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