, together with the tools and utensils Szeukha used while he lived there. Szeukha was very angry with the Great Eagle, who he probably thought had had more to do with bringing on the flood than appears in the narrative. At any rate the general reputation of the bird was sufficiently bad, and Szeukha prepared a kind of rope ladder from a very tough species of tree, much like woodbine, with the aid of which he climbed up to the cliff where the Eagle lived, and slew him.[II-38] Looking about here, he found the mutilated and decaying bodies of a great multitude of those that the Eagle had stolen and taken for a prey; and he raised them all to life again and sent them away to repeople the earth. In the house or den of the Eagle, he found a woman that the monster had taken to wife, and a child. These he sent also upon their way, and from these are descended that great people called Hohocam, 'ancients or grandfathers,' who were led in all their wanderings by an eagle, and who eventually passed into Mexico.[II-39] One of these Hohocam named Sivano, built the Casa Grande on the Gila, and indeed the ruins of this structure are called after his name to this day. On the death of Sivano, his son led a branch of the Hohocam to Salt River, where he built certain edifices and dug a large canal, or acequia. At last it came about that a woman ruled over the Hohocam. Her throne was cut out of a blue stone, and a mysterious bird was her constant attendant. These Hohocam were at war with a people that lived to the east of them, on the Rio Verde, and one day the bird warned her that the enemy was at hand. The warning was disregarded or it came too late, for the eastern people came down in three bands; destroyed the cities of the Hohocam, and killed or drove away all the inhabitants.

* * * * *

Most of the Pueblo tribes call themselves the descendants of Montezuma;[II-40] the Moquis, however, have a quite different story of their origin. They believe in a great Father living where the sun rises; and in a great Mother, whose home is where the sun goes down. The Father is the father of evil, war, pestilence, and famine; but from the Mother are all joys, peace, plenty, and health. In the beginning of time the Mother produced from her western home nine races of men in the following primary forms: First, the Deer race; second, the Sand race; third, the Water race; fourth, the Bear race; fifth, the Hare race; sixth, the Prairie-wolf race; seventh, the Rattle-snake race; eighth, the Tobacco-plant race; and ninth, the Reed-grass race. All these the Mother placed respectively on the spots where their villages now stand, and transformed them into the men who built the present Pueblos. These race-distinctions are still sharply kept up; for they are believed to be realities, not only of the past and present, but also of the future; every man when he dies shall be resolved into his primeval form; shall wave in the grass, or drift in the sand, or prowl on the prairie as in the beginning.[II-41]

[Sidenote: CAVE-ORIGIN OF THE NAVAJOS.]

The Navajos, living north of the Pueblos, say that at one time all the nations, Navajos, Pueblos, Coyoteros, and white people, lived together, underground in the heart of a mountain near the river San Juan. Their only food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all kinds of game were closed up with them in their cave; but their light was dim and only endured for a few hours each day. There were happily two dumb men among the Navajos, flute-players who enlivened the darkness with music. One of these striking by chance on the roof of the limbo with his flute, brought out a hollow sound, upon which the elders of the tribes determined to bore in the direction whence the sound came. The flute was then set up against the roof, and the Raccoon sent up the tube to dig a way out; but he could not. Then the Moth-worm mounted into the breach, and bored and bored till he found himself suddenly on the outside of the mountain and surrounded by water. Under these novel circumstances, he heaped up a little mound and set himself down on it to observe and ponder the situation. A critical situation enough! for, from the four corners of the universe, four great white Swans bore down upon him, every one with two arrows, one under either wing. The Swan from the north reached him first, and having pierced him with two arrows, drew them out and examined their points, exclaiming as the result: He is of my race. So also, in succession, did all the others. Then they went away; and towards the directions in which they departed, to the north, south, east, and west, were found four great arroyos, by which all the water flowed off, leaving only mud. The worm now returned to the cave, and the Raccoon went up into the mud, sinking in it mid-leg deep, as the marks on his fur show to this day. And the wind began to rise, sweeping up the four great arroyos, and the mud was dried away. Then the men and the animals began to come up from their cave, and their coming up required several days. First came the Navajos, and no sooner had they reached the surface then they commenced gaming at patole, their favorite game. Then came the Pueblos and other Indians who crop their hair and build houses. Lastly came the white people, who started off at once for the rising sun and were lost sight of for many winters.

While these nations lived underground they all spake one tongue; but with the light of day and the level of earth, came many languages. The earth was at this time very small and the light was quite as scanty as it had been down below; for there was as yet no heaven, nor sun, nor moon, nor stars. So another council of the ancients was held and a committee of their number appointed to manufacture these luminaries. A large house or workshop was erected; and when the sun and moon were ready, they were entrusted to the direction and guidance of the two dumb fluters already mentioned. The one who got charge of the sun came very near, through his clumsiness in his new office, to making a Phaethon of himself and setting fire to the earth. The old men, however, either more lenient than Zeus or lacking his thunder, contented themselves with forcing the offender back by puffing the smoke of their pipes into his face. Since then the increasing size of the earth has four times rendered it necessary that he should be put back, and his course farther removed from the world and from the subterranean cave to which he nightly retires with the great light. At night also the other dumb man issues from this cave, bearing the moon under his arm, and lighting up such part of the world as he can. Next the old men set to work to make the heavens, intending to broider in the stars in beautiful patterns, of bears, birds, and such things. But just as they had made a beginning a prairie-wolf rushed in, and crying out: Why all this trouble and embroidery? scattered the pile of stars over all the floor of heaven, just as they still lie.

When now the world and its firmament had been finished, the old men prepared two earthen tinages or water-jars, and having decorated one with bright colors, filled it with trifles; while the other was left plain on the outside, but filled within with flocks and herds and riches of all kinds. These jars being covered and presented to the Navajos and Pueblos, the former chose the gaudy but paltry jar; while the Pueblos received the plain and rich vessel; each nation showing in its choice traits which characterize it to this day. Next there arose among the Navajos a great gambler, who went on winning the goods and the persons of his opponents till he had won the whole tribe. Upon this, one of the old men became indignant, set the gambler on his bowstring and shot him off into space--an unfortunate proceeding, for the fellow returned in a short time with firearms and the Spaniards. Let me conclude by telling how the Navajos came by the seed they now cultivate: All the wise men being one day assembled, a turkey-hen came flying from the direction of the morning star, and shook from her feathers an ear of blue corn into the midst of the company; and in subsequent visits brought all the other seeds they possess.[II-42]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ORIGIN-MYTHS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.]

Of some tribes, we do not know that they possess any other ideas of their origin than the name of their first ancestor, or the name of a creator or a tradition of his existence.

The Sinaloas, from Culiacan north to the Yaqui River, have dances in honor of a certain Viriseva, the mother of the first man. This first man, who was her son, and called Vairubi, they hold in like esteem.[II-43] The Cochimis, of Lower California, amid an apparent multiplicity of gods, say there is in reality only one, who created heaven, earth, plants, animals, and man.[II-44] The Pericues, also of Lower California, call the creator Niparaya, and say that the heavens are his dwelling-place. A sect of the same tribe add that the stars are made of metal, and are the work of a certain Purutabui; while the moon has been made by one Cucunumic.[II-45]

The nations of Los Angeles County, California, believe that their one god, Quaoar, came down from heaven; and, after reducing chaos to order, put the world on the back of seven giants. He then created the lower animals, and lastly a man and a woman. These were made separately out of earth and called, the man Tobohar, and the woman Pabavit.[II-46]

Hugo Reid, to whom we are mainly indebted for the mythology of Southern California, and who is an excellent authority, inasmuch as his wife was an Indian woman of that country, besides the preceding gives us another and different tradition on the same subject: Two great Beings made the world, filled it with grass and trees, and gave form, life, and motion to the various animals that people land and sea. When this work was done, the elder Creator went up to heaven and left his brother alone on the earth. The solitary god left below, made to himself men-children, that he should not be utterly companionless. Fortunately also, about this time, the moon came to that neighborhood; she was very fair in her delicate beauty, very kind-hearted, and she filled the place of a mother to the men-children that the god had created. She watched over them, and guarded them from all evil things of the night, standing at the door of their lodge. The children grew up very happily, laying great store by the love with which their guardians regarded them; but there came a day when their heart saddened, in which they began to notice that neither their god-creator nor their moon foster-mother gave them any longer undivided affection and care, but that instead, the two great ones seemed to waste much precious love upon each other. The tall god began to steal out of their lodge at dusk, and spend the night watches in the company of the white-haired moon, who, on the other hand, did not seem on these occasions to pay such absorbing attention to her sentinel duty as at other times. The children grew sad at this, and bitter at the heart with a boyish jealousy. But worse was yet to come: one night they were awakened by a querulous wailing in their lodge, and the earliest dawn showed them a strange thing, which they afterwards came to know was a new-born infant, lying in the doorway. The god and the moon had eloped together; their Great One had returned to his place beyond the ether, and that he might not be separated from his paramour, he had appointed her at the same time a lodge in the great firmament; where she may yet be seen, with her gauzy robe and shining silver hair, treading celestial paths. The child left on the earth was a girl. She grew up very soft, very bright, very beautiful, like her mother; but like her mother also, O so fickle and frail! She was the first of woman-kind, from her are all other women descended, and from the moon; and as the moon changes so they all change, say the philosophers of Los Angeles.[II-47]

[Sidenote: CENTRAL-CALIFORNIAN CREATION-MYTHS.]

A much more prosaic and materialistic origin is that accorded to the moon in the traditions of the Gallinomeros of Central California.[II-48] In the beginning, they say, there was no light, but a thick darkness covered all the earth. Man stumbled blindly against man and against the animals, the birds clashed together in the air, and confusion reigned everywhere. The Hawk happening by chance to fly into the face of the Coyote, there followed mutual apologies and afterwards a long discussion on the emergency of the situation. Determined to make some effort toward abating the public evil, the two set about a remedy. The Coyote gathered a great heap of tules, rolled them into a ball, and gave it to the Hawk, together with some pieces of flint. Gathering all together as well as he could, the Hawk flew straight up into the sky, where he struck fire with the flints, lit his ball of reeds, and left it there, whirling along all in a fierce red glow as it continues to the present; for it is the sun. In the same way the moon was made, but as the tules of which it was constructed were rather damp, its light has been always somewhat uncertain and feeble.[II-49]

In northern California, we find the Mattoles,[II-50] who connect a tradition of a destructive flood with Taylor Peak, a mountain in their locality, on which they say their forefathers took refuge. As to the creation, they teach that a certain Big Man began by making the naked earth, silent and bleak, with nothing of plant or animal thereon, save one Indian, who roamed about in a wofully hungry and desolate state. Suddenly there rose a terrible whirlwind, the air grew dark and thick with dust and drifting sand, and the Indian fell upon his face in sore dread. Then there came a great calm, and the man rose and looked, and lo, all the earth was perfect and peopled; the grass and the trees were green on every plain and hill; the beasts of the fields, the fowls of the air, the creeping things, the things that swim, moved everywhere in his sight. There is a limit set to the number of the animals, which is this: only a certain number of animal spirits are in existence; when one beast dies, his spirit immediately takes up its abode in another body, so that the whole number of animals is always the same, and the original spirits move in an endless circle of earthy immortality.[II-51]

[Sidenote: THE COYOTE OF THE CALIFORNIANS.]

We pass now to a train of myths in which the Coyote again appears, figuring in many important and somewhat mystical rôles--figuring in fact as the great Somebody of many tribes. To him, though involuntarily as it appears, are owing the fish to be found in Clear Lake. The story runs that one summer long ago there was a terrible drought in that region, followed by a plague of grasshoppers. The Coyote ate a great quantity of these grasshoppers, and drank up the whole lake to quench his thirst. After this he lay down to sleep off the effects of his extraordinary repast, and while he slept a man came up from the south country and thrust him through with a spear. Then all the water he had drunk flowed back through his wound into the lake, and with the water the grasshoppers he had eaten; and these insects became fishes, the same that still swim in Clear Lake.[II-52]

The Californians in most cases describe themselves as originating from the Coyote, and more remotely, from the very soil they tread. In the language of Mr. Powers--whose extended personal investigations give him the right to speak with authority--"All the aboriginal inhabitants of California, without exception, believe that their first ancestors were created directly from the earth of their respective present dwelling-places, and, in very many cases, that these ancestors were coyotes."[II-53]

The Potoyantes give an ingenious account of the transformation of the first coyotes into men: There was an age in which no men existed, nothing but coyotes. When one of these animals died, his body used to breed a multitude of little animals, much as the carcass of the huge Ymir, rotting in Ginnunga-gap, bred the maggots that turned to dwarfs. The little animals of our story were in reality spirits, which, after crawling about for a time on the dead coyote, and taking all kinds of shapes, ended by spreading wings and floating off to the moon. This evidently would not do; the earth was in danger of becoming depopulated; so the old coyotes took counsel together if perchance they might devise a remedy. The result was a general order that, for the time to come, all bodies should be incinerated immediately after death. Thus originated the custom of burning the dead, a custom still kept up among these people. We next learn--what indeed might have been expected of animals of such wisdom and parts--that these primeval coyotes began by degrees to assume the shape of men. At first, it is true, with many imperfections; but, a toe, an ear, a hand, bit by bit, they were gradually builded up into the perfect form of man looking upward. For one thing they still grieve, however, of all their lost estate--their tails are gone. An acquired habit of sitting upright, has utterly erased and destroyed that beautiful member. Lost is indeed lost, and gone is gone for ever, yet still when in dance and festival, the Potoyante throws off the weary burden of hard and utilitarian care, he attaches to himself, as nearly as may be in the ancient place, an artificial tail, and forgets for a happy hour the degeneracy of the present in simulating the glory of the past.[II-54]

The Californians tell again of a great flood, or at least of a time when the whole country, with the exception of Mount Diablo and Reed Peak, was covered with water. There was a Coyote on the peak, the only living thing the wide world over, and there was a single feather tossing about on the rippled water. The Coyote was looking at the feather, and even as he looked, flesh and bones and other feathers, came and joined themselves to the first, and became an Eagle. There was a stir on the water, a rush of broad pinions, and before the widening circles reached the island-hill, the bird stood beside the astonished Coyote. The two came soon to be acquainted and to be good friends, and they made occasional excursions together to the other hill, the Eagle flying leisurely overhead while the Coyote swam. After a time they began to feel lonely, so they created men; and as the men multiplied the waters abated, till the dry land came to be much as it is at present.

[Sidenote: HOW THE GOLDEN GATE WAS OPENED.]

Now, also, the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin began to find their way into the Pacific, through the mountains which, up to this time, had stretched across the mouth of San Francisco Bay. No Poseidon clove the hills with his trident, as when the pleasant vale of Tempe was formed, but a strong earthquake tore the rock apart and opened the Golden Gate between the waters within and those without. Before this there had existed only two outlets for the drainage of the whole country; one was the Russian River, and the other the San Juan.[II-55]

The natives in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe, ascribe its origin to a great natural convulsion. There was a time, they say, when their tribe possessed the whole earth, and were strong, numerous, and rich; but a day came in which a people rose up stronger than they, and defeated and enslaved them. Afterwards the Great Spirit sent an immense wave across the continent from the sea, and this wave engulfed both the oppressors and the oppressed, all but a very small remnant. Then the taskmasters made the remaining people raise up a great temple, so that they, of the ruling caste, should have a refuge in case of another flood, and on the top of this temple the masters worshiped a column of perpetual fire.

Half a moon had not elapsed, however, before the earth was again troubled, this time with strong convulsions and thunderings, upon which the masters took refuge in their great tower, closing the people out. The poor slaves fled to the Humboldt River, and getting into canoes paddled for life from the awful sight behind them. For the land was tossing like a troubled sea, and casting up fire, smoke, and ashes. The flames went up to the very heaven and melted many stars, so that they rained down in molten metal upon the earth, forming the ore that the white men seek. The Sierra was mounded up from the bosom of the earth; while the place where the great fort stood sank, leaving only the dome on the top exposed above the waters of Lake Tahoe. The inmates of the temple-tower clung to this dome to save themselves from drowning; but the Great Spirit walked upon the waters in his wrath, and took the oppressors one by one like pebbles, and threw them far into the recesses of a great cavern, on the east side of the lake, called to this day the Spirit Lodge, where the waters shut them in. There must they remain till a last great volcanic burning, which is to overturn the whole earth, shall again set them free. In the depths of their cavern-prison they may still be heard, wailing and moaning, when the snows melt and the waters swell in the lake.[II-56]

We again meet the Coyote among the Cahrocs of Klamath River in Northern California. These Cahrocs believe in a certain Chareya, Old Man Above, who made the world, sitting the while upon a certain stool now in the possession of the high-priest, or chief medicine-man. After the creation of the earth, Chareya first made fishes, then the lower animals, and lastly man, upon whom was conferred the power of assigning to each animal its respective duties and position. The man determined to give each a bow, the length of which should denote the rank of the receiver. So he called all the animals together, and told them that next day, early in the morning, the distribution of bows would take place. Now the Coyote greatly desired the longest bow; and, in order to be in first at the division, he determined to remain awake all night. His anxiety sustained him for some time; but just before morning he gave way, and fell into a sound sleep. The consequence was, he was last at the rendezvous, and got the shortest bow of all. The man took pity on his distress, however, and brought the matter to the notice of Chareya, who, on considering the circumstances, decreed that the Coyote should become the most cunning of animals, as he remains to this time. The Coyote was very grateful to the man for his intercession, and he became his friend and the friend of his children, and did many things to aid mankind as we shall see hereafter.[II-57]

[Sidenote: MOUNT SHASTA THE WIGWAM OF THE GREAT SPIRIT.]

