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American Hero-Myths, A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent

Daniel G. Brinton

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AMERICAN HERO-MYTHS.

A STUDY IN THE NATIVE RELIGIONS
OF THE WESTERN CONTINENT.

BY

DANIEL G. BRINTON, M.D.,

MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN
SOCIETY; THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILA., ETC.; AUTHOR OF
"THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD;" "THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT." ETC.


1882.


TO

ELI K. PRICE, ESQ.,

PRESIDENT OF THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, WHOSE
ENLIGHTENED INTEREST HAS FOR MANY YEARS, AND IN MANY WAYS, FURTHERED THE
PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE
AUTHOR.




PREFACE.


This little volume is a contribution to the comparative study of
religions. It is an endeavor to present in a critically correct light some
of the fundamental conceptions which are found in the native beliefs of
the tribes of America.

So little has heretofore been done in this field that it has yielded a
very scanty harvest for purposes of general study. It has not yet even
passed the stage where the distinction between myth and tradition has been
recognized. Nearly all historians continue to write about some of the
American hero-gods as if they had been chiefs of tribes at some
undetermined epoch, and the effort to trace the migrations and
affiliations of nations by similarities in such stories is of almost daily
occurrence. How baseless and misleading all such arguments must be, it is
one of my objects to set forth.

At the same time I have endeavored to be temperate in applying the
interpretations of mythologists. I am aware of the risk one runs in
looking at every legend as a light or storm myth. My guiding principle has
been that when the same, and that a very extraordinary, story is told by
several tribes wholly apart in language and location, then the
probabilities are enormous that it is not a legend but a myth, and must be
explained as such. It is a spontaneous production of the mind, not a
reminiscence of an historic event.

The importance of the study of myths has been abundantly shown of recent
years, and the methods of analyzing them have been established with
satisfactory clearness.

The time has long since passed, at least among thinking men, when the
religious legends of the lower races were looked upon as trivial fables,
or as the inventions of the Father of Lies. They are neither the one nor
the other. They express, in image and incident, the opinions of these
races on the mightiest topics of human thought, on the origin and destiny
of man, his motives for duty and his grounds of hope, and the source,
history and fate of all external nature. Certainly the sincere expressions
on these subjects of even humble members of the human race deserve our
most respectful heed, and it may be that we shall discover in their crude
or coarse narrations gleams of a mental light which their proud Aryan
brothers have been long in coming to, or have not yet reached.

The prejudice against all the lower faiths inspired by the claim of
Christianity to a monopoly of religious truth--a claim nowise set up by
its founder--has led to extreme injustice toward the so-called heathen
religions. Little effort has been made to distinguish between their good
and evil tendencies, or even to understand them. I do not know of a single
instance on this continent of a thorough and intelligent study of a native
religion made by a Protestant missionary.

So little real work has been done in American mythology that very diverse
opinions as to its interpretation prevail among writers. Too many of them
apply to it facile generalizations, such as "heliolatry," "animism,"
"ancestral worship," "primitive philosophizing," and think that such a
sesame will unloose all its mysteries. The result has been that while each
satisfies himself, he convinces no one else.

I have tried to avoid any such bias, and have sought to discover the
source of the myths I have selected, by close attention to two points:
first, that I should obtain the precise original form of the myth by a
rigid scrutiny of authorities; and, secondly, that I should bring to bear
upon it modern methods of mythological and linguistic analysis.

The first of these requirements has given me no small trouble. The sources
of American history not only differ vastly in merit, but many of them are
almost inaccessible. I still have by me a list of books of the first order
of importance for these studies, which I have not been able to find in any
public or private library in the United States.

I have been free in giving references for the statements in the text. The
growing custom among historians of omitting to do this must be deplored in
the interests of sound learning. It is better to risk the charge of
pedantry than to leave at fault those who wish to test an author's
accuracy or follow up the line of investigation he indicates.

On the other hand, I have exercised moderation in drawing comparisons with
Aryan, Semitic, Egyptian and other Old World mythologies. It would have
been easy to have noted apparent similarities to a much greater extent.
But I have preferred to leave this for those who write upon general
comparative mythology. Such parallelisms, to reach satisfactory results,
should be attempted only by those who have studied the Oriental religions
in their original sources, and thus are not to be deceived by superficial
resemblances.

The term "comparative mythology" reaches hardly far enough to cover all
that I have aimed at. The professional mythologist thinks he has completed
his task when he has traced a myth through its transformations in story
and language back to the natural phenomena of which it was the expression.
This external history is essential. But deeper than that lies the study of
the influence of the myth on the individual and national mind, on the
progress and destiny of those who believed it, in other words, its true
_religious_ import. I have endeavored, also, to take some account of this.

