[Pg iv]

Top face of the monolith known as the "Dragon" or the "Great Turtle" of Quirigua. This is one of the group of stelae and "altars" which mark the ceremonial courts of this vanished Maya city (see Plate XXIII); and is perhaps the master-work not only of Mayan, but of aboriginal American art. The top of the stone here figured shows a highly conventionalized daemon or dragon mask, surrounded by a complication of ornament. The north and south (here lower and upper) faces of the monument contain representations of divinities; on the south face is a mask of the "god with the ornamented nose" (possibly Ahpuch, the death god), and on the north, seated within the open mouth of the Dragon, the teeth of whose upper jaw appear on the top face of the monument, is carved a serene, Buddha-like divinity shown in Plate XXV. The Maya date corresponding, probably, to 525 a. d. appears in a glyphic inscription on the shoulder of the Dragon. The monument is fully described by W. H. Holmes, Art and Archaeology, Vol. IV, No. 6.

[Pg v]

IN APPRECIATION OF HER INTERPRETATIONS OF AMERICAN INDIAN LIFE AND LORE

[Pg vii]

In aim and plan the present volume is made to accord as nearly as may be with the earlier-written volume on the mythology of the North American Indians. Owing to divergence of the materials, some deviations of method have been necessary, but in their main lines the two books correspond in form as they are continuous in matter. In each case the author has aimed primarily at a descriptive treatment, following regional divisions, and directed to essential conceptions rather than to exhaustive classification; and in each case it has been, not the specialist in the field, but the scholar with kindred interests and the reader of broadly humane tastes whom the author has had before him.

The difficulties besetting the composition of both books have been analogous, growing chiefly from the vast diversities of the sources of material; but these difficulties are decidedly greater for the Latin-American field. The matter of spelling is one of the more immediate. In general, the author has endeavoured to adhere to such of the rules given in Note 1 of Mythology of All Races, Vol. X (pp. 267-68), as may be applicable, seeking the simplest plausible English forms and continuing literary usage wherever it is well established, both for native and for Spanish names (as Montezuma, Cortez). Consistency is pragmatically impossible in such a matter; but it is hoped that the foundational need, that of identification, is not evaded.

The problem of an appropriate bibliography has proven to be of the hardest. To the best of the author's belief, there exists, aside from that here given, no bibliography aiming at a systematic classification of the sources and discussions of the mythology of the Latin-American Indians, as a whole. There[Pg viii] are, indeed, a considerable number of special bibliographies, regional in character, for which every student must be grateful; and it is hoped that not many of the more important of these have failed of inclusion in the bibliographical division devoted to "Guides"; but for the whole field, the appended bibliography is pioneer work, and subject to the weaknesses of all such attempts. The principles of inclusion are: (1) All works upon which the text of the volume directly rests. These will be found cited in the Notes, where are also a few references to works cited for points of an adventitious character, and therefore not included in the general bibliography. (2) A more liberal inclusion of English and Spanish than of works in other languages, the one for accessibility, the other for source importance. (3) An effort to select only such works as have material directly pertinent to the mythology, not such as deal with the general culture, of the peoples under consideration,—a line most difficult to draw. In respect to bibliography, it should be further stated that it is the intent to enter the names of Spanish authors in the forms approved by the rules of the Real Academia, while it has not seemed important to follow other than the English custom in either text or notes. It is certainly the author's hope that the labour devoted to the assembling of the bibliography will prove helpful to students generally, and it is his belief that those wishing an introduction to the more important sources for the various regions will find of immediate help the select bibliographies given in the Notes, for each region and chapter.

The illustrations should speak for themselves. Care has been taken to reproduce works which are characteristic of the art as well as of the mythic conceptions of the several peoples; and since, in the more civilized localities, architecture also is significantly associated with mythic elements, a certain number of pictures are of architectural subjects.

It remains to express the numerous forms of indebtedness which pertain to a work of the present character. Where they[Pg ix] are a matter of authority, it is believed that the references to the Notes will be found fully to cover them; and where illustrations are the subject, the derivation is indicated on the tissues. In the way of courtesies extended, the author owes recognition to staff-members of the libraries of Harvard and Northwestern Universities, to the Peabody Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of the University of Nebraska. His personal obligations are due to Professor Frank S. Philbrick, of the Northwestern University Law School, and to the Assistant Curator of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, Dr. Herbert I. Priestley, for valuable suggestions anent the bibliography, and to Dr. Hiram Bingham, of the Yale Peruvian Expedition, for his courtesy in furnishing for reproduction the photographs represented by Plates XXX and XXXVIII. His obligations to the editor of the series are, it is trusted, understood.

The manuscript of the present volume was prepared for the printer by November of 1916. The ensuing outbreak of war delayed publication until the present hour. In the intervening period a number of works of some importance appeared, and the author has endeavoured to incorporate as much as was essential of this later criticism into the body of his work, a matter difficult to make sure. The war also has been responsible for the editor's absence in Europe during the period in which the book has been put through the press, and the duty of oversight has fallen upon the author who is, therefore, responsible for such editorial delinquencies as may be found.

[Pg xi]

[Pg xv]

[Pg 1]

There is an element of obvious incongruity in the use of the term "Latin American" to designate the native Indian myths of Mexico and of Central and South America. Unfortunately, we have no convenient geographical term which embraces all those portions of America which fell to Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, and in default of this, the term designating their culture, Latin in character, has come into use—aptly enough when its application is to transplanted Iberian institutions and peoples, but in no logical mode relating to the aborigines of these regions. More than this, there are no aboriginal unities of native culture and ideas which follow the divisions made by the several Caucasian conquests of the Americas. It is primarily as consequence of their conquest by Spaniards that Mexico and Central America fall with the southern continent in our thought; from the point of view of their primitive ethnology there is little evidence (at least for recent times)[1] of southern influence until Yucatan and Guatemala are passed. There are, to be sure, striking resemblances between the Mexican and Andean aboriginal civilizations; and there are, again, broad similarities between the ideas and customs of the less advanced tribes of the two continents, such that we may correctly infer a certain racial character as typical of all American Indians; but amid these similarities there are grouped differences which, as between the continents, are scarcely less distinctive than are their fauna and flora,—say, calumet and eagle's plume as against blowgun and parrot's feather,—and these hold level for level: the Amazonian and the Inca[Pg 2] are as distinctively South American as the Mississippian and the Aztec are distinctively North American.

Were the divisions in a treatment of American Indian myth to follow the rationale of pre-Columbian ethnography,[2] the key-group would be found in the series of civilized or semi-civilized peoples of the mainly mountainous and plateau regions of the western continental ridge, roughly from Cancer to Capricorn, or with outlying spurs from about 35º North (Zuñi and Hopi) to near 35º South (Calchaqui-Diaguité). Within this region native American agriculture originated; and along with agriculture were developed the arts of civilization in the forms characteristic of America; while from the several centres of the key-group agriculture and attendant arts passed on into the plains and forests regions and the great alluvial valleys of the two continents and into the archipelago which lies between them. In each continent there is a region—the Boreal and the Austral—beyond the boundaries of the native agriculture, and untouched by the arts of the central civilizations, yet showing an unmistakable community of ideas, of which (primitive and vague as they are) recurrent instances are to be found among the intervening groups. Thus the plat and configuration of autochthonous America divides into cultural zones that are almost those of the hemispherical projection, and into altitudes that are curiously parallel to the continental altitudes: the higher civilizations of the plateaux, the more or less barbarous cultures of the unstable tribes of the great river basins, and the primitive development of the wandering hordes of the frigid coasts. The primitive stage may be assumed to be the foundational one throughout both continents, and it is virtually repeated in the least advanced groups of all regions; the intermediate stage (except in such enigmatical groups as that of the North-West Coast Indians of North America) appears to owe much to definite acculturation as a consequence of the spread of the arts and industries developed by the most advanced peoples. Moreover,[Pg 3] the outer unities of mode of life are reflected by inner communities of thought; for there are unmistakable kinships of idea, not only throughout the civilized group, but also in the whole range of the regions affected by its arts; while underlying these and outcropping at the poles, there is a definable stratum of virtually identical primitive thought. Nevertheless, these unities are cut across by differences, partly environmental and partly historical in origin, which give, as said above, distinctive character to the parallel groups of the two continents. One might, indeed, say that the cultural division is twinned, north and south,—with a certain primacy, as of elder birth and clear superiority in the northern groups; for, on the whole, the Maya is superior to the Inca, just as the Iroquois and Sioux are superior to Carib and Araucanian, and the Eskimo to the Fuegian.

Such, in loose form, is the native configuration of American culture and hence of native American thought, and without question a desirable mode of treating the latter would be to follow this natural chart. Nevertheless, there are reasons which fully justify, in the study of native ideas, the bringing together in a single treatment of all the materials relating to the peoples of Latin America. The most obvious of these reasons is the unity of the descriptive literature, in its earlier and primary works almost wholly Spanish. It is not merely that such writers as Las Casas, Acosta, Herrera, and Gómara pass ubiquitously from region to region of the Spanish conquests, now north, now south, in the course of their narratives; it is rather that a certain colouristic harmony is derived from what might be termed the linguistic prejudices of their tongue, which, therefore, they share with those Spanish chroniclers whose field of description is limited to some one region. The mere fact that the ideas of an Indian nation are first described by a sixteenth century Spaniard—friar, bishop, or cavalier—gives to them the flavour of their translation and context, and thus establishes a sort of community between all groups of ideas so[Pg 4] described. Nor need this be matter for regret: primitive thought, with its burning concreteness and its lack of relational expression, is as truly untranslatable into analytical languages as poetry is untranslatable; and it is, on the whole, good fortune to have, as it were, but one linguistic colour cast upon so large a body of aboriginal ideas.

Further—what may not be to the liking of the ethnologist, but is certainly of high zest to the lover of romance—the Spanish colour is quite as much in the nature of imagination as in the hue of expression. No book on Latin American mythology could be complete without description of those truly Latinian fables which the discoverers brought with them to the New World, and there, wedding them to native traditions (ill-heard and fabulously repeated), soon created such a realm of gorgeous marvel as glamoured the age with fantasy and set the coolest heads to mad adventure. In such names as Antilles, Brazil, the Amazon, Old World myths are fixed in New World geography; and beyond these there is the whole series of fantastic tales with which the Spaniard, in a sort of imaginative munificence, has enriched the literature and the romantic resources of this world of ours. The Fountain of Eternal Youth, the Seven Cities of Cibola, the Island of the Amazons and the marvellous virtues of the Amazon Stone, El Dorado ("the Gilded Man"), the treasure cities of Manoa and Omagua, the lost empire of the Gran Moxo and the Gran Paytiti, Patagonian giants, and "men whose heads do grow between their shoulders," and finally, most wide-spread of all, the miracles of the robed and bearded white man who, long ago, had come to teach the Indian a new way of life and a purer worship and had left the cross to be his sign, in whom no pious mind could see other than the blessed Saint Thomas: all these were in part a freight of the caravels, and they represent collectively a chapter second to none in mythopoesy. There is no match for this cargo of imported fantasy in the parts of America colonized by the English and the French.[Pg 5] This, however, need not be accredited merely to cooler blood and calmer race: the North American colonies belong to the seventeenth century, a good hundred years after the Spaniards had completed their most golden conquests, and for the Spaniard, no less than for the others, the hour of intoxication and extravagance had by then gone by—leaving its flamboyant tones to warm the colours of succeeding times. Thus it is that Latin American myth is in no faint degree truly Latinian.

But while there is a certain Old World seasoning in Latin American myth, native traditions are, of course, the substantial material of the study. This material is striking and various. It embraces the usual substrata of demoniac beliefs and animistic credulities, and above these such elaborate formations as the Aztec and Maya pantheons, with their amazing astral and calendric interpretations, or the enigmatic and fervid religion of Peru. Many of the stories are little more than vocal superstitions; others, such as the conquering of death in the Popul Vuh, the Brazilian tale of the release of the imprisoned night, or the superb Surinam legend of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, will compare, both for dramatic power and subtle suggestion, with the best that the world can show. There is, of course, the constant difficulty of deciding where myth clearly emerges from the misty realm of folk-lore, and, at the other extreme, where it is succeeded by science and religion; but this difficulty is more theoretic than practical: in its central character mythology is present wherever there are animating gods operant in the body of nature, and myth is present wherever spirits or deities are shown as dramatically interacting causes. With a few possible exceptions (the possibility being probably but the expression of our ignorance), all American Indians are mythopoets, whose mythology is characterized in characterizing their beliefs.

The practical problem of handling and apportioning the subject-matter is similar to that presented in the case of North America, and rather more difficult. In the first place,[Pg 6] it were idle to undertake the mere narration of stones and superstitions without some delineation of the conditions of the life and culture of those who make them; frequently, the whole relevance of the tale is to the manner of life. In the next place, the feasible mode of apportionment, by regional divisions, is made difficult not only by the vastness of some of the regions, but even more so by the unevenness of culture, and hence of the range of ideas. If the lines were drawn on the scale of Old World studies, Mexico (Nahua and Maya) and Peru would each deserve a volume; and the proportionately slight attention which they receive in the present work is due partly to the need of giving reasonable space to other regions, partly to the fact that the myths of these fallen empires are already represented by an accessible literature. Still a third problem has to do with the order in which the matters should be presented. From the point of view of native affinities, the logical step from the Antilles is to the Orinoco and Guiana region (that is, from Chapter I to Chapter VIII).[3] But since, in beginning with the Antilles, one is really following the course of discovery—seeing, as it were, with Spanish eyes—the natural continuation is on to Mexico and Peru, and thence to the more slowly uncovered regions of central South America. This procedure, also, follows a certain bibliographical trend: the relative importance of Spanish authors is much less for the latter chapters of the book, and the sources of material, in general, are of later origin.

Finally, a word might be said with respect to interpretation. No matter how conscientiously one may aim at straight narration, the mere need for coherence will compel some interpreting; while every translation is, in its degree, an interpretation (and one literally impossible). Besides and beyond all this, there are the prepossessions of the recorders to be taken into account—honest men who interpret according to their lights. There are the Biblical prepossessions of the early Padres, for whom the Tower of Babel and the Dispersion[Pg 7] were recent and real events: granting a Noachian Deluge of the thoroughness which they had in mind, nothing could be more rational than were their readings of aboriginal legends of events of a kindred nature, or than their speculations as to what sons of Shem the Indians might be. There are the traditionary visions of migratory descendants of the Lost Tribes, of far-wandering Buddhist monks, of sea-faring Orientals, and forgotten Atlantideans; and there is the wonderful Euhemerism of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (ever the more admirable in the more reading)—neither the first nor the last of his tribe, but assuredly the most gifted of them all. There are, again, the theological biases of missionaries, for whom the devil is seldom far and God is generally near; and there are the no less ingrained prejudices of the anthropologists who serenely Tylorize and fetishize the most recalcitrant materials, and of the philologists who solarize and astralize because the model was once set for them. America has proven an abundant field for the illustration of all these methods of reading the riddle of man's fancy; and it is scarcely to be desired that one should report the matters without some reflection of the colourations. But, in sooth, how could myth be myth apart from meaning?

Which leads (by no devious routing of reflection) to some consideration of the meaning of mythology and of our interest in it. Such interest may be of any of several types. A first, and still persistent, interest, and one to which we owe, for America, from Ramon Pane onward, more actual material than to any other, is the desire of the Christian missionary to discover in the native mind those points of approach and elements of community which will best enable him to spread the faith of Christendom. In many cases, of course, the missionary is seized with a purely speculative zeal for recording facts, but it is usually possible in such records to detect the influence of the impulse which first brought him into the field,—and which, it may be added, makes of his services a[Pg 8] matter for the gratitude of all who follow him. A second interest, which is often not sharply divorced from the first, as instanced in Missionary Brett's poetizing of the myths of the Guiana Indians,[4] is the aesthetic and imaginative. What classical mythology has done for the art and poetry of Christian Europe all men know: Dante and Milton, Botticelli and Michelangelo are only less its debtors than are Homer and Phidias. Further, the Renaissance curiosity, with its passion for the antique gems and heathen gods whose forms so stimulated its own expressions, was at its height when America was discovered and conquered; and it is small wonder that that interest was transformed, where the marvel of the New World was in question, into a wave of American exotism which rose to its crest in the humanitarian enthusiasm of the eighteenth century.[5] In our own day this interest is continuing, more soberly but not less fruitfully, in a deliberate effort on the part of artists, of poets, and of musicians to discover the elements of lasting beauty in the native arts and mythic themes. From a certain point of view there is a peril in the aesthetic interest: most investigators consciously or unconsciously possess it, and most recorders of native myths consciously or unconsciously dress their materials with the suaver forms of expression which the cultivated languages of Europe have developed. There is, in other words, some untruth to aboriginal thought in the desire to find or inject art where the original motive was realistic, or, if aesthetic, governed by a taste foreign to our own. On the other hand, we recognize readily enough that the real creative gain, in an artistic sense, must come from an amalgamation, and with such an example of artistic achievement through amalgamation as is afforded by the Renaissance, we can but hope that the more intimate adoption of the ideas and motives of American Indian art into our own aesthetic consciousness may yet result in an American Renaissance no less notable.

A third interest in American mythology is that of the[Pg 9] anthropologists, by whom the domain is today most cultivated. Here the foundation is scientific curiosity and the modes are those of the natural and historical sciences. This type of interest, of course, determines its own problems and methods. For example, to it we owe most of the exact recording and minute analysis of materials: the preservation of texts in the native tongues, and the careful application of ethnological and archaeological observations to their interpretation. Naturally, the key-problem here is of the origin and distribution of the American Indian peoples, and the reconstruction of their history, both physical and ideational,—wherein recent advances have been veritably in the nature of strides. Along with this problem of distribution and genesis there has co-existed the complementary question of the influence of nature (human and environmental) upon the forms of expression—a question to which one might ascribe three facets, the philological, the sociological, and the more strictly bionomic, with its strong Darwinian leanings. Ultimately the two complemental problems resolve into an effort to read human nature, as human nature is reflected in its express reactions to the complex world by which it is modified even while it offers a conserving resistance, born of the strength of its traditions and of racial solidarity. This means, at the bottom, an interest in human psychology.

It is here that the anthropological interest in mythology passes over into the philosophical. Philosophy strives to achieve, as it were, a generalized autobiography of the human mind. It starts, inevitably, with psychology, and with those elemental unities of experience which our senses (inner and outer) determine for us; it goes on to try to discover the range and fullness of meaning of all the variations of human experience. Philosophers are interested in mythology, therefore, primarily from a psychological standpoint: they are interested in reading the mind's complexion, as mythopoesy reflects it; in analyzing out the images of sense in human thought, the[Pg 10] images of instinct, of kind and kin, of speech and number; and again in reviewing the natural reactions of the human spirit to the visible and sensible world, with its seasons and cycles and evident metamorphoses,—reactions which start, apparently, with a dreamy consciousness of the fluid and incoherent character of an outer, man-environing world, and culminate in a sense of the allegory and drama of things physical, and the discovery of a thinking self, still hazy as to its powers and its limitations. The biographic tale is a long one; it begins in savagery and continues on into the highest civilization; it is today unfinished, and so long as man lives and thinks must continue unfinished; but it is not without form, and its continuities become the more obvious with the extension of our knowledge of men.

It should be added that each of the interests which have been named shares in or leads to that final interest which is most appropriate to all, namely, a common concern for human welfare. The missionary interest is obviously actuated by this from the very beginning, and, as applied to America, it has produced (in Las Casas and his many notable successors) a truly wonderful series of apostolic figures—in themselves a moving revelation of the possibilities of human nature. Hardly less striking is the humanitarianism which has accompanied the aesthetic interest—one need but mention Montaigne's sympathetic curiosity, Rousseau, fantastic in his eighteenth century credulity, Chateaubriand, with his "epic of the man of nature," or Fenimore Cooper's idealization of the savage chivalrous,—while the curiosity of the anthropologist and the philosopher, as must all honest curiosity about things human, leads at the last to understanding and sympathy, and ultimately to an active desire to preserve the manifest good which enlightens every chapter in the narrative of human progress.

Finally, it is perhaps worth observing that America affords a field of truly unique profit for all of these interests. The[Pg 11] long isolation of its inhabitants from the balance of mankind, the variety of the forms and levels of their native achievement, the intrinsic value to humanity at large of what they did achieve, both in material and ideal modes, all unite to give to the races of the New Hemisphere an almost other-world distinction from the Old World peoples from whose midst (in some remote day) they doubtless sprang. It is true that the resemblances between the modes of life and the bent of thought in the two Worlds are as striking and numerous as their divergences; but this fact is in itself of the highest significance in that it emphasizes that fundamental unity, spiritual as well as physical, which is of the whole human brotherhood.

It is surely apparent that one book cannot satisfy all the interests which have been here defined. It is possible, however, that a description which should show what, in the main, are the materials to be found and how they are distributed with reference to accessible sources of study might well contribute to all. Nothing more ambitious than this is in the plan of the present work.

[Pg 15]

A glance at a map of the Western Hemisphere reveals two great continents, North and South America, somewhat tenuously united by the Isthmus and the Antilles. The Isthmus is solid, mountainous land, forming a part of that backbone of the hemisphere which extends along its western border, continuous from Alaska to the Land of Fire. The Antilles are an archipelago, or rather a group of archipelagos, extending without gap from the tip of Florida to Trinidad and the mouths of the Orinoco. Both connexions have a certain weight, or leaning, toward North America. The Isthmus narrows southward almost to the point of its attachment to South America, while to the north it broadens out into Central America, the peninsula of Yucatan, and the plateau of Mexico. Similarly, the southern division of the archipelago, the Lesser Antilles, forms an arc of islets, mere stepping-stones, as it were, from the southern continent to the large islands of the Greater Antilles—Porto Rico, Hispaniola or Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba—which are natural outliers of the continent to the north. Cuba, indeed, almost unites Yucatan and Florida; while breasting Cuba and Florida, toward the open sea, is a third island group, the Bahamas, still further emphasizing the northern predominance.

[Pg 16]

There is a superficial resemblance between the connexions of the northern and southern land bodies in the Old World and in the New—the Isthmus of Suez having its counterpart in Panama; the peninsulas and large islands of southern Europe corresponding to Florida, Yucatan, and the Greater Antilles; and the break at Gibraltar suggesting the uncertain bridge of the Lesser Antilles. But the resemblance is merely superficial. The Mediterranean served far more as a unifier than as a divider of cultures and civilizations in antiquity; all its shores were in a sense a single land even before Rome united them politically. The Caribbean, on the other hand, was a true obstacle to the primitive intercourse of the western continents, having its proper Old World analogue in the Sahara Desert rather than in the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, we can carry this truer analogy a step further, pointing out that just as Old World culture went southward, from Egypt into Ethiopia, by way of the comparatively secure route of the Nile, so New World civilization found its securest path by way of the solid land of the Isthmus, while the islets of the Lesser Antilles and the isle-like oases of the Sahara were alike unfriendly to profoundly influential intercourse.

In one striking particular the analogies of the Old World are reversed in the New: at least in recent periods, the migration of native races and culture has been from the south to the north. This is the more extraordinary in view of the land predominance which, as has been indicated, belongs to the north. The Isthmus was held by, and is now representative of, the Chibchan stock, extending far south into Ecuador; while the Antilles, at the time of the discovery, were almost entirely possessed by tribes of two great South American stocks, Arawakan and Carib. In Cuba, and probably in the Bahamas, there were remnants of more ancient peoples—timid and crude folk, whose kindred seem to have been the makers of the shell-mounds of Florida, and whose provenience was doubtless the northern continent; but neither the race[Pg 17] nor the affinities of these vanished peoples is certainly known; even in pre-Columbian times they were succumbing to the war-like Calusa of southern Florida and to the still more dangerous Arawakan tribes from the south.

Of the two powerful races from the south, the first comers were doubtless the Taïno[7] (as the Antillean Arawak are named), whom the Spaniards found in possession of most of Cuba and of the other greater islands, Porto Rico alone showing a strong Carib element along with the Arawak. The Lesser Antilles, bordering the sea which was named for their race, was inhabited by Carib tribes, whose language comprised a man-tongue and a woman-tongue, the latter containing many Arawak words—a fact which has led to the interesting (though uncertain) inference that the first Carib invaders slew all the warriors of their Arawak predecessors, taking the women for their own wives. Only when they came to Porto Rico, the first of the Greater Antilles in their route, were they partially stopped by the mass and strength of the more highly developed Taïno peoples; some, indeed, obtained a foothold here, while beyond, in Hispaniola, one of the five caciques[8] dividing the power of the island was reputed a Carib, and in Cuba itself have been found bones believed to be those of Carib marauders. The typical culture of the Antilles, that of the Arawakan Taïno, was scarcely less aggressive than the Carib. Arawaks gained a foothold in Florida, and their influence, in trade at least, seems to have extended far into Muskhogean territories to the north, while it may have affected Yucatan and Honduras to the west. Nor was it meanly savage in type. The Antilles furnish every incentive of climate, food supply, rich resources, and easy communication for development of civilization; and at the time of the discovery of the Taïno peoples, they were already advanced in the arts of agriculture, pottery-making, weaving, and stone-working, combined with some knowledge of metals. Furthermore, they had developed their social organization to such an[Pg 18] extent that their chiefs, or caciques, with power in some cases hereditary, were the heads of veritable nations—all of Jamaica was under one ruler, Hispaniola had five, while the Ciboney of Cuba and the Borinqueño of Porto Rico were powerful peoples. The Spanish conquerors of the islands succeeded early in virtually annihilating these nations, but their handiwork and the traditions which they have left still command respect.

Even before Columbus's day the mythical Island of Antilia was marked on the maps out in the Atlantic west; and when the archipelago which Columbus first discovered came to be known as an archipelago, the name, in the plural form Antilles, was not unnaturally applied to it. Probably, too, it was with more than the glamour of discovery—enchanting as that must have been—that Columbus first looked upon the new-found lands. From time immemorial European imagination had been haunted by legends of Isles of the Gods, Isles of the Happy Dead—Fortunate Isles, in some weird sense, lying far out in the enchanted seas; and it is no marvel if Columbus should have felt himself the finder of this blessed realm. In one of his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella he wrote: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendour; the natives love their neighbours as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your highness there is not a better people in the world."

Something of the same idealization, coupled with a happy ignorance, underlay, no doubt, the statement which Columbus makes in his letters to Ferdinand's officials, Gabriel Sanchez and Luis de Santangel, describing his first voyage: "They are not acquainted with any kind of worship and are not[Pg 19] idolaters, but believe that all power and, indeed, all good things are in heaven." Columbus adds that the natives believed him and his vessels and his crews to be descended from heaven, and the Indians whom he took with him from his first landing, to serve as interpreters, cried out to the others, "Come, come, and see the people from heaven!" This same simplicity was cruelly exploited by the Spaniards of later date, for after the mines of Hispaniola were opened, and the native labour of the island was exhausted, the Bahamas were nearly emptied of inhabitants by the ruse that the Spaniards would convey them to the shores where dwelt their departed relatives and friends. Belief in heaven-spirits and belief in living souls of their dead were surely deep-seated in these first-met of New World peoples.

The earliest encounters were probably with tribes of the Taïno race, for the Indians taken from San Salvador were readily understood in the Greater Antilles; and it was with this race that Columbus had to do on his initial voyage. Yet even then he was learning of other peoples. He was told that in the western part of Cuba ("Juana" was the name he gave to the island) there was a province whose inhabitants were born with tails—a form of derogation of inferior peoples familiar in many parts of the world—and the story very likely designated remnants of the autochthones of the islands. Again, as he explored eastward, he began to hear of the Carib cannibals, with whom he became acquainted on later voyages. "These are the men," he reports, "who form unions with certain women who dwell alone in the island of Matenino, which lies next to Española on the side toward India; these latter employ themselves in no labour suitable to their own sex, for they use bows and javelins as I have already described their paramours as doing, and for defensive armour they have plates of brass, of which metal they possess great abundance." Thus we have the beginning of that legend of Amazons[10] in the New World which not only occupied the fancies of[Pg 20] explorers and historiographers for many decades, but eventually, as the domain of these mythical women was pushed farther and farther into the beyond, gave its name to the great river which drains what was then the mysterious heart of the southern continent. Possibly the source of the tale lay in a difference of Taïno and Carib customs, for among the latter the women, as the Spaniards speedily discovered, were quick with bow and spear; possibly it lay in the fact, already noted, that the Caribs, dispatching the men of a conquered tribe, formed unions with their women, who spoke a language differing from that of their conquerors.

Other legends of the Old World, besides that of Amazonian warriors, gained a footing in the New, mingling, not infrequently, with similar native tales. The "Septe Cidade" of the Island of Antilia had been founded, according to Portuguese tradition, by the Archbishop of Oporto and six bishops, fleeing from the Moors in the eighth century; and it was these cities, identified by the Spaniards with the seven caves whence the Aztecs traced their race, that led Cabeza de Vaca onward in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola and resulted in the discovery of the Pueblos in New Mexico. Similarly, Ponce de León partly brought and partly found the story of the Fountain of Youth,[11] or the life-renewing Jordan, in search of which he went into Florida. The story is narrated in the "Memoir on Florida" of Hernando d'Escalente Fontaneda, who says that the Indians of Cuba and the other isles told lies of this mythical river; but that the story was not merely invented as a gratification of the Spaniards' thirst for marvels is suggested by Fontaneda's further statement that long before his time a great number of Indians from Cuba had come into Florida in search of this same wonder—a possible explanation of the Arawakan colony on the Florida coast.

But it was chiefly with tales of gold that the Spaniards' ears were pleasured. Columbus, writing to de Santangel, promised his sovereigns not only spices and dyes and Brazil-wood[Pg 21] from their new realm, fruits and cotton and slaves, but "gold as much as they need"; and this promise was all too well founded for the good of either Spaniard or native, since the spoil of western gold, more than aught else, resulted in the wars which eventually impoverished Spain; and thirst for sudden wealth was the chief cause of the early extermination of the native peoples of the Antilles. Las Casas, bitter and full of pity, gives us the contrasting pictures. The first is of the cacique Hatuey,[12] fled from Haiti to Cuba to escape the Spaniards and there assembling his people before a chest of gold: "Behold," he said, "the god of the Spaniards! Let us do to him, if it seem good to you, areitos [solemn dances], that thus doing we shall please him, and he will command the Spaniards that they do us no harm." The other is the image of the Spanish tyrant, enslaving the Indians in mines "to the end that he might make gold of the bodies and souls of those for whom Jesus Christ suffered death."

The Spanish conquistador, reckless of native life in his eager quest of gold, and the Spanish preaching friar, often yielding himself to death for the spread of the Gospel, are the two types of men most impressively delineated in the pages of the first decades of Spain's history in America, illustrating the complex and conflicting motives which urged the great adventure. As early as the writings of Columbus these two motives stand out, and the promise of wealth and the promise of souls to save are alike eloquent in his thought. In order to convert, one must first understand; and Columbus himself is our earliest authority on the religion of the men of the Indies, showing how his mind was moved to this problem. In the History of the Life of Columbus, by his son Fernando, the Admiral is quoted in description of the Indian religion.

"I could discover," he says, "neither idolatry nor any other[Pg 22] sect among them, though every one of their kings ... has a house apart from the town, in which there is nothing at all but some wooden images carved by them, called cemis; nor is there anything done in those houses but what is for the service of those cemis, they repairing to perform certain ceremonies, and pray there, as we do to our churches. In these houses they have a handsome round table, made like a dish, on which is some powder which they lay on the head of the cemis with a certain ceremony; then through a cane that has two branches, clapped to their nose, they snuff up this powder: the words they say none of our people understand. This powder puts them beside themselves, as if they were drunk. They also give the image a name, and I believe it is their father's or grandfather's, or both; for they have more than one, and some above ten, all in memory of their forefathers.... The people and caciques boast among themselves of having the best cemis. When they go to these, their cemis, they shun the Christians, and will not let them go into those houses; and if they suspect they will come, they take away their cemis and hide them in the woods for fear they should be taken from them; and what is most ridiculous, they used to steal one another's cemis. It happened once that the Christians on a sudden rushed into the house with them, and presently the cemi cried out, speaking in their language, by which it appeared to be artificially made; for it being hollow they had applied a trunk to it, which answered to a dark corner of the house covered with boughs and leaves, where a man was concealed who spoke what the cacique ordered him. The Spaniards, therefore, reflecting on what it might be, kicked down the cemi, and found as has been said; and the cacique, seeing they had discovered his practice, earnestly begged of them not to speak of it to his subjects, or the other Indians, because he kept them in obedience by that policy."

This, the great Admiral quaintly concedes, "has some resemblance to idolatry." In fact, his description points clearly[Pg 23] to well-developed cults: there are temples, with altars, idols, oracles, and priests, and there is even a shrewd adaptation of religion to politics—the certain mark of sophistication in matters of cult. Benzoni, who visited the Indies some fifty years after their discovery, says of the islanders: "They worshipped, and still worship, various deities, many painted, others sculptured, some formed of clay, others of wood, or gold, or silver.... And although our priests still daily endeavour to destroy these idols, yet the ministers of their faith keep a great many of them hidden in caves and underground, sacrificing to them occultly, and asking in what manner they can possibly expel the Christians from their country." Idols of gold and silver have not been preserved to modern times, but examples in stone and wood and baked clay are in present-day collections, and one, at least, of the wooden images has a hollow head, open at the back for the reception of the speaking-tube by which the priest conveyed the wisdom of his cacique. A peculiar type of Antillean cultus-image, mentioned by Peter Martyr, among others, was made of "plaited cotton, tightly stuffed inside," though its use seems to have been rather in connexion with funeral rites (perhaps as apotropaic fetishes) than in worship of nature-powers.

The work of archaeologists, especially in the Greater Antilles, has brought to light many curious objects certainly connected with the old Antillean cults. There are idols and images, ranging in height from near three feet to an inch or so; and the latter, often perforated, were used, perhaps, as Peter Martyr describes: "When they are about to go into battle, they tie small images representing little demons upon their foreheads." There are, again, masks and grotesque faces, sometimes cunningly carved, sometimes crude pictographs. Most characteristic are the triangular stones with a human or an animal face on one side; the stone collars or yokes, some slender and some massive in construction, but all representing laborious toil; and the "elbow stones" with carved panels—objects[Pg 24] of which the true use and meaning is forgotten, though their connexion with cult is not to be doubted.[14] Possibly a hint of their meaning is to be found in the narrative of Columbus, which, after describing the zemis, goes on to say: "Most of the caciques have three great stones also, to which they and their people show a great devotion. The one they say helps corn and all sorts of grain; the second makes women be delivered without pain; and the third procures rain and fair weather, according as they stand in need of either."