The natives in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta, in Northern California, say that the Great Spirit made this mountain first of all. Boring a hole in the sky, using a large stone as an auger, he pushed down snow and ice until they had reached the desired height; then he stepped from cloud to cloud down to the great icy pile, and from it to the earth, where he planted the first trees by merely putting his finger into the soil here and there. The sun began to melt the snow; the snow produced water; the water ran down the sides of the mountains, refreshed the trees, and made rivers. The Creator gathered the leaves that fell from the trees, blew upon them, and they became birds. He took a stick and broke it into pieces; of the small end he made fishes; and of the middle of the stick he made animals--the grizzly bear excepted, which he formed from the big end of his stick, appointing him to be master over all the others. Indeed this animal was then so large, strong, and cunning, that the Creator somewhat feared him, and hollowed out Mount Shasta as a wigwam for himself, where he might reside while on earth, in the most perfect security and comfort. So the smoke was soon to be seen curling up from the mountain, where the Great Spirit and his family lived, and still live, though their hearth-fire is alight no longer, now that the white man is in the land. This was thousands of snows ago, and there came after this a late and severe spring-time, in which a memorable storm blew up from the sea, shaking the huge lodge to its base. The Great Spirit commanded his daughter, little more than an infant, to go up and bid the wind to be still, cautioning her at the same time in his fatherly way, not to put her head out into the blast, but only to thrust out her little red arm and make a sign before she delivered her message. The eager child hastened up to the hole in the roof, did as she was told, and then turned to descend; but the Eve was too strong in her to leave without a look at the forbidden world outside and the rivers and the trees, at the far ocean and the great waves that the storm had made as hoary as the forests when the snow is on the firs. She stopped, she put out her head to look; instantly the storm took her by the long hair, and blew her down to the earth, down the mountain side, over the smooth ice and soft snow, down to the land of the grizzly bears.

Now the grizzly bears were somewhat different then from what they are at present. In appearance they were much the same it is true; but they walked then on their hind legs like men, and talked, and carried clubs, using the fore-limbs as men use their arms.

[Sidenote: THE GRIZZLY FAMILY OF MOUNT SHASTA.]

There was a family of these grizzlies living at the foot of the mountain, at the place where the child was blown to. The father was returning from the hunt with his club on his shoulder and a young elk in his hand, when he saw the little shivering waif lying on the snow with her hair all tangled about her. The old Grizzly, pitying and wondering at the strange forlorn creature, lifted it up, and carried it in to his wife to see what should be done. She too was pitiful, and she fed it from her own breast, bringing it up quietly as one of her family. So the girl grew up, and the eldest son of the old Grizzly married her, and their offspring was neither grizzly nor Great Spirit, but man. Very proud indeed were the whole grizzly nation of the new race, and uniting their strength from all parts of the country, they built the young mother and her family a mountain wigwam near that of the Great Spirit; and this structure of theirs is now known as Little Mount Shasta. Many years passed away, and at last the old grandmother Grizzly became very feeble and felt that she must soon die. She knew that the girl she had adopted was the daughter of the Great Spirit, and her conscience troubled her that she had never let him know anything of the fate of his child. So she called all the grizzlies together to the new lodge, and sent her eldest grandson up on a cloud to the summit of Mount Shasta, to tell the father that his daughter yet lived. When the Great Spirit heard that, he was so glad that he immediately ran down the mountain, on the south side, toward where he had been told his daughter was; and such was the swiftness of his pace that the snow was melted here and there along his course, as it remains to this day. The grizzlies had prepared him an honorable reception, and as he approached his daughter's home, he found them standing in thousands in two files, on either side of the door, with their clubs under their arms. He had never pictured his daughter as aught but the little child he had loved so long ago; but when he found that she was a mother, and that he had been betrayed into the creation of a new race, his anger overcame him; he scowled so terribly on the poor old grandmother Grizzly that she died upon the spot. At this all the bears set up a fearful howl, but the exasperated father, taking his lost darling on his shoulder, turned to the armed host, and in his fury cursed them. Peace! he said. Be silent for ever! Let no articulate word ever again pass your lips, neither stand any more upright; but use your hands as feet, and look downward until I come again! Then he drove them all out; he drove out also the new race of men, shut to the door of Little Mount Shasta, and passed away to his mountain, carrying his daughter; and her or him no eye has since seen. The grizzlies never spoke again, nor stood up; save indeed when fighting for their life, when the Great Spirit still permits them to stand as in the old time, and to use their fists like men. No Indian tracing his descent from the spirit mother and the grizzly, as here described, will kill a grizzly bear; and if by an evil chance a grizzly kill a man in any place, that spot becomes memorable, and every one that passes casts a stone there till a great pile is thrown up.[II-58]

Let us now pass on, and going east and north, enter the Shoshone country. In Idaho there are certain famous Soda Springs whose origin the Snakes refer to the close of their happiest age. Long ago, the legend runs, when the cotton-woods on the Big River were no larger than arrows, all red men were at peace, the hatchet was everywhere buried, and hunter met hunter in the game-lands of the one or the other, with all hospitality and good-will. During this state of things, two chiefs, one of the Shoshone, the other of the Comanche nation, met one day at a certain spring. The Shoshone had been successful in the chase, and the Comanche very unlucky, which put the latter in rather an ill humor. So he got up a dispute with the other as to the importance of their respective and related tribes, and ended by making an unprovoked and treacherous attack on the Shoshone, striking him into the water from behind, when he had stooped to drink. The murdered man fell forward into the water, and immediately a strange commotion was observable there; great bubbles and spirts of gas shot up from the bottom of the pool, and amid a cloud of vapor there arose also an old white-haired Indian, armed with a ponderous club of elk-horn. Well the assassin knew who stood before him; the totem on the breast was that of Wankanaga, the father both of the Shoshone and of the Comanche nations, an ancient famous for his brave deeds, and celebrated in the hieroglyphic pictures of both peoples. Accursed of two nations! cried the old man, this day hast thou put death between the two greatest peoples under the sun; see, the blood of this Shoshone cries out to the Great Spirit for vengeance. And he dashed out the brains of the Comanche with his club, and the murderer fell there beside his victim into the spring. After that the spring became foul and bitter, nor even to this day can any one drink of its nauseous water. Then Wankanaga, seeing that it had been defiled, took his club and smote a neighboring rock, and the rock burst forth into clear bubbling water, so fresh and so grateful to the palate that no other water can even be compared to it.[II-59]

[Sidenote: THE GIANTS OF THE PALOUSE RIVER.]

Passing into Washington, we find an account of the origin of the falls of Palouse River and of certain native tribes. There lived here at one time a family of giants, four brothers and a sister. The sister wanted some beaver-fat and she begged her brothers to get it for her--no easy task, as there was only one beaver in the country, and he an animal of extraordinary size and activity. However, like four gallant fellows, the giants set out to find the monster, soon catching sight of him near the mouth of the Palouse, then a peaceful gliding river with an even though winding channel. They at once gave chase, heading him up the river. A little distance up-stream they succeeded in striking him for the first time with their spears, but he shook himself clear, making in his struggle the first rapids of the Palouse, and dashed on up-stream. Again the brothers overtook him, pinning him to the river-bed with their weapons, and again the vigorous beast writhed away, making thus the second falls of the Palouse. Another chase, and, in a third and fatal attack, the four spear-shafts are struck again through the broad wounded back. There is a last stubborn struggle at the spot since marked by the great falls called Aputaput, a tearing of earth and a lashing of water in the fierce death-flurry, and the huge Beaver is dead. The brothers having secured the skin and fat, cut up the body and threw the pieces in various directions. From these pieces have originated the various tribes of the country, as the Cayuses, the Nez Percés, the Walla Wallas, and so on. The Cayuses sprang from the beaver's heart, and for this reason they are more energetic, daring, and successful than their neighbors.[II-60]

In Oregon the Chinooks and neighboring people tell of a pre-human demon race, called Ulháipa by the Chinooks, and Sehuiáb by the Clallams and Lummis. The Chinooks say that the human race was created by Italapas, the Coyote. The first men were sent into the world in a very lumpish and imperfect state, their mouth and eyes were closed, their hands and feet immovable. Then a kind and powerful spirit called Ikánam, took a sharp stone, opened the eyes of these poor creatures, and gave motion to their hands and feet. He taught them how to make canoes as well as all other implements and utensils; and he threw great rocks into the rivers and made falls, to obstruct the salmon in their ascent, so that they might be easily caught.[II-61]

Farther north among the Ahts of Vancouver Island, perhaps the commonest notion of origin is that men at first existed as birds, animals, and fishes. We are told of a certain Quawteaht, represented somewhat contradictorily, as the first Aht that ever lived, thickset and hairy-limbed, and as the chief Aht deity, a purely supernatural being, if not the creator, at least the maker and shaper of most things, the maker of the land and the water, and of the animals that inhabit the one or the other. In each of these animals as at first created, there resided the embryo or essence of a man. One day a canoe came down the coast, paddled by two personages in the, at that time, unknown form of men. The animals were frightened out of their wits, and fled, each from his house, in such haste that he left behind him the human essence that he usually carried in his body. These embryos rapidly developed into men; they multiplied, made use of the huts deserted by the animals, and became in every way as the Ahts are now. There exists another account of the origin of the Ahts, which would make them the direct descendants of Quawteaht and an immense bird that he married--the great Thunder Bird, Tootooch, with which, under a different name and in a different sex, we shall become more familiar presently. The flapping of Tootooch's wings shook the hills with thunder, tootah; and when she put out her forked tongue, the lightning quivered across the sky.

The Ahts have various legends of the way in which fire was first obtained, which legends may be reduced to the following: Quawteaht withheld fire, for some reason or other, from the creatures that he had brought into the world, with one exception; it was always to be found burning in the home of the cuttle-fish, telhoop. The other beasts attempted to steal this fire, but only the deer succeeded; he hid a little of it in the joint of his hind leg, and escaping, introduced the element to general use.

Not all animals, it would appear, were produced in the general creation; the loon and the crow had a special origin, being metamorphosed men. Two fishermen, being out at sea in their canoes, fell to quarreling, the one ridiculing the other for his small success in fishing. Finally the unsuccessful man became so infuriated by the taunts of his companion that he knocked him on the head, and stole his fish, cutting out his tongue before he paddled off, lest by any chance the unfortunate should recover his senses and gain the shore. The precaution was well taken, for the mutilated man reached the land and tried to denounce his late companion. No sound however could he utter but something resembling the cry of a loon, upon which the Great Spirit, Quawteaht, became so indiscriminatingly angry at the whole affair that he changed the poor mute into a loon, and his assailant into a crow. So when the mournful voice of the loon is heard from the silent lake or river, it is still the poor fisherman that we hear, trying to make himself understood and to tell the hard story of his wrongs.[II-62]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA AND SALISH CREATION-MYTHS.]

The general drift of many of the foregoing myths would go to indicate a wide-spread belief in the theory of an evolution of man from animals.[II-63] Traditions are not wanting, however, whose teaching is precisely the reverse. The Salish, the Nisquallies, and the Yakimas of Washington, all hold that beasts, fishes, and even edible roots are descended from human originals. One account of this inverse Darwinian development is this: The son of the Sun--whoever he may have been--caused certain individuals to swim through a lake of magic oil, a liquid of such Circean potency that the unfortunates immersed were transformed as above related. The peculiarities of organism of the various animals, are the results of incidents of their passage; the bear dived, and is therefore fat all over; the goose swam high, and is consequently fat only up to the water-line; and so on through all the list.[II-64]

Moving north to the Tacullies of British Columbia, we find the Musk-rat an active agent in the work of creation. The flat earth, following the Tacully cosmogony, was at first wholly covered with water. On the water a Musk-rat swam to and fro, seeking food. Finding none there, he dived to the bottom and brought up a mouthful of mud, but only to spit it out again when he came to the surface. All this he did again and again till quite an island was formed and by degrees the whole earth. In some unexplained way this earth became afterwards peopled in every part, and so remained, until a fierce fire of several days' duration swept over it, destroying all life, with two exceptions; one man and one woman hid themselves in a deep cave in the heart of a mountain, and from these two has the world been since repeopled.[II-65]

[Sidenote: YEHL, THE CREATOR OF THE THLINKEETS.]

From the Tacully country we pass north and west to the coast inhabited by the Thlinkeets, among whom the myth of a great Bird, or of a great hero-deity, whose favorite disguise is the shape of a bird, assumes the most elaborate proportions and importance. Here the name of this great Somebody is Yehl, the Crow or Raven, creator of most things, and especially of the Thlinkeets. Very dark, damp, and chaotic was the world in the beginning; nothing with breath or body moved there except Yehl; in the likeness of a raven he brooded over the mist, his black wings beat down the vast confusion, the waters went back before him and the dry land appeared. The Thlinkeets were placed on the earth--though how or when does not exactly appear--while the world was still in darkness, and without sun or moon or stars. A certain Thlinkeet, we are further informed, had a wife and a sister. Of the wife he was devouringly jealous, and when employed in the woods at his trade of building canoes, he had her constantly watched by eight red birds of the kind called kun. To make assurance surer, he even used to coop her up in a kind of box every time he left home. All this while his sister, a widow it would appear, was bringing up certain sons she had, fine tall fellows, rapidly approaching manhood. The jealous uncle could not endure the thought of their being in the neighborhood of his wife. So he inveigled them one by one, time after time, out to sea with him on pretense of fishing, and drowned them there. The poor mother was left desolate, she went to the sea-shore to weep for her children. A dolphin--some say a whale--saw her there, and pitied her; the beast told her to swallow a small pebble and drink some sea-water. She did so, and in eight months was delivered of a child. That child was Yehl, who thus took upon himself a human shape, and grew up a mighty hunter and notable archer. One day a large bird appeared to him, having a long tail like a magpie, and a long glittering bill as of metal; the name of the bird was Kutzghatushl, that is, Crane that can soar to heaven. Yehl shot the bird, skinned it, and whenever he wished to fly used to clothe himself in its skin.

Now Yehl had grown to manhood, and he determined to avenge himself upon his uncle for the death of his brothers; so he opened the box in which the well-guarded wife was shut up. Instantly the eight faithful birds flew off and told the husband, who set out for his home in a murderous mood. Most cunning, however, in his patience, he greeted Yehl with composure, and invited him into his canoe for a short trip to sea. Having paddled out some way, he flung himself on the young man and forced him overboard: Then he put his canoe about and made leisurely for the land, rid as he thought of another enemy. But Yehl swam in quietly another way, and stood up in his uncle's house. The baffled murderer was beside himself with fury, he imprecated with a potent curse a deluge upon all the earth, well content to perish himself so he involved his rival in the common destruction, for jealousy is cruel as the grave. The flood came, the waters rose and rose; but Yehl clothed himself in his bird-skin, and soared up to heaven, where he struck his beak into a cloud, and remained till the waters were assuaged.

[Sidenote: ADVENTURES OF YEHL AND KHANUKH.]

After this affair Yehl had many other adventures, so many that "one man cannot know them all," as the Thlinkeets say. One of the most useful things he did was to supply light to mankind--with whom, as appears, the earth had been again peopled after the deluge. Now all the light in the world was stored away in three boxes, among the riches of a certain mysterious old Chief, who guarded his treasure closely. Yehl set his wits to work to secure the boxes; he determined to be born into the chief's family. The old fellow had one daughter upon whom he doted, and Yehl transforming himself into a blade of grass, got into the girl's drinking-cup and was swallowed by her. In due time she gave birth to a son, who was Yehl, thus a second time born of a woman into the world. Very proud was the old chief of his grandson, loving him even as he loved his daughter, so that Yehl came to be a decidedly spoiled child. He fell a crying one day, working himself almost into a fit; he kicked and scratched and howled, and turned the family hut into a little pandemonium as only an infant plague can. He screamed for one of the three boxes; he would have a box; nothing but a box should ever appease him! The indulgent grandfather gave him one of the boxes; he clutched it, stopped crying, and crawled off into the yard to play. Playing, he contrived to wrench the lid off, and lo! the beautiful heaven was thick with stars, and the box empty. The old man wept for the loss of his stars, but he did not scold his grandson, he loved him too blindly for that. Yehl had succeeded in getting the stars into the firmament, and he proceeded to repeat his successful trick, to do the like by the moon and sun. As may be imagined, the difficulty was much increased; still he gained his end. He first let the moon out into the sky, and some time afterward, getting possession of the box that held the sun, he changed himself into a raven and flew away with his greatest prize of all. When he set up the blazing light in heaven, the people that saw it were at first afraid. Many hid themselves in the mountains, and in the forests, and even in the water, and were changed into the various kinds of animals that frequent these places.