The usual statement is that tribes in the intellectual condition of those
I am dealing with rest their religion on a worship of external phenomena.
In contradiction to this, I advance various arguments to show that their
chief god was not identified with any objective natural process, but was
human in nature, benignant in character, loved rather than feared, and
that his worship carried with it the germs of the development of
benevolent emotions and sound ethical principles.

_Media, Pa., Oct., 1882._




CONTENTS.




CHAPTER I.


INTRODUCTORY.

Some Kind of Religion Found among all Men--Classifications of
Religions--The Purpose of Religions--Religions of Rite and of Creed--The
Myth Grows in the First of these--Intent and Meaning of the Myth.

Processes of Myth Building in America--Personification, Paronyms and
Homonyms--Otosis--Polyonomy--Henotheism--Borrowing--Rhetorical
Figures--Abstract Expressions--Esoteric Teachings.

Outlines of the Fundamental American Myth--The White Culture-hero and the
Four Brothers--Interpretation of the Myth--Comparison with the Aryan
Hermes Myth--With the Aryo-Semitic Cadmus Myth--With Osirian Myths--The
Myth of the Virgin Mother--The Interpretation thus Supported.


CHAPTER II.


THE HERO-GODS OF THE ALGONKINS AND IROQUOIS.

Sec.1. _The Algonkin Myth of Michabo._

The Myth of the Giant Rabbit--The Rabbit Creates the World--He Marries the
Muskrat--Becomes the All-Father--Derivation of Michabo--of Wajashk, the
Musk-rat--The Myth Explained--The Light-God as God of the East--The Four
Divine Brothers--Myth of the Huarochiris--The Day-Makers--Michabo's
Contests with His Father and Brother--Explanation of These--The Symbolic
Flint Stone--Michabo Destroys the Serpent King--Meaning of this
Myth--Relations of the Light-God and Wind-God--Michabo as God of Waters
and Fertility--Represented as a Bearded Man.

Sec.2. _The Iroquois Myth of Ioskeha._

The Creation of the Earth--The Miraculous Birth of Ioskeha--He Overcomes
his Brother Tawiscara--Creates and Teaches Mankind--Visits his People--His
Grandmother Ataensic--Ioskeha as Father of his Mother--Similar Conceptions
in Egyptian Myths--Derivation of Ioskeha and Ataensic--Ioskeha as
Tharonhiawakon, the Sky Supporter--His Brother Tawiscara or Tehotennhiaron
Identified--Similarity to Algonkin Myths.


CHAPTER III.


THE HERO-GOD OP THE AZTEC TRIBES.

Sec.1. _The Two Antagonists._

The Contest of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca--Quetzalcoatl the
Light-God--Derivation of His Name--Titles of Tezcatlipoca--Identified with
Darkness, Night and Gloom.

Sec.2. _Quetzalcoatl the God._

Myth of the Four Brothers--The Four Suns and the Elemental Conflict--Names
of the Four Brothers.

Sec.3. _Quetzalcoatl the Hero of Tula._

Tula, the City of the Sun--Who were the Toltecs?--Tlapallan and Xalac--The
Birth of the Hero God--His Virgin Mother Chimalmatl--His Miraculous
Conception--Aztlan, the Land of Seven Caves, and Colhuacan, the Bended
Mount--The Maid Xochitl and the Rose Garden of the Gods--Quetzalcoatl as
the White and Bearded Stranger.

The Glory of the Lord of Tula--The Subtlety of the Sorcerer
Tezcatlipoca--The Magic Mirror and the Mystic Draught--The Myth
Explained--The Promise of Rejuvenation--The Toveyo and the Maiden--The
Juggleries of Tezcatlipoca--Departure of Quetzalcoatl from
Tula--Quetzalcoatl at Cholula--His Death or Departure--The Celestial Game
of Ball and Tiger Skin--Quetzalcoatl as the Planet Venus.

Sec.4. _Quetzalcoatl as Lord of the Winds._

The Lord of the Four Winds--His Symbols, the Wheel of the Winds, the
Pentagon and the Cross--Close Relation to the Gods of Rain and
Waters--Inventor of the Calendar--God of Fertility and
Conception--Recommends Sexual Austerity--Phallic Symbols--God of
Merchants--The Patron of Thieves--His Pictographic Representations.

Sec.5. _The Return of Quetzalcoatl._

His Expected Re-appearance--The Anxiety of Montezuma--His Address to
Cortes--The General Expectation--Explanation of his Predicted Return.


CHAPTER IV.