Antillean triangular carved stones, lateral and top views. In addition to the grotesque masks, limbs are clearly indicated. For reference to their probable significance, see pages 23-24 and note 14. After 25 ARBE, Plates XLVI and XLIX.

From the name zemi (variously spelt by the older writers), applied to the Antillean cult-images, the aboriginal faith of this region has come to be called zemiism; and it is not difficult, from the descriptions left us, to reconstruct its general character. "They believe," says Peter Martyr, "that the zemes send rain or sunshine in response to their prayers, according to their needs. They believe the zemes to be intermediaries between them and God, whom they represent as one, eternal, omnipotent, and invisible. Each cacique has his zemes, which he honours with particular care. Their ancestors gave to the supreme and eternal Being two names, Iocauna and Guamaonocon. But this supreme Being was himself brought forth by a mother, who has five names, Attabeira, Mamona, Guacarapita, Iella, and Guimazoa." Here we have the typical American Indian conception of Mother Earth and Father Sky and a host of intermediary powers, deriving their potency in some dim way from the two great life-givers. In the name zemi itself is perhaps an indication of the animistic foundation of the religion, for by some authorities it is held to mean "animal" or "animal-being," while others see in it a corruption of guami, "ruler"—a source which would ally it with one of the terms for the Supreme Being as given by Peter Martyr; for Guamaonocon is interpreted as meaning "Ruler of the Earth."

Other appellations of the Sky Father, who "lives in the sun," are Jocakuvague, Yocahu, Vague, and Maorocon or[Pg 25] Maorocoti; while Fray Ramon Pane gives names for the Earth Mother closely paralleling Peter Martyr's list: Atabei ("First-in-Being"), Iermaoguacar, Apito, and Zuimaco. Guabancex was a goddess of wind and water, and had two subordinates, Guatauva, her messenger, and Coatrischie, the tempest-raiser. Yobanua-Borna was a rain-deity whose shrine was in a cavern, and who likewise had two subordinates, or ministers. The Haitians are said to have made pilgrimages to a cave in which were kept two statues of wood, gods again of rain, or of sun and rain; and it is likely that the double-figure images preserved from this region are representations of these or of some other pair of Antillean twin deities. Baidrama, or Vaybrama, was also seemingly a twinned divinity, and clearly was the strength-giver: "They say," Fray Ramon tells us, "in time of wars he was burnt, and afterwards being washed with the juice of yucca, his arms grew out again, his body spread, and he recovered his eyes"; and the worshippers of the god bathed themselves in the sap of the yucca when they desired strength or healing. Other zemis mentioned by Pane are Opigielguoviran, a dog-like being which plunged into a morass when the Spaniards came, never to be seen again; and Faraguvaol, a beam or tree-trunk with the power of wandering at will. Here there seems to be indication of a vegetation-cult, which is borne out by Pane's description of the way in which wooden zemis were made—strikingly analogous to West African fetish-construction: "Those of wood are made thus: when any one is travelling he says he sees some tree that shakes its root; the man, in great fright, stops and asks who he is; it answers, 'My name is Buhuitihu [a name for priest, or medicine-man],[15] and he will inform you who I am.' The man repairing to the said physician, tells him what he has seen. The wizard, or conjurer, runs immediately to see the tree the other has told him of, sits down by it and makes it cogioba [an offering of tobacco].... He stands up, gives it all its titles, as if it were some great lord, and asks of it, 'Tell[Pg 26] me who you are, what you do here, what you will have with me, and why you send for me? Tell me whether you will have me cut you, whether you will go along with me, and how you will have me carry you; and I will build you a house and endow it.' Immediately that tree, or cemi, becomes an idol, or devil, answers, telling how he will have him do it. He cuts it into such a shape as he is directed, builds his house, and endows it; and makes cogioba for it several times in the year, which cogioba is to pray to it, to please it, to ask and know of the said cemi what good or evil is to happen, and to beg wealth of it."

In such descriptions we get our picture of zemiism, a religion rising above the animism which was its obvious source, becoming predominantly anthropomorphic in its representations of superhuman beings, yet showing no signs of passing from crude fetish-worship to that symbolic use of images which marks the higher forms of idolatry. The ritual was apparently not bloody—offerings of tobacco, the use of purges and narcotics inducing vision and frenzy, and the dramatic dances, or areitos, which marked all solemn occasions and the great seasons of life, such as birth and marriage and death—these were the important features. Oblatio sacrificiorum pertinet ad jus naturale, says Las Casas (quoting St. Thomas Aquinas) in his description of Haitian rites; and to the law of man's nature may surely be ascribed that impulse which caused the Antillean to make his offerings to Heaven and Earth and to the powers that dwell therein.

Nor was he forgetful of the potencies within himself. With his nature-worship was a closely associated ancestor-worship. When they can no longer see the reflection of a person in the pupil of the eye, the soul is fled, say the Arawak—fled to become a zemi. The early writers all dwell upon this belief in the potency and propinquity of the souls of the departed. They are shut up by day, but walk abroad by night, says Fray Ramon; and sometimes they return to their kinsmen in[Pg 27] the form of Incubi: "thus it is they know them: they feel their belly, and if they cannot find their navel, they say they are dead; for they say the dead have no navel." The navel is the symbol of birth and of the attachment of the body to its life; hence the dead, though they may possess all other bodily members, lack this; and the Indians have, says Pane, one name for the soul in the living body and another for the soul of the departed.

The bones of the dead, especially of caciques and great men, enclosed sometimes in baskets, sometimes in plaited cotton images, were regarded as powerful fetishes; and from what is told us of the funeral ceremonies certain beliefs may be inferred. The statement by Columbus, already quoted, closes with an account of some such rites: "When these Indians die, they have several ways of performing their obsequies, but the manner of burying their caciques is thus: they open and dry him at the fire, that he may keep whole. Of others they take only the head, others they bury in a grot or den, and lay a calabash of water and bread on his head; others they burn in the house where they die, and when they are at the last gasp, they suffer them not to die but strangle them; and this is done to caciques. Others are turned out of the house, and others put them into a hammock, which is their bed, laying bread and water by their head, never returning to see them any more. Some that are dangerously ill are carried to the cacique, who tells them whether they are to be strangled or not, and what he says is done. I have taken pains to find out what it is they believe, and whether they know what becomes of them after they are dead," and the answer was that "they go to a certain vale, which every great cacique supposes to be in his country, where they affirm they find their parents and all their predecessors, and that they eat, have women, and give themselves up to pleasures and pastimes." This is very much the belief of all the primitive world, but it has one interesting feature. The strangling of caciques and of those[Pg 28] named by caciques clearly indicates that there was a belief in a different fate for men who die by nature and men who die with the breath of life not yet exhausted; quite likely it was some Valhalla reserved for the brave, such as the Norseman found who escaped the "straw death," or the Aztec warrior whom Tonatiuh snatched up into the mansions of the Sun.

"I ordered," says Columbus, "one Friar Ramon, who understood their language, to set down all their language and antiquities"; and it is to this Fray Ramon Pane, "a poor anchorite of the order of St. Jerome," as he tells us, that thanks are due for most of what is preserved of Taïno mythology. The myths which he gathered are from the island of Haiti, or Hispaniola, but it is safe to assume that they represent cycles of tales shared by all the Taïno peoples. They believe, says the friar, in an invisible and immortal Being, like Heaven, and they speak of the mother of this heaven-son, who was called, among other names, Atabei, "the First-in-Existence." "They also know whence they came, the origin of the sun and moon, how the sea was made, and whither the dead go."

The earliest Indians appeared, according to the legend, from two caverns of a certain mountain of Hispaniola—"most of the people that first inhabited the island came out of Cacibagiagua," while the others emerged from Amaiauva (it is altogether likely that the two caves represent two races or tribal stocks). Before the people came forth, a watchman, Marocael, guarded the entrances by night; but, once delaying his return into the caves until after dawn, the sun transformed him into a stone; while others, going a-fishing, were also caught by the sun and were changed into trees. As for the sun and moon, they, too, came from a certain grotto, called Giovava, to which, says Fray Ramon, the Indians paid[Pg 29] great veneration, having it all painted "without any figure, but with leaves and the like"; and keeping in it two stone zemis which looked "as if they sweated"; to these they went when they wanted rain.

Antillean stone ring, of the ovate type, with carved panels. Stone rings, or "collars," form one of the types of symbolic stones from this region the significance of which has so profoundly puzzled archaeologists. Reference to their possible meaning will be found on page 24 and note 14. there referred to. The specimen here figured is in the Museum of the American Indian, New York. Joyce (Central American Archaeology, pages 189-91) interprets the design as a human figure. The disks on either side of the head are ear-plugs; arms and hands may be seen supporting them; the pit between the elbows is the umbilicus; while the legs are represented by the upper segments of the decorated panels exterior to the disks.

The story of the origin of the sea is a little more complex. In introducing the tale, Fray Ramon says: "I, writing in haste and not having paper enough, could not place everything rightly.... Let us now return to what we should have said first, that is, their opinion concerning the origin and beginning of the sea." There was a certain man, Giaia, whose son, Giaiael ("Giaia's son"), undertook to kill his father, but was himself slain by the parent, who put the bones into a calabash, which he hung in the top of his house. One day he took the calabash down, and looking into it, an abundance of fishes, great and small, came forth, since into these the bones had changed. Later on, while Giaia was absent, there came to his house four sons, born at a birth from a certain woman, Itiba Tahuvava, who was cut open that they might be delivered—"the first that they cut out was Caracaracol, that is, 'Mangy.'" These four brothers took the calabash and ate of the fish, but seeing Giaia returning, in their haste they replaced it badly, with the result that "there ran so much water from it as overflowed all the country, and with it came out abundance of fish, and hence they believe the sea had its origin." Fray Ramon goes on to tell how, the four brothers being hungry, one of them begged cassaba bread of a certain man, but was struck by him with tobacco. Thereupon his shoulder swelled up painfully; and when it was opened, a live female tortoise issued forth—"so they built their house and bred up the tortoise."

"I understood no more of this matter, and what we have writ signifies but little," continues the friar; yet to the modern reader the tales have all the marks of a primitive cosmogony, a cosmogony having many analogues in similar tales from the two Americas. The notion of a cave or caves from which[Pg 30] the parents of the human race and of the animal kinds issue to people the world is ubiquitous in America; so, too, is the notion of an age of transformations, in which beings were altered from their first forms. Peter Martyr, who tells the same stories in résumé, as he says, of Pane's manuscript, adds a number of interesting details; as that after the metamorphosis of Marocael, or Machchael, as Martyr calls him, the First Race were refused entrance into the caves when the sun rose "because they sought to sin," and so were transformed—a moral element which recalls similar motifs in Pueblo myths. But perhaps the most striking analogies are with the cosmogonies of the Algonquian and Iroquoian stocks. The four Caracarols (caracol, "shell," plural cacaracol, is the evident derivation), one of whom was called "Mangy," recall the Stone Giants, and again recall the twins or (as in a Potawatomi version) quadruplets whose birth causes their mother's death, while the tortoise cut from the shoulder (Martyr says it was a woman by whom the brothers successively became fathers of sons and daughters) is at least suggestive of the cosmogonic turtle of North American myth. In the flood-legend, the idea of fishes being formed from bones is remotely paralleled by the Eskimo conception of the creation of fishes from the finger-bones of the daughter of Anguta; and Benzoni tells how, in his day, the Haitians still had a pumpkin as a relic, "saying that it had come out of the sea with all the fish in it."

In the order of his narrative—though not, apparently, in the order in which he deemed the events ought to lie—Fray Ramon follows the story of the emergence of the First People from caves with the adventures of a hero whom he calls Guagugiana, but whom Peter Martyr terms Vagoniona. It is easy to recognize in this hero an example of the demiurgic Trickster-Transformer so common in American myth. Like the Trickster elsewhere, he has a servant or comrade, Giadruvava, and the first story that Pane tells is one of which we would fain have a fuller version, for even the fragmentary[Pg 31] sketch of it is full of poetic suggestion. Guagugiana, it seems, was one of the cave-dwellers of the First Race. One day he sent forth his servant to seek a certain cleansing herb, but, as Pane has it, "the sun took him by the way, and he became a bird that sings in the morning, like the nightingale"; to which Peter Martyr adds that "on every anniversary of his transformation he fills the night air with songs, bewailing his misfortunes and imploring his master to come to his help."

In this tale, slender as it is, there is an element of unusual interest, fortified by various other allusions to Antillean beliefs. It would appear that the First People, the cave-dwellers, were of the nature of spirits or souls, and that the Sun was the true Transformer, whose strength-giving rays gave to each, as it emerged to light, the form which it was to keep. The disembodied soul (opia) haunts the night, moreover, as if night were its native season; in the day it is powerless, and men have no fear of it. Surely it is a beautiful myth which makes of the night-bird's song a longing for the free life of the spirit, or at least an expression of the feeling of kinship with the spirit-world.

The tale goes on to tell how Guagugiana, lamenting his lost comrade, resolved to go forth from the cave in which the First People dwelt. Yet he went not alone, for he called to the women: "Leave your husbands! Let us go into other countries, where we shall get jewels enough! Leave your children; we will come again for them; carry only herbs with you." The women, abandoning all save their nursing children (as Peter Martyr tells), followed Guagugiana to the island of Matenino, and there he left them; but the children he took away and abandoned them beside a brook—or perhaps, as Martyr implies, he brought them back and left them on the shore of the sea—where, starving, they cried, "Toa, toa," which is to say, "Milk, milk!" "And they thus crying and begging of the earth, saying, 'toa, toa,' like one that very earnestly begs a thing, they were transformed into little creatures[Pg 32] like dwarfs, and called tona, because of their begging the earth." Martyr's more prosaic version says that they were transformed into frogs; but both authorities agree that this is how the men came to be left without wives; and doubtless it is this myth from which Columbus gained at least a part of his notion of the Amazon-like women "who dwell alone in the island of Matenino."

Other episodes in the career of Guagugiana, which Pane recounts in a confused way, are his going to sea with a companion whom he tricked into looking for precious shells and then threw overboard; his finding of a woman of the sea who taught him a cure for the pox; this woman's name was Guabonito, and she taught him the use of amulets and of ornaments of white stone and of gold. Peter Martyr's variant says: "He is supposed to go to meet a beautiful woman, perceived in the depths of the sea, from whom are obtained the white shells called by the natives cibas, and other shells of a yellowish colour called guianos, of both of which they make necklaces; the caciques, in our own time, regard these trinkets as sacred." In this there is a striking suggestion of the Pueblo myths of the White-Shell Woman of the East and of the sea-dwelling Guardian of the yellow shells of the West; and it is quite to be inferred that the regard in which the caciques held these objects was due to a ritual and magical significance analogous to that which we know in the Pueblos.

"The Spaniards," says Peter Martyr,[17] "lived for some time in Hispaniola without suspecting that the islanders worshipped anything else than the stars, or that they had any kind of religion,... but after mingling with them for some years ... many of the Spaniards began to notice among them divers ceremonies and rites." These ceremonies are called areitos, or areytos, by the Spanish writers; and from the early[Pg 33] descriptions it is obvious that they were rites of the typical American kind, dramatic dances or mysteries performed in the great crises of national and personal life, or in the changes and climaxes of that course of the seasons, which is the life of Nature. As in the case of myths, so in the case of rites, it is chiefly those of Haiti which are described for us; but there is little reason to doubt that these are typical of all the Greater Antilles.

Birth, marriage, death, going to war, curing the sick, initiation, and puberty rites all seem to have had their appropriate ceremonies. Songs played an important part in these ceremonies; indeed, the word areito is frequently restricted to funeral chants, or elegies in praise of heroes. But the chief rite known to us, and, we may feel assured, the chief rite of the whole Taïno culture, was the ceremony in honour of the Earth Goddess. This ceremony, as celebrated by the Haitians, is described by both Benzoni and Gómara with some detail. Gómara's account is as follows:[18]

"When the cacique celebrated the festival in honour of his principal idol, all the people attended the function. They decorated the idol very elaborately; the priests arranged themselves like a choir about the king, and the cacique sat at the entrance of the temple with a drum at his side. The men came painted black, red, blue, and other colours or covered with branches and garlands of flowers, or feathers and shells, wearing shell bracelets and little shells on their arms and rattles on their feet. The women also came with similar rattles, but naked, if they were maids, and not painted; if married, wearing only breechcloths. They approached dancing, and singing to the sound of the shells, and as they approached the cacique he saluted them with a drum. Having entered the temple, they vomited, putting a small stick into their throat, in order to show the idol that they had nothing evil in their stomach. They seated themselves like tailors and prayed with a low voice. Then there approached many women bearing[Pg 34] baskets and cakes on their heads and many roses, flowers, and fragrant herbs. They formed a circle as they prayed and began to chant something like an old ballad in praise of the god. All rose to respond at the close of the ballad; they changed their tone and sang another song in praise of the cacique, after which they offered the bread to the idol, kneeling. The priests took the gift, blessed, and divided it; and so the feast ended, but the recipients of the bread preserved it all the year and held that house unfortunate and liable to many dangers which was without it."

In this rite it is easy to recognize a festival in honour of a divinity of fertility, probably a corn deity, or perhaps a goddess who is the mother of corn spirits. Benzoni says of the Haitians that "they worshipped two wooden figures as the gods of abundance, and at some periods of the year many Indians went on a pilgrimage to them." These may be the two zemis of the painted grotto of the Sun and the Moon, mentioned by Ramon Pane and Peter Martyr, for the latter says that "they go on pilgrimages to that cavern just as we go to Rome"; but it is certain that they were associated with agriculture, since it was to them that prayers were made for rain and fruitfulness. In an interesting old picture, printed in Picart, the rite of the Earth Goddess is represented, much as described by Gómara and Benzoni. The goddess herself is shown with several heads, each that of a different animal, and near her are two lesser idols of grotesque form. It is possible that the Earth was conceived as the mother of all life, animal as well as vegetable, and that her two attendants represented yucca and maize, the two principal food plants of the Antilleans. Some authorities regard the chief of the Taïno gods, the son of the great First-in-Being, as a yucca spirit; and, indeed, the name of the plant appears to enter into such forms as Iocauna, Jocakuvague, Yocahuguama. Yet it is little likely that we shall ever have certainty on this point, for of the poems which, Peter Martyr tells us, the sons of[Pg 35] chiefs sang to the people on feast days, in the form of sacred chants, none are preserved to us.

Dance, or Areito, of the Haitian Indians in honor of the Earth Goddess. The ceremony is described by both Benzoni and Gómara, the latter's description being quoted in this volume, pages 33-34. After the drawing in Picart, The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the known World, London, 1731-37, Plate No. 78.

That the Taïno had, besides these great public festivals, rites for the individual also is abundantly witnessed in the old books. Like all American Indians, they were mystics and vision-seekers. Benzoni says that when the doctors wished to cure a man who was ill, he was lulled into unconsciousness by tobacco smoke, and "on returning to his senses he told a thousand stories of his having been at the council of the gods and other high visions"—a description which recalls im Thurn's account of his own experiences in the hands of an Arawak peaiman.[19] Something analogous to the individual totem, or "medicine," of other Indians was certainly known to them. "The islanders," says Peter Martyr, "pay homage to numerous zemes, each person having his own. Some are made of wood, because it is amongst the trees and in the darkness of night they have received the message of the gods. Others, who have heard the voice among the rocks, make their zemes of stone; while others, who heard their revelation while they were cultivating their ages—the kind of cereal I have already mentioned [sweet potato, or yam],—make theirs of roots." Martyr goes on to describe trances, induced, he thinks, by tobacco, in which the chiefs seek prophetic revelations, stammered out in incoherent words. One of the most interesting of the early stories tells of such a prophecy received from Yocahuguama, the yucca spirit. Doubtless the earliest version of the tale is that of Ramon Pane:[20]

"That great lord who, they say, is in heaven ... is this Cazziva [cassava], who kept a sort of abstinence here, which all of them generally perform; for they shut themselves up six or seven days, without taking any sustenance but the juice of herbs, with which they also wash themselves. After this time they begin to eat something that is nourishing. During the time they have been without eating, weakness makes them say they have seen something they earnestly desired,[Pg 36] for they all perform that abstinence in honour of the cemies to know whether they shall obtain victory over their enemies, or to acquire wealth or any other thing they desire. They say this cacique affirmed he spoke with Giocauvaghama, who told him that whosoever survived him would not long enjoy his power, because they should see a people clad, in their country, who would rule over and kill them, and they should die for hunger. They thought at first these should be the cannibals, but afterwards considering that they only plundered and fled, they believed it was some other people the cemi spoke of; and now they believe it is the admiral and those that came with him." This is the first of those stories of clothed and bearded strangers (the beard is added in some versions), coming to overthrow the gods and kingdoms of the Indians, which were encountered in various portions of the New World. So much importance was attached to it, says Gómara, that a song was formed commemorating it, sung as an areito in a ceremonial dance.

Not only Columbus, but other early writers praised the peacefully happy and amiably virtuous character of the Indians of the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles; and though this description may have been in some degree coloured by their ideal of what dwellers in the Fortunate Isles ought to be, there is yet little in the old accounts of these Indians to contravene their good report. With small question, however, this same picture served only to intensify the grimness of its companion portrait, for the folk of the Lesser Antilles, the "Caribbee Islands" of seamen's romance, were painted as hard and mirthless savages, murderers and marauders, ferocious in war, and abhorrent cannibals—altogether such as would be dramatically appropriate as the aborigines of islands that were to become the paradise of pirates.

On his second voyage Columbus encountered men of this[Pg 37] race, finding them treacherous and fierce. Unlike the Taïno, the men wore their hair long and they painted themselves with strange devices; their beards were plucked out, and their eyes and eyebrows were stained to give them a terrible appearance—at least so thought Chanca, who describes them for us. The women—that is, the true Carib women, not the captives, of whom they had many—were as savage fighters as the men; and the Spaniards distinguished them from the captive Taïno women by the leg-bands, fastened below the knee and above the ankle, which caused the leg-muscles to swell out—a trait recorded by im Thurn of the true Carib of Guiana.

There is small question that these people came from the mouth of the Orinoco in the southern continent just as the ancestors of the Taïno had doubtless come before them; and even at the time of the discovery they were invading the Greater Antilles and had secured a foothold in Porto Rico. Nevertheless, they had already been in the lesser islands for a period sufficiently long to differentiate them, in a degree, from their continental congeners and to develop among them a distinctly Antillean type of Carib culture, related on the one hand to the continent they had left, on the other to the islands they had conquered. Doubtless the fundamental modification was due not so much to the change of habitat or to the difference between alluvial and insular life as to the fact—repeated from Columbus onward—that they spared and married with the women of the dispossessed tribes and so fell heirs to many of their arts and ideas.

Of all Carib customs, after their cannibalism (the word "cannibal" is a variant of "Carib"), the most striking is the couvade—the Custom whereby the husband and father, at the birth of a child, takes to his bed, or rather hammock, as if he were suffering the pangs of labour. For forty days he remains in retirement, fasting or on meagre diet; and at the end of this period a feast is held at which the invited guests[Pg 38] lacerate the skin of the patient with their nails and wash the wounds with a solution of red pepper, he bearing his pain heroically. Even then his trials are not at an end; for six moons more he must be careful of his food—should he eat turtle, the child will become deaf, and so of other creatures, bird and fish,—such being Père du Tertre's description of this rite, still in vogue on the southern continent.

Other Carib festivals are mentioned by Davies. A ceremony attended a council of war, the killing of an enemy, and the return from war; the launching of a canoe, the building of a house, and the making of a garden; the birth of a child and the cutting of its hair; adolescence and participation in the first war-party; the death of parents, husband, or wife. They had, of course, their doctors or medicine-men—the peaimen of the continent, apparently called boii by the islanders, a name which is surely a variant of the Taïno buhuitihu and doubtless was adopted from the latter; especially as Maboya ("the Great Boye" or "Great Snake") is a name recorded for the tutelary power of these boii, or "snakes." Maboya, or Mapoia, is the god who sends the hurricane; and here we have an interesting point of contact with the mythology of the great isthmus, since Hurakan, the hurricane, is the Mayan storm-god. Du Tertre says that there were many Maboyas; and it may be that the term is the insular equivalent for "Kenaima," by which the mainland Carib designate a member of the class of death-bringing powers.

Good spirits were also recognized. The names Akambou and Yris are found for the highest of all, and the name Chemin—doubtless related to zemi—is applied to the sky-god. It may be that the island Carib possessed a whole pantheon of celestial deities, or perhaps the name for the Great Spirit varied from island to island, as similar names vary among the related tribes of Guiana.

Fragments of the legends of the island Carib are preserved. Louquo, the first man, came down from the sky; other men[Pg 39] were born from his body; and after his death he ascended into the heavens. The sky itself is eternal; the earth, at first soft, was hardened by the sun's rays. The First Race of men were nearly exterminated by a deluge, from which a lucky few escaped in a canoe. After death the soul of the valiant Carib ascends to heaven; the stars are Carib souls. All these are beliefs which we need not ascribe to Old World suggestion, for they are found far and wide in America; and equally native must be the Carib notion that each man has three souls—one in his heart, one in his head, and one in his shoulders—though it is only the heart-soul that ascends to paradise at death, while the other two wander abroad as dangerous and evil powers. The islanders possessed also a legend of their origin or migration from among the Galibi, their continental relatives, "Galibi" being, apparently, yet another variant of "Carib." Their ancestor, Kalinago, they said, wearying of life among his own people, embarked for the conquest of new lands, and after a long voyage settled in Santo Domingo with his kin, where his numerous children, conspiring against him, gave him poison. His body died, but his soul found an avatar in a terrible fish, Atraioman; while his slayers, pursued by his vengeance, scattered afar among all the isles. Wherever they went, they destroyed the men, but spared the women; and they placed the heads of their enemies in rocky caves that they might show their sons and their sons' sons these symbols of the valour of their fathers. According to some tales all brave Caribs at death enter a paradise where they forever wage successful war against the Arawak, while cowards are condemned in the future world to be enslaved to Arawak masters.

A more agreeable picture of Carib nature is suggested by their belief in Icheiri—a kind of Lares and Penates—to whom in each cabin was erected an altar of banana leaves or of cane, upon which were placed offerings of cassava flour and of the first fruits of the field, these Icheiri being conceived as[Pg 40] kindly and familiar intermediaries between man below and the distant heaven power above. There were also spirits that could enter into a man to lead him to inspired vision—"medicine" spirits, or tutelaries. The god Yris seems to have been of this character, for du Tertre, who received the story from one of the missionaries in Santo Domingo, relates that Yris entered into a certain woman and transported her far above the sun, where she saw lands of a marvellous beauty with verdant mountains from which gushed springs of living water; and the god promised her that after her death she should come thither to dwell with him forever. The savage mystic, too, it would appear, has her visions of a divine spouse, who shall one day welcome her into the heaven above the heavens.

[Pg 41]

From the Rio Grande to the southern continent extends the great land bridge connecting North and South America, forming a region which might properly be called Middle America. This region divides naturally into several sections. To the north is the body of Mexico, its coastal lands mounting abruptly on the western side, but rising more gradually on the eastern littoral toward the broad central plateau, the shape of which—roughly triangular, with its apex in the lofty mountains of the south—conforms to that of the whole land north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Next to this is the low-lying peninsular region of Yucatan, ascending into mountains toward the Pacific, and forming a great broadening of the southward tapering land. A second bulge is Central America, lying between the Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Gulf, and terminating in the thin Isthmus forming an arc about the Bay of Panama.

The physiography of the region is an index to its pre-Columbian ethnography.[22] The northern portion, including Lower California and, roughly, the mainlands in its latitudes, was a region of wild tribes, the best of them much inferior in culture to the Pueblo Indians on the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and the lowest as destitute of arts as any in America. Yuman and Waicurian tribes in Lower California; Seri on the Island of Tiburon and the neighbouring mainland; Piman in the north central and western mainlands; Apache in the desert-like lands south of the Rio Grande; and Tamaulipecan[Pg 42] on the east, coasting the Gulf of Mexico—these are the principal groups of this region, peoples whose ideas and myths differ little from those of their kindred groups of the arid South-west of North America. The Piman group, however, possesses a special interest in that it forms a possible connexion between the Shoshonean to the north and the Nahuatlan nations of the Aztec world. Such peoples as the Papago, Yaqui, Tarahumare, and Tepehuane are the wilder cousins of the Nahua, while the Tepecano, Huichol, and Cora tribes, just to the south, distinctly show Aztec acculturation. In general, the Mexican tribes north of the Tropic of Cancer belong, in habit and thought, with the groups of the South-West of the northern continent; ethnically, Middle America falls south of the Tropic.

Below this line, extending as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is the region dominated by the empire of the Aztec, marked by the civilization which bears their name.[23] As a matter of fact, although at the time of the culmination of their power this whole region was politically subordinated to the Aztec (it was not completely conquered by them), it contained several centres of culture, each in degree distinct. To the north, about the Panuco, were the Huastec, a branch of the Maya stock; while immediately south of them, and also on the Gulf Coast, were the Totonac, possibly of Maya kinship. The central highlands, immediately west of these peoples, were occupied by the Otomi, primitive and warlike foes of the Aztec emperors. On their west, in turn, the Otomi had a common frontier with Nahuatlan tribes—Huichol, Cora, and others—forming a transitional group between the wild tribes of the north and the civilized Nahua. Quite surrounded by Nahuatlan and Otomian tribes was the Tarascan stock of Michoacan, a group of peoples whose culture certainly ante-dates that of the Nahua, of whom, indeed, they may have been the teachers. Still to the south—their territories nearly conterminous with the state of Oaxaca—were the Zapotecan peoples,[Pg 43] chief among them the Zapotec and Mixtec, whose civilization ranks with those of Nahua and Maya in individual quality, while in native vitality it has proved stronger than either.

The Zoquean tribes (Mixe, Zoque, and others), back from the Gulf of Tehuantepec, form a transition to the next great culture centre, that of the Maya nations. The territories of this most remarkable of all American civilizations included the whole of Yucatan, the greater portions of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and the lands bordering on both sides of the Gulf of Honduras. Thus the Mayan regions dominate the strategy of the Americas, since they not only control the juncture of the continents, but, stretching out toward the Greater Antilles, command the passage between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It is easily conceivable that, had a free maritime commerce grown up, the Maya might have become, not merely the Greeks, but the Romans, of the New World.

Central America, occupied by no less than a dozen distinct linguistic stocks, forms a fourth cultural district. Its peoples show not only the influences of the Maya and Nahua to the north (a tribe of the Nahuatlan stock had penetrated as far south as Lake Nicaragua), but also of the Chibchan civilization of the southern continent, dominant in the Isthmus of Panama, and extending beyond Costa Rica up into Nicaragua. In addition, there is more than a suggestion of influence from the Antilles and from the sea-faring Carib. Here, we can truly say, is the meeting-place of the continents.

The nodes of interest in the culture and history of Middle America are the Aztec and Maya civilizations, which are justly regarded as marking the highest attainment of native Americans.[24] Neither Aztec nor Maya could vie with the Peruvian peoples in the engineering and political skill which made the empire of the Incas such a marvel of organization; but in the general level of the arts, in the intricacy of their science, and above all in the possession of systems of hieroglyphic writing and of monumental records the Middle Americans[Pg 44] had touched a level properly comparable with the earliest civilizations of the Old World, nor can theirs have been vastly later than Old World culture in origin.

In a number of particulars the civilizations of the Middle and South American centres show curious parallels. In each case we are in the presence of an aggressively imperial highland (Aztec, Inca) and of a decadent lowland (Maya, Yunca) culture. In each case the lowland culture is the more advanced aesthetically and apparently of longer history. Both highland powers clearly depend upon remote highland predecessors for their own culture (Aztec harks back to Toltec, Inca to Tiahuanaco); and in both regions it is a pretty problem for the archaeologist to determine whether this more remote highland civilization is ancestrally akin to the lowland. Again, in both the apogee of monument building and of the arts seems to have passed when the Spaniards arrived; indeed, empire itself was weakening. The Aztec and the Inca tribes (perhaps the most striking parallel of all) emerged from obscurity about the same time to proceed on the road to empire, for the traditional Aztec departure from Aztlan and the Inca departure from Tampu Tocco alike occurred in the neighbourhood of 1200 a. d. Finally, it was Ahuitzotl, the predecessor of Montezuma II, who brought Aztec power to its zenith, and it was Huayna Capac, the father of Atahualpa, who gave Inca empire its greatest extent; while both the Aztec empire under Montezuma, which fell to Cortez in 1519, and the Inca empire under Atahualpa, conquered by Pizarro in 1524, were internally weakening at the time. But the crowning misfortune common to the two empires was the possession of gold, maddening the eyes of the conquistadores.

In 1517 Hernandez de Cordova, sailing from Cuba for the Bahamas, was driven out of his course by adverse gales;[Pg 45] Yucatan was discovered; and a part of the coast of the Gulf of Campeche was explored. Battles were fought, and hardships were endured by the discoverers, but the reports of a higher civilization which they brought back to Cuba, coupled with specimens of curious gold-work, induced the governor of the island to equip a new expedition to continue the exploration. This venture, of four vessels under the command of Juan de Grijalva, set out in May, 1518, and following the course of its predecessor, coasted as far as the province of Panuco, visiting the Isla de los Sacrificios—near the site of the future Vera Cruz—and doing profitable trading with some of the vassals of the Aztec emperor. A caravel which he dispatched to Cuba with some of his golden profit induced the governor to undertake a larger military expedition to effect the conquest of the empire discovered; for now men began to realize that a truly imperial realm had been revealed. This third expedition was placed under the command of Hernando Cortez; it sailed from Cuba in February, 1519, and landed on the island of Cozumel, in Maya territory, where the Spaniards were profoundly impressed at finding the Cross an object of veneration. The course was resumed, and a battle was fought near the mouth of the Rio de Tabasco; but Cortez was in search of richer lands and so moved onward, beyond the lands of the Maya, until on Good Friday, April 21, 1519, he landed with all his forces on the site of Vera Cruz. The two years of the Conquest followed—the tale of which, for fantastic and romantic adventure, for egregious heroism and veritable gluttony of bloodshed, has few competitors in human annals: its climacterics being the seizure of Montezuma in November, 1519; la noche triste, July 1, 1520, when the invaders were driven from Tenochtitlan; and, finally, the defeat and capture of Guatemotzin, August 13, 1521.

The reader of the tale cannot but be profoundly moved both by what the Spaniards found and by what they did. He will be moved with regret at the wanton destruction of so much[Pg 46] that was in its way splendid in Aztec civilization. He will be moved with revulsion and wonder that such a civilization could support a religion which, though not without elements of poetic exaltation, was drugged with obscene and bloody rites; and he will feel only a shuddering thankfulness that this faith is of the past. But when he turns to the agents of its destruction and reads their chronicles, furious with carnage, he will surely say, with Clavigero, that "the Spaniards cannot but appear to have been the severest instruments fate ever made use of to further the ends of Providence," and amid conflicting horrors he will be led again into regretful sympathy for the final victims.