There are still other feats of Yehl's replete with the happiest consequences to mankind. There was a time, for instance, when all the fire in the world was hid away in an island of the ocean. Thither flew the indefatigable deity, fetching back a brand in his mouth. The distance, however, was so great that most of the wood was burned away and a part of his beak, before he reached the Thlinkeet shore. Arrived there, he dropped the embers at once, and the sparks flew about in all directions among various sticks and stones; therefore it is that by striking these stones, and by friction on this wood, fire is always to be obtained.

Light they now had, and fire; but one thing was still wanting to men; they had no fresh water. A personage called Khanukh[II-66] kept all the fresh water in his well, in an island to the east of Sitka, and over the mouth of the well, for its better custody, he had built his hut. Yehl set out to the island in his boat, to secure the water, and on his way he met Khanukh himself, paddling along in another boat. Khanukh spoke first: How long hast thou been living in the world? Proudly Yehl answered: Before the world stood in its place, I was there. Yehl in his turn questioned Khanukh: But how long hast thou lived in the world? To which Khanukh replied: Ever since the time that the liver came out from below.[II-67] Then said Yehl: Thou art older than I. Upon this Khanukh, to show that his power was as great as his age, took off his hat, and there rose a dense fog, so that the one could no longer see the other. Yehl then became afraid, and cried out to Khanukh; but Khanukh answered nothing. At last when Yehl found himself completely helpless in the darkness, he began to weep and howl; upon which the old sorcerer put on his hat again, and the fog vanished. Khanukh then invited Yehl to his house, and entertained him handsomely with many luxuries, among which was fresh water. The meal over, host and guest sat down, and the latter began a long relation of his many exploits and adventures. Khanukh listened as attentively as he could, but the story was really so interminable that he at last fell asleep across the cover of his well. This frustrated Yehl's intention of stealing the water while its owner slept, so he resorted to another stratagem: he put some filth under the sleeper, then waking him up, made him believe he had bewrayed himself. Khanukh, whose own nose abhorred him, at once hurried off to the sea to wash, and his deceiver as quickly set about securing the precious water. Just as All-father Odin, the Raven-god, stole Suttung's mead, drinking it up and escaping in the form of a bird, so Yehl drank what fresh water he could, filling himself to the very beak, then took the form of a raven and attempted to fly off through the chimney of the hut. He stuck in the flue however, and Khanukh returning at that instant recognized his guest in the struggling bird. The old man comprehended the situation, and quietly piling up a roaring fire, he sat down comfortably to watch the choking and scorching of his crafty guest. The raven had always been a white bird, but so thoroughly was he smoked in the chimney on this occasion that he has ever since remained the sootiest of fowls. At last Khanukh watching the fire, became drowsy and fell asleep; so Yehl escaped from the island with the water. He flew back to the continent, where he scattered it in every direction; and wherever small drops fell there are now springs and creeks, while the large drops have produced lakes and rivers. This is the end of the exploits of Yehl; having thus done everything necessary to the happiness of mankind, he returned to his habitation, which is in the east, and into which no other spirit, nor any man can possibly enter.

The existing difference in language between the Thlinkeets and other people is one of the consequences of a great flood--perhaps that flood already described as having been brought on through the jealousy of the canoe-builder. Many persons escaped drowning by taking refuge in a great floating building. When the waters fell, this vessel grounded upon a rock, and was broken into two pieces; in the one fragment were left those whose descendants speak the Thlinkeet language, in the other remained all whose descendants employ a different idiom.

[Sidenote: CHETHL AND AHGISHANAKHOU.]

Connected with the history of this deluge is another myth in which a great Bird figures. When the waters rose a certain mysterious brother and sister found it necessary to part. The name of the brother was Chethl, that is, Thunder or Lightning, and the name of the sister was Ahgishanakhou, which means the Underground Woman. As they separated Chethl said to her: Sister, you shall never see me again, but while I live you shall hear my voice. Then he clothed himself in the skin of a great bird, and flew towards the south-west. His sister climbed to the top of Mount Edgecomb, which is near Sitka, and it opened and swallowed her up, leaving a great hole, or crater. The world itself is an immense flat plate supported on a pillar, and under the world, in silence and darkness, this Under-ground Woman guards the great pillar from evil and malignant powers. She has never seen her brother since she left the upper world, and she shall never see him again; but still, when the tempest sweeps down on Edgecomb, the lightning of his eyes gleams down her crater-window, and the thundering of his wings re-echoes through all her subterranean halls.[II-68]

The Koniagas, north of the Thlinkeets, have their legendary Bird and Dog--the latter taking the place occupied in the mythology of many other tribes by the wolf or coyote. Up in heaven, according to the Koniagas, there exists a great deity called Shljam Schoa. He created two personages and sent them down to the earth, and the Raven accompanied them carrying light. This original pair made sea, rivers, mountains, forests, and such things. Among other places they made the Island of Kadiak, and so stocked it that the present Koniagas assert themselves the descendants of a Dog.[II-69]

The Aleuts of the Aleutian Archipelago seem to disagree upon their origin. Some say that in the beginning a Bitch inhabited Unalaska, and that a great Dog swam across to her from Kadiak; from which pair the human race have sprung. Others, naming the bitch-mother of their race Mahakh, describe a certain Old Man, called Iraghdadakh, who came from the north to visit this Mahakh. The result of this visit was the birth of two creatures, male and female, with such an extraordinary mixing up of the elements of nature in them that they were each half man, half fox. The name of the male creature was Acagnikakh, and by the other creature he became father of the human race. The Old Man however seems hardly to have needed any help to people the world, for like the great patriarch of Thessaly, he was able to create men by merely casting stones on the earth. He flung also other stones into the air, into the water, and over the land, thus making beasts, birds, and fishes. In another version of the narrative, the first father of the Aleuts is said to have fallen from heaven in the shape of a dog.[II-70]

[Sidenote: THE DOG-ORIGIN OF THE HYPERBOREANS.]

In the legends of the Tinneh, living inland, north-east of the Koniagas, the familiar Bird and Dog again appear. These legends tell us that the world existed at first as a great ocean frequented only by an immense Bird, the beating of whose wings was thunder, and its glance lightning. This great flying monster descended and touched the waters, upon which the earth rose up and appeared above them; it touched the earth, and therefrom came every living creature--except the Tinneh, who owe their origin to a Dog. Therefore it is that to this day a dog's flesh is an abomination to the Tinneh, as are also all who eat such flesh. A few years before Captain Franklin's visit they almost ruined themselves by following the advice of some fanatic reformer. Convinced by him of the wickedness of exacting labor from their near relations, the dogs, they got rid at once of the sin and of all temptation to its recommission, by killing every cur in their possession.

To return to the origin of the Tinneh, the wonderful Bird before mentioned made and presented to them a peculiar arrow, which they were to preserve for all time with great care. But they would not; they misappropriated the sacred shaft to some common use, and immediately the great Bird flew away never to return. With its departure ended the Golden Age of the Tinneh--an age in which men lived till their throats were worn through with eating, and their feet with walking.[II-71]

Belonging to the Northern-Indian branch of the Tinneh we find a narrative in which the Dog holds a prominent place, but in which we find no mention at all of the Bird: The earth existed at first in a chaotic state, with only one human inhabitant, a woman who dwelt in a cave and lived on berries. While gathering these one day, she encountered an animal like a dog, which followed her home. This Dog possessed the power of transforming himself into a handsome young man, and in this shape he became the father by the woman of the first men. In course of time a giant of such height that his head reached the clouds, arrived on the scene and fitted the earth for its inhabitants. He reduced the chaos to order; he established the land in its boundaries, he marked out with his staff the position or course of the lakes, ponds, and rivers. Next he slew the Dog and tore him to pieces, as the four giants did the Beaver of the Palouse River, or as the creating Æsir did Aurgelmir. Unlike the four brothers, however, and unlike the sons of Bör, this giant of the Tinneh used the fragments not to create men or things, but animals. The entrails of the dog he threw into the water, and every piece became a fish; the flesh he scattered over the land, and every scrap became an animal; the bits of skin he sowed upon the wind, and they became birds. All these spread over the earth, and increased and multiplied; and the giant gave the woman and her progeny power to kill and eat of them according to their necessities. After this he returned to his place, and he has not since been heard of.[II-72]

Leaving now this division of our subject, more particularly concerned with cosmogony, it may not be amiss to forestall possible criticism as to the disconnected manner in which the various myths are given. I have but to repeat that the mythology with which we have to deal is only known in fragments, and to submit that a broken statue, or even a broken shard, of genuine or presumably genuine antiquity, is more valuable to science and even to poetry, than the most skillful ideal restoration.

[Sidenote: INTERPRETATION OF MYTHS.]

Further, the absence of any attempt to form a connected whole out of the myths that come under our notice cannot but obviate that tendency to alter in outline and to color in detail which is so insensibly natural to any mythographer prepossessed with the spirit of a system. In advancing lastly the opinion that the disconnected arrangement is not only better adapted toward preserving the original myths in their integrity, but is also better for the student, I may be allowed to close the chapter with the second of the Rules for the Interpretation of Mythes given by so distinguished an authority as Mr. Keightley: "In like manner the mythes themselves should be considered separately, and detached from the system in which they are placed; for the single mythes existed long before the system, and were the product of other minds than those which afterwards set them in connection, not unfrequently without fully understanding them."[II-73]

FOOTNOTES:

[II-1] In Vienna in 1857, the book now best known as the Popol Vuh was first brought to the notice of European scholars, under the following title: Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala, traducidas de la Lengua Quiché al Castellano para mas Comodidad de los Ministros del S. Evangelio, por el R. P. F. Francisco Ximenez, cura doctrinero por el real patronato del Pueblo de S. Thomas Chuila.--Exactamente segun el texto español del manuscrito original que se halla en la biblioteca de la Universidad de Guatemala, publicado por la primera vez, y aumentado con una introduccion y anotaciones por el Dr C. Scherzer. What Dr Scherzer says in a paper read before the Vienna Academy of Sciences, Feb. 20th, 1856; and repeats in his introduction, about its author, amounts to this: In the early part of the 18th century Francisco Ximenez, a Dominican Father of great repute for his learning and his love of truth, filled the office of curate in the little Indian town of Chichicastenango in the highlands of Guatemala. Neither the time of his birth nor that of his death can be exactly ascertained, but the internal evidence of one of his works shows that he was engaged upon it in 1721. He left many manuscripts, but it is supposed that the unpalatable truths some of them contain with regard to the ill-treatment of the Indians by the colonial authorities sufficed, as previously in the case of Las Casas, to ensure their partial destruction and total suppression. What remains of them lay long hid in an obscure corner of the Convent of the Dominicans in Guatemala, and passed afterwards, on the suppression of all the religious orders, into the library of the University of San Carlos (Guatemala). Here Dr Scherzer discovered them in June 1854, and carefully copied, and afterwards published as above the particular treatise with which we are now concerned. This, according to Father Ximenez himself, and according to its internal evidence, is a translation of a literal copy of an original book, written by one or more Quichés, in the Quiché language, in Roman letters, after the Christians had occupied Guatemala, and after the real original Popol Vuh--National Book--had been lost or destroyed--literally, was no more to be seen--and written to replace that lost book. 'Quise trasladar todas las historias á la letra de estos indios, y tambien traducirla en la lengua castellana.' 'Esto escribiremos ya en la ley de Dios en la cristiandad los sacaremos, porque ya no hay libro comun, original donde verlo, Ximenez, Hist. Ind. Guat., pp. 1, 4, 5. 'Voilà ce que nous écrirons depuis (qu'on a promulgué) la parole de Dieu, et en dedans du Christianisme; nous le reproduirons, parce qu'on ne voit plus ce Livre national,' 'Vae x-chi-ka tzibah chupan chic u chabal Dios, pa Christianoil chic; x-chi-k'-elezah, rumal ma-habi chic ilbal re Popol-Vuh,' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. 5. The evidence that the author was Quiché will be found in the numerous passages scattered through the narrative in which he speaks of the Quiché nation, and of the ancestors of that nation as 'our people,' 'our ancestors,' and so on. We pass now to what the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg has to say about the book. He says that Ximenes 'discovered this document, in the last years of the 17th century.' In 1855, at Guatemala, the abbé first saw Ximenez' manuscript containing this work. The manuscript contained the Quiché text and the Spanish curate's translation of that text. Brasseur de Bourbourg copied both at that time, but he was dissatisfied with the translation, believing it to be full of faults owing to the prejudices and the ignorance of the age in which it was made, as well as disfigured by abridgments and omissions. So in 1860 he settled himself among the Quichés and by the help of natives joined to his own practical knowledge of their language, he elaborated a new and literal translation, (aussi littérale qu'il a été possible de la faire). We seem justified then on the whole in taking this document for what Ximenez and its own evidence declare it to be, namely, a reproduction of an older work or body of Quiché traditional history, written because that older work had been lost and was likely to be forgotten, and written by a Quiché not long after the Spanish conquest. One consequence of the last fact would seem to be that a tinge of biblical expression has, consciously or unconsciously to the Quiché who wrote, influenced the form of the narrative. But these coincidences may be wholly accidental, the more as there are also striking resemblances to expressions in the Scandinavian Edda and in the Hindoo Veda. And even if they be not accidental, 'much remains,' adopting the language and the conclusion of Professor Max Müller, 'in these American traditions which is so different from anything else in the national literatures of other countries, that we may safely treat it as the genuine growth of the intellectual soil of America.' Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i., p. 328. For the foregoing, as well as further information on the subject see:--Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, pp. 5-31, 195-231; S'il existe des Sources de l'Hist. Prim., pp. 83-7; Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 47-61; Ximenez, Hist. Ind. Guat., pp. 5-15; Scherzer, in Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, 20th Feb., 1856; Helps' Spanish Conquest, vol. iv., pp. 455-6. Professor Müller in his essay on the Popol Vuh, has in one or two places misunderstood the narrative. There was no such creation of man as that he gives as the second, while his third creation is the second of the original. Again, he makes the four Quiché ancestors to be the progenitors of all tribes both white and black; while they were the parents of the Quiché and kindred races only. The course of the legend brings us to tribes of a strange blood, with which these four ancestors and their people were often at war. The narrative is, however, itself so confused and contradictory at points, that it is almost impossible to avoid such things; and, as a whole, the views of Professor Müller on the Popol Vuh seem just and well considered. Baldwin, Ancient America, pp. 191-7, gives a mere dilution of Professor Müller's essay, and that without acknowledgment.

[II-2] The original Quiché runs as follows: 'Are u tzihoxic vae ca ca tzinin-oc, ca ca chamam-oc, ca tzinonic; ca ca zilanic, ca ca lolinic, ca tolona puch u pa cah. Vae cute nabe tzih, nabe uchan.--Ma-habi-oc hun vinak, hun chicop; tziquin, car, tap, che, abah, hul, civan, quim, qichelah: xa-utuquel cah qolic. Mavi calah u vach uleu: xa-utnquel remanic palo, u pah cah ronohel. Ma-habi nakila ca molobic, ca cotzobic: hunta ca zilobic; ca mal ca ban-tah, ca cotz ca ban-tah pa cah. X-ma qo-vi nakila qolic yacalic; xa remanic ha, xa lianic palo, xa-utuquel remanic; x-ma qo-vi nakilalo qolic. Xa ca chamanic, ca tzininic chi gekum, chi agab.'

This passage is rendered by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg thus: 'Voici le récit comme quoi tout était en suspens, tout était calme et silencieux; tout était immobile, tout était paisible, et vide était l'immensité des cieux. Voilà donc la première parole et le premier discours. Il n'y avait pas encore un seul homme, pas un animal, pas d'oiseaux, de poissons, d'écrevisses, de bois, de pierre, de fondrières, de ravins, d'herbe ou de bocages: seulement le ciel existait. La face de la terre ne se manifestait pas encore: seule la mer paisible était et tout l'espace des cieux. Il n'y avait encore rien qui fît corps, rien qui se cramponnât à autre chose: rien qui se balançât, qui fît (le moindre) frôlement, qui fît (entendre) un son dans le ciel. Il n'y avait rien qui existât debout; (il n'y avait) que l'eau paisible, que la mer calme et seule dans ses bornes; car il n'y avait rien qui existât. Ce n'était que l'immobilité et le silence dans les ténèbres, dans la nuit.' Popol Vuh, p. 7.

And by Francisco Ximenez thus: 'Este es su ser dicho cuando estaba suspenso en calma, en silencio, sin moverse, sin cosa sino vacio el cielo. Y esta es la primera palabra y elocuencia; aun no habia hombres, animales, pájaros, pescado, cangrejo, palo, piedra, hoya, barranca, paja ni monte, sino solo estaba el cielo; no se manifestaba la faz de la tierra; sino que solo estaba el mar represado, y todo lo del cielo; aun no habia cosa alguna junta, ni sonaba nada, ni cosa alguna se meneaba, ni cosa que hiciera mal, ni cosa que hiciera "cotz," (esto es ruido en el cielo), ni habia cosa que estuviese parada en pié; solo el agua represada, solo la mar sosegada, solo ella represada, ni cosa alguna habia que estuviese; solo estaba en silencio, y sosiego en la obscuridad, y la noche.' Hist. Ind. Guat., pp. 5-6.

[II-3] 'Gucumatz, littéralement serpent emplumé, et dans un sens plus étendu, serpent revêtu de couleurs brillantes, de vert ou d'azur. Les plumes du guc ou quetzal offrent également les deux teintes. C'est exactment la même chose que quetzalcohuatl dans la langue mexicaine.' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. i., p. 50.