THE HERO-GODS OF THE MAYAS.

Civilization of the Mayas--Whence it Originated--Duplicate Traditions

Sec.1. _The Culture Hero Itzamna._

Itzamna as Ruler, Priest and Teacher--As Chief God and Creator of the
World--Las Casas' Supposed Christ Myth--The Four Bacabs--Itzamna as Lord
of the Winds and Rains--The Symbol of the Cross--As Lord of the Light and
Day--Derivation of his Various Names.

Sec.2. _The Culture Hero Kukulcan._

Kukulcan as Connected with the Calendar--Meaning of the Name--The Myth of
the Four Brothers--Kukulcan's Happy Rule and Miraculous
Disappearance--Relation to Quetzalcoatl--Aztec and Maya
Mythology--Kukulcan a Maya Divinity--The Expected Return of the
Hero-god--The Maya Prophecies--Their Explanation.


CHAPTER V.


THE QQICHUA HERO-GOD VIRACOCHA.

Viracocha as the First Cause--His name Illa Ticci--Qquichua Prayers--Other
Names and Titles of Viracocha--His Worship a True Monotheism--The Myth of
the Four Brothers--Myth of the Twin Brothers.

Viracocha as Tunapa, He who Perfects--Various Incidents in His
Life--Relation to Manco Capac--He Disappears in the West.

Viracocha Rises from Lake Titicaca and Journeys to the West--Derivation of
His Name--He was Represented as White and Bearded--The Myth of Con and
Pachacamac--Contice Viracocha--Prophecies of the Peruvian Seers The White
Men Called Viracochas--Similarities to Aztec Myths.


CHAPTER VI.


THE EXTENSION AND INFLUENCE OP THE TYPICAL HERO-MYTH.

The Typical Myth found in many parts of the Continent--Difficulties in
Tracing it--Religious Evolution in America Similar to that in the Old
World--Failure of Christianity in the Red Race.

The Culture Myth of the Tarascos of Mechoacan--That of the Kiches of
Guatemala.--The Votan Myth of the Tzendals of Chiapas--A Fragment of a
Mixe Myth--The Hero-God of the Muyscas of New Granada--Of the
Tupi-Guaranay Stem of Paraguay and Brazil--Myths of the Dene of British
America.

Sun Worship in America--Germs of Progress in American Religions--Relation
of Religion and Morality--The Light-God A Moral and Beneficent
Creation--His Worship was Elevating--Moral Condition of Native Societies
before the Conquest--Progress in the Definition of the Idea of God in
Peru, Mexico and Yucatan--Erroneous Statements about the Morals of the
Natives--Evolution of their Ethical Principles.


INDEX.




AMERICAN HERO-MYTHS.




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

SOME KIND OF RELIGION FOUND AMONG ALL MEN--CLASSIFICATIONS OF
RELIGIONS--THE PURPOSE OF RELIGIONS--RELIGIONS OF RITE AND OF CREED--THE
MYTH GROWS IN THE FIRST OF THESE--INTENT AND MEANING OF THE MYTH.

PROCESSES OF MYTH-BUILDING IN AMERICA--PERSONIFICATION. PARONYMS AND
HOMONYMS--OTOSIS--POLYONOMY--HENOTHEISM--BORROWING--RHETORICAL
FIGURES--ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONS. ESOTERIC TEACHINGS.

OUTLINES OF THE FUNDAMENTAL AMERICAN MYTH--THE WHITE CULTURE-HERO AND THE
FOUR BROTHERS--INTERPRETATION OF THE MYTH--COMPARISON WITH THE ARYAN
HERMES MYTH--WITH THE ARYO-SEMITIC CADMUS MYTH--WITH OSIRIAN MYTHS--THE
MYTH OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER--THE INTERPRETATION THUS SUPPORTED.


The time was, and that not so very long ago, when it was contended by some
that there are tribes of men without any sort of religion; nowadays the
effort is to show that the feeling which prompts to it is common, even
among brutes.

This change of opinion has come about partly through an extension of the
definition of religion. It is now held to mean any kind of belief in
spiritual or extra-natural agencies. Some learned men say that we had
better drop the word "religion," lest we be misunderstood. They would
rather use "daimonism," or "supernaturalism," or other such new term; but
none of these seems to me so wide and so exactly significant of what I
mean as "religion."

All now agree that in this very broad sense some kind of religion exists
in every human community.[1]

[Footnote 1: I suppose I am not going too far in saying "all agree;" for I
think that the latest study of this subject, by Gustav Roskoff, disposes
of Sir John Lubbock's doubts, as well as the crude statements of the
author of _Kraft und Stoff_, and such like compilations. Gustav Roskoff,
_Das Religionswesen der Rohesten Naturvoelker_, Leipzig, 1880.]

