V. GODS, SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, AND WORSHIP…

V. GODS, SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, AND WORSHIP

ESKIMO WITCHCRAFT -- THE TINNEH AND THE KONIAGAS -- KUGANS OF THE ALEUTS -- THE THLINKEETS, THE HAIDAHS, AND THE NOOTKAS -- PARADISE LOST OF THE OKANAGANS -- THE SALISH, THE CLALLAMS, THE CHINOOKS, THE CAYUSES, THE WALLA WALLAS, AND THE NEZ PERCÉS -- SHOSHONE GHOULS -- NORTHERN CALIFORNIA -- THE SUN AT MONTEREY -- OUIOT AND CHINIGCHINICH -- ANTAGONISTIC GODS OF LOWER CALIFORNIA -- COMANCHES, APACHES, AND NAVAJOS -- MONTEZUMA OF THE PUEBLOS -- MOQUIS AND MOJAVES -- PRIMEVAL RACE OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

We now come to the broadest, whether or not it be the most important, branch of our subject, namely, the gods and spirits that men worship or know of. Commencing at the extreme north, we shall follow them through the various nations of our territory toward the south. Very wild and conflicting is the general mass of evidence bearing on a belief in supernatural existences. Not only from the nature of the subject is it allied to questions and matters the most abstruse and transcendental--in the expression of which the exactest dialectic terminology must often be at fault; much more the rude and stammering speech of savages--but it is also apt to call up prejudices of the most warping and contradictory kind in the minds of those through whose relation it must pass to us. However hopeless the task, I will strive to hold an equal beam of historical truth, and putting away speculations of either extreme, try to give the naked expression of the belief of the peoples we deal with--however stupid, however absurd--and not what they ought to believe, or may be supposed to believe, according to the ingenious speculations of different theorists.

[Sidenote: ESKIMO SHAMANISM.]

The Eskimos do not appear to recognize any supreme deity, but only an indefinite number of supernatural beings varying in name, power, and character--the evil seeming to predominate. They carry on the person a small ivory image rudely carved to represent some animal, as a kind of talisman; these are thought to further success in hunting, fishing and other pursuits, but can hardly be looked upon with any great reverence, as they are generally to be bought of their owners for a reasonable price. All supernatural business is transacted through the medium of shamáns;--functionaries answering to the medicine-men of eastern Indian tribes;--of these there are both male and female, each practising on or for the benefit of his or her own respective sex. The rites of their black art differ somewhat, according to Dall, from those of their Tinneh neighbors, and very much from those of the Tschuktschi and other Siberian tribes; and their whole religion may be summed up as a vague fear finding its expression in witchcraft.[V-1]

The Tinneh, that great people stretching north of the fifty-fifth parallel nearly to the Arctic Ocean and to the Pacific, do not seem in any of their various tribes to have a single expressed idea with regard to a supreme power. The Loucheux branch recognize a certain personage, resident in the moon, whom they supplicate for success in starting on a hunting expedition. This being once lived among them as a poor ragged boy that an old woman had found and was bringing up; and who made himself ridiculous to his fellows by making a pair of very large snow-shoes; for the people could not see what a starveling like him should want with shoes of such unusual size. Times of great scarcity troubled the hunters, and they would often have fared badly had they not invariably on such occasions come across a new broad trail that led to a head or two of freshly killed game. They were glad enough to get the game and without scruples as to its appropriation; still they felt curious as to whence it came and how. Suspicion at last pointing to the boy and his great shoes, as being in some way implicated in the affair, he was watched. It soon became evident that he was indeed the benefactor of the Loucheux, and the secret hunter whose quarry had so often replenished their empty pots; yet the people were far from being adequately grateful, and continued to treat him with little kindness or respect. On one occasion they refused him a certain piece of fat--him who had so often saved their lives by his timely bounty! That night the lad disappeared, leaving only his clothes behind, hanging on a tree. He returned to them in a month, however, appearing as a man and dressed as a man. He told them that he had taken up his home in the moon; that he would always look down with a kindly eye to their success in hunting; but he added, that as a punishment for their shameless greed and ingratitude in refusing him the piece of fat, all animals should be lean the long winter through, and fat only in summer; as has since been the case.

[Sidenote: SPIRITS WITH THE KONIAGAS AND TINNEH.]

According to Hearne, the Tinneh believe in a kind of spirits, or fairies, called nantena, which people the earth, the sea, and the air, and are instrumental for both good and evil. Some of them believe in a good spirit called Tihugun, 'my old friend,' supposed to reside in the sun and in the moon; they have also a bad spirit, Chutsain, apparently only a personification of death, and for this reason called bad.

They have no regular order of shamáns; any one when the spirit moves him may take upon himself their duties and pretensions, though some by happy chances, or peculiar cunning, are much more highly esteemed in this regard than others, and are supported by voluntary contributions. The conjurer often shuts himself in his tent and abstains from food for days till his earthly grossness thins away, and the spirits and things unseen are constrained to appear at his behest. The younger Tinneh care for none of these things; the strong limb and the keen eye, holding their own well in the jostle of life, mock at the terrors of the invisible; but as the pulses dwindle with disease or age, and the knees strike together in the shadow of impending death, the shamán is hired to expel the evil things of which the patient is possessed. Among the Tacullies, a confession is often resorted to at this stage, on the truth and accuracy of which depend the chances of a recovery. As Harmon says, "the crimes which they most frequently confess discover something of their moral character and therefore deserve to be mentioned;" but in truth I cannot mention them; both with women and with men a filthiness and bestiality worse than the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah defy the stomach of description. The same thing is true of the tedious and disgusting rites performed by the Tinneh shamáns over the sick and at various other emergencies. They blow on the invalid, leap about him or upon him, shriek, sing, groan, gesticulate, and foam at the mouth, with other details of hocus-pocus varying indefinitely with tribe and locality. The existence of a soul is for the most part denied, and the spirits with whom dealings are had are not spirits that were ever in or of men; neither are they regarded by men with any sentiment of love or kindly respect; fear and self-interest are the bonds--where any bonds exist--that link the Tinneh with powers supernal or infernal.[V-2]

The Koniagas have the usual legion of spirits haunting water, earth, and air, whose wrath is only to be appeased by offerings to the shamáns; and sometimes, though very rarely, by human sacrifices of slaves. They have also a chief deity or spirit, called Shljam Schoá, and a power for evil called Eyak.[V-3]

Of the Aleuts, it is said that their rites showed a much higher religious development than was to be found among any of their neighbors; the labors of the Russian priests have, however, been successful enough among them to obliterate all remembrance of aught but the outlines of their ancient cult. They recognize a creator-god, but without worshiping him; he had made the world, but he did not guide it; men had nothing to do any longer with him, but only with the lesser kugans, or spirits, to whom the direction and care of earthly affairs have been committed. The stars and the sun and the moon were worshiped, or the spirits of them among others, and avenged themselves on those that adored them not. The offended sun smote the eyes of a scoffer with blindness, the moon stoned him to death, and the stars constrained him to count their number--hopeless task that always left the victim a staring maniac. The shamáns do not seem to have enjoyed that distinction among the Aleuts that their monopoly of mediation between man and the invisible world gave them among other nations. They were generally very poor, living in want and dying in misery; they had no part nor lot in the joys or sorrows of social life; never at feast, at wedding, or at a funeral was their face seen. They lived and wandered men forbid, driven to and fro by phantoms that were their masters and not their slaves. The Aleuts had no permanent idols, nor any worshiping-places built with hands; near every village was some sanctified high place or rock, sacred as a Sinai against the foot of woman or youth, and whoever profaned it became immediately mad or sick to death. Only the men and the old men visited the place leaving there their offerings of skins or feathers with unknown mysterious ceremonies.

The use of amulets was universal; and more than shield or spear to the warrior going to battle was a belt of sea-weed woven in magic knots. What a philosopher's stone was to a Roger Bacon or a Paracelsus, was the tkhimkee, a marvelous pebble thrown up at rare intervals by the sea, to the Aleutian hunter. No beast could resist its attraction; he that carried it had no need to chase his prey, he had only to wait and strike as the animal walked up to its death. Another potent charm was grease taken from a dead man's body; the spearhead touched with this was sure to reach a mortal spot in the whale at which it was hurled.

[Sidenote: ALEUTIAN MYSTERY-DANCE.]

There are dim Aleutian traditions of certain religious night dances held in the month of December. Wooden idols, or figures of some kind, were made for the occasion and carried from island to island with many esoteric ceremonies. Then was to be seen a marvelous sight. The men and women were put far apart; in the middle of each party a wooden figure was set up; certain great wooden masks or blinders were put on each person, so contrived that the wearer could see nothing outside a little circle round his feet. Then every one stripped, and there upon the snow, under the moonlight, in the bitter Arctic night, danced naked before the image--say rather before the god, for as they danced a kugan descended and entered into the wooden figure. Woe to him or to her whose drift-wood mask fell, or was lifted, in the whirl of that awful dance; the stare of the Gorgon was not more fatal than a glance of the demon that possessed the idol; and for any one to look on one of the opposite sex, however it came about, he might be even counted as one dead. When the dance was over, the idols and the masks were broken and cast away. It may be added that such masks as this were needed, even by prophets in their interviews with the great spirits that know all mortal consequences; and that when a man died such a mask was put over his eyes--O naked and shivering soul, face to face with the darkest kugan of all we will shelter thee what we can.[V-4]

The Thlinkeets are said not to believe in any supreme being. They have that Yehl, the Raven, and that Khanukh, the Wolf, whom we are already to some extent acquainted with; but neither the exact rank and character of these in the supernatural world, nor even their comparative rank, can be established above contradiction. Thus Yehl is said to be the creator of all beings and things, yet we have not forgotten how Khanukh wrung from the unwilling lips of him the confession: Thou art older that I. It is again said of Yehl that his power is unlimited; but alas, we have seen him helpless in the magic darkness raised by Khanukh, and howling as a frightened child might do in a gloomy corridor. The nature of Yehl is kind and he loves men, while the reverse is generally considered true of Khanukh; but Yehl, too, when his anger is stirred up sends sickness and evil fortune. Yehl existed before his birth upon earth; he cannot die nor even become older. Where the sources of the Nass are, whence the east-wind comes, is Nass-Shakieyehl, the home of Yehl; the east-wind brings news of him. By an unknown mother a son was born to him, who loves mankind even more than his father, and provides their food in due season. To conclude the matter, Yehl is, if not the central figure, at least the most prominent in the Thlinkeet pantheon, and the alpha and the omega of Thlinkeet philosophy and theology is summed up in their favorite aphorism: As Yehl acted and lived, so also will we live and do. After Yehl and Khanukh, the Thlinkeets believe in the brother and sister, Chethl and Ahgishanakhou, the Thunder or Thunder-bird, and the Under-ground Woman. Chethl is a kind of great northern rukh that snatches up and swallows a whale without difficulty, while his wings and eyes produce thunder and lightning as already described; his sister Ahgishanakhou sits alone below and guards the Irminsul that supports the world of the North-west.[V-5]

[Sidenote: THE THLINKEET SHAMÁN.]

The Thlinkeets have no idols, unless the little images sometimes carried by the magicians for charming with may be called by that name; they have no worship nor priests, unless their sorcerers and the rites of them may be entitled to these appellations. These sorcerers or shamáns seem to be much respected; their words and actions are generally believed and acquiesced in by all; though the death of a patient or victim, or supposed victim, is sometimes avenged upon them by the relatives of the deceased. Shamánism is mostly hereditary; as a natural course of things the long array of apparatus, masks, dresses, and so on, is inherited by the son or grandson of the deceased conjurer. The young man must, however, prove himself worthy of his position before it becomes assured to him, by calling up and communicating with spirits. The future shamán retires into a lonely forest or up some mountain, where he lives retired, feeding only on the roots of the panax-horridum, and waiting for the spirits to come to him, which they are generally supposed to do in from two to four weeks. If all go well the meeting takes place, and the chief of the spirits sends to the neophyte a river-otter, in the tongue of which animal is supposed to be hid the whole power and secret of shamánism. The man meets the beast face to face, and four times, each time in a different fashion, he pronounces the syllable 'Oh!' Upon this the otter falls instantly, reaching out at the same time its tongue, which the man cuts off and preserves; hiding it away in a close place, for if any one not initiated should look on this talisman the sight would drive him mad. The otter is skinned by the new shamán and the skin kept for a sign of his profession, while the flesh is buried; it was unlawful to kill a river-otter save on such occasions as have been described. If, however, the spirits will not visit the would-be shamán, nor give him any opportunity to get the otter-tongue as described above, the neophyte visits the tomb of a dead shamán and keeps an awful vigil over night, holding in his living mouth a finger of the dead man or one of his teeth; this constrains the spirits very powerfully to send the necessary otter. When all these things have been done the shamán returns to his family emaciated and worn out, and his new powers are immediately put to the test. His reputation depends on the number of spirits at his command. The spirits are called yek, and to every conjurer a certain number of them are attached as familiars, while there are others on whom he may call in an emergency; indeed every man of whatever rank or profession is attended by a familiar spirit or demon, who only abandons his charge when the man becomes exceedingly bad. The world of spirits in general is divided into three classes: keeyek, tákeeyek, and tékeeyek. The first-class, 'the Upper Ones,' dwell in the north and seem to be connected with the northern lights; they are the spirits of the brave fallen in battle. The other two classes are the spirits of those that died a natural death, and their dwelling is called takankóu. The tákeeyek, 'land-spirits,' appear to the shamáns in the form of land animals. With regard to the tékeeyek, 'sea-spirits' which appear in the form of marine animals, there is some dispute among the Thlinkeets as to whether these spirits were ever the spirits of men like those of the other two classes, or whether they were merely the souls of sea animals.

The supreme feat of a conjurer's power is to throw one of his liege spirits into the body of one who refuses to believe in his power; upon which the possessed is taken with swooning and fits. The hair of a shamán is never cut. As among the Aleuts, a wooden mask is necessary to his safe intercourse with any spirit; separate masks are worn for interviews with separate spirits. When a shamán sickens, his relatives fast for his recovery; when he dies, his body is not burned like that of other men, but put in a box which is set up on a high frame. The first night following his death his body is left in that corner of his hut in which he died. On the second night it is carried to another corner, and so on for four nights till it has occupied successively all the corners of the yourt, all the occupants of which are supposed to fast during this time. On the fifth day the body is tied down on a board, and two bones that the dead man had often used in his rites when alive are stuck, the one in his hair and the other in the bridge of his nose. The head is then covered with a willow basket, and the body taken to its place of sepulture, which is always near the sea-shore; no Thlinkeet ever passes the spot without dropping a little tobacco into the water to conciliate the manes of the mighty dead.[V-6]

[Sidenote: SOLAR SPIRIT OF THE HAIDAHS.]

The Haidahs believe the great solar spirit to be the creator and supreme ruler; they do not however confuse him with the material sun, who is a shining man walking round the fixed earth and wearing a "radiated" crown. Sometimes the moon is also connected in a confused indefinite way with the great spirit. There is an evil spirit who, according to Dunn, is provided with hoofs and horns, though nothing is said as to the fashion of them, whether orthodox or not. The Haidahs, at least those seen by Mr Poole on Queen Charlotte Island, have no worship, nor did they look upon themselves as in any way responsible to any deity for their actions. As with their northern neighbors, a belief in goblins, spectres, and sorcery seems to be the sum of their religion.

With some at least of the Haidahs there was in existence a rite of this sorcery attended by circumstances of more than ordinary barbarity and ferocity. When the salmon season is over and the provisions of winter have been stored away, feasting and conjuring begin. The chief--who seems to be the principal sorcerer, and indeed to possess little authority save from his connection with the preterhuman powers--goes off to the loneliest and wildest retreat he knows of or can discover in the mountains or forest, and half starves himself there for some weeks till he is worked up to a frenzy of religious insanity and the nawloks--fearful beings of some kind not human--consent to communicate with him by voices or otherwise. During all this observance, the chief is called taamish, and woe to the unlucky Haidah who happens by chance so much as to look on him during its continuance; even if the taamish do not instantly slay the intruder, his neighbors are certain to do so when the thing comes to their knowledge, and if the victim attempt to conceal the affair, or do not himself confess it, the most cruel tortures are added to his fate. At last the inspired demoniac returns to his village, naked save a bear-skin or a ragged blanket, with a chaplet on his head and a red band of alder-bark about his neck. He springs on the first person he meets, bites out and swallows one or more mouthfuls of the man's living flesh wherever he can fix his teeth, then rushes to another and another, repeating his revolting meal till he falls into a torpor from his sudden and half-masticated surfeit of flesh. For some days after this he lies in a kind of coma, "like an over-gorged beast of prey," as Dunn says; the same observer adding that his breath during that time is "like an exhalation from a grave." The victims of this ferocity dare not resist the bite of the taamish; on the contrary, they are sometimes willing to offer themselves to the ordeal, and are always proud of its scars.[V-7]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA GODS.]

The Nootkas acknowledge the existence of a great personage called Quahootze, whose habitation is apparently in the sky, but of whose nature little is known. When a storm begins to rage dangerously the Nootkas climb to the top of their houses and looking upwards to this great god, they beat drums and chant and call upon his name, imploring him to still the tempest. They fast, as something agreeable to the same deity, before setting out on the hunt, and, if their success warrant it, hold a feast in his honor after their return. This festival is held usually in December, and it was formerly the custom to finish it with a human sacrifice, an atrocity now happily fallen into disuse; a boy, with knives stuck through the superficial flesh of his arms, legs, and sides, being exhibited as a substitute for the ancient victim.

Matlose is a famous hob-goblin of the Nootkas; he is a very Caliban of spirits; his head is like the head of something that might have been a man but is not; his uncouth bulk is horrid with black bristles; his monstrous teeth and nails are like the fangs and claws of a bear. Whoever hears his terrible voice falls like one smitten, and his curved claws rend a prey into morsels with a single stroke.

The Nootkas, like so many American peoples, have a tradition of a supernatural teacher and benefactor, an old man that came to them up the Sound long ago. His canoe was copper, and the paddles of it copper; every thing he had on him or about him was of the same metal. He landed and instructed the men of that day in many things; telling them that he came from the sky, that their country should be eventually destroyed, that they should all die, but after death rise and live with him above. Then all the people rose up angry, and took his canoe from him, and slew him; a crime from which their descendants have derived much benefit, for copper and the use of it have remained with them ever since. Huge images, carved in wood, still stand in their houses intended to represent the form and hold in remembrance the visit of this old man--by which visit is not improbably intended to be signified an avatar or incarnation of that chief deity, or great spirit, worshiped by many Californian tribes as 'the Old Man above.'

The Ahts regard the moon and the sun as their highest deities, the moon being the husband and the sun the wife. To the moon chiefly, as the more powerful deity, they pray for what they require; and to both moon and sun, as to all good deities, their prayers are addressed directly and without the intervention of the sorcerers. Quawteaht--which seems to be a local Aht modification of Quahootze--who made most things that are in the world, was the first to teach the people to worship these luminaries who, over all and seeing all, are more powerful than himself, though more distant and less active. There is also that Tootooch, thunder-bird, of which so much has been already said.

The Nootkas, in general, believe in the existence of numberless spirits of various kinds, and in the efficacy of sorcery. As in neighboring nations, the shamán gains or renews his inspiration by fasting and solitary meditation in some retired place, re-appearing at the end of his vigil half-starved and half-insane, but filled with the black virtue of his art. He does not generally collect a meal of living human flesh like the taamish of the preceding family, but he is satisfied with what his teeth can tear from the corpses in the burial-places. Old women are admitted to a share in the powers of sorcery and prophecy and the interpretation of omens and dreams; the latter a most important function, as few days and nights pass over a Nootka house that do not give occasion by some vision or occurrence for the office of the sibyl or the augur.[V-8]

[Sidenote: PARADISE LOST OF THE OKANAGANS.]

The Okanagans believe in a good spirit or master of life, called Elemehumkillanwaist or Skyappe; and in a bad spirit Kishtsamah or Chacha; both moving constantly through the air, so that nothing can be done without their knowledge. The Okanagans have no worship public or private, but before engaging in anything of importance they offer up a short prayer to the good spirit for assistance; again on state occasions, a pipe is passed round and each one smokes three whiffs toward the rising sun, the same toward the setting, and the same respectively toward the heaven above and the earth beneath. Then they have their great mythic ruler and heroine, Scomalt, whose story is intimately connected with a kind of Okanagan fall or paradise lost. Long ago, so long ago that the sun was quite young and very small and no bigger than a star, there was an island far out at sea called Samahtumiwhoolah, or the White Man's Island. It was inhabited by a white race of gigantic stature, and governed by a tall fair woman called Scomalt; and she was a great and strong 'medicine,' this Scomalt. At last the peace of the island was destroyed by war, and the noise of battle was heard, the white men fighting the one with the other; and Scomalt was exceedingly wroth. She rose up and said: lo, now I will drive these wicked far from me; my soul shall be no longer vexed concerning them, neither shall they trouble the faithful of my people with their strivings any more. And she drove the rebellious together to the uttermost end of the island, and broke off the piece of land on which they were huddled, and pushed it out to sea to drift whither it would. This floating island was tossed to and fro many days and buffeted of the winds exceedingly, so that all the people thereon died save one man and one woman, who, seeing their island was ready to sink, made themselves a canoe and gat them away toward the west. After paddling day and night for many suns, they came to certain islands, whence steering through them, they came at last to where the mainland was, being the territory that the Okanagans now inhabit; it was, however, much smaller in those days, having grown much since. This man and woman were so sorely weather-beaten when they landed that they found their original whiteness quite gone, and a dusky reddish color in its place. All the people of the continent are descended from this pair, and the dingy skin of their storm-tossed ancestors has become a characteristic of the race. And even, as in time past the wrath of the fair Scomalt loosed the island of their ancestors from its mainland, and sent it adrift with its burden of sinful men, so in a time to come, the deep lakes, that like some Hannibal's vinegar soften the rocks of the foundations of the world, and the rivers that run for ever and gnaw them away, shall set the earth afloat again; then shall the end of the world be, the awful itsowleigh.[V-9]

The Salish tribes believe the sun to be the chief deity, and certain ceremonies, described by Mr Lord as having taken place on the death of a chief, seem to indicate that fire is in some way connected with the great light.[V-10] The chief is ex officio a kind of priest, presiding for the most part at the various observances by which the deity of the sun is recognized. There is the usual belief in sorcery and second sight, and individuals succeed, by force of special gifts for fasting and lonely meditation, in having themselves accounted conjurers--an honor of dubious profit, as medicine-men are constantly liable to be shot by an enraged relative of any one whose death they may be supposed to have brought about.

[Sidenote: DEITIES OF THE CLALLAMS.]