[II-4] A long rambling story is here introduced which has nothing to do with Creation, and which is omitted for the present.

[II-5] Balam-Quitzé, the tiger with the sweet smile; Balam-Agab, the tiger of the night; Mahucutah, the distinguished name; Iqi-Balam, the tiger of the moon. 'Telle est la signification littérale que Ximenez a donnée de ces quatre noms.' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. 199.

[II-6] Caha-paluma, the falling water; Chomi-ha or Chomih-a, the beautiful house or the beautiful water; in the same way, Tzununiha may mean either the house or the water of the humming-birds; and Cakixaha, either the house or the water of the aras [which are a kind of parrot]. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. 205.

[II-7] 'Are ma-habi chi tzukun, qui coon; xavi chi cah chi qui pacaba qui vach; mavi qu'etaam x-e be-vi naht x-qui bano.' 'Alors ils ne servaient pas encore et ne soutenaient point (les autels des dieux); seulement ils tournaient leurs visages vers le ciel, et ils ne savaient ce qu'ils étaient venus faire si loin.' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. 209. It is right to add, however, that Ximenez gives a much more prosaic turn to the passage: 'No cabian de sustento, sino que levantaban las caras al cielo y no se sabian alejar.' Hist. Ind. Guat., p. 84.

[II-8] Or as Ximenez, Hist. Ind. Guat., p. 87, writes it--Tulanzú, (las siete cuevas y siete barrancas).

[II-9] The following passage in a letter from the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, to Mr. Rafn of Copenhagen, bearing date 25th October, 1858, may be useful in this connection:--'On sait que la coutume toltèque et mexicaine était de conserver, comme chez les chrétiens, les reliques des héros de la patrie: on enveloppait leurs os avec des pierres précieuses dans un paquet d'étoffes auquel on donnait le nom de Tlaquimilolli; ces paquets demeuraient à jamais fermés et on les déposait au fond des sanctuaires où on les conservait comme des objects sacrés.' Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1858, tom. iv., p. 268. One of these 'bundles,' was given up to the Christians by a Tlascaltec some time after the conquest. It was reported to contain the remains of Camaxtli, the chief god of Tlascala. The native historian, Camargo, describes it as follows: 'Quand on défit le paquet où se trouvaient les cendres de l'idole Camaxtle, on y trouva aussi un paquet de cheveux blonds, ... on y trouva aussi une émeraude, et de ses cendres on avait fait une pâte, en les pétrissant avec le sang des enfants que l'on avait sacrifiés.' Hist. de Tlaxcallan; in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1843, tom. xcix., p. 179.

[II-10] See Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. i., p. 333.

[II-11] Even supposing there were no special historical reasons for making this distinction, it seems convenient that such a division should be made in a country where the distinction of classes was so marked as in Mexico. As Reads puts the case, Martyrdom of Man, p. 177, 'In those countries where two distinct classes of men exist, the one intellectual and learned, the other illiterate and degraded, there will be in reality two religions, though nominally there may be only one.'

[II-12] 'Les prêtres et les nobles de Mexico avaient péri presque tous lors de la prise de cette ville, et ceux qui avaient échappé au massacre s'étaient réfugiés dans des lieux inaccessibles. Ce furent donc presque toujours des gens du peuple sans éducation et livrés aux plus grossiéres superstitions qui leur firent les récits qu'ils nous ont transmis; Les missionnaires, d'ailleurs, avaient plus d'intérêt à connaître les usages qu'ils voulaient déraciner de la masse du peuple qu'à comprendre le sens plus élevé que la partie éclairée de la nation pouvait y attacher.' Ternaux-Compans, Essai sur la Théogonie Mexicaine, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1840, tom. lxxxv., p. 274.

[II-13] This last statement rests on the authority of Domingo Muñoz Camargo, a native of the city of Tlascala who wrote about 1585. See his Hist. de Tlaxcallan as translated by Ternaux Compans in the Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1843, tom. xcix., p. 129. 'Les Indiens ne croyaient pas que le monde eût été créé, mais pensaient qu'il était le produit du hazard. Ils disaient aussi que les cieux avaient toujours existé.' 'Estos, pues, alcanzaron con claridad el verdadero orígen y principio de todo el Universo, porque asientan que el cielo y la tierra y cuanto en ellos se halla es obra de la poderosa mano de un Dios Supremo y único, á quien daban el nombre de Tloque Nahuaque, que quiere decir, criador de todas las cosas. Llamábanle tambien Ipalnemohualoni, que quiere decir, por quien vivimos y somos, y fué la única deidad que adoraron en aquellos primitivos tiempos; y aun despues que se introdujo la idolatría y el falso culto, le creyeron siempre superior á todos sus dioses, y le invocaban levantando los ojos al cielo. En esta creencia se mantuvieron constantes hasta la llegada de los españoles, como afirma Herrera, no solo los mejicanos, sino tambien los de Michoacan.' Veytia, Historia Antigua de Méjico, tom. i., p. 7. 'Los Tultecas alcanzaron y supieron la creacion del mundo, y como el Tloque Nahuaque lo crió y las demas cosas que hay en él, como son plantas, montes, animales, aves, agua y peces; asimismo supieron como crió Dios al hombre y una muger, de donde los hombres descendieron y se multiplicaron, y sobre esto añaden muchas fábulas que por escusar prolijidad no se ponen aqui.' Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, in Kingsborough, vol. ix., p. 321. 'Dios Criador, que en lengua Indiana llamò Tlòque Nahuàque, queriendo dàr à entender, que este Solo, Poderoso, y Clementissimo Dios.' Boturini, Idea de una Hist., p. 79. 'Confessauan los Mexicanos a vn supremo Dios, Señor, y hazedor de todo, y este era el principal que venerauan, mirando al cielo, llamandole criador del cielo y tierra.' Herrera, Hist. Gen., dec. iii., lib. ii., cap. 15, p. 85. 'El dios que se llamaba Titlacaâon, (Tezcatlipuca), decian que era criador del cielo y de la tierra y era todo poderoso.' Sahagun, Hist. Ant. Mex., tom. i., lib. iii., p. 241. 'Tezcatlipoca, Questo era il maggior Dio, che in que' paesi si adorava, dopo il Dio invisibile, o Supremo Essere, di cui abbiam ragionato.... Era il Dio della Providenza, l'anima del Mondo, il Creator del Cielo e della Terra, ed il Signor di tutte le cose.' Clavigero, Storia Antica del Messico, tom. ii., p. 7. 'La creacion del cielo y de la tierra aplicaban á diversos dioses, y algunos á Tezcatlipuca y á Uzilopuchtli, ó segun otros, Ocelopuchtli, y de los principales de Mexico.' Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., p. 81.

[II-14] 'Lorsque le ciel et la terre s'étaient faits, quatre fois déjà l'homme avait été formé ... de cendres Dieu l'avait formé et animé.' The Codex Chimalpopoca, or Chimalpopoca MS., after Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. i., p. 53. This Codex Chimalpopoca, so called by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, is an anonymous manuscript in the Mexican language. What we really know of this much-talked-of document is little, and will be best given in the original form. The following is the first notice I find of this manuscript, with its appurtenances, being Boturini's description of it as possessed at one time by him. Catálogo, pp. 17-18. 'Una historia de los Reynos de Culhuàcan, y Mexico en lengua Nàhuatl, y papel Europèo de Autor Anonymo, y tiene añadida una Breve Relacion de los Dioses, y Ritos de la Gentilidad en lengua Castellana que escribiò el Bachiller Don Pedro Ponce, Indio Cazique Beneficiado, que fuè del Partido de Tzumpauàcan. Está todo copiado de letra de Don Fernando de Alba, y le falta la primera foja.' With regard to the term Nahuatl used in this Catalogue, see Id., p. 85: 'Los Manuscritos en lengua Nàhuatl, que en este Catálogo se citan, se entiende ser en lengua Mexicana!' This manuscript, or a copy of it, fell into the hands of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg in the city of Mexico, in the year 1850, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne, Introduction, p. xxi., and the learned Abbé describes it as follows:--'Codex Chimalpopoca (Copie du), contenant les Epoques, dites Histoire des Soleils et l'Histoire des Royaumes de Colhuacan et de Mexico, texte Mexicain (corrigé d'après celui de M. Aubin), avec un essai de traduction française en regard. gr. in 4o--Manuscrit de 93 ff., copié et traduit par le signataire de la bibliothèque. C'est la copie du document marqué au no 13, § viii., du catalogue de Boturini, sous le titre de: Historia de los Reynos de Colhuacan y Mexico, etc. Ce document, où pour la première fois j'ai soulevé le voile énigmatique qui recouvrait les symboles de la religion et de l'histoire du Mexique est le plus important de tous ceux qui nous soient restés des annales antiques mexicaines. Il renferme chronologiquement l'histoire géologique du monde, par séries de 13 ans, à commencer de plus de dix mille ans avant l'ère chrétienne, suivant les calculs mexicains.' Id., p. 47.

[II-15] Otherwise called, according to Clavigero, the god Ometeuctli, and the goddess Omecihuatl. Ternaux-Compans says: 'Les noms d'Ometeuctli et d'Omecihuatl ne se trouvent nulle part ailleurs dans la mythologie mexicaine; mais on pourrait les expliquer par l'étymologie. Ome signifie deux en mexicain, et tous les auteurs sont d'accord pour traduire littéralement leur nom par deux seigneurs et deux dames.' Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1840, tom. lxxxvi., p. 7.

[II-16] Xolotl, 'servant or page.'--Molina, Vocabulario en lengua Castellana Mexicana. Not 'eye' as some scholiasts have it.

[II-17] Literally, in the earliest copy of the myth that I have seen, the milk of the thistle, 'la leche de cardo,' which term has been repeated blindly, and apparently without any idea of its meaning, by the various writers that have followed. The old authorities, however, and especially Mendieta, from whom I take the legend, were in the habit of calling the maguey a thistle; and indeed the tremendous prickles of the Mexican plant may lay good claim to the Nemo me impune lacessit of the Scottish emblem. 'Maguey, que es el cardon de donde sacan la miel.' Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., p. 110. 'Metl es un arbol ó cardo que en lengua de las Islas se llama maguey.' Motolinia, Hist. de los Ind., in Icazbalceta, Col. de Doc., tom. i., p. 243. 'Et similmente-cogliono le foglie di questo albero, ò cardo che si tengono là, come qua le vigne, et chiamanlo magueis.' Relatione fatta per un Gentil'huomo del Signor Cortese, in Ramusio, Viaggi, tom. iii., fol. 307.

[II-18] Motolinia in Icazbalceta, Col., tom. i., pp. 6-10, says this first man and woman were begotten between the rain and the dust of the earth--'engendrada de la lluvia y del polvo de la tierra'--and in other ways adds to the perplexity; so that I am well inclined to agree with Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, p. 518, when he says these cosmogonical myths display marks of local origin and of the subsequent fusion of several legends into an incongruous whole. 'Aus dieser Menge von Verschiedenheiten in diesen Kosmogonien ist ersichtlich, dass viele Lokalmythen hier wie in Peru unabhängig von einander entstanden die man äusserlich mit einander verband, die aber in mancherlei Widersprüchen auch noch später ihre ursprüngliche Unabhängigkeit zu erkennen geben.'

[II-19] Here, as elsewhere in this legend we follow Andres de Olmos' account as given by Mendieta. Sahagun, however differs from it a good deal in places. At this point for example, he mentions some notable personages who guessed right about the rising of the sun:--'Otros se pusieron á mirar ácia el oriente, y digeron aquí, de esta parte ha de salir el Sol. El dicho de estos fué verdadero. Dicen que los que miraron ácia el Oriente, fueron Quetzalcoatl, que tambien se llama Ecatl, y otro que se llama Totec, y por otro nombre Anaoatlytecu, y por otro nombre Tlatavictezcatlipuca, y otros que se llaman Minizcoa,' or as in Kingsborough's edition, Mex. Antiq., vol. vii., p. 186. 'Por otro nombre Anaoatl y Tecu, y por otro nombre Tlatavictezcatlipuca, y otros que se llaman Mimizcoa, que son inumerables; y cuatro mugeres, la una se llama Tiacapan, la otra Teicu, la tercera Tlacoeoa, la cuarta Xocoyotl.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. viii., p. 248.

[II-20] Besides differences of authorities already noticed, I may add that Sahagun describes the personage who became the sun--as well as him who, as we shall soon see, became the moon--as belonging before his transformation to the number of the gods, and not as one of the men who served them. Further, in recounting the death of the gods, Sahagun says that to the Air, Ecatl, Quetzalcoatl, was alloted the task of killing the rest; nor does it appear that Quetzalcoatl killed himself. As to Xolotl, he plays quite a cowardly part in this version; trying to elude his death, he transformed himself into various things, and was only at last taken and killed under the form of a fish called Axolotl.

[II-21] This kind of idol answers evidently to the mysterious 'Envelope' of the Quiché myth. See also note 9.

[II-22] Besides the Chimalpopoca manuscript, the earliest summaries of the Mexican creation-myths are to be found in Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., pp. 77-81; Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. iii., p. 233, tom. ii., lib. vii., pp. 246-250; Boturini, Idea de una Hist., pp. 37-43; Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. i., pp. 31-5, tom. ii., pp. 76-8; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., pp. 8-10.

[II-23] Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chichimeca in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., pp. 205-6. The same author, in his Relaciones, Ib. pp. 321-2, either through his own carelessness or that of a transcriber, transposes the second and third Ages. To see that it is an oversight of some sort, we have but to pass to the summary he gives at the end of these same Relaciones, Ib., p. 459, where the account is again found in strict agreement with the version given in the text. Camargo, Hist. de Tlax. in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1843, tom. xcix., p. 132, giving as we may suppose the Tlascaltec version of the general Mexican myth, agrees with Ixtlilxochitl as to the whole number of Ages, following, however, the order of the error above noticed in the Relaciones. The Tlascaltec historian, moreover, affirms that only two of these Ages are past, and that the third and fourth destructions are yet to come. M. Ternaux-Compans, Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1840, tom. lxxxvi., p. 5, adopts this Tlascaltec account as the general Mexican tradition; he is followed by Dr. Prichard, Researches, vol. v., pp. 360-1. Dr. Prichard cites Bradford as supporting the same opinion, but erroneously, as Bradford, Am. Antiq., p. 328, follows Humboldt. Boturini, Idea de una Hist., p. 3. and Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., p. 57, agree exactly with the text. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg also accepts the version of three past destructions. S'il existe des Sources de l'Hist. Prim., pp. 26-7. Professor J. G. Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, pp. 510-12, admits that the version of three past destructions and one to come, as given in the text, and in the order there given, 'seems to be the most ancient Mexican version;' though he decides to follow Humboldt, and adopts what he calls the 'latest and fullest form of the myth.' The Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano [Vaticano] contradicts itself, giving first two past destructions, and farther on four, Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., pp. 163-7; as does also the Explic. del Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Ib., pp. 134-6. Kingsborough himself seems to favor the idea of three past destructions and four ages in all; see Mex. Antiq., vol. vi., p. 171, note. Gomara, Hist. Mex., fol. 297-8; Leon y Gama, Dos Piedras, parte i., pp. 94-5; Humboldt, Vues, tom. ii., pp. 118-129; Prescott, Conq. of Mex., vol. i., p. 61; Gallatin, in Am. Ethnol. Soc., Transact., vol. i., p. 325--describe four past destructions and one yet to come, or five Ages, and the Chimalpopoca MS., see note 13, seems also to favor this opinion. Lastly, Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., p. 81, declares that the Mexicans believe in five Suns, or Ages, in times past; but these suns were of inferior quality, so that the soil produced its fruits only in a crude and imperfect state. The consequence was that in every case the inhabitants of the world died through the eating of divers things. This present and sixth Sun was good, however, and under its influence all things were produced properly. Torquemada--who has, indeed, been all along appropriating, by whole chapters, the so long inedited work of Mendieta; and that, if we believe Icazbalceta, Hist. Ecles., Noticias del Autor., pp. xxx. to xlv., under circumstances of peculiar turpitude--of course gives also five past Ages, repeating Mendieta word for word with the exception of a single 'la.' Monarq. Ind., tom. ii., p. 79.

[II-24] Professor J. G. Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, p. 568, remarks of these two personages: 'Rein nordisch ist der chichimekische Coxcox, der schon bei der Fluthsage genannt wurde, der Tezpi der Mechoakaner. Das ist auch ursprünglich ein Wassergott und Fischgott, darum trägt er auch den Namen Cipactli, Fisch, Teocipactli, göttlicher Fisch, Huehuetonacateocipactli, alter Fischgott von unserem Fleisch. Darum ist auch seine Gattin eine Pflanzengöttin mit Namen Xochiquetzal d. h. geflügelte Blume.'