The attempt has often been made to classify these various faiths under
some few general headings. The scheme of Auguste Comte still has
supporters. He taught that man begins with fetichism, advances to
polytheism, and at last rises to monotheism. More in vogue at present is
the theory that the simplest and lowest form of religion is individual;
above it are the national religions; and at the summit the universal or
world religions.

Comte's scheme has not borne examination. It is artificial and sterile.
Look at Christianity. It is the highest of all religions, but it is not
monotheism. Look at Buddhism. In its pure form it is not even theism. The
second classification is more fruitful for historical purposes.

The psychologist, however, inquires as to the essence, the real purpose of
religions. This has been differently defined by the two great schools of
thought.

All religions, says the idealist, are the efforts, poor or noble,
conscious or blind, to develop the Idea of God in the soul of man.

No, replies the rationalist, it is simply the effort of the human mind to
frame a Theory of Things; at first, religion is an early system of natural
philosophy; later it becomes moral philosophy. Explain the Universe by
physical laws, point out that the origin and aim of ethics are the
relations of men, and we shall have no more religions, nor need any.

The first answer is too intangible, the second too narrow. The rude savage
does not philosophize on phenomena; the enlightened student sees in them
but interacting forces: yet both may be profoundly religious. Nor can
morality be accepted as a criterion of religions. The bloody scenes in the
Mexican teocalli were merciful compared with those in the torture rooms of
the Inquisition. Yet the religion of Jesus was far above that of
Huitzilopochtli.

What I think is the essence, the principle of vitality, in religion, and
in all religions, is _their supposed control over the destiny of the
individual_, his weal or woe, his good or bad hap, here or hereafter, as
it may be. Rooted infinitely deep in the sense of personality, religion
was recognized at the beginning, it will be recognized at the end, as the
one indestructible ally in the struggle for individual existence. At
heart, all prayers are for preservation, the burden of all litanies is a
begging for Life.

This end, these benefits, have been sought by the cults of the world
through one of two theories.

The one, that which characterizes the earliest and the crudest religions,
teaches that man escapes dangers and secures safety by the performance or
avoidance of certain actions. He may credit this or that myth, he may hold
to one or many gods; this is unimportant; but he must not fail in the
penance or the sacred dance, he must not touch that which is _taboo_, or
he is in peril. The life of these cults is the Deed, their expression is
the Rite.

Higher religions discern the inefficacy of the mere Act. They rest their
claim on Belief. They establish dogmas, the mental acceptance of which is
the one thing needful. In them mythology passes into theology; the act is
measured by its motive, the formula by the faith back of it. Their life is
the Creed.

The Myth finds vigorous and congenial growth only in the first of these
forms. There alone the imagination of the votary is free, there alone it
is not fettered by a symbol already defined.

To the student of religions the interest of the Myth is not that of an
infantile attempt to philosophize, but as it illustrates the intimate and
immediate relations which the religion in which it grew bore to the
individual life. Thus examined, it reveals the inevitable destinies of men
and of nations as bound up with their forms of worship.

These general considerations appear to me to be needed for the proper
understanding of the study I am about to make. It concerns itself with
some of the religions which were developed on the American continent
before its discovery. My object is to present from them a series of myths
curiously similar in features, and to see if one simple and general
explanation of them can be found.

The processes of myth-building among American tribes were much the same as
elsewhere. These are now too generally familiar to need specification
here, beyond a few which I have found particularly noticeable.

At the foundation of all myths lies the mental process of
_personification_, which finds expression in the rhetorical figure of
_prosopopeia_. The definition of this, however, must be extended from the
mere representation of inanimate things as animate, to include also the
representation of irrational beings as rational, as in the "animal myths,"
a most common form of religious story among primitive people.

Some languages favor these forms of personification much more than others,
and most of the American languages do so in a marked manner, by the broad
grammatical distinctions they draw between animate and inanimate objects,
which distinctions must invariably be observed. They cannot say "the boat
moves" without specifying whether the boat is an animate object or not, or
whether it is to be considered animate, for rhetorical purposes, at the
time of speaking.

The sounds of words have aided greatly in myth building. Names and words
which are somewhat alike in sound, _paronyms_, as they are called by
grammarians, may be taken or mistaken one for the other. Again, many myths
spring from _homonymy_, that is, the sameness in sound of words with
difference in signification. Thus _coatl_, in the Aztec tongue, is a word
frequently appearing in the names of divinities. It has three entirely
different meanings, to wit, a serpent, a guest and twins. Now, whichever
one of these was originally meant, it would be quite certain to be
misunderstood, more or less, by later generations, and myths would arise
to explain the several possible interpretations of the word--as, in fact,
we find was the case.