An apologist for human nature would say that neither conquistador nor papa (as the Spaniards named the Aztec priest) was quite so despicable as his deeds, that both were moved by a faith that had redeeming traits. Outwardly, aesthetically, the whole scene is bizarre and devilish; inwardly, it is not without devotion and heroism. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, adventurer not only with Cortez, but with Cordova and Grijalva before him, one of the sturdiest of the conquerors and destined to be their foremost chronicler, records for us one unforgettable incident which presents the whole inwardness and outwardness of the situation—gorgeous cruelty and simple humanity—in a single image. It was four days after the army of Cortez had entered the Mexican capital; and after having been shown the wonders of the populous markets of Tenochtitlan, the visitors were escorted, at their own request, to the platform top of the great teocalli overlooking Tlatelolco, the mart of Mexico. From the platform Montezuma proudly pointed to the quartered city below, and beyond that to the gleaming lake and the glistening villages on its borders—all a local index of his imperial domains. "We counted among us," says the chronicler,[26] "soldiers who had traversed different parts of the world: Constantinople, Italy, Rome; they said that they had seen nowhere a place so well aligned, so vast,[Pg 47] ordered with such art, and covered with so many people." Cortez turned to Montezuma: "You are a great lord," he said. "You have shown us your great cities; show us now your gods."

Aztec goddess, probably Coatlicue, the mother of Huitzilopochtli, an earth goddess (see page 74). The statue is one of two Aztec monuments (the other being the "Calendar Stone," Plate XIV) discovered under the pavement of the principal plaza of Mexico City in 1790, and is possibly the very image which Bernal Diaz mistook for "Huichilobos" (see pages 46-49, and Note 26). The goddess wears the serpent apron, and carries a death's head at the girdle; her own head is formed of two serpent heads, facing, rising from her shoulders. The importance of Coatlicue in Aztec legend is evidenced by the story of the embassy sent to her by Montezuma I (see page 116). After an engraving in AnMM, first series, Vol. II.

"He invited us into a tower," continues the chronicler, "into a part in form like a great hall where were two altars covered with rich woodwork. Upon the altars were reared two massive forms, like giants with ponderous bodies. The first, placed at the right, was, they say, Huichilobos [Huitzilopochtli], their god of war. His countenance was very large, the eyes huge and terrifying; all his body, including the head, was covered with gems, with gold, with pearls large and small, adherent by means of a glue made from farinaceous roots. The body was cinctured with great serpents fabricked of gold and precious stones; in one hand he held a bow, and in the other arrows. A second little idol, standing beside the great divinity like a page, carried for him a short spear and a buckler rich in gold and gems. From the neck of Huichilobos hung masks of Indians and hearts in gold or in silver surmounted by blue stones. Near by were to be seen burners with incense of copal; three hearts of Indians sacrificed that very day burned there, continuing with the incense the sacrifice that had just taken place. The walls and floor of this sanctuary were so bathed with congealing blood that they exhaled a horrid odour.

"Turning our gaze to the left, we saw there another great mass, of the height of Huichilobos. Its face resembled the snout of a bear, and its shining eyes were made of mirrors called tezcatl in the language of the country; its body was covered with rich gems, in like manner with Huichilobos, for they are called brothers. They adore Tezcatepuca [Tezcatlipoca] as god of the lower worlds, and attribute to him the care of the souls of Mexicans. His body was bound about with little devils having the tails of snakes. About him also upon the walls there was such a crust of blood and the floor so[Pg 48] soaked with it that not the butcheries of Castile exhale such a stench. There was to be seen, moreover, the offering of five hearts of victims sacrificed that day. At the culminating point of the temple was a niche of woodwork, richly carved; within it, a statue representing a being half man, half crocodile, enriched with jewels and partly covered by a mantle. They said that this idol was the god of sowings and of fruits; the half of his body contained all the grains of the country. I do not recall the name of this divinity; what I do know is that here also all was soiled with blood, wall and altar, and that the stench was such that we did not delay to go forth to take the air. There we found a drum of immense size; when struck it gave forth a lugubrious sound, such as an infernal instrument could not want. It could be heard for two leagues about, and it was said to be stretched with the skins of gigantic serpents.

"Upon the terrace were to be seen an endless number of things diabolical in appearance: speaking trumpets, horns, knives, many hearts of Indians burned as incense to idols; and all covered with blood in such quantity that I vowed it to malediction! As moreover, everywhere arose the odours of a charnel, it moved us strongly to depart from these exhalations and above all from so repulsive a sight.

"It was then that our general, by means of our interpreter, said to Montezuma, smiling: 'Sire, I cannot understand how being so great a prince and so wise as you are, that you have not perceived in your reflections that your idols are not gods, but evilly named demons. That Your Majesty may recognize this and all your priests be convinced, grant me the grace of finding it good that I erect a Cross upon the height of this tower, and that in the same part of the sanctuary where are your Huichilobos and Tezcatepuca, we construct a shrine and elevate the image of Our Lady; and you will see the fear which she will inspire in these idols, of which you are the dupes.' Montezuma replied partly in anger, while the priests made menacing gestures: 'Sir Malinche, if I had thought that you[Pg 49] could offer blasphemies, such as you have just done, I had not shown you my deities. Our gods we hold to be good; it is they who give us health, rains, good harvests, storms, victories, and all that we desire. We ought to adore them and make them sacrifices. What I beg of you is that you will say not a word more that is not in their honour.' Our general, having heard and seeing his emotion, thought best not to reply; so, affecting a gay air, he said: 'It is already the hour that we and Your Majesty must part.' To which Montezuma answered, true, but as for him, he must pray and make sacrifice in expiation of the sin he had committed in giving us access to his temple, which had had for consequence our presentation to his gods and the want of respect through which we had rendered ourselves culpable, blaspheming against them." So the Spaniards departed, leaving Montezuma to his expiatory prayers and no doubt bloody sacrifices.

Within the precincts of the temple-pyramid, and not far from it, was a lesser building which Bernal Diaz describes, a house of idols, diabolisms, serpents, tools for carving the bodies of sacrificed victims, and pots and kettles to cook them for the cannibal repasts of the priests, the entrance being formed by gaping jaws "such as one pictures at the mouth of Inferno, showing great teeth for the devouring of poor souls." The place was foul with blood and black with smoke, "and for my part," says Diaz, "I was accustomed to call it 'Hell.'"

It is indeed doubtful whether the human imagination has ever elsewhere conjured up such soul-satisfying devils as are the gods of the Aztec pantheon. Beside them Old World demons seem prankishly amiable sprites: the Mediaeval imagination at best (or worst) gives us but a somewhat deranged barnyard, while even Chinese devils modulate into pleasantly decorative motifs. But the Aztec gods, in their[Pg 50] formal presentments, and seldom less in their material characters, ugly, ghastly, foul, afford unalloyed shudders which time cannot still nor custom stale. To be sure, the ensemble frequently shows a vigour of design which suggests decoration (though the decorative spirit is never sensitive, as it often is in Maya art); but this suggestion is too illusory to abide: it passes like a mist, and the imagination is gripped by the raw horror of the Thing. Aztec religious art seems, in fact, to move in a more primitively realistic atmosphere than that in which the religious art of other peoples has come to similarly adept expression; it shows little of that tendency—which Yucatan and Peru in America, as well as the ancient and Oriental nations, had all attained—to subordinate the idea to the expressional form, and to soften even the horrible with the suavity of aesthetic charm. The Aztec gods were as grimly business-like in form as the realities of their service were fearful.

In number these divinities were myriad and in relations chaotic. There were clan and tribal, city and national gods, not only of the victorious race, but of their confederates and subjects, for the Aztec followed the custom of pagan conquerors, holding it safest to honour the deities native to the land; and several of their greatest divinities were assuredly inherited from vanquished peoples—Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc among them—though an odd and somewhat amusing fact is that a multitude of the godling idols of ravaged cities were kept in a kind of prison-house in the Aztec capital, where, it was assumed, they were incapable of assisting their former worshippers. There were gods of commerce and industries, headed by Tacatecutli, god of merchant-adventurers, whose "peaceful penetration" opened paths for the imperial armies; gods of potters and weavers and mat-makers, of workers in wood and stone and metal; gods of agriculture, of sowing and ripening and reaping; gods of fishermen; gods of the elements—earth, air, fire, and water; gods of mountains and volcanoes; creator-gods; animal-gods; gods of medicine, of disease[Pg 51] and death, and of the underworld; deity patrons of drunkenness and of carnal vice, and deity protectors of the flowers which these strange peoples loved. The whole heterogeneous world was filled with divinities, reflecting the old fears of primitive man and the old tumults of history, each god jealous of his right and gluttonous of blood—a kind of horrid exteriorization of human passion and desire.

However, this motley pantheon is not without certain principles of order. The regulations of an elaborate social system, divided by clan and caste and rank and guild, are reduplicated in it; for to every phase of Mexican life religious rites and divine tutelage were attached. Still more significant as a means of hierarchic classification is the relation of the divine beings to the divisions of time and space. A cult of the quarters of space and their tutelaries and of the powers of sky-realms above and of earth-realms below is almost universal among American Indian groups showing any advancement in culture; the gods of the quarters, for example, are bringers of wind and rain, upholders of heaven, animal chiefs; the gods above are storm-deities and rulers of the orbs and dominions of light, on the whole beneficent; the powers below, under the hegemony of the earth goddess, are spirits of vegetation and lords of death and things noxious. This is the most primitive stage in which the family of Heaven and Earth begin to assume form as an hierarchic pantheon. But the seasons, beginning with the diurnal alternation of the rule of light and darkness, and proceeding thence to the changing phases of the moon and the seasonal journeys of the sun, constantly shift the domination of the world from deity to deity and from group to group. Thus the lords of day are not the lords of night, nor are the fates of the mounting morn those of descending eve: the Sun himself changes his disposition with the hours. Similarly, the Moon's phases are tempers rather than forms; and the year, divided among the gods, runs the cycle of their influences.

[Pg 52]

The Aztec and other pantheons of the civilized Mexicans evince all of these elements with complications. Both cosmography and calendar are more complex than among the more northerly Americans, and there is a veritable tangle of space-craft and time-craft, with astrological and necromantic conceptions, bound up with every human desire and every natural activity. Certainly the most curious feature of this lore is the influence of certain numbers—especially four (and five) and nine; and, again, six (and seven) and thirteen. These number-groups are primarily related to space-divisions. Thus four is the number of cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, to which a fifth point is added if the pou sto, or point of the observer, is included; by a process of reduplication, of which there are several instances in North America, the number of earth's cardinal points became the number of the sky-tiers above and of the earth-tiers below, so that the cosmos becomes a nine-storeyed structure, with earth its middle plane. Sometimes (this is characteristic of the Pueblo Indians) orientation is with reference to six points—the four directions and the Above and the Below (the pou sto, when added, becomes a seventh—a grouping which recalls to us the seven forms of Platonic locomotion—up, down, forward, backward, right, left, and axial). With these directions colours, jewels, herbs, and animals are symbolically associated, becoming emblems of the ruling powers of the quarters. The number-groups thus cosmographically formed react upon time-conceptions, especially where ritual is concerned. Thus the Pueblo Indians celebrate lesser festivals of five days (a day of preparation and four of ritual), and greater feasts of nine days (reduplicating the four) the whole, in some cases at least, being comprised in a longer period of twenty days. The rites of the year among the Zuñi and some others are divided into two six-month groups, and each month is dedicated to or associated with one of the six colour-symbols of the six directions; while the Hopi—a fact of especial[Pg 53] interest—make use of thirteen points on the horizon for the determination of ceremonial dates.[28]

The cosmic and calendric orientation of the Mexicans is a complex, with elaborations, of both these number-groups (i.e. four, five, nine, and six, seven, thirteen). According to one conception there are nine heavens above and nine hells beneath. Ometecutli ("Twofold Lord") and Omeciuatl ("Twofold Lady") the male and female powers of generation, dwell in Omeyocan ("the Place of the Twofold") at the culmination of the universe; and it is from Omeyocan that the souls of babes, bringing the lots "assigned to them from the commencement of the world,"[29] descend to mortal birth; while in the opposite direction the souls of the dead, after four years of wandering, having passed the nine-fold stream of the underworld, go to find their rest in Chicunauhmictlan, the ninth pit. Nine "Lords of the Night" preside over its nine hours, and potently over the affairs of men. Mictlantecutli, the skeleton god of death, is lord of the midnight hour; the owl is his bird; his consort is Mictlanciuatl; and the place of their abode, windowless and lightless, is "huge enough to receive the whole world." Over the first hour of night and the first of morning (there are Lords of the Day, too) presides Xiuhtecutli, the fire-god, for the hearth of the universe, like the hearth of the house, is the world's centre.

But the ninefold conception of the universe is not without rival. A second notion (of Toltec source, according to Sahagun) speaks of twelve heavens; or of thirteen, reckoning earth as one. The Toltec, says Sahagun, were the first to count the days of the year, the nights, and the hours, and to calculate the movements of the heavens by the movements of the stars; they affirmed that Ometecutli and Omeciuatl rule over the twelve heavens and the earth, and are procreators of all life below. There is some ground for believing that with this there was associated a belief in twelve corresponding under-worlds, for Seler[30] plausibly argues that the five-and-twenty[Pg 54] divine pairs of Codex Vaticanus B represent twelve pairs of rulers of hours of the day, twelve of hours of the night, and one intermediate. However, the arrangement which Seler finds predominating is that of thirteen Lords of the Day and nine Lords of the Night—implying a commingling of the two systems—and this scheme (the day-hour lords following the Aubin Tonalamatl and the Codex Borbonicus, as Seler interprets them) he reconstructs dial-fashion, as follows:

But the gods are patrons not only of the celestial worlds and of the underworlds, hours of the day and of the night; they are also rulers and tutelaries of the quarters of earth and heaven, and of the numerous divisions and periods of time involved in the complicated Mexican calendar. The influences of the cosmos were conceived to vary not merely with the seasonal or solar year of 365 days, but also with the[Pg 55] Tonalamatl (a calendric period of 13 x 20, or 260, days); again with a 584-day period of the phases of Venus; and finally with the cycles formed by measuring these periods into one another. Here, it is evident, we are in the presence not only of a scheme capable of utilizing an extensive pantheon, but of one having divinatory possibilities second to no astrology.

As such it was used by the Mexican priests, and various codices, or pinturas, preserved from the general destruction of Aztec manuscripts are nothing but calendric charts to calculate days for feasts and days auspicious or inauspicious for enterprise. In one of these, the Codex Ferjérváry-Mayer, the first sheet is devoted to a figure in the general form of a cross pattée combined with an X, or St. Andrew's cross. This figure, as explained by Seler,[31] affords a graphic illustration of Aztec ideas. It represents the five regions of the world and their deities, the good and bad days of the Tonalamatl, the nine Lords of the Night, and the four trees (in form like tau-crosses) which rise into the quarters of heaven, perhaps as its support. In the Middle Place, the pou sto, is the red image of Xiuhtecutli, the Fire-Deity—"the Mother, the Father of the Gods, who dwells in the navel of the Earth"—armed with spears and spear-thrower, while from the divinity's body four streams of blood flow to the four cardinal points, terminating in symbols appropriate to these points—East, a yellow hand typifying the sun's ray; North, the stump of a leg, symbol of Tezcatlipoca as Mictlantecutli, lord of the underworld; West, where the sun dies, the vertebrae and ribs of a skeleton; South, Tezcatlipoca as lord of the air, with featherdown in his head-gear. The arms of the St. Andrew's cross terminate in birds—quetzal, macaw, eagle, parrot—bearing shields upon which are depicted the four day-signs after which the years are named (because, in sequence, they fall on the first day of the year), each year being brought into relation with a correspondingly symbolized world-quarter; within each arm of the cross, below the day-sign, is a sign denoting plenty or[Pg 56] famine. But the main part of the design, about the centre, is occupied with symbols of the quarters of the heavens. In each section is a T-shaped tree, surmounted by a bird, with tutelary deities on either side of the trunk. Above, framed in red, the tree rises from an image of the sun, set on a temple, while a quetzal bird surmounts it; the gods on either side are (left) Itztli, the Stone-Knife God, and (right) Tonatiuh, the Sun; the whole symbolizes the tree which rises into the eastern heavens. The trapezoid opposite this, coloured blue, symbol of the west, contains a thorn-tree rising from the body of the dragon of the eclipse (for the heavens descend to darkness in this region) and surmounted by a humming-bird, which, according to Aztec belief, dies with the dry and revives with the rainy season; the attendant deities are Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of flowing water, and the earth goddess Tlazolteotl, deity of dirt and of sin. To the right, framed in yellow, a thorny tree rises from a dish containing emblems of expiation, while an eagle surmounts it; the attendants are Tlaloc, the rain-god, and Tepeyollotl, the Heart of the Mountains, Voice of the Jaguar—all a token of the northern heavens. Opposite this is a green trapezoid containing a parrot-surmounted tree rising from the jaws of the Earth, and having, on one side, Cinteotl, the maize-god, and on the other, Mictlantecutli, the divinity of death. The nine deities, he of the centre and the four pairs, form the group of los Señores de la Noche ("the Lords of Night"); while the whole figure symbolizes the orientation of the world-powers in space and time—years and Tonalamatls, earth-realms and sky-realms.

First page of the Codex Ferjérváry-Mayer, representing the five regions of the world and their tutelary deities. Seler's interpretation of this figure is given, in brief, on pages 55-56 of this book.

The recurrence of cross-forms in this and similar pictures is striking: the Greek cross, the tau-cross, St. Andrew's cross. The Codex Vaticanus B contains a series of symbols of the trees of the quarters approximating the Roman cross in form, suggesting the cross-figured tablets of Palenque. In the analogous series of the Codex Borgia, each tree issues from the recumbent body of an earth divinity or underworld deity,[Pg 57] each surmounted by a heaven-bird; and again all are cruciform. There is also a tree of the Middle Place in the series, rising from the body of the Earth Goddess, who is masked with a death's head and lies upon the spines of a crocodile—"the fish from which Earth was made"—surmounted by the quetzal bird (Pharomacrus mocinno), whose green and flowing tail-plumage is the symbol of fructifying moisture and responding fertility—"already has it changed to quetzal feathers, already all has become green, already the rainy time is here!" About the stem of the tree are the circles of the world-encompassing sea, and on either side of it, springing also from the body of the goddess, are two great ears of maize. The attendant or tutelar deities in this image are Quetzalcoatl ("the green Feather-Snake"), god of the winds, and Macuilxochitl ("the Five Flowers"), the divinity of music and dancing. Another series of figures in this same Codex represent the gods of the quarters as caryatid-like upbearers of the skies—Quetzalcoatl of the east; Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec war-god, of the south; Tlauizcalpantecutli, Venus as Evening Star, of the west; Mictlantecutli, the death-god, of the north. All these, however, are only a few of the many examples of the multifarious cosmic and calendric arrangements of the gods of the Aztec pantheon.

On the cosmic and astral side the regnant powers of the Aztec pantheon are the Gaping Jaws of Earth; the Sea as a circumambient Great Serpent; and the Death's-Head God of the Underworld; while above are the Sun wearing a collar of life-giving rays; the Moon represented as marked by a rabbit (for in Mexican myth the Moon shone as brightly as the Sun till the latter darkened his rival by casting a rabbit upon his face); and finally the Great Star, "Lord in the House of Dawn," the planet Venus, characteristically shown with a[Pg 58] body streaked red and white, now Morning Star, now Evening Star. The Sun and Venus are far more important than the Moon, for the reason that their periods (365 and 584 days respectively), along with the Tonalamatl (260 days), form the foundation for calendric computations. The regents of the quarters of space and of the divisions of time are ranged in numerous and complex groups under these deities of the cosmos.

But the divinities who are thus important cosmically are not in like measure important politically, nor indeed mythologically, since the great gods of the Aztec, like those of other consciously political peoples, were those that presided over the activities of statecraft—war and agriculture and political destiny. In the Aztec capital the central teocalli was the shrine of Huitzilopochtli, the war-god and national deity of the ruling tribe. The teocalli above the market-place, which Bernal Diaz describes, was devoted to Coatlicue, the mother of the war-god, to Tezcatlipoca, the omnipotent divinity of all the Nahua tribes, and, in a second shrine, to Tlaloc, the rain-god, whose cult, according to tradition, was older than the coming of the first Nahua. In a third temple, built in circular rather than pyramidal form, was the shrine of what was perhaps the most ancient deity of all, Quetzalcoatl ("the Feather-Snake"), lord of wind and weather. These—Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Tlaloc—are the gods that are supreme in picturesque emphasis in the Aztec pantheon.

The great teocalli of Huitzilopochtli stood in the centre of Tenochtitlan and was dedicated in the year 1486 by Ahuitzotl, the emperor preceding the last Montezuma, with the sacrifice of huge numbers of captive warriors—sixty to eighty thousand, if we are to believe the chroniclers. On the platform top of the pyramidal structure, bearing the fane of the war-god[Pg 59] and also (as in the case of the temple in the market place) a shrine of Tlaloc, was space, tradition says, for a thousand warriors, and it was here, in 1520, that Cortez and his companions waged their most picturesque battle, fighting their way up the temple stairs, clearing the summit of some four hundred Aztec warriors, burning the fanes, and hurling the images of the gods to the pavements below. After the Conquest the temple was razed, and the Cathedral which still adorns the City of Mexico was erected on or near a site which had probably seen more human blood shed for superstition than has any other in the world.

The name of the war-god, Huitzilopochtli (or Uitzilopochtli), is curiously innocent in suggestion—"Humming-Bird of the South" (literally, "Humming-Bird-Left-Side," for in naming the directions the Nahua called the south the "left" of the sun). Humming-bird feathers on his left leg formed part of the insignia of the divinity; the fire-snake, Xiuhcoatl, was another attribute, and the spear-thrower which he carried was serpentine in form; among his weapons were arrows tipped with balls of featherdown; and it was to his glory that gladiatorial sacrifices were held in which captive warriors, chained to the sacrificial rock, were armed with down-tipped weapons and forced to fight to the death with Aztec champions. One of the most romantic of native tales recounts the capture, by wile, of the Tlascalan chieftain, Tlahuicol. Such was his renown that Montezuma offered him citizenship, rather than the usual death by sacrifice, and even sent him at the head of a military expedition in which the Tlascalan won notable victories. But the chieftain refused all proffers of grace, claiming the right to die a warrior's death on the sacrificial stone, and at last, after three years of captivity, Montezuma conceded to him the privilege sought—the gladiatorial sacrifice. The Tlascalan is said to have slain eight Aztec warriors and to have wounded twenty before he finally succumbed. It may be remarked in passing that the Tlascalan deity, Camaxtli,[Pg 60] the Tarascan Curicaveri, the Chichimec Mixcoatl, and the tribal god of the Tepanec and Otomi, Otontecutli or Xocotl, were similar to, if not identical with, Huitzilopochtli.

The myth of the birth of Huitzilopochtli, which Sahagun relates, throws light upon the character of the divinity. His mother, Coatlicue ("She of the Serpent-Woven Skirt"), dwelling on Coatepec ("Serpent Mountain"), had a family consisting of a daughter, Coyolxauhqui ("She whose Face is Painted with Bells"), and of many sons, known collectively as the Centzonuitznaua ("the Four Hundred Southerners"). One day, while doing penance upon the mountain, a ball of feathers fell upon her, and having placed this in her bosom, it was observed, shortly afterward, that she was pregnant. Her sons, the Centzonuitznaua, urged by Coyolxauhqui, planned to slay their mother to wipe out the disgrace which they conceived to have befallen them; but though Coatlicue was frightened, the unborn child commanded her to have no fear. One of the Four Hundred, turning traitor, communicated to the still unborn Huitzilopochtli the approach of the hostile brothers, and at the moment of their arrival the god was born in full panoply, carrying a blue shield and dart, his limbs painted blue, his head adorned with plumes, and his left leg decked with humming-bird feathers. Commanding his servant to light a torch, in shape a serpent, with this Xiuhcoatl he slew Coyolxauhqui, and destroying her body, he placed her head upon the summit of Coatepec. Then taking up his arms, he pursued and slew the Centzonuitznaua, a very few of whom succeeded in escaping to Uitztlampa ("the Place of Thorns"), the South.

1. Colossal stone head representing Coyolxauhqui, the Moon goddess, sister of Huitzilopochtli (see page 60). The head is not a fragment, but bears figures upon its base, and doubtless represents Coyolxauhqui as slain by the Fire Snake, Xiuhcoatl, hurled by Huitzilopochtli, and afterwards beheaded by him. The original is in the Museo Nacional, Mexico.

2. Statue of the god of feasting, Xochipilli, "Lord of Flowers" (see page 77). The crest is missing. The original is in the British Museum.

3. The Fire Snake, Xiuhcoatl, as represented in stone. The Fire Snake is associated with Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, and the fire god, Xiuhtecutli; and stands, perhaps, in a kind of opposition to the "Green Feather Snake," Quetzalcoatl, the latter signifying rain and vegetation, the former drought and want (cf. the hymn to Xipe Totec, page 77). The original is in the British Museum.

The myth seemingly identifies Huitzilopochtli as a god of the southern sun. The hostile sister is the moon; the brothers are the stars driven from the heavens by the rising sun, whose blue shield is surely the blue buckler of the daylit sky; and probably the balls of featherdown tipping his arrows are cloud-symbols. Sahagun describes a sacramental rite in which[Pg 61] an image of the god's body, made of grain, was eaten by a group of youths who were for a year the servitors of the deity, with duties so onerous that the young men sometimes fled the country, preferring death at the hands of their enemies—a statement which leads to the suspicion that here was some ordeal connected with chivalric advancement. Certainly Huitzilopochtli was a god of warriors, and it is probable that those devoted to him sought the warrior's death, which meant ascent into the skies rather than that descent into murky Mictlan which was the lot of the ordinary. In this connexion the name of the divinity and the humming-bird feather insignia acquire significance; for again it is Sahagun who relates that the souls of ascending warriors, after four years, are "metamorphosed into various kinds of birds of rich plumage and brilliant colour which go about drawing the sweet from the flowers of the sky, as do the humming-birds upon earth."

Tezcatlipoca, or "Smoking Mirror," was so called because of his most conspicuous emblem, a mirror from which a spiral of smoke is sometimes represented as ascending, and in which the god was supposed to see all that takes place on earth, in heaven, and in hell. Frequently the mirror is shown as replacing one of his feet (loss or abnormality of one foot is common in the Mexican pantheon), explained mythically as severed when the doors of the underworld closed prematurely upon it—for Tezcatlipoca in one of his many functions is deity of the setting sun. In other aspects he is a moon-god, the moon of the evening skies; again, a divinity of the night; or sometimes, with blindfold eyes, a god of the underworld and of the dead; and in the calendric charts he is represented as regent of the northern heavens, although sometimes (perhaps identified with Huitzilopochtli) he is ruler of the south. Probably he is at bottom the incarnation of the changing[Pg 62] heavens, symbolized by his mirror, now fiery, now murky, reflecting the encompassed universe. He is the red Tezcatlipoca and the black—the heaven of day and the heaven of night. He is the Warrior of the North and the Warrior of the South, symbolizing the course of the yearly sun, which, in the latitude of Mexico, culminates with the alternating seasons to the north and to the south of the zenith. His emblems include the Fire-Snake, symbol of heavenly fires; and again he is Iztli-Tezcatlipoca, the Stone-Knife God of the underworld, of blood-letting penance, and of human sacrifice. Sahagun says of him that he raised wars, enmities, and discords wherever he went; nevertheless, he was the ruler of the world, and from him proceeded all prosperities and enrichments. Frequently he is represented as a jaguar, which to the Mexicans was the dragon of the eclipse, a were-beast, and the patron of magicians; cross-roads were marked by seats for Tezcatlipoca, the god who traversed all ways; and he was called the Wizard and the Transformer. In himself he was invisible and impalpable, penetrating all things; or, if he appeared to men, it was as a flitting shadow; yet he could assume multifarious monstrous forms to tempt and try men, striking them with disease and death. As Yoalli Ehecatl, the Night Wind, he wandered about in search of evil-doers, and sinners summoned him in their confessions. On the other hand, he was "the Youth" (Telpochtli), and as Omacatl ("Two-Reed") he was lord of banquets and festivities.

It is evident that Tezcatlipoca is the Great Transformer, identified with the heavens and all its breaths, twofold in all things: day, night; life, death; good, evil. Certainly he seems to have been held in more awe than any other Mexican god and well merits the supremacy (not political, but religious) which tradition assigns to him. The most notable of the prayers which Sahagun transcribes are filled with poetic veneration for this deity, and had we only these invocations as record—not also tales of the fearful human sacrifices—we[Pg 63] should assuredly assign to their Aztec composers a pure and noble religious sentiment. Perhaps theirs was so, for men's actions everywhere seem worse than the creeds which impel them. Thus, in time of plague the priests prayed:

Throughout the prayers there are characterizations of the god, not a few of them echoing a kind of world-weary melancholy that seems so typical of Aztec supplications. When the new king is crowned, the priest prays: "Perchance, deeming himself worthy of his high employ, he will think to perpetuate himself long therein. Will not this be for him a dream of sorrow? Will he find in this dignity received at thy hands an occasion of pride and presumption, till it hap that he despise the world, assuming to himself a sumptuous show? Thy Majesty knoweth well whereto he must come within a few brief days—for we men are but thy spectacle, thy theatre, serving for thy laughter and diversion." And when the king is dead: "Thou hast given him to taste in this world a few of thy sweets and suavities, making them to pass before his[Pg 64] eyes like the will-o'-the-wisp, which vanisheth in an instant; such is the dignity of the post wherein thou didst place him, and in which he had a few days in thy service, prostrate, in tears, breathing his devoted prayers unto thy Majesty." Again: "Thou art invisible and impalpable, and we believe that thy gaze doth penetrate the stones and into the hearts of the trees, seeing clearly all that is concealed therein. So dost thou see and comprehend what is in our hearts and in our thoughts; before thee our souls are as a waft of smoke or as a vapour that riseth from the earth."

Perhaps the most striking rite in the Aztec year was the springtime sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca—near Easter, Sahagun says. In the previous year a youth had been selected from a group of captives trained for the purpose, physically without blemish and having all accomplishments possible. He was trained to sing and to play the flute, to carry flowers and to smoke with elegance; he was dressed in rich apparel and was constantly accompanied by eight pages. The king himself provided for his habiliment, since "he held him already to be a god." For nearly a year this youth was entertained and feasted, honoured by the nobility and venerated by the populace as the living embodiment of Tezcatlipoca. Twenty days before the festival his livery was changed, and his long hair was dressed like that of an Aztec chieftain. Four maidens, delicately reared, were assigned to him as wives, called by the names of four goddesses—Xochiquetzal ("Flowering Quetzal-Plume"), Xilonen ("Young Maize"), Atlatonan (a goddess of the coast), and Uixtociuatl (goddess of the salt water). Five days previous to the sacrifice a series of feasts and dances was begun, continued during each of the following four days in separate quarters of the city. Then came the final day; the youth was taken beyond the city; his goddess-wives abandoned him; and he was brought to a little road-side temple for the consummation of the rite. He ascended its four stages, breaking a flute at each stage, till at the top he was seized,[Pg 65] and the priest opening his breast with a single blow, presented his heart to the sun. Immediately another youth was chosen for the following year, for the Tezcatlipoca must never die. It was said, remarks Sahagun, that this youth's fate signified that those who possess wealth and march amid pleasures during life will end their career in grief and poverty; while Torquemada more grimly comments that "the soul of the victim went down to the company of his false gods, in hell." For the student of to-day, however, the rite is but another significant symbol of the god who dies and is born again.

Figure from the Codex Borgia representing the red and the black Tezcatlipoca facing one another across a tlachtli court upon which is shown a sacrificial victim painted with the red and white stripes of the Morning and Evening Star (Venus). The red Tezcatlipoca symbolizes day, the black Tezcatlipoca, night; the ball court is a symbol of the universe; the Morning and Evening Star might very naturally be looked upon as a sacrifice to the heaven god.

In myth Tezcatlipoca plays the leading rôle as adversary of Quetzalcoatl, the ruler and god of the Toltec city of Tollan. In Sahagun's version of the story, three magicians, Huitzilopochtli, Titlacauan ("We are his Slaves," an epithet of Tezcatlipoca), and Tlacauepan, the younger brother of the others, undertook by magic and wile to drive Quetzalcoatl from the country and to overthrow the Toltec power. The three deities are obviously tribal gods of Nahuatlan nations, and Tezcatlipoca, who plays the chief part in the legends, is clearly the god of first importance at this early period, possibly the principal deity of all the Nahua; he was also the foremost divinity of Tezcuco, which, almost to the eve of the Conquest, was the leading partner in the Aztec confederacy. As the tale goes, Quetzalcoatl was ailing; Tezcatlipoca appeared in the guise of an old man, a physician, and administered to the ailing god, not medicine, but a liquor which intoxicated him. Texcatlipoca then assumed the form of a nude Indian of a strange tribe, a seller of green peppers, and walked before the palace of Uemac, temporal chief of the Toltec. Here he was seen by the chief's daughter, who fell ill of love for him. Uemac ordered the stranger brought before him and demanded of Toueyo (as the stranger called himself) why he was not clothed as other men. "It is not the custom of my country," Toueyo answered. "You have inspired my daughter with caprice; you must cure her," said Uemac. "That[Pg 66] is impossible; kill me; I would die, for I do not deserve such words, seeking as I am only to earn an honest living." "Nevertheless, you shall cure her," replied the chief, "it is necessary; have no fear." So he caused the marriage of his daughter with the stranger, who thus became a chieftain among the Toltec. Winning a victory for his new countrymen, he announced a feast in Tollan; and when the multitudes were assembled, he caused them to dance to his singing until they were as men intoxicated or demented; they danced into a ravine and were changed into rocks, they fell from a bridge and became stones in the waters below. Again, in company with Tlacauepan, he appeared in the market-place of Tollan and caused the infant Huitzilopochtli to dance upon his hand. The people, crowding near, crushed several of their number dead; enraged, they slew the performers and, on the advice of Tlacauepan, fastened ropes to their bodies to drag them out; but all who touched the cords fell dead. By this and other magical devices great numbers of the Toltec were slain, and their dominion was brought to an end.