[II-25] Boturini, Idea de una Hist., pp. 113-4; Id., Catálogo, pp. 39-40; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. i., pp. 129-30, tom. ii., p. 6; Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano (Vaticano), tav. vii., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., pp. 164-5; Gemelli Carreri, in Churchill's Col. Voy., vol. iv., p. 481; Humboldt, Vues, tom. i., pp. 114-15, tom. ii., pp. 175-8; Tylor's Anahuac, pp. 276-7; Gondra, in Prescott, Conquista de Mexico, tom. iii., pp. 1-10. A careful comparison of the passages given above will show that this whole story of the escape of Coxcox and his wife in a boat from a great deluge, and of the distribution by a bird of different languages to their descendants, rests on the interpretation of certain Aztec paintings, containing supposed pictures of a flood, of Coxcox and his wife, of a canoe or rude vessel of some kind, of the mountain Culhuacan, which was the Mexican Ararat, and of a bird distributing languages to a number of men. Not one of the earliest writers on Mexican mythology, none of those personally familiar with the natives and with their oral traditions as existing at the time of, or immediately after the conquest, seems to have known this legend; Olmos, Sahagun, Motolinia, Mendieta, Ixtlilxochitl, and Camargo, are all of them silent with regard to it. These facts must give rise to grave suspicions with regard to the accuracy of the commonly accepted version, notwithstanding its apparently implicit reception up to this time by the most critical historians. These suspicions will not be lessened by the result of the researches of Don José Fernando Ramirez, Conservator of the Mexican National Museum, a gentleman not less remarkable for his familiarity with the language and antiquities of Mexico than for the moderation and calmness of his critical judgments, as far as these are known. In a communication dated April, 1858, to Garcia y Cubas, Atlas Geográfico, Estadístico e Histórico de la Republica Mejicana, entrega 29, speaking of the celebrated Mexican picture there for the first time, as he claims, accurately given to the public--Sigüenza's copy of it, as given by Gemelli Carreri, that given by Clavigero in his Storia del Messico, that given by Humboldt in his Atlas Pittoresque, and that given by Kingsborough being all incorrect--Señor Ramirez says:--'The authority of writers so competent as Sigüenza and Clavigero imposed silence on the incredulous, and after the illustrious Baron von Humboldt added his irresistible authority, adopting that interpretation, nobody doubted that "the traditions of the Hebrews were found among the people of America;" that, as the wise Baron thought, "their Coxcox, Teocipactli, or Tezpi is the Noah, Xisutrus, or Menou of the Asiatic families;" and that "the Cerro of Culhuacan is the Ararat of the Mexicans." Grand and magnificent thought, but unfortunately only a delusion. The blue square No. 1, with its bands or obscure lines of the same color, cannot represent the terrestrial globe covered with the waters of the flood, because we should have to suppose a repetition of the same deluge in the figure No. 40, where it is reproduced with some of its principal accidents. Neither, for the same reason, do the human heads and the heads of birds which appear to float there, denote the submerging of men and animals, for it would be necessary to give the same explanation to those seen in group No. 39. It might be argued that the group to the left (of No. 1), made up of a human head placed under the head of a bird, represented phonetically the name Coxcox, and denoted the Aztec Noah; but the group on the right, formed of a woman's head with other symbolic figures above it, evidently does not express the name Xochiquetzal, which is said to have been that of his wife.... Let us now pass on to the dove giving tongues to the primitive men who were born mute. The commas which seem to come from the beak of the bird there represented, form one of the most complex and varied symbols, in respect to their phonetic force, which are found in our hieroglyphic writing. In connection with animated beings they designate generically the emission of the voice.... In the group before us they denote purely and simply that the bird was singing or speaking--to whom?--to the group of persons before it, who by the direction of their faces and bodies show clearly and distinctly the attention with which they listened. Consequently the designer of the before-mentioned drawing for Clavigero, pre-occupied with the idea of signifying by it the pretended confusion of tongues, changed with his pencil the historic truth, giving to these figures opposite directions. Examining attentively the inexactitudes and errors of the graver and the pencil in all historical engravings relating to Mexico, it is seen that they are no less numerous and serious than those of the pen. The interpretations given to the ancient Mexican paintings by ardent imaginations led away by love of novelty or by the spirit of system, justify to a certain point the distrust and disfavor with which the last and most distinguished historian of the Conquest of Mexico (W. H. Prescott) has treated this interesting and precious class of historical documents.' Señor Ramirez goes on thus at some length to his conclusions, which reduce the original painting to a simple record of a wandering of the Mexicans among the lakes of the Mexican valley--that journey beginning at a place 'not more than nine miles from the gutters of Mexico,'--a record having absolutely no connection either with the mythical deluge, already described as one of the four destructions of the world, or with any other. The bird speaking in the picture, he connects with a well-known Mexican fable given by Torquemada, in which a bird is described as speaking from a tree to the leaders of the Mexicans at a certain stage of their migration, and repeating the work Tihui, that is to say, 'Let us go.' A little bird called the Tihuitochan, with a cry that the vulgar still interpret in a somewhat similar sense, is well known in Mexico, and is perhaps at the bottom of the tradition. It may be added that Torquemada gives a painted manuscript, possibly that under discussion, as his authority for the story. The boat, the mountain, and the other adjuncts of the picture are explained in a like simple way, as the hieroglyphics, for the most part, of various proper names. Our space here will not permit further details--though another volume will contain this picture and a further discussion of the subject--but I may remark in concluding that the moderation with which Señor Ramirez discusses the question, as well as his great experience and learning in matters of Mexican antiquity, seem to claim for his views the serious consideration of future students.

[II-26] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 425-7.

[II-27] Fr. Gregorio Garcia, Origen de los Ind., pp. 327-9, took this narrative from a book he found in a convent in Cuilapa, a little Indian town about a league and a half south of Oajaca. The book had been compiled by the vicar of that convent, and--'escrito con sus Figuras, como los Indios de aquel Reino Mixteco las tenian en sus Libros, ò Pergaminos arrollados, con la declaracion de lo que significaban las Figuras, en que contaban su Origen, la Creacion del Mundo, i Diluvio General.'

[II-28] 'Que aparecieron visiblemente un Dios, que tuvo por Nombre un Ciervo, i por sobrenombre Culebra de Leon; i una Diosa mui linda, i hermosa, que su Nombre fue un Ciervo, i por sobrenombre Culebra de Tigre,' Garcia, Id., pp. 327-9.

[II-29] Burgoa, Geog. Descrip., tom. i., fol. 128, 176.

[II-30] Burgoa, Geog. Descrip., fol. 196-7.

[II-31] One of the Las Casas MSS. gives, according to Helps, 'trece hijos' instead of 'tres hijos;' the latter, however, being the correct reading, as the list of names in the same manuscript shows, and as Father Roman gives it. See note 33.

[II-32] This tradition, says the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. ii., pp. 74-5, has indubitably reference to a queen whose memory has become attached to very many places in Guatemala, and Central America generally. She was called Atit, Grandmother; and from her the volcano of Atitlan, received the name Atital-huyu, by which it is still known to the aborigines. This Atit lived during four centuries, and from her are descended all the royal and princely families of Guatemala.

[II-33] Roman, República de los Indios Occidentales, part 1, lib. 2, cap. 15, after Garcia, Origen de los Ind., pp. 329-30; _Las Casas_, Hist. Apologética, MS., cap. 235, after _Helps' Span. Conq._, vol. ii., p. 140; Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. ii., pp. 53-4; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. ii., pp. 74-5.

[II-34] The first of these two names is erroneously spelt 'Famagoztad' by M. Ternaux-Compans, Mr. Squier, and the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, the two latter perhaps led astray by the error of M. Ternaux-Compans, an error which first appeared in that gentleman's translation of Oviedo. Oviedo, Hist. Gen., tom. iv., p. 40. Peter Martyr, dec. vi., cap. 4.

[II-35] This tradition was 'gathered principally from the relations of Con Quien, the intelligent chief of the central Papagos.' Davidson, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1865, pp. 131-3.

[II-36] The legendary Montezuma, whom we shall meet so often in the mythology of the Gila valley, must not be confounded with the two Mexican monarchs of the same title. The name itself would seem, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to have been carried into Arizona and New Mexico by the Spaniards or their Mexican attendants, and to have become gradually associated in the minds of some of the New Mexican and neighboring tribes, with a vague, mythical, and departed grandeur. The name Montezuma became thus, to use Mr. Tylor's words, that of the great 'Somebody' of the tribe. This being once the case, all the lesser heroes would be gradually absorbed in the greater, and their names forgotten. Their deeds would become his deeds, their fame his fame. There is evidence enough that this is a general tendency of tradition, even in historical times. The pages of Mr. Cox's scholarly and comprehensive work, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, teem with examples of it. In Persia, deeds of every kind and date are referred to Antar. In Russia, buildings of every age are declared to be the work of Peter the Great. All over Europe, in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied have been ascribed in the folk-lore and ballads of the people to Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V., William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood, Wallace, and St. Patrick. The connection of the name of Montezuma with ancient buildings and legendary adventures in the mythology of the Gila valley seems to be simply another example of the same kind.

[II-37] I am indebted for these particulars of the belief of the Pimas to the kindness of Mr. J. H. Stout of the Pima agency, who procured me a personal interview with five chiefs of that nation, and their very intelligent and obliging interpreter, Mr. Walker, at San Francisco, in October, 1873.

[II-38] For the killing of this Great Eagle Szeukha had to do a kind of penance, which was never to scratch himself with his nails, but always with a small stick. This custom is still observed by all Pimas; and a bit of wood, renewed every fourth day, is carried for this purpose stuck in their long hair.

[II-39] With the reader, as with myself, this clause will probably call up something more than a mere suspicion of Spanish influence tinging the incidents of the legend. The Pimas themselves, however, asserted that this tradition existed among them long before the arrival of the Spaniards and was not modified thereby. One fact that seems to speak for the comparative purity of their traditions is that the name of Montezuma is nowhere to be found in them, although Cremony, Apaches, p. 102, states the contrary.

[II-40] Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, vol. i., p. 268.

[II-41] Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., pp. 85-6.

[II-42] Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., pp. 89-90; and Eaton, Ib., pp. 218-9. The latter account differs a little from that given in the text, and makes the following addition: After the Navajos came up from the cave, there came a time when, by the ferocity of giants and rapacious animals, their numbers were reduced to three--an old man, an old woman, and a young woman. The stock was replenished by the latter bearing a child to the sun.

[II-43] Ribas, Hist., pp. 18, 40.

[II-44] Clavigero, Storia della Cal., tom. i., p. 139.

[II-45] Clavigero, Storia della Cal., tom. i., pp. 135-7.

[II-46] Hugo Reid, in Los Angeles Star.

[II-47] Hugo Reid, Ib.

[II-48] Russian River Valley, Sonoma County.

[II-49] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[II-50] Humboldt County.

[II-51] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[II-52] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[II-53] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[II-54] Johnston, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., pp. 224-5.

[II-55] H. B. D. in Hesperian Mag., vol. iii., 1859, p. 326.

[II-56] Wadsworth, in Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. ii., 1858, pp. 356-8.

[II-57] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[II-58] Joaquin Miller's Life Amongst the Modocs, pp. 235-236, 242-6.

[II-59] Ruxton's Adven. in Mex., pp. 244-6.

[II-60] Wilkes' Nar. in U. S. Ex. Ex., vol. iv., p. 496.

[II-61] Franchère's Nar., p. 258; Cox's Adven., vol. i., p. 317; Gibbs' Chinook Vocab., pp. 11-13; Id., _Clallam and Lummi Vocab._, pp. 15-29; Parker's Explor. Tour, p. 139.

[II-62] Sproat's Scenes, pp. 176-85, 203-14.

[II-63] To the examples already given of this we may add the case of the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Island, of whom Mr. Poole, Q. Char. Isl., p. 136, says: 'Their descent from the crows is quite gravely affirmed and steadfastly maintained.'

[II-64] Anderson, in Lord's Nat., vol. ii., p. 240.

[II-65] Harmon's Jour., pp. 302-3.

[II-66] This Khanukh was the progenitor of the Wolf family of the Thlinkeets even as Yehl was that of the Raven family. The influence of this wolf-deity seems to have been generally malign, but except in connection with this water-legend, he is little mentioned in the Thlinkeet myths.

[II-67] 'Seit der Zeit, entgegnete Khanukh, als von unten die Leber herauskam.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 61. What is meant by the term 'die Leber,' literally the particular gland of the body called in English 'the liver,' I cannot say; neither Holmberg or any one else, as far as my knowledge goes, attempting any explanation.

[II-68] Barrett-Lennard's Trav., pp. 54-7; Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., pp. 14, 52-63; Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., pp. 93-100; Dall's Alaska, pp. 421-22; Macfie's Vanc. Isl., pp. 452-5; Richardson's Jour., vol. i., p. 405; Mayne's B. C., p. 272.

[II-69] Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 116; Lisiansky's Voy., pp. 197-8; Dall's Alaska, p. 405; Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 140.

[II-70] Choris, Voy. Pitt., pt. vii., p. 7; Kotzebue's Voy., vol. ii., p. 165.

[II-71] Dunn's Oregon, pp. 102, et seq.; Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 173; Mackenzie's Voy., p. cxviii.; Franklin's Nar., vol. i., pp. 249-50.

[II-72] Hearne's Journey, pp. 342-3.

[II-73] Keightley's Myth. of Ancient Greece and Italy, p. 14.

III. PHYSICAL MYTHS

SUN, MOON, AND STARS -- ECLIPSES -- THE MOON PERSONIFIED IN THE LAND OF THE CRESCENT -- FIRE -- HOW THE COYOTE STOLE FIRE FOR THE CAHROCS -- HOW THE FROG LOST HIS TAIL -- HOW THE COYOTE STOLE FIRE FOR THE NAVAJOS -- WIND AND THUNDER -- THE FOUR WINDS AND THE CROSS -- WATER, THE FIRST OF ELEMENTAL THINGS -- ITS SACRED AND CLEANSING POWER -- EARTH AND SKY -- EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES -- MOUNTAINS -- HOW THE HAWK AND CROW BUILT THE COAST RANGE -- THE MOUNTAINS OF YOSEMITE.

Fetichism seems to be the physical philosophy of man in his most primitive state. He looks on material things as animated by a life analogous to his own, as having a personal consciousness and character, as being severally the material body that contains some immaterial essence or soul. A child or a savage strikes or chides any object that hurts him, and caresses the gewgaw that takes his fancy, talking to it much as to a companion.

[Sidenote: VAGARIES CONCERNING CELESTIAL BODIES.]

Let there be something peculiar, mysterious, or dangerous about the thing and the savage worships it, deprecates its wrath and entreats its favor, with such ceremonies, prayers, and sacrifices as he may deem likely to win upon its regard. In considering such cases mythologically, it will be necessary to examine the facts to see whether we have to deal with simple fetichism or with idolatry. That savage worships a fetich who worships the heaving sea as a great living creature, or kneels to flame as to a hissing roaring animal; but the Greeks in conceiving a separate anthropomorphic god of the sea or of the fire, and in representing that god by figures of different kinds, were only idolaters. The two things, however, are often so merged into each other that it becomes difficult or impossible to say in many instances whether a particular object, for example the sun, is regarded as the deity or merely as the representation or symbol of the deity. It is plain enough, however, that a tolerably distinct element of fetichism underlies much of the Indian mythology. Speaking of this mythology in the mass, the North American Review says: "A mysterious and inexplicable power resides in inanimate things. They, too, can listen to the voice of man, and influence his life for evil or for good. Lakes, rivers, and waterfalls are sometimes the dwelling-place of spirits, but more frequently they are themselves living beings, to be propitiated by prayers and offerings."[III-1]

The explicit worship of the sun and more or less that of other heavenly bodies, or at least a recognition of some supernatural power resident in or connected with them, was widely spread through Mexico, as well among the uncivilized as among the civilized tribes. The wild Chichimecs or that portion of the wild tribes of Mexico to which Alegre applied this name, owned the sun as their deity, as did also the people of the Nayarit country.[III-2]

In what we may call civilized Mexico, the sun was definitely worshiped under the name of Tonatiuh, the Sun in his substance, and under that of Naolin, the Sun in his four motions. He was sometimes represented by a human face surrounded with rays, at other times by a full-length human figure, while again he often seems to be confused or connected with the element fire and the god of fire. Sahagun, for instance, usually speaks of the festival of the month Itzcalli as appertaining to the god of fire, but in at least one place he describes it as belonging to the sun and the fire.[III-3] The sun, it is tolerably certain, held, if not the highest place, one not far removed from that position in the Mexican pantheon. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Tylor, Squier, and Schoolcraft agree in considering sun-worship the most radical religious idea of all civilized American religions.[III-4] Professor Müller considers the sun-god and the supreme Mexican Teotl to be identical.[III-5] Dr. Brinton, as we shall see when we come to notice the mythology of fire, while not denying the prominence of the sun-cult, would refer that cult to a basal and original fire-worship. Many interpreters of mythology see also the personification of the sun in others of the Mexican gods besides Tonatiuh. More especially does evidence seem to point strongly in this direction in the case of Quetzalcoatl, as will be seen when we come to deal with this god.

The Mexicans were much troubled and distressed by an eclipse of the sun. They thought that he was much disturbed and tossed about by something, and that he was becoming seriously jaundiced. This was the occasion of a general panic, women weeping aloud, and men howling and shouting and striking the hand upon the mouth. There was an immediate search for men with white hair and white faces, and these were sacrificed to the sun, amid the din and tumult of singing and musical instruments. It was thought that should the eclipse become once total, there would be an end of the light, and that in the darkness the demons would come down to the devouring of the people.[III-6]

[Sidenote: ECLIPSES, AND THEIR EFFECT ON MAN.]