Closely allied to this is what has been called _otosis_. This is the
substitution of a familiar word for an archaic or foreign one of similar
sound but wholly diverse meaning. This is a very common occurrence and
easily leads to myth making. For example, there is a cave, near
Chattanooga, which has the Cherokee name Nik-a-jak. This the white
settlers have transformed into Nigger Jack, and are prepared with a
narrative of some runaway slave to explain the cognomen. It may also occur
in the same language. In an Algonkin dialect _missi wabu_ means "the great
light of the dawn;" and a common large rabbit was called _missabo_; at
some period the precise meaning of the former words was lost, and a
variety of interesting myths of the daybreak were transferred to a
supposed huge rabbit! Rarely does there occur a more striking example of
how the deteriorations of language affect mythology.

_Aztlan_, the mythical land whence the Aztec speaking tribes were said to
have come, and from which they derived their name, means "the place of
whiteness;" but the word was similar to _Aztatlan_, which would mean "the
place of herons," some spot where these birds would love to congregate,
from _aztatl_, the heron, and in after ages, this latter, as the plainer
and more concrete signification, came to prevail, and was adopted by the
myth-makers.

_Polyonomy_ is another procedure often seen in these myths. A divinity has
several or many titles; one or another of these becomes prominent, and at
last obscures in a particular myth or locality the original personality of
the hero of the tale. In America this is most obvious in Peru.

Akin to this is what Prof. Max Mueller has termed _henotheism_. In this
mental process one god or one form of a god is exalted beyond all others,
and even addressed as the one, only, absolute and supreme deity. Such
expressions are not to be construed literally as evidences of a
monotheism, but simply that at that particular time the worshiper's mind
was so filled with the power and majesty of the divinity to whom he
appealed, that he applied to him these superlatives, very much as he would
to a great ruler. The next day he might apply them to another deity,
without any hypocrisy or sense of logical contradiction. Instances of this
are common in the Aztec prayers which have been preserved.

One difficulty encountered in Aryan mythology is extremely rare in
America, and that is, the adoption of foreign names. A proper name without
a definite concrete significance in the tongue of the people who used it
is almost unexampled in the red race. A word without a meaning was
something quite foreign to their mode of thought. One of our most eminent
students[1] has justly said: "Every Indian synthesis--names of persons and
places not excepted--must preserve the consciousness of its roots, and
must not only have a meaning, but be so framed as to convey that meaning
with precision, to all who speak the language to which it belongs." Hence,
the names of their divinities can nearly always be interpreted, though for
the reasons above given the most obvious and current interpretation is not
in every case the correct one.

[Footnote 1: J. Hammond Trumbull, _On the Composition of Indian
Geographical Names_, p. 3 (Hartford, 1870).]

As foreign names were not adopted, so the mythology of one tribe very
rarely influenced that of another. As a rule, all the religions were
tribal or national, and their votaries had no desire to extend them. There
was little of the proselytizing spirit among the red race. Some exceptions
can be pointed out to this statement, in the Aztec and Peruvian
monarchies. Some borrowing seems to have been done either by or from the
Mayas; and the hero-myth of the Iroquois has so many of the lineaments of
that of the Algonkins that it is difficult to believe that it was wholly
independent of it. But, on the whole, the identities often found in
American myths are more justly attributable to a similarity of
surroundings and impressions than to any other cause.

The diversity and intricacy of American mythology have been greatly
fostered by the delight the more developed nations took in rhetorical
figures, in metaphor and simile, and in expressions of amplification and
hyperbole. Those who imagine that there was a poverty of resources in
these languages, or that their concrete form hemmed in the mind from the
study of the abstract, speak without knowledge. One has but to look at the
inexhaustible synonymy of the Aztec, as it is set forth by Olmos or
Sahagun, or at its power to render correctly the refinements of scholastic
theology, to see how wide of the fact is any such opinion. And what is
true of the Aztec, is not less so of the Qquichua and other tongues.

I will give an example, where the English language itself falls short of
the nicety of the Qquichua in handling a metaphysical tenet. _Cay_ in
Qquichua expresses the real being of things, the _essentia_; as, _runap
caynin_, the being of the human race, humanity in the abstract; but to
convey the idea of actual being, the _existentia_ as united to the
_essentia_, we must add the prefix _cascan_, and thus have
_runap-cascan-caynin_, which strictly means "the essence of being in
general, as existent in humanity."[1] I doubt if the dialect of German
metaphysics itself, after all its elaboration, could produce in equal
compass a term for this conception. In Qquichua, moreover, there is
nothing strained and nothing foreign in this example; it is perfectly
pure, and in thorough accord with the genius of the tongue.