The most famous and picturesque of New World mythic figures is that of Quetzalcoatl, although primarily his renown is due less to the undoubted importance of his cult than to his association with the coming and the beliefs of the white men. According to native tradition, Quetzalcoatl had been the wise and good ruler of Tollan in the Golden Age of Anahuac, lawgiver, teacher of the arts, and founder of a purified religion. Driven from his kingdom by the machinations of evil magicians, he departed over the eastern sea for Tlapallan, the land of plenty, promising to return and reinstitute his kindly creed on some future anniversary of the day of his departure. He was described as an old man, bearded, and white, clad in a long robe; as with other celestial gods, crosses were[Pg 67] associated with his representations and shrines. When Cortez landed, the Mexicans were expecting the return of Quetzalcoatl; and, according to Sahagun, the very outlooks who first beheld the ships of the Spaniards had been posted to watch for the coming god. The white men (perhaps the image was aided by their shining armour, their robed priests, their crosses) were inevitably assumed to be the deity, and among the gifts sent to them by Montezuma were the turquoise mask, feather mantle, and other apparel appropriate to the god. It is certain that the belief materially aided the Spaniards in the early stages of their advance, and it is small wonder that the myth which was so helpful to their ambitions should have appealed to their imaginations. The missionary priests, gaining some idea of native traditions and finding among them ideas, emblems, and rites analogous to those of Christendom (the deluge, the cross, baptism, sacraments, confession), not unnaturally saw in the figure of the robed and bearded reformer of religion a Christian teacher, and they were not slow to identify him with St. Thomas, the Apostle. When an almost identical story was found throughout Central America, the Andean region, and, indeed, wide-spread in South America, the same explanation was adopted, and the wanderings of the Saint became vast beyond the dreams of Marco Polo or any other vaunted traveller, while memorials of his miracles are still displayed in regions as remote from Mexico as the basin of La Plata. Naturally, too, the interest of the subject has not waned with time, for whether we view the Quetzalcoatl myth in relation to its association with European ideas or with respect to its aboriginal analogues in the two Americas, it presents a variety of interest scarcely equalled by any other tale of the New World.

The name of the god is formed of quetzal, designating the long, green tail-plumes of Pharomacrus mocinno, and coatl ("serpent"); it means, therefore, "the Green-Feather Snake," and immediately puts Quetzalcoatl into the group of celestial[Pg 68] powers of which the plumed serpent is a symbol, among the Hopi and Zuñi to the north as well as among Andean peoples far to the south. Sahagun says that Quetzalcoatl is a wind-god, who "sweeps the roads for the rain-gods, that they may rain." Quetzal-plumes were a symbol of greening vegetation, and it is altogether probable that the Plumed Serpent-God was originally a deity of rain-clouds, the sky-serpent embodiment of the rainbow or the lightning. The turquoise snake-mask or bird-mask, characteristic of the god, is surely an emblem of the skies, and like other sky-gods he carries a serpent-shaped spear-thrower. The beard (which other Mexican deities sometimes wear) is perhaps a symbol of descending rain, perhaps (as on some Navaho figures) of pollen, or fertilization. Curiously enough, Quetzalcoatl is not commonly shown as the white god which the tradition would lead us to expect, but typically with a dark-hued body; it may be that the dark hue and the robe of legend are both emblems of rain-clouds.

The tradition of his whiteness may come from his stellar associations, for though he is sometimes shown with emblems of moon or sun, he is more particularly identified with the morning star. According to the Annals of Quauhtitlan, Quetzalcoatl, when driven from Tollan, immolated himself on the shores of the eastern sea, and from his ashes rose birds with shining feathers (symbols of warrior souls mounting to the sun), while his heart became the Morning Star, wandering for eight days in the underworld before it ascended in splendour. In numerous legends Quetzalcoatl is associated with Tezcatlipoca, commonly as an antagonist; and if we may believe one tale, recounted by Mendieta, Tezcatlipoca, defeating Quetzalcoatl in ball-play (a game directly symbolic of the movements of the heavenly orbs), cast him out of the land into the east, where he encountered the sun and was burned. This story (clearly a variant of the tale of the banishment of Quetzalcoatl told in the Annals of Quauhtitlan and by Sahagun) is[Pg 69] interpreted by Seler as a myth of the morning moon, driven back by night (the dark Tezcatlipoca) to be consumed by the rising sun. A reverse story represents Tezcatlipoca, the sun, as stricken down by the club of Quetzalcoatl, transformed into a jaguar, the man-devouring demon of night, while Quetzalcoatl becomes sun in his place. Normally Quetzalcoatl is a god of the eastern heavens, and sometimes he is pictured as the caryatid or upbearer of the sky of that quarter.

Perhaps it is in this character that he was conceived as a lord of life, a meaning naturally intensified by his association with the rejuvenating rains and with the wind, which is the breath of life. A woman who had become pregnant was praised by the relatives of her husband for her faithfulness in religious devotions. "It is for these," they said, "that our lord Quetzalcoatl, author and creator, has vouchsafed this grace—even as it was decreed in the sky by that one who is man and woman under the names Ometecutli and Omeciuatl." Moreover the new-born was addressed: "Little son and lord, person of high value, of great price and esteem! O precious stone, emerald, topaz, rare plume, fruit of lofty generation! be welcome among us! Thou hast been formed in the highest places, above the ninth heaven, where the two supreme gods dwell. The Divine Majesty hath cast thee in his mould, as one casts a golden bead; thou hast been pierced, like a rich stone artistically wrought, by thy father and mother, the great god and the great goddess, assisted by their son, Quetzalcoatl." The deity also figures as a world creator, as in the Sahagun manuscript in the Academia de la Historia, from which Seler translates:

"And thus said our fathers, our grandfathers,
They said that he made, created, and formed us
Whose creatures we are, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl;
And he made the heavens, the sun, the earth."

It is in another character, however, that Quetzalcoatl is romantically of most interest. His cult was less sanguinary[Pg 70] than that of most Aztec divinities, though assuredly not antagonistic to human sacrifice, as some traditions say. He was a penance-inflicting god, perhaps particularly a deity of priests and their lore; yet he was also associated with education and the rearing of the young. He is named as the patron of the arts, the teacher of metallurgy and of letters, and in tradition he is the god of the cultured people of yore from whom the Aztec derived their civilization. A part of the story, as narrated by Sahagun, has been told: how Quetzalcoatl was the aged and wise priest-king of Tollan, driven thence by the magic and guile of Tezcatlipoca and his companions. The tale goes on to tell how Quetzalcoatl, chagrined and ailing, resolved to depart from his kingdom for his ancient home, Tlapallan. He burned his houses built of shell and silver, buried his treasure, changed the cacao-trees into mesquite, and set forth, preceded by servants in the form of birds of rich plumage. Coming to Quauhtitlan, he demanded a mirror and gazing into it, he said, "I am old," wherefore he named the city "the old Quauhtitlan." Seating himself at another place and gazing back upon Tollan, as he wept, his tears pierced the rock, which also bore thenceforth the marks where his hands had rested. He encountered certain magicians, who demanded of him, before they would let him pass, the arts of refining silver, of working in wood, stone, and feathers, and of painting; and as he crossed the sierra, all his companions, who were dwarfs and hump-backs, died of the cold. Many other localities received memorials of his passage: at one place he played a game of ball, at another shot arrows into a tree so that they formed a cross, at another caused underworld houses to be built—all clearly cosmic symbols—and finally coming to the sea, he departed for Tlapallan on his serpent-raft. In Ixtlilxochitl's history, Quetzalcoatl first appeared in the third period of the world, taught the arts, instituted the worship of the cross—"tree of nourishment and of life"—and ended the period with his departure. Tradition names the last king of the Toltec "Topiltzin[Pg 71] Quetzalcoatl," and it may be assumed as not improbable that stories of the disasters attending the fall of Tollan, under a king bearing the name of the ancient divinity, represent an historical element, confused with nature elements, in the myths of Quetzalcoatl,—such an assumption accounting for the heroic glamour surrounding the god, who, like King Arthur, is half kingly mortal, half divinity. In Cholula, whither many of the Toltec were said to have fled with the fall of their empire, was the loftiest pyramid in Mexico, dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and even in the eyes of Aztec conquerors a seat of venerable sanctities—the emblem of the culture whose conquest had conquered them.

Figures from the Codex Borgia, representing cosmic tutelaries.

The upper figure represents the tree of the Middle Place rising from the body of the Earth Goddess, recumbent upon the spines of the crocodile from which Earth was made. The tree is encircled by the world sea and is surmounted by the Quetzal, whose plumage typifies vegetation; two ears of maize spring up at its roots. The attendant deities are Quetzalcoatl and Macuilxochitl, both symbols of fertility. In the figure they are apparently nourishing themselves on the up-flowing blood, or vital saps, of the body of Earth. The figure should be compared with the Palenque Cross and Foliate Cross tablets (Plate XVIII a, b). See, also, pages 57, 68, 77.

The lower figure represents one of the four caryatid-like supporters of the heavens, Huitzilopochtli, as the Atlas of the southern quarter. See page 57.

The rain-god, Tlaloc, was less important in myth than in cult. He was a deity of great antiquity, and a mountain, east of Tezcuco, bearing his name, was said to have had from remote times a statue of the god, carved in white lava. His especial abode, Tlalocan, supposed to be upon the crests of hills, was rich in all foods and was the home of the maize-goddesses; and there, with his dwarf (or child) servants, Tlaloc possesses four jars from which he pours water down upon the earth. One water is good and causes maize and other fruits to flourish; a second brings cobwebs and blight; a third congeals into frost; a fourth is followed by dearth of fruit. These are the waters of the four quarters, and only that of the east is good. When the dwarfs smash their jars, there is thunder; and pieces cast below are thunderbolts. The number of the Tlaloque was regarded as great, so that, indeed, every mountain had its Tlaloc.

Like Quetzalcoatl, the god was shown with a serpent-mask, except that Tlaloc's was formed, not of one, but of two serpents; and from the conventionalization of the serpentine coils of this mask came the customary representation of the[Pg 72] god's eyes as surrounded by wide, blue circles, and of his lip as formed by a convoluted band from which are fanglike dependencies. The double-headed serpent—a symbol no less wide-spread than the plumed serpent—is frequently his attribute. His association with mountains brought him also into connexion with volcanoes and fire, and it was he who was said to have presided over the Rain-Sun, one of the cosmogonic epochs, during which there rained, not water, but fire and red-hot stones.

The worship of Tlaloc was among the most ghastly in Mexico. Perhaps for the purpose of keeping up the number of his rain-dwarfs, children were constantly sacrificed to him. If we may believe Sahagun, at the feast of the Tlaloque "they sought out a great number of babes at the breast, which they purchased of their mothers. They chose by preference those who had two crowns in their hair and who had been born under a good sign. They pretended that these would form a more agreeable sacrifice to the gods, to the end that they might obtain rain at the opportune time.... They killed a great number of babes each year; and after they had put them to death, they cooked and ate them.... If the children wept and shed tears abundantly, those who beheld it rejoiced and said that this was a sign of rain very near." No wonder the brave friar turns from his narrative to cry out against such horror. Yet, he says, "the cause of this cruel blindness, of which the poor children were victims, should not be directly imputed to the natural inspirations of their parents, who, indeed, shed abundant tears and delivered themselves to the practice with dolour of soul; one should rather see therein the hateful and barbarous hand of Satan, our eternal enemy, employing all his malign ruses to urge on to this fatal act." Unfortunately, it is to be suspected that the rite was very far-spread, for in the myths of many of the wild Mexican tribes and even in those of the Pueblo tribes north of Mexico the story of the sacrifice of children to the water-gods constantly[Pg 73] recurs—though, perhaps, this was but the far-cast rumour of the terrible superstition of the south.

The goddess of flowing waters, of springs and rivulets, Chalchiuhtlicue, was regarded as sister of the Tlaloque and was frequently honoured in rites in connexion with them. Like Tlaloc, she played no minor rôle in the calendric division of powers, and she also ruled over one of the "Suns" of the cosmogonic period. Serpents and maize were associated with her, and like the similar deities she had both her beneficent and malevolent moods, being not merely a cleanser, but also a cause of shipwreck and watery deaths. At the bathing of the new-born she was addressed: "Merciful Lady Chalchiuhtlicue, thy servant here present is come into this world, sent by our father and mother, Ometecutli and Omeciuatl, who reside at the ninth heaven. We know not what gifts he bringeth; we know not what hath been assigned to him from before the beginning of the world, nor with what lot he cometh enveloped. We know not if this lot be good or bad, or to what end he will be followed by ill fortune. We know not what faults or defects he may inherit from his father and mother. Behold him between thy hands! Wash him and deliver him from impurities as thou knowest should be, for he is confided to thy power. Cleanse him of the contaminations he hath received from his parents; let the water take away the soil and the stain, and let him be freed from all taint. May it please thee, O goddess, that his heart and his life be purified, that he may dwell in this world in peace and wisdom. May this water take away all ills, for which this babe is put into thy hands, thou who art mother and sister of the gods, and who alone art worthy to possess it and to give it, to wash from him the evils which he beareth from before the beginning of the world. Deign to do this that we ask, now that the child is in thy presence." It is not difficult to see how this rite should have suggested to the first missionaries their own Christian sacrament of baptism.

[Pg 74]

Universally Earth is the mythic Mother of Gods and Men, and Giver of Life; nor does the Mexican pantheon offer an exception to the rule, although its embodiments of the Earth Mother possess associations which give a character of their own. Like similar goddesses, the Mexican Earth Mothers are prophetic and divinatory, and in various forms they appear in the calendric omen-books. They are goddesses of medicine, too, probably owing this function primarily to their association with the sweat-bath, which, in its primitive form of earth-lodge and heated stones, is the fundamental instrument of American Indian therapeutics. It is here, possibly, that these goddesses get their connexion with the fire-gods, of whom they are not infrequently consorts, and with whom they share the butterfly insignia—a symbol of fertility, for the fire-god, at earth's centre, was believed to generate the warmth of life. Serpents also are signs of the earth goddesses, not the plumed serpents of the skies, but underworld powers, likewise associated with generation in Aztec symbolism. A third animal connected with generation, and hence with these deities, is the deer—the white, dead Deer of the East denoted plenty; the stricken, brown Deer of the North was a symbol of drought, and related to the fire-gods. The eagle, also, is sometimes found associated with the goddesses by a process of indirection, for the eagle is primarily the heavenly warrior, Tonatiuh, the Sun. Frequently, however, the earth goddess is a war-goddess; Coatlicue, mother of the war-god Huitzilopochtli, is an earth deity, wearing the serpent skirt; and it was a wide-spread belief among the Mexicans that the Earth was the first victim offered on the sacrificial stone to the Sun—the first, therefore, to die a warrior's death. When a victim was dedicated for sacrifice, therefore, his captor adorned himself in eagle's down in honour, at once, of the Sun and of the goddess who had been the primal offering.

[Pg 75]

Among the earth goddesses the most famous was Ciuacoatl ("Snake Woman"), whose voice, roaring through the night, betokened war. She was also called Tonantzin ("Our Mother") and, Sahagun says, "these two circumstances give her a resemblance to our mother Eve who was duped by the Serpent." Other names for the same divinity were Ilamatecutli ("the Old Goddess"), sometimes represented as the Earth Toad, Tlatecutli, swallowing a stone knife; Itzpapalotl ("Obsidian Butterfly"), occasionally shown as a deer; Temazcalteci ("Grandmother of the Sweat-Bath"); and Teteoinnan, the Mother of the Gods, who, like several other of the earth goddesses, was also a lunar deity. In her honour a harvest-home was celebrated in which her Huastec priests (for she probably hailed from the eastern coast) bore phallic emblems.

Closely connected with the earth goddesses are their children, the vegetation-deities. Of these the maize-spirits are the most important, maize being the great cereal of the highland region, and, indeed, so much the "corn" of primitive America that the latter word has come to mean maize in the English-speaking parts of the New World. Cinteotl was the maize-god, and Chicomecoatl ("Seven Snakes"), also known as Xilonen, was his female counterpart, their symbol being the young maize-ear. Because of the use of maize as the staff of life, a crown filled with this grain was the symbol of Tonacatecutli ("Lord of our Flesh"), creator-god and food-giver. Pedro de Rios says[38] of him that he was "the first Lord that the world was said to have had, and who, as it pleased him, blew and divided the waters from the heaven and from the earth, which before him were all intermingled; and he it is who disposed them as they now are, and so they called him 'Lord of our Bodies' and 'Lord of the Overflow'; and he gave them all things, and therefore he alone was pictured with the royal crown. He was further called 'Seven Flowers' [Chicomexochitl], because they said that he divided the principalities of the world. He had no temple of any kind, nor were[Pg 76] offerings brought to him, because they say he desired them not, as it were to a greater Majesty." This god was also identified with the Milky Way.

Of all Mexican vegetation-deities, however, at once the most important and the most horrible was Xipe Totec ("Our Lord the Flayed"), represented as clad in a human skin, stripped from the body of a sacrificed captive. He was the god of the renewal of vegetation—the fresh skin which Earth receives with the recurrent green—and his great festival, the Feast of the Man-Flaying, was held in the spring when the fresh verdure was appearing. At this time, men, women, and children captives were sacrificed, their bodies eaten, and the skins flayed from them to be worn by personators of the god. That there was a kind of sacrament in this rite is evident from Sahagun's statement that the captor did not partake of the flesh of his own captive, regarding it as part of his own body. Again, youths clad in skins flayed from sacrificed warriors were called by the god's own name, and they waged mimic warfare with bands pitted against them; if a captive was made, a mock sacrifice was enacted. The famous sacrificio gladiatorio was also celebrated in the god's honour, the victim, with weak weapons, being pitted against strong warriors until he succumbed. The magic properties of the skins torn from victims' bodies is shown by the fact that persons suffering from diseases of the skin and eye wore these trophies for their healing, the period being twenty days. Xipe Totec was clad in a green garment, but yellow was his predominant colour; his ornaments were golden, and he was the patron of gold-workers—a symbolism probably related to the ripening grain, for with all that is horrible about him Xipe Totec is at bottom a simple agricultural deity. At his festival were stately areitos, and songs were chanted, one of which is preserved:[39]

"Thou night-time drinker, why dost thou delay?
[Pg 77]Put on thy disguise—thy golden garment, put it on!

"My Lord, let thine emerald waters come descending!
Now is the old tree changed to green plumage—
The Fire-Snake is transformed into the Quetzal!

"It may be that I am to die, I, the young maize-plant;
Like an emerald is my heart; gold would I see it be;
I shall be happy when first it is ripe—the war-chief born!

"My Lord, when there is abundance in the maize-fields,
I shall look to thy mountains, verily thy worshipper;
I shall be happy when first it is ripe—the war-chief born!"

Stone mask of Xipe Totec. The face is represented as covered by the skin of a sacrificed victim, flaying being a rite with which this god was honored. The reverse of the mask bears an image of the god in relief. The original is in the British Museum.

Less unattractive is the group of deities of flowers and dancing, games and feasting—Xochipilli ("Flower Lord"), Macuilxochitl ("Five Blossoms"), and Ixtlilton ("Little Black-Face"). Xochipilli is in part a divinity of the young maize, probably as pollinating, and is sometimes viewed as a son of Cinteotl. As is natural, he and his brothers are occasionally associated with the pulque-gods, the Centzontotochtin, of whom there were a great number—among them Patecatl, lord and discoverer of the ocpatli (the peyote) from which liquor is made, Texcatzoncatl ("Straw Mirror"), Colhuatzincatl ("the Winged"), and Ometochtli ("Two Rabbit")—deities who were supposed to possess their worshippers and to be the real agents of the drunken man's mischief. The more especial associate of the flower-gods, however, is Xochiquetzal ("Flower Feather"), who is said to have been originally the spouse of Tlaloc, but to have been carried away by Tezcatlipoca and to have been established by him as the goddess of love. Her throne is described as being above the ninth heaven, and there is reason to think that in this rôle she is identical with Tonacaciuatl, the consort of the creator-god, Tonacatecutli.[40] Her home was in Xochitlicacan ("Place of Flowers") in Itzeecayan ("Place of Cool Winds"), or in Tamoanchan, the Paradise of the West—the region whence came the Ciuateteo, the ghostly women who at certain seasons swooped down in eagles' form, striking children with epilepsy and inspiring[Pg 78] men with lust. Xochiquetzal was, indeed, the patroness of the unmarried women who lived with the young bachelor warriors and marched to war with them, and who sometimes, at the goddess's festival, immolated themselves upon her altars. In a more pleasing aspect she was the deity of weaving and spinning and of making all beautiful and artistic fabrics, and she is portrayed in bright and many-coloured raiment, not forgetting the butterfly at her lips, emblem of life and of the seeker after sweets. In a hymn[41] she is named along with her lover, Piltzintecutli ("Lord of Princes"), who is presumed to be the same as Xochipilli:

"Out of the land of water and mist, I come, Xochiquetzal—
Out of the land where the Sun enters his house, out of Tamoanchan.

"Weepeth the pious Piltzintecutli;
He seeketh Xochiquetzal.
Dark it is whither I must go."

Seler suggests that this lamentation is perchance the expression of a Proserpina myth—of the carrying off into the underworld of the bright goddess of flowers and of the quest for her by her disconsolate lover.

Of far darker hue is the goddess whom Sahagun[42] calls "another Venus," Tlazolteotl ("Goddess of Uncleanliness"), the deity in particular of lust and sexual sin. To her priests confession was made of carnal sins and drunkenness, and by them penance was inflicted, including as a feature piercing the tongue with a maguey thorn and the insertion therein of straws and osier twigs. Sahagun remarks that the Indians awaited old age before confessing carnal sins, "a thing easy to comprehend, since, although they had committed their faults during youth, they would not confess before an advanced age in order not to find themselves obliged to cease from disorderly conduct before age came upon them; this, because of their belief that one who fell into a sin already once confessed could receive no absolution. From all of which,"[Pg 79] he continues, "it is natural to reach the conclusion that the Indians of New Spain believed themselves obliged to confess once in their lifetime, and that in lumine naturali, with no knowledge of the things of the faith." One of the titles of Tlazolteotl is "Heart of the Earth," and since she is represented in the same attire as the great mother of the gods, it is presumed that she is a special form of the Earth Mother, Teteoinnan, with emphasis upon her character as deity of fertility. Sometimes she is spoken of as Ixcuiname ("the Four-faced") and is regarded plurally as a group of four sisters who, according to Sahagun, represent four ages of woman's maturity. In the Annals of Quauhtitlan it is related that the Ixcuiname came to Tollan from Huasteca. "And in the place called Where-the-Huaxtec-weep they summoned their captives, whom they had taken in Huaxteca, and explained to them what the business was, telling them that, 'We go now to Tollan, we want to couple the Earth with you, we want to hold a feast with you: for till now no battle offerings have been made with men. We want to make a beginning of it, and shoot you to death with arrows.'" In Aztec paintings of the arrow sacrifice the victim is shown suspended from a ladder-like scaffold, whence the blood from the arrow wounds drips to earth. This blood was the emblem of the fertilizing seed, dropped into the womb of the goddess; and it is at least worthy of remark that the form of the Skidi Pawnee fertility sacrifice, in honour of the Morning Star, was identical, scaffold and all, with that in vogue in Mexico.

Earth, the Great Mother, is a giver of life, but Earth, the cavernous, is Lord of Death. The Mexicans are second to no people in the grimness of their representations of this power. As Tepeyollotl ("Heart of the Mountain"), earth's cavern, it is the spotted jaguar monster which leaps up out of the[Pg 80] west to seize the declining sun, and its roars may be heard in the echoing hills. As Tlaltecutli ("Lord of the Earth") it is the hideous Toad with Gaping Jaws, which must be nourished with the blood of sacrificed men, precisely as the Sun above must be nurtured; for the Mexican idea of warfare seems to have been that it must be waged to keep perpetual the ascending vapours and the descending flow from the hearts of sacrificed victims, that Tonatiuh and Tlaltecutli might gain sustenance in heaven and in earth.[43]

But the grimmest figure is that of Hades himself, Mictlantecutli, the skeleton God of the Dead—also called, says Sahagun, Tzontemoc ("He of the Falling Hair"). Sahagun describes the journey to the abode of this divinity. When a mortal—man, woman, child, lord, or thrall—died of disease, his soul descended to Mictlan, and beside the corpse the last words were spoken:[44] "Our son, thou art finished with the sufferings and fatigues of this life. It hath pleased Our Lord to take thee hence, for thou hast not eternal life in this world: our existence is as a ray of the sun. He hath given thee the grace of knowing us and of associating in our common life. Now the god Mictlantecutli, otherwise called Acolnauacatl or Tzontemoc, as also the goddess Mictecaciuatl, hath made thee to share his abode. We shall all follow thee, for it is our destiny, and the abode is broad enough to receive the whole world. Thou wilt be heard of no longer among us. Behold, thou art gone to the domain of darkness, where there is neither light nor window. Never shalt thou come hither again, nor needst thou concern thyself for thy return, for thine absence is eternal. Thou dost leave thy children poor and orphaned, not knowing what will be their end nor how they will support the fatigues of this life. As for us, we shall not delay to go to join thee there where thou wilt be." Similar words were spoken to the relatives: "Hath this death come because some being wisheth us ill or mocketh us? Nay, it is because Our Lord hath willed that such be his end." Then the body was wrapped,[Pg 81] mummy-form, and a few drops of water were poured upon the head: "Lo, the water of which thou hast made use in this life"; and a vessel of water was presented: "This for thy journey." Next, certain papers were laid before the body in due order: "Lo, with this thou shalt pass the two clashing mountains." "With this thou shalt pass the road where the serpent awaiteth thee." "With this thou shalt pass the place of the green lizard." "Lo, wherewithal thou shalt cross the eight deserts." "And the eight hills." "And behold with what thou canst traverse the place of the winds that bear obsidian knives." Thus the perils of the underworld were to be passed and the soul, arrived before Mictlantecutli, was, after four years, to fare on until he should arrive at Chiconauapan, the "Nine-Fold Stream" of the underworld. Across this he would be borne by the red dog which, sacrificed at his grave, had been his faithful companion; and thence master and hound would enter into the eternal house of the dead, Chiconamictlan, the "Ninth Hell."

Green stone image of Mictlantecutli, the skeleton god of death and of the underworld. The original is in the Stuttgart Museum.

Yet not all who died pursued this journey. To the terrestrial paradise, Tlalocan, the abode of Tlaloc, rich with every kind of fruit and abundant with joys, departed those slain by lightning, the drowned, victims of skin-diseases, and persons who died of dropsical affections—a heterogeneous lot whose company is to be ascribed to the various attributes of the rain-gods. With them should be included victims sacrificed to these deities, who perhaps themselves became rain-makers and servants of the Lords of the Rain. More fortunate still were they who ascended to the mansions of the Sun—those who fell in war, those who perished on the sacrificial altar or were sacrificed by burning, and women who died in child-birth. Those warriors, it was said, whose shields had been pierced could behold the Sun through the holes; to the others Tonatiuh was invisible; but all entered into the sky gardens, whose trees were other than those of this world; and there, after four years, they were transformed into[Pg 82] birds of bright plumage, drawing the honey from the celestial blossoms.

It was in the eastern heavens that the souls of warriors found their paradise. Here they met the Sun as he rose in the morning, striking their bucklers with joyous cries and accompanying him on his journey to the meridian, where they were encountered by the War Women of the western heavens, the Ciuateteo, or Ciuapipiltin, souls of women who had gone to war or had died in childbed. These escorted the Sun down the western sky, bearing him on a gorgeous palanquin, into Tamoanchan ("the House of the Descent").[45] At the portals of the underworld they were met by the Lords of Hell, who conducted the Sun into their abode; for when it ceases to be day here, the day begins in the realm below. Possibly it was from this association with the underworld powers that the Ciuateteo acquired their sinister traits, for they were sometimes identified with the descending stars, the Tzitzimime, which follow the Sun's descent and become embodied as Demons of the Dark.

But the Sun has yet another comrade on his journey. As the soul of the dead Aztec is accompanied and guided into the nether world by his faithful dog, so the Sun has for companion the dog Xolotl. Xolotl is a god who presides over the game of tlachtli, the Mexican ball-game, analogous to tennis, in which a rubber ball was bounced back and forth in a court, not hurled or struck by hand, but by shoulder or thigh. As with other Indian ball-games, this was regarded as symbolic of the sun's course, and Xolotl was said to play the game on a magic court, which could be nothing else than the heavens. He was, moreover, deity of twins and other monstrous forms (for twins were regarded as monstrous), and it was humpbacks and dwarfs that were sacrificed to the Sun on the occasion of an eclipse, when it was deemed that the solar divinity had need of them. A myth narrated by Sahagun possibly explains or reflects this belief. In the beginning of things there[Pg 83] was no sun and no moon; but two of the gods immolated themselves, and from their ashes rose the orbs of night and day, although neither sun nor moon as yet had motion. Then all the gods resolved to sacrifice themselves in order to give life and motion to the heavenly bodies. Xolotl alone refused: "Gods, I will not die," he said; and when the priest of the sacrifice came, he fled, transforming himself into a twin-stalked maize plant, such as is called xolotl; discovered, he escaped again and assumed the form of a maguey called mexolotl; and evading capture a third time, he entered the water and became a larva, axolotl—only to be found and offered up. A second version of the legend, recorded by Mendieta, makes Xolotl the sacrificial celebrant who gave death to the other gods and then to himself that the sun might have life. In still another tale, recorded also by Mendieta, it is the dog Xolotl who is sent to the Underworld for bones of the forefathers, that the first human pair might be created; but being pursued by Mictlantecutli, Xolotl stumbled, and the bone that he carried was dropped and broken into fragments, from which the various kinds of people sprang. Tales such as these are strongly reminiscent of the coyote stories of the northern continent, and it is possible that Xolotl himself is only a special form of Coyote, the trickster and transformer, especially as Ueuecoyotl ("Old Coyote"), borrowed from the more primitive Otomi, was a recognized member of the Aztec pantheon, as a god of feasts and dances, and perhaps of trickery as well.

Of all the recorded beliefs connected with the dead the most affecting is the brief account of the limbo of child-souls reported by the clerical expositor of Codex Vaticanus A. There was, he says,[46] "a third place for souls which passed from this life, to which went only the souls of children who died before attaining the use of reason. They feigned the existence of a tree from which milk distilled, where all children who died at such an age were carried; since the Devil,[Pg 84] who is so inimical to the honour of God, even in this instance wished to show his rivalry: for in the same way as our holy doctors teach the existence of limbo for children who die without baptism, or without the circumcision of the old law, or without the sacrifice of the natural man, so he has caused these poor people to believe that there was such a place for their children; and he has superadded another error—the persuading them that these children have to return thence to repeople the world after the third destruction which they suppose that it must undergo, for they believe that the world has already been twice destroyed." The belief in an infant paradise, with its Tree of Life whence the souls of babes draw nourishment, biding the day of their rebirth, is a pleasant relief from the nightmarelike quality of most Aztec notions—not less familiarly human than are the pious reflections of the good friar who records it.

[Pg 85]

Mexican cosmogonies conform to a wide-spread American type. There is first an ancient creator, little important in cult, who is the remote giver and sustainer of the life of the universe; and next comes a generation of gods, magicians and transformers rather than true creators, who form and transform the beings of times primeval and eventually bring the world to its present condition. The earlier world-epochs, or "Suns," as the Mexicans called them, are commonly four in number, and each is terminated by the catastrophic destruction of its Sun and of its peoples, fire and flood overwhelming creation in successive cataclysms. Not all of this, in single completeness, is preserved in any one account, but from the various fragments and abridgements that are extant the whole may be reasonably reconstructed.

One of the simpler tales (simple at least in its transmitted form) is of the Tarascan deity, Tucupacha. "They hold him to be creator of all things," says Herrera,[48] "that he gives life and death, good and evil fortune, and they call upon him in their tribulations, gazing toward the sky where they believe him to be." This deity first created heaven and earth and hell; then he formed a man and a woman of clay, but they were destroyed in bathing; again he made a human pair, using cinders and metals, and from these the world was peopled. But the god sent a flood, from which he preserved a certain priest, Texpi, and his wife, with seeds and with animals, floating in an[Pg 86] ark-like log. Texpi discovered land by sending out birds, after the fashion of Noah, and it is quite possible that the legend as recounted is not altogether native.

More primitive in type and more interesting in form is the Mixtec cosmogony narrated by Fray Gregorio García, which begins thus:[49] "In the year and in the day of obscurity and darkness, when there were as yet no days nor years, the world was a chaos sunk in darkness, while the earth was covered with water, on which scum and slime floated." This exordium, with its effort to describe the void by negation and the beginning of time by the absence of its denominations, is strikingly reminiscent of the creation-narrative in Genesis ii. and of the similar Babylonian cosmogony; the negative mode, employed in all three, is essentially true to that stage when human thought is first struggling to grapple with abstractions, seeking to define them rather by a process of denudation than by one of limitation of the field of thought. The Mixtec tale proceeds with a group of incidents. (1) The Deer-God and the Deer-Goddess (the deer is an emblem of fecundity)—known also as the Puma-Snake and the Jaguar-Snake, in which character they doubtless represent the tawny heaven of the day-sky and the starry vault of night—magically raised a cliff above the abyss of waters, on the summit of which they placed an axe, edge upward, upon which the heavens rested. (2) Here, at the Place-where-the-Heavens-stood, they lived many centuries, and here they reared their two boys, Wind-of-the-Nine-Serpents and Wind-of-the-Nine-Caves, who possessed the power of transforming themselves into eagles and serpents, and even of passing through solid bodies. The symbolism of these two boys as typifying the upper and the nether world is obvious; they can only be one more example of the demiurgic twins common in American cosmogony. (3) The brothers inaugurated sacrifice and penance, the cultivation of flowers and fruits; and with vows and prayers they besought their ancestral gods to let the light appear, to cause the water to be[Pg 87] separated from the earth, and to permit the dry land to be freed from its covering. (4) The earth was peopled, but a flood destroyed this First People, and the world was restored by the "Creator of all Things."

It is probable that this Mixtec Creator-of-All-Things was the same deity as he who was known to their Zapotec kindred as Coqui-Xèe or Coqui-Cilla ("Lord of the Beginning"), of whom it was said that "he was the creator of all things and was himself uncreated." Seler is of opinion that Coqui-Xèe is a spirit of "the beginning" in the sense of dawn and the east and the rising sun, and that since he is also known as Piye-Tào, or "the Great Wind," he is none other than the Zapotec Quetzalcoatl, who also is an increate creator. Coqui-Xèe, however, is "merely the principle, the essence of the creative deity or of deity in general without reference to the act of creating the world and human beings"; for that act is rather to be ascribed to the primeval pair (equivalent to the Deer-God and Deer-Goddess of the Mixtec), Cozaana ("Creator, the Maker of all Beasts") and Huichaana ("Creator, the Maker of Men and Fishes").