The Clallams, a coast tribe on the mainland opposite the south end of Vancouver Island, have a principal good deity called by various names, and an evil spirit called Skoocoom; to these some add a certain Teyutlma, 'the genius of good fortune.' The medicine-men of the tribe are supposed to have much influence both for good and evil with these spirits and with all the demon race, or sehuiáb as the latter are sometimes called. In this tribe the various conjurers are united by the bonds of a secret society, the initiation into which is attended by a good deal of ceremony and expense. Three days and three nights must the novice of the order fast alone in a mysterious lodge prepared for him, round which during all that time the brethren already initiated sing and dance. This period elapsed, during which it would seem that the old nature has been killed out of him, he is taken up like one dead and soused into the nearest cold water, where he is washed till he revives; which thing they call "washing the dead." When his senses are sufficiently gathered to him, he is set on his feet; upon which he runs off into the forest, whence he soon reappears a perfect medicine-man, rattle in hand and decked out with the various trappings of his profession. He then parts all his worldly gear among his friends, himself henceforth to be supported only by the fees of his new calling.[V-11]

Ikánam, the creator of the universe, is a powerful deity among the Chinooks, who have a mountain named after him from a belief that he there turned himself into stone. After him, or before him as many say, comes Italapas, the Coyote, who created men after an imperfect fashion,[V-12] taught them how to make nets and catch salmon, how to make a fire, and how to cook; for this the first fruits of the fishing season are always sacred to him, and his figure is to be found carved on the head of almost every Chinook canoe on the Columbia. They have a fire-spirit, an evil spirit, and a body of familiar spirits, tamanowas. Each person has his special spirit, selected by him at an early age, sometimes by fasting and other mortification of the flesh, sometimes by the adoption of the first object the child or young man sees, or thinks he sees, on visiting the woods. These spirits have a great effect on the imagination of the Chinooks, and their supposed directions are followed under pain of mysterious and awful punishments; people converse--"particularly when in the water"--with them, apparently talking to themselves in low monotonous tones. Some say that when a man dies his tamanowa passes to his son; but the whole matter is darkened with much mystery and secrecy; the name of one's familiar spirit or guardian never being mentioned even to the nearest friend. A similar custom forbids the mention of a dead man's name, at least till many years have elapsed after the bereavement.

The Chinook medicine-men are possessed of the usual powers of converse and mediation with the spirits good and evil; there are two classes of them, employed in all cases of sickness--the etaminuas, or priests, who intercede for the soul of the patient, and, if necessary, for its safe passage to the land of spirits--and the keelalles, or doctors, sometimes women, whose duty it is to administer medical as well as spiritual aid.[V-13]

With the Cayuses and the Walla-Wallas any one may become a medicine-man; among the Nez Percés the office belongs to an hereditary order. Women are sometimes trained to the profession, but they are not believed to hold such extreme powers as the males, nor are they murdered on the supposed exercise of some fatal influence. For, as with the Chinooks[V-14] so here, the reputation of sorcerer is at once the most terrible to others and the most dangerous to one's self that one can have. His is a power of life, and death; his evil eye can wither and freeze a hated life if not as swiftly at least as surely as the stare of the Medusa; he is mortal, however--he can slay your friend or yourself, and death is bitter, but then how sweet an anodyne is revenge! There is no strong magic can avail when the heart's blood trickles down the avenger's shaft, no cunning enchantment that can keep the life in when his tomahawk crumbles the skull like a potsherd--and so it comes about that the conjurers walk everywhere with their life in their hand, and are constrained to be very wary in their exercise of their nefarious powers.[V-15]

[Sidenote: SHOSHONE DEMONS.]

The Shoshone legends people certain parts of the mountains of Montana with little imps or demons called ninumbees, who are about two feet long, perfectly naked, and provided each with a tail. These limbs of the evil one are accustomed to eat up any unguarded infant they may find, leaving in its stead one of their own baneful race. When the mother comes to suckle what she supposes to be her child, the fiendish changeling seizes her breast and begins to devour it; then, although her screams and the alarm thereby given soon force the malicious imp to make his escape, there is no hope further; she dies within the twenty-four hours, and if not well watched in the meantime, the little demon will even return and make an end of her by finishing his interrupted meal. There is another variety of these hobgoblins call pahonahs, 'water-infants,' who devour women and children as do their brother-fiends of the mountain, and complete the ring of ghoulish terror that closes round the Shoshone child and mother.[V-16]

The Californian tribes, taken as a whole, are pretty uniform in the main features of their theogonic beliefs. They seem, without exception, to have had a hazy conception of a lofty, almost supreme being; for the most part referred to as a Great Man, the Old Man Above, the One Above; attributing to him, however, as is usual in such cases, nothing but the vaguest and most negative functions and qualities. The real, practical power that most interested them, who had most to do with them and they with him, was a demon, or body of demons, of a tolerably pronounced character. In the face of divers assertions to the effect that no such thing as a devil proper has ever been found in savage mythology, we would draw attention to the following extract from the Pomo manuscript of Mr Powers--a gentleman who, both by his study and by personal investigation, has made himself one of the best qualified authorities on the belief of the native Californian, and whose dealings have been for the most part with tribes that have never had any friendly intercourse with white men:--"Of course the thin and meagre imagination of the American savages was not equal to the creation of Milton's magnificent imperial Satan, or of Goethe's Mephistopheles, with his subtle intellect, his vast powers, his malignant mirth; but in so far as the Indian fiends or devils have the ability, they are wholly as wicked as these. They are totally bad, they have no good thing in them, they think only evil; but they are weak and undignified and absurd; they are as much beneath Satan as the 'Big Indians' who invent them are inferior in imagination to John Milton."[V-17]

A definite location is generally assigned to the evil one as his favorite residence or resort; thus the Californians in the county of Siskiyou, give over Devil's Castle, its mount and lake, to the malignant spirits, and avoid the vicinity of these places with all possible care.

[Sidenote: SACRED FIRES.]

The medicine-man of these people is a personage of some importance, dressing in the most costly furs; he is a non-combatant, not coming on the field till after the fight; among other duties, it is absolutely necessary for him to visit any camp from which the tribe has been driven by the enemy, there to chant the death-song and appease the angry spirit that wrought this judgment of defeat, for only after this has been done is it thought safe to light again the lodge-fires on the old hearths. Once lit these lodge-fires are never allowed to go out during times of peace; it would be a bad omen, and omens are everything with these men, and deducible from all things. The power of prophecy is thoroughly believed in, and is credited not only to special seers, but also to distinguished warriors going into battle; in the latter case, as far at least as their own several fate is concerned; this, according to Mr Miller, they often predict with startling accuracy.[V-18]

There is a strange sacredness mixed up with the sweat-house and its use, among the Cahrocs, the Eurocs, and many other tribes. The men of every village spend the winter and rainy season in its warm shelter; but squaws are forbidden to enter, under penalty of death, except when they are initiated into the ranks of the 'medicines.' So consistent are the Indians in this matter, that women are not allowed even to gather the wood that is to be burned in the sacred fire of a sweat-house; all is done by men, and that only with certain precautions and ceremonies. The sacred fire is lit every year in September by a 'medicine' who has gone out into the forest and fasted and meditated for ten days; and, till a certain time has elapsed, no secular eye must behold so much as the smoke of it under awful penalties. The flame once burning is never suffered to go out till the spring begins to render further heat unnecessary and inconvenient.

On one only occasion is the ban lifted from the head of women; when a female is being admitted to the medicine ranks, she is made to dance in the sweat-house till she falls exhausted. It does not appear, however, that even by becoming a medicine can she hope to see twice the interior of this lodge.

The admission of a man to the medicine is a much severer affair. He must retire to the forest for ten days, eating no meat the while, and only enough acorn-porridge to keep the life in him; the ten days past, he returns to the sweat-house and leaps up and down till he falls, just as the woman did.

The doctors or sorcerers are of two kinds, 'root doctors' and 'barking doctors.' To the barking doctor falls the diagnosis of a case of sickness. He, or she, squats down opposite the patient, and barks at him after the manner of an enraged cur, for hours together. If it be a poisoning case, or a case of malady inflicted by some conjurer, the barking doctor then goes on to suck the evil thing out through the skin or administer emetics, as may be deemed desirable. If the case, however, be one of less serious proportions, the 'barker,' after having made his diagnosis, retires, and the root-doctor comes in, who, with his herbs and simples and a few minor incantations, proceeds to cure the ailment. If a patient die, then the medicine is forced to return his fee; and if he refuse to attend on anyone and the person die, then he is forced to pay to the relatives a sum equal to that which was tendered to him as a fee in the beginning of the affair; thus like all professions, that of a medicine has its draw-backs as well as advantages.

Several Northern Californian tribes have secret societies which meet in a lodge set apart, or in a sweat-house, and engage in mummeries of various kinds, all to frighten their women. The men pretend to converse with the devil, and make their meeting-place shake and ring again with yells and whoops. In some instances, one of their number, disguised as the master fiend himself, issues from the haunted lodge, and rushes like a madman through the village, doing his best to frighten contumacious women and children out of their senses. This, it would seem, has been going on from time immemorial and the poor women are still gulled by it, and even frightened into more or less prolonged fits of wifely propriety and less easy virtue.

[Sidenote: CALIFORNIAN DEITIES.]

The coast tribes of Del Norte County, California, live in constant terror of a malignant spirit that takes the form of certain animals, the form of a bat, of a hawk, of a tarantula, and so on--but especially delights in and affects that of a screech-owl. The belief of the Russian-River tribes and others is practically identical with this.

The Cahrocs have, as we already know, some conception of a great deity, called Chareya, the Old Man Above; he is wont to appear upon earth at times to some of the most favored sorcerers; he is described as wearing a close tunic, with a medicine-bag, and as having long white hair that falls venerably about his shoulders. Practically, however, the Cahrocs, like the majority of Californian tribes, venerate chiefly the coyote. Great dread is also had of certain forest-demons of nocturnal habits; these, say the Eurocs, take the form of bears and shoot arrows at benighted wayfarers.[V-19]

Between the foregoing outlines of Californian belief and those connected with the remaining tribes, passing south, we can detect no salient difference till we reach the Olchones, a coast tribe between San Francisco and Monterey; the sun here begins to be connected, or identified by name, with that great spirit, or rather, that Big Man, who made the earth and who rules in the sky.[V-20] So we find it again both around Monterey and around San Luis Obispo; the first fruits of the earth were offered in these neighborhoods to the great light, and his rising was greeted with cries of joy.[V-21]

Father Gerónimo Boscana[V-22] gives us the following relation of the faith and worship of the Acagchemem nations, in the valley and neighborhood of San Juan Capistrano, California. Part of it would fall naturally into that part of this work alloted to origin; but the whole is so intimately mixed with so much concerning the life, deeds, and worship of various supernatural personages that it has seemed better to fit its present position than any other. Of the first part of the tradition there are two versions--if indeed they be versions of the same tradition. We give first that version held by the serranos, or highlanders, of the interior country, three or four leagues inland from the said San Juan Capistrano:--

Before the material world at all existed there lived two beings, brother and sister, of a nature that can not be explained; the brother living above, and his name meaning the Heavens, the sister living below and her name signifying Earth. From the union of these two, there sprang a numerous offspring. Earth and sand were the first fruits of this marriage; then were born rocks and stones; then trees both great and small; then grass and herbs; then animals; lastly was born a great personage called Ouiot, who was a "grand captain." By some unknown mother many children of a medicine race were born to this Ouiot. All these things happened in the north; and afterward when men were created they were created in the north; but as the people multiplied they moved toward the south, the earth growing larger also and extending itself in the same direction.

[Sidenote: THE COYOTE OF THE ACAGCHEMEMS.]

In process of time, Ouiot becoming old, his children plotted to kill him, alleging that the infirmities of age made him unfit any longer to govern them or attend to their welfare. So they put a strong poison in his drink, and when he drank of it a sore sickness came upon him; he rose up and left his home in the mountains and went down to what is now the sea-shore, though at that time there was no sea there. His mother, whose name is the Earth, mixed him an antidote in a large shell, and set the potion out in the sun to brew; but the fragrance of it attracted the attention of the Coyote, who came and overset the shell. So Ouiot sickened to death, and though he told his children that he would shortly return and be with them again, he has never been seen since. All the people made a great pile of wood and burnt his body there, and just as the ceremony began the Coyote leaped upon the body, saying that he would burn with it; but he only tore a piece of flesh from the stomach and ate it and escaped. After that the title of the Coyote was changed from Eyacque, which means Sub-captain, to Eno, that is to say, Thief and Cannibal.

When now the funeral rites were over, a general council was held and arrangements made for collecting animal and vegetable food; for up to this time the children and descendants of Ouiot had nothing to eat but a kind of white clay. And while they consulted together, behold a marvelous thing appeared before them, and they spoke to it saying: Art thou our captain, Ouiot. But the spectre said: Nay, for I am greater than Ouiot; my habitation is above, and my name is Chinigchinich. Then he spoke further, having been told for what they were come together: I create all things, and I go now to make man, another people like unto you; as for you I give you power, each after his kind, to produce all good and pleasant things. One of you shall bring rain, and another dew, and another make the acorn grow, and others other seeds, and yet others shall cause all kinds of game to abound in the land; and your children shall have this power for ever, and they shall be sorcerers to the men I go to create, and shall receive gifts of them, that the game fail not and the harvests be sure. Then Chinigchinich made man; out of the clay of the lake he formed him, male and female; and the present Californians are the descendants of the one or more pairs there and thus created.

So ends the known tradition of the mountaineers; we must now go back and take up the story anew at its beginning, as told by the playanos, or people of the valley of San Juan Capistrano. These say that an invisible all-powerful being, called Nocuma, made the world and all that it contains of things that grow and move. He made it round like a ball and held it in his hands, where it rolled about a good deal at first, till he steadied it by sticking a heavy black rock called tosaut into it, as a kind of ballast. The sea was at this time only a little stream running round the world, and so crowded with fish that their twinkling fins had no longer room to move; so great was the press that some of the more foolish fry were for effecting a landing and founding a colony, upon the dry land, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that they were persuaded by their elders, that the killing air and baneful sun and the want of feet must infallibly prove the destruction before many days of all who took part in such a desperate enterprise. The proper plan was evidently to improve and enlarge their present home; and to this end, principally by the aid of one very large fish, they broke the great rock tosaut in two, finding a bladder in the centre filled with a very bitter substance. The taste of it pleased the fish, so they emptied it into the water, and instantly the water became salt and swelled up and overflowed a great part of the old earth, and made itself the new boundaries that remain to this day.

Then Nocuma created a man, shaping him out of the soil of the earth, calling him Ejoni. A woman also the great god made, presumably of the same material as the man, calling her Aé. Many children were born to this first pair, and their descendants multiplied over the land. The name of one of these last was Sirout, that is to say, Handful of Tobacco, and the name of his wife was Ycaiut, which means Above; and to Sirout and Ycaiut was born a son, while they lived in a place north-east about eight leagues from San Juan Capistrano. The name of this son was Ouiot, that is to say Dominator; he grew a fierce and redoubtable warrior; haughty, ambitious, tyrannous, he extended his lordship on every side, ruling everywhere as with a rod of iron; and the people conspired against him. It was determined that he should die by poison; a piece of the rock tosaut was ground up in so deadly a way that its mere external application was sufficient to cause death. Ouiot, notwithstanding that he held himself constantly on the alert, having been warned of his danger by a small burrowing animal called the cucumel, was unable to avoid his fate; a few grains of the cankerous mixture were dropped upon his breast while he slept, and the strong mineral ate its way to the very springs of his life. All the wise men of the land were called to his assistance; but there was nothing for him save to die. His body was burned on a great pile with songs of joy and dances, and the nation rejoiced.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST MEDICINE-MAN.]

While the people were gathered to this end, it was thought advisable to consult on the feasibility of procuring seed and flesh to eat instead of the clay which had up to this time been the sole food of the human family. And while they yet talked together, there appeared to them, coming they knew not whence, one called Attajen, "which name implies man, or rational being." And Attajen, understanding their desires, chose out certain of the elders among them, and to these gave he power; one that he might cause rain to fall, to another that he might cause game to abound, and so with the rest, to each his power and gift, and to the successors of each for ever. These were the first medicine-men.

Many years having elapsed since the death of Ouiot, there appeared in the same place one called Ouiamot, reputed son of Tacu and Auzar--people unknown, but natives; it is thought by Boscana, of "some distant land." This Ouiamot is better known by his great name Chinigchinich, which means Almighty. He first manifested his powers to the people on a day when they had met in congregation for some purpose or other; he appeared dancing before them crowned with a kind of high crown made of tall feathers stuck into a circlet of some kind, girt with a kind of petticoat of feathers, and having his flesh painted black and red. Thus decorated he was called the tobet. Having danced some time, Chinigchinich called out the medicine-men, or puplems as they were called, among whom it would appear the chiefs are always numbered, and confirmed their power; telling them that he had come from the stars to instruct them in dancing and all other things, and commanding that in all their necessities they should array themselves in the tobet, and so dance as he had danced, supplicating him by his great name, that thus they might receive of their petitions. He taught them how to worship him, how to build vanquechs, or places of worship, and how to direct their conduct in various affairs of life. Then he prepared to die, and the people asked him if they should bury him; but he warned them against attempting such a thing: If ye buried me, he said, ye would tread upon my grave, and for that my hand would be heavy upon you; look to it, and to all your ways, for lo, I go up where the high stars are, where mine eyes shall see all the ways of men; and whosoever will not keep my commandments nor observe the things I have taught, behold disease shall plague all his body, and no food shall come near his lips, the bear shall rend his flesh, and the crooked tooth of the serpent shall sting him.

[Sidenote: SANCTUARIES OF REFUGE.]

The vanquech, or place of worship, seems to have been an unroofed inclosure of stakes, within which, on a hurdle, was placed the image of the god Chinigchinich. This image was the skin of a coyote or that of a mountain-cat stuffed with the feathers of certain birds, and with various other things, so that it looked like a live animal; a bow and some arrows were attached to it on the outside, and other arrows were thrust down its throat so that the feathers of them appeared at the mouth as out of a quiver. The whole place of the inclosure was sacred, and not to be approached without reverence; it does not seem that sacrifices formed any part of the worship there offered, but only prayer, and sometimes a kind of pantomime connected with the undertaking desired to be furthered--thus, desiring success in hunting one mimicked the actions of the chase, leaping and twanging one's bow. Each vanquech was a city of refuge, with rights of sanctuary exceeding any ever granted in Jewish or Christian countries. Not only was every criminal safe there whatever his crime, but the crime was as it were blotted out from that moment, and the offender was at liberty to leave the sanctuary and walk about as before; it was not lawful even to mention his crime; all that the avenger could do was to point at him and deride him, saying: Lo, a coward, who has been forced to flee to Chinigchinich! This flight was rendered so much a meaner thing in that it only turned the punishment from the head of him that fled upon that of some of his relatives; life went for life, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, even to the third and fourth generation, for justice' sake.

Besides Chinigchinich they worshiped, or at any rate feared, a god called Touch; who inhabited the mountains and the bowels of the earth, appearing, however, from time to time in the form of various animals of a terrifying kind. Every child at the age of six or seven received, sent to him from this god, some animal as a protector. To find out what this animal or spirit in the shape of animal was, narcotic drinks were swallowed, or the subject fasted and watched in the vanquech for a given time, generally three days. He whose rank entitled him to wait for his guardian apparition in the sacred inclosure, was set there by the side of the god's image, and on the ground before him was sketched by one of the wise men an uncouth figure of some animal. The child was then left to complete his vigil, being warned at the same time to endure its hardships with patience, in that any attempt to infringe upon its rules, by eating or drinking or otherwise, would be reported to the god by the sprawling figure the enchanter had drawn in the clay, and that in such a case the punishment of Chinigchinich would be terrible. After all this was over, a scar was made on the child's right arm, and sometimes on the thick part of the leg also, by covering the part, "according to the figure required," with a peculiar herb dried and powdered, and setting fire to it. This was a brand or seal required by Chinigchinich, and was besides supposed to strengthen the nerves and give "a better pulse for the management of the bow."[V-23]

The Acagchemems, like many other Californian tribes,[V-24] regard the great buzzard with sentiments of veneration, while they seem to have had connected with it several rites and ideas peculiar to themselves. They called this bird the panes, and once every year they had a festival of the same name, in which the principal ceremony was the killing of a buzzard without losing a drop of its blood. It was next skinned, all possible care being taken to preserve the feathers entire, as these were used in making the feathered petticoat and diadem, already described as part of the tobet. Last of all the body was buried within the sacred inclosure amid great apparent grief from the old women, they mourning as over the loss of relative or friend. Tradition explained this: the panes had indeed been once a woman, whom, wandering in the mountain ways, the great god Chinigchinich had come suddenly upon and changed into a bird. How this was connected with the killing of her anew every year by the people, and with certain extraordinary ideas held relative to that killing is, however, by no means clear; for it was believed that as often as the bird was killed it was made alive again, and more, and faith to move mountains--that the birds killed in one same yearly feast in many separate villages were one and the same bird. How these things were or why, none knew, it was enough that they were a commandment and ordinance of Chinigchinich, whose ways were not as the ways of men.[V-25]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: AND THERE WAS WAR IN HEAVEN.]

The Pericues of Lower California were divided into two sects, worshiping two hostile divinities who made a war of extermination upon each other. The tradition explains that there was a great lord in heaven, called Niparaya, who made earth and sea, and was almighty and invisible. His wife was Anayicoyondi, a goddess who, though possessing no body, bore him in a divinely mysterious manner three children; one of whom, Quaayayp, was a real man and born on earth, on the Acaragui mountains. Very powerful this young god was, and a long time he lived with the ancestors of the Pericues, whom it is almost to be inferred that he created; at any rate we are told that he was able to make men, drawing them up out of the earth. The men at last killed this their great hero and teacher, and put a crown of thorns upon his head.[V-26] Somewhere or other he remains lying dead to this day, and he remains constantly beautiful, neither does his body know corruption. Blood drips constantly from his wounds, and he can speak no more, being dead; yet there is an owl that speaks to him. And besides the before-spoken-of god Niparaya in heaven, there was another and hostile god called Wac or Tuparan. According to the Niparaya sect, this Wac had made war on their favorite god, and been by him defeated and cast forth of heaven into a cave under the earth, of which cave the whales of the sea were the guardians. With a perverse, though not unnatural obstinacy, the sect that held Wac or Tuparan to be their great god persisted in holding ideas peculiar to themselves with regard to the truth of the foregoing story; and their account of the great war in heaven and its results differed from the other, as differ the creeds of heterodox and orthodox everywhere; they ascribe, for example, part of the creation to other gods besides Niparaya.[V-27] The Cochimis and remaining natives of the Californian peninsula seem to have held in the main much the same ideas with regard to the gods and powers above them as the Pericues held, and the sorcerers of all had the common blowings, leapings, fastings, and other mummeries that make these professors of the sinister art so much alike everywhere in our territory.[V-28]

* * * * *

The natives of Nevada have ideas respecting a great kind Spirit of some kind, as well as a myth concerning an evil one; but they have no special class set apart as medicine-men.[V-29] The Utah belief seems to be as nearly as possible identical with that of Nevada.[V-30]

The Comanches acknowledge more or less vaguely a Supreme Spirit, but seem to use the Sun and the Earth as mediators with and, in some sort, as embodiments of him. They have a recognized body of sorcerers called puyacantes, and various religious ceremonies and chants; for the most part of a simple kind, and directed to the Sun as the great source of life, and to the Earth as the producer and receptacle of all that sustains life. According to the Abbé Domenech, every Comanche wears a little figure of the sun attached to his neck, or has a picture of it painted on his shield; from the ears of each hang also two crescents, which may possibly represent the moon.[V-31]

The Apaches recognize a supreme power in heaven under the name Yaxtaxitaxitanne, the creator and master of all things; but they render him no open service nor worship. To any taciturn cunning man they are accustomed to credit intercourse with a preternatural power of some kind, and to look to him as a sort of oracle in various emergencies. This is, in fact, their medicine-man, and in cases of illness he pretends to perform cures by the aid of herbs and ceremonies of various kinds.[V-32]

The Navajos, having the usual class of sorcerers, call their good deity Whaillahay, and their evil one Chinday; the principal use of their good god seems to be to protect them from their evil one. In smoking they sometimes puff their tobacco-smoke toward heaven with great formality; this is said to bring rain; to the same end certain long round stones, thought to be cast down by the clouds in a thunderstorm, are used with various ceremonies.