[Footnote 1: "El ser existente de hombre, que es el modo de estar el
primer ser que es la essentia que en Dios y los Angeles y el hombre es
modo personal." Diego Gonzalez Holguin, _Vocabvlario de la Lengva Qqichua,
o del Inca; sub voce, Cay_. (Ciudad de los Reyes, 1608.)]

I take some pains to impress this fact, for it is an important one in
estimating the religious ideas of the race. We must not think we have
grounds for skepticism if we occasionally come across some that astonish
us by their subtlety. Such are quite in keeping with the psychology and
languages of the race we are studying.

Yet, throughout America, as in most other parts of the world, the teaching
of religious tenets was twofold, the one popular, the other for the
initiated, an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine. A difference in dialect
was assiduously cultivated, a sort of "sacred language" being employed to
conceal while it conveyed the mysteries of faith. Some linguists think
that these dialects are archaic forms of the language, the memory of which
was retained in ceremonial observances; others maintain that they were
simply affectations of expression, and form a sort of slang, based on the
every day language, and current among the initiated. I am inclined to the
latter as the correct opinion, in many cases.

Whichever it was, such a sacred dialect is found in almost all tribes.
There are fragments of it from the cultivated races of Mexico, Yucatan and
Peru; and at the other end of the scale we may instance the Guaymis, of
Darien, naked savages, but whose "chiefs of the law," we are told, taught
"the doctrines of their religion in a peculiar idiom, invented for the
purpose, and very different from the common language."[1]

[Footnote 1: Franco, _Noticia de los Indios Guaymies y de sus Costumbres_,
p. 20, in Pinart, _Coleccion de Linguistica y Etnografia Americana_. Tom.
iv.]

This becomes an added difficulty in the analysis of myths, as not only
were the names of the divinities and of localities expressed in terms in
the highest degree metaphorical, but they were at times obscured by an
affected pronunciation, devised to conceal their exact derivation.

The native tribes of this Continent had many myths, and among them there
was one which was so prominent, and recurred with such strangely similar
features in localities widely asunder, that it has for years attracted my
attention, and I have been led to present it as it occurs among several
nations far apart, both geographically and in point of culture. This myth
is that of the national hero, their mythical civilizer and teacher of the
tribe, who, at the same time, was often identified with the supreme deity
and the creator of the world. It is the fundamental myth of a very large
number of American tribes, and on its recognition and interpretation
depends the correct understanding of most of their mythology and religious
life.

The outlines of this legend are to the effect that in some exceedingly
remote time this divinity took an active part in creating the world and in
fitting it to be the abode of man, and may himself have formed or called
forth the race. At any rate, his interest in its advancement was such that
he personally appeared among the ancestors of the nation, and taught them
the useful arts, gave them the maize or other food plants, initiated them
into the mysteries of their religious rites, framed the laws which
governed their social relations, and having thus started them on the road
to self development, he left them, not suffering death, but disappearing
in some way from their view. Hence it was nigh universally expected that
at some time he would return.

The circumstances attending the birth of these hero-gods have great
similarity. As a rule, each is a twin or one of four brothers born at one
birth; very generally at the cost of their mother's life, who is a virgin,
or at least had never been impregnated by mortal man. The hero is apt to
come into conflict with his brother, or one of his brothers, and the long
and desperate struggle resulting, which often involved the universe in
repeated destructions, constitutes one of the leading topics of the
myth-makers. The duel is not generally--not at all, I believe, when we can
get at the genuine native form of the myth--between a morally good and an
evil spirit, though, undoubtedly, the one is more friendly and favorable
to the welfare of man than the other.

The better of the two, the true hero-god, is in the end triumphant, though
the national temperament represented this variously. At any rate, his
people are not deserted by him, and though absent, and perhaps for a while
driven away by his potent adversary, he is sure to come back some time or
other.

The place of his birth is nearly always located in the East; from that
quarter he first came when he appeared as a man among men; toward that
point he returned when he disappeared; and there he still lives, awaiting
the appointed time for his reappearance.