The ideas of the Nahuatlan tribes were similar. Of the Chichimec Sahagun[50] says that "they had only a single god, Mixcoatl, whose image they possessed; but they believed in another invisible god, not represented by any image, called Yoalli Ehecatl, that is to say, God invisible, impalpable, beneficent, protector, omnipotent, by whose strength alone the whole world lives, and who, by his sole knowledge, rules voluntarily all things." Mixcoatl ("Cloud-Snake"), the tribal god of the Chichimec and Otomi, is certainly an analogue of Quetzalcoatl or of Huitzilopochtli, like them figuring as demiurge; and Yoalli Ehecatl ("Wind and Night," or "Night-Wind") is an epithet applied to Tezcatlipoca, who also is addressed as "Creator of Heaven and Earth."

All of these gods are of the sky and atmosphere, and all of them appear as creative powers, though mainly in the demiurgic[Pg 88] rôle. Back of and above them is the ancient Twofold One, the Male-Female or Male and Female principle of generation, which not only first created the world, but maintains it fecund. This being, sometimes called Tloque Nauaque, or "Lord of the By," i.e. the Omnipresent, is represented as a divine pair, known under several names. Sahagun commonly speaks of them as Ometecutli and Omeciuatl ("Twi-Lord," "Twi-Lady"), and in his account of the Toltec he states that they reign over the twelve heavens and the earth; the existence of all things depends upon them, and from them proceeds the "influence and warmth whereby infants are engendered in the wombs of their mothers." Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciutl ("Lord of Our Flesh," "Lady of Our Flesh") is another pair of names, used with reference to the creation of the human body out of maize and to its support thereby.[51] A third pair of terms, appearing in Mendieta and in the Annals of Quauhtitlan, is Citlallatonac and Citlalicue ("Lord" and "Lady of the Starry Zones"). In the Annals Quetzalcoatl, as high-priest of the Toltec, is said to have dedicated a cult to "Citlalicue Citlallatonac, Tonacaciuatl Tonacatecutli ... who is clothed in charcoal, clothed in blood, who giveth food to the earth; and he cried aloft, to the Omeyocan, to the heaven lying above the nine that are bound together." Nevertheless, these deities—or rather deity, for Tloque Nauaque seems to be, like the Zuñi Awonawilona, bisexual in nature—received little recognition in the formal cult; and it was said that they desired none.

Figures representing the heavenly bodies. The upper figure, from Codex Vaticanus B, represents the conflict of light and darkness. The Eagle is either the Morning Star or the Sun; the Plumed Serpent is the symbol of the Cosmic Waters, from whose throat the Hare, perhaps the Earth or Moon, is being snatched by the Eagle. Similar figures appear in other codices, the Serpent being in one instance represented as torn by the Eagle's talons.

The lower figure, from Codex Borgia, portrays Sun, Moon, and Morning Star. The Sun-god is within the rayed disk; he holds a bundle of spears in one hand, a spear-thrower in the other; a stream of blood, apparently from a sacrifice offered by the Morning Star, which has the form of an ocelot, nourishes the Sun. The Moon appears as a Hare upon the face of the crescent, which is filled with water and set upon a background of dark sky.

In connexion with these primal creators appear the demiurgic transformers, Quetzalcoatl usually playing the important part. According to Sahagun's fragmentary accounts, the gods were gathered from time immemorial in a place called Teotiuacan. They asked: "Who shall govern and direct the world? Who will be Sun?" Tecuciztecatl ("Cockle-Shell House") and the pox-afflicted Nanauatzin volunteered. They were dressed in ceremonial garments and fasted for four days; and then the gods ranged themselves about a sacrificial fire, which the candidates[Pg 89] were asked to enter. Tecuciztecatl recoiled from the intense heat until encouraged by the example of Nanauatzin, who plunged into it; and because of this Nanauatzin became the Sun, while Tecuciztecatl assumed second place as Moon. The gods now ranged themselves to await the appearance of the Sun, but not knowing where to expect it, and gazing in various directions, some of them, including Quetzalcoatl, turned their faces toward the east, where the Sun finally manifested himself, close-followed by the Moon. Their light being then equal, was so bright that none might endure it, and the deities accordingly asked one another, "How can this be? Is it good that they should shine with equal light?" One of them ran and threw a rabbit into the face of Tecuciztecatl, which thenceforth shone as does now the moon; but since the sun and the moon rested upon the earth, without rising, the gods saw that they must immolate themselves to give motion to the orbs of light. Xolotl fled, but was finally caught and sacrificed; yet even so the orbs did not stir until the wind blew with such violence as to compel them—first, the sun, and afterward the moon. Quetzalcoatl, the wind-god, is, of course, thus the giver of life to sun and moon as he is also, in the prayers the bearer of the breath of life from the divine pair to the new-born.

A complete version of the same myth is given by Mendieta,[52] who credits it to Fray Andrés de Olmos, transmitted by word of mouth from Mexican caciques. Each province had its own narrative, he says, but they were agreed that in heaven were a god and goddess, Citlallatonac and Citlalicue, and that the goddess gave birth to a stone knife (tecpatl), to the amazement and horror of her other sons which were in heaven. The stone hurled forth by these outraged sons and falling to Chicomoxtoc ("Seven Caves"), was shattered, and from its fragments arose sixteen hundred earth-godlings. These sent Tlotli, the Hawk, heavenward to demand of their mother the privilege of creating men to be their servants; and she replied that they should send[Pg 90] to Mictlantecutli, Lord of Hell, for a bone or ashes of the dead, from which a man and woman would be born. Xolotl was dispatched as messenger, secured the bone, and fled with it; but being pursued by the Lord of Hell, he stumbled, and the bone broke. With such fragments as he could secure he reached the earth, and the bones, placed in a vessel, were sprinkled with blood drawn from the bodies of the gods. On the fourth day a boy emerged from the mixture; on the eighth, a girl; and these were reared by Xolotl to become parents of mankind. Men differ in size because the bone broke into unequal fragments; and as human beings multiplied, they were assigned as servants to the several gods. Now, the Sun had not been shining for a long time, and the deities assembled at Teotiuacan to consider the matter. Having built a great fire, they announced that that one among their devotees who should first hurl himself into it should have the honour of becoming the Sun, and when one had courageously entered the flames, they awaited the sunrise, wagering as to the quarter in which he would appear; but they guessed wrong, and for this they were condemned to be sacrificed, as they were soon to learn. When the Sun appeared, he remained ominously motionless; and although Tlotli was sent to demand that he continue his journey, he refused, saying that he should remain where he was until they were all destroyed. Citli ("Hare") in anger shot the Sun with an arrow, but the latter hurled it back, piercing the forehead of his antagonist. The gods then recognized their inferiority and allowed themselves to be sacrificed, their hearts being torn out by Xolotl, who slew himself last of all. Before departing, however, each divinity gave to his followers, as a sacred bundle, his vesture wrapped about a green gem which was to serve as a heart. Tezcatlipoca was one of the departed deities, but one day he appeared to a mourning follower whom he commanded to journey to the House of the Sun beyond the waters and to bring thence singers and musical instruments to make a feast for him. This the messenger did, singing as he[Pg 91] went. The Sun warned his people not to harken to the stranger, but the music was irresistible, and some of them were lured to follow him back to earth, where they instituted the musical rites. Such details as the formation of the ceremonial bundles and the journey of the song-seeker to the House of the Sun immediately suggest numerous analogues among the wild tribes of the north, indicating the primitive and doubtless ancient character of the myth.

In the developed cosmogonic myths the cycles, or "Suns," of the early world are the turns of the drama of creation. Ixtlilxochitl names four ages, following the creation of the world and man by a supreme god, "Creator of All Things, Lord of Heaven and Earth." Atonatiuh, "the Sun of Waters," was the first age terminated by a deluge in which all creatures perished. Next came Tlalchitonatiuh, "the Sun of Earth"; this was the age of giants, and it ended with a terrific earthquake and the fall of mountains. "The Sun of Air," Ehcatonatiuh, closed with a furious wind, which destroyed edifices, uprooted trees, and even moved the rocks. It was during this period that a great number of monkeys appeared "brought by the wind," and these were regarded as men changed into animals. Quetzalcoatl appeared in this third Sun, teaching the way of virtue and the arts of life; but his doctrines failed to take root, so he departed toward the east, promising to return another day. With his departure "the Sun of Air" came to its end, and Tlatonatiuh, "the Sun of Fire," began, so called because it was expected that the next destruction would be by fire.

Other versions give four Suns as already completed, making the present into a fifth age of the world. The most detailed of these cosmogonic myth-records is that given in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas. According to this document Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciuatl dwelt from the beginning in[Pg 92] the thirteenth heaven. To them were born, as to an elder generation, four gods—the ruddy Camaxtli (chief divinity of the Tlascalans); the black Tezcatlipoca, wizard of the night; Quetzalcoatl, the wind-god; and the grim Huitzilopochtli, of whom it was said that he was born without flesh, a skeleton. For six hundred years these deities lived in idleness; then the four brethren assembled, creating first the fire (hearth of the universe) and afterward a half-sun. They formed also Oxomoco and Cipactonal, the first man and first woman, commanding that the former should till the ground, and the latter spin and weave; while to the woman they gave powers of divination and grains of maize that she might work cures. They also divided time into days and inaugurated a year of eighteen twenty-day periods, or three hundred and sixty days. Mictlantecutli and Mictlanciuatl they created to be Lord and Lady of Hell, and they formed the heavens that are below the thirteenth storey of the celestial regions, and the waters of the sea, making in the sea a monster Cipactli, from which they shaped the earth. The gods of the waters, Tlaloctecutli and his wife Chalchiuhtlicue, they created, giving them dominion over the Quarters. The son of the first pair married a woman formed from a hair of the goddess Xochiquetzal; and the gods, noticing how little was the light given forth by the half-sun, resolved to make another half-sun, whereupon Tezcatlipoca became the sun-bearer—for what we behold traversing the daily heavens is not the sun itself, but only its brightness; the true sun is invisible. The other gods created huge giants, who could uproot trees by brute force, and whose food was acorns. For thirteen times fifty-two years, altogether six hundred and seventy-six, this period lasted—as long as its Sun endured; and it is from this first Sun that time began to be counted, for during the six hundred years of the idleness of the gods, while Huitzilopochtli was in his bones, time was not reckoned. This Sun came to an end when Quetzalcoatl struck down Tezcatlipoca and became Sun in his place. Tezcatlipoca was metamorphosed[Pg 93] into a jaguar (Ursa Major) which is seen by night in the skies wheeling down into the waters whither Quetzalcoatl cast him; and this jaguar devoured the giants of that period. At the end of six hundred and seventy-six years Quetzalcoatl was treated by his brothers as he had treated Tezcatlipoca, and his Sun came to an end with a great wind which carried away most of the people of that time or transformed them into monkeys. Then for seven times fifty-two years Tlaloc was Sun; but at the end of this three hundred and sixty-four years Quetzalcoatl rained fire from heaven and made Chalchiuhtlicue Sun in place of her husband, a dignity which she held for three hundred and twelve years (six times fifty-two); and it was in these days that maize began to be used. Now two thousand six hundred and twenty-eight years had passed since the birth of the gods, and in this year it rained so heavily that the heavens themselves fell, while the people of that time were transformed into fish. When the gods saw this, they created four men, with whose aid Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl again upreared the heavens, even as they are today; and these two gods becoming lords of the heavens and of the stars, walked therein. After the deluge and the restoration of the heavens, Tezcatlipoca discovered the art of making fire from sticks and of drawing it from the heart of flint. The first man, Piltzintecutli, and his wife, who had been made of a hair of Xochiquetzal, did not perish in the flood, because they were divine. A son was born to them, and the gods created other people just as they had formerly existed. But since, except for the fires, all was in darkness, the gods resolved to create a new Sun. This was done by Quetzalcoatl, who cast his own son, by Chalchiuhtlicue, into a great fire, whence he issued as the Sun of our own time; Tlaloc hurled his son into the cinders of the fire, and thence rose the Moon, ever following after the Sun. This Sun, said the gods, should eat hearts and drink blood, and so they established wars that there might be sacrifices of captives to nourish the orbs of light. Most of the other versions of the myth of the epochal Suns[Pg 94] similarly date the beginning of sacrifice and penance from the birth of the present age.

The Annals of Quauhtitlan gives a somewhat different picture of the course of the epochs. Each epoch begins on the first day of Tochtli, and the god Quetzalcoatl figures as the creator. Atonatiuh, the first Sun, ended with a flood and the transformation of living creatures into fish. Ocelotonatiuh, "the Jaguar Sun," was the epoch of giants and of solar eclipse. Third came "the Sun of Rains," Quiyauhtonatiuh, ending with a rain of fire and red-hot rocks; only birds, or those transformed into them, and a human pair who found subterranean refuge, escaped the conflagration. The fourth, Ecatonatiuh, is the Sun of destruction by winds; while the fifth is the Sun of Earthquakes, Famines, Wars, and Confusions, which will bring our present world to destruction. The author of the Spiegazione delle tavole del codice mexicano (Codex Vaticanus A)—not consistent with himself, for in his account of the infants' limbo he makes ours the third Sun—changes the order somewhat: first, the Sun of Water, which is also the Age of Giants; second, the Sun of Winds, ending with the transformation into apes; third, the Sun of Fire; fourth, the Sun of Famine, terminating with a rain of blood and the fall of Tollan. Four Suns passed, and a fifth Sun, leading forward to a fifth eventual destruction, seems, most authorities agree, to represent the orthodox Mexican myth; though versions like that of Ixtlilxochitl represent only three as past, while others, as Camargo's account of the Tlascaltec myth, make the present Sun the third in a total of four that are to be. Probably one cause of the confusion with respect to the order of the Suns is the double association of Quetzalcoatl—first, with the Sun of Winds, which he, as the Wind-God, would naturally acquire; and second, with the fall of Tollan and of the Toltec empire, for Quetzalcoatl, with respect to dynastic succession, is clearly the Toltec Zeus. The Sun of Winds is normally the second in the series; the fall of Tollan is generally associated with the end of the Sun last[Pg 95] past: circumstances which may account for the shortened versions, for it seems little likely (judging from American analogies) that the notion of four Suns passed is not the most primitive version.

Figures from Codex Vaticanus A representing cataclysms bringing to an end cosmic "Suns," or Ages of the World.

The upper figure represents the close of the Sun of Winds, ending with the transformation of men, save for an ancestral pair, into apes. The lower pictures the end of the Sun of Fire, whence only birds and a human pair in a subterranean retreat escaped.

Another myth confusedly associated now with the Sun of Waters, now with the Sun last past, is the story of the deluge. In the pattern conception (if it may so be termed) each Sun begins with the creation or appearance of a First Man and First Woman and ends with the salvation of a single human pair, all others being lost or transformed. The first Sun ends with a deluge and the metamorphosis of the First Men into fish; but a single pair escaped by being sealed up in a log or ark. In the Chimalpopoca (Quauhtitlan) version given by Brasseur de Bourbourg it is related that the waters had been tranquil for fifty-two years; then, on the first day of the Sun, there came such a flood as submerged even the mountains, and this endured for fifty-two years. Warned by Tezcatlipoca, however, a man named Nata, with Nena his wife, hollowed a log and entered therein; and the god closed the port, saying, "Thou shalt eat but a single ear of maize, and thy wife but a single ear also." When the waters subsided, they issued from their log, and seeing fish about, they built a fire to roast them. Citlallatonac and Citlalicue, beholding this from the heavens, said: "Divine Lord, what is this fire? Wherefore does this smoke cloud the sky?" Whereupon Tezcatlipoca descended in anger, crying, "What fire is this?" And he seized the fishes and transformed them into dogs. Certainly one would relish an elaboration of this tale; for it would seem that a theft of the fire must precede—perhaps a suffering Prometheus may have followed—the anger of the gods. In another version the Mexican Noah is named Coxcox, his wife bears the name of Xochiquetzal; and it is said that their children, born dumb, received their several forms of speech from the birds. Now Xochiquetzal is associated (doubtless as a festal goddess) with Tollan and the age in which she appears is the last of all, that[Pg 96] in which Tollan is destroyed; whence the deluge is placed at the end of the fourth Sun.

To the same group of events—the passing of Tollan and the deluge—belong the stories of the building of the great pyramid of Cholula and the portents which accompanied it. It is said[54] that, reared by a chief named Xelua, who escaped the deluge, it was built so high that it appeared to reach heaven; and that they who reared it were content, "since it seemed to them that they had a place whence to escape from the deluge if it should happen again, and whence they might ascend into heaven"; but "a chalcuitl, which is a precious stone, fell thence [i.e. from the skies] and struck it to the ground; others say that the chalcuitl was in the shape of a toad; and that whilst destroying the tower it reprimanded them, inquiring of them their reason for wishing to ascend into heaven, since it was sufficient for them to see what was on the earth." It is worth while to remember that the hybristic scaling of heaven is no uncommon motive in American Indian myth, while the moral of the tale is honestly pagan—"mortal things are the behoof of mortals," saith Pindar; nor can we fail to see in the green jewel the jealous Earth-Titaness, for the toad is Earth's symbol.

The duration of the cosmic Suns is given various values by the recorders of the myths. These, no doubt, issued from variations in calendric computations; for the Mexicans not only possessed an elaborate calendar; they also used it, in its involved circles of returning signs, as the foundation for calculating the cycles of cosmic and of human history. It is essential, therefore, if the genius of Mexican myth be fully grasped, that the elements of its calendar be made clear.

The Mexican calendar is one of the most extraordinary inventions of human intelligence. Elsewhere the science of the calendar is a lore of sun, moon, and stars, and of their synodic[Pg 97] periods; in the count of time astronomy is mistress, and number is but the handmaiden. In the Mexican system this relation is distinctly reversed: it is number that is dominant, and astronomy that is ancillary. One might, indeed, add that the number is geometric. It is common enough elsewhere to find the measures of space influencing the measures of time, but ordinarily they are the measures of celestial, not of terrestrial, space; and they are, therefore, moving, and not stationary, numbers. In the Mexican system the controlling numerical ideas appear to be the 4 (5) and the 6 (7) of the world-quarters—these in their duplicate forms, 9 (= 2 x 4 + 1) and 13 (= 2 x 6 + 1)—and all are under the domination of the four by five digits (two fives of fingers and two of toes) of their vigesimal system of counting. Man in the Middle Place of his cosmos; oriented to the rising Sun; four-square with the Quarters, which are duplicate in the Above and the Below; counting his natural days by his natural digits: this is the image which makes most plausible our explanations of the peculiarly earth-tethered calendar of the Mexicans, and, in consequence, of a cosmographical rather than an astrological conception of the Fates and Influences.

Not that the moving heavens were without computation: astronomy, though secondary, was indispensable.[56] The day, of course, is the creation of the journey of the sun; and the day, as a time-unit, plays in the Mexican count a part altogether commensurate in importance with that given to the sun in myth and ritual. The moon, though far less prominent in every respect, is still conspicuously figured. The morning star (far and wide a great deity of the American Indian nations) was second in significance only to the sun; indeed, one of the most extraordinary achievements of aboriginal American science was the identification of Phosphorus and Hesperus as the same star, and the computation of a Venus-period of five hundred and eighty-four days (the exact period being five hundred and eighty-three days and twenty-two hours).[Pg 98] Comets and meteors were regarded as portents; the Milky Way was the skirt of Citlalicue, or was the white hair of Mixcoatl of the Zenith; and in the patterns of the stars were seen the figures that define the topography of the nocturnal heavens. Sahagun mentions three constellations, which he vaguely identifies with Gemini, Scorpio, and Ursa Minor; and in the chart of heavenly bodies, given with his Nahuatlan text, he figures two other stellar groups; while five is the number which Tezozomoc names as those for which the king elect must keep watch on the night of his vigil. Doubtless many other star-patterns were observed, but these five seem predominant. Stansbury Hagar, resolving what he regards as the Mexican Scorpio into Scorpio and Libra, would see in Sahagun's figures half of the zodiacal twelve; and in both Mexico and Peru he believes that he has identified a series of signs closely equivalent to that of the Old World zodiac. Another view (presented by Zelia Nuttall) conceives the Aztec constellations as forming a series of twenty, corresponding to the twenty day-signs employed in the calendar. A third interpretation, on the whole, accordant with the evidence, is that of Seler, who maintains that the five constellations named by Sahagun and Tezozomoc represent, instead of a zodiac, the four quarters and the zenith of the sky-world, and are, therefore, spatial rather than temporal guides. Seler identifies Mamalhuaztli, "the Fire-Sticks," with stars of the east, in or near Taurus. The Pleiades, rising in the same neighbourhood, he believes to have been the sign of the zenith; and at the beginning of a new cycle of fifty-two years the new fire was kindled when the Pleiades were in the zenith at midnight—the very hour, according to Tezozomoc, when the king rises to his vigil. Citlalachtli, "the Star Ball-Ground," is called "the North and its Wheel" by Tezozomoc, and must refer to the stars which revolve about the northern pole. Colotlixayac, "Scorpion-Face," marks the west; while Citlalxonecuilli—so named, Sahagun tells us, from its resemblance to S-shaped[Pg 99] loaves of bread which were called xonecuilli—is clearly identified by Tezozomoc with the Southern Cross and adjacent stars. Thus it appears (granting Seler's interpretation) that the constellations served but to mark the pillars of this four-square world.

Essentially the Mexican calendar is an elaborate day-count. As with many other American peoples, the system of notation was vigesimal (probably developed from a quinary mode of counting), and the days were accordingly reckoned by twenties: twenty pictographs served as day-signs, endlessly repeated like the names of the days of the week. These twenty-day periods are commonly called "months" (following the usage of Spanish writers), though they have no relation to the moon and its phases; they are, however, like our months, used as measures of the primitive solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, the Aztec year comprising eighteen months (or sets of twenties) plus five nemontemi, or "Empty Days," regarded as unlucky. According to Sahagun, six nemontemi were counted every fourth year; if this were true (it is widely doubted), the Mexicans would have had a calendar which was Julian in effect. Like our months, each of the eighteen twenties of the solar year had its own name and its characteristic religious festivals; during the nemontemi there were neither feasts nor undertakings. The beginning of the solar year is placed by Sahagun on the first day of the month Atlcaualco—corresponding, he says, to February 2—the period of the cessation of rains, and the time of rites in honour of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue. Some authorities, however, believe that the year really began with Toxcatl, corresponding to the earlier part of May, the period of the celebration of the great festival of Tezcatlipoca, when his personator was sacrificed and the next year's victim was chosen. The location of the nemontemi in the year is not certain.

From the fact that to the days of the year were assigned[Pg 100] twenty endlessly repeating signs, and the further fact that the nemontemi were five in number (18 x 20 + 5 = 365), it follows that the first day of the year would always fall upon one of four signs; and these signs—Colli ("House"), Tochtli ("Rabbit"), Acatl ("Reed"), and Tecpatl ("Flint")—inevitably became emphasized in the imagination, not only with units of time, but also with the Quarters which divide the world.

But the designation of the days was not simply by the series of pictographic signs. An additional series was formed of the numbers one to thirteen, which, like the signs, were repeated over and over; so that each day had not only a sign, but also a number. Since only thirteen numerals were employed, it follows that if any given twenty days have the number one accompanying the sign of its first day, the sign of the first day of the ensuing twenty days will be accompanied by the number eight, the sign of the first day of the third twenty by two, and so on; not until the end of two hundred and sixty days (since thirteen is a prime number) will the same number recur with the initial sign. The representation of this period of thirteen by twenty days, in which the cycles of numerals and pictographs passed from an initial correspondence to its first recurrence, was called by the Aztec the Tonalamatl, or "Book of Good and Bad Days"—a set of signs employed for divination as the name implies. Since the Tonalamatl represents only two hundred and sixty days, it follows that the last one hundred and fifteen days of the year will have the same signs and numerals as the first one hundred and fifteen. For this reason De Jonghe and some others believe that a third set of day-signs was employed—the nine Lords of the Night, which (since two hundred and sixty is not evenly divisible by nine) would suffice to differentiate the days throughout the year. Seler, however maintains that he has disproved this theory; if so, there would still be the possibility of differentiating the days of the second Tonalamatl from[Pg 101] those of the first by employing the sign of that one of the eighteen "months" in which the day fell.

The Aztec "Calendar Stone," one of the two monuments (see Plate V for the other) found beneath the pavement of the plaza of the city of Mexico in 1790. The outer band of decoration is formed of two "Fire Snakes" (cf. Plates VII 3 and XXI), each with a human head in its mouth; between the tips of the serpents' tails is a glyph giving the date, 13 Acatl, of the historical Sun, that is, the beginning of the present Age of the World. A decorative band formed of the twenty day signs surrounds the central figure, which consists of a Sun-face, with the glyph 4 Olin; while in the four adjacent compartments are the names of the eras of the four earlier "Suns." Sun rays, with other figures, appear in the spaces between the inner and outer decorative bands. Below is given a key (after Joyce, Mexican Archaeology, page 74).

In addition to the Tonalamatl, there is another consequence of the double designation of the days. Each year, it has been noted, begins with one of four day-signs. But three hundred and sixty-five is indivisible, evenly, by thirteen; therefore, the day-signs and numerals for succeeding years must vary, the day-signs recurring in the same order every four years, and the numerals in the same order every thirteen years (since 365 = 13 x 28 + 1), while not until there has elapsed four times thirteen years will the same day-sign and the same numeral occur on the first day of the year. These divisions of the years into groups, determined by their signs and numbers, were of great significance to the Mexican peoples. The sign which began each group of thirteen years was regarded as dominant during that period, and as each of these signs was dedicated to one of the four Quarters, it is to be supposed that the powers of the ruling sign determined the fortunes of the period. The cycle was complete when, at the end of fifty-two years, the same sign and number recurred as the emblem of the year. Such an epoch was the occasion for prognostics and dread anticipations, and it was celebrated with a special feast at which all fires were extinguished and a new flame was kindled on the breast of a sacrificial victim. This festival was called "the Knot of the Years," and in Aztec pictography past periods were represented by bundles, each signifying such a cycle of fifty-two years.

It will be noted that the fifty-two year cycle is also the period for the recurring coincidence of the day-signs and numerals in the year and in the Tonalamatl (for, 365 factoring 73 x 5, and 260 factoring 52 x 5, it follows that 52 years will equal 73 Tonalamatls). It is, therefore, the more extraordinary that in the usual mode of figuring the Tonalamatl it is begun, not with one of the four signs which name the years and their cycles, but with another day-sign, Cipactli[Pg 102] ("Crocodile"). The plausible explanation of this is that since the Crocodile was the monster from which Earth was formed by the creative gods, the divinatory period was inaugurated under his sign.

The origin of so peculiar a reckoning as the Tonalamatl is one of the puzzles of Americanist studies. Effort has been made to connect it with lunar movements, but no astronomical period corresponds with it. Again, it has been pointed out that the two hundred and sixty days of the Tonalamatl approximate the period of gestation, and in view of its use, for divinations and horoscopic forecasts, this is not impossible as an explanation of its origin. The obvious fact that it expresses the cycle of coincidence of the twenty day-signs and thirteen numerals only carries the puzzle back to the origination of the numeration, with its anomalous thirteen—for which, as a significant number, no more satisfactory astronomical reason has been suggested than León y Gama's, that it represents half of the period of the moon's visibility. In myth the invention of the Tonalamatl is ascribed to Cipactonal and Oxomoco (in whom Señor Robelo sees the personification of Day and Night), and again to Quetzalcoatl. At his immolation the heart of Quetzalcoatl, it will be recalled, flew upward to become the Morning Star, and in special degree the god is associated with this star. "They said that Quetzalcoatl died when the star became visible, and henceforward they called him Tlauizcalpantecutli, 'Lord of the Dawn.' They said that when he died he was invisible for four days; they said he wandered in the underworld, and for four days more he was bone. Not until eight days were past did the great star appear. Quetzalcoatl then ascended the throne as god." One of the early writers, Ramon y Zamora, states that the Tonalamatl was determined by the Mexicans as the period during which Venus is visible as the evening star; and Förstemann discovered representations of the Venus-year of five hundred and eighty-four days divided into[Pg 103] periods of ninety, two hundred and fifty, eight, and two hundred and thirty-six days, which he estimated to represent respectively the period of Venus's invisibility during superior conjunction (ninety days), of its visibility as evening star (two hundred and fifty days), of its invisibility during inferior conjunction (eight days), and of its visibility as morning star (two hundred and thirty-six days). The near correspondence of the period of two hundred and fifty days with the Tonalamatl, coupled with the identity of the eight days' invisibility with the period of Quetzalcoatl's wandering and lying dead in the underworld, which was followed by his ascension to the throne of the eastern heaven, as related in the myth, give plausibility to the traditions which associate the formation of the Tonalamatl with the Venus-period. Seler suggests—and this is perhaps the best explanation yet offered—that the Tonalamatl is the product of an indirect association of the solar year (three hundred and sixty-five days) and of the Venus-period (five hundred and eighty-four days), for the least common multiple of the numbers of days in these two periods is twenty-nine hundred and twenty days, equal to eight solar years and five Venus years; in associating the two, he says, the inventors of the calendar lighted upon the number thirteen (8 + 5), and hence upon the Tonalamatl of two hundred and sixty days. If this be the case, the belief in thirteen heavens and thirteen hours of the day would be derivative from temporal rather than spatial observations, from astronomy rather than cosmography. A somewhat analogous association might be offered in connexion with the nine of the heavens and the nine of the hours of the night; for just as there are four signs that always recur as the designations of the solar years, so for the Venus-period there are five (since five hundred and eighty-four divided by twenty leaves four as divisor of the signs), and the sum of these is nine.

The signs which inaugurate the Venus periods are Cipactli[Pg 104] ("Crocodile"), Coatl ("Snake"), Atl ("Water"), Acatl ("Reed"), and Olin ("Motion"). But here again the numerals enter in to complicate the series, so that while the day-signs which inaugurate the Venus-periods recur in groups of five, they do not recur with the same numeral until the lapse of thirteen times five periods. This great cycle of Venus-days, comprising sixty-five repetitions of the apparent course of the planet, is also a common multiple of the solar year and of the Tonalamatl, comprising one hundred and four of the former and one hundred and forty-six of the latter. Thus it was that at the end of one hundred and four years of three hundred and sixty-five days the same sign and number-series recurred in the three great units of the Aztec calendar. When it is remembered that prognostics were to be drawn not merely from the complex relations of the signs to their place in each of the three time-units, with their respective elaborations into cycles; but from their further relations with the regions of the upper and lower worlds, and also from the numerals, which had good and evil values of their own, it will be seen that the Mexican priests were in possession of a fount of craft not second to that of the astrologers of the Old World.

That so complex a system could easily give rise to error is evident, and it is probable that, as tradition asserts, from time to time corrections were made, serving as the inauguration of new "Suns" or as new "inventions" of time. It may even be that the "Suns" of the cosmogonic myths are reminiscences of calendric corrections, and it is at least a striking coincidence that the traditions of these "Suns" make them four in number, like the year-signs, or five in number, like the Venus-signs. The latter series, too, is distinctly cosmogonic in symbolism—Crocodile suggests the creation from a fish-like monster; Snake, the falling heavens; Water, the "Water-Sun" and the deluge; Reed (the fire-maker), the Sun of Fire; Motion, the Sun of Wind, or perhaps the Earthquake. But whatever be the value of these symbolisms, it is certain that the[Pg 105] Mexicans themselves associated perilous times and cataclysmic changes with the rounding out of their cycles.

The cosmogonic and calendric cycles (intimately associated) profoundly influenced the Mexican conception of history. Orderly arrangement of time is as essential to an advancing civilization as the ordering of space, and it is natural for the human imagination to form all of its temporal conceptions into a single dramatic unity—a World Drama, with its Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Judgement; or a Cosmic Evolution from Nebula to Solar System, and Solar System to Nebula. In the making, such cosmic dramas start from these roots: (1) Cosmogony and Theogony, for which there is no simpler image in nature than the creation of the Life of Day from the Chaos of Night at the command of the Lord of Light; (2) "Great Years," or calendric cycles, formed by calculations of the synodic periods of sun and moon and wandering stars, or, as in the curious American instance, mainly from simple day-counts influenced by a complex symbolism of numbers and by an awkward notation; (3) the recession of history, back through the period of record to that of racial reminiscence and of demigod founders and culture-heroes. Of these three elements, the first and third constitute the material, while the second becomes the form-giver—the measure of the duration of the acts and scenes of the drama, as it were—adding, however, on the material side, the portents and omens imaged in the stars.

The Mexican system of cosmic Suns is a capital example of the first element—each Sun introducing a creation or restoration, and each followed by an elemental destruction, while all are meted out in formal cycles. It is no matter for wonder that there are varying versions of the order and number of the cosmogonic cycles, nor that a nebulous and legendary history[Pg 106] is varyingly fitted into the cyclic plan; for each political state and cultural centre tended to develop its own stories in connexion with its own records and traditions. Nevertheless, there is a broad scheme of historic events common to all the more advanced Nahuatlan peoples, the uniformity of which somewhat argues for its truly historic foundation. This is the legend which assigns to the plateau of Anahuac three successive dominations, that of the Toltec, that of the Chichimec nations, and that of the Aztec and their allies. Although the remote Toltec period is clouded in myth, archaeology tends to support the truth of the tales of legendary Tollan, at least to the extent of identifying the site of a city which for a long period had been the centre of a power that was, by Mexican standards, to be accounted civilized.

The general characters of Toltec civilization, as tradition shows it, are those recorded by Sahagun.[57] The Toltec were clever workmen in metals, pottery, jewellery, and fabrics, indeed, in all the industrial arts. They were notable builders, adorning the walls of their structures with skilful mosaic. They were magicians, astrologers, medicine-men, musicians, priests, inventors of writing, and creators of the calendar. They were mannerly men, and virtuous, and lying was unknown among them. But they were not warlike—and this was to be their ruin.

The temple of Xochicalco, partially restored. The relief band, of which a section is given for detail, shows a serpent; a human figure, doubtless a deity, is seated beneath one of the great coils. After photographs in the Peabody Museum.