The Tlascaltecs, regarding the sun and the moon as husband and wife, believed eclipses to be domestic quarrels, whose consequences were likely to be fatal to the world if peace could not be made before things proceeded to an extremity. To sooth the ruffled spirit of the sun when he was eclipsed, a human sacrifice was offered to him of the ruddiest victims that could be found; and when the moon was darkened she was appeased with the blood of those white-complexioned persons commonly known as Albinos.[III-7]

The idea of averting the evil by noise, in case of an eclipse either of the sun or moon, seems to have been a common one among other American tribes. Alegre ascribes it to the natives of Sonora in general. Ribas tells how the Sinaloas held that the moon in an eclipse was darkened with the dust of battle. Her enemy had come upon her, and a terrible fight, big with consequence to those on earth, went on in heaven. In wild excitement the people beat on the sides of their houses, encouraging the moon and shooting flights of arrows up into the sky to distract her adversary. Much the same as this was also done by certain Californians.[III-8]

With regard to an eclipse of the moon the Mexicans seem to have had rather special ideas as to its effects upon unborn children. At such times, women who were with child became alarmed lest their infant should be turned into a mouse, and to guard against such an undesirable consummation they held a bit of obsidian, iztli, in their mouth, or put a piece of it in their girdle, so that the child should be born perfect and not lipless, or noseless, or wry-mouthed, or squinting, or a monster.[III-9] These ideas are probably connected with the fact that the Mexicans worshiped the moon under the name of Meztli, as a deity presiding over human generations. This moon-god is considered by Clavigero to be identical with Joaltecutli, god of night.[III-10]

It is to the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, however, that we must turn for a truly novel and cyclopean theory of Mexican lunolatry. He sees back to a time when the forefathers of American civilization lived in a certain Crescent Land in the Atlantic; here they practiced Sabaism. Through some tremendous physical catastrophe their country was utterly overwhelmed by the sea; and this inundation is considered by the abbé to be the origin of the deluge-myths of the Central-American nations. A remnant of these Crescent people saved themselves in the seven principal islands of the Lesser Antilles; these are, he explains, the seven mythical caves or grottoes celebrated in so many American legends as the cradle of the nations. The saved remnant of the people wept the loss of their friends and of their old land, making the latter, with its crescent shape, memorable forever by adopting the moon as their god. "It is the moon," writes the great Américaniste, "male and female, Luna and Lunas, personified in the land of the Crescent, engulfed in the abyss, that I believe I see at the commencement of this amalgam of rites and symbols of every kind."[III-11] I confess inability to follow the path by which the abbé has reached this conclusion; but I have indicated its whereabouts, and future students may be granted a further insight into this new labyrinth and the subtleties of its industrious Dædalus.

[Sidenote: WHAT THE MEXICANS THOUGHT OF STARS AND COMETS.]

The Mexicans had many curious ideas about the stars, some of which have come down to us. They particularly reverenced a certain group of three called mamalhoaztli, in, or in the neighborhood of, the sign Taurus of the zodiac. This name was the same as that of the sticks from which fire was procured: a resemblance of some kind being supposed to exist between them and these stars. Connected again with this was the burning by every male Mexican of certain marks upon his wrist, in honor of the same stars; it being believed that the man who died without these marks should, on his arrival in hades, be forced to draw fire from his wrist by boring upon it as on a fire-stick. The planet Venus was worshiped as the first light that appeared in the world, as the god of twilight, and, according to some, as being identical with Quetzalcoatl. This star has been further said to borrow its light from the moon, and to rise by four starts. Its first twinkle was a bad augury, and to be closed out of all doors and windows; on appearing for the third time, it began to give a steady light, and on the fourth it shone forth in all its clearness and brilliancy.

Comets were called each citlalinpopoca, or the smoking star; their appearance was considered as a public disaster, and as announcing pest, dearth, or the death of some prince. The common people were accustomed to say of one, This is our famine, and they believed it to cast down certain darts, which falling on any animal, bred a maggot that rendered the creature unfit for food. All possible precautions of shelter were of course taken by persons in positions exposed to the influence of these noxious rays. Besides the foregoing, there were many stars or groups of stars whose names were identical with those of certain gods; the following seem to belong to this class: Tonacatlecutli or Citlalalatonalli, the milky way; Yzacatecutli, Tlahvizcalpantecutli, Ceyacatl, Achitumetl, Xacupancalqui, Mixcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Contemoctli.[III-12]

* * * * *

I have already noticed a prevailing tendency to connect the worship of fire and that of the sun. The rites of a perpetual fire are found closely connected with a sun-cult, and, whichever may be the older, it is certain they are rarely found apart. "What," says Tylor, "the sea is to Water-worship, in some measure the Sun is to Fire-worship."[III-13] Brinton would reverse this and give to fire the predominance: in short, he says, the sun "is always spoken of as a fire;" "and without danger or error we can merge the consideration of its worship almost altogether in this element."[III-14] This sounds rather extravagant and is hardly needed in any case; for sufficient reason for its deification can always be found in its mysterious nature and awful powers of destruction, as well as in its kind and constantly renewed services, if gratitude have any power in making a god. The mere guarding and holding sacred a particular fire probably originated in the importance of possessing an unfailing source of the element, and in the difficulty of its production if allowed to die out, among men not possessed of the appliances of civilization.

When we come to review the gods in general, those connected with fire will be pointed out as they appear; for the present, let it suffice to say that many American peoples had such gods, or had ceremonies suggesting their existence and recognition, or lastly, had legends of the origin or procurement of the fire they daily used on the altar or on the hearth. In the Pueblos of New Mexico, and more especially among the Pecos, sacred perpetual fires were kept up by special command of their traditionary god and ruler Montezuma; but these fires were not regarded as fetiches.[III-15] The Mexican fire-god was known by the name of Xiuhtecutli, and by other names appertaining to the different aspects in which he was viewed. While preserving his own well-marked identity, he was evidently closely related also to the sun-god. Many and various, even in domestic life, were the ceremonies by which he was recognized; the most important ritual in connection with his service being, perhaps, the lighting of the new fire, with which, as we shall see, the beginning of every Mexican cycle was solemnized.[III-16]

There are various fables scattered up and down among the various tribes regarding the origin or rather the procuring of fire. We know how the Quichés received it from the stamp of the sandal of Tohil; how, from the home of the cuttle-fish, a deer brought it to the Ahts in a joint of his leg; how from a distant island the great Yehl of the Thlinkeets fetched the brand in his beak that filled the flint and the fire-stick with seeds of eternal fire.

[Sidenote: HOW THE CAHROCS OBTAINED FIRE.]

The Cahrocs hold that, when in the beginning the creator Chareya made fire, he gave it into the custody of two old hags, lest the Cahrocs should steal it. The Cahrocs, having exhausted every means to procure the treasure, applied for help to their old friend the Coyote; who, having maturely considered how the theft might best be accomplished, set about the thing in this way: From the land of the Cahrocs to the home of the old women he stationed a great company of animals, at convenient distances; the strongest nearest the den of the old beldames, the weakest farthest removed. Last of all he hid a Cahroc in the neighborhood of the hut, and, having left the man precise directions how to act, he trotted up to the door and asked to be let in out of the cold. Suspecting nothing, the crones gave him admittance; so he lay down in front of the fire, and made himself as comfortable as possible, waiting for the further action of his human accomplice without. In good time, the man made a furious attack on the house and the old furies rushed out at once to drive off the invader. This was the Coyote's opportunity. Instantly he seized a half-burnt brand and fled like a comet down the trail; and the two hags, seeing how they had been outwitted, turned after him in immediate and furious chase. It had gone hard then with the hopes of the Cahrocs, if their four-legged Prometheus had trusted to his single speed; but just as he began to feel the pace tell on him, and just as the weird women thought they were about to recover the brand, the Cougar relieved him of it. Great was the satisfaction of our wise Coyote, as he sank down, clearing his sooty eyes and throat, and catching his breath, to see the great lithe cat leap away with the torch, and the hags gnash their choppy gums as they rushed by, hard in pursuit, on the dim trail of sparks. The Cougar passed the brand to the Bear, the Bear to his neighbor, and so on to the end. Down the long line of carriers, the panting crones plied their withered old legs in vain; only two mishaps occurring among all the animals that made up the file. The squirrel, last in the train but one, burned his tail so badly that it curled up over his back, and even scorched the skin above his shoulders. Last of all, the poor Frog, who received the brand when it had burned down to a very little piece, hopped along so heavily that his pursuers gained on him, gained fast and surely. In vain he gathered himself for every spring, in vain he stretched at every leap till the jarred muscles cracked again. He was caught. The smoke-dimmed eyes stood out from his head, his little heart thumped like a club against the lean fingers that closed upon his body--yet that wild croak was not the croak of despair. Once more for the hope of the Cahrocs! one more struggle for the Coyote that trusted him in this great thing! and with a gulp the plucky little martyr swallowed the fire, tore himself from the hands that held him, leaped into a river, and diving deep and long, gained his goal; but gained it a mournful wreck, the handsome tail, which, of all his race, only the tadpole should ever wear again, was utterly gone, left, like that of an O'Shanter's mare, in the witch's grasp; only the ghost of himself was left to spit out on some pieces of wood the precious embers preserved at so great a cost. And it is because the Frog spat out this fire upon these pieces of wood that it can always be extracted again by rubbing them hard together.[III-17]

[Sidenote: FIRE, THE LIGHTNING, AND WIND.]

The Navajos have a legend as to the procuring of fire, that has many analogies to the foregoing. They tell how, when they first gained the earth, they were without fire, and how the Coyote, the Bat, and the Squirrel agreed to procure it for them. The object of their desire seems to have been in the possession of the animals in general, in some distant locality. The Coyote, having attached pine splinters to his tail, ran quickly through the fire and fled with his lighted prize. Being keenly pursued, however, by the other animals, he soon tired; upon which the Bat relieved him, and dodging and flitting here and there, carried the splinters still farther. Then the Squirrel came to the assistance of the Bat, and succeeding him in his office, contrived to reach the hearths of the Navajos with the coveted embers.[III-18]

The natives of Mendocino county, California, believe that lightning is the origin of fire, that a primeval bolt hurled down by the Man Above fell upon certain wood, from which, consequently fire can always be extracted by rubbing two pieces together.[III-19]

* * * * *

From fire let us turn for a moment to wind, whose phenomena, as might be expected, have not been allowed to pass wholly unnoticed by the mythologies with which we have to deal. When we come to examine ideas connected with death and with the soul of man and its future, we shall find the wind, or the air, often in use as the best name and figure for the expression of primitive conceptions of that mysterious thing, the vital essence or spirit. The wind too is often considered as a god, or at least as the breath of a god, and in many American languages the Great Spirit and the Great Wind are one and the same both in word and signification. The name of the god Hurakan, mentioned in Quiché myths, still signifies the Storm in many a language strange to his worshipers, while in Quiché it may be translated Spirit, or swiftly moving Spirit;[III-20] and the name of the Mexican god Mixcoatl is said to be to this day the correct Mexican term for the whirlwind.[III-21]

An interesting point here arises with regard to the division of the heavens into four quarters and the naming of these after the names of the wind. Dr. Brinton believes this fact to be at the bottom of the sacredness and often occurrence of the number four in so many early legends, and he connects these four winds and their embodiment in many quaternions of deities, with the sacredness of the cross and its use among widely separated nations, to whom its later Christian signification was utterly unknown.[III-22]

If we may suppose that the Great Spirit and the wind are often represented under the form of an enormous bird, we must connect with them, as their most inseparable attributes, the thunder and the lightning; the first, as we have so often seen, is the rustling or stridor of the wings of the bird, the second is the flashing of his eyes. The Raven of the Koniagas is not, however, as among most other tribes of the great Northwest, the author of these things; but their principal deity when he is angry sends down two dwarfs, who thunder and lighten according to his command.[III-23] Of the god Hurakan, whom we have noticed as the etymon of the word hurricane, the Popol Vuh says: "The flash is the first sign of Hurakan; the second is the furrow of the flash; the third is the thunderbolt that strikes;"[III-24] and to the Mexican god, Tlaloc, are also attached the same three attributes.[III-25]

[Sidenote: WATER AS A PURIFYING ELEMENT.]

Turning to water, we find it regarded among many tribes as the first of elemental things. It is from a primeval ocean of water that the earth is generally supposed to come up. Water is obviously a first and chief nourisher of vegetable life, and an indispensable prerequisite of all fertility; from this it is but a short step to saying that it is the mother of those that live by the earth's fertility. "Your mother, Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water," is a phrase constantly found in the midwife's mouth, in her address to the child, in the Mexican washing or baptismal service.[III-26]

The use of water more or less sanctified or set apart or made worthy the distinction 'holy;' the employment of this in a rite of avowed purification from inherent sin, at the time of giving a name--baptism, in one word--runs back to a period far pre-Christian among the Mexican, Maya, and other American nations; as ancient ceremonies to be hereafter described will show. That man sets out in this life-journey of his with a terrible bias toward evil, with a sad and pitiful liability to temptation, is a point upon which all religions are practically unanimous. How else could they exist? Were man born perfect he would remain perfect, otherwise the first element of perfection would be wanting; and perfection admits of no superlative, no greater, no god. Where there is a religion then, there is generally a consciousness of sin voluntary and involuntary. How shall I be cleansed? how shall my child be cleansed from this great wickedness? is the cry of the idolater as well as of the monotheist. Is it strange that the analogy between corporal and spiritual pollution should independently suggest itself to both? Surely not. Wash and be clean, is to all the world a parable needing no interpreter.[III-27]

The ceremonial use of water followed the Mexican through all his life; though for the present we shall only notice one more custom connected with it, the last of all. When a body was buried, a vase of clean, sweet water was let down into the tomb; bright, clear, life-giving and preserving water--hope and love, dumb and inarticulate, stretching vague hand toward a resurrection.

The Mexican rain and water god was Tlaloc, sender of thunder and lightning, lord of the earthly paradise, and fertilizer of earth; his wife was the Chalchiuhtlicue, already mentioned.[III-28] Like Tlaloc was Quiateot, the Nicaraguan rain-god, master of thunderbolts and general director of meteorological phenomena.[III-29]

The Navajos puffed tobacco smoke straight up toward heaven to bring rain, and those of them that carried a corpse to burial were unclean till washed in water.[III-30] In a deep and lonely cañon near Fort Defiance there is a spring that this tribe hold sacred, approaching it only with much reverence and the performance of certain mystic ceremonies. They say it was once a boiling spring, and that even yet if approached heedlessly or by a bad Indian, its waters will seethe up and leap forth to overwhelm the intruder.[III-31]

The Zuñis had also a sacred spring; sacred to the rain-god, who, as we see by implication, is Montezuma the great Pueblo deity himself. No animal might taste of its sacred waters, and it was cleansed annually with vessels also sacred--most ancient vases that had been transmitted from generation to generation since times to which even tradition went not back. These vessels were kept ranged on the wall of the well. The frog, the rattlesnake, and the tortoise were depicted upon them, and were sacred to the great patron of the place, whose terrible lightning should consume the sacrilegious hand that touched these hallowed relics.[III-32]

[Sidenote: THE EARTH, THE SEA, THE SKY.]

We have seen how the Californian tribes believe themselves descended from the very earth, how the bodiless ancestor of the Tezcucans came up from the soil, how the Guatemaltecs, Papagos, and Pimas were molded from the clay they tread, and how the Navajos came to light from the bowels of a great mountain near the river San Juan. It seems long ago and often to have come into men's mind that the over-arching heaven or something there and the all-producing earth are, as it were, a father and mother to all living creatures. The Comanches call on the earth as their mother, and on the Great Spirit as their father. The Mexicans used to pray: Be pleased, O our Lord, that the nobles who may die in the war be peacefully and pleasingly received by the sun and the earth, who are the father and mother of all.[III-33] It was probably, again, with some reference to the motherly function of the earth that the same people, when an earthquake came, took their children by the head or hand, and lifted them up saying: The earthquake will make them grow.[III-34] Sometimes they specified a particular part of the earth as closer to them in this relation than other parts. It is said that on the tenth day of the month Quecholli, the citizens of Mexico and those of Tlatelolco were wont to visit a hill called Cacatepec, for they said it was their mother.[III-35]

As to the substance, arrangement, and so on of the earth and sky there remain one or two ideas not already given in connection with the general creation. The Tlascaltecs, and perhaps others of the Anáhuac peoples, believed that the earth was flat, and ending with the sea-shore, was borne up by certain divinities, who when fatigued relieved each other, and that as the burden was shifted from shoulder to shoulder earthquakes occurred. The sea and sky were considered as of one material, the sea being more highly condensed; and the rain was thought to fall not from clouds but from the very substance of heaven itself.[III-36] The Southern Californians believed that when the Creator made the world he fixed it on the back of seven giants, whose movements, as in the preceding myth, caused earthquakes.[III-37] The sky, according to certain of the Yucatecs, was held up by four brothers called each of them Bacab, in addition to their several names, which seem to have been Kan, Muluc, Ix, and Cauac. These four, God had placed at the four corners of the world when he created it, and they had escaped when all else were destroyed by flood.[III-38]

In the interior of the earth, in volcanoes, subterranean gods were often supposed to reside. The Koniagas, for example, held that the craters of Alaska were inhabited by beings mightier then men, and that these sent forth fire and smoke when they heated their sweat-houses or cooked their food.[III-39]

* * * * *

The rugged majesty of hills and mountains has not been without its effect on the reverential mind of the American aborigines. Direct worship was unusual, but several incidents must have already informed the reader that a kind of sanctity is often attached to great elevations in nature. A predilection for hills and mounds as landmarks and fanes of tradition, and as places of worship, was as common among the Americans as among the people of the old world. The Choles of the province of Itza had a hill in their country that they regarded as the god of all the mountains, and on which they burned a perpetual fire.[III-40] The Mexicans, praying for rain, were accustomed to vow that they would make images of the mountains if their petitions were favorably received;[III-41] and, in other points connected with their religion to show, as has appeared and will appear both with them and with other people, their recognition of a divinity abiding on or hedging about the great peaks. What wonder, indeed, that to the rude and awe-struck mind, the everlasting hills seemed nearer and liker heaven than the common-place level of earth? and that the wild man should kneel or go softly there, as in the peculiar presence of the Great Spirit? This is hardly a new feeling, it seems an instinct and custom as old as religion. Where went Abraham in that awful hour, counted to him for righteousness through all the centuries? Where smoked the thunderings and lightnings that heralded the delivery of the Law, when the son of Amram talked with Jehovah face to face, as a man talketh with his friend? Whence saw a greater than Moses the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them? whence, in the all-nights that came after, did the prayers of the Christ ascend? and where stood he when his raiment became as no fuller on earth could white it; Moses and Elias talking with him, and Peter so sore afraid?

[Sidenote: HILLS AND MOUNTAIN RANGES.]

Where hills were not found conveniently situated for purposes of worship, they seem to have been counterfeited after man's feeble fashion: from high-place and mound, from pyramid and teocalli, since the morning stars sang together, the smoke of the altar and the censer has not ceased to ascend. But the day begins to broaden out, and the mists of the morning flee away; though the hills be not lowered, God is lifted up. Yet they have their glory and their charm still even to us, and to the savage they often appear as the result of a special and several creation. We remember how the Great Spirit made Mount Shasta as his only worthy abiding-place on earth; and I give here another legend of a much more trivial sort than the first, telling how, not Mount Shasta alone, but all the mountains of California were built and put into position:--[III-42] At a time when the world was covered with water there existed a Hawk and a Crow and a very small Duck. The latter, after diving to the bottom and bringing up a beakful of mud, died; whereupon the Crow and the Hawk took each a half of the mud that had been brought up, and set to work to make the mountains. Beginning at a place called Teheechaypah Pass, they built northwards, the Hawk working on the eastern range and the Crow on the western. It was a long and weary toil, but in time the work was finished, and as they laid the last peak the workers met at Mount Shasta. Then the Hawk saw that there had been foul play somewhere, for the western range was bigger than his; and he charged the Crow with stealing some of his mud. But the smart bird laughed a hoarse guffaw in the face of his eastern brother, not even taking the trouble to disown the theft, and chuckled hugely over his own success and western enterprise. The honest Hawk was at his wits' end, and he stood thinking with his head on one side for quite a long time; then in an absent kind of way he picked up a leaf of Indian tobacco and began to chew, and wisdom came with chewing. And he strengthened himself mightily, and fixed his claws in the mountains, and turned the whole chain in the water like a great floating wheel, till the range of his rival had changed places with his, and the Sierra Nevada was on the east and the Coast Range on the west, as they remain to this day.

This legend is not without ingenuity in its way but there is more of human interest in the following pretty story of the Yosemite nations, as to the origin of the names and present appearance of certain peaks and other natural features of their valley:--

[Sidenote: TOTOKÓNULA AND TISAYAC OF YOSEMITE.]

A certain Totokónula was once chief of the people here: a mighty hunter and a good husbandman, his tribe never wanted food while he attended to their welfare. But a change came; while out hunting one day, the young man met a spirit-maid, the guardian angel of the valley, the beautiful Tisayac. She was not as the dusky beauties of his tribe, but white and fair, with rolling yellow tresses that fell over her shoulders like sunshine, and blue eyes with a light in them like the sky where the sun goes down. White, cloudlike wings were folded behind her shoulders, and her voice was sweeter than the song of birds; no wonder the strong chief loved her with a mad and instant love. He reached toward her, but the snowy wings lifted her above his sight, and he stood again alone upon the dome, where she had been.

No more Totokónula led in the chase or heeded the crops in the valley; he wandered here and there like a man distraught, ever seeking that wonderful shining vision that had made all else on earth stale and unprofitable in his sight. The land began to languish, missing the industrious directing hand that had tended it so long; the pleasant garden became a wilderness where the drought laid waste, and the wild beast spoiled what was left, and taught his cubs to divide the prey. When the fair spirit returned at last to visit her valley, she wept to see the desolation, and she knelt upon the dome, praying to the Great Spirit for succor. God heard, and stooping from his place, he clove the dome upon which she stood, and the granite was riven beneath her feet, and the melted snows of the Nevada rushed through the gorge, bearing fertility upon their cool bosom. A beautiful lake was formed between the cloven walls of the mountain, and a river issued from it to feed the valley for ever. Then sang the birds as of old, laving their bodies in the water, and the odor of flowers rose like a pleasant incense, and the trees put forth their buds, and the corn shot up to meet the sun and rustled when the breeze crept through the tall stalks.

Tisayac moved away as she had come, and none knew whither she went; but the people called the dome by her name, as it is indeed known to this day. After her departure the chief returned from his weary quest; and as he heard that the winged one had visited the valley, the old madness crept up into his eyes and entered, seven times worse than at the first, into his empty soul; he turned his back on the lodges of his people. His last act was to cut with his hunting-knife the outline of his face upon a lofty rock, so that if he never returned his memorial at least should remain with them forever. He never did return from that hopeless search, but the graven rock was called Totokónula, after his name, and it may be still seen, three thousand feet high, guarding the entrance of the beautiful valley.[III-43]

Leaving this locality and subject, I may remark that the natives have named the Póhono Fall, in the same valley, after an evil spirit; many persons having been swept over and dashed to pieces there. No native of the vicinity will so much as point at this fall when going through the valley, nor could anything tempt one of them to sleep near it; for the ghosts of the drowned are tossing in its spray, and their wail is heard forever above the hiss of its rushing waters.[III-44]

FOOTNOTES:

[III-1] North Am. Rev., vol. ciii., p. 1.

[III-2] Alegre, Hist. Comp. de Jesus, tom. i., p. 279; Apostólicos Afanes, p. 68.

[III-3] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. ii., pp. 74-5, 200-18; Explicacion del Codex Telleriano-Remensis, parte ii., lam. x., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 139; Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano (Vaticano), tav. xxv. and xxxiii., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., pp. 178, 181-2; Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., pp. 80-1; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., pp. 9, 11, 17, 34-5.

[III-4] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. iii., p. 301; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Quatre Lettres, p. 156; Tylor's Prim. Cult., vol. ii., pp. 259, 262-3; Squier's Serpent Symbol, pp. 18-20; Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iii., p. 60, vol. iv., p. 639, vol. v., pp. 29-87, vol. vi., pp. 594, 626, 636.

[III-5] Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, p. 474.

[III-6] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vii., pp. 244-5. In Campeche, in 1834, M. Waldeck witnessed an eclipse of the moon during which the Yucatecs conducted themselves much as their fathers might have done in their gentile days, howling frightfully and making every effort to part the celestial combatants. The only apparent advance made on the old customs was the firing off of muskets, 'to prove' in the words of the sarcastic artist, 'that the Yucatecs of to-day are not strangers to the progress of civilization.' Waldeck, Voy. Pitt., p. 14.

[III-7] Camargo, Hist. de Tlaxcallan, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1843, tom. xcvii., p. 193.

[III-8] Alegre, Hist. Comp. de Jesus, tom. ii., p. 218; Ribas, Hist. de los Triumphos, p. 202; Boscana, in Robinson's Life in Cal., pp. 296-300.

[III-9] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. viii., p. 250.

[III-10] Explicacion del Codex Telleriano-Remensis, part. ii., lam. x., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 139; Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano (Vaticano), tav. xxvi., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 179; Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vii., p. 250; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., pp. 9-17.

[III-11] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Quatre Lettres, pp. 155-6.

[III-12] Explicacion delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano, part. i., lam. ii., part. ii., lam. xiv., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., pp. 132, 140; Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano (Vaticano), tav. xvii., xxxi., Ib., vol. v., pp. 175, 181; Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vii., pp. 250-252; Camargo, Hist. de Tlaxcallan, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1843, tom. xcviii., p. 193; Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., p. 81. The word tecutli is of frequent occurrence as a termination in the names of Mexican gods. It signifies 'lord' and is written with various spellings. I follow that given by Molina's Vocabulary.

[III-13] Tylor's Prim. Cult., vol. ii., p. 259.

[III-14] Brinton's Myths, p. 143.

[III-15] Ward, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1864, p. 193.

[III-16] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. i., p. 16; Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. ii., pp. 56-7; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. iii., pp. 491-2.

[III-17] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[III-18] Eaton, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., pp. 218-19.

[III-19] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[III-20] Brasseur de Bourbourg, S'il Existe des Sources de l'Hist. Prim. du Mexique, p. 101.

[III-21] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., tom. iii., p. 485; Brinton's Myths, p. 51.

[III-22] Brinton's Myths, pp. 66-98.

[III-23] Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 141.

[III-24] Ximenez, Hist. Ind. Guat., p. 6; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. 9.

[III-25] Gama, Dos Piedras, pt. ii., p. 76.

[III-26] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 197.

[III-27] Singularly apt in this connection are the wise words that Carlyle, Past and Present Chartism, book i., p. 233, puts into the mouth of his mythical friend Sauerteig--'Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, how it radiates in on thee with cunning symbolic influences, to the very soul!... It remains a religious duty from oldest time in the East.... Even the dull English feel something of this; they have a saying, "cleanliness is near of kin to Godliness."'

[III-28] Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., pp. 15-16. 'Era conosciuta con altri nomi assai espressive, i quali o significavano i diversi effetti, che cagionano l'acque, o le diverse apparenze, colori, che formano col loro moto. I Tlascallesi la chiamavano Matlalcueje, cioè, vestita di gonna turchina.' See also Müller, Reisen in Mex., tom. iii., p. 89.

[III-29] Oviedo, Hist. Gen., tom. iv., pp. 46, 55.

[III-30] Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., p. 91; Bristol, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1867, p. 358.

[III-31] Backus, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., p. 213.

[III-32] Whipple, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii., p. 39.

[III-33] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 43.

[III-34] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. v., ap., pp. 21-2.

[III-35] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. ii., p. 70.

[III-36] Camargo, Hist. de Tlaxcallan, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1834, tom. xcviii., p. 192.

[III-37] Reid, in Los Angeles Star.

[III-38] Landa, Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan, p. 206.

[III-39] Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 141.

[III-40] Villagutierre, Hist. Conq. de Itza, pp. 151-2.

[III-41] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. ii., p. 177.

[III-42] Powers' Pomo, MS. This is a tradition of the Yocuts, a Californian tribe, occupying the Kern and Tulare basins, the middle San Joaquin, and the various streams running into Lake Tulare.

[III-43] Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. iv., pp. 197-9.

[III-44] Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. iv., p. 243.

IV. ANIMAL MYTHOLOGY

RÔLES ASSIGNED TO ANIMALS -- AUGURIES FROM THEIR MOVEMENTS -- THE ILL-OMENED OWL -- TUTELARY ANIMALS -- METAMORPHOSED MEN -- THE OGRESS-SQUIRREL OF VANCOUVER ISLAND -- MONKEYS AND BEAVERS -- FALLEN MEN -- THE SACRED ANIMALS -- PROMINENCE OF THE BIRD -- AN EMBLEM OF THE WIND -- THE SERPENT, AN EMBLEM OF THE LIGHTNING -- NOT SPECIALLY CONNECTED WITH EVIL -- THE SERPENT OF THE PUEBLOS -- THE WATER-SNAKE -- OPHIOLATRY -- PROMINENCE OF THE DOG, OR THE COYOTE -- GENERALLY THOUGH NOT ALWAYS A BENEVOLENT POWER -- HOW THE COYOTE LET SALMON UP THE KLAMATH -- DANSE MACABRE AND SAD DEATH OF THE COYOTE.

The reader must have already noticed the strange rôles filled by animals in the creeds of the Native Races of the Pacific States. Beasts and birds and fishes fetch and carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even Æsop's heroes in the shade; while a mysterious and inexplicable influence over human destiny is often accorded to them. It is of course impossible to say precisely how much of all this is metaphorical, and how much is held as soberly and literally true. Probably the proportion varies all the way from one extreme to the other among different nations, and among peoples of different stages of culture in the same nation. They spake only in part, these priests and prophets of barbaric cults, and we can understand only in part; we cannot solve the dark riddle of the past; we can oftenest only repeat it, and even that in a more or less imperfect manner.

The Mexicans had their official augurs and soothsayers, who divined much as did their brethren of classic times. The people also drew omen and presage from many things: from the howling of wild beasts at night; the singing of certain birds; the hooting of the owl; a weasel crossing a traveler's path; a rabbit running into its burrow; from the chance movements of worms, beetles, ants, frogs, and mice; and so on in detail.[IV-1]

The owl seems to have been in many places considered a bird of ill omen. Among all the tribes visited by Mr Lord, from the Fraser River to the Saint Lawrence, this bird was portentously sacred, and was a favorite decoration of the medicine-men. To come on an owl at an unusual time, in daylight for example, and to hear its mystic cry, were things not desirable of any that loved fulness of pleasure and length of days.[IV-2] In California, by the tribes on the Russian River, owls were held to be devils or evil spirits incarnate.[IV-3]

We often find an animal adopted in much the same way as a patron saint was selected by the mediæval knight. The Hyperborean lad, for example, when he reaches manhood, takes some beast or fish or bird to be his patron, and the spirit connected with that animal is supposed to guard him. Unlike most Indians, the Eskimo will have no hesitation in killing an animal of his tutelary species: he is only careful to wear a piece of its skin or bone, which he regards as an amulet, which it were to him a serious misfortune to lose. Prolonged ill luck sometimes leads a man to change his patron beast for another. The spirits connected with the deer, the seal, the salmon, and the beluga are regarded by all with special veneration.[IV-4]

The Mexicans used to allot certain animals to certain parts of the body; perhaps in much the same way as astrologers and alchemists used to connect the stars of heaven with different substances and persons. The following twenty Mexican symbols were supposed to rule over the various members of the human body: The sign of the deer, over the right foot; of the tiger, over the left foot; of the eagle, over the right hand; of the monkey, over the left hand; of death--represented by a skull--over the skull; of water, over the hair; of the house, over the brow; of rain, over the eyes; of the dog, over the nose; of the vulture, over the right ear; of the rabbit, over the left ear; of the earthquake, over the tongue; of flint, over the teeth; of air, over the breath; of the rose, over the breast; of the cane, over the heart; of wind, over the lungs--as appears from the plate in the Codex Vaticanus, the Italian interpreter giving, however, "over the liver;" of the grass, over the intestines; of the lizard, over the loins; and of the serpent, over the genitals.[IV-5]

[Sidenote: THE HUMANITY OF ANIMALS.]

Sometimes the whole life and being of a man was supposed to be bound up in the bundle with that of some animal. Thus, of the Guatemaltecs, old Gage quaintly enough writes: "Many are deluded by the Devil to believe that their life dependeth upon the life of such and such a beast (which they take unto them as their familiar spirit) and think that when that beast dieth they must die; when he is chased their hearts pant; when he is faint they are faint; nay it happeneth that by the devil's delusion they appear in the shape of that beast."[IV-6]

Animals are sometimes only men in disguise; and this is the idea often to be found at the bottom of that sacredness which among particular tribes is ascribed to particular animals.

The Thlinkeet will kill a bear only in case of great necessity, for the bear is supposed to be a man that has taken the shape of an animal. We do not know if they think the same of the albatross, but they certainly will not kill this bird, believing, like mariners ancient and modern, that such a misdeed would be followed by bad weather.[IV-7]

Among the natives seen by Mr Lord on Vancouver Island, ill-luck is supposed to attend the profane killing of the ogress-squirrel, and the conjurers wear its skin as a strong charm among their other trumpery. As tradition tells, there once lived there a monstrous old woman with wolfish teeth, and finger-nails like claws. She ate children, this old hag, wiling them to her with cunning and oily words, and many were the broken hearts and empty cradles that she left. One poor Rachel, weeping for her child and not to be comforted because it was not, cries aloud: Oh, Great Spirit, Great Medicine, save my son, in any way, in any form! And the great, good Father, looking down upon the red mother pities her; lo, the child's soft brown skin turns to fur, and there slides from the ogress's grip no child, but the happiest, liveliest, merriest little squirrel of all the west--but bearing, as its descendants still bear, those four dark lines along the back that show where the cruel claws plowed into it escaping.[IV-8]

Where monkeys are found, the idea seems often to have occurred to men, to account for the resemblance of the monkey to the man by making of the first a fallen or changed form of the latter. We have already seen how the third Quiché destruction of the human race terminated thus; and how the hurricane-ended Sun of the Air in Mexican mythology, also left men in the apish state. The intelligence of beavers may have been the means of winning them a similar distinction. The Flathead says these animals are a fallen race of Indians, condemned for their wickedness to this form, but who will yet, in the fulness of time, be restored to their humanity.[IV-9]

As we shall see more particularly, when we come to deal with the question of the future life, it was a common idea that the soul of the dead took an animal shape, sometimes inhabiting another world, sometimes this. The Thlinkeets, for example, believed that their shamáns used to have interviews with certain spirits of the dead that appeared to them in two forms, some as land animals, some as marine.[IV-10]

[Sidenote: SACREDNESS OF CERTAIN BRUTES.]