Whenever the personal appearance of this hero-god is described, it is,
strangely enough, represented to be that of one of the white race, a man
of fair complexion, with long, flowing beard, with abundant hair, and
clothed in ample and loose robes. This extraordinary fact naturally
suggests the gravest suspicion that these stories were made up after the
whites had reached the American shores, and nearly all historians have
summarily rejected their authenticity, on this account. But a most careful
scrutiny of their sources positively refutes this opinion. There is
irrefragable evidence that these myths and this ideal of the hero-god,
were intimately known and widely current in America long before any one of
its millions of inhabitants had ever seen a white man. Nor is there any
difficulty in explaining this, when we divest these figures of the
fanciful garbs in which they have been clothed by the religious
imagination, and recognize what are the phenomena on which they are based,
and the physical processes whose histories they embody. To show this I
will offer, in the most concise terms, my interpretation of their main
details.

The most important of all things to life is _Light_. This the primitive
savage felt, and, personifying it, he made Light his chief god. The
beginning of the day served, by analogy, for the beginning of the world.
Light comes before the sun, brings it forth, creates it, as it were. Hence
the Light-God is not the Sun-God, but his Antecedent and Creator.

The light appears in the East, and thus defines that cardinal point, and
by it the others are located. These points, as indispensable guides to the
wandering hordes, became, from earliest times, personified as important
deities, and were identified with the winds that blew from them, as wind
and rain gods. This explains the four brothers, who were nothing else than
the four cardinal points, and their mother, who dies in producing them, is
the eastern light, which is soon lost in the growing day. The East, as
their leader, was also the supposed ruler of the winds, and thus god of
the air and rain. As more immediately connected with the advent and
departure of light, the East and West are twins, the one of which sends
forth the glorious day-orb, which the other lies in wait to conquer. Yet
the light-god is not slain. The sun shall rise again in undiminished
glory, and he lives, though absent.

By sight and light we see and learn. Nothing, therefore, is more natural
than to attribute to the light-god the early progress in the arts of
domestic and social life. Thus light came to be personified as the
embodiment of culture and knowledge, of wisdom, and of the peace and
prosperity which are necessary for the growth of learning.

The fair complexion of these heroes is nothing but a reference to the
white light of the dawn. Their ample hair and beard are the rays of the
sun that flow from his radiant visage. Their loose and large robes typify
the enfolding of the firmament by the light and the winds.

This interpretation is nowise strained, but is simply that which, in Aryan
mythology, is now universally accepted for similar mythological creations.
Thus, in the Greek Phoebus and Perseus, in the Teutonic Lif, and in the
Norse Baldur, we have also beneficent hero-gods, distinguished by their
fair complexion and ample golden locks. "Amongst the dark as well as
amongst the fair races, amongst those who are marked by black hair and
dark eyes, they exhibit the same unfailing type of blue-eyed heroes whose
golden locks flow over their shoulders, and whose faces gleam as with the
light of the new risen sun."[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir George W. Cox, _An Introduction to the Science of
Comparative Mythology and Folk-Lore_, p. 17.]

Everywhere, too, the history of these heroes is that of a struggle against
some potent enemy, some dark demon or dragon, but as often against some
member of their own household, a brother or a father.

The identification of the Light-God with the deity of the winds is also
seen in Aryan mythology. Hermes, to the Greek, was the inventor of the
alphabet, music, the cultivation of the olive, weights and measures, and
such humane arts. He was also the messenger of the gods, in other words,
the breezes, the winds, the air in motion. His name Hermes, Hermeias, is
but a transliteration of the Sanscrit Sarameyas, under which he appears in
the Vedic songs, as the son of Sarama, the Dawn. Even his character as the
master thief and patron saint of the light-fingered gentry, drawn from the
way the winds and breezes penetrate every crack and cranny of the house,
is absolutely repeated in the Mexican hero-god Quetzalcoatl, who was also
the patron of thieves. I might carry the comparison yet further, for as
Sarameyas is derived from the root _sar_, to creep, whence _serpo_,
serpent, the creeper, so the name Quetzalcoatl can be accurately
translated, "the wonderful serpent." In name, history and functions the
parallelism is maintained throughout.

Or we can find another familiar myth, partly Aryan, partly Semitic, where
many of the same outlines present themselves. The Argive Thebans
attributed the founding of their city and state to Cadmus. He collected
their ancestors into a community, gave them laws, invented the alphabet of
sixteen letters, taught them the art of smelting metals, established
oracles, and introduced the Dyonisiac worship, or that of the reproductive
principle. He subsequently left them and lived for a time with other
nations, and at last did not die, but was changed into a dragon and
carried by Zeus to Elysion.

The birthplace of this culture hero was somewhere far to the eastward of
Greece, somewhere in "the purple land" (Phoenicia); his mother was "the
far gleaming one" (Telephassa); he was one of four children, and his
sister was Europe, the Dawn, who was seized and carried westward by Zeus,
in the shape of a white bull. Cadmus seeks to recover her, and sets out,
following the westward course of the sun. "There can be no rest until the
lost one is found again. The sun must journey westward until he sees again
the beautiful tints which greeted his eyes in the morning."[1] Therefore
Cadmus leaves the purple land to pursue his quest. It is one of toil and
struggle. He has to fight the dragon offspring of Ares and the bands of
armed men who spring from the dragon's teeth which were sown, that is, the
clouds and gloom of the overcast sky. He conquers, and is rewarded, but
does not recover his sister.

[Footnote 1: Sir George W. Cox, _Ibid._, p. 76.]

When we find that the name Cadmus is simply the Semitic word _kedem_, the
east, and notice all this mythical entourage, we see that this legend is
but a lightly veiled account of the local source and progress of the light
of day, and of the advantages men derive from it. Cadmus brings the
letters of the alphabet from the east to Greece, for the same reason that
in ancient Maya myth Itzamna, "son of the mother of the morning," brought
the hieroglyphs of the Maya script also from the east to Yucatan--because
both represent the light by which we see and learn.

Egyptian mythology offers quite as many analogies to support this
interpretation of American myths as do the Aryan god-stories.

The heavenly light impregnates the virgin from whom is born the sun-god,
whose life is a long contest with his twin brother. The latter wins, but
his victory is transient, for the light, though conquered and banished by
the darkness, cannot be slain, and is sure to return with the dawn, to the
great joy of the sons of men. This story the Egyptians delighted to repeat
under numberless disguises. The groundwork and meaning are the same,
whether the actors are Osiris, Isis and Set, Ptah, Hapi and the Virgin
Cow, or the many other actors of this drama. There, too, among a brown
race of men, the light-god was deemed to be not of their own hue, but
"light colored, white or yellow," of comely countenance, bright eyes and
golden hair. Again, he is the one who invented the calendar, taught the
arts, established the rituals, revealed the medical virtues of plants,
recommended peace, and again was identified as one of the brothers of the
cardinal points.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Dr. C.P. Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, pp.
93, 95, 99, et al.]

The story of the virgin-mother points, in America as it did in the old
world, to the notion of the dawn bringing forth the sun. It was one of the
commonest myths in both continents, and in a period of human thought when
miracles were supposed to be part of the order of things had in it nothing
difficult of credence. The Peruvians, for instance, had large
establishments where were kept in rigid seclusion the "virgins of the
sun." Did one of these violate her vow of chastity, she and her fellow
criminal were at once put to death; but did she claim that the child she
bore was of divine parentage, and the contrary could not be shown, then
she was feted as a queen, and the product of her womb was classed among
princes, as a son of the sun. So, in the inscription at Thebes, in the
temple of the virgin goddess Mat, we read where she says of herself: "My
garment no man has lifted up; the fruit that I have borne was begotten of
the sun."[1]

[Footnote 1: "[Greek: Ton emon chitona oudeis apechaluphen on ego charpon
etechan, aelios egeneto.]" Proclus, quoted by Tiele, ubi supra, p. 204,
note.]

I do not venture too much in saying that it were easy to parallel every
event in these American hero-myths, every phase of character of the
personages they represent, with others drawn from Aryan and Egyptian
legends long familiar to students, and which now are fully recognized as
having in them nothing of the substance of history, but as pure creations
of the religious imagination working on the processes of nature brought
into relation to the hopes and fears of men.

If this is so, is it not time that we dismiss, once for all, these
American myths from the domain of historical traditions? Why should we try
to make a king of Itzamna, an enlightened ruler of Quetzalcoatl, a
cultured nation of the Toltecs, when the proof is of the strongest, that
every one of these is an absolutely baseless fiction of mythology? Let it
be understood, hereafter, that whoever uses these names in an historical
sense betrays an ignorance of the subject he handles, which, were it in
the better known field of Aryan or Egyptian lore, would at once convict
him of not meriting the name of scholar.

In European history the day has passed when it was allowable to construct
primitive chronicles out of fairy tales and nature myths. The science of
comparative mythology has assigned to these venerable stories a different,
though not less noble, interpretation. How much longer must we wait to see
the same canons of criticism applied to the products of the religious
fancy of the red race?

Furthermore, if the myths of the American nations are shown to be capable
of a consistent interpretation by the principles of comparative mythology,
let it be recognized that they are neither to be discarded because they
resemble some familiar to their European conquerors, nor does that
similarity mean that they are historically derived, the one from the
other. Each is an independent growth, but as each is the reflex in a
common psychical nature of the same phenomena, the same forms of
expression were adopted to convey them.
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