Their principal deity was Quetzalcoatl, and his chief priest bore the same name. The temple of the god was the greatest work of their hands. It was composed of four chambers: that to the east, of gold; that to the west, encrusted with turquoise and emerald; that to the south, with sea-shells and silver; that to the north, with reddish jasper and shell. In another similar shrine, plumage of the several colours adorned the four apartments. The explicator of Codex Vaticanus A says that Quetzalcoatl was the inventor of round temples (it is possible that the rotundity of his shrines was due to the presumption that the wind does not love corners), and that he founded four; in the first[Pg 107] princes and nobles fasted; the second was frequented by the lower classes; the third was "the House of the Serpent," and here it was unlawful to lift the eyes from the ground; the fourth was "the Temple of Shame," where were sent sinners and men of immoral life. Details such as these—obviously referring to familiar features of American Indian ritual—as well as the numerous myths that narrate the departure of Quetzalcoatl for the mysterious Tlapallan, followed by a great part of the Toltec population, clearly belong in the realm of fancy, shimmeringly veiling historic facts. Thus, when Ixtlilxochitl states that the reign of each Toltec king was just fifty-two years, we see simply a statement which identifies calendric with political periods; yet when he goes on with the qualification that those kings who died under such a period were replaced by regents until a new cycle could begin with the election of a new king, and when he specifically notes that, as exceptions, Ilacomihua reigned fifty-nine years, and Xiuhquentzin, his queen, four years after him, we are in the presence of a tradition which looks much more like history than myth—for there is no mythic reason that satisfies this shift. Fact, too, should underlie Sahagun's naïve remark that the Toltec were expert in the Mexican tongue, although they did not speak it with the perfection of his day, and again that communities which spoke a pure Nahua were composed of descendants of Toltecs who remained in the land when Quetzalcoatl departed—for behind such notions should lie a story of linguistic supersession.

Such, indeed, appears to have been the course of events. The date of the founding of Tollan, according to the Annals of Quauhtitlan, is, computed in our era, 752 a. d. Ixtlilxochitl puts the beginning of the Toltec kingship as early as 510 a. d.; and the end he sets in the year 959, when the last Toltec king, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, was overthrown and departed, none knew whither. It is a plausible hypothesis which assumes the historicity of this event and which accounts for the myths of[Pg 108] the departure of Quetzalcoatl, the god, as due in part to a confusion of the permutations of a nature deity with the gesta of an earthly hero—a process exemplified in the Old World in the tales of King Arthur, Celtic god and British hero-king. It is certain that from an early date the civilization of the Mexican plateau was racially akin to that of the Maya in the south; it is not improbable that the Toltec represent an ancient northern extension of Maya power (the oldest stratum at Tollan shows Huastec influences, and the Huastec are of Maya kin); and, finally, when the political overthrow of the Toltec was accomplished, and their leaders fled away to Tlapallan, to the south-east, the northern barbarians who had replaced them gradually learned the lesson of civilization from the sporadic groups which remained in various centres after the capital had fallen—Cholula, Cuernavaca, and Teotihuacan, cities which were to figure in Nahuatlan lore as the centres of priestly learning. Such an hypothesis would account for Sahagun's statement that the Toltec spoke Nahua imperfectly, for those who remained would have changed to this language; while what may well be an historical incident of the period of change is Ixtlilxochitl's account of the reply of the Toltec king of Colhuacan to the invading Chichimec, refusing to pay tribute, for "they held the country from their ancestors, to whom it belonged, and they had never obeyed or payed tribute to any foreign lord ... nor recognized other master than the Sun and their gods." However, less able in arms than the invaders, they fell to no great force.

The Chichimec, according to the prevailing accounts, were a congeries of wild hunting tribes, cave-dwellers by preference, who vaguely and imperfectly absorbed the culture that had preceded them in the Valley of Mexico. Ixtlilxochitl has it that, under the leadership of a chief named after the celestial dog Xolotl, they entered the Toltec domain a few years after the fall of Tollan, peaceably possessing themselves of an almost deserted land. They were soon followed by related tribes,[Pg 109] among whom the most important were the Acolhua, founders of Tezcuco; while later came the Mexicans, or Aztec, who wandered obscurely from place to place before they finally established the town which was to be the capital of their empire. For several centuries, as the chronicler pictures it, these related peoples warred and quarrelled turbulently, owning the shadowy suzerainty of "emperors" whose power waxed or waned with their personal force—altogether such a picture as is presented by Mediaeval Europe after the recession of the Roman Empire before the incursive barbarians. Gradually, however, just as in Europe, the seed of the elder civilization took root, and the culture which the Spaniards discovered grew and consolidated.

Its leaders were not the Aztec, but the related Acolhua, whose capital, Tezcuco, became the Athens of an empire of which Tenochtitlan was to be the Rome; and the great age of Tezcuco came with King Nezahualcoyotl, less than a century before the appearance of Cortez. Cautious writers point to the resemblances between the career and character of this monarch as pictured by Ixtlilxochitl, and that of the Scriptural David: both, in their youth, are hunted and persecuted by a jealous king, and are forced into exile and outlawry; both triumphantly overthrow their enemies and inaugurate reigns of splendour, erecting temples, cultivating the arts, and reforming the state; both are singers and psalmists, and prophets of a purified monotheism; both assent to the execution of an eldest son and heir because of palace intrigue; and, finally, both, in the hour of temptation, cause an honoured thane to be treacherously slain in order that they may possess themselves of a woman who has captivated their fancy. In each case, too, the queen dishonourably won becomes the mother of a successor whose reign is followed by a decline of power, for Nezahualpilli was the last of the great Tezcucan kings. Certainly the parallels are striking and the chronicler may well have been influenced by Biblical analogy in the form which he gives his stories; but[Pg 110] it is surely not unfair to remark that such repetitions of event are to be expected in a world whose possibilities are, after all, limited in number; that, for example, a whole series of similarities can be drawn between Inca and Aztec history (where there is no suspicion of influence), and that there are not a few striking likenesses of the characters of Nezahualcoyotl and Huayna Capac, to both of whom is ascribed an enlightened monotheism. Various fragments of Nezahualcoyotl's poems—or such as bear his name—have survived, among them a lament which has the very tone of the Aztec prayers preserved by Sahagun, and which, indeed, breathes the whole world-weary dolour of Nahuatlan religion.[58]

Common tradition makes of the Aztec, or Mexica, late comers into the central valley, although they are regarded as belonging to the general movement of tribes known as the Chichimec immigration. Apparently they entered obscurely in the wake of kindred groups, perhaps in the middle of the eleventh century; wandered from place to place for a period; and finally settled on the swampy islands of Lake Tezcuco, founding Tenochtitlan, or Mexico, which eventually became the capital of empire. The founding of the city is variously dated—one group of references placing it at or near 1140, and another assigning dates from 1321 to 1327, variations which may refer to an earlier and later occupation by different or related tribal groups. The Aztec formed a league with their kindred neighbours, the Tecpanec of Tlacopan and the Acolhua of Tezcuco, in which their own rôle was a secondary one, until finally, under Axayacatl, Tizoc, and Ahuitzotl, the immediate predecessors of the last Montezuma (whose name is variously rendered Moteuhçoma, Moteczuma, Moteçuma,[Pg 112] Motecuhzoma, etc.), they rose to undisputed supremacy. This, however, was in war and politics, for Tezcuco, previous to the Conquest, was still the seat of Mexican learning.

Many of the Nahuatlan peoples retained mythic reminiscences of the period and course of their migrations; but of the narratives which remain hardly two are in accord, although most of them mention the "House of Seven Caves" (Chicomoztoc) as a place of dispersal. Back of this several of the narratives go, giving details of which the purely mythic character is evident, for the leaders named are gods and eponymous sires, while tribes of utterly unrelated stocks are given a common source. Thus, according to Mendieta's account,[60] at Chicomoztoc dwelt Iztacmixcoatl ("the White Cloud-Serpent") and his wife Ilancue ("the Old Woman"), from whom were sprung the ancestors—"as from the sons of Noah"—of the leading nations of Mexico, excepting that the Toltec were descended from Ixtacmixcoatl by a second wife, Chimalmatl (or Chimalma), who is named as mother of Quetzalcoatl, and who is represented elsewhere as the priestess or ancestress of the Aztec in their fabled first home, Aztlan.

Sahagun[61] gives a version starting with the landing of the ancestral Mexicans at Panotlan ("Place of Arrival by Sea"), whence he says that they proceeded to Guatemala, and thence, guided by a priest, to Tamoanchan, where the Amoxoaque, or wise men, left them, departing toward the east with their ritual manuscripts and promising to return at the end of the world. Only four of the learned ones remained with the colonists—Oxomoco, Cipactonal, Tlaltetecuin, and Xochicauaca—and it was they who invented the calendar and its interpretation in order that men might have a guide for their conduct. From Tamoanchan the colonists went to Teotihuacan, where they made sacrifices and erected pyramids in honour of the Sun and of the Moon. Here also they elected their first kings, and here they buried them, regarding them as gods and saying of them, not that they had died, but that[Pg 113] they had just awakened from a dream called life. "Hence the ancients were in the habit of saying that when men die, they in reality began to live," addressing them: "Lord (or Lady), awake! the day is coming! Already the first light of dawn appears! The song of the yellow-plumed birds is heard, and the many-coloured butterflies are taking wing!" Even at Tamoanchan a dispersal of the tribes had begun: the Olmac and the Huastec had departed toward the east, and from them had come the invention of the intoxicating drink, pulque, and (apparently as a result of this) the power of creating magical illusions; for they could make a house seem to be in flames when nothing of the sort was taking place, they could show fish in empty waters, and they could even make it appear that they had cut their own bodies into morsels. But the peoples associated with the Mexicans departed from Teotihuacan. First went the Toltec, then the Otomi, who settled in Coatepec, and last the Nahua; they traversed the deserts, seeking a home, each tribe guided by its own gods. Worn by pains and famines, they at length came to the Place of Seven Caves, where they celebrated their respective rites. The Toltec were the first to go forth, finally settling at Tollan. The people of Michoacan departed next, to be followed by the Tepanec, Acolhua, Tlascaltec, and other Nahuatlan tribes, and last of all by the Aztec, or Mexicans proper, who, led by their god, came to Colhuacan. Even here they were not allowed to rest, but were compelled to resume their wanderings, and, passing from place to place—"all designated by their names in the ancient paintings which form the annals of this people"—finally they came again to Colhuacan, and thence to the neighbouring island where Tenochtitlan was founded.

Section, comprising about one third, of the "Map Tlotzin," after Aubin, Mémoires sur la peinture didactique (Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale), Plate I. The map is described by Boturini as a "map on prepared skin representing the genealogy of the Chichimec emperors from Tlotzin to the last king, Don Fernando Cortès Ixtilxochitzin." Two of the six "caves," or ancestral abodes of the Chichimec, shown on the whole map, are here represented. At the right, marked by a bat in the ceiling, is Tzinacanoztoc, "the Cave of the Bat"; below it, in Nahuatl, being the inscription, "Tzinacanoztoc, here was born Ixtilxochitzin." The second cave shown is Quauhyacac, "At the End of the Trees"; and here are shown a group of ancestral Chichimec chieftains, whose wanderings are indicated in the figures below. The Nahuatlan text below the figure of the cave is translated: "All came to establish themselves there at Quauhyacoc, where they were yet all together. Thence departed Amacui; with his wife he went to Colhuatlican. Thence again departed Nopal; he went with his wife to Huexotla. Thence again departed Tlotli; he went with his wife to Oztoticpac."

Of the "ancient paintings," mentioned by Sahagun, several are preserved,[62] portraying the journey of the Aztec from Aztlan, their mythical fatherland, which is represented and described as located beyond the waters, or as surrounded by waters; and the first stage of the migration is said to have[Pg 114] been made by boat. For this reason numerous speculations as to its locality have placed it overseas—in Asia or on the North-west Coast of America—although the more conservative opinion follows Seler, who holds that it represents simply an island shrine or temple-centre of the national god, and hence a focus of national organization rather than of tribal origin. According to the Codex Boturini (one of the migration picture-records), as interpreted by Seler and others, after leaving Aztlan, represented as an island upon which stood the shrine of Huitzilopochtli in care of the tribal ancestor and his wife Chimalma, the Aztec landed at Colhuacan (or Teocolhuacan, i. e. "the divine Colhuacan"), where they united with eight related tribes, the Uexotzinca, Chalca, Xochimilca, Cuitlauaca, Malinalca, Chichimeca, Tepaneca, and Matlatzinca, who are said to have had their origin in a cavern of a crook-peaked mountain. From Colhuacan, led by a priestess and four priests, they journeyed to a place (represented in the codex by a broken tree) which Seler identifies as Tamoanchan, or "the House of Descent," and which is also the "House of Birth," for it is here that souls are sent from the thirteenth heaven to be born. Thence, after a sojourn of five years, the Aztec, perhaps urged on by some portent of which the broken tree is a symbol, took their departure alone, leaving their kindred tribes; and guided by Huitzilopochtli, they came to the land of melon-cacti and mesquite, where the god gave them bow and arrows and a snare. This land they called Mimixcoua ("Land of the Cloud-Serpent"); and it was here that they changed their name, for the first time calling themselves "Mexica"—an appellation which Sahagun describes as formed from that of a chieftain, who was also an inspired priest, ruling over the nation while they were in the land of the Chichimec, and whose cradle, it was said, was a maguey plant, whence he was called Mexicatl ("Mescal Hare"). Perhaps this is the incident represented in the curious picture which shows human beings clad in skins and with ceremonial[Pg 115] face-paintings, recumbent upon desert plants; and no doubt it signifies some important change in cult, such, perhaps, as the introduction of the mescal intoxication, with its attendant visions. It may, too, portray the institution of human sacrifice; for the next station indicated on the chart, Cuextecatlichocayan ("Where the Huastec Weep"), was the scene of the offering of the Huastec captives by arrow-slaying (see p. 79, supra). From this place the journey led to Coatlicamac ("In the Jaws of the Serpent"), where the people "tied the years" and kindled the new fire; and from Coatlicamac they made their way to Tollan, with the reaching of which the first stage of the migration-story may be said to end. Seler regards the whole as a myth of the world-quarters: Tamoanchan is the West, as in the Books of Fate; Mimixcoua is the North; Cuextecatlichocayan is the East, as the reference to the Huastec shows; and Coatlicamac is the South; finally, Tollan is the Middle Place, being regarded, like other sacred cities, as the navel of the world.

A second stage of the myth depicts the journey of the Aztec from Tollan, through many stops, back to Colhuacan, until at last they came to the site of Tenochtitlan. It is said that as the tribes halted by the waters of Tezcuco they beheld a great eagle perched on a cactus growing from a wave-washed rock; and while they gazed the bird ascended to the rising sun with a serpent in his talons. This was regarded as a divine augury, and here Tenochtitlan was founded. Such is the tradition which gives modern Mexico its national emblem. The places of sojourn between Tollan and Tenochtitlan, as represented in the writings, are all with fair certainty identified with towns or sites in the Valley of Mexico, so that here we are in the realm of history rather than of myth. Historic also are the names (and approximate dates) of the nine lords or emperors who ruled from the Mexican capital before the coming of the Spaniards brought the native power to its unhappy end.

[Pg 116]

The fifth of the Aztec monarchs was the first Montezuma. Of him it is told (the story is recorded by Fray Diego Durán)[63] that after he had extended his realm and consolidated his rule, he decided to send an embassy to the home of his fathers, especially since he had heard that the mother of Huitzilopochtli was still living there. He summoned his counsellor Tlacaelel, who brought before him an aged man learned in the nation's history. "The place you name," said the old man, "is called Aztlan ['White'], and near it, in the midst of the water, is a mountain called Culhuacan ['Crooked Hill']. In its caverns our fathers dwelt for many years, much at their ease, and they were known as Mexitin and Azteca. They had quantities of duck, heron, cormorants, and other waterfowl, while birds of red and of yellow plumage diverted them with song. They had fine large fish; handsome trees lined the shores; and the streams flowed through meadows under the cypress and alder. In canoes they fared upon the waters, and they had floating gardens bearing maize, chile, tomatoes, beans, and all the vegetables which we now eat and which we have brought thence. But after they left this island and set foot on land, all this was changed: the herbs pricked them, the stones wounded, and the fields were full of thistle and of thorn. Snakes and venomous vermin swarmed everywhere, while all about were lions and tigers and other dangerous and hurtful beasts. So is it written in my books." Then the king dispatched his messengers with gifts for the mother of Huitzilopochtli. They came first to Coatepec, near Tollan, and there called upon their demons (for they were magicians) to guide them; and thus they reached Culhuacan, the mountain in the sea, where they beheld the fisherfolk and the floating gardens. The people of the land, finding that the foreigners spoke their tongue, asked what god they worshipped, and when told that it was Huitzilopochtli and that they were come with a present for Coatlicue, his mother, if she yet lived, they conducted the strangers to the steward of the god's[Pg 117] mother. When they had delivered their message, stating their mission from the King and his counsellor, the steward answered: "Who is this Montezuma and who is Tlacaelel? Those who went from here bore no such names; they were called Teçacatetl, Acacitli, Oçelopan, Ahatl, Xomimitl, Auexotl, Uicton, Tenoch, chieftains of the tribes, and with them were the four guardians of Huitzilopochtli." The messengers answered: "Sir, we own that we do not know these lords, nor have we seen them, for all are long dead." "Who, then, killed them? We who are left here are all yet living. Who, then, are they who live to-day?" The messengers told of the old man who retained the record of the journey, and they asked to be taken before the mother of the god to discharge their duty. The old man, who was the steward of Coatlicue, led them forward; but the mountain, as they ascended, was like a pile of loose sand, in which they sank. "What makes you so heavy?" asked the guide, who moved lightly on the surface; and they answered, "We eat meat and drink cocoa." "It is this meat and drink," said the elder, "that prevent you from reaching the place where your fathers dwelt; it is this that has brought death among you. We know naught of these, naught of the luxury that drags you down; with us all is simple and meagre." Thereupon he took them up, and swift as wind brought them into the presence of Coatlicue. The goddess was foul and frightful to behold, and like one near death, for she was in mourning for her son's departure; but when she heard the message and beheld the rich gifts, she sent word to her son, reminding him of the prophecy that he had made at the time of his going forth: how he should lead the seven tribes into the lands they were to possess, making war and reducing cities and nations to his service; and how at last he should be overthrown, even as he had overthrown others, and his weapons cast to earth. "Then, O mother mine, my time will be accomplished, and I will return fleeing to thy lap, but until then I shall know naught save pain. Therefore give[Pg 118] me two pairs of sandals, one for going forth and one for returning, and four pairs of sandals, two pair for going forth and two for returning." "When he thinks on these words," continued the goddess, "and remembers that his mother yearns after him, bring to him this mantle of nequen and this breechband." With these gifts she dismissed the messengers; and as they descended, the steward of Coatlicue explained how the people of Aztlan kept their youth, for when they grew old, they climbed the mountain, and the climbing renewed their years. So the messengers returned, by the way they had come, to King Montezuma.

In 1502 Montezuma Xocoyotzin ("Montezuma the Young") was elected Emperor of Mexico, assuming a pomp and pride unknown to his predecessors. Five years later, in 1507, the Aztec "tied the years" and for the last time kindled the new fire on the breast of a noble captive. Ominous portents began to appear with the new cycle, and the chronicles abounded with imaginations of disaster.[64] The temple turret of the war-god was burned; another shrine was destroyed by fire from heaven, thunderlessly fallen in the midst of rain; a tree-headed comet was seen; Lake Tezcuco overflowed its banks for no cause; a rock which the King had ordered made into a sacrificial altar refused to be moved, saying to the workmen that the Lord of Creation would not suffer it; twins and monsters were born, and there were nightly cries, as of women in travail—

"Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New-hatched to the woeful time."

Fishermen caught a strange bird with a crystal in its head, and in the crystal, as in a mirror, Montezuma beheld unheard-of[Pg 119] warriors, armed and slaying. Most terrible of all, a huge pyramid of fire appeared in the east, night after night, coruscating with points of brilliance. In his terror Montezuma summoned old Nezahualpilli of Tezcuco, noted as an astrologer, to interpret the sign; and this King, whose star was in the decline, took perhaps a grim satisfaction in reading from the portents the early overthrow of the empire. Montezuma, it is said, put the interpretation to test, challenging Nezahualpilli to the divinatory game of tlachtli; but just on the point of winning, the monarch lost and returned discomfited. Another tale, doubtless apocryphal, tells how Papantzin, sister of Montezuma, died and was buried; shortly afterward she was found sitting by a fountain in the palace garden, and when the lords were assembled in her presence, she told how a winged youth had taken her to the banks of a river, beside which she saw the bones of dead men and heard their groans, while upon the waters were strange craft, manned by fair and bearded warriors coming to possess the kingdom. Certain it is, at least, that the hearts of all men regarded the return of Quetzalcoatl as near—the oppressed looking with hope, the powerful with dread, to the coming of the god—and the vestments of the deity were among the first gifts with which the unhappy Mexican sought to win the favour of Cortez.

Interior of chamber, Mitla, showing type of mural decoration peculiar to this region. After photograph in the Peabody Museum.

Nevertheless the memory of the King did not fade from native imagination with the fall of his throne. Stories of the greatness, the pride and the destruction of Montezuma spread; they became confused with older legends; and finally the Mexican monarch himself became the subject of myth. Far to the north the Papago[65] still show the cave of Montezuma, whom they have identified with Sihu, the elder brother of Coyote; and they tell how Montezuma, coming forth from a cave dug by the Creator, led the Indian nations thence. At first all went happily, and men and beasts conversed with one another until a flood ended this age of felicity, only Montezuma and his brother, Coyote, escaping in arks which they made for[Pg 120] themselves. When the waters had subsided, they aided in the repeopling of the world, and to Montezuma was assigned the lordship of the new race, but, being swollen with pride and arrogance by his high dignity, he failed to rule justly. The Great Spirit, to punish him, removed the sun to a remote part of the heavens; whereupon Montezuma set about building a house which should reach the skies, and whose apartments he lined with jewels and precious metals. This the Great Spirit destroyed with his thunder; but Montezuma was still rebellious, whereupon as his supreme punishment, the Great Spirit sent an insect to summon the Spaniards from the East for his destruction.

How far the political influence of the Aztec Empire extended is not clearly certain, but there are numerous indications that its cultural relations were very wide. There are rites and myths of the Pueblo Indians, Hopi and Zuñi, whose resemblance to the Mexican seems surely to imply a connexion not too remote; while far to the south, among the Nahua of Lake Nicaragua, the creator pair and ruling gods, Tamagostad and Çipattoval, are identical with the Mexican generative couple, Oxomoco and Cipactonal.[66]

In outlying districts today the less-touched Nahuatlan tribes preserve their essential paganism, and Lumholtz's and Preuss's accounts[67] of the pantheons of the Cora and Huichol Indians give us a living image of what must have been the ancestral religion of the Nahuatlan tribes, at least in the crude days of their wanderings. Father Sun, say the Cora, is fierce in the summer-time, slaying men and animals; but Chuvalete, the Morning Star, keeps watch over him to prevent him from harming the people. Morning Star is cool and dislikes heat, and once he shot the Sun, causing him to fall to earth; but an old man restored him to the heavens, giving him a new start, Chuvalete is the first friend of the Cora among the gods, and it is to him that they address their prayers as they go to the spring to bathe in the early dawn; they call him, "Elder[Pg 121] Brother," just as the Earth is "Our Mother" and the Sun "Our Father." The Water Serpent of the West, the Moon, the Winds, the Rain, the Lightning,—all these are familiar deities. Preuss[68] calls attention to the striking emphasis which the Cora place on the power of thought: the leaders of the ceremonies are called "thinkers" and in their prayers and rites the conception of a magical preservative and creative power in thought frequently recurs, not only as a power of priests, who have obtained it through purification, but as the essential power of the gods. Thus, of the sun about to rise:

"Our Father in Heaven thinks upon his Earth, our Father the Shining One.
There he is, on the other side of the World.
He thinks with his Thought, our Father, the Shining One.
He remembers, too, what he is, our Father, the Shining One."

And again it is the sacred words handed down in ritual through which men acquire that mystical participation in the divine power that preserves them in life:

"Here are present his Words, which he has given to us, his children,
Wherewith we live and continue in the World.
Indeed, all his Words are here present, which he has uttered and left unto us.
Here leaves he unto his children his Thought."

The Huichol have a more populous pantheon. Tatevali ("Grandfather Fire") is the deity of life and health, and also of shamans and prophesying. Great-grandfather Deer-Tail is likewise a fire-god and a singing shaman; he is the son of Grandfather Fire and yet his elder; for, it is said, Great-grandfather Deer-Tail is the spark produced in striking flint, while Grandfather Fire is the flame fed by wood. Father Sun is another important deity who was created, they say, when the Corn Mother (or the Eagle Mother, as some have it) threw her young son, armed with bow and arrows, into an oven,[Pg 122] whence he emerged as the divinity. Setting Sun is the assistant of Father Sun; and with the Moon, who is a Grandmother, he helps to keep Tokakami, the black and blood-smeared god of death, from leaving his underworld abode to devour the Indians. Tamats, the Elder Brother, is divinity of wind and air and messenger of the gods;[69] the cock belongs to him, because it follows the course of the Sun and always knows where the Sun is; and he is also the deity who conquered the underworld people and put the world into shape. He appears in different forms (like Tezcatlipoca), now a wolf, now a deer, a pine-tree, a whirlwind; and it is he who taught the ancients "all they had to do in order to comply with what the gods wanted at the five points of the world." There are goddesses, too. Takotsi Nakawe ("Grandmother Growth") is the Earth goddess who gives long life and is the mother of the armadillo, the peccary, and the bear; to her belong maize, and squash, and beans, and sheep; she is water, likewise, and is a Rain-Serpent in the east. Rain-Serpent goddesses live in each of the Quarters—she of the east is red, and the flowers of spring are her skirt; she of the west is white, like a white cloud; blue is the Rain-Serpent goddess of the south, and to her belong seeds and singing shamans; while the Rain-Serpent goddess of the north, whose name means "Rain and Fog hanging in the Trees and Grass," is spotted. Another goddess is Young Mother Eagle, the Sun's mother, and it is she who holds the world in her talons and guards everything; the stars are her dress. With Grandmother Growth beneath, Young Mother Eagle above, and the four Rain-Serpent goddesses, the six cardinal points of the world are defined. It will be observed, too, that the goddesses are deities of the feminine element, earth and water; while the gods are divinities of the masculine elements, fire and air.

Beliefs such as these inevitably suggest those of the older Mexico, and similarly in many of the rites of these Indians there are analogies to Aztec cult. Perhaps most striking of all[Pg 123] is the elaborate and partly mystical adoration of the hikuli, or peyote (cacti of the genus Lophophora), to which are ascribed mantic power and the induction of ecstacy; and in which, no doubt, we see the marvellous plant which the Aztec encountered in their migration. The cult extends to tribes remote in the north and is not without a touch of welcome poetry, as in the Tarahumare song given by Lumholtz[70]—

"Beautiful lily, in bloom this morning, guard me!
Drive away sorcery! Make me grow old!
Let me reach the age at which I have to take up a walking-stick!
I thank thee for exhaling thy fragrance, there where thou art standing!"

[Pg 124]

Native American civilization attained its apogee among the Maya. This is not true in a political sense, for, though at the time of the Conquest the Maya remembered a past political greatness, there is no reason to believe that it had ever been, either in power or in organization, a rival of such states as the Aztec and Inca. The Mayan cities had been confederate in their unions rather than national, aristocratic in their governments rather than monarchic; and in their greatest unity the power of their strongest rulers, the lords of Mayapan, appears to have been that of feudal suzerains, or at best of insecure tyrants. Politically the Mayan cities present somewhat the aspect of the loose-leaguing Hellenic states, and it is not without probability that in each case the looseness of the political organization was directly conducive to the intense civic pride which undoubtedly in each case fostered an extraordinary development of the arts. For in all the more intellectual tokens of culture—in art, in mathematics, in writing, and in historical records—the Mayan peoples surpassed all other native Americans, leaving in the ruins of their cities and in the profusion of their sculptured monuments such evidences of genius as only the most famous centres of Old-World antiquity can rival.

The territories of the Mayan stock are singularly compact.[71] They occupied—and their descendants now occupy—the Peninsula of Yucatan, the valley of the Usumacinta, and the cordillera rising westerly and sinking to the Pacific. The Rio[Pg 125] Motagua, emptying into the Gulf of Honduras, and the Rio Grijalva, debouching into the Bay of Campeche, form respectively their south-eastern and western borders excepting for the fact that on the eastern coasts of Mexico, facing the Gulf of Campeche, the Huastec (and perhaps their Totonac neighbours) represent a Mayan kindred. Between this western branch and the great Mayan centre of Yucatan the coast was occupied by intrusive Nahuatlan tribes, landward from whom lay the territories of the Zoquean and Zapotecan stocks, the western neighbours of the Mayan peoples.

The culture of the Maya is distinctly related, either as parent or as branch, to the civilizations of Mexico.[72] Affinities of Haustec and Maya works of art indicate that the ancestors of the two branches were not separated previous to a considerable progress in civilization; while, in a broader way, the cultures of the Nahuatlan, Zapotecan, and Mayan peoples have common elements of art, ritual, myth, and, above all, of mathematical and calendric systems which mark them as sprung from a common source. The Zapotec, situated between the Nahuatlan and Mayan centres, show an intermediate art and science, whose elements clearly unite the two extremes; while the appearance of place-names, such as Nonoual and Tulan, or Tollan, in both Maya and Nahua tradition imply at least a remote geographical community. The Nahuatlan tribes, if we may believe their own account, were comparatively recent comers into the realm of a civilization long anteceding them, and one which they, as barbarians, adopted; the Maya (at least, mythically) remembered the day of their coming into Yucatan. On the basis of these two facts and the undoubted community of culture of the two races, it has been not implausibly reasoned that the Toltec of Nahua tradition were in fact the ancestors of the Maya, who, abandoning their original home in Mexico, made their way to the peninsula, there to perfect their civilization; and the common association of Quetzalcoatl ("Kukulcan" in Maya) with the migration-legends[Pg 126] adds strength to this theory. Nevertheless, tradition points to the high antiquity of the southern rather than of the Mexican centres of civilization; and as the facts seem to be well explained by the assumption of a northern extension of Mayan culture in the Toltec or pre-Toltec age, followed by its recession in the period of its decline in the south, this may be taken as the more acceptable theory in the light of present knowledge. According to this view, the Nahua should be regarded as the late inheritors of an older civilization which they had gradually pushed back upon its place of origin and which, indeed, they were threatening still further at the time of the Conquest, for even then Nahuatlan tribes had forced themselves among and beyond the declining Maya.

When the Spaniards reached Yucatan, its civilization was already decadent. The greater cities had been abandoned and were falling into decay, while the country was anarchical with local enmities. The past greatness of Mayapan and Chichen Itza was remembered; but rather, as Bishop Landa's account shows,[73] for the intensification of the jealousies of those who boasted great descent than as models for emulation. Three brothers from the east—so runs the Bishop's narrative—had founded Chichen Itza, living honourably until one of them died, when dissensions arose, and the two surviving brothers were assassinated. Either before this event, or immediately afterward, there arrived from the west a great prince named Cuculcan who, "after his departure, was regarded in Mexico as a god and was called Cezalcouati; and he was venerated as a divinity in Yucatan also because of his zeal for the public good." He quieted the dissensions of the people and founded the city of Mayapan, where he built a round temple, with four entrances opening to the four quarters, "entirely different from all those that are in Yucatan"; and after ruling in Mayapan for seven years he returned to Mexico, leaving peace and amity behind him. The family of the Cocomes succeeded to the rule, and shortly afterward came Tutul-Xiu and his followers, who had[Pg 127] been wandering in the interior for forty years. These formed an alliance with Mayapan; but eventually the Cocomes, by introducing Mexican mercenaries (who brought the bow, previously unknown there) were able to tyrannize over the people. Under the leadership of the Xius, rising in revolt, the Cocomes were overthrown, only one son out of the royal house escaping; and Mayapan, after five centuries of power, was abandoned. The single Cocom who escaped gathered his followers and founded Tibulon calling his province Zututa, while the Mexican mercenaries settled at Canul. Achchel, a noble who had married the daughter of the Ahkin-Mai, chief priest of Mayapan and keeper of the mysteries, founded the kingdom of the Cheles on the coast; and the Xius held the inlands. "Between these three great princely houses of the Cocomes, Xivis, and Cheles there were constant struggles and cruel hatreds, and these endure even now that they have become Christians. The Cocomes say to the Xivis that they assassinated their sovereign and stole his domains; the Xivis reply that they are neither less noble nor less ancient and royal than the others, and that far from being traitors, they were the liberators of the country in slaying a tyrant. The Cheles, in turn, claim to be as noble as any, since they are descended from the most venerated priest of Mayapan. On another side, they mutually reviled each other in the matter of food, since the Cheles, dwelling on the coast, would not give fish or salt to the Cocomes, obliging them to send far for these, while the Cocomes would not permit the Cheles the game and fruits of their territory."

Temple 3, ruins of Tikal. After Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, Vol. V, Plate II.

Such is the picture which Bishop Landa gives of the conditions in the north of the peninsula at the time of the Conquest, about a century after the fall of Mayapan; and native records and archaeology alike sustain its general truth.[74] At Chichen Itza the so-called Ball Court is regarded as Mexican in inspiration, while in the same city exist the ruins of a round temple similar to those which tradition ascribes to Kukulcan, different in character from the normal Mayan types. Reliefs[Pg 128] representing warriors in Mexican garb also point to Nahuatlan incursions, which may in fact have been the occasion for the dissolution of the Mayan league of the cities of the north—Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Mayapan—in the Books of Chilam Balam represented as powerful in the day of the great among the Maya of Yucatan.

These "Books" are historical chronicles written after the Conquest by members of native families—chiefly the Tutul-Xiu—and from them, as key events of Yucatec history, a few events stand forth so conspicuously that possible dates can be assigned to them. "This is the arrangement of the katuns [periods of 7200 days] since the departure was made from the land, from the house of Nonoual, where were the four Tutul-Xiu, from Zuiva in the west; they came from the land of Tulapan, having formed a league."[75] So begins one of the chronicles, indicating a remote migration of the Xiu family from the west—an event which Spinden and Joyce place near 160 a. d.[76] The next event recorded is a stay, eighty years later, at Chacnouiton (or Chacnabiton), where a sojourn of ninety-nine years is recorded; and thence the migration was renewed, Bakhalal, near the Gulf of Honduras, being occupied for some sixty years. Here it was that the wanderers "learned of," or discovered, Chichen Itza, and hither the people removed about the middle of the fifth century, only to abandon it after a century or more in order to occupy Chacanputun, on the Bay of Campeche. Two hundred and sixty years later this seat was lost, and the Itza returned, about the year 970 a. d., to Chichen Itza, while a member of the Tutul-Xiu founded Uxmal, these two cities joining with Mayapan to form the triple league which, for more than two centuries, was to bring peace and prosperity and the climax of its civilization to northern Yucatan. This happy condition was ended by "the treachery of Hunac Ceel," who introduced foreign warriors (Mexicans, as their names indicate) into Chichen Itza, overthrew its ruler, Chac Xib Chac, and caused a state of anarchy. For a brief period power centred[Pg 129] in Mayapan, which ruled with something like order, until "by the revolt of the Itza" it also lost its position and was finally depopulated in 1442, this disaster being closely followed by plagues, wars, and a terrific storm, accompanied by inundation, all of which carried the destruction forward.