The sun, moon, and stars are thought to be powers connected with rain and fine weather; while the god Montezuma of their Pueblo neighbors is unknown among them.[V-33]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: MONTEZUMA OF THE PUEBLOS.]

All the Pueblo cities, though speaking different languages hold substantially the same faith. They seem to assent to the statement of the existence of a great and good spirit whose name is too sacred to be mentioned; but most say that Montezuma is his equal; and some, again, that the Sun is the same as or equal to Montezuma. There are, besides, the lesser divinities of water--Montezuma being considered in one aspect as the great rain-god, and as such often mentioned as being aided by or being in connection with a serpent. Over and above all these, the existence of a general class or body of evil spirits is taken for granted.

Many places in New Mexico claim to be the birthplace of the great leader, teacher, and god Montezuma. At any rate he is traditionally supposed to have appeared among the Pueblos before they had arrived at or built their present towns. Some traditions would make him either the ancestor or the creator of the same people; but the most regard him as a kind of semi or wholly divine priest, prophet, leader, and legislator. Under restrictions pointed out in a former note,[V-34] we may fairly regard him as at once the Melchizedek, the Moses, and the Messiah of these Pueblo desert wanderers from an Egypt that history is ignorant of, and whose name even tradition whispers not. He taught his people to build cities with tall houses, to construct estufas, or semi-sacred sweat-houses, and to kindle and guard the sacred fire.

At Acoma, it is said by some, was established the first Pueblo, and thence the people marched southward, forming others. Acoma was one, and Pecos another. At this last, Montezuma planted a tree upside down, and said that, on his leaving them, a strange nation should oppress them for many years, years also in which there should be no rain, but that they were to persist in watching the sacred fire until the tree fell, when he would return, with a white race which should destroy their enemies; and then rain should fall again and the earth be fertile. It is said that this tree fell from its abnormal position, as the American army entered Santa Fé.

[Sidenote: HE IS NOT DEAD BUT SLEEPETH.]

The watching of the fire, kept up in subterranean estufas, under a covering of ashes generally, and in the basin of a small altar, was no light task. The warriors took the post by turns, some said, for two successive days and nights, sans food, sans drink, sans sleep, sans everything. Others affirm that this watching was kept up till exhaustion and even death relieved the guard--the last not to be wondered at, seeing the insufferable closeness of the place and the accumulation of carbonic acid. The remains of the dead were, it was sometimes supposed, carried off by a monstrous serpent. This holy fire was believed to be the palladium of the city, and the watchers by it could well dream of that day, when, coming with the sun, Montezuma should descend by the column of smoke whose roots they fed, and should fill the shabby little estufa with a glory like that in a wilderness tabernacle they knew not of, where a more awful pillar of smoke shadowed the mystic cherubim. Hope dies hard, and the dim memories of a great past never quite fade away from among any people. No true-born British bard ever doubted of Arthur's return from his kingly rest in Avalon, nor that the flash of Excalibar should be one day again as the lightning of death in the eyes of the hated Saxon. The herders on the shore of Lucerne know that were Switzerland in peril, the Tell would spring from his sleep as at the crack of doom. "When Germany is at her lowest then is her greatness nearest" say the weird old ballads of that land; for then shall the Great Kaiser rise from the vault in the Kyffhäuser--Barbarossa shall rise, though his beard be grown through the long stone table. Neither is the Frank without his savior: Sing, O troubadours, sing and strike the chords proudly! Who shall prevail while Charlemagne but sleeps in the shadow of the Untersberg?--And so our Pueblo sentinel climbing the housetop at Pecos, looking ever eastward from Santo Domingo on the Rio Grande; he too waits for the beautiful feet upon the mountains and the plumes of him--

Who dwelt up in the yellow sun, And sorrowing for man's despair, Slid by his trailing yellow hair To earth, to rule with love and bring The blessedness of peace.[V-35]

The Pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests; they perform the various simple rites by which the power of the sun and of Montezuma is recognized as well as the power--according to some accounts--of "the Great Snake, to whom by order of Montezuma they are to look for life;" they also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for rain. There are painted representations of the Great Snake, together with that of a misshapen red-haired man declared to stand for Montezuma. Of this last there was also in 1845, in the pueblo of Laguna, a rude effigy or idol, intended, apparently, to represent only the head of the deity; it was made of tanned skin in the form of a brimless hat or cylinder open at the bottom. Half-way round, it was painted red; the other half was green. The green side was rudely marked to suggest a face: two triangles were cut for eyes; there was no nose; a circular leather patch served for a mouth, and two other patches in an appropriate situation suggested ears. Crowning the head was a small tuft of leather, said to be supplemented by feathers on festal occasions. A sorry image one would say, yet one looked upon by its exhibitors with apparently the greatest veneration; they kneeling in a most devoted manner, going through a form of prayer, and sprinkling it with a white powder. One of the worshipers said it was God and the brother of God; and the people bring it out in dry seasons, and, with dancing and other rites, invoke it for rain.

Christianity has now effaced the memory of most of the rites of the Pueblo religion, but Dr Ten Broeck noticed that many of the worshipers at the Christian church in Laguna carried little baskets in their hands containing images of domestic animals, or of beasts of the chase, molded in mud or dough; it being the custom, as it had been there from time immemorial, for those that had been successful in the chase, or in accumulating cattle, to bring such simulachres of their prosperity before the altar of God--probably, a modification produced by the poverty of the people of a rite as old as the altar of Abel, to wit, the offering of the firstlings and first-fruits to that Deity whose blessing had given the increase.

It has been affirmed, without much foundation or probability of truth, that the Pueblos worshiped fire and water.[V-36]

The Moquis know nothing of Montezuma; they believe in a Great Father, living where the sun rises, and in a great Mother, whose home is where the sun goes down. This Father is the father of evil, war, pestilence, and famine; but from the mother are all their joy, peace, plenty, and health.[V-37]

[Sidenote: MOJAVE DEITIES.]

The Mojaves tell of a certain Matevil, creator of heaven and earth, who was wont in time past to remain among them in a certain grand casa. This habitation was, however, by some untoward event broken down; the nations were destroyed; and Matevil departed eastward. Whence, in the latter days, he will again return to consolidate, prosper, and live with his people forever. This Matevil, or Mathowelia, has a son called Mastamho, who made the water and planted trees. There is also an Evil Spirit Newathie.[V-38]

* * * * *

From a letter just received from Judge Roseborough, I am enabled to close this chapter with some new and valuable facts regarding the religious ideas of certain tribes--not accurately specified--of the north-west portion of Upper California. The learned judge has given unusual attention to the subject of which he writes, and his opportunities for procuring information must have been frequent during ten years of travel and residence in the districts of the northern counties of California:--

Among the tribes in the neighborhood of Trinity river is found a legend relating to a certain Wappeckquemow, who was a giant, and apparently the father and leader of a pre-human race like himself. He was expelled from the country that he inhabited--near the mouth of the Klamath--for disobeying or offending some great god, and a curse was pronounced against him, so that not even his descendants should ever return to that land. On the expulsion of these Anakim, the ancestors of the people to whom this legend belongs came down from the north-west, a direction of migration, according to Judge Roseborough, uniformly adhered to in the legends of all the tribes of north-west California. These new settlers, however, like their predecessors of the giant race, quarreled with the great god and were abandoned by him to their own devices, being given over into the hands of certain evil powers or devils. Of these the first is Omahá, who, possessing the shape of a grizzly bear, is invisible and goes about everywhere bringing sickness and misfortune on mankind. Next there is Makalay, a fiend with a horn like a unicorn; he is swift as the wind and moves by great leaps like a kangaroo. The sight of him is usually death to mortals. There is, thirdly, a dreadful being called Kalicknateck, who seems a faithful reproduction of the great thunder-bird of the north: thus Kalicknateck "is a huge bird that sits on the mountain-peak, and broods in silence over his thoughts until hungry; when he will sweep down over the ocean, snatch up a large whale, and carry it to his mountain-throne, for a single meal."

Besides the before-mentioned powers of evil, these Trinity people have legends connected with other personages of the same nature, among whom are Wanuswegock, Surgelp, Napousney, and Nequiteh.

When white miners first came to work on the Trinity River, their advent caused, as may be imagined, much unsatisfactory speculation among the aborigines; some saying one thing of the whites and some another. At last an old seer of the Hoopah Valley settled the question by declaring that the new-comers were descendants of that banished Wappeckquemow, from whose heads the already-mentioned curse, forbidding their return, had been by some means lifted.

[Sidenote: THE KITCHEN-MIDDEN OF THE HOHGATES.]

The coast people in northern California have a story about a mysterious people called Hohgates, to whom is ascribed an immense bed of mussel-shells and bones of animals still existing on the table-land of Point St George, near Crescent City. These Hohgates, seven in number, are said to have come to the place in a boat, to have built themselves "houses above-ground, after the style of white men"--all this about the time that the first natives came down the coast from the north. These Hohgates, living at the point mentioned, killed many elk on land, and many seals and sea-lions in fishing excursions from their boats; using for the latter purpose a kind of harpoon made of a knife attached to a stick, and the whole fastened to the boat with a long line. They also sailed frequently to certain rocks, and loaded their little vessels with mussels. By all this they secured plenty of food, and the refuse of it, the bones and shells and so on, rapidly accumulated into the great kjökken mödding still to be seen. One day, however, all the Hohgates being out at sea in their boat, they struck a huge sea-lion with their rude harpoon, and, unable or unwilling to cut or throw off their line, were dragged with fearful speed toward a great whirlpool, called Chareckquin, that lay far toward the north-west. It is the place where souls go, where in darkness and cold the spirits shiver for ever; living men suffer even from its winds--from the north-west wind, the bleak and bitter Charreck-rawek. And just as the boat reached the edge of this fearful place, behold, a marvelous thing: the rope broke and the sea-monster was swept down alone into the whirl of wind and water, while the Hohgates were caught up into the air; swinging round and round, their boat floated steadily up into the vast of heaven. Nevermore on earth were the Hohgates seen; but there are seven stars in heaven that all men know of, and these stars are the seven Hohgates that once lived where the great shell-bed near Crescent City now is.

FOOTNOTES:

[V-1] Armstrong's Nar., pp. 102, 193; Richardson's Pol. Reg., pp. 319-20, 325; Richardson's Jour., vol. i., pp. 358, 385; Dall's Alaska, pp. 144-5.

[V-2] Hardisty, in Smithsonian Rept., 1866, pp. 318-19; Jarvis' Religion, Ind. N. Am., p. 91; Kennicott, in Whymper's Alaska, p. 345; Mackenzie's Voy., p. cxxviii.; Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 178; Ross, in Smithsonian Rept., 1866, pp. 306-7; Franklin's Nar., vol. i., pp. 246-7; Harmon's Jour., p. 300; Hooper's Tuski, p. 317; Richardson's Jour., vol. i., pp. 385-6; Dall's Alaska, pp. 83-90; Whymper's Alaska, pp. 231-2.

[V-3] Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., pp. 140-1; Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 174.

[V-4] D'Orbigny, Voy., pp. 579-80; Coxe's Russ. Dis., p. 217; Dall's Alaska, pp. 335, 389; See Bancroft's Nat. Races, vol. i., p. 93.

[V-5] In Holmberg's account of these Thlinkeet supernatural powers, nothing is said of the sun or moon as indicating the possession of life by them or of any qualities not material. But Dunn, The Oregon Territory, p. 284, and Dixon, Voyage Round the World, pp. 189-90, describe at least some tribe or tribes of the Thlinkeets and many tribes of the Haidahs, that consider the sun to be a great spirit moving over the earth once every day, animating and keeping alive all creatures, and, apparently, as being the origin of all; the moon is a subordinate and night watcher.

[V-6] Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., pp. 52-73; Dall's Alaska, pp. 421-3; Kotzebue's New Voyage, vol. ii., p. 58; Dunn's Oregon, p. 280; Bendel's Alex. Arch., pp. 31-3. This last traveler gives us a variation of the history of Yehl and Khanukh, which is best presented in his own words:--'The Klinkits do not believe in one Supreme Being, but in a host of good and evil spirits, above whom are towering two lofty beings of godlike magnitude, who are the principal objects of Indian reverence. These are Yethl and Kanugh--two brothers; the former the benefactor and well-wisher of mankind, but of a very whimsical and unreliable nature; the latter the stern God of War, terrible in his wrath, but a true patron of every fearless brave. It is he who sends epidemics, bloodshed and war to those who have displeased him, while it seems to be the principal function of Yethl to cross the sinister purposes of his dark-minded brother. Yethl and Kanugh lived formerly on earth, and were born of a woman of a supernatural race now passed away, about the origin and nature of which many conflicting legends are told, hard to comprehend. When Yethl walked on earth and was quite young he acquired great skill in the use of the bow and arrow. He used to kill large birds, assume their shape and fly about. His favorite bird was the raven; hence its name, "Yethl," which signifies "raven" in the Klinkit language. He had also the fogs and clouds at his command, and he would often draw them around him to escape his enemies. His brother's name, Kanugh, signifies "wolf," consequently "raven" and "wolf" are the names of the two gods of the Klinkits, who are supposed to be the founders of the Indian race.'

[V-7] Dunn's Oregon, pp. 253-9; Scouler, in _Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour._, vol. xi., p. 223; Bancroft's Nat. Races, vol. i., pp. 170-71.

[V-8] Jewitt's Nar., p. 83; Scouler, in Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour., vol. xi., pp. 223-4; Mofras, Explor., tom. i., p. 345; Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p. 136; Meares' Voy., p. 270; Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. v., pp. 222-4; Macfie's Vanc. Isl., pp. 433-441, 455; Barrett-Lennard's Trav., pp. 51-3; Sproat's Scenes, pp. 40, 156-8, 167-75, 205-11; Cook's Voy. to Pac., vol. ii., p. 317. As illustrating strongly the Nootka ideas with regard to the sanctity of the moon and sun, as well as the connection of the sun with the fire, it may be well to call attention to the two following customs:--'El Tays [chief] no puede hacer uso de sus mugeres sin ver enteramente iluminado el disco de la luna.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p. 145. 'Girls at puberty ... are kept particularly from the sun or fire.' Bancroft's Nat. Races, vol. i., p. 197. In this connection it may be mentioned that Mr Lord, Naturalist, vol. ii., p. 257, saw among the Nootkas while at Fort Rupert, a very peculiar Indian "medicine," a solid piece of native copper, hammered flat, oval it would appear from the description, and painted with curious devices, eyes of all sizes being especially conspicuous. The Hudson-Bay traders call it an "Indian copper," and said it was only exhibited on extraordinary occasions, and that its value to the tribe was estimated at fifteen slaves or two hundred blankets. This "medicine" was preserved in an elaborately ornamented wooden case, and belonging to the tribe, not to the chief, was guarded by the medicine-men. Similar sheets of copper are described by Schoolcraft as in use among certain of the Vesperic aborigines: May they all be intended for symbols of the sun, such as that reverenced by the Peruvians?

[V-9] Ross' Adven., pp. 287-9.

[V-10] 'The bravest woman of the tribe, one used to carrying ammunition to the warrior when engaged in fight, bared her breast to the person who for courage and conduct was deemed fit successor to the departed. From the breast he cut a small portion, which he threw into the fire. She then cut a small piece from the shoulder of the warrior, which was also thrown into the fire. A piece of bitter root, with a piece of meat, were next thrown into the fire, all these being intended as offerings to the Sun, the deity of the Flatheads.' Tolmie, in Lord's Nat., vol. ii., pp. 237-8. For references to the remaining matter of the paragraph see Id., vol. ii., pp. 237-43, 260.

[V-11] Kane's Wand., pp. 218-9; Gibbs' Clallam and Lummi Vocab., p. 15.

[V-12] This vol., pp. 95-6.

[V-13] Wilkes' Nar. in U. S. Ex. Ex., vol. v., pp. 124-5; Cox's Adven., vol. i., p. 317; Dunn's Oregon, pp. 125-6; Franchère's Nar., p. 258; Mofras, Explor., tom. ii., p. 354; Ross' Adven., p. 96; Parker's Explor. Tour, pp. 139, 246, 254; Tolmie, in Lord's Nat., vol. ii., p. 248; Gibbs' Chinook Vocab., pp. 11, 13; Gibbs' Clallam and Lummi Vocab., pp. 15, 29; Irving's Astoria, pp. 339-40; Tylor's Prim. Cult., vol. ii., p. 253.

[V-14] Parker's Explor. Tour, p. 254: 'The chiefs say, that they and their sons are too great to die of themselves, and although they may be sick, and decline, and die, as others do, yet some person, or some evil spirit instigated by some one, is the invisible cause of their death; and therefore when a chief, or chief's son dies, the supposed author of the deed must be killed.'

[V-15] Alvord, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 652.

[V-16] Stuart's Montana, pp. 64-6.

[V-17] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[V-18] Joaquin Miller's Life amongst the Modocs, pp. 21, 116, 259-60, 360.

[V-19] Powers' Pomo, MS.

[V-20] Beechey's Voy., vol. ii., p. 78.

[V-21] Fages, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., vol. ci., pp. 316, 335.

[V-22] Father Boscana, one of the earliest missionaries to Upper California, left behind him the short manuscript history from which the tradition following in the text has been taken--through the medium of a now rare translation by Mr Robinson. Filled with the prejudices of its age and of the profession of its author, it is yet marvelously truthlike; though a painstaking care has evidently been used with regard to its most apparently insignificant details, there are none of those too visible wrenchings after consistency, and fillings up of lacunae which so surely betray the hand of the sophisticator in so many monkish manuscripts on like and kindred subjects. There are found on the other hand frank confessions of ignorance on doubtful points, and many naïve and puzzled comments on the whole. It is apparently the longest and the most valuable notice in existence on the religion of a nation of the native Californians, as existing at the time of the Spanish conquest, and more worthy of confidence than the general run of such documents of any date whatever. The father procured his information as follows. He says: 'God assigned to me three aged Indians, the youngest of whom was over seventy years of age. They knew all the secrets, for two of them were capitanes, and the other a pul, who were well instructed in the mysteries. By gifts, endearments, and kindness, I elicited from them their secrets, with their explanations; and by witnessing the ceremonies which they performed, I learned by degrees, their mysteries. Thus, by devoting a portion of the nights to profound meditation, and comparing their actions with their disclosures, I was enabled after a long time, to acquire a knowledge of their religion.' Boscana, in Robinson's Life in Cal., p. 236.

[V-23] See p. 113, of this volume, for a custom among the Mexicans not without analogies to this.

[V-24] See p. 134, of this volume.

[V-25] Boscana, in Robinson's Life in Cal., pp. 242-301.

[V-26] The Christian leaven, whose workings are evident through this narrative, ferments here too violently to need pointing out.

[V-27] See pp. 83-4, this volume.

[V-28] Venegas, Noticia de la Cal., tom. i., pp. 102-124; Clavigero, Storia della Cal., tom. i., pp. 135-141; Humboldt, Essai Pol., tom. i., p. 314.

[V-29] Virginia City Chronicle, quoted in S. F. Daily Ev'g Post, of Oct. 12th, 1872; Browne's Lower Cal., p. 188.

[V-30] De Smet's Letters, p. 41.

[V-31] Parker, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 684; Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner's Rept., pp. 35-6, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii.; Barreiro, Ojeada sobre N. Mex., ap. p. 8; Filley's Life and Adven., p. 82; Marcy's Army Life, pp. 58, 64; Domenech, Jour. d'un Miss., pp. 13, 131, 469.

[V-32] Barreiro, Ojeada sobre N. Mex., ap. pp. 2-3; Henry, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. v., p. 212.

[V-33] Crofutt's Western World, Aug. 1872, p. 27; Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner's Rept., p. 42, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii.; Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., p. 91; Bristol, in Ind. Aff. Rept., Special Com., 1867, p. 358; Brinton's Myths, p. 158; Domenech's Deserts, vol. ii., p. 402.

[V-34] See pp. 77-8, note 36, this volume.

[V-35] Joaquin Miller's Californian.

[V-36] Gregg's Com. Prairies, vol. i., pp. 271-3; Davis' El Gringo, pp. 142, 396; Simpson's Overland Journ., pp. 21-3; Domenech's Deserts, vol. i., pp. 164-5, 418, vol. ii., pp. 62-3, 401; Möllhausen, Tagebuch, pp. 170, 219, 284; Meline's Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, pp. 202, 226; Ruxton's Adven. in Mex., p. 193; Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., p. 73; Ward, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1864, pp. 192-3; Emory's Reconnoissance, p. 30; Tylor's Prim. Cult., vol. ii., p. 384; Brinton's Myths, p. 190; Coronado, in Hakluyt's Voy., vol. iii., p. 379. Fremont gives an account of the birth of Montezuma. His mother was, it is said, a woman of exquisite beauty, admired and sought after by all men, they making her presents of corn and skins and all that they had; but the fastidious beauty would accept nothing of them but their gifts. In process of time a season of drought brought on a famine and much distress; then it was that the rich lady showed her charity to be as great in one direction as it had been wanting in another. She opened her granaries and the gifts of the lovers she had not loved went to relieve the hungry she pitied. At last with rain, fertility returned to the earth; and on the chaste Artemis of the Pueblos its touch fell too. She bore a son to the thick summer shower and that son was Montezuma.

[V-37] Ten Broeck, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iv., pp. 85-6.

[V-38] Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner's Rept., pp. 42-3, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii.; Dodt, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1870, p. 129.

VI. GODS, SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, AND WORSHIP

GODS AND RELIGIOUS RITES OF CHIHUAHUA, SONORA, DURANGO, AND SINALOA -- THE MEXICAN RELIGION, RECEIVED WITH DIFFERENT DEGREES OF CREDULITY BY DIFFERENT CLASSES OF THE PEOPLE -- OPINIONS OF DIFFERENT WRITERS AS TO ITS NATURE -- MONOTHEISM OF NEZAHUALCOYOTL -- PRESENT CONDITION OF THE STUDY OF MEXICAN MYTHOLOGY -- TEZCATLIPOCA -- PRAYERS TO HIM IN TIME OF PESTILENCE, OF WAR, FOR THOSE IN AUTHORITY -- PRAYER USED BY AN ABSOLVING PRIEST -- GENUINENESS OF THE FOREGOING PRAYERS -- CHARACTER AND WORKS OF SAHAGUN.

From the Pueblo cities let us now pass down into Mexico, glancing first at the northern and north-western neighbors of this great people that ruled on the plateau of Anáhuac. The Chihuahuans worshiped a great god called by them the 'captain of heaven' and recognized a lesser divinity as abiding in and inspiring their priests and medicine-men. They rendered homage to the sun; and when any comet or other phenomenon appeared in the heavens they offered sacrifice thereto; their sacrifice being much after the Mexican fashion--fruits, herbs, and such things as they had, together with blood drawn from their bodies by the pricks of a thorn.[VI-1]

[Sidenote: GODS OF SONORA AND DURANGO.]