The Californians round San Diego will not eat the flesh of large game, believing such animals are inhabited by the souls of generations of people that have died ages ago; 'eater of venison!' is a term of reproach among them.[IV-11]

The Pimos and Maricopas had, if Bartlett's account be correct, some curious and unusual ideas regarding their future state; saying that the several parts of the body should be changed into separate animals; the head would perhaps take the form of an owl, the feet become wolves, and so on.[IV-12] The Moquis supposed that at death they should be severally changed into animals--bears, deer, and such beasts; which indeed, as we have already seen, they believed to have been their original form.[IV-13]

Different reasons are given by different tribes for holding certain animals sacred; some of these we have already had occasion to notice. Somewhat different from most, however, is that given by the Northern-Indian branch of the Tinneh, for not eating the flesh of foxes, wolves, ravens, and so on. This tribe are accustomed to abandon the bodies of their dead wherever they happen to fall, leaving them to the maws of kites or of any other animals of prey in the neighborhood; therefore nothing but the extremest necessity can force any member of the nation to make use of such animals as food.[IV-14]

Certain natives of Guatemala in the province of Acalán, called by Villagutierre Mazotecas, kept deer in so tame a state that they were easily killed by the least active soldiers. These deer were held as sacred by the inhabitants; for tradition told them that their greatest god had visited them in this figure.[IV-15] The Apaches greatly respect the bear, neither killing him nor tasting his flesh. They think that there are spirits of divine origin within or connected with the eagle, the owl, and all birds perfectly white. Swine, they hold to be wholly unclean.[IV-16] Some animals are sacred to particular gods: with the Zuñis, the frog, the turtle, and the rattlesnake were either considered as specially under the protection of Montezuma--here considered as the god of rain--or they were themselves the lesser divinities of water.[IV-17]

It is sometimes necessary to guard against being misled by names. Thus the natives of Nicaragua had gods whose name was that of a rabbit or a deer; yet these animals were not considered as gods. The identity of name went only to say that such and such were the gods to be invoked in hunting such and such animals.[IV-18]

[Sidenote: THE WIND OR THUNDER BIRD.]

The reader must have already noticed how important is the part assigned to birds in our mythology, especially in creation-myths. A great bird is the agent of the chief deity, perhaps the chief deity himself. The sweep of his wings is thunder; the lightnings are the glances of his eyes.[IV-19] Chipewyans, Thlinkeets, Atnas, Koltschanes, Kenai, and other nations give this being great prominence in their legends.

Brinton believes this bird to be the emblem of the wind, to be "a relic of the cosmogonal myth which explained the origin of the world from the action of the winds, under the image of the bird, on the primeval ocean;"[IV-20] and his view is probably correct in many cases.

The savage is ever ready to be smitten by natural powers. Ignorant and agape with wonder, is it unnatural that he should regard, with a superstitious awe and respect, the higher and more peculiar animal gifts, relating them to like physical powers, and managing to mix and confuse the whole by a strange synthesis of philosophy? Birds flew, the winds flew; the birds were of the kith of the winds, and the winds were of the kin of the gods who are over all. Poor, weary, painted man, who could only toil dustily along, foot-sore and perhaps heart-sore, with strange longings that venison and bear-meat could not satisfy--was it very wonderful if the throbbing music and upward flight of the clear-throated and swift-winged were to him very mysterious and sacred things? "All living beings," say the north-eastern Eskimos, "have the faculty of soul, but especially the bird." From the flight and song of birds, the Mexican divined and shadowed forth the unborn shapes of the to-come. He died too, if he died in an odor of warlike sanctity, in the strong faith that his soul should ultimately take the form of a bird and twitter through the ages in the purple shadows of the trees of paradise.[IV-21]

The Kailtas on the south fork of the Trinity in California, though they do not turn the soul into a bird, do say that as it leaves the body a little bird carries it up to the spirit-land.[IV-22]

The Spaniards of Vizcaino's expedition, in 1602, found the Californians of Santa Catalina Island venerating two great black crows, which, according to Señor Galan, were probably a species of bird known in Mexico as rey de los zopilotes, or king of turkey-buzzards; he adding that these birds are still the objects of respect and devotion among most Californian tribes.[IV-23]

As another symbol, sign, or type of the supernatural, the serpent would naturally suggest itself at an early date to man. Its stealthy, subtle, sinuous motion, the glittering fascination of its eyes, the silent deathly thrust of its channeled fangs--what marvel if the foolishest of men, like the wisest of kings, should say "I know it not; it is a thing too wonderful for me?" It seems to be immortal: every spring-time it cast off and crept from its former skin, a crawling unburnt phœnix, a new animal.

Schwartz, of Berlin, affirms, from deep research in Greek and German mythology, that the paramount germinal idea in this wide-spread serpent-emblem is the lightning, and Dr. Brinton develops the same opinion at some length.[IV-24]

Tlaloc, the Aztec rain-god, held in his hand a serpent-shaped piece of gold, representing most probably the lightning. Hurakan, of the Quiché legends, is otherwise the Strong Serpent, he who hurls below, referring in all likelihood to storm powers as thunderer.[IV-25] This view being accepted, the lightning-serpent is the type of fruitfulness; the thunder storm being inseparably joined with the thick, fertilizing summer showers.[IV-26] Born, too, in the middle heaven, of a cloud mother and of an Ixion upon whom science cannot yet place her finger, amid moaning breeze and threatening tempest, the lightning is surely also akin to the wind and to the bird that is their symbol. The amalgamation of these powers in one deity seems to be what is indicated by such names as Quetzalcoatl, Gucumatz, Cukulcan, all titles of the God of the Air in different American languages, and all signifying 'Bird-Serpent.'

[Sidenote: THE CROSS AND THE FOUR WINDS.]

In a tablet on the wall of a room at Palenque is a cross surmounted by a bird, and supported by what appears to be the head of a serpent: "The cross," says Brinton, "is the symbol of the four winds; the bird and serpent, the rebus of the air god, their ruler."

It does not appear that savages attach any special significance of evil to the snake, though the prepossessions of early writers almost invariably blind them on this point.[IV-27] This rule is not without its exceptions however; the Apaches hold that every rattlesnake contains the soul of a bad man or is an emissary of the Evil Spirit.[IV-28] The Piutes of Nevada have a demon-deity in the form of a serpent still supposed to exist in the waters of Pyramid Lake. The wind when it sweeps down among the nine islands of the lake drives the waters into the most fantastic swirls and eddies, even when the general surface of the lake is tolerably placid. This, say the Piutes, is the devil-snake causing the deep to boil like a pot; this is the old serpent seeking whom he may devour; and no native in possession of his five sober wits will be found steering toward those troubled waters at such a time.[IV-29]

In the Pueblo cities, among the Pecos especially, there existed in early times an immense serpent, supposed to be sacred, and which, according to some accounts, was fed with the flesh of his devotees. Gregg heard an "honest ranchero" relate how, one snowy morning, he had come upon this terrible reptile's trail, "large as that of a dragging ox;" the ranchero did not pursue the investigation farther, not obtruding his science, such as it was, upon his religion. This serpent was supposed to be specially connected with Montezuma, and with rain phenomena: it is often called "the great water-snake." It was described to Whipple "as being as large round as a man's body; and of exceeding great length, slowly gliding upon the water, with long wavy folds" like the Nahant sea-serpent--to Möllhausen, as being a great rattlesnake, possessor of power over seas, lakes, rivers and rain; as thick as many men put together, and much longer than all the snakes in the world; moving in great curves and destroying wicked men. The Pueblo Indians prayed to it for rain and revered its mysterious powers.[IV-30]

A people, called by Castañeda Tahus, apparently of Sinaloa in the neighborhood of Culiacan, regarded certain large serpents with sentiments of great veneration if not of worship.[IV-31] These reptiles seem also to have been regarded with considerable reverence in Yucatan. In 1517, Bernal Diaz noticed many figures of serpents in a temple he saw at Campeche. Juan de Grijalva, also, found at the same time many such figures at Champoton, among other idols of clay and wood.[IV-32]

We have already spoken of the Mexican Tlaloc and of the frequent appearance of the serpent in his worship; it does not appear, however, notwithstanding Mr Squier's assertion to the contrary, that the serpent was actually worshiped either in Yucatan or Mexico. Bernal Diaz, indeed, says positively in one passage, speaking of a town called Tenayuca, that "they worshiped here, in their chief temple, three serpents;" but the stout soldier was not one to make fine distinctions between gods and their attributes or symbols; nor, even with the best intentions, was he or any other of the conquistadores in a position to do justice to the faith of 'gentiles.'[IV-33]

We shall hereafter find the serpent closely connected with Quetzalcoatl in many of his manifestations, as well as with others of the Mexican gods.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE DOG OF AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY.]

From the serpent let us turn to the dog, with his relations the wolf and coyote, an animal holding a respectable place in American mythology. We have seen how many tribes derive, figuratively or literally, their origin from him, and how often he becomes legendarily important as the hero of some adventure or the agent of some deity. He is generally brought before us in a rather benevolent aspect, though an exception occurs to this in the case of the Chinooks at the mouth of the Columbia. With these the coyote figures as the chosen medium for the action of the Evil Spirit toward any given malevolent end--as the form taken by the Evil One to counteract some beneficence of the Good Spirit toward the poor Indian whom he loves.[IV-34]

Very different from this is the character of that Coyote of the Cahrocs whose good deeds we have so often had occasion to set forth. One feat of his yet remains to be told--how he stocked the river with salmon. Chareya, the creator, had made salmon, but he had put them in the big-water, and made a great fish-dam at the mouth of the Klamath, so that they could not go up; and this dam was closed with something of the nature of a white man's key, which key was given in charge to two old hags, not wholly unfamiliar to us, to keep and watch over it night and day, so that no Cahroc should get near it. Now fish being wanting to the Cahrocs, they were sorely pushed by hunger, and the voice of women and little children was heard imploring food. The Coyote determined to help them; he swore by the stool of Chareya that before another moon their lodges should drip with salmon, and the very dogs be satisfied withal. So he traveled down the Klamath many days' journey till he came to the mouth of the river and saw the big-water and heard the thunder of its waves. Up he went to the hut of the old women, rapped, and asked hospitality for the night; and he was so polite and debonair that the crones could find no excuse for refusing him. He entered the place and threw himself down by the fire, warming himself while they prepared salmon for supper, which they ate without offering him a bite. All night long he lay by the fire pretending to sleep, but thinking over his plans and waiting for the event that should put him in possession of the mighty key that he saw hanging so high above his reach. In the morning one of the hags took down the key and started off toward the dam to get some fish for breakfast. Like a flash the Coyote leaped at her, hurling himself between her feet; heels over head she pitched, and the key flew far from her hands. Before she well knew what had hurt her the Coyote stood at the dam with the key in his teeth, wrenching at the fastenings. They gave way; and with a great roar the green water raced through, all ashine with salmon, utterly destroying and breaking down the dam, so that ever after fish found free way up the Klamath.

[Sidenote: COYOTES MUST NOT DANCE WITH STARS.]

The end of the poor Coyote was rather sad, considering his kindness of heart and the many services he had rendered the Cahrocs. Like too many great personages, he grew proud and puffed up with the adulation of flatterers and sycophants--proud of his courage and cunning, and of the success that had crowned his great enterprises for the good of mankind--proud that he had twice deceived and outwitted the guardian hags to whom Chareya had entrusted the fire and the salmon--so proud that he determined to have a dance through heaven itself, having chosen as his partner a certain star that used to pass quite close by a mountain where he spent a good deal of his time. So he called out to the star to take him by the paw and they would go round the world together for a night; but the star only laughed, and winked in an excessively provoking way from time to time. The Coyote persisted angrily in his demand, and barked and barked at the star all round heaven, till the twinkling thing grew tired of his noise and told him to be quiet and he should be taken next night. Next night the star came quite up close to the cliff where the Coyote stood, who leaping was able to catch on. Away they danced together through the blue heavens. Fine sport it was for a while; but oh, it grew bitter cold up there for a Coyote of the earth, and it was an awful sight to look down to where the broad Klamath lay like a slack bowstring and the Cahroc villages like arrow-heads. Woe for the Coyote! his numb paws have slipped their hold on his bright companion; dark is the partner that leads the dance now, and the name of him is Death. Ten long snows the Coyote is in falling, and when he strikes the earth he is "smashed as flat as a willow-mat".--Coyotes must not dance with stars.[IV-35]

FOOTNOTES:

[IV-1] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. v., pp. 1-14, ap. pp. 25-6.

[IV-2] Lord's Naturalist in Vancouver Island, vol. ii., pp. 32-4.

[IV-3] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[IV-4] Dall's Alaska, p. 145.

[IV-5] Codex Vaticanus (Mex.), in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ii., plate 75; Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano (Vaticano), in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 197, tav. lxxv.; Explanation of the Codex Vaticanus, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. vi., pp. 222-3, plate lxxv. It will be seen that I have trusted more to the plate itself than to the Italian explanation. As to Kingsborough's translation of that explanation, it is nothing but a gloss with additions to and omissions from the original.

[IV-6] Gage's New Survey, p. 334.

[IV-7] Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 30.

[IV-8] Lord's Nat., vol. ii., pp. 52-4.

[IV-9] Cox's Adven., vol. i., p. 253.

[IV-10] Dall's Alaska, pp. 422-3.

[IV-11] Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 215.

[IV-12] Bartlett's Pers. Nar., vol. ii., p. 222.

[IV-13] Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., p. 86.

[IV-14] Hearne's Journey, p. 341.

[IV-15] Villagutierre, Hist. Conq. Itza, p. 43.

[IV-16] Charlton, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 209.

[IV-17] Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner's Rept., pp. 39-40, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii.

[IV-18] Oviedo, Hist. Gen., tom. iv., pp. 54-5.

[IV-19] Swinburne, Anactoria, has found an allied idea worthy of his sublime verse:--

'Cast forth of heaven, with feet of awful gold, And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind, Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind, Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown--'

[IV-20] Brinton's Myths, p. 205. The Norse belief is akin to this:--

'The giant Hrsuelgur, At the end of heaven, Sits in an eagle's form; 'Tis said that from his wings The cold winds sweep Over all the nations.'

Vafthrudvers maal; Grenville Pigott's translation, in Scandinavian Mythology, p. 27.

Scott, Pirate, chap. v., in the 'Song of the Tempest,' which he translates from Norna's mouth, shows that the same idea is still found in the Shetland Islands:--

'Stern eagle of the far north-west, Thou that bearest in thy grasp the thunderbolt, Thou whose rushing pinions stir ocean to madness, ... Cease thou the waving of thy pinions, Let the ocean repose in her dark strength; Cease thou the flashing of thine eyes, Let the thunderbolt sleep in the armory of Odin.'

[IV-21] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. iii., p. 265; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., p. 5.

[IV-22] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[IV-23] Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. i., p. 713: 'The entire tribes of the Californian Indiania [sic] appear to have had a great devotion and veneration for the Condor or Yellow-headed Vulture.' Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, May 25th, 1860. 'Cathartes Californianus, the largest rapacious bird of North America.' Baird's Birds of N. Am., p. 5. 'This bird is an object of great veneration or worship among the Indian tribes of every portion of the state.' Reid, in Los Angeles Star.

[IV-24] Brinton's Myths, p. 112.

[IV-25] Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. ii., pp. 46-71; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., pp. 14-15; Gama, Dos Piedras, pt. ii., pp. 76-7.

[IV-26] Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, p. 500.

[IV-27] Tylor's Prim. Cult., vol. ii., p. 217.

[IV-28] Charlton, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 209.

[IV-29] Virginia City Chronicle, in S. F. Daily Ev'g Post, of Aug. 12th, 1872.

[IV-30] Gregg's Com. Prairies, vol. i., pp. 271-2; Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner's Rept., pp. 38-9, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii.; Möllhausen, Tagebuch, p. 170; Domenech's Deserts, vol. i., pp. 164-5. Certain later travelers deny all the foregoing as 'fiction and fable;' meaning, probably, that they saw nothing of it, or that it does not exist at present. Wand, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1864, p. 193; Meline's Two Thousand Miles, p. 256.

[IV-31] Castañeda, Voy. de Cibola, in Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, série i., tom. ix., p. 150.

[IV-32] Bernal Diaz, Hist. Conq., fol. 3, 8.

[IV-33] Bernal Diaz, Hist. Conq., fol. 136; Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 105.

[IV-34] Lord's Nat., vol. ii., p. 218.

[IV-35] Powers' Pomo, MS.; Boscana, in Robinson's Life in Cal., pp. 259-262, describes certain other Californians as worshiping for their chief god something in the form of a stuffed coyote.