This reconstruction of northern Yucatec history, however, gives no clue to the origin or life of the cities of the south—Palenque, Piedras Negras, and Yaxchilan in the lower central valley of the Usumacintla; Seibal on its upper reaches, not far from Lake Peten, near which are the ruins of Tikal and Naranjo; while, south-east of these, Copan, on the river of the same name, and Quirigua mark the boundaries of Mayan power toward Central America. These cities had been long in ruins at the time of the Conquest; their builders were forgotten, and their sites were hardly known; nor do the sparse traditions which have survived in the south—the Cakchiquel Annals and the Popul Vuh—throw light upon them. Were it not for the ingenuity of scholars, who have deciphered the numeral and dating system of their many monuments, their period would have remained but vague surmise; nor would this have sufficed without the aid of the Tutul-Xiu chronicles to bring the readings within the range of our own chronological system. The problem is by no means a simple one, even when the dates on the monuments have been read; for the southern centres employed a system—the "long count," as it is called—of which only a single monumental specimen, a lintel at Chichen Itza, has been discovered in the north. Nevertheless, with the aid of this inscription, and with the probable identification of its date in the light of the Books of Chilam Balam, scholars have arrived at something like consensus as to the period of the southern floruit of Mayan culture. This falls within the ninth Maya cycle (160 a. d. to 554 a. d., on Spinden's reckoning), for it is a remarkable fact that practically all the monuments of the south are of this cycle; and as the archaeological evidence indicates an occupancy of nearly two centuries for[Pg 130] several of the cities, it is clear that the southern civilization, like the northern of a later day, was marked by the contemporaneous rise of several great centres. Morley[77] suggests that the south may even have been held by a league of three cities, as was later the case in the north, Palenque dominating the west, Tikal the centre and north, and Copan the south and east. Two archaic inscriptions—on the Tuxtla Statuette and the Leiden Plate, as the relics are called—bear dates of the eighth cycle, the earlier falling a century or more before the beginning of our era; and these, no doubt, imply a nascent civilization which was to reach the height of its power in the fifth century, when the cities of the south produced those masterpieces of sculpture which mark the climax of an American aboriginal art, which was to disappear, a century later, leaving scarcely a memory in the land of its origin.

As restored by Morley,[78] the history of Mayan civilization falls into two periods of imperial development, each subdivided into several epochs. The older, or parent empire is that of the south; the later, formed by colonization begun while the old civilization was still flourishing, is that of the peninsula. Morley's scheme is as follows:

Map of Yucatan, showing sites of ancient cities. After Morley, BBE 57, Plate I.

Each of the earlier periods is marked by the appearance of new sites and the foundation of new cities as well as by advance[Pg 131] in the arts; and as a whole the Old Empire is marked by the high development of its sculpture and the use of the more complete mode of reckoning, while in the cities of the New Empire architecture attains to its highest development.

Such are the more plausible theories of Mayan culture history, although there are others (those of Brasseur de Bourbourg, for example) which would place the age of Mayan greatness earlier by many centuries.

From their remote beginnings, as with other peoples whose traditions lead back to an age of migrations, the Mayan tribes remembered culture heroes, tutors in the arts as well as founders of empire, priests as well as kings, who may have been historic,[79] but who in origin were probably gods rather than men—gods whom time had confused with the persons of their priestly or royal worshippers, and in whose deeds cosmic and historic events were distortedly intermingled. Tales of three such heroes hold a central place in Mayan mythology: Votan, the hero of Tzental legend, whose name is associated with Palenque and the tradition of a great "Votanic Empire" of times long past; Zamna, or Itzamna, a Yucatec hero; and Kukulcan, known to the Quiché as Gucumatz, who is the Mayan equivalent of Quetzalcoatl. All three of these hero-deities are reputed to have come from afar—strange in costume and in custom,—to have been the inventors or teachers of writing, and to have founded new cults.

The Tzental legend of Votan,[80] describing him as having appeared from across the sea, declares that when he reached Laguna de Términos he named the country "the Land of Birds and Game" because of the abundant life of the region; and thence the Votanides ascended the Usumacinta valley, ultimately founding their capital at Palenque, whose older and perhaps original name was Nachan, or "House of Snakes." Shortly[Pg 132] afterward, no less astonishing to the Votanides than had been their own apparition to the rude aboriginal, came other boatloads of long-robed strangers, the first Nahuatlans; but these were peaceably amalgamated into the new empire. Votan ruled many years, and, among other works, composed a narrative of the origin of the Indian nations, of which Ordoñez y Aguiar gives a summary. The chief argument of the work, he says, aims to show that Votan was descended from Imos (one of the genii, or guardians, of the days), that he was of the race of Chan, the Serpent, and that he took his origin from Chivim. Being the first man whom God had sent to this region, which we call America, to people and divide the lands, he made known the route which he had followed, and after he had established his seat, he made divers journeys to Valum-Chivim. These were four in number: in the first he related that having departed from Valum-Votan, he set out toward the House of Thirteen Serpents and then went to Valum-Chivim, whence he passed by the city where he beheld the House of God being built. He next visited the ruins of the ancient edifice which men had erected at the command of their common ancestor in order to climb to the sky; and he declared that those with whom he there conversed assured him that that was the place where God had given to each tribe its own particular tongue. He affirmed that on his return from the House of God he went forth a second time to examine all the subterranean regions which he had passed, and the signs to be found there, adding that he was made to traverse a subterranean road which, leading beneath the Earth and terminating at the roots of the Sky, was none other than the hole of a snake; and this he entered because he was "the Son of the Serpent."

Ordoñez would like to see in this legend (which he has obviously accommodated to his desire) a record of historical wanderings in and from Old World lands and out of Biblical times. Yet the narrative, even in its garbled form, is clearly a cosmologic myth—at the least a tale of the sun's journey, and[Pg 133] probably this tale set in the general context of Ages of the World (the four journeys of Votan?) analogous to those of Nahuatlan myth and of the Popul Vuh. When it is added that Votan was known by the epithet "Heart of the People," that his successor was called Canam-Lum ("Serpent of the Earth"), and that both of these were venerated as gods at the time of the Conquest, no word need be added to emphasize the naturalistic character of the myth; although there may be truth in a legend of Votanides, or Votan-worshippers, as founders of Palenque and possibly as institutors of Mayan civilization.

Zamna (Itzamna, Yzamna, "House of the Dews," or "Lap of the Dews")[81] was the reputed bringer of civilization into the peninsula and the traditional founder of Mayapan, which he was said to have made a centre of feudal rule. Like Votan he was supposed to have been the first to name the localities of the land, to have invented writing, and to have instructed the barbarous aborigines in the arts. "With the populations which came from the East," Cogolludo writes, "was a man, called Zamna, who was as their priest, and who, they say, was the one who gave the names by which they now distinguish, in their language, all the seaports, hills, estuaries, coasts, mountains, and other parts of the country, which assuredly is an admirable thing if he thus made a division of every part of the land, of which scarcely an inch has not its proper appellation in their tongue." After having lived to a great age, Zamna is said to have been buried at Izamal, where his tomb-temple became a centre for pilgrimage. In fact, Izamal is but a modification of a name of Itzamna, since its older form is Itzmatul, which means, says the Abbé Brasseur, "He who asks or obtains the dew or the frost." The ancients of Izamal, Lizana declares, possessed a renowned idol, Ytzmatul, which "had no other name ... although it was said that he was a powerful king in this region, to whom obedience was given as to the son of the gods. When he was asked how he was named and how he should be addressed, he answered only, Ytzen caan, ytzen muyal,[Pg 134] 'I am the dew, the substance, of the sky and clouds.'"

All this is plain euhemerism, for Itzamna was a deity of rain and fertility; Yucatan, it is said, was without moisture when he came to it; he rose from the sea; and his temples and his tomb were by the seaside. His festival, according to Landa, fell in Mac (March), when he was worshipped in company with the gods of abundance. He caused the dead to rise and cured the sick; while in his honour a temple was built with four doors leading to the four extremities of the country, as far as Guatemala, Tabasco, and Chiapas, this shrine being called Kab-ul, or "the Potent Hand,"—a striking image of the sky-deity reaching down from heaven, of which there are analogues in Egypt and Peru. Both Landa and Lizana state that he was the son of Hunab-Ku ("the Holy One"), "the one living and true God, who, they said, is the greatest of the gods, and who cannot be figured or represented because he is incorporeal.... From him everything proceeds,... and he has a son whom they name Hun Ytzamna." All this indicates a deity of the descending rains and dews, son of Father Heaven, and, through his association with the East, giver of life, light, and knowledge. Students of the codices believe that he is represented by "God D"—the aged divinity with the Roman nose and toothless mouth, associated (as is Tlaloc) with the double-headed serpent, which is clearly a sky-symbol. Perhaps, as Seler suggests, he is the "Grandfather Above," the Lord of life, analogous to the Mexican Tonacatecutli.[82]

As has been indicated, the worship of Kukulcan,[83] to whom tradition ascribed the latest appearance of the three culture heroes, was especially associated with Chichen Itza and Mayapan, and perhaps with Nahua immigrations. His name, like that of the Quiché demiurge Gucumatz, means "Plumed Serpent" and is a precise equivalent of "Quetzalcoatl"—the first element referring directly to the long and iridescent plumes of the quetzal. The frequency of bird-serpent symbols in Maya[Pg 135] art, regarded as emblematic of this deity, as well as images, both in the codices and on the monuments, of the long-nosed god himself, indicate a deep-seated and fervent worship, so that it may indeed be an open question as to whether Kukulcan is the pattern or the copy of Quetzalcoatl, with the probabilities favoring the Maya source. Certainly it is significant that, as Tozzer tells us, his name still survives among the Yucatec Maya, while to the Lacandones he is a many-headed snake which dwells with the great father, Nohochakyum: "this snake is killed and eaten only at the time of great national peril, as during an eclipse of the moon and especially that of the sun."

The importance of Kukulcan in the peninsula is indicated by Landa's description of his festival, which occurred on the sixteenth day of Xul (October 24). Upon Kukulcan's departure, says Landa (who clearly regarded the god as an historical personage), there were some Indians who believed that he had ascended into heaven, and regarding him as a god, they built temples in his honour. After the destruction of Mayapan, however, his feasts were kept only in the province of Mani, "but the other districts, turn by turn, in recognition of what was due to Kukulcan, presented each year at Mani sometimes four, sometimes five, magnificent feather banners with which they celebrated the fête." This festival was observed in the following manner: After fasts and abstinences, the lords and priests of Mani assembled before the multitude; and on the evening of the festal day, together with a great number of mummers, they issued from the palace of the prince, proceeding slowly to the temple of Kukulcan, which had been properly adorned. When they had reached it and had prayed, they erected their banners, setting forth their idols on a carpet of leafage; and having lighted a new fire, they burned incense in many places, making oblations of meat cooked without seasoning and of drink made from beans and the seeds of gourds. The lords and all who had observed the fast remained there five days and five nights, praying, burning copal, and[Pg 136] performing sacred dances, during which period the mummers went from the house of one noble to that of another, performing their acts and receiving the gifts offered them. At the end of five days they carried their donations to the temple, where they shared all with the lords, the singers, the priests, and the dancers; and after this the banners and idols (doubtless household gods) were taken again to the palace of the prince, whence each returned to his own house. "They say and hold for certain that Kukulcan descended from the sky the last day of the feast and personally received the sacrifices, the penitences, and the offerings made in his honour."

For the names of the Maya gods we are mainly indebted to sparse notices in the works of Landa and Lizana, who, in obliterating native writings, destroyed far more than they preserved. Landa[84] gives a general picture of the aboriginal religion, indicating a ritual not less elaborate than the Mexican, though with far less human bloodshed. "They had," he says, "a great number of idols and of sumptuous temples. Besides the ordinary shrines, princes, priests, and chief men had oratories with household idols, where they made special prayers and offerings. They had as much devotion for Cozumel and the wells of the Chichen Itza as we for pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem; and they went to visit them and make offerings as we go to holy places.... They had such a number of idols that their gods did not suffice them; for there was not an animal nor a reptile of which they did not make images, and they formed them also in the likeness of their gods and goddesses. They had some idols of stone, but in small number, and others, of lesser size, of wood, though not so many as of earthenware. The idols in wood were esteemed to such a degree as to be counted for inheritances, and in them they had the greatest confidence. They were not at all ignorant that their idols were[Pg 137] only the work of their own hands, dead things and without divinity, but they venerated them for the sake of what they represented and because of the rites with which they had consecrated them."

Tablet of the Foliated Cross, Palenque. This cross, like that shown in Plate XX (B), rests upon a monstrous head, doubtless representing the Underworld, and is surmounted by the quetzal, the symbol of rain and vegetation. It is possible that the greater of the two human figures represents a deity, the lesser a priest, or that both are divinities as in the analogous figures of the codices (cf. Plate IX, upper figure). After drawing in Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

Tablet of the Cross, Palenque. The cross was encountered as an object of worship on the Island of Cozumel by the first-coming Spaniards. Cruciform figures of several types are of frequent occurrence as cosmic symbols in Mexican and Mayan art. With this plate and with Plate XX (A) should be compared Plates VI and IX. After drawing in Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

Tablet of the Sun, Palenque. The two caryatid-like figures beneath the solar symbol doubtless represent the upbearers of the heavens (cf. Plate IX, lower figure). After drawing in Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

Among the deities mentioned by Landa are the Chacs, or "gods of abundance," whose feasts were held in the spring of the year in connexion with the four Bacab, or deities of the Quarters; and again in association with Itzamna at the great March festival designed to obtain water for the crops, when the hearts of every kind of wild animal and reptile were offered in sacrifice. The Chacs were evidently rain-gods, like the Mexican Tlaloque, with a ruler, Chac, corresponding to Tlaloc. The name was likewise applied to four old men annually chosen to assist the priests in the festivals, and from Landa's descriptions of the parts played by them it is clear that they represented the genii of the Quarters.

Other divinities who are named include Ekchuah (also mentioned by Cogolludo and Las Casas), to whom travellers prayed and burned copal: "At night, wherever they rested, they erected three small stones, depositing upon each of these some grains of their incense, while before them they placed three other flat stones on which they put more incense, entreating the god which they name Ekchuah that he would deign to bring them safely home." There were, again, medicine-gods, Cit-Bolon-Tum and Ahau-Chamahez, names which Brasseur de Bourbourg[85] interprets as meaning respectively "Boar-with-the-Nine-Tusks" and "Lord-of-the-Magic-Tooth." There were gods of the chase; gods of fisher folk; gods of maize, as Yum Kaax ("Lord of Harvests"), of cocoa; and no doubt of all other food plants. Of the annual feasts, the most significant appear to have been the New Year's consecration of the idols in the month Pop (July); the great medicine festival, with devotion to hunters' and fishermen's gods, in Zip (September); the festival of Kukulcan in Xul (October); the fabrication of new idols in Mol (December); the Ocna, or renovation of the[Pg 138] temple in honour of the gods of the fields, in Yax (January); the interesting expiation for bloodshed—"for they regarded as abominable all shedding of blood apart from sacrifice"—in Zac (February); the rain-prayer to Itzamna and the Chacs, in March (mentioned above); and the Pax (May) festival in which the Nacon, or war-chief, was honoured, and at which the Holkan-Okot, or "Dance of the Warriors," was probably the notable feature. The war-god is represented in the codices with a black line upon his face, supposed to represent war-paint, and is often shown as presiding over the body of a sacrificial victim; while with him is associated not only the death-god, Ahpuch, but another grim deity, the "Black Captain," Ek Ahau.

Celestial divinities were probably numerous in the Maya pantheon, as was almost inevitable in view of the extraordinary development of astronomical observation. Xaman Ek was the North Star, while Venus was Noh Ek, the Great Star. The Sun, according to Lizana,[86] was worshipped at Izamal as Kinich-Kakmo, the "Fiery-Visaged Sun"; and the macaw was his symbol, for, they said, "the Sun descends at midday to consume the sacrifice as the macaw descends in plumage of many colours." In view of all the fire thus came at noon upon the altars, after which the priest prophesied what should come to pass, especially by way of pestilence, famine, and death. "The Yucatec have an excessive fear of death," says Landa, "as may be seen in all their rites with which they honour their gods, which have no other end than to obtain health and life and their daily bread"; and he continues with a description of the abode of blessed souls, a land of food, drink, and sweet savours, where "there is a tree which they call Yaxche, of an admirable freshness under the shady branches of which they will enjoy eternal pleasure.... The pains of a wicked-life consist in a descent to a place still lower which they call Mitnal, there to be tormented by demons and to suffer the tortures of hunger, cold, famine, and sorrow." The lord of this hell is[Pg 139] Hanhau; and the future life, good or bad, is eternal, for the life of souls has no end. "They hold it as certain that the souls of those who hang themselves go to paradise, there to be received by Ixtab, goddess of the hanged"; and many ended their lives in this manner for but light reason such as a disappointment or an illness.

The image of Ixtab, with body limp and head in a loop, as if hanged, is one of those recognized in the codices; for in default of mythic tales, few of which are preserved concerning the Yucatec gods, these codex drawings and the monumental images furnish our main clues to the Maya pantheon. Following the suggestion of Schellhas,[87] it is customary to designate the codical deities (nameless, or uncertainly named) by letters. Thus, God A is represented with visible vertebrae and skull head, and is therefore identified as the death-god, named Hanhau in Landa's account, Ahpuch by Hernández, and Yum Cimil ("Lord of Death") by the Yucatec of today. Death is occasionally shown as an owl-headed deity, and is also associated with the moan-bird (a kind of screech-owl), with the god of war, and with a being that is dubiously identified as a divinity of frost and of sin. God B, whose image occurs most frequently of all in the codices, and who is represented with protruding teeth, a pendulous nose, and lolling tongue, is closely connected with the serpent and with symbols of the meteorological elements and of the cardinal points; and is regarded as representing Kukulcan. God C, the "god with the ornamented face," is a sky-deity, tentatively identified with the North Star, or perhaps with the constellation of the Little Bear. God D, the old divinity with the Roman nose and the toothless jaws, is regarded by Schellhas as a god of the moon or of the night, although in him other scholars see Itzamna, regarded as a sun-deity. God E is the maize-god, probably Yum Kaax, or "Lord of Harvests"; God F is the deity of war; and with him is sometimes associated God M, the "black god with the red lips," perhaps Ekchuah, the divinity of merchants[Pg 140] and travellers, for war and commerce are connected in the New World as in the Old.

These seven deities are those of most frequent occurrence in the codices, though the full list, which surely gives a general picture of the Maya pantheon, includes also God G, the sun-god God H, the Chicchan-god (or serpent-deity); God I, a water-goddess; God K, the "god with the ornamented nose"; God L, the "old black god," perhaps related to M; God N, the "god of the end of the year"; God O, a goddess with the face of an old woman; and God P, a frog-god. Others are animal deities,—the dog, jaguar, vulture, tortoise, and, in differing shapes of representation, the panther, deer, peccary, bat, and many forms of birds and animals.

Not a few of these ancient deities hold among the Maya of today something of their ancient dignity: they are slightly degraded, not utterly overthrown by the intervention of Catholic Christianity. At least this is the picture given by Tozzer as result of his researches among the Yucatac villagers. According to them, he says,[88] there are seven heavens above the earth, each pierced by a hole at its center. A giant ceiba, growing in the exact center of the earth, rears its branches through the holes of the heavens until it reaches the seventh, where lives El Gran Dios of the Spaniards; and it is by means of this tree that the spirits of the dead ascend from heaven to heaven. Below this topmost Christianized heaven, dwell the spirits, under the rule of El Gran Dios, which are none other than the ancient Maya gods. In the sixth heaven are the bearded old men, the Nukuchyumchakob, or Yumchakob, white-haired and very fond of smoking, who are the lords of rain and the protectors of human beings—apparently the Chacs of the earlier chroniclers, though the description of them would seem to imply that Kukulcan is of their number; perhaps originally he was their lord; now they receive their orders from El Gran Dios.

In the fifth heaven above dwell the protecting spirits of the[Pg 141] fields and the forests; in the fourth the protectors of animals; in the third the spirits ill-disposed toward men; in the second the lords of the four winds; while in the first above the earth reside the Yumbalamob, for the special protection of Christians. These latter are invisible during the day, but at night they sit beside the crosses reared at the entrances of the pueblos, one for each of the cardinal points, protecting the villagers from the dangers of the forest. With obsidian knives they cut through the wind, and make sounds by which they signal to their comrades stationed at other entrances to the town. Truly, this description answers astonishingly to the Aztec lord of the crossroads, Tezcatlipoca.

Below the earth is Kisin, the earthquake, the evil one, who resents the chill rains sent down by the Yumchakob, and raises a wind to clear the sky. The spirits of suicides dwell here also, and all souls excepting those of war-slain men and women dead of child-birth (which go directly to heaven) are doomed for a time to this underworld realm.

Other diminished deities are Ahkinshok, the owner of the days; the guardians of the bees; the spirit of new fire; Ahkushtal, of birth; Ahmakiq, who locks up the crop-destroying winds; patrons of medicine; and a crowd of workers of ill to men, among them the Shtabai, serpentiform demons who issue from their cavernous abodes and in female form snare men to ruin. Paqok, on the other hand, wanders abroad at night and attacks women. The Yoyolche are also night-walkers; their step is half a league, and they shake the house as they pass.

Tozzer makes the interesting observation that in many cases, where among the Maya is found a class of spirits, the purely heathen Lacandones recognize a single god. Thus, to the Nukuchyumchakob of the Maya corresponds the Lacandone Nohochakyum, who is the Great Father and chief god of their religion, having as his servants the spirits of the east, the constellations, and the thunder. At the end of the world he will wear around his body the serpent Hapikern, who will draw[Pg 142] people to him by his breath and slay them. Nohochakyum is one of four brothers, apparently lords of the four quarters. As is usual in such groups, he of the east is pre-eminent. Usukun, one of the brothers, is a cave-dweller, having the earthquake for his servant; he is regarded with dread, and his image is set apart from the other gods. There are a number of other gods and goddesses of the Lacandones, several of which are clearly identifiable as the same as the Maya deities described by Landa and other early writers. As a whole, the pantheon is a humane one; it lacks that quality of terror which makes hideous the congregation of the Aztec deities. Most of the gods, Maya and Lacandone, are kindly-disposed toward men, and doubtless it was this kindliness reflected back which kept the Maya altars relatively free of human blood.

No region in America appears to have furnished so many or such striking analogies to Christian ritual and symbolism as did the Mayan. It was here, on the island of Cozumel, that the cross was an object of veneration even at the first coming of the Spaniard; and when the rites of the natives were studied by the missionaries, they were found to include many that seemed to be Christian in inspiration. Bishop Landa[89] describes at length the Yucatec baptism, which was designated by a name equivalent, he says, to renascor—"for in the Yucatec tongue zihil means to be reborn"—and which was celebrated in a complex festival, godfather and all. The name of the rite was Em-Ku, or "Descent of God"; and, he adds, "They believe that they receive therefrom a disposition inclined to good conduct and that it guarantees them from all temptations of the devil with respect to temporal things, while by means of this rite and a good life they hope to secure salvation." Sacraments of various sorts, confession of sins, penitence, penance, and pilgrimages to holy shrines were other ritual similarities[Pg 143] with Catholic Christianity which could not fail to be impressive and which actually furthered the change of religion with a minimum of friction.

Along with these analogies of ritual there were likenesses of belief: traditions of a deluge, a confusion of tongues, and a dispersion of peoples, as well as reminiscences of legendary teachers of the arts of life and of the truths of religion in which it was not difficult for the eye of faith to discern the missionary labours of Saint Thomas. Las Casas,[90] quoting a certain cleric, Padre Francisco Hernández, tells of a Yucatec trinity: one of their old men, when asked as to their ancient religion, said that "they recognized and believed in God who dwells in heaven, and that this God was Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Father was called Içona, who had created men and all things, that the Son was named Bacab, and that he was born of a virgin called Chibirias, who is in heaven with God; the Holy Spirit they termed Echuac." The son, Bacab, it is added, being scourged and crowned with thorns by one Eopuco, was tied upon a cross with extended arms, where he died; but after three days he arose and ascended into heaven to be with his father. The name Echuac signifies "merchant"; "and good merchandise the Holy Spirit bore to this world, for He filled the earth with gifts and graces so divine and so abundant."

The honesty of this account is no less evident than its distortion, which may have been due as much to the confused reminiscences of the old Indian as to the imaginative expectancy of the Spanish recorder. Bacab and Ekchuah are mentioned by Landa and others, and Las Casas also states that the mother of Chibirias was named Hischen (que nosotros decimos haber sido Sant' Ana), who must surely be the goddess Ixchel, goddess of fecundity, invoked at child-birth. The association of the Bacabs (for there are four of them) with the cross and with heaven is also intelligible, since the Bacabs are genii of the Quarters, where they upheld the skies and guarded the waters, which were symbolized in rites by water-jars with animal or[Pg 144] human heads. They are, no doubt, in the Maya region as in Mexico, represented by caryatid and cruciform figures, of which, we may suppose, the celebrated Tablet of the Cross and Tablet of the Foliate Cross at Palenque are examples.

Stone Lintel from Menché, Chiapas, representing a Maya priest asperging a penitent who is drawing a barbed cord through his tongue. After photograph in the Peabody Museum.

The character of the Bacab is best indicated by Landa's[91] description of the New Year festival celebrated for them; and he calls them "four brothers whom God, when creating the world, had placed at its four corners in order to uphold the heaven ... though some say that these Bacabs were among those who were saved when the earth was destroyed in the Deluge." In all the Yucatec cities there were, Landa states, four entrances toward the four points, each marked by two huge stones opposite one another; and each of the four successive years designated by a different New Year's sign was introduced by rites performed at the stones marking the entrance appropriate to the year. Thus Kan years were devoted to the south. The omen of this year was called Hobnil, and the festival began with the fabrication of a statue of Kan-u-Uayeyab which was placed with the stones of the south, while a second idol, called Bolon-Zacab, was erected at the principal entrance of the chief's house. When the populace had assembled they proceeded, along a path well-swept and adorned with greenery, to the gate of the south, where priests and nobles, burning incense mingled with maize, sacrificed a fowl. This done, they placed the statue upon a litter of yellow wood, "and upon its shoulders an angel—horribly fashioned and painted—as a sign of an abundance of water and of a good year to come." Dancing, they conveyed the litter to the presence of the statue of Bolon-Zacab at the chief's house, where further offerings were made and a banquet was shared by such strangers as might be within the gates. "Others drawing blood and scarifying their ears, anointed a stone which was there, an idol named Kanal-Acantun; and they moulded also a heart of bread-dough and another of gourd-seeds which they presented to the idol Kan-u-Uayeyab. Thus they guarded this[Pg 145] statue and the other during the unlucky days, smoking them with incense and with incense mingled with ground maize for they believed that if they neglected these rites, they would be subject to the ills pertaining to this year. When the unlucky days were past, they carried the image of Bolon-Zacab to the temple, and the idol of the other to the eastern gate of the town, that there they might begin the New Year; and leaving it in this place, they returned home, each occupying himself with the duties of the New Year." This was regarded as a year of good augury; and similar rites were performed in connexion with each of the other year-signs. Under Muluc the omen was called Canzienal and was also regarded as good. It was the year of the east, and the gate was marked by an idol named Chac-u-Uayeyab, while the deity presiding at the chief's house was termed Kinich-Ahau, the meaning of which must be "Lord of the Solar Eye" if Brasseur's interpretation be correct. War-dances were a feature of the celebration, doubtless to Sol Invictus; and offerings made in the form of yolks of eggs further suggest solar symbolism; while it was believed that eye-disease or injury would be the lot of anyone who neglected the rites. Ix years were devoted to the north, with an omen called Zac-Ciui and regarded as evil. The god of the quarter was named Zac-u-Uayeyab, and he of the centre Yzamna, to whom were offered turkeys' heads, quails' feet, etc. Cotton was the sole crop in which abundance was to be expected, while ills of all sorts threatened. Darker still were the prognostics of Hozanek, the omen of Cauac years, sacred to the west. An image of Ek-u-Mayeyab was carried to the portals of the west, while Uac-Mitun-Ahau presided in the central place; and on a green and black litter the god of the gate was carried to the centre, having on his shoulders a calabash and a dead man, with an ash-coloured bird of prey above. "This they conveyed in a manner showing devotion mingled with distress, performing dances which they called Xibalba-Okot, which signifies 'dance of the demon.'" Pests of ants and devouring birds[Pg 146] were among the plagues expected; and among the rites by which they sought to exorcise these evils was a night of bonfires, through the hot coals of which they raced with bare feet, hoping thus to expiate the threatened ills, all ending in an intoxication "demanded both by custom and by the heat of the fire."

It is probable that the Mexican calendar is remotely of Mayan origin, especially as the fundamental features of the calendric system are the same in the two regions; viz., first, the combination of the Tonalamatl of two hundred and sixty days with the year of three hundred and sixty-five days in a "round" or "bundle," of fifty-two such years; and second, the co-ordination of cyclic returns of calendric symbols with the synodic periods of the planets, serving, along with purely numerical counts, to distinguish and characterize the major cycles. It is in this second feature that the Maya calendar is vastly superior to the Mexican; forming, indeed, by far the most impressive achievement of aboriginal America in the way of scientific conception.

The Mayan name for the period known to the Aztec as Xiuhmolpilli, or "Bundle of the Years," is unknown; it is customarily designated as the Calendar Round. In construction it is essentially the same as the Mexican: the day, kin (literally, "sun"), is combined in the twenty-day period, or uinal (probably related to uinic, "man," referring to the foundation of the vigesimal system in the full count of fingers and toes); and thirteen of these periods are united in the Tonalamatl (the Maya name is unknown), which Goodman designates the "Burner Period," believing it to be ceremonially related to incense burning. As the combination of thirteen numerals with the twenty day-signs causes the completion of their possible combinations in this period, the series, as with the Mexicans, begins anew at the end of the Tonalamatl; and is so continued, repeating[Pg 147] indefinitely. The names of the Maya days, corresponding to the twenty signs, are: Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Eznab, Cauac, and Ahau. Each of these day-signs (and probably each of the thirteen numbers accompanying them) had its divinatory significance; and it is quite certain, from Landa's references alone, that divination formed a prominent use of calendric codices.

The year, or haab, of the Maya, again like the Mexican, consisted of eighteen uinals—Pop, Uo, Zip, Zotz, Tzec, Xul, Yaxkin, Mol, Chen, Yax, Zac, Ceh, Mac, Kankin, Muan, Pax, Kayab, and Cumhu,—plus five "nameless days," or Uayeb. This year of three hundred and sixty-five days is, of course, a quarter of a day less than the true year, and such astronomers as the Maya must have been could not have failed to discover this fact. Bishop Landa states explicitly that they were quite aware of it; but they did not, in all probability, resort to any intercalation to correct the defect, for the whole genius of the Mayan calendar consists in their unswerving maintenance of the count of days. On the other hand, it is probable that the priests who made the solar observations adjusted the seasonal feasts to the changing dates as in the precisely similar custom of ancient Egypt, where each ascending Pharaoh swore to preserve the civil year of three hundred and sixty-five days without intercalation: the immense power and prestige given to the priesthood by this custom is a sufficient reason for its perpetuity. The fact that 20 (uinal) and 365 (haab) factor with 5 gives, again, the division of the uinal days into groups of five, each headed by one of the four—Ik, Manik, Eb, and Caban—which alone could be New Year's days.

The names of the "month," or divisions of the year, like the names of the uinal days, were symbolized by hieroglyphs, and the days of the month were numbered 0 to 19, since in their reckoning of time the Maya always counted that which had elapsed. Thus every day had a double designation: its position[Pg 148] in the Tonalamatl, determined by day-sign and day-number (1 ... 13), and its position in the haab, determined by "month"-sign (uinal or Uayeb) and day-number (0 ... 19), as, for example, the date-name of the Maya Era, "4 Ahau 8 Cumhu." The possible combinations of these elements is exhausted only in a cycle of 18,980 days, equal to 73 Tonalamatls and to 52 haabs. This is the Calendar Round, or cycle of date-names, which, like the other elements in the Maya calendar, is endlessly repeated. It is probable that the Aztec had no such precision in their dating system even within the Year-Bundle, evidence for the employment of month-signs in computation of the day-series being uncertain.

In yet another important respect the Maya were far in advance of the Mexicans, for the latter had no adequate means of distinguishing dates of the same name belonging to separate Year-Bundles, in consequence of which their historic records are full of confusion; whereas the Maya developed an elaborate method—still, curiously enough, a day-count—parallel with the Calendar Round series, by which they were able to record historic dates for immense periods. The system was essentially mathematical and was based on their vigesimal notation, its elements being as follows:

In this series, it will be observed, the third day-group does not rise from the second by vigesimal multiplication; and it is assumed that it has been, as it were, psychologically deflected from the regular ascending series by the attraction of the 18 uinals of the natural year in order to bring the tun into some kind of conformity with the haab. Beyond the katun, the[Pg 149] native names for the cycles are unknown, though their symbols have been determined.

The series of units of time thus composed is that employed by the Maya of Yucatan, as recovered from the early Spanish records and the codices. In this region the katun was the historical unit of prime significance, for both Landa and Cogolludo note the fact that at the end of every katun a graven stone was erected or laid in the walls of an edifice to record the event. Study of the sculptured stelae of the capitals and cities of the Old Empire of the south has convinced archaeologists that these stelae are similarly, in great part, monuments erected not primarily to honor men or commemorate events but to mark the passage of time. The units, however, as recorded from readings of the dates, are not primarily katuns (of 7200 days), but halves and quarters of the katun. Morley,[93] to whom belongs credit of the demonstration of the system, gives to these lesser periods the names hotun ("five tuns," or 1800 days) and lahuntun ("ten tuns," or 3600 days). The amazing monumental wealth, therefore, of the old Maya cities turns out to be chiefly due to the importance which the Maya peoples attached to the idea of time itself and to the recording of its passage.