In Sonora--the great central heart of Mexico making its beatings more and more clearly felt as we approach it nearer--the vague feelings of awe and reverence with which the savage regards the unseen, unknown, and unknowable powers, begin at last to somewhat lose their vagueness and to crystallize into the recognition of a power to be represented and symbolized by a god made with hands. The offerings thereto begin also, more and more, to lose their primitive simple shape, and the blood, without which is no remission of sins, stains the rude altar that a more Arcadian race had only heaped with flowers and fruit. The natives of Sonora bring, says Las Casas, "many deer, wolves, hares, and birds before a large idol, with music of many flutes and other instruments of theirs; then cutting open the animals through the middle, they take out their hearts and hang them round the neck of the image, wetting it with the flowing blood. It is certain that the only offering made in all this province of Sonora was the hearts of brutes."[VI-2] All this they did more especially in two great festivals they had, the one at seed-time, the other at harvest; and we have reason to rejoice that the thing was no worse, reason to be glad that the hearts of brave men and fair women, and soft children not knowing their right hand from their left, were not called for, as in the land of the eagle and cactus banner, to feed that devil's Minotaur, superstition.

The people of Durango called the principal power in which they believed Meyuncame, that is to say, Maker of All Things; they had another god, Cachiripa, whose name is all we know of him. They had besides innumerable private idols, penates of all possible and impossible figures; some being stone, shaped by nature only. In one village they worshiped a great flint knife that their flint implements of every kind might be good and sure. They had gods of storm and gods of sunshine, gods of good and gods of evil, gods of everything in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth. Their idols received bloody sacrifices, not always of beasts; a bowl containing beans and the cooked human flesh of an enemy was offered to them for success in war.[VI-3]

Much of the preceding paragraph belongs also to Sinaloa or cannot be exactly located more in the one province than in the other. The Sinaloas are said to have venerated above all the other gods one called Cocohuame, which is, being interpreted, Death. They worshiped also a certain Ouraba,[VI-4] which is Valor, offering him bows, arrows, and all kinds of instruments of war. To Sehuatoba, that is to say Pleasure, they sacrificed feathers, raiment, beads of glass, and women's ornaments. Bamusehua was the god of water. In some parts, it is said, there was recognized a divine element in common herbs and birds. One deity--or devil, as Ribas calls him with the exquisite courtesy that distinguishes the theosophic historian--was the especial patron of a class of wizards closely resembling the shamáns and medicine-men of the north. No one seemed to know exactly the powers of this deity, but everyone admitted their extent by recognizing with a respectful awe their effects; effects brought about through the agency of the wizards, by the use of bags, rattles, magic stones, blowings, suckings, and all that routine of sorcery with which we are already familiar. This deity was called Grandfather or Ancestor.[VI-5]

One Sinaloa nation, the Tahus, in the neighborhood of Culiacan, reared great serpents for which they had a good deal of veneration. They propitiated their gods with offerings of precious stones and rich stuffs, but they did not sacrifice men. With an altogether characteristic insinuation, the Abbé Domenech says, that though highly immoral in the main, they so highly respected women who devoted themselves to a life of celibacy, that they held great festivals in their honor--leaving the reader to suppose that the Tahus had a class of female religious who devoted themselves to a life of chastity and were respected for that reason; the truth is found to be, on referring to the author Castañeda--from whom apparently the abbé has taken this half truth and whole falsehood--that these estimable celibate women were the public prostitutes of the nation.[VI-6]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE MEXICAN RELIGION AND ITS HISTORIANS.]

The Mexican religion, as transmitted to us, is a confused and clashing chaos of fragments. If ever the great nation of Anáhuac had its Hesiod or its Homer, no ray of his light has reached the stumbling feet of research in that direction; no echo of his harmony has been ever heard by any ear less dull than that of a Zumárraga. It is given to few men to rise above their age, and it is folly to expect grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles; yet it is hard to suppress wholly some feelings of regret, in poring upon those ponderous tomes of sixteenth and seventeenth century history that touch upon Mexican religion; one pities far less the inevitable superstition and childish ignorance of the barbarian than the senility of his Christian historian and critic--there was some element of hope and evidence of attainment in what the half-civilized barbarian knew; but from what heights of Athenian, Roman, and Alexandrian philosophy and eloquence, had civilization fallen into the dull and arrogant nescience of the chronicles of the clergy of Spain.

We have already noticed[VI-7] the existence of at least two schools of religious philosophy in Mexico, two average levels of thought, the one that of the vulgar and credulous, the other that of the more enlightened and reflective. It has resulted from this that different writers differ somewhat in their opinions with regard to the precise nature and essence of that religion, some saying one thing and some another. I cannot show this more shortly and--what is much more important in a subject like this--more exactly, than by quoting a number of these opinions:

"Turning from the simple faiths of savage tribes of America, to the complex religion of the half-civilized Mexican nation, we find what we might naturally expect, a cumbrous polytheism complicated by mixture of several national pantheons, and beside and beyond this, certain appearances of a doctrine of divine supremacy. But these doctrines seem to have been spoken of more definitely than the evidence warrants. A remarkable native development of Mexican theism must be admitted, in so far as we may receive the native historian Ixtlilxochitl's account of the worship paid by Nezahualcoyotl, the poet-king of Tezcuco, to the invisible supreme Tloque-Nahuaque, he who has all in him, the cause of causes, in whose star-roofed pyramid stood an idol, and who there received no bloody sacrifice, but only flowers and incense. Yet it would have been more satisfactory, were the stories told by this Aztec panegyrist of his royal ancestors confirmed by other records. Traces of divine supremacy in Mexican religion are especially associated with Tezcatlipoca, 'Shining Mirror,' a deity who seems in his original nature the Sun-god, and thence by expansion to have become the soul of the world, creator of heaven and earth, lord of all things, Supreme Deity. Such conceptions may, in more or less measure, have arisen in native thought, but it should be pointed out that the remarkable Aztec religious formulas collected by Sahagun, in which the deity Tezcatlipoca is so prominent a figure, show traces of Christian admixture in their material, as well as of Christian influence in their style. In distinct and absolute personality, the divine Sun in Aztec theology was Tonatiuh[VI-8] whose huge pyramid-mound stands on the plain of Teotihuacan, a witness of his worship for future ages. Beyond this the religion of Mexico, in its complex system, or congeries of great gods, such as results from the mixture and alliance of the deities of several nations, shows the solar element rooted deeply and widely in other personages of its divine mythology, and attributes especially to the sun the title of Teotl, God."[VI-9]

[Sidenote: COMPLEXITY OF AZTEC THEOLOGY.]

"It is remarkable," says Professor J. G. Müller, "that the well-instructed Acosta should have known nothing about the adoration of a highest invisible God, under the name of Teotl. And yet this adoration has been reported in the most certain manner by others, and made evident from more exact statements regarding the nature of this deity. He has been surnamed Ipalnemoan, that is, He through whom we live, and Tloquenahuaque, that is, He who is all things through himself. He has been looked upon as the originator and essence of all things, and as especially throned in the high cloud-surrounded mountains. Rightly does Wuttke contend against any conception of this deity as a monotheistic one, the polytheism of the people being considered--for polytheism and monotheism will not be yoked together; even if a logical concordance were found, the inner spirits of the principles of the two would still be opposed to each other. Another argument stands also clearly out, in the total absence of any prayers, offerings, feasts, or temples to or in the honor of this god. From this it is evident that Teotl was not a god of the common people. Yet this, on the other hand, cannot justify us--the so-frequently-occurring statements of well-informed authorities being taken into account--in denying in toto all traces of a pantheistic monotheism, as this latter may easily spring up among cultivated polytheists as a logical result and outcome of their natural religion. Nezahualcoyotl, the enlightened king of Tezcuco, adored as the cause of causes, a god without an image. The chief of the Totonac aborigines of Cempoallan had, if we may credit the speech put in his mouth by Las Casas and Herrera, an idea of a highest god and creator. This abstract idea has also here, as in other parts of America, intertwined itself with the conception of a sun-god. Hence the Mexicans named the sun-god pre-eminently Teotl; and that enlightened king of Tezcuco, who built a temple of nine stories--symbolizing the nine heavens--in honor of the stars, called the sun-god his father."[VI-10]

"To the most ancient gods," says Klemm, "belonged the divinities of nature, as well as a highest being called Teotl, God. He was perfect, independent, and invisible, and consequently not represented by any image. His qualities were represented by expressions like these: He through whom we live, He who is all in himself. This god coincides very nearly with the Master of Life of the North Americans. In opposition to him is the evil spirit, the enemy of mankind, who often appears to and terrifies them. He is called Tlacatecololotl, that is to say, Rational Owl, and may possibly, like the Lame-foot of the Peruvians, be a survival from the times when the old hunter-nations inhabited the forests and mountains. Next to Teotl was Tezcatlipoca, that is to say, Shining Mirror; he was the god of providence, the soul of the world, and the creator of heaven and earth. Teotl was not represented by any image, and was probably not worshiped with offerings nor in any special temples; Tezcatlipoca was, however, so represented, and that as a youth, because time could have no power over his beauty and his splendor. He rewarded the righteous, and punished the ungodly with sickness and misfortune. He created the world, and mankind, and the sun, and the water, and he was himself in a certain degree the overseer thereof."[VI-11]

[Sidenote: TLOQUE-NAHUAQUE.]

The Abbé Brasseur believes in the knowledge by the Mexicans and certain neighboring or related nations, of a Supreme God; but he thinks also that the names of great priests and legislators have often been used for or confounded with the one Name above every name. He says: "In the traditions that have reached us the name of the legislator is often confused with that of the divinity; and behind the symbolic veil that covers primitive history, he who civilized and brought to light in the Americans a new life, is designedly identified with the Father of the universal creation. The writers who treat of the history of the ancient American nations avow that, at the time of the landing of the Spaniards on the soil of the western continent, there was not one that did not recognize the existence of a supreme deity and arbiter of the universe. In that confusion of religious ideas, which is the inevitable result of ignorance and superstition, the notion of a unique immaterial being, of an invisible power, had survived the shipwreck of pure primitive creeds. Under the name Tloque-Nahuaque, the Mexicans adored Him who is the first cause of all things, who preserves and sustains all by his providence; calling him again, for the same reason, Ipalnemoaloni, He in whom and by whom we are and live. This god was the same as that Kunab-Ku, the Alone Holy, who was adored in Yucatan; the same again as that Hurakan, the Voice that Cries, the Heart of Heaven, found with the Guatemalan nations of Central America; and the same lastly as that Teotl, God, whom we find named in the Tzendal and Mexican books. This "God of all purity," as he was styled in a Mexican prayer, was, however, too elevated for the thoughts of the vulgar. His existence was recognized, and sages invoked him; but he had neither temples nor altars--perhaps because no one knew how he should be represented--and it was only in the last times of the Aztec monarchy that Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, dedicated to him a teocalli of nine terraces, without statues, under the title of the unknown god."[VI-12]

Mr Gallatin says of the Mexicans: "Their mythology, as far as we know it, presents a great number of unconnected gods, without apparent system or unity of design. It exhibits no evidence of metaphysical research or imaginative powers. Viewed only as a development of the intellectual faculties of man, it is, in every respect, vastly inferior to the religious systems of Egypt, India, Greece, or Scandinavia. If imported, it must have been from some barbarous country, and brought directly from such country to Mexico, since no traces of a similar worship are found in the more northern parts of America."[VI-13]

"The Aztecs," writes Prescott, "recognized the existence of a Supreme Creator and Lord of the Universe. But the idea of unity--of a being, with whom volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute his purposes--was too simple, or too vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief as usual, in a plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various occupations of man. Of these, there were thirteen principal deities, and more than two hundred inferior; to each of whom some special day, or appropriate festival, was consecrated."[VI-14]

[Sidenote: PRIMITIVE WORSHIP.]

According to Mr Squier: "The original deities of the Mexican pantheon are few in number. Thus when the Mexicans engaged in a war, in defense of the liberty or sovereignty of their country, they invoked the War God, under his aspect and name Huitzlipochtli. When suddenly attacked by enemies, they called upon the same god, under his aspect and name of Paynalton, which implied God of Emergencies, etc. In fact, as already elsewhere observed, all the divinities of the Mexican, as of every other mythology, resolve themselves into the primeval God and Goddess."[VI-15]

"The population of Central America," says the Vicomte de Bussierre, "although they had preserved the vague notion of a superior eternal God and creator, known by the name Teotl, had an Olympus as numerous as that of the Greeks and the Romans. It would appear--the most ancient, though, unfortunately, also the most obscure legends being followed--that during the civilized period which preceded the successive invasions of the barbarous hordes of the north, the inhabitants of Anáhuac joined to the idea of a supreme being the worship of the sun and the moon, offering them flowers, fruits, and the first fruits of their fields. The most ancient monuments of the country, such as the pyramids of Teotihuacan, were incontestably consecrated to these luminaries. Let us now trace some of the most striking features of these people. Among the number of their gods, is found one represented under the figure of a man eternally young, and considered as the symbol of the supreme and mysterious God. Two other gods there were, watching over mortals from the height of a celestial city, and charged with the accomplishment of their prayers. Air, earth, fire, and water had their particular divinities. The woman of the serpent, the prolific woman, she who never gave birth but to twins, was adored as the mother of the human race. The sun and the moon had their altars. Various divinities presided over the phenomena of nature, over the day, the night, the mist, the thunder, the harvest, the mountains, and so on. Souls, the place of the dead, warriors, hunters, merchants, fishing, love, drunkenness, medicine, flowers, and many other things had their special gods. A multitude of heroes and of illustrious kings, whose apotheosis had been decreed, took their place in this vast pantheon, where were besides seated two hundred and sixty divinities of inferior rank, to each of whom nevertheless one of the days of the year was consecrated. Lastly, every city, every family, every individual, had its or his celestial protector, to whom worship was rendered. The number of the temples corresponded to that of the gods; these temples were found everywhere, in the cities, in the fields, in the woods, along the roads, and all of them had priests charged with their service. This complicated mythology was common to all the nations of Anáhuac, even to those that the empire had been unable to subjugate and with which it was at war; but each country had its favorite god, such god being to it, what Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, was to the Aztecs."[VI-16]

The Mexican religion, as summed up by Mr Brantz Mayer,[VI-17] "was a compound of spiritualism and gross idolatry; for the Aztecs believed in a Supreme Deity, whom they called Teotl, God; or Ipalnemoani, He by whom we live; or Tloque Nahuaque, He who has all in himself; while their evil spirit bore the name of Tlaleatcololotl, the Rational Owl. These spiritual beings are surrounded by a number of lesser divinities, who were probably the ministerial agents of Teotl. These were Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Teoyaomiqui, his spouse, whose duty it was to conduct the souls of warriors who perished in defense of their homes and religion to the 'house of the sun,' the Aztec heaven. Huitzilopochtli, or Mextli, the god of war, was the special protector of the Aztecs; and devoted as they were to war, this deity was always invoked before battle, and recompensed after it by the offering of numerous captives taken in conflict."

[Sidenote: MEXICAN RELIGION, GREEK AND ROMAN.]

"The religion of the Mexicans," writes Señor Carbajal Espinosa,[VI-18] plagiarizing as literally as possible from Clavigero, "was a tissue of errors and of cruel and superstitious rites. Similar infirmities of the human mind are inseparable from a religious system originating in caprice and fear, as we see even in the most cultured nations of antiquity. If the religion of the Mexicans be compared with that of the Greeks and Romans, it will be found that the latter is the more superstitious and ridiculous and the former the more barbarous and sanguinary. These celebrated nations of ancient Europe multiplied excessively their gods because of the mean idea that they had of their power; restricting their rule within narrow limits, attributing to them the most atrocious crimes, and solemnizing their worship with such execrable impurities as were so justly condemned by the fathers of Christianity. The gods of the Mexicans were less imperfect, and their worship although superstitious contained nothing repugnant to decency. They had some idea, although imperfect, of a Supreme Being, absolute, independent, believing that they owed him tribute, adoration, and fear. They had no figure whereby to represent him, believing him to be invisible, neither did they give him any other name, save the generic one, God, which is in the Mexican tongue teotl, resembling even more in sense than in pronunciation the theos of the Greeks; they used, however, epithets, in the highest degree expressive, to signify the grandeur and the power which they believed him endowed with, calling him Ipalnemoani, that is to say, He by whom we live, and Tloque-Nahuaque, which means, He that is all things in himself. But the knowledge and the worship of this Supreme Essence were obscured by the multitude of gods invented by superstition. The people believed furthermore in an evil spirit, inimical to mankind, calling him Tlacatecololotl, or Rational Owl, and saying that oftentimes he revealed himself to men, to hurt or to terrify them."

"The Mexicans and the Tezcucans," following Señor Pimentel, "recognized the existence of a Supreme Being, of a First Cause, and gave him that generic title Teotl, God, the analogy of which with the Theos of the Greeks, has been already noted by various authors. The idea of God is one of those that appear radical to our very existence.... With the Mexicans and Tezcucans this idea was darkened by the adoration of a thousand gods, invoked in all emergencies; of these gods there were thirteen principal, the most notable being the god of providence, that of war, and that of the wind and waters. The god of providence had his seat in the sky, and had in his care all human affairs. The god of the waters was considered as the fertilizer of earth, and his dwelling was in the highest of the mountains where he arranged the clouds. The god of war was the principal protector of the Mexicans, their guide in their wanderings from the mysterious country of Aztlan, the god to whose favor they owed those great victories that elevated them from the lowly estate of lake-fishermen up to the lordship of Anáhuac. The god of the wind had an aspect more benign.... The Mexicans also worshiped the sun and the moon, and even, it would appear, certain animals considered as sacred. There figured also in the Aztec mythology an evil genius called the Owl-man,[VI-19] since in some manner the good and the bad, mixed up here on earth, have to be explained. So the Persians had their Oromasdes and Arimanes, the first the genius of good, and the second of evil, and so, later, Manicheism presents us with analogous explanations."[VI-20]

[Sidenote: THE NAMELESS GOD.]

Solis, writing of Mexico and the Mexicans says: "There was hardly a street without its tutelary god; neither was there any calamity of nature without its altar, to which they had recourse for remedy. They imagined and made their gods out of their own fear; not understanding that they lessened the power of some by what they attributed to others.... But for all so many as were their gods, and so complete as was the blindness of their idolatry, they were not without the knowledge of a Superior Deity, to whom they attributed the creation of the heavens and the earth. This original of things was, among the Mexicans, a god without name; they had no word in their language with which to express him, only they gave it to be understood that they knew him, pointing reverently towards heaven, and giving to him after their fashion the attribute of ineffable, with that sort of religious uncertainty with which the Athenians venerated the Unknown God."[VI-21]

The interpreter of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis calls the Supreme God of the Mexicans by the name Tonacateotle.[VI-22] The interpreter says: "God, Lord, Creator, Governor of all, Tloque, Nauaq, Tlalticpaque, Teotlalale-Matlava-Tepeva--all these epithets they bestowed on their god Tonacateotle, who, they said, was the god that created the world; and him alone they painted with a crown as lord of all. They never offered sacrifices to this god for they said he cared not for such things. All the others to whom they sacrificed were men once on a time, or demons."[VI-23]

We have already seen from Herrera that "the Mexicans confessed to a Supreme God, Lord, and maker of all things, and the said God was the principal that they venerated, looking towards heaven, and calling him Creator of heaven and earth."[VI-24] In contradistinction to this it may be well to consider the following extract from the same author: "Such was the blindness of the Mexicans, even to the natural light, that they did not think like men of good judgment that all created things were the work and effect of some immense and infinite cause, the which only the First Cause and true God is.... And in Mexico alone (according to the common opinion) they had and adored two thousand gods, of whom the principal were Vizilipuztli and Tezcatlipucatl, who as supreme were set up in the height of the great temple, over two altars.... Tezcatlipucatl was the god of providence, and Vizilipuztli the god of war."[VI-25]

Speaking of Mexican temples[VI-26] and gods, Oviedo says: "But Montezuma had the chief [temple], together with three other prayer-houses, in which he sacrificed in honor of four gods, or idols, that he had; of these they had one for god of war, as the Gentiles had Mars; to another they gave honor and sacrifice as god of the waters, even as the ancients gave to Neptune; another they adored for god of the wind, as the lost heathen adored Æolus; and another still they revered as their sovereign god, and this was the sun.... They had further other gods; making one of them god of the maize-fields, attributing to him the power of guarding and multiplying the same, as the fable-writing poets and ancients of antiquity did to Ceres. They had gods for everything, giving attributes to each according to their surmises, investing them with that godhead which they had not, and with which it was not right to invest any save only the true God."[VI-27]

Speaking in general terms of probably a large part of New Spain, Torquemada, says: "These idolaters did not deny that they had a god called Ypalnemoaloni, that is to say, Lord by whom we live, and his nature is that his existence is in himself:[VI-28] the which is most proper to God, who is in his essence life. But that in which these people erred was in distributing this divinity and attributing it to many gods; yet, in reality, and verily, they recognized a Supreme God, to whom all the others were inferior. But for the greatness of their sins, they lacked faith and ran into this error like the other nations that have done so."

[Sidenote: ACOSTA AND TEOTL.]

Acosta, as has been already noticed by Professor J. G. Müller, either never heard of or disbelieved in the existence of the name Teotl and of the ideas connected therewith by so many historians.[VI-29] The said Acosta says: "If wee shall seeke into the Indian tongue for a word to answer to this name of God, as in Latin, Deus; in Greeke, Theos; in Hebrew, El; in Arabike, Alla; but wee shall not finde any in the Cuscan or Mexicaine tongues. So as such as preach, or write to the Indians, vse our Spanish name Dios, fitting it to the accent or pronounciation of the Indian tongues; the which differ much, whereby appeares the small knowledge they had of God, seeing they cannot so much as name him, if it be not by our very name: yet in trueth they had some little knowledge.... The Mexicaines almost in the same manner [as the Peruvians] after the supreame God, worshiped the Sunne: And therefore they called Hernando Cortez, Sonne of the Sunne, for his care and courage to compasse the earth. But they made their greatest adoration to an Idol called Vitzilipuztli, the which in all this region they called the most puissant and Lord of all things: for this cause the Mexicaines built him a Temple, the greatest, the fairest, the highest, and the most sumptuous of all others.... But heere the Mexicaines Idolatrie hath bin more pernicious and hurtfull than that of the Inguas, as wee shall see plainer heereafter, for that the greatest part of their adoration and idolatrie, was employed to Idols, and not to naturall things, although they did attribute naturall effects to these Idolls, as raine, multiplication of cattell, warre, and generation, even as the Greekes and Latins have forged Idolls of Phœbus, Mercurie, Jupiter, Minerva, and of Mars. To conclude, who so shall neerely looke into it, shall finde this manner which the Divell hath vsed to deceive the Indians, to be the same wherewith hee hath deceived the Greekes and Romans, and other ancient Gentiles, giving them to vnderstand that these notable creatures, the Sunne, Moone, Starres, and Elements, had power and authoritie to doe good or harme to men."[VI-30]

[Sidenote: MENDIETA'S EUHEMERISTIC THEORY.]

Mendieta says: "It is to be noted for a general rule that, though these people, in all the continent of these Indias, from the farthest parts of New Spain to the parts of Florida, and farther still to the kingdoms of Peru, had, as has been said, an infinity of idols that they reverenced as gods, nevertheless, above all, they still held the sun as chiefest and most powerful. And they dedicated to the sun the greatest, richest, and most sumptuous of their temples. This should be the power the Mexicans called Ipalnemohuani, that is to say, 'by whom all live,' and Moyucuyatzin ayac oquiyocux ayac oquipic, that is to say, 'he that no one created or formed, but who, on the contrary, made all things by his own power and will.' ... So many are the fictions and fables that the Indians invented about their gods, and so differently are these related in the different towns, that neither can they agree among themselves in recounting them, nor shall there be found any one who shall understand them. In the principal provinces of this New Spain, they had--after the sun, which was the common god of them all--each province, its particular and principal god, to which god above all others they offered their sacrifices; as the Mexicans to Uzilopuchtli--a name that the Spaniards not being able to pronounce called Ocholobos, 'eight wolves', or Uchilobos; as the Tezucans to Tezcatlipuca; as the Tlaxcalans to Camaxtli, and as the Cholulans to Quetzalcoatl; doubtless all these were famous men that performed some notable feats, or invented some new thing, to the honor and benefit of the state; or perhaps again these gave the people laws and a rule of life, or taught them trades, or to offer up sacrifices, or some other thing that appeared good and worthy to be rewarded with grateful acknowledgements.... The demon, the old enemy, did not content himself with the service that these people did him in the adoration of almost every visible creature, in making idols of them, both carven and painted, but he also kept them blinded with a thousand fashions of witchcrafts, parodies of sacraments, and superstitions."[VI-31]

"It is well to remark," writes Camargo, "that although the Indians had a divinity for each thing, they were aware of the existence of a Supreme God that they named Tloque-Nahuaque, or He who contains all, regarding the same as superior to all the other gods." This Tlascaltec author has also preserved us a native prayer couched in the following terms: "O, all-powerful gods, that inhabit the heavens, even as far as the ninth, where abides your master and ours, the great Tloque-Nahuaque (this name means, He that accompanies the other gods[VI-32])--you that have all power over men forsake us not in danger. We invoke you, as well also as the sun Nauholin, and the moon, spouse of that brilliant luminary, the stars of heaven also, and the wind of the night and of the day."[VI-33]

According to the somewhat vague and incomplete account of Fray Toribio de Benavente, or Motolinia--the latter his adopted name and that by which he is best known--another of the original and early authorities in matter concerning the gentile Mexicans: "Tezcatlipoca was the god or demon that they held for greatest and to whom most dignity was attributed.... They had idols of stone, and of wood, and of baked clay; they also made them of dough and of seeds kneaded into the dough.... Some of them were shaped like men, ... some were like women; ... some were like wild beasts, as lions, tigers, dogs, deer, and such other animals as frequented the mountains and plains; ... some like snakes of many fashions, large and coiling.... Of the owl and other night-birds, and of others as the kite, and of every large bird, or beautiful, or fierce, or preciously feathered--they had an idol. But the principal of all was the sun. Likewise had they idols of the moon and stars, and of the great fishes, and of the water-lizards, and of toads and frogs, and of other fishes; and these they said were the gods of the fishes.... They had for gods fire, water, and earth; and of all these they had painted figures.... Of many other things they had figures and idols, carved or painted, even of butterflies, fleas, and locusts."[VI-34]

[Sidenote: THE CREED OF NEZAHUALCOYOTL.]

Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, was he who--according to the no doubt somewhat partial account of his descendant Ixtlilxochitl--pushed the farthest into overt speech and act his contempt of the vulgar idolatry and his recognition of a high, holy, and to a great extent unknowable supreme power. This thoughtful monarch "found for false all the gods adored by the people of this land, saying that they were statues and demons hostile to the human race; for he was very learned in moral things, and he went to and fro more than any other, seeking if haply he might find light to affirm the true God and creator of all things, as has been seen in the discourse of his history, and as bear witness the songs that he composed on this theme. He said that there was only One, that this One was the maker of heaven and earth, that he sustained all he had made and created, and that he was where was no second, above the nine heavens; that no eye had ever seen this One, in a human shape nor in any shape whatever; that the souls of the virtuous went to him after death, while the souls of the bad went to another place, some most infamous spot of earth, filled with horrible hardships and sufferings. Never--though there were many gods representing many idols--did the king neglect an opportunity of saying when divinity was discussed, 'yntloque in nauhaque y palne moalani,' which sentence sums up his convictions as above expressed. Nevertheless he recognized the sun as his father and the earth as his mother."[VI-35]

Now it is in the face of much that has been said denying or doubting Ixtlilxochitl's account of the creed of Nezahualcoyotl that I have selected the passage above translated, from among other passages touching the same subject in the Historia Chichimeca and in the Relaciones. I have selected it not because it is the most clearly worded, or the most eloquent, or the most complete; but solely on account of the sentence with which it concludes: Nezahualcoyotl "recognized the sun as his father and the earth as his mother." These few words occurring at the end of a eulogy of the great Tezcucan by a confessed admirer, these few words that have passed unnoticed amid the din and hubbub raised over the lofty creed to which they form the last article, these few words so insignificant apparently and yet so significant in their connection--should go far to prove the faithfulness of Ixtlilxochitl's record, and the greater or less completeness of his portrait of his great ancestor. Were Ixtlilxochitl dishonest, would he ever have allowed such a pagan chord as this to come jangling into the otherwise perfect music of his description of a perfect sage and Christian, who believed in a God alone and all-sufficient, who believed in a creator of all things without any help at all, much less the help of his dead material creatures the sun and the earth? Let us admit the honesty of Ixtlilxochitl, and admit with him a knowledge of that Unknown God, whom, as did the Athenians, Nezahualcoyotl ignorantly worshiped; but let us not be blinded by a glitter of words--which we may be sure lose nothing in the repetition--as to the significance of that 'ignorantly;' let us never lose sight across the shadow of that obscure Athenian altar to the Unknown God, of the mighty columns of the Acropolis and the crest of the Athena Promachos. Nezahualcoyotl seems a fair type of a thoughtful, somewhat sceptical Mexican of that better-instructed class which is ever and everywhere the horror of hypocrites and fanatics, of that class never without its witnesses in all countries and at all times, of that class two steps above the ignorant laity, and one step above the learned priesthood, yet far still from that simple and perfect truth which shall one day be patent enough to all.

[Sidenote: AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY.]

Turning from the discussion of a point so obscure and intangible as the monotheism of Nezahualcoyotl and the school of which he was the type, let us review the very palpable and indubitable polytheism of the Mexicans. It seems radically to differ little from other polytheisms better known, such as those of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia; it seems to have been a jumble of personified powers, causes, and qualities, developed in the ordinary way from the mythical corruption of that florid hyperbolical style of speech natural to all peoples in days before the exact definition of words was either possible or necessary; just such a jumble as the Aryan polytheisms were in the days of the Euhemerists, and for too long after unfortunately; such a jumble as Aryan mythology was till the brothers Grimm led the van of the ripest talent and scholarship of the nineteenth century into the paths of 'word-shunting,' which led again into god or hero shunting, if the term may be invented. Unfortunately the philologic and mythologic material for such an exhaustive synthesis of the origin and relations of the American creeds as Mr Cox, for example, has given to the world on the Aryan legends, in his Mythology of the Aryan Nations, is yet far from complete; which fact indeed makes the raison d'être of works like the present. There is nothing for me at present but to gather, sift, and arrange, with such sifting and arrangement as may be possible, all accessible materials relating to the subject in hand; that done let more skilled workmen find and give them their place in the wall of science. For they have a place there, whether or no it be found to-day or to-morrow; a breach is there that shall be empty until they fit and fill it.

* * * * *

Tezcatlipoca seems to have been considered on the whole, and the patron-gods of different cities aside, as the most important of the Mexican gods. We have seen him identified in several of the preceding quotations with a supreme invisible god, and I now proceed, illustrating this phase of his character, to translate as closely as possible the various prayers given by Sahagun as addressed to this great deity under his various names, Titlacoan, Yautl, Telpuchtli, Tlamatzincatl, Moiocoiatzin, Iaotzin, Necociautl, Necaoalpilli, and others:--

O, thou almighty God, that givest life to men, and art called Titlacaoan, grant me in thy mercy everything needful to eat and to drink, and to enjoy of thy soft and delicate things; for in grievous toil and straitness I live in the world. Have mercy on me, so poor I am and naked, I that labor in thy service, and for thy service sweep, and clean, and put light in this poor house, where I await thine orders; otherwise let me die soon and end this toilful and miserable life, so that my body may find rest and a breathing-time.

In illness the people prayed to this deity as follows: O God, whose name is Titlacaoan, be merciful and send away this sickness which is killing me, and I will reform my life. Let me be once healed of this infirmity and I swear to serve thee and to earn the right to live; should I by hard toil gain something, I will not eat it nor employ it in anything save only to thine honor; I will give a feast and a banquet of dancing in this poor house.

But the sick man that could not recover, and that felt it so, used to grow desperate and blaspheme saying: O Titlacaoan, since thou mockest me, why dost thou not kill me?[VI-36]

[Sidenote: PRAYER IN TIME OF PESTILENCE.]

[Sidenote: SPARE THE GREEN AND TAKE THE RIPE.]

Then following is a prayer to Tezcatlipoca, used by the priest in time of pestilence: O mighty Lord, under whose wing we find defense and shelter, thou art invisible and impalpable even as night and the air. How can I that am so mean and worthless dare to appear before thy majesty? Stuttering and with rude lips I speak; ungainly is the manner of my speech as one leaping among furrows, as one advancing unevenly; for all this I fear to raise thine anger, and to provoke instead of appeasing thee; nevertheless thou wilt do unto me as may please thee. O Lord, that hast held it good to forsake us in these days, according to the counsel thou hast as well in heaven as in hades--alas for us, in that thine anger and indignation has descended in these days upon us; alas, in that the many and grievous afflictions of thy wrath have overgone and swallowed us up, coming down even as stones, spears, and arrows upon the wretches that inhabit the earth--this is the sore pestilence with which we are afflicted and almost destroyed. Alas, O valiant and all-powerful Lord, the common people are almost made an end of and destroyed; a great destruction and ruin the pestilence already makes in this nation; and, what is most pitiful of all, the little children that are innocent and understand nothing, only to play with pebbles and to heap up little mounds of earth, they too die, broken and dashed to pieces as against stones and a wall--a thing very pitiful and grievous to be seen, for there remain of them not even those in the cradles, nor those that could not walk nor speak. Ah, Lord, how all things become confounded; of young and old and of men and women there remains neither branch nor root; thy nation and thy people and thy wealth are leveled down and destroyed. O our Lord, protector of all, most valiant and most kind, what is this? Thine anger and thine indignation, does it glory or delight in hurling the stone and arrow and spear? The fire of the pestilence, made exceeding hot, is upon thy nation, as a fire in a hut, burning and smoking, leaving nothing upright or sound. The grinders of thy teeth are employed, and thy bitter whips upon the miserable of thy people, who have become lean and of little substance, even as a hollow green cane. Yea, what doest thou now, O Lord, most strong, compassionate, invisible, and impalpable, whose will all things obey, upon whose disposal depends the rule of the world, to whom all is subject--what in thy divine breast hast thou decreed? Peradventure hast thou altogether forsaken thy nation and thy people? Hast thou verily determined that it utterly perish, and that there be no more memory of it in the world, that the peopled place become a wooded hill and a wilderness of stones? Peradventure wilt thou permit that the temples, and the places of prayer, and the altars, built for thy service, be razed and destroyed and no memory of them be left? Is it indeed possible that thy wrath and punishment, and vexed indignation are altogether implacable and will go on to the end to our destruction? Is it already fixed in thy divine counsel that there is to be no mercy nor pity for us, until the arrows of thy fury are spent to our utter perdition and destruction? Is it possible that this lash and chastisement is not given for our correction and amendment, but only for our total destruction and obliteration; that the sun shall nevermore shine upon us, but that we must remain in perpetual darkness and silence; that nevermore thou wilt look upon us with eyes of mercy, neither little nor much? Wilt thou after this fashion destroy the wretched sick that cannot find rest nor turn from side to side, whose mouth and teeth are filled with earth and scurf? It is a sore thing to tell how we are all in darkness, having none understanding nor sense to watch for or aid one another. We are all as drunken and without understanding, without hope of any aid; already the little children perish of hunger, for there is none to give them food, nor drink, nor consolation, nor caress--none to give the breast to them that suck; for their fathers and mothers have died and left them orphans, suffering for the sins of their fathers. O our Lord, all-powerful, full of mercy, our refuge, though indeed thine anger and indignation, thine arrows and stones, have sorely hurt this poor people, let it be as a father or a mother that rebukes children, pulling their ears, pinching their arms, whipping them with nettles, pouring chill water upon them; all being done that they may amend their puerility and childishness. Thy chastisement and indignation have lorded and prevailed over these thy servants, over this poor people, even as rain falling upon the trees and the green canes, being touched of the wind, drops also upon those that are below. O most compassionate Lord, thou knowest that the common folk are as children, that being whipped they cry and sob and repent of what they have done. Peradventure, already these poor people by reason of thy chastisement weep, sigh, blame, and murmur against themselves; in thy presence they blame and bear witness against their bad deeds and punish themselves therefor. Our Lord most compassionate, pitiful, noble, and precious, let a time be given the people to repent; let the past chastisement suffice, let it end here, to begin again if the reform endure not. Pardon and overlook the sins of the people; cause thine anger and thy resentment to cease; repress it again within thy breast that it destroy no farther; let it rest there; let it cease, for of a surety none can avoid death nor escape to any place. We owe tribute to death; and all that live in the world are the vassals thereof; this tribute shall every man pay with his life. None shall avoid from following death, for it is thy messenger what hour soever it may be sent, hungering and thirsting always to devour all that are in the world and so powerful that none shall escape: then indeed shall every man be punished according to his deeds. O most pitiful Lord, at least take pity and have mercy upon the children that are in the cradles, upon those that cannot walk. Have mercy also, O Lord, upon the poor and very miserable, who have nothing to eat, nor to cover themselves withal, nor a place to sleep, who do not know what thing a happy day is, whose days pass altogether in pain, affliction, and sadness. Than this, were it not better, O Lord, if thou should forget to have mercy upon the soldiers and upon the men of war, whom thou wilt have need of sometime; behold it is better to die in war and go to serve food and drink in the house of the sun, than to die in this pestilence and descend to hades. O most strong Lord, protector of all, lord of the earth, governor of the world, and universal master, let the sport and satisfaction thou hast already taken in this past punishment suffice; make an end of this smoke and fog of thy resentment; quench also the burning and destroying fire of thine anger: let serenity come and clearness; let the small birds of thy people begin to sing and to approach the sun; give them quiet weather so that they may cause their voices to reach thy highness and thou mayest know them. O our Lord, most strong, most compassionate, and most noble, this little have I said before thee, and I have nothing more to say, only to prostrate and throw myself at thy feet, seeking pardon for the faults of this my prayer; certainly I would not remain in thy displeasure, and I have no other thing to say.

[Sidenote: PRAYER FOR AID AGAINST POVERTY.]

The following is a prayer to the same deity, under his names Tezcatlipuca and Yoalliehecatl, for succor against poverty: O our Lord, protector most strong and compassionate, invisible, and impalpable, thou art the giver of life; lord of all, and lord of battles, I present myself here before thee to say some few words concerning the need of the poor people, the people of none estate nor intelligence. When they lie down at night they have nothing, nor when they rise up in the morning; the darkness and the light pass alike in great poverty. Know, O Lord, that thy subjects and servants, suffer a sore poverty that cannot be told of more than that it is a sore poverty and desolateness. The men have no garments nor the women to cover themselves with, but only certain rags rent in every part that allow the air and the cold to pass everywhere. With great toil and weariness they scrape together enough for each day, going by mountain and wilderness seeking their food; so faint and enfeebled are they that their bowels cleave to the ribs, and all their body reëchoes with hollowness; and they walk as people affrighted, the face and the body in likeness of death. If they be merchants, they now sell only cakes of salt and broken pepper; the people that have something despise their wares, so that they go out to sell from door to door and from house to house; and when they sell nothing they sit down sadly by some fence, or wall, or in some corner, licking their lips and gnawing the nails of their hands for the hunger that is in them; they look on the one side and on the other at the mouths of those that pass by, hoping peradventure that one may speak some word to them. O compassionate God, the bed on which they lie down is not a thing to rest upon, but to endure torment in; they draw a rag over them at night and so sleep; there they throw down their bodies and the bodies of children that thou hast given them. For the misery they grow up in, for the filth[VI-37] of their food, for the lack of covering, their faces are yellow and all their bodies of the color of earth. They tremble with cold, and for leanness they stagger in walking. They go weeping, and sighing, and full of sadness, and all misfortunes are joined to them; though they stay by a fire they find little heat. O our Lord, most clement, invisible, and impalpable, I supplicate thee to see good to have pity upon them as they move in thy presence wailing and clamoring and seeking mercy with anguish of heart. O our Lord, in whose power it is to give all content, consolation, sweetness, softness, prosperity and riches, for thou alone art lord of all good--have mercy upon them for they are thy servants. I supplicate thee, O Lord, that thou prove them a little with tenderness, indulgence, sweetness, and softness, which indeed they sorely lack and require. I supplicate thee that thou will lift up their heads with thy favor and aid, that thou will see good that they enjoy some days of prosperity and tranquillity, so they may sleep and know repose, having prosperous and peaceable days of life. Should they still refuse to serve thee, thou afterwards canst take away what thou hast given; they having enjoyed it but a few days, as those that enjoy a fragrant and beautiful flower and find it wither presently. Should this nation, for whom I pray and entreat thee to do them good, not understand what thou hast given, thou canst take away the good and pour out cursing; so that all evil may come upon them, and they become poor, in need, maimed, lame, blind, and deaf: then indeed they shall waken and know the good that they had and have not, and they shall call upon thee and lean towards thee; but thou wilt not listen, for in the day of abundance they would not understand thy goodness towards them. In conclusion, I supplicate thee, O most kind and benificent Lord, that thou will see good to give this people to taste of the goods and riches that thou art wont to give, and that proceed from thee, things sweet and soft and bringing content, and joy, although it be but for a little while, and as a dream that passes. For it is certain that for a long time the people go sadly before thee, weeping and thoughtful, because of the anguish, hardship, and anxiety that fill their bodies and hearts, taking away all ease and rest. Verily, it is not doubtful that to this poor nation, needy and shelterless, happens all I have said. If thou answerest my petition it will be only of thy liberality and magnificence, for no one is worthy to receive thy bounty for any merit of his, but only through thy grace. Search below the dung-hills and in the mountains for thy servants, friends, and acquaintance, and raise them to riches and dignities. O our Lord, most clement, let thy will be done as it is ordained in thy heart, and we shall have nothing to say. I, a rude man and common, would not by importunity and prolixity disgust and annoy thee, detailing my sickness, destruction, and punishment. Whom do I speak to? Where am I? Lo I speak with thee, O King; well do I know that I stand in an eminent place, and that I talk with one of great majesty, before whose presence flows a river through a chasm, a gulf sheer down of awful depth; this also is a slippery place, whence many precipitate themselves, for there shall not be found one without error before thy majesty. I myself, a man of little understanding and lacking speech, dare to address my words to thee; I put myself in peril of falling into the gorge and cavern of this river. I, Lord, have come to take with my hands blindness to mine eyes, rottenness and shrivelling to my members, poverty and affliction to my body; for my meanness and rudeness this it is that I merit to receive. Live and rule for ever in all quietness and tranquillity, O thou that art our lord, our shelter, our protector, most compassionate, most pitiful, invisible, impalpable.

[Sidenote: PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR.]

[Sidenote: PRAYER TO THE GOD OF BATTLES.]

This following is a petition in time of war to the same principal god, under his name of Tezcatlipoca Yautlnecociautlmonenequi, praying favor against the enemy: O our Lord, most compassionate, protector, defender, invisible, impalpable, by whose will and wisdom we are directed and governed, beneath whose rule we live--O, Lord of battles, it is a thing very certain and settled that war begins to be arranged and prepared for. The god of the earth opens his mouth, thirsty to drink the blood of them that shall die in this strife. It seems that they wish to be merry, the sun and the god of the earth called Tlaltecutli; they wish to give to eat and drink to the gods of heaven and hades, making them a banquet with the blood and flesh of the men that have to die in this war. Already do they look, the gods of heaven and hades, to see who they are that have to conquer, and who to be conquered; who they are that have to slay, and who to be slain; whose blood it is that has to be drunken, and whose flesh it is that has to be eaten;--which things the noble fathers and mothers whose sons have to die, are ignorant of. Even so are ignorant all their kith and kin, and the nurses that gave them suck--ignorant also are the fathers that toiled for them, seeking things needful for their food and drink and raiment until they reached the age they now have. Certainly they could not foretell how those sons should end whom they reared so anxiously, or that they should be one day left captives or dead upon the field. See good, O our Lord, that the nobles who die in the shock of war be peacefully and agreeably received, and with bowels of love, by the sun and the earth that are father and mother of all. For verily thou dost not deceive thyself in what thou doest,[VI-38] to wit, in wishing them to die in war; for certainly for this didst thou send them into the world, so that with their flesh and their blood they might be for meat and drink to the sun and the earth. Be not wroth, O Lord, anew against those of the profession of war, for in the same place where they will die have died many generous[VI-39] and noble lords and captains, and valiant men. The nobility and generosity of the nobles and the great-heartedness of the warriors is made apparent, and thou makest manifest, O Lord, how estimable and precious is each one, so that as such he may be held and honored, even as a stone of price or a rich feather. O Lord, most clement, lord of battles, emperor of all, whose name is Tezcatlipoca, invisible and impalpable, we supplicate thee that he or they that thou wilt permit to die in this war may be received into the house of the sun in heaven, with love and honor, and may be placed and lodged between the brave and famous warriors already dead in war, to wit, the lords Quitzicquaquatzin, Maceuhcatzin, Tlacahuepantzin, Ixtlilcuechavac, Ihuitltemuc, Chavacuetzin, and all the other valiant and renowned men that died in former times--who are rejoicing with and praising our lord the sun, who are glad and eternally rich through him, and shall be for ever; they go about sucking the sweetness of all flowers delectable and pleasant to the taste. This is a great dignity for the stout and valiant ones that died in war; for this they are drunken with delight, keeping no account of night, nor day, nor years, nor times; their joy and their wealth is without end; the nectarous flowers they sip never fade, and for the desire thereof men of high descent strengthen themselves to die. In conclusion, I entreat thee, O Lord, that art our lord most clement, our emperor most invincible, to see good that those that die in this war be received with bowels of pity and love by our father the sun, and our mother the earth; for thou only livest and rulest and art our most compassionate lord. Nor do I supplicate alone for the illustrious and noble, but also for the other soldiers, who are troubled and tormented in heart, who clamor, calling upon thee, holding their lives as nothing, and who fling themselves without fear upon the enemy, seeking death. Grant them at least some small part of their desire, some rest and repose in this life; or if here, in this world, they are not destined to prosperity, appoint them for servants and officers of the sun, to give food and drink to those in hades and to those in heaven. As for those whose charge it is to rule the state and to be tlacateccatl or tlacochcalatl,[VI-40] make them to be fathers and mothers to the men of war that wander by field and mountain, by height and ravine--in their hand is the sentence of death for enemies and criminals, as also the distribution of dignities, the offices and the arms of war, the badges, the granting privileges to those that wear visors and tassels[VI-41] on the head, and ear-rings, pendants, and bracelets, and have yellow skins tied to their ankles--with them is the privilege of appointing the fashion of the raiment that every one shall wear. It is to these also to give permission to certain to use and wear precious stones, as chalchivetes, turquoises, and rich feathers in the dances, and to wear necklaces and jewels of gold: all of which things are delicate and precious gifts proceeding from thy riches, and which thou givest to those that perform feats and valiant deeds in war. I entreat thee also, O Lord, to make grace of thy largess to the common soldiers, give them some shelter and good lodging in this world, make them stout and brave, and take away all cowardice from their heart, so that not only shall they meet death with cheerfulness, but even desire it as a sweet thing, as flowers and dainty food, nor dread at all the hoots and shouts of their enemies: this do to them as to thy friend. Forasmuch as thou art lord of battles, on whose will depends the victory, aiding whom thou wilt, needing not that any counsel thee--I entreat thee, O Lord, to make mad and drunken our enemies so that without hurt to us they may cast themselves into our hands, into the hands of our men of war enduring so much hardship and poverty. O our Lord, since thou art God, all-powerful, all-knowing, disposer of all things, able to make this land rich, prosperous, praised, honored, famed in the art and feats of war, able to make the warriors now in the field to live and be prosperous, if, in the days at hand, thou see good that they die in war, let it be to go to the house of the sun, among all the heroes that are there and that died upon the battle-field.

[Sidenote: PRAYER THAT A RULER MAY RULE WELL.]

[Sidenote: THAT A RULER MAY NOT ABUSE HIS POWER.]

The following prayer is one addressed to the principal deity, under his name Tezcatlipoca Teiocoiani Tehimatini, asking favor for a newly elected ruler: To-day, a fortunate day, the sun has risen upon us, warming us, so that in it a precious stone may be wrought, and a handsome sapphire. To us has appeared a new light, has arrived a new brightness, to us has been given a glittering axe to rule and govern our nation--has been given a man to take upon his shoulders the affairs and troubles of the state. He is to be the image and substitute of the lords and governors that have already passed away from this life, who for some days labored, bearing the burden of thy people, possessing thy throne and seat, which is the principal dignity[VI-42] of this thy nation, province, and kingdom; having and holding the same in thy name and person some few days. These have now departed from this life, put off their shoulders the great load and burden that so few are able to suffer. Now, O Lord, we marvel that thou hast indeed set thine eyes on this man, rude and of little knowledge, to make him for some days, for some little time, the governor of this state, nation, province, and kingdom. O our Lord, most clement, art thou peradventure in want of persons and friends?--nay verily, thou that hast thereof more than can be counted! Is it, peradventure, by error, or that thou dost not know him; or is it that thou hast taken him for the nonce, while thou seekest among many for another and a better than he, unwise, indiscrete, unprofitable, a superfluous man in the world. Finally, we give thanks to thy majesty for the favor thou hast done us. What thy designs therein are thou alone knowest; perhaps beforehand this office has been provided for: thy will be done as it is determined in thy heart; let this man serve for some days and times. It may be that he will fill this office defectively, giving unrest and fear to his subjects, doing things without counsel or consideration, deeming himself worthy of the dignity he has, thinking that he will remain in it for a long time, making a sad dream of it, making the occupation and dignity thou hast given him an occasion of pride and presumption, making little of everybody and going about with pomp and pageantry. Within a few days, thou wilt know the event of all, for all men are thy spectacle and theatre, at which thou laughest and makest thyself merry. Perhaps this ruler will lose his office through his childishness, or it will happen through his carelessness and laziness; for verily nothing is hidden from thee, thy sight makes way through stone and wood, and thine hearing. Or perhaps his arrogance, and the secret boasting of his thoughts will destroy him. Then thou wilt throw him among the filth and upon the dung-hills, and his reward will be blindness, and shrivellings, and extreme poverty till the hour of his death, when thou wilt put him under thy feet. Since this poor man is put in this risk and peril, we supplicate thee, who art our Lord, our invisible and impalpable protector, under whose will and pleasure we are, who alone disposes of and provides for all--we supplicate thee that thou see good to deal mercifully with him; inasmuch as he is needy, thy subject and servant, and blind; deign to provide him with thy light, that he may know what he has to think, what he has to do, and the road he has to follow, so as to commit no error in his office, contrary to thy disposition and will. Thou knowest what is to happen to him in this office both by day and night; we know, O our Lord, most clement, that our ways and deeds are not so much in our hands as in the hands of our ruler. If this ruler after an evil and perverse fashion, in the place to which thou hast elevated him, and in the seat in which thou hast put him--which is thine--where he manages the affairs of the people, as one that washes filthy things with clean and clear water, (yea in the same seat holds a similar cleansing office the ancient god, who is father and mother to thyself, and is god of fire, who stands in the midst of flowers, in the midst of the place bounded by four walls, who is covered with shining feathers that are as wings)--if this ruler-elect of ours do evil with which to provoke thine ire and indignation, and to awaken thy chastisement against himself, it will not be of his own will or seeking, but by thy permission or by some impulse from without; for which I entreat thee to see good to open his eyes to give him light; open also his ears and guide him, not so much for his own sake as for that of those whom he has to rule over and carry on his shoulders.[VI-43] I supplicate thee, that now, from the beginning, thou inspire him with what he is to conceive in his heart, and the road he is to follow, inasmuch as thou hast made of him a seat on which to seat thyself, and also as it were a flute that, being played upon, may signify thy will. Make him, O Lord, a faithful image of thyself, and permit not that in thy throne and hall he make himself proud and haughty; but rather see good, O Lord, that quietly and prudently he rule and govern those in his charge who are common people: do not permit him to insult and oppress his subjects, nor to give over without reason any of them to destruction. Neither permit, O Lord, that he spot and defile thy throne and hall with any injustice or oppression, for in so doing he will stain also thine honor and fame. Already, O Lord, has this poor man accepted and received the honor and lordship that thou hast given him; already he possesses the glory and riches thereof; already thou hast adorned his hands, feet, head, ears, and lips, with visor, ear-rings, and bracelets, and put yellow leather upon his ankles. Permit it not, O Lord, that these decorations, badges, and ornaments be to him a cause of pride and presumption; but rather that he serve thee with humility and plainness. May it please thee, O our Lord, most clement, that he rule and govern this, thy seignory, that thou hast committed to him, with all prudence and wisdom. May it please thee that he do nothing wrong or to thine offense; deign to walk with him and direct him in all his ways. But if thou wilt not do this, ordain that from this day henceforth he be abhorred and disliked, and that he die in war at the hands of his enemies, that he depart to the house of the sun; where he will be taken care of as a precious stone, and his heart esteemed by the sun-lord; he dying in the war like a stout and valiant man. This would be much better than to be dishonored in the world, to be disliked and abhorred of his people for his faults or defects. O our Lord, thou that providest to all the things needful for them, let this thing be done as I have entreated and supplicated thee.

[Sidenote: THAT A RULER BE SET OVER THE NATION.]

The next prayer, directed to the god under his name Tezcatlipoca Titlacaoamoquequeloa, is to ask, after the death of a ruler, that another may be given: O our Lord, already thou knowest how our ruler is dead, already thou hast put him under thy feet; he is gathered to his place; he is gone by the road that all have to go by, and to the house where all have to lodge; house of perpetual darkness, where there is no window, nor any light at all; he is now where none shall trouble his rest. He served thee here in his office during some few days and years, not indeed without fault and offense. Thou gavest him to taste in this world somewhat of thy kindness and favor, passing it before his face as a thing that passes quickly. This is the dignity and office that thou placedst him in, that he served thee in for some days, as has been said, with sighs, tears and devout prayers before thy majesty. Alas, he is gone now where our father and mother the god of hades is, the god that descended head foremost below the fire,[VI-44] the god that desires to carry us all to his place, with a very importunate desire, with such a desire as one has that dies of hunger and thirst; the god that is moved exceedingly, both by day and night, crying and demanding that all go to him. There, with this god, is now our late-departed ruler; he is there with all his ancestors that were in the first times, that governed this kingdom, with Acamapichtli, with Tyzoc, with Avitzotl, with the first Mocthecuzoma, with Axayacatl, and with those that came last, as the second Mocthecuzoma and also Mocthecuzoma Ilhuicamina.[VI-45] All these lords and kings ruled, governed, and enjoyed the sovereignty and royal dignity, and throne and seat of this empire; they ordered and regulated the affairs of this thy kingdom--thou that art the universal lord and emperor, and that needest not to take counsel with another. Already had these put off the intolerable load that they had on their shoulders, leaving it to their successor, our late ruler, so that for some days he bore up this lordship and kingdom; but now he has passed on after his predecessors to the other world. For thou didst ordain him to go, and didst call him to give thanks for being unloaded of so great a burden, quit of so sore a toil, and left in peace and rest. Some few days we have enjoyed him, but now forever he is absent from us, never more to return to the world. Peradventure has he gone to any place whence he can return here, so that his subjects may see his face again? Will he come again to tell us to do this or that? Will he come again to look to the consuls or governors of the state? Peradventure will they see him any more, or hear his decree and commandment? Will he come any more to give consolation and comfort to his principal men and his consuls? Alas, there is an end to his presence, he is gone for ever. Alas, that our candle has been quenched, and our light, that the axe that shone with us is lost altogether. All his subjects and inferiors, he has left in orphanage and without shelter. Peradventure will he take care henceforward of this city, province, and kingdom, though this city be destroyed and leveled to the ground, with this seignory and kingdom? O our Lord, most clement, is it a fit thing that by the absence of him that died shall come to the city, seignory, and kingdom some misfortune, in which will be destroyed, undone, and affrighted the vassals that live therein? For while living, he who has died gave shelter under his wings, and kept his feathers spread over the people. Great danger runs this your city, seignory, and kingdom, if another ruler be not elected immediately to be a shelter thereto. What is it that thou art resolved to do? Is it good that thy people be in darkness? Is it good that they be without head or shelter? Is it thy will that they be leveled down and destroyed? Woe for the poor and the little ones, thy servants, that go seeking a father and mother, some one to shelter and govern them, even as little children that go weeping, seeking an absent father and mother, and that grieve, not finding them. Woe for the merchants, petty and poor, that go about by the mountains, deserts, and meadows, woe also to the sad toilers that go about seeking herbs to eat, roots and wood to burn, or to sell, to eke out an existence withal. Woe for the poor soldiers, for the men of war, that go about seeking death, that abhor life, that think of nothing but the field and the line where battle is given--upon whom shall they call? who shall take a captive? to whom shall they present the same? And if they themselves be taken captive, to whom shall they give notice, that it may be known in their land? Whom shall they take for father and mother, so that in such a case favor may be granted them? Since he whose duty it was to see to this, who was as father and mother to all, is already dead. There will be none to weep, to sigh for the captives, to tell their relatives about them. Woe for the poor of the litigants, for those that have lawsuits with those that would take their estates. Who will judge, make peace among, and clear them of their disputes and quarrels? Behold when a child becomes dirty, if his mother clean him not, he must remain filthy. And those that make strife between themselves, that beat, that knock down, who will keep peace between them? Those that for all this go weeping and shedding tears, who shall wipe away their tears and put a stop to their laments? Peradventure can they apply a remedy to themselves? Those deserving death, will they peradventure pass sentence upon themselves? Who shall set up the throne of justice? Who shall possess the hall of the judge, since there is no judge? Who will ordain the things that are necessary for the good of this city, seignory, and kingdom? Who will elect the special judges that have charge of the lower people, district by district? Who will look to the sounding of the drum and fife to gather the people for war? who will collect and lead the soldiers and dexterous men to battle? O our Lord and protector see good to elect and decide upon some person sufficient to fill your throne and bear upon his shoulders the sore burden of the ruling of the state, to gladden and cheer the common people, even as the mother caresses the child, taking it in her lap; who will make music to the troubled bees[VI-46] so that they may be at rest? O our Lord, most clement, favor our ruler-elect, whom we deem fit for this office, elect and choose him so that he may hold this your lordship and government; give him as a loan your throne and seat, so that he may rule over this seignory and kingdom as long as he lives; lift him from the lowliness and humility in which he is, and put on him this honor and dignity that we think him worthy of; O our Lord, most clement, give light and splendor with your hand to this state and kingdom. What has been said I only come to propose to thy majesty; although very defectively, as one that is drunken, and that staggers, almost ready to fall. Do that which may best serve thee, in all and through all.

[Sidenote: PRAYER TO BE RID OF A BAD RULER.]

What follows is a kind of greater excommunication, or prayer to get rid of a ruler that abused and misused his power and dignity: O our Lord, most clement, that givest shelter to every one that approaches, even as a tree of great height and breadth, thou that art invisible and impalpable; that art, as we understand, able to penetrate the stones and the trees, seeing what is contained therein. For this same reason thou seest and knowest what is within our hearts and readest our thoughts. Our soul in thy presence is as a little smoke or fog that rises from the earth. It cannot at all be hidden from thee, the deed and the manner of living of any one; for thou seest and knowest his secrets and the sources of his pride and ambition. Thou knowest that our ruler has a cruel and hard heart and abuses the dignity that thou hast given him, as the drunkard abuses his wine, as one drunken with a soporific;[VI-47] that is to say that the riches, dignity, and abundance that for a little while thou hast given him, fill him with error, haughtiness, and unrest, and that he becomes a fool, intoxicated with the poison that makes him mad. His prosperity causes him to despise and make little of every one; it seems that his heart is covered with sharp thorns and also his face: all of which is made apparent by his manner of living, and by his manner of talking; never saying nor doing anything that gives pleasure to any one, never caring for any one, never taking counsel of any one; he ever lives as seems good to him and as the whim directs. O our Lord, most clement, protector of all, creator and maker of all, it is too certain that this man has destroyed himself, has acted like a child ungrateful to his father, like a drunkard without reason. The favors thou hast accorded him, the dignity thou hast set him in, have occasioned his perdition. Besides these, there is another thing, exceedingly hurtful and reprehensible: he is irreligious, never praying to the gods, never weeping before them, nor grieving for his sins, nor sighing; from this it comes about that he is as headstrong as a drunkard in his vices, going about like a hollow and empty person, wholly senseless; he stays not to consider what he is nor the office that he fills. Of a verity he dishonors and affronts the dignity and throne that he holds, which is thine, and which ought to be much honored and reverenced; for from it depends the justice and rightness of the judicature that he holds, for the sustaining and worthily directing of thy nation, thou being emperor of all. He should so hold his power that the lower people be not injured and oppressed by the great; from him should fall punishment and humiliation on those that respect not thy power and dignity. But all things and people suffer loss in that he fills not his office as he ought. The merchants suffer also, who are those to whom thou givest the most of thy riches, who overrun all the world, yea the mountains and the unpeopled places, seeking through much sorrow thy gifts, favors, and dainties, the which thou givest sparingly and to thy friends. Ah, Lord, not only does he dishonor thee as aforesaid, but also when we are gathered together to intone thy songs, gathered in the place where we solicit thy mercies and gifts, in the place where thou art praised and prayed to, where the sad afflicted ones and the poor gather comfort and strength, where very cowards find spirit to die in war--in this so holy and reverend place this man exhibits his dissoluteness and hurts devotion; he troubles those that serve and praise thee in the place where thou gatherest and markest thy friends, as a shepherd marks his flock.[VI-48] Since thou, Lord, hearest and knowest to be true all that I have now said in thy presence, there remains no more but that thy will be done, and the good pleasure of thy heart to the remedy of this affair. At least, O Lord, punish this man in such wise that he become a warning to others, so that they may not imitate his evil life. Let the punishment fall on him from thy hand that to thee seems most meet, be it sickness or any other affliction; or deprive him of the lordship, so that thou mayest give it to another, to one of thy friends, to one humble, devoted, and penitent; for many such thou hast, thou that lackest not persons such as are necessary for this office, friends that hope, crying to thee: thou knowest those for friends and servants that weep and sigh in thy presence every day. Elect some one of these that he may hold the dignity of this thy kingdom and seignory; make trial of some of these. And now, O Lord, of all the aforesaid things which is it that thou wilt grant? Wilt thou take from this ruler the lordship, dignity, and riches on which he prides himself, and give them to another who may be devout, penitent, humble, obedient, capable, and of good understanding? Or, peradventure, wilt thou be served by the falling of this proud one into poverty and misery, as one of the poor rustics that can hardly gather the wherewithal to eat, drink, and clothe himself? Or, peradventure, will it please thee to smite him with a sore punishment so that all his body may shrivel up, or his eyes be made blind, or his members rotten? Or wilt thou be pleased to withdraw him from the world through death, and send him to hades, to the house of darkness and obscurity, where his ancestors are, whither we have all to go, where our father is, and our mother, the god and the goddess of hell. O our Lord, most clement, what is it that thy heart desires the most? Let thy will be done. And in this matter in which I supplicate thee, I am not moved by envy nor hate; nor with any such motives have I come into thy presence. I am moved only by the robbery and ill-treatment that the people suffer, only by a desire for their peace and prosperity. I would not desire, O Lord, to provoke against myself thy wrath and indignation, I that am a mean man and rude; for it is to thee, O Lord, to penetrate the heart and to know the thoughts of all mortals.

[Sidenote: PRAYER USED BY A CONFESSOR OF SINS.]

The following is a form of Mexican prayer to Tezcatlipoca, used by the officiating confessor after having heard a confession of sins from some one. The peculiarity of a Mexican confession was that it could not lawfully have place in a man's life more than once; a man's first absolution and remission of sins was also the last and the only one he had to hope for:--O our most compassionate Lord, protector and favorer of all, thou hast now heard the confession of this poor sinner, with which he has published in thy presence his rottenness and unsavoriness. Perhaps he has hidden some of his sins before thee, and if it be so he has irreverently and offensively mocked thy majesty, and thrown himself into a dark cavern and into a deep ravine;[VI-49] he has snared and entangled himself; he has made himself worthy of blindness, shrivelling and rotting of the members, poverty, and misery. Alas, if this poor sinner have attempted any such audacity as to offend thus before thy majesty, before thee that art lord and emperor of all, that keepest a reckoning with all, he has tied himself up, he has made himself vile, he has mocked himself. Thou thoroughly seest him, for thou seest all things, being invisible and without bodily parts. If he have done this thing, he has, of his own will, put himself in this peril and risk; for this is a place of very strict justice and very strait judgment. This rite is like very clear water with which thou washest away the faults of him that wholly confesses, even if he have incurred destruction and shortening of days; if indeed he have told all the truth, and have freed and untied himself from his sins and faults, he has received the pardon of them and of what they have incurred. This poor man is even as a man that has slipped and fallen in thy presence, offending thee in divers ways, dirting himself also and casting himself into a deep cavern, and a bottomless well.[VI-50] He fell like a poor and lean man, and now he is grieved and discontented with all the past; his heart and body are pained and ill at ease; he is now filled with heaviness for having done what he did; he is now wholly determined never to offend thee again. In thy presence, O Lord, I speak, that knowest all things, that knowest also that this poor wretch did not sin with an entire liberty of free will; he was pushed to it and inclined by the nature of the sign under which he was born. And since this is so, O our Lord, most clement, protector and helper of all, since also this poor man has gravely offended thee, wilt thou not remove thine anger and thine indignation from him? Give him time, O Lord; favor and pardon him, inasmuch as he weeps, sighs, and sobs, looking before him on the evil he has done, and on that wherein he has offended thee. He is sorrowful, he sheds many tears, the sorrow of his sins afflicts his heart; he is not sorry only, but terrified also at thoughts of them. This being so, it is also a just thing that thy fury and indignation against him be appeased and that his sins be thrown on one side. Since thou art full of pity, O Lord, see good to pardon and to cleanse him; grant him the pardon and remission of his sins, a thing that descends from heaven, as water very clear and very pure to wash away sins,[VI-51] with which thou washest away all the stain and impurity that sin causes in the soul. See good, O Lord, that this man go in peace, and command him in what he has to do; let him go to do penance for and to weep over his sins; give him the counsels necessary to his well living.

[Sidenote: PERILS OF FALSE CONFESSION.]

[Sidenote: EXHORTATION TO THE PENITENT.]

At this point the confessor ceases from addressing the god and turns to the penitent, saying: O my brother, thou hast come into a place of much peril, a place of travail and fear; thou hast come to a steep chasm and a sheer rock, where if any one fall he shall never come up again; thou hast come to the very place where the snares and the nets touch one another, where they are set one upon another, in such wise that no one may pass thereby without falling into some of them, and not only snares and nets but also holes like wells. Thou hast thrown thyself down the banks of the river and among the snares and nets, whence without aid it is not possible that thou shouldst escape. These thy sins are not only snares, nets, and wells, into which thou hast fallen, but they are also wild beasts that kill and rend both body and soul. Peradventure, hast thou hidden some one or some of thy sins, weighty, huge, filthy, unsavory, hidden something now published in heaven, earth, and hades, something that now stinks to the uttermost part of the world? Thou hast now presented thyself before our most clement Lord and protector of all, whom thou didst irritate, offend, and provoke the anger of, who to-morrow, or some other day, will take thee out of this world and put thee under his feet, and send thee to the universal house of hades, where thy father is and thy mother, the god and the goddess of hell, whose mouths are always open desiring to swallow thee and as many as may be in the world. In that place shall be given thee whatsoever thou didst merit in this world, according to the divine justice, and to what thou hast earned with thy works of poverty, misery, and sickness. In divers manners thou wilt be tormented and afflicted in the extreme, and wilt be soaked in a lake of intolerable torments and miseries; but here, at this time, thou hast had pity upon thyself in speaking and communicating with our Lord, with him that sees all the secrets of every heart. Tell therefore wholly all that thou hast done, as one that flings himself into a deep place, into a well without bottom. When thou wast created and sent into the world, clean and good thou wast created and sent; thy father and thy mother Quetzalcoatl formed thee like a precious stone, and like a bead of gold of much value; when thou wast born thou wast like a rich stone and a jewel of gold very shining and very polished. But of thine own will and volition thou hast defiled and stained thyself, and rolled in filth, and in the uncleanness of the sins and evil deeds that thou hast committed and now confessed. Thou hast acted as a child without judgment or understanding, that playing and toying defiles himself with a loathsome filth; so hast thou acted in the matter of the sins that thou hast taken pleasure in, but hast now confessed and altogether discovered before our Lord, who is the protector and purifier of all sinners. This thou shalt not take for an occasion of jesting, for verily thou hast come to the fountain of mercy, which is like very clear water, with which filthinesses of the soul are washed away by our Lord God, the protector and favorer of all that turn to him. Thou hast snatched thyself from hades, and hast returned again to come to life in this world, as one that comes from another. Now thou hast been born anew, thou hast begun to live anew, and our Lord God gives thee light and a new sun. Now once more thou beginnest to radiate and to shine anew like a very precious and clear stone, issuing from the belly of the matrix in which it was created. Since this is thus, see that thou live with much circumspection and very advisedly now and henceforward, all the time that thou mayest live in this world under the power and lordship of our Lord God, most clement, beneficent, and munificent. Weep, be sad, walk humbly, with submission, with the head low and bowed down, praying to God. Look that pride find no place within thee, otherwise thou wilt displease our Lord, who sees the hearts and the thoughts of all mortals. In what dost thou esteem thyself? At how much dost thou hold thyself? What is thy foundation and root? On what dost thou support thyself? It is clear that thou art nothing, canst do nothing, and art worth nothing; for our Lord will do with thee all he may desire and none shall stay his hand. Peradventure, must he show thee those things with which he torments and afflicts, so that thou mayest see them with thine eyes in this world? Nay verily, for the torments and horrible sufferings of his tortures of the other world are not visible, nor able to be seen by those that live here. Perhaps he will condemn thee to the universal house of hades; and the house where thou now livest will fall down and be destroyed, and be as a dung-hill of filthiness and uncleanness, thou having been accustomed to live therein with much satisfaction, waiting to know how he would dispose of thee, he our Lord and helper, the invisible, incorporeal and alone one. Therefore I entreat thee to stand up and strengthen thyself and to be no more henceforth as thou hast been in the past. Take to thyself a new heart and a new manner of living, and take good care not to turn again to thine old sins. Consider that thou canst not see with thine eyes our Lord God, for he is invisible and impalpable, he is Tezcatlipoca, he is Titlacaoa, he is a youth of perfect perfection and without spot. Strengthen thyself to sweep, to clean, and to arrange thy house; for if thou do not this, thou wilt reject from thy company and from thy house, and wilt offend much the very clement youth that is ever walking through our houses, and through our streets, enjoying and amusing himself--the youth that labors, seeking his friends, to comfort them and to comfort himself with them. To conclude, I tell thee to go and learn to sweep, and to get rid of the filth and sweepings of thy house, and to cleanse everything, thyself not the least. Seek out also a slave to immolate him before God; make a feast to the principal men, and let them sing the praises of our Lord. It is moreover fit that thou shouldst do penance, working a year or more in the house of God; there thou shalt bleed thyself, and prick thy body with maguey thorns; and, as a penance for the adulteries and other vilenesses that thou hast committed, thou shalt, twice every day, pass osier twigs through holes pierced in thy body, once through thy tongue, and once through thine ears. This penance shalt thou do not alone for the carnalities above mentioned, but also for the evil and injurious words with which thou hast insulted and affronted thy neighbors; as also for the ingratitude thou hast shown with reference to the gifts bestowed on thee by our Lord, and for thine inhumanity toward thy neighbors, neither making offerings of the goods that were given thee by God, nor sharing with the poor the temporal benefits given by our Lord. Thou shalt burden thyself to offer paper and copal; thou shalt give alms to the needy and the hungry, to those that have nothing to eat nor to drink nor to cover themselves with; even though thou thyself go without food to give it away and to clothe the naked: look to it, for their flesh is like thy flesh, and they are men as thou. Care most of all for the sick, they are the image of God.[VI-52] There remains nothing more to be said to thee; go in peace, and entreat God to aid thee to fulfill what thou art obliged to do; for he gives favor to all.

[Sidenote: PRAYER OF A RULER FOR DIRECTION.]

The following prayer is one addressed to Tezcatlipoca by a recently elected ruler, to give thanks for his election and to ask favor and light for the proper performance of his office: O our lord, most clement, invisible and impalpable protector and governor, well do I know that thou knowest me, who am a poor man, of low destiny, born and brought up among filth, and a man of small reason and mean judgment, full of many defects and faults, a man that knows not himself, nor considers who he is. Thou hast bestowed on me a great benefit, favor, and mercy, without any merit on my part; thou hast lifted me from the dung-hill and set me in the royal dignity and throne. Who am I, my Lord, and what is my worth that thou shouldst put me among the number of those that thou lovest? among the number of thine acquaintance, of those thou holdest for chosen friends and worthy of all honor; born and brought up for thrones and royal dignities; to this end thou hast created them able, prudent, descended from noble and generous fathers; for this end they were created and educated; to be thine instruments and images they were born and baptized under the signs and constellations that lords are born under. They were born to rule thy kingdoms, thy word being within them and speaking by their mouth--according to the desire of the ancient god, the father of all the gods, the god of fire, who is in the pond of water among turrets surrounded with stones like roses, who is called Xiuhtecutli, who determines, examines, and settles the business and lawsuits of the nation and of the common people, as it were washing them with water; in the company and presence of this god the generous personages aforementioned always are. O most clement Lord, ruler, and governor, thou hast done me a great favor. Perhaps it has been through the intercession and through the tears shed by the departed lords and ladies that had charge of this kingdom.[VI-53] It would be great madness to suppose that for any merit or courage of mine thou hast favored me, setting me over this your kingdom, the government of which is something very heavy, difficult, and even fearful; it is as a huge burden, carried on the shoulders, and one that with great difficulty the past rulers bore, ruling in thy name. O our Lord, most clement, invisible, and impalpable, ruler and governor, creator and knower of all things and thoughts, beautifier of thy creatures,[VI-54] what shall I say more, poor me? In what wise have I to rule and govern this thy state, or how have I to carry this burden of the common people? I who am blind and deaf, who do not even know myself, nor know how to rule over myself. I am accustomed to walk in filth, my faculties fit me for seeking and selling edible herbs, and for carrying and selling wood. What I deserve, O Lord, is blindness for mine eyes and shriveling and rotting for my limbs, and to go dressed in rags and tatters; this is what I deserve and what ought to be given me. It is I that need to be ruled and to be carried on some one's back. Thou hast many friends and acquaintances that may be trusted with this load. Since, however, thou has already determined to set me up for a scoff and a jeer to the world, let thy will be done and thy word fulfilled. Peradventure thou knowest not who I am; and, after having known me, wilt seek another and take the government from me; taking it again to thyself, hiding again in thyself this dignity and honor, being already angry and weary of bearing with me; and thou wilt give the government to another, to some close friend and acquaintance of thine, to some one very devout toward thee, that weeps and sighs and so merits this dignity. Or, peradventure, this thing that happened to me is a dream, or a walking in sleep. O Lord, thou that art present in every place, that knowest all thoughts, that distributest all gifts, be pleased not to hide from me thy words and thine inspiration. I do not know the road I have to follow, nor what I have to do, deign then not to hide from me the light and the mirror that have to guide me. Do not allow me to cause those I have to rule and carry on my shoulders to lose the road and to wander over rocks and mountains. Do not allow me to guide them in the tracks of rabbits and deer. Do not permit, O Lord, any war to be raised against me, nor any pestilence to come upon those I govern; for I should not know, in such a case, what to do, nor where to take those I have upon my shoulders; alas for me, that am incapable and ignorant. I would not that any sickness come upon me, for in that case thy nation and people would be lost, and thy kingdom desolated and given up to darkness. What shall I do, O Lord and creator, if by chance I fall into some disgraceful fleshly sin, and thereby ruin the kingdom? what do if by negligence or sloth I undo my subjects? what do if through my fault I hurl down a precipice those I have to rule? Our Lord, most clement, invisible and impalpable, I entreat thee not to separate thyself from me; visit me often; visit this poor house, for I will be waiting for thee therein. With great thirst I await thee and demand urgently thy word and inspiration, which thou didst breathe into thine ancient friends and acquaintances that have ruled with diligence and rectitude over thy kingdom. This is thy throne and honor, on either side whereof are seated thy senators and principal men, who are as thine image and very person. They give sentence and speak on the affairs of the state in thy name; thou usest them as thy flutes, speaking from within them and placing thyself in their faces and ears, opening their mouths so that they may speak well. In this place the merchants mock and jest at our follies, with which merchants thou art spending thy leisure, since they are thy friends and acquaintances; there also thou inspirest and breathest upon thy devoted ones, who weep and sigh in thy presence, sincerely giving thee their heart.[VI-55] For this reason thou adornest them with prudence and wisdom, so that they may look as into a mirror with two faces, where every one's image is to be seen;[VI-56] for this thou givest them a very clear axe, without any dimness, whose brightness flashes into all places. For this cause also thou givest them gifts and precious jewels, hanging them from their necks and ears, even like material ornaments such as are the nacochtl, the tentetl, the tlapiloni or head-tassel, the matemecatl or tanned strap that lords tie round their wrists,[VI-57] the yellow leather bound on the ankles, the beads of gold, and the rich feathers. In this place of the good governing and rule of thy kingdom, are merited thy riches and glory, thy sweet and delightful things, calmness and tranquillity, a peaceable and contented life; all of which come from thy hand. In the same place, lastly, are also merited the adverse and wearisome things, sickness, poverty, and the shortness of life; which things are sent by thee to those that in this condition do not fulfill their duty. O our Lord, most clement, knower of thoughts and giver of gifts, is it in my hand, that am a mean man, to know how to rule? is the manner of my life in my hand, and the works that I have to do in my office? which indeed is of thy kingdom and dignity and not mine. What thou mayest wish me to do and what may be thy will and disposition, thou aiding me I will do. The road thou mayest show me I will walk in; that thou mayest inspire me with, and put in my heart, that I will say and speak. O our Lord, most clement, in thy hand I wholly place myself, for it is not possible for me to direct or govern myself; I am blind, darkness, a dung-hill. See good, O Lord, to give me a little light, though it be only as much as a fire-fly gives out, going about at night; to light me in this dream, in this life asleep that endures as for a day; where are many things to stumble at, many things to give occasion for laughing at one, many things like a rugged road that has to be gone over by leaps. All this has to happen in the position thou hast put me in, giving me thy seat and dignity. O Lord, most clement, I entreat thee to visit me with thy light, that I may not err, that I may not undo myself, that my vassals may not cry out against me. O our Lord, most pitiful, thou hast made me now the back-piece[VI-58] of thy chair, also thy flute; all without any merit of mine. I am thy mouth, thy face, thine ears, thy teeth, and thy nails. Although I am a mean man I desire to say that I unworthily represent thy person, and thine image, that the words I shall speak have to be esteemed as thine, that my face has to be held as thine, mine eyes as thine, and the punishment that I shall inflict as if thou hadst inflicted it. For all this I entreat thee to put thy spirit within me, and thy words, so that all may obey them and none contradict.[VI-59]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: GENUINENESS OF THE FOREGOING PRAYERS.]

[Sidenote: CHARACTER AND WORKS OF SAHAGUN.]

[Sidenote: ADULTERATION OF THE SAHAGUN MSS.]

Now with regard to the measure of the genuineness of the prayers to Tezcatlipoca, just given, it seems evident that either with or without the conscious connivance of Father Bernardino de Sahagun, their historian, a certain amount of sophistication and adaptation to Christian ideas has crept into them; it appears to be just as evident, however, on the other hand, that they contain a great deal that is original, indigenous, and characteristic in regard to the Mexican religion. At any rate they purport to do so, and as evidence bearing on the matter, presented by a hearer and eye-witness at first hand, by a man of strongly authenticated probity, learning, and above all, of strong sympathy with the Mexican people, beloved and trusted by those of them with whom he came in contact, and admitted to the familiarity of a friend with their traditions and habits of thought--for all these reasons his evidence, however we may esteem it, must be heard and judged.[VI-60]

FOOTNOTES:

[VI-1] Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, tom. iii., p. 22; _Doc. Hist. Mex._, série iv., tom. iii., p. 86.

[VI-2] Las Casas, Hist. Apologética, MS., tom. iii., cap. 168; Smith's Relation of Cabeza de Vaca, p. 177.

[VI-3] Ribas, Hist. de los Triumphos, pp. 473-5; Doc. Hist. Mex., série iv., tom. iii., p. 48.

[VI-4] Apparently the same as that Vairubi spoken of on p. 83 of this volume.

[VI-5] Ribas, Hist. de los Triumphos, pp. 16, 18, 40. 'A uno de sus dioses llamaban Ouraba, que quiere decir fortaleza. Era como Marte, dios de la guerra. Ofrecíanle arcos, flechas y todo género de armas para el feliz éxito de sus batallas. A otro llamaban Sehuatoba, que quiere decir, deleite, á quien ofrecian plumas, mantas, cuentecillas de vidrio y adornos mugeriles. Al dios de las aguas llamaban Bamusehua. El mas venerado de todos era Cocohuame, que significa muerte.' Alegre, Hist. Comp. de Jesus, tom. ii., p. 45. 'They worship for their gods such things as they haue in their houses, as namely, hearbes, and birdes, and sing songs vnto them in their language.' Coronado, in Hakluyt's Voy., vol. iii., p. 363.

[VI-6] 'Ils célébraient de grandes fêtes en l'honneur des femmes qui voulaient vivre dans le célibat. Les caciques d'un canton se réunissaient et dansaient tous nus, l'un après l'autre, avec la femme qui avait pris cette détermination. Quand la danse était terminée, ils la conduisaient dans une petite maison qu'on avait décorée à cet effet, et ils jouissaient de sa personne, les caciques d'abord et ensuite tous ceux qui le voulaient. A dater de ce moment, elles ne pouvaient rien refuser à quiconque leur offrait le prix fixé pour cela. Elles n'étaient jamais dispensées de cette obligation, même quand plus tard elles se mariaient.' Castañeda, in Ternaux-Compans, Voy., série i., tom. ix., pp. 150-1. 'Although these men were very immoral, yet such was their respect for all women who led a life of celibacy, that they celebrated grand festivals in their honour.' And there he makes an end. Domenech's Deserts, vol. i., p. 170.

[VI-7] This volume, pp. 55-6.

[VI-8] I would call attention to the fact that Alvarado, the ruddy handsome Spanish captain, was called Tonatiuh by the Mexicans, just as Barnabas was called Jupiter, and Paul, Mercurius, by the people of Lystra--going to show how unfetish and anthropomorphic were the ideas connected with the sun-god by the Mexicans.

[VI-9] Tylor's Prim. Cult., vol. ii., p. 311.

[VI-10] Müller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, pp. 473-4. The so-often discussed resemblance in form and signification between the two Mexican words teotl and calli (see Molina, Vocabulario) and the two Greek words theos and kalia, is completely enough noticed by Müller. 'Die Mexikanischen Völker haben einen Appellativnamen für Gott, Teotl, welcher, da die Buchstaben tl blosse aztekische Endung sind, merkwürdiger Weise mit dem indogermanischen theos, Deus, Deva, Dew, zusammenstimmt. Dieses Wort wird zur Bildung mancher Götternamen oder Kultusgegenstände gebraucht. Hieher gehören die Götternamen Tcotlacozanqui, Teocipactli, Teotetl, Teoyamiqui, Tlozolteotl. Der Tempel heisst Teocalli (vgl. Kalia, Hütte, Kalias, Capelle) oder wörtlich Haus Gottes--das göttliche Buch, Teoamoxtli, Priester Teopuixqui, oder auch Teoteuktli, eine Prozession, Teonenemi, Göttermarsch. Dazu kommen noch manche Namen von Städten, die als Kultussitze ausgezeichnet waren, wie das uns schon früher bekannt gewordene Teotihuacan. Im Plural wurden die Götter Teules genannt und eben so, wie uns Bernal Diaz so oft erzählt, die Gefährten des Cortes, welche das gemeine Volk als Götter bezeichnen wollte.' Id., p. 472.

[VI-11] Klemm, Cultur-Geschichte, tom. v., pp. 114-5.

[VI-12] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 45-6.

[VI-13] Gallatin, in Amer. Antiq. Soc., Transact., vol. i., p. 352.

[VI-14] Prescott's Conq. of Mex., vol. i., p. 57.

[VI-15] Squier's Serpent Symbol, p. 47.

[VI-16] Bussierre, L'Empire Mexicain, pp. 131-3.

[VI-17] Brantz Mayer, in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. vi., p. 585; see also, Brantz Mayer's Mexico as it was, p. 110.

[VI-18] Carbajal Espinosa, Hist. de Mexico, tom. i., pp. 468-9; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. ii., pp. 3-4.

[VI-19] Hombre Buho.

[VI-20] Pimentel, Mem. sobre la Raza Indígena, pp. 11-13.

[VI-21] Solis, Hist. de la Conq. de Mex., tom. i., pp. 398-9, 431.

[VI-22] Gallatin, in Amer. Ethnol. Soc., Transact., vol. i., p. 350, identifies this god with Tezcatlipoca of whom he writes in the following terms: 'Tezcatlipoca. A true invisible god, dwells in heaven, earth, and hell; alone attends to the government of the world, gives and takes away wealth and prosperity. Called also Titlacoa (whence his star Titlacahuan). Under the name of Necocyaotl, the author of wars and discords. According to Boturini, he is the god of providence. He seems to be the only equivalent for the Tonacatlecottle of the interpreters of the Codices.'

[VI-23] Explic. del Codex Telleriano-Remensis, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 135. I take this opportunity of cautioning the reader against Kingsborough's translation of the above codex, as well as against his translation of the Spiegazione delle Tavole del Codice Mexicano: every error that could vitiate a translation seems to have crept into these two.

[VI-24] See this vol. p. 57, note 13. On pages 55 and 56, and in the note pertaining thereto, will also be found many references bearing on the matter under present discussion.

[VI-25] Herrera, Hist. Gen., dec. ii., lib. vii., cap. xviii., p. 253.

[VI-26] Qües, Oviedo calls them, (spelled cues by most writers) the following explanation being given in glossary of Voces Americanas Empleadas por Oviedo, appended to the fourth volume of the Hist. Gen.: 'Qü: templo, casa de oracion. Esta voz era muy general en casi toda América, y muy principalmente en las comarcas de Yucatan y Mechuacan.'

[VI-27] Oviedo, Hist. Gen., tom. iii., p. 503.

[VI-28] 'Ypalnemoaloni, que quiere decir, Señor por quien se vive, y ai sèr en èl de Naturaleça.' Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. iii., p. 30.

[VI-29] See this vol. p. 183.--Not, be it remarked that Acosta denies the knowledge by the Mexicans of a Supreme God; he only denies the existence of any name by which the said deity was generally known. This is clear from the following extract from the Hist. Nat. Ind., p. 333: 'First, although the darkenesse of infidelitie holdeth these nations in blindenesse, yet in many thinges the light of truth and reason works somewhat in them. And they commonly acknowledge a supreame Lorde and Author of all things, which they of Peru called Viracocha.... Him they did worship, as the chiefest of all, whom they did honor in beholding the heaven. The like wee see amongest them of Mexico.'

[VI-30] Acosta, Hist. Nat. Ind., pp. 334, 337-8.

[VI-31] Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., pp. 88, 91, 107.

[VI-32] The interpretation of the title Tloque Nahuaque is not only irreconcilable with another given by the same author a few lines above in our text, but it is also at utter variance with those of all other authors with which I am acquainted. It may not be amiss here to turn to the best authority accessible in matters of Mexican idiom: Molina, Vocabulario, describes the title to mean, 'He upon whom depends the existence of all things, preserving and sustaining them,'--a word used also to mean God, or Lord. 'Tloque nauaque, cabe quien esta el ser de todas las cosas, conseruandolas y sustentandolas: y dizese de nro señor dios.'

[VI-33] Camargo, Hist. de Tlax., in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1843, tom. xcviii., p. 191, tom. xcix., p. 168.

[VI-34] Motolinia, Hist. Indios, in Icazbalceta, Col., tom. i., pp. 4, 33-34.

[VI-35] Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chichimeca in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 261. 'Tuvo por falsos á todos los dioses que adoraban los de esta tierra, diciendo que eran estatuas ó demonios enemigos del género humano; por que fue muy sabio en las cosas morales, y el que mas vaciló buscando de donde tomar lumbre para certificarse del verdadero Dios y criador de todas las cosas, como se ha visto en el discurso de su historia, y dan testimonio sus cantos que compuso en razon de esto como es el decir que habia uno solo, y que este era el hacedor del cielo y de la tierra, y sustentaba todo lo hecho y criado por él, y que estaba donde no tenia segundo, sobre los nueve cielos, que él alcanzaba, que jamas se habia visto en forma humana, ni otra figura, que con él iban á parar las almas de los virtuosos despues de muertos, y que las de los malos iban á otro lugar, que era el mas ínfimo de la tierra, de trabajos y penas horribles. Nunca jamas (aunque habia muchos ídolos que representaban muchos dioses) cuando se ofrecia tratar de deidad, ni en general ni en particular, sino que decia yntloque in nauhaque y palne moalani, que significa lo que està atras declarado. Solo decia que reconocia al sol por padre; y á la tierra por madre.' See also the Relaciones of the same author, in the same volume, p. 454.

[VI-36] Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. iii., pp. 241-2.

[VI-37] 'Por la freza de la comida.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 39.

[VI-38] 'Porque á la verdad no os engañais con lo que haceis.' See Sahagun, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 356, as the substitution of 'engañeis' for 'engañais' destroys the sense of the passage in Bustamante's ed. of the same, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 43.

[VI-39] By an error and a solecism of Bustamante's ed. the words 'gentes rojas' are substituted for the adjective 'generosos.' See, as in the preceding note, Sahagun, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 357, and Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 43.

[VI-40] 'Es decir Comandantes ó Capitanes generales de ejército:' Bustamante, in Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 44.

[VI-41] 'Borlas,' see Sahagun, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 358, given 'bollas' in Bustamante's Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 45.

[VI-42] 'Dignidad,' Sahagun, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 359, misprinted 'diligencia' in Bustamante's Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 46.

[VI-43] This doubtful and involved sentence, with the contained clause touching the nature of the fire-god, runs exactly as follows in the two varying editions of the original: 'Si alguna cosa aviesa ó mal heche hiciera en la dignidad que le habeis dado, y en la silla en que le habeis puesto, que és vuestra, donde està tratando los negocios populares, como quien lava cosas sucias con agua muy clara y muy limpia; en la qual silla y dignidad tiene el mismo oficio de lavar vuestro padre y madre de todos los Dioses, el Dios antiguo que és el Dios del fuego, que está en medio del albergue cerca de quatro paredes, y está cubierto con plumas resplandecientes que son como alas, lo que este electo hiciese mal hecho, con que provoque vuestra ira é indignacion, y despierte vuestro castigo contra si, no será de su albedrio ó de su querer, sino de vuestra permision, ó de algun otra sugestion vuestra, ó de otro; por lo cual os suplico tengais por bien de abrirle los ojos y darle lumbre y abrirle las orejas, y guiadle á este pobre electo, no tanto por lo que él és, sino principalmente por aquellos á quienes ha de regir y llevar á cuestas.' Sahagun, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., pp. 360-361. 'Si alguna cosa aviesa ó mal hecha hiciere, en la dignidad que le habeis dado, y en la silla en que lo habeis puesto que es vuestra, donde está tratando los negocios populares, como quien laba cosas sucias, con agua muy clara y muy limpia, en la cual silla y dignidad tiene el mismo oficio de labar vuestro padre y madre, de todos los dioses, el dios antiguo, que es el dios del fuego que está en medio de las flores, y en medio del albergue cercado de cuatro paredes, y está cubierto con plumas resplandecientes que son somo álas; lo que este electo hiciere mal hecho con que provoque vuestra ira é indignacion, y despierte vuestro castigo contra sí, no será de su alvedrio de ó su querer, sino de vuestra permision, ó de alguna otra sugestion vuestra, ó de otro; por lo cual os suplico tengais por bien de abirle los ojos, y darle luz, y abridle tambien las orejas, y guiad á este pobre electo; no tanto por lo que es él, sino principalmente por aquellos á quien ha de regir y llevar a cuestas.' Bustamante's Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 48.

[VI-44] See this volume p. 60.

[VI-45] Some of these names are differently spelt in Kingsborough's ed., Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 362. 'Uno de los quales fué Camapichtli, otro fué Tizocic, otro Avitzotl, otro el primero Motezuzoma, otro Axayaca, y los que ahora á la parte han muerto, como el segundo Motezuzoma, y tambien Ylhiycamina.'

[VI-46] 'Obejas,' in Bustamante's ed. Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 53; 'abejas' in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 364.

[VI-47] 'Y como el loco de los beleños.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 54.

[VI-48] Both editors of Sahagun agree here in using the word 'obejas.' As sheep were unknown in Mexico it is too evident that other hands than Mexican have been employed in the construction of this simile.

[VI-49] 'Si es así ha hecho burla de V. M., y con desacato y grande ofensa, se ha arrojado á una cima, y en una profunda barranca.' Bustamante's ed. of Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 58. The same passage runs as follows in Kingsborough's ed.: 'Si és así ha hecho burla de vuestra magestad, y con desacato y grande ofensa de vuestra magestad será arrojado en una sima, y en una profunda barranca.' Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 367.

[VI-50] 'Poca' is misprinted for 'poza' in Bustamante's ed., Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. v., p. 58.

[VI-51] 'Cosa que desciende del cielo, como agua clarísima y purísima par lavar los pecados.' Sahagun, in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. v., p. 368. See also Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 59.

'The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath.'--Merchant of Venice, act. iv.

[VI-52] 'Mayormente á los enfermos porque son imágen de dios.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 63.

[VI-53] 'Los pasados señores y señoras que tuvieron cargo de éste reino.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 71.

[VI-54] 'Adornador de las criaturas.' Sahagun, in _Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq._, vol v., p. 377. 'Adornador de las almas.' Sahagun, _Hist. Gen._, tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 71.

[VI-55] The precise force of much of this sentence it is hard to understand. It seems to show, at any rate, that the merchants were supposed to be very intimate with and especially favored by this deity. The original runs as follows: 'En este lugar burlan y rien de nuestras boberías los negociantes, con los quales estais vos holgados, porque son vuestros amigos y vuestros conocidos, y allí inspirais é insuflais á vuestros devotos, que lloran y suspiran en vuestra presencia y os dan de verdad su corazon.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 73.

[VI-56] 'Para que vean como en espejo de dos hazes, donde se representa la imágen de cada uno'. Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 73.

[VI-57] Nacochtli, orejeras (ear-rings); Tentetl, beçote de indio (lip-ornament). Molina, Vocabulario. Molina gives also Matemecatl, to mean a gold bracelet or something of that kind; Bustamante translates the word in the same way, explaining that the strap mentioned in the text was used to tie the bracelet on. Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 74.

[VI-58] 'Espaldar de vuestra silla.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 75.

[VI-59] 'He that delivered this prayer before Tezcatlipoca, stood on his feet, his feet close together, bending himself towards the earth. Those that were very devout were naked. Before they began the prayer they offered copal to the fire, or some other sacrifice, and if they were covered with a blanket, they pulled the knot of it round to the breast, so that they were naked in front. Some spoke this prayer squatting on their calves, and kept the knot of the blanket on the shoulder.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. vi., p. 75.

[VI-60] Father Bernardino de Sahagun, a Spanish Franciscan, was one of the first preachers sent to Mexico; where he was much employed in the instruction of the native youth, working for the most part in the province of Tezcuco. While there, in the city of Tepeopulco, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, he began the work, best known to us as the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, from which the above prayers have been translated, and from which we shall draw largely for further information. It would be hard to imagine a work of such a character constructed after a better fashion of working than his. Gathering the principal natives of the town in which he carried on his labors, he induced them to appoint him a number of persons, the most learned and experienced in the things of which he wished to write. These learned Mexicans being collected, Father Sahagun was accustomed to get them to paint down in their native fashion the various legends, details of history and mythology, and so on that he wanted; at the foot of the said pictures these learned Mexicans wrote out the explanations of the same in the Mexican tongue; and this explanation the Father Sahagun translated into Spanish: that translation purports to be what we now read as the Historia General. Here follows a translation of the Prologo of his work, in which he describes all the foregoing in his own way: "All writers labor the best that they can to make their works authoritative; some by witnesses worthy of faith, others by the writings of previous writers held worthy of belief, others by the testimony of the Sacred Scriptures. To me are wanting all these foundations to make authoritative what I have written in these twelve books [of the Historia General]. I have no other foundation, but to set down here the relation of the diligence that I made to know the truth of all that is written in these twelve books. As I have said in other prologues to this work, I was commanded in all holy obedience by my chief prelate to write in the Mexican language that which appeared to me to be useful for the doctrine, worship, and maintenance of Christianity among these natives of New Spain, and for the aid of the workers and ministers that taught them. Having received this commandment, I made in the Spanish language a minute or memorandum of all the matters that I had to treat of, which matters are what is written in the twelve books, ... which were begun in the pueblo of Tepeopulco, which is in the province of Culhuacán or Tezcuco. The work was done in the following way. In the aforesaid pueblo, I got together all the principal men, together with the lord of the place, who was called Don Diego de Mendoza, of great distinction and ability, well experienced in things ecclesiastic, military, political, and even relating to idolatry. They being come together, I set before them what I proposed to do, and prayed them to appoint me able and experienced persons, with whom I might converse and come to an understanding on such questions as I might propose. They answered me that they would talk the matter over and give their answer on another day; and with this they took their departure. So on another day the lord and his principal men came, and having conferred together with great solemnity, as they were accustomed at that time to do, they chose out ten or twelve of the principal old men, and told me that with these I might communicate and that these would instruct me in any matters I should inquire of. Of these there were as many as four instructed in Latin, to whom I, some few years before, had myself taught grammar in the college of Santa Cruz, in Tlaltelolco. With these appointed principal men, including the four instructed in grammar, I talked many days during about two years, following the order of the minute I had already made out. On all the subjects on which we conferred they gave me pictures--which were the writings anciently in use among them--and these the grammarians interpreted to me in their language, writing the interpretation at the foot of the picture. Even to this day I hold the originals of these.... When I went to the chapter, with which was ended the seven years' term of Fray Francisco Torál--he that had imposed the charge of this work upon me--I was removed from Tepeopulco, carrying all my writings. I went to reside at Santiago del Tlaltelolco. There I brought together the principal men, set before them the matter of my writings, and asked them to appoint me some able principal men, with whom I might examine and talk over the writings I had brought from Tepeopulco. The governor, with the alcaldes, appointed me as many as eight or ten principal men, selected from all the most able in their language, and in the things of their antiquities. With these and with four or five collegians, all trilinguists, and living for the space of a year or more secluded in the college, all that had been brought written from Tepeopulco was clearly emended and added to; and the whole was rewritten in small letters, for it was written with much haste. In this scrutiny or examination, he that worked the hardest of all the collegians was Martin Jacobita, who was then rector of the college, an inhabitant of the ward of Santa Ana. I, having done all as above said in Tlaltelolco, went, taking with me all my writings, to reside in San Francisco de México, where, by myself, for the space of three years, I examined over and over again the writings, emended them, divided them into twelve books, and each book into chapters and paragraphs. After this, Father Miguel Navarro being provincial, and Father Diego de Mendoza commissary-general in Mexico, with their favor I had all the twelve books clearly copied in a good hand, as also the Postilla and the Cantáres [which were other works on which Sahagun was engaged]. I made out also an Art of the Mexican language with a vocabulary-appendix. Now the Mexicans added to and emended my twelve books [of the Historia General] in many things while they were being copied out in full; so that the first sieve through which my work passed was that of Tepeopulco, the second that of Tlaltelolco, the third that of Mexico; and in all these scrutinies collegiate grammarians had been employed. The chief and most learned was Antonio Valeriano, a resident of Aztcapuzalco; another little less than the first, was Alonso Vegerano, resident of Cuauhtitlan; another was Martin Jacobita, above mentioned; another Pedro de Santa Buenaventura, resident of Cuauhtitlan; all expert in three languages, Latin, Spanish, and Indian [Mexican]. The scribes that made out the clear copies of all the works are Diego Degrado, resident of the ward of San Martin, Mateo Severino, resident of Xochimilco, of the part of Ullác. The clear copy being fully made out, by the favor of the fathers above mentioned and the expenditure of hard cash on the scribes, the author thereof asked of the delegate Father Francisco de Rivera that the work be submitted to three or four religious, so that they might give an opinion on it, and that in the provincial chapter, which was close at hand, they might attend and report on the matter to the assembly, speaking as the thing might appear to them. And these reported in the assembly that the writings were of much value and deserved such support as was necessary toward their completion. But to some of the assembly it seemed that it was contrary to their vows of poverty to spend money in copying these writings; so they commanded the author to dismiss his scribes, and that he alone with his own hand should do what copying he wanted done; but as he was more than seventy years old, and for the trembling of his hand not able to write anything, nor able to procure a dispensation from this mandate, there was nothing done with the writings for more than five years. During this interval, and at the next chapter, Father Miguel Navarro was elected by the general chapter for custos custodium, and Father Alonso de Escalona, for provincial. During this time the author made a summary of all the books and of all the chapters of each book, and prologues, wherein was said with brevity all that the books contained. This summary Father Miguel Navarro and his companion, Father Gerónimo de Mendieta, carried to Spain, and thus in Spain the things that had been written about this land made their appearance. In the mean time, the father provincial took all the books of the author and dispersed them through all the province, where they were seen by many religious and approved for very precious and valuable. After some years, the general chapter meeting again, Father Miguel Navarro, at the petition of the author, turned with censures to collect again the said books; which, from that collecting, came within about a year into the hands of the author. During that time nothing was done in them, nor was there any one to help to get them translated into the vernacular Spanish, until the delegate-general Father Rodrigo de Sequera came to these parts, saw and was much pleased with them, and commanded the author to translate them into Spanish; providing all that was necessary to their being re-written, the Mexican language in one column and the Spanish in another, so that they might be sent to Spain; for the most illustrious Señor Don Juan de Ovando, president of the Council of Indies, had inquired after them, he knowing of them by reason of the summary that the said Father Miguel Navarro had carried to Spain, as above said. And all the above-said is to show that this work has been examined and approved by many, and during many years has passed through many troubles and misfortunes before reaching the place it now has." Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., lib. i., Prólogo, pp. iii. vii. As to the date at which Sahagun wrote he says: 'These twelve books and the Art and the vocabulary-appendix were finished in a clear copy in the year 1569; but not translated into Spanish.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. ii., lib. i., Introduccion, p. xv. The following scanty sketch of the life of Sahagun, is taken, after Bustamante, from the Menealógio Seráfico of Father Betancourt: 'Father Bernardino Sahagun, native of Sahagun, took the robe in the convent of Salamanca, being a student of that university. He passed into this province [Mexico] in the year 1529, in the company of Father Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo. While a youth he was endowed with a beauty and grace of person that corresponded with that of his soul. From his tenderest years he was very observant, self-contained, and given to prayer. Father Martin de Valencia held very close communion with him, owing to which he saw him many times snatched up into an ecstasy. Sahagun was very exact in his attendance in the choir, even in his old age, he never was absent at matins. He was gentle, humble, courteous in his converse with all. He was elected secondly with the learned Father Juan de Gaona, as professor at Tlaltelolco in the college of Santa Cruz; where he shone like a light on a candlestick, for he was perfect in all the sciences. His possession of the Mexican language was of a perfectness that has never to this day being equaled; he wrote many books in it that will be mentioned in the catalogue of authors. He had to strive with much opposition, for to some it did not seem good to write out in the language of the Mexicans their ancient rites, lest it should give occasion for their being persevered in. He watched over the honor of God against idolatry, and sought earnestly to impress the Christian faith upon the converted. He affirmed as a minister of much experience, that during the first twenty years [of his life in the province] the fervor of the natives was very great; but that afterward they inclined to idolatry, and became very lukewarm in the faith. This he says in the book of his Postillas that I have, in which I learnt much. During the first twenty years of his life [in the province] he was guardian of some convents; but after that he desired not to take upon himself any office or guardianship for more than forty years, so that he could occupy himself in preaching, confessing, and writing. During the sixty and one years that he lived in the province, for the most part in college, without resting a single day, he instructed the boys in civilization and good customs, teaching them reading, writing, grammar, music, and other things in the service of God and the state. This went on till the year 1590, when, the approach of death becoming apparent to every one, he entered the hospital of Mexico; where he died on the 23rd of October. There assembled to his funeral the collegians, trailing their becas, and the natives shedding tears, and the members of the different religious houses giving praises to God our Lord for this holy death, of which the martyrology treats--Gonzaga, Torquemada, Deza, Rampineo, and many others. In the library of Señor Eguiara, in the manuscript of the Turriana collection, I have read the article relating to Father Sahagun; in it a large catalogue of works that he wrote is given. I remember only the following: Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España; Arte de gramática mexicana; Diccionario trilingue de español, latin, y mexicano; Sermones para todo el año en mexicano, (poséo aunque sin nombre de autor); Postillas ó commentarios al evangelio, para las misas solemnes de dia de precepto; Historia de los primeros pobladores franciscanos en Mexico; Salmodia de la vida de Cristo, de la virgen y de los santos, que usaban los indios, y preceptos para los casados; Escala espiritual, que fué la primera obra que se imprimió en Mexico en la imprenta que trajo Hernan Cortés de España.' Sahagun, Hist. Gen., tom. i., pp. vii.-ix. As to the manner in which the Historia General of Sahagun, 'whom,' says Prescott, Mex., vol. i., p. 67, 'I have followed as the highest authority' in matters of Mexican religion--at last saw the light of publication, I give Prescott's account, Mex., vol. i., p. 88, as exact save in one point, for which see the correction in brackets:--'At length, toward the close of the last century, the indefatigable Muñoz succeeded in disinterring the long lost manuscript from the place tradition had assigned to it--the library of a convent at Tolosa, in Navarre, the northern extremity of Spain. With his usual ardor, he transcribed the whole work with his own hands, and added it to the inestimable collection, of which, alas! he was destined not to reap the full benefit himself. From this transcript Lord Kingsborough was enabled to procure the copy which was published in 1830, in the sixth volume of his magnificent compilation. [It was published in two parts, in the fifth and seventh volumes of that compilation, and the exact date of the publication was 1831.] In it he expresses an honest satisfaction at being the first to give Sahagun's work to the world. But in this supposition he was mistaken. The very year preceding, an edition of it, with annotations, appeared in Mexico, in three volumes 8vo. It was prepared by Bustamante--a scholar to whose editorial activity his country is largely indebted--from a copy of the Muñoz manuscript which came into his possession. Thus this remarkable work, which was denied the honors of the press during the author's lifetime, after passing into oblivion, reappeared, at the distance of nearly three centuries, not in his own country, but in foreign lands widely remote from each other, and that almost simultaneously.... Sahagun divided his history into twelve books. The first eleven are occupied with the social institutions of Mexico, and the last with the Conquest. On the religion of the country he is particularly full. His great object evidently was, to give a clear view of its mythology, and of the burdensome ritual which belonged to it. Religion entered so intimately into the most private concerns and usages of the Aztecs, that Sahagun's work must be a text-book for every student of their antiquities. Torquemada availed himself of a manuscript copy, which fell into his hands before it was sent to Spain, to enrich his own pages--a circumstance more fortunate for his readers than for Sahagun's reputation, whose work, now that it is published, loses much of the originality and interest which would otherwise attach to it. In one respect it is invaluable; as presenting a complete collection of the various forms of prayer, accommodated to every possible emergency, in use by the Mexicans. They are often clothed in dignified and beautiful language, showing that sublime speculative tenets are quite compatible with the most degrading practices of superstition. It is much to be regretted that we have not the eighteen hymns, inserted by the author in his book, which would have particular interest, as the only specimen of devotional poetry preserved of the Aztecs. The hieroglyphical paintings, which accompanied the text are also missing. If they have escaped the hands of fanaticism, both may reappear at some future day.' As may have been noticed, the editions of Sahagun by both Bustamante and Kingsborough have been constantly used together and collated during the course of this present work. They differ, especially in many minor points of typography, Bustamante's being the more carelessly edited in this respect. Notwithstanding, however, the opinion to the contrary of Mr Harrisse, Bustamante's edition is on the whole the more complete; Kingsborough having avowedly omitted divers parts of the original which he thought unimportant or uninteresting--a fault also of Bustamante's, but to a lesser extent. Fortunately what is absent in the one I have always found in the other; and indeed, as a whole, and all circumstances being considered, they agree tolerably well. The criticism of Mr Harrisse, just referred to, runs as follows, Bib. Am. Vet., p. 208, note 52: 'Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España; Mexico, 3 vols., 4to, 1829 (edited and castrated by Bustamente [Bustamante] in such a manner as to require for a perfect understanding of that dry but important work, the reading of the parts also published in vols. v. and vi. [v. and vii.], of Kingsborough's Antiquities.)' We are not yet done, however, with editions of Sahagun. A third edition of part of his work has seen the light. It is Bustamante himself that attempts to supersede a part of his first edition. He affirms, that book xii. of that first edition of his, as of course also book xii. of Kingsborough's edition, is spurious and has been garbled and glossed by Spanish hands quite away from the original as written by Sahagun. Exactly how or when this corruption took place he does not show; but he leaves it to be inferred that it was immediately after the original manuscript had been taken from its author, and that it was done because that twelfth book, which treats more immediately of the Conquest, reflected too hardly on the Conquerors. Bustamante having procured, in a manner now to be given in his own words, a correct and genuine copy of the twelfth book, a copy written and signed by the hand of Sahagun himself, proceeded in 1840 to give it to the world under the extraordinary title of La Aparicion de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Mexico, comprobada con la refutacion del argumento negativo que presenta D. Juan Bautista Muñoz, fundandose en el testimonio del P. Fr. Bernardino Sahagun; ó sea, Historia Original de este Escritor, que altera la publicada en 1829 en el equivocado concepto de ser la unica y original del dicho autor. All of which means to say that he, Bustamante, having already published in 1829-30, a complete edition of Sahagun's Historia General, in twelve books, according to the best manuscript he could then find, has found the twelfth book of that history to be not genuine, has found the genuine original of said twelfth book, and now, in 1840, publishes said genuine twelfth book under the above extraordinary name, inasmuch as it contains some reference to what is supposed to be uppermost in every religious Mexican's mind, to wit, the miraculous appearance of the Blessed Virgin to a certain native Mexican, la aparicion de nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Mexico. Bustamante's own account of all the foregoing, being translated from the above-mentioned Nra. Señora de Guadalupe, pp. iv., viii., xxiii., runs as follows: 'As he [Sahagun] wrote with the frankness proper to truth, and as this was not pleasing to the heads of the then government, nor even to some of his brother friars, he was despoiled of his writings. These were sent to Spain, and ordered to be stored away in the archives of the convent of San Francisco de Tolosa de Navarra, so that no one should ever be able to read them; there they lay hid for more than two centuries. During the reign of Carlos iii., Señor Muñoz was commissioned to write the history of the New World. But he found himself without this work [of Sahagun's] so necessary to his purpose; and he was ignorant of its whereabouts, till, reading the index of the Biblioteca Franciscana he came to know about it, and, furnished by the government with all powers, he took it out of the said monastery. Colonel D. Diego Garcia Panes having come to Madrid at the same time, to publish the works of Señor Veytia, this gentleman contracted a friendship with Muñoz who allowed him to copy the two thick volumes in which Sahagun's work was written.... These two volumes, then, that Colonel Panes had copied, were what was held to be solely the work of Father Sahagun, and as such esteemed; still it does not appear to be proved by attestation that this was the author's original autograph history. Had it been so, the circumstance would hardly have been left without definite mention, when the relation was given of the way in which the book was got hold of, and when the guarantee of the exactness of the copy was procured. I, to-day, possess an original manuscript, written altogether and signed by the hand of Father Sahagun; in which is to be noted an essential variation in certain of the chapters which I now present, from those that I before published in the twelfth book of his Historia General; which is the book treating of the Conquest. Sahagun wrote this manuscript in the year 1585, that is to say, five years before his death, and he wrote it without doubt under a presentiment of the alterations that his work would suffer. He had already made alterations therein himself, since he confesses (they are his words) that certain defects existed in them, that certain things had been put into the narrative of that Conquest that should not have been put there, while other things were left out that should not have been omitted. Therefore [says Bustamante], this autograph manuscript discovers the alterations that his writings underwent and gives us good reason to doubt the authenticity and exactness of the text seen by Muñoz.... During the revolution of Madrid, in May, 1808, caused by the entrance of the French and the removal of the royal family to Bayonne, the office of the secretary of the Academy of History was robbed, and from it were taken various bundles of the works of Father Sahagun. These an old lawyer of the court bought, and among them one entitled: Relacion de la conquista de esta Nueva España, como la contaron los soldados indios que se hallaron presentes. Convertióse en lengua española llana é inteligible y bien enmendada en este año de 1585. Unfortunately there had only remained [of the Relacion, etc., (?)] a single volume of manuscript, which Señor D. José Gomez de la Cortina, ex-count of that title, bought, giving therefor the sum of a hundred dollars. He allowed me the use of it, and I have made an exact copy of it, adding notes for the better understanding of the Conquest; the before-mentioned being altogether written, as I have said, and signed by the hands of Father Sahagun. This portion, which the said ex-count has certified to, induces us to believe that the other works of Sahagun, relating both to the Conquest and to the Aparicion Guadalupana have been adulterated because they did little honor to the first Conquerors. That they have at all come to be discussed with posterity, has been because a knowledge of them was generally scattered, and in such a way that it was no longer possible to keep them hidden; or, perhaps, because the faction interested in their concealment had disappeared. In proof of the authenticity and identity of this manuscript, we refer to Father Betancur in his Chronicle of the province of the Santo Evangelio de México, making a catalogue of the illustrious men thereof; speaking of Sahagun, he says on page 138: "The ninth book that this writer composed was the Conquest of Mexico by Cortés; which book afterward, in the year 1585, he re-wrote and emended; the [emended] original of this I saw signed with his hand in the possession of Señor D. Juan Francisco de Montemayor, president of the Royal Audiencia, who carried it to Spain with the intention of having it printed; and of this I have a translation wherein it is said that the Marquis of Villa-Manrique, viceroy of Mexico, took from him [Sahagun] the twelve books and sent them to his majesty for the royal chronicler." Bustamante lastly gives a certificate of the authenticity of the manuscript under discussion and published by him. The certificate is signed by José Gomez de la Cortina, and runs as follows: 'Mexico, 1st April, 1840. I certify that, being in Madrid in the year 1828, I bought from D. Lorenzo Ruiz de Artieda, through the agency of my friend and companion, D. José Musso Valiente, member of the Spanish Academies of language and of history, the original manuscript of Father Sahagun, of which mention is made in this work by his Excellency Señor D. Cárlos María Bustamante, as constated by the receipts of the seller, and by other documents in my possession.' So much for Bustamante's new position as a reëditor of a part of Sahagun's Historia General; we have stated it in his own words, and in those of his own witnesses as brought forward by him. The changes referred to do not involve any matter bearing on mythology; it may be not out of place to say however, that the evidence in favor of Bustamante's new views seems strong and truth-like.