Such an idea could only have reference to religious or mythico-religious beliefs, of the nature of which something is to be inferred from the monumental and codical indications of the cycles and the Great Cycle which entered into Maya computations. The cycle is clearly a conception induced by the necessities of vigesimal notation, with, no doubt, mythic associations suggested by its pictographic notation; it is a period of twenty katuns, just as the katun is twenty tuns. But the duration of the Great Cycle is matter of dispute. Bowditch and Goodman, basing their judgment on the fact that the cycles in the inscriptions are numbered 1 ... 13, and again upon the fact that the two known starting-points, or eras, of Maya monumental chronology are just thirteen cycles apart,[Pg 150] regard the Great Cycle as composed of thirteen cycles; Morley, chiefly from evidence in the codices, believes that it was composed of twenty cycles. It is possible, of course, that the conception of the Great Cycle changed from the time of the Old Empire to that of the New, perhaps influenced by the change in the period of erecting monumental records; but in any case the immense numbers of days embraced in the Maya reckonings excite our wonder. Such calculations could have been made possible only by the use of a highly developed arithmetical system, and this the Maya possessed; for they had developed a positional notation, employing a sign for zero, a system of dots and bars for the integers 1 ... 19, while the conception of positive and negative was achieved through the use of these elements recorded vertically—units above zero, twenties above the units, tuns in the third position upward, and so on. The tun (= 360) is an obvious calendric number, and this makes clear that the Maya certainly developed the higher possibilities of their mode of computation in connexion with the needs of their reckoning of time. The perfection of their achievement is indicated by the fact that through its use they were enabled to distinguish any date within the range of a Great Cycle from any other, thus creating a numbered time-scheme which in our own system would be measured by millenia.

To complete its historical value only one element need be added, the selection of an era from which to reckon dates. Two such eras are known, one bearing the name 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, and the other (found in only two inscriptions) that of 4 Ahau 8 Zotz, this falling thirteen cycles earlier than the other. The former, from which nearly all the monumental inscriptions are reckoned, is some three thousand years anterior to the period of the inscriptions themselves and probably, therefore, refers to an event in the third millennium b. c., assuming that the monuments belong to the first thousand years[Pg 151] of our era. It is altogether unlikely that a date so remote can represent any but a mythical event, such, we may suppose, as the end of a preceding "Sun," or Age of the World, and the beginning of that in which we live; for the Maya, like the Nahua, possessed the myth of ages of this type. Cogolludo mentions two of these ages as terminated by annihilation of the human race through epidemic, and a third as ended by storm and flood; while Landa's account of the calamities following the destruction of Mayapan seems clearly to be intermingled with a myth of world catastrophes. The Popul Vuh shows that the character of the Quiché legend was not essentially unlike that of the Aztec, who may, indeed, have received from the Maya their cosmogony along with their calendric system, of which it is doubtless in some degree a product.

Astronomical data must have entered into the calculation of these great epochs. Förstemann and other students have discovered in the codices, particularly in the Dresden Codex, evidences of the reckoning of the period not only of Venus (five hundred and eighty-four days), but also of lunar revolutions, of the period of Mars (seven hundred and eighty days), and possibly of the cycles Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury as well. Such periods, for astrological and divinatory purposes, were recorded in the books of the priests; and, as elsewhere in the world, the synodic revolutions of the planets, and the recurrences of their stations with respect to the day-signs, gave the material for the formation of huge cycles of time which their mathematical system enabled them to compute. Thus it is that Förstemann finds near the end of the Dresden Codex vast numbers—designated as "Serpent Numbers" because of the occurrence of the serpent-symbol in connexion with them—which correspond to such cyclic recombinations of signs and events.

"In the so-called 'serpent numbers,'" writes Morley,[94] "a grand total of nearly twelve and a half million days (about thirty-four thousand years) is recorded again and again. In[Pg 152] these well-nigh inconceivable periods all the smaller units may be regarded as coming at last to a more or less exact close. What matter a few score years one way or the other in this virtual eternity? Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World, for which the highest numbers have paved the way. Here we see the rain serpent, stretching across the sky, belching forth torrents of water. Great streams of water gush from the sun and moon. The old goddess, she of the tiger claws and forbidding aspect, the malevolent patroness of floods and cloudbursts, overturns the bowl of the heavenly waters. The crossbones, dread emblem of death, decorate her skirt, and a writhing snake crowns her head. Below with downward-pointed spears, symbolic of the universal destruction, the black god stalks abroad, a screeching owl raging on his fearsome head. Here, indeed, is portrayed with graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm."

Final page from the Codex Dresdensis showing "Serpent Numbers" and typifying the cataclysms destroying the world. See pages 151-2 for description, and compare Plates XII, XIII, XIV.

In their sculpture the Maya far surpassed the artistic expression of all other Americans, attaining not only decorative power, but such idealization of the human countenance as is possible only among people whose aesthetic sensibilities have an intellectual background and guidance. No more convincing evidence of this mental power could be forthcoming than is shown in their mathematical and astronomical learning, at once a testimony to the antiquity of their culture and to the force of their native genius.

Just as the notion of great astronomical cycles shadowed forth eschatological cataclysms, so it reverted to cyclic aeons of the past in which the world came to its present form. There is no such wealth of creation myth preserved from the ancient Maya as from the Nahua, but enough is recorded to make it clear that the ideas of the two peoples were essentially one: indeed, they clearly belong to a group of cosmogonical[Pg 153] conceptions extending as far to the north as the Pueblos of the United States, and not without influence beyond, into the prairie country. Possibly the whole complex conception had its first telling with the Maya; it is with them, at least, that the numerical and calendric ideas with which it is logically associated received the greatest development and give the most natural raison d'être to the mythic lore.

Something of the nature of the Maya conception is intimated by Cogolludo and Landa, as noted in a preceding paragraph. More is given in Tozzer's account of Maya religion as it is today.[95] According to information obtained from Mayas of Valladolid, the world is now in the fourth period of its existence. In the first, there lived the Saiyamkoob, "the Adjusters," the primitive race of Yucatan, who were dwarfs and built the cities now in ruins. Their work was done in darkness, when as yet there was no sun. When the sun appeared they were turned into stone, and their images are to be found today in the ruins. In this period there was a living rope extending from earth to sky, by which food was brought down to the builders. Blood was in this rope; but the rope was cut, the blood flowed out, and earth and sky were parted. Water-over-the-earth ended this period. It was followed by the age of the Tsolob, "the Offenders"; and these, too, were destroyed by a flood. The third age was that in which the Maya reigned, but their day likewise passed amid waters of destruction, to give place to the present age peopled by a mixture of all the races that have previously dwelt in Yucatan.

It is easy to align these notions with what we know of Mexican myth, though it is evident that history rather than genesis is its present significance. But purely cosmogonic is the fragment from the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel published by Martínez Hernández[96] with its suggestion of the Thirteen Lords of the Day captured by the Nine of the Night as the first great act:

"During the 11 ahau, Ahmucen-cab come [came] to cover[Pg 154] the faces of Oxlahun-ti-ku (thirteen gods); his names were unknown except those of his sister and of his children: and they said that the faces also were equally not visible; then, when the world was made, they knew not that they would be entirely cast away; and Oxlahun-ti-ku was captured by Bolon-ti-ku (nine gods); then he brought down fire; then he brought down salt; then he brought down the stones and trees and came to play with the stones and trees; and Oxlahun-ti-ku was caught and they broke his head and buffeted him, and also carried him on their backs; and they despoiled him of his dragon and his tizne [black paint or soot]; and they took fresh shoots of yaxum and white beans, tuberous roots cut up small, and the heart of small calabash seeds and of large calabash seeds cut up small, and of black beans cut up small. This first Bolon-tsac-cab (nine orders of the world) made a thick covering of seeds and went away to the thirteenth heaven, and the surface of the earth remained formed, and the peaks of the rocks of the world.

"And the heart of Oxlahun-ti-ku went away, the hearts of the tuberous roots refusing to go. And there came women without-fathers, with those who have hard work, the without-husbands, who, although living have no heart; and wrapped in dog's grass, they were buried in the sea.

"All at once came the water after the dragon was carried away. The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that Cantul-ti-ku (four gods), the four Bacab, were those who destroyed it. Then, when the universal destruction was past, they placed as dweller Kan-xib-yúi, to order it anew. And the tree, the white ymix, was placed standing in the north; and he placed the supporting poles of the heaven; and it was said that this tree was the symbol of the universal destruction." Four other trees, each of a different colour, each symbol of a destruction of the world, were planted at the remaining quarters and the centre; and the form of the world was then complete. "'The whole world,' said Ah-uuc-chek-nale[Pg 155] (he who seven times makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he descended to make fruitful Itzam-kab-ain (the female whale with alligator feet), when he came down from the central angle of the heavenly region. The four lights, the four regions of the stars, revolved. As yet there was no light; absolutely there was no sun; absolutely there was no night; absolutely there was no moon. They awoke; and from then began the world. At that instant the world began. Thirteen numeral orders, with seven, is the period since the beginning of the world."

[Pg 156]

By some accident of history the most significant literary records of the Mayan peoples—and, in their way, of any American stock—are not preserved to us from the builders of the monumental cities, the Maya themselves, but from two closely related tribes belonging to the southernmost group of the Mayan race. The Quiché (frequently, Kiché) and the Cakchiquel (or Kakchiquel) dwelt in the mountains of Guatemala overlooking the Pacific, where, except for the Nahuatlan Pipil, to the east of them, their neighbours were other Mayan tribes—the Tzental, the Mame, and their kindred to the west; the Pokonchi, the Kekchi, and others to the north; and the Chorti to the east. It is in the lands of these groups, mountain valleys draining toward the Gulf and the Caribbean, that the ruins of the monumental cities chiefly lie. At the time of the Conquest their sites had long been abandoned, though it must not be supposed that the tribes occupying the land were savage. On the contrary, they lived in well-built, fortified towns, with fine residences for the chiefs and pyramid temples for the service of the gods; but the remains of the cities of the Conquest era have yielded no such wealth of art as has been revealed by the exploration of the homes of the ancestral Maya, nor do the traditions of the tribes who inhabited the region at the coming of the Spaniards throw any light upon the builders of the ancient cities which, indeed, they seem scarcely to have known. Rather, when the Quiché and their kindred entered the land, it appears[Pg 157] to have been long deserted: "Only rabbits and birds were here, they say, when they took possession of the hills and the plains, they, our fathers and ancestors from Tulan, O my children,"—so runs the beginning of the Cakchiquel Annals.[98] These Annals, like the Popul Vuh, or "Sacred Book," of the kindred Quiché, profess to give a migration-legend of the ancestors of the tribe and an account of the historic chiefs, but neither the one record nor the other runs to a remote period; both point to a comparatively recent entrance into an abandoned country, the date of which Brinton would set at less than two centuries anterior to the Conquest; nor is there any certain clue which would associate the Quiché-Cakchiquel histories with those of the contemporary Maya.

The relationship of the two centres of Mayan culture, Yucatec and Guatemalan, is, however, more than merely linguistic and racial. When the Maya of the later days of the Old Empire were pushing northward into the peninsula, exploring and establishing cities, others of their kindred were penetrating the mountains to the south, and the last town of the south to rise and fall (as shown by its dated monuments) was at Quen Santo in the Guatemalan province of Huehuetenango. Whether or not something of the old culture was transmitted through these groups or their descendants, whom, indeed, the Quiché and Cakchiquel may have been, identities of mythic reference make it certain that all Maya groups had some primitive community of experience. Moreover, the southern tribes clearly shared with the northern their literary and artistic bent. The story of the defeat of the Quiché, in the Cakchiquel Annals,[99] tells how the latter slew "the son of the chief jeweller, the treasurer, the secretary, and the chief engraver" of the Quiché monarch—officers whose very character gives the picture of an accomplished society; and it may well be assumed that the literary taste and historic feeling manifest in the Annals and the Popul Vuh are but evidences, literary rather than graphic in character, of the genius which marks the whole Mayan race. Brasseur[Pg 158] de Bourbourg says[100] of the Popul Vuh that "it is composed in a Quiché of great elegance, and its author must have been one of the princes of the royal family," while of the Annals (which he names Mémorial de Tecpan-Atitlan, and which was indeed, in greater part written by a noble, Don Francisco Ernandez Arana Xahila) he declares that "the style is varied and picturesque and frequently contains passages of high animation." The translations of both documents quite sustain these opinions of their literary excellence.

Las Casas, who was as familiar as any man with the general character of native American culture, and especially with that of Guatemala of which he was bishop, gives a general characterization of native learning in his chapter (Apologética História, ccxxxv) on "the books and religious traditions of Guatemala." In the kingdoms and republics of New Spain, he says, "among other offices and officials, were those who acted as chroniclers and historians. They possessed knowledge of the origin of all things relative to religion and to the gods and their cult, as well as of the founders of their cities, of the beginnings of their kings and lords and seignories, of the manner of their election and succession, of how many and what lords and princes had passed away, of their works and actions and memorable deeds, good and bad, and of whatever they had governed well or ill; also, of their great men and good, and of strong and valorous captains, of the wars that they had made, and of how they had distinguished themselves. Moreover, of the first customs and the first comers, of how they had since changed for good or ill, and of all that pertains to history, in order that they might have understanding and remembrance of past events." Furthermore, he adds, these chroniclers kept count of the days, months, and years, and "although they had no writing similar to ours, nevertheless they had figures and characters representing all that they needed to designate, and, by means of these, great books of such clever and ingenious art that we may say that our letters were of no great advantage to[Pg 159] them." The office of chronicler, it is added, was hereditary, or belonged to certain families.

After the Conquest many of the natives who had acquired the alphabet adapted it to their own tongue and recorded their histories in the new characters. Numbers of such books were known to the Spanish writers of the sixteenth century, and it is from these that the Popul Vuh and the Cakchiquel Annals have survived.

The Popul Vuh is the most striking and instructive of the myth-records of primitive America. Other legends are as comprehensive in scope, as varied in material, and as dramatic in form; but no other, in anything like the measure of this document, combines with these qualities the element of critical consciousness, giving the flavour of philosophic reflection which lifts the narrative from the level of mere tale-telling into that of literature. Something of this character is clearly due to the fact that it was written down after the introduction of Christianity by an author, or authors, professing the new faith; yet it is equally clear to a reader of our day that this is not the whole cause, that there is in the aboriginal material itself such an element of deliberate reflection as appears in the Aztec rituals recorded by Sahagun and in some of the Incaic fragments, though scarcely to be found elsewhere in the New World, at least in the myths as they have been preserved to us.

The work is divided into four parts, consciously literary in arrangement. The first recounts the creation of the earth and of the First Peoples, together with the conflicts of the Hero Brothers with Titan-like Earth-giants. The second part depicts the duel of the upper-world heroes with the nether-world demonic powers: an elder pair of Hero Brothers are defeated, later to be avenged by the younger Hero Brothers—the slayers of the Earth-giants—who overcome Death in his own lair and by his own wile. This incident of "the harrowing of[Pg 160] Hell" belongs in mythic chronology to a cycle of events earlier in part than the gigantomachy, and it is obviously for dramatic reasons that the longest book of the Popul Vuh is devoted to it. With the third part the original narrative is resumed, narrating the creation of the ancestors of the present race of men and the rise of the Sun which now rules the world; while the fourth and last part continues the tale, giving myths of cult origins, tribal wars, and finally records of historic rulers, thus satisfying the feeling for consecutiveness and completeness.

Ceremonial precinct or plaza, Quirigua. An altar and three stelae of the Old Empire Maya type are shown. Other monuments are still in situ on this site, among them the "Quirigua Dragon," Plate I (frontispiece). After photograph by Cornell, Lincoln.

"Admirable is the account"—so the narrative opens—"admirable is the account of the time in which it came to pass that all was formed in heaven and upon earth, the quartering of their signs, their measure and alignment, and the establishment of parallels to the skies and upon the earth to the four quarters, thereof, as was spoken by the Creator and Maker, the Mother, the Father of life and of all existence, that one by whom all move and breathe, father and sustainer of the peace of peoples, by whose wisdom was premeditated the excellence of all that doth exist in the heavens, upon the earth, in lake and sea.

"Lo, all was in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was motionless, all was quiet, and wide was the immensity of the skies.

"Lo, the first word and the first discourse. There was not yet a man, not an animal; there were no birds nor fish nor crayfish; there was no wood, no stone, no bog, no ravine, neither vegetation nor marsh; only the sky existed.

"The face of the earth was not yet to be seen; only the peaceful sea and the expanse of the heavens.

"Nothing was yet formed into a body; nothing was joined to another thing; naught held itself poised; there was not a rustle not a sound beneath the sky. There was naught that stood upright; there were only the quiet waters of the sea, solitary within its bounds; for as yet naught existed.

"There were only immobility and silence in the darkness and in the night. Alone was the Creator, the Maker, Tepeu, the[Pg 161] Lord, and Gucumatz, the Plumed Serpent, those who engender, those who give being, alone upon the waters like a growing light.

"They are enveloped in green and azure, whence is the name Gucumatz, and their being is great wisdom. Lo, how the sky existeth, how the Heart of the Sky existeth—for such is the name of God, as He doth name Himself!

"It is then that the word came to Tepeu and to Gucumatz, in the shadows and in the night, and spake with Tepeu and with Gucumatz. And they spake and consulted and meditated, and they joined their words and their counsels.

"Then light came while they consulted together; and at the moment of dawn man appeared while they planned concerning the production and increase of the groves and of the climbing vines, there in the shade and in the night, through that one who is the Heart of the Sky, whose name is Hurakan.

"The Lightning is the first sign of Hurakan; the second is the Streak of Lightning; the third is the Thunderbolt which striketh; and these three are the Heart of the Sky.

"Then they came to Tepeu, to Gucumatz, and held counsel touching civilized life: how seed should be formed, how light should be produced, how the sustainer and nourisher of all.

"'Let it be thus done. Let the waters retire and cease to obstruct, to the end that earth exist here, that it harden itself and show its surface, to the end that it be sown, and that the light of day shine in the heavens and upon the earth; for we shall receive neither glory nor honour from all that we have created and formed until human beings exist, endowed with sentience.' Thus they spake while the earth was formed by them. It is thus, veritably, that creation took place, and the earth existed. 'Earth,' they said, and immediately it was formed.

"Like a fog or a cloud was its formation into the material state, when, like great lobsters, the mountains appeared upon the waters, and in an instant there were great mountains. Only[Pg 162] by marvellous power could have been achieved this their resolution when the mountains and the valleys instantly appeared with groves of cypress and pine upon them.

"Then was Gucumatz filled with joy. 'Thou art welcome, O Heart of the Sky, O Hurakan, O Streak of Lightning, O Thunderbolt!'

"'This that we have created and shaped will have its end,' they replied.

"And thus first were formed the earth, the mountains, and the plains; and the course of the waters was divided, the rivulets running serpentine among the mountains; it is thus that the waters existed when the great mountains were unveiled.

"Thus was accomplished the creation of the earth when it was formed by those who are the Heart of the Sky and the Heart of the Earth; for so those are called who first made fruitful the heaven and the earth while yet they were suspended in the midst of the waters. Such was its fecundation when they fecundated it while its fulfilment and its composition were meditated by them."

So runs the first chapter of the Quiché Genesis, displaying at the outset an odd intermingling, which characterizes the whole work, of the raw actuality of primitive imagination with the dramatic reflection of the mind of the sage.

The second act of the drama is the creation of denizens, or rather histrions, for the stage that is set; and the Quiché narrator, with remarkable ease, casts them in puppet mould, a background of grandiosity serving still further to belittle the dolls which are the Creator's experiments. First, the animals are formed and assigned their dwellings and their habits: "Thou, Deer, shalt sleep on the borders of brooks and in the ravines; there shalt thou rest in the brushwood, amid forage; and there multiply; thou shalt go upon four feet, and upon four feet shalt thou live." This is the style in which the creatures of land and air and water are severally addressed. Nevertheless—and here is the philosophic touch—the animals could not[Pg 163] speak, as man does; they had no language; they could only chatter and cluck and croak, each according to its kind. This is very far from the most primitive stratum of thought, where all animals are gifted with language.

"When the Creator and the Maker understood that they could not speak, they said one to another: 'They are unable to utter our name, although we are their makers and formers. This is not well.' And they spake to the animals: 'Our glory is not perfect in that ye do not invoke us; but there shall yet be those who can salute us and who will be capable of obedience. As for you, your flesh shall be broken under the tooth.'"

Seed-time was approaching, and dawn; and the divine beings said, "Let us make those who shall be our supporters and nourishers." Then they formed men out of moist earth, but these proved to be without cohesion or consistence or power of movement; they could not turn their heads; their sight was veiled; although they had speech, they had no intelligence; the waters destroyed them helplessly; and their makers saw that their handiwork was a failure. Now they consulted with Xpiyacoc and Xmucané (Mayan equivalents of Cipactonal and Oxomoco, like whom they were addressed as "Twice Grandmother," "Twice Grandsire"); while Hurakan of the Winds and He of the Sun were also called into the council. There they divined with kernels of maize and with red berries of the tzité; and when noon came they said: "O Maize, O Tzité, O Sun, O Creature, unite and join one another! And thou, O Heart of the Sky, redden that the countenance of Tepeu, of Gucumatz, be not made to lower!" Then they carved manikins of wood and caused them to live and to multiply and to engender sons and daughters who were also manikins, carved and wooden. But these had neither heart nor intelligence nor memory of their creators; they led a useless and animal existence; they were only experimental men; they had no blood, no substance, no flesh; and their faces and their limbs were dry and desiccated.[Pg 164] They thought not of their Makers, nor did they lift their heads to them.

The gods, again disappointed, resolved upon the destruction of the manikin race and caused a heavy, resinous rain to descend day and night, darkening the face of the earth. Moreover, four great birds were sent to assail these creatures of wood: Xecotcovach snatched their eyes from their orbits; Camalotz attacked their heads, and Cotzbalam their flesh, while Tecumbalam broke their bones, and animals great and small turned against them. "Ye have done ill to us," cried their dogs and their fowls; "now we shall bite you; in your turn ye shall be tormented." Even the pots and cooking utensils arose in rebellion. The metates said: "We were tortured by you; daily, daily, night and day, always it was holi, holi, huqui, huqui, grinding our surfaces because of you. This we have suffered from you; now that ye have ceased to be men, ye shall feel our power; we shall grind you and reduce your flesh to powder;" and the bowls and pots followed with similar threats and imprecations. The victims ran everywhere in desperate efforts to escape: they ascended to the roofs of their houses, but the houses collapsed; they wished to climb the trees, but the trees drew away from them; they sought to enter the caverns, but these closed against them. All were destroyed, and there remained of their descendants only the little monkeys that live in the trees, which is token that "of wood alone their flesh was formed by the Creator and Maker."

After the destruction of the manikins is narrated, the Popul Vuh digresses to recount the deeds of the Hero Brothers, Hunahpu and Xbalanqué; and it is only in the third part of the work that the tale of creation is resumed, the beginnings of the present "Sun" of the world being its theme.

Once more the demiurgic gods meditated the creation of man, and once more they gathered for counsel in the cosmic dusk, for though the dawn was near, the world was not yet illuminated. It was then that they heard of the white and the yellow maize[Pg 165] in the Place of the Division of the Waters; and it was decided that from these should be made the blood and the flesh of man. "Then they began to grind the white maize and the yellow, while Xumucané concocted nine broths; and this nourishment entering in, generated strength and power, giving flesh and muscles to man.... Only yellow maize and white entered into their flesh, and these were the sole substance of the legs and arms of man; thus were formed our first fathers, the four brothers, who were formed of it," whose names were Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam. "Men they were; they spake and they reasoned; they saw and they understood; they moved and they had feeling; men perfect and fair, whose features were human features."

These beings, however, were too highly endowed; they lifted up their eyes, and their gaze embraced all; they knew all things; nothing in heaven or earth was concealed from them. The Maker asked: "Is not your being good? Do ye not see? Do ye not understand? Your speech and your movement, are they not admirable? Look up, are there not mountains and plains under the sky?" Then the created ones rendered thanks to their Creator, saying: "Truly, thou gavest us every motion and accomplishment! We have received existence, we have received a mouth, a face; we speak, we understand, we think, we walk; we perceive and we know equally well what is far and what is near; we see all things, great and small, in heaven and upon the earth. Thanks be to you who have created us, O Maker, O Former!" But the Makers were not pleased to hear this. "This is not well! Their nature will not be that of simple creatures; they will be as gods.... Would they perchance rival us who have made them, whose wisdom extendeth far and knoweth all things?" Thus spoke Hurakan, and Tepeu, and Gucumatz, and the divine pair Xpiyacoc and Xmucané. Then the Heart of the Sky breathed a cloud upon the eyes of the four men, veiling itself so that it appeared like a mirror covered with vapour; and their vision was obscured, so that[Pg 166] they could clearly see only what was near them. Thus their knowledge and their wisdom were reduced to mortal proportions; and being caused to slumber, during their sleep four beautiful women were brought to be their wives, so that when they awoke, they were filled with joy of their espousals.

The generations of humanity increased, men living together in joy and peace. They had but a single language and they prayed neither to wood nor to stone, but only to the Maker and Former, Heart of the Sky and Heart of the Earth, their prayer being for children and for light, for the sun had not yet risen. As time passed and no sun appeared, men became disquieted, so that the four brothers set forth for Tulan-Zuiva, the Place of Seven Caves and Seven Ravines, where they received their gods, a deity for each clan, Tohil being the divinity of Balam-Quitzé, Avilix of Balam-Agab, Hacavitz of Mahucutah, and Nicahtagah of Iqi-Balam. Tohil's first gift was fire, and when rains extinguished the first flame, he kindled it anew by striking upon his foot-gear, whereupon men of other tribes, their teeth chattering with cold, came to the brothers praying for a little of their fire. "They were not well received, and their hearts were filled with sadness," is the rather brutal comment; but the motive turns out to be yet more brutal, for as a price of fire Tohil demanded that these strangers "embrace me, Tohil, under the armpit and under the girdle," a euphemism which can refer only to the customary form of human sacrifice.

Even yet the sun had not appeared, and the race of man was saddened by the delay. They fasted and performed expiations, keeping continual watch for the Morning Star, which should herald the first sunrise. Finally in despair they resumed their migration: "Alas!" they said, "here we shall never behold the dawn at the moment when the sun is born to lighten the face of the earth!" The journey led through many lands until finally they came to the mountain of Hacavitz, where the brothers burned incense which they had brought from "the[Pg 167] place of sunrise" and where they watched the Morning Star ascend with waxing splendour on the dawn of the rising sun. As the orb appeared, the animals, great and small, were filled with joy, while all the nations prostrated themselves in adoration. The new sun did not burn with the heat of the sun of today, but was like a pale reflection of ours; nevertheless it dried the dank earth and made it habitable. Moreover, the great beast-gods of the first days—lion, tiger, and noxious viper—together with the gods Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz, were changed into stone as the sun appeared—"their arms cramped like the branches of trees ... and in all parts they became stone. Perhaps we should not be in life at this moment because of the voracity of the lions, the tigers, the vipers, the qantis, and the White Fire-Maker of the Night; perchance our glory would not now exist had not the first animals been petrified by the sun."

Nevertheless sorrow mingled with joy, for though the ancestors of the Quiché had found their mountain home, illumined by the sun, the moon, and the stars, they remembered their kindred left behind; and even when they sang the song Ka-mucu ("We behold"), the anguish in their hearts came also to expression. "Alas! we were ruined in Tollan; we were parted from our brethren, who still remain behind! True, indeed, we have beheld the Sun, but they, where now are they, when at last the day hath come?" Years afterward, when the Quiché had become great under the leadership of the four heroes, the brothers foresaw the day of their death drawing near; and again, with dolour of soul, they sang the song Ka-mucu, bidding farewell to their wives and their sons, and saying: "We return to our people; even now the King of the Deer riseth into the sky. Lo, we make our return; our task is performed; our days are complete." Thereupon they disappeared, vanishing without trace, excepting that in their place was left a sacred bundle which was never to be opened and which was called "Majesty Enveloped."

[Pg 168]

The deeds of the Hero Brothers in the Popul Vuh take place in an epoch of the world previous to the rise of the present Sun. Apparently they fall in an Age of Giants just succeeding the destruction of the manikins, for the narrative proceeds from the tale of the annihilation of these beings to the overthrow, by the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, of the Earth Titans, stating that the events occurred in the days of the inundation. Vukub-Cakix was the first of the Giants, and his sin was the sin of hubris, for he boasted: "I shall be yet again above all created beings; I am their sun, I am their dawn, I am their moon. Great is my splendour; I am he by whom men move. Of silver are the balls of my eyes, gleaming like precious stones; and the whiteness of my teeth is like the face of the sky. My nostrils shine afar like the moon; of silver is my throne, and the earth liveth when I step forth from it. I am the sun, I am the moon, the bringer of felicity. So be it, for my gaze reacheth afar!" This is obviously a hymn to the sun; and it is possible that it refers to a mythic "Sun of Giants," although the narrator clearly takes it in another sense: "In reality his sight ended where it fell, and his gaze did not embrace the entire world." It was, in fact, because of his riches (metals and precious stones) that Vukub-Cakix thought to emulate the sun and the moon.

Image of a youthful deity with elaborate head-dress seated in the mouth of the "Dragon of Quirigua" (see frontispiece). After a photograph in the Peabody Museum.

It was for their pride and arrogance that Vukub-Cakix and his sons, Zipacna and Cabrakan, were successively overcome and destroyed by the hero brothers. "Attention, it is I who am the sun," cried Vukub-Cakix; "it is I who move the earth," said Zipacna; "and it is I that shake the sky and overturn the the whole earth," quoth Cabrakan. Indeed, such was their strength that they could move mountains, great and small, at will; and since such orgulous Titans could be overcome only by craft, even with demi-gods for their adversaries, it was by craft that Hunahpu and Xbalanqué conquered them.

[Pg 169]

Vukub-Cakix possessed a tree the fruit of which was his food, and the twins, concealing themselves in its branches, shot the giant in the cheek with a poisoned arrow when he came for his meal, though they did not escape uninjured, for he tore away one of Hunahpu's arms. The monster went home, roaring with pain, and the two plotters, disguising themselves as physicians, came offering to cure his malady and saying: "You suffer from a worm but you can be cured if your jaw is altered by removing the bad teeth." "It is by my teeth alone that I am king; all my beauty comes from my teeth and the balls of mine eyes." "We will put others in their place," they said; and so they substituted teeth of maize for the emerald teeth of the giant and flayed the splendour from his eyes. The splendour faded from him; he ceased to appear like a king; and soon he died, while Hunahpu recovered his arm, which Chimalmat, the wife of Vukub-Cakix, was basting on a spit; and the twins turned away in triumph. Zipacna was the next victim. First, the brothers conspired with four hundred youths (doubtless the same as the "Four Hundred Southerners" of the Huitzilopochtli myth) to lure Zipacna into a pitfall, where they tried to destroy him by hurling huge trees upon him; and when all was quiet, the plotters erected a house on the spot, making merry with drink and celebrating their triumph. But the giant was only craftily biding his time, and, rising suddenly, he cast house and revellers high into the heavens, where the four hundred became stars and constellations. The twins then decided upon another decoy. Since the food of Zipacna was sea-food, especially crabs, they modelled a great crab, and painting it cunningly they put it into a deep ravine. Encountering the giant on his food search, they pointed out this fine crab; he leaped after it, and they—wiser by experience—hurled mountains upon him, thus imprisoning him, though so desperate were his struggles for freedom that they turned him into stone to quiet him. The third giant, Cabrakan, was also made the victim of his own gluttony and pride. The[Pg 170] brothers challenged him to shift a certain mountain, for he boasted that he could remove the greatest; but as he was preparing to show his strength, they suggested that he first partake of food, and shooting a bird, they cooked it for him, taking care to poison it in the process. The giant devoured the bird the more greedily in that it was his first taste of cooked meat; but immediately his strength began to fail, and his eyes to dim; and while the brothers twittingly urged him to make good his boasts, he sank to earth dead.

The great adventure of the heroic twins, however, was their triumph over the Lords of Death, and to this the second part of the Popul Vuh is devoted. The tale begins with the story of an earlier pair of Hero Brothers, Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Ahpu, sons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucané. Hunhun-Ahpu, in turn, was father of Hunbatz and Hunchouen, two youths who seem to be little more than foils for the hero twins later to be born; although they are described as wise in all the arts, as players of the flute, singers, blow-gun shooters, painters, sculptors, jewel-workers, and smiths.

Hunhun-Ahpu and his brother, Vukub-Ahpu, being devoted to tlachtli, exercised themselves at this sport every day. As they played, they journeyed toward Xibalba, the underworld, whose lords, Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé, also were clever at the ball game. Therefore, thinking to trap the upper-world champions, they of the nether realm sent them a challenge—four owls were their messengers—to meet in an underworld match; and the brothers accepting the challenge, set out for Xibalba. Passing down a steep descent, they soon crossed a river in a deep gorge, next a boiling river, and then a river of blood, after which, beyond a fourth river, they came to cross-roads, red, black, white, and yellow. The guardian of the black road said: "I am the way to the king"; but it led them to a place where two wooden images were seated. These the brothers saluted; and receiving no response except the ribald laughter of the Xibalbans, the heroes knew that they had[Pg 171] been made butts of ridicule. The brothers angrily issued their challenge, and the Xibalbans invited them to seats on the throne of honour; but this proved to be a heated stone, and when they burned themselves, the princes of Xibalba could scarcely contain their merriment. The brothers were then given torches and conducted to the House of Gloom, with injunctions to keep the lights undiminished until the dawn; but the torches were speedily consumed, and when, next day, they were brought before Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé who demanded the lights, they could only reply, "They are consumed, Lords." Thereupon, at the command of the underworld-gods, the brothers were sacrificed, and their bodies were buried; only, the head of Hunhun-Ahpu was placed in a fruit-tree, where it was immediately transformed so as to be indistinguishable from the gourd-like fruits which the tree bore.

The Xibalbans were prohibited from approaching this tree, but a certain maiden, Xquiq ("Princess Blood"), having heard of it, said to herself: "Why should I not go to see this tree; in sooth, its fruits should be sweet, according to what I hear said of it." She approached the tree in admiration: "Are such the fruits of this tree? And should I die were I to pluck one?" Then the head in the midst said: "Do you indeed desire it? These round lumps among the branches of the tree are only death's-heads!" Nevertheless, Xquiq was insistent, whereupon Hunhun-Ahpu's head demanded that she stretch forth her hand, and, by a violent effort, he spat into it, saying: "This saliva and foam which I give thee is my posterity. Behold, my head will cease to speak, for it is only a death's-head, with no longer any flesh. So it is also with the head of even the greatest of princes; for it is the flesh alone that adorneth the visage, whence cometh the horror which besetteth men at the moment of death." He then directed the maiden to flee to the upper world, knowing that she would be pursued by the underworld-powers; and these, indeed, when they heard that Xquiq was enceinte, demanded that she be sacrificed, sending Owl-Men[Pg 172] to execute their doom. But the princess beguiled the Owls, inducing them to substitute for her heart the coagulated sap of the bloodwort, the odour of which they took to be the scent of blood, while she herself fled to the protection of the mother of Hunbatz and Hunchouen. The latter demanded proof that the new comer was indeed her daughter-in-law and sent Xquiq into the field for maize. There was but one hill in the field, whereupon the maiden appealed for aid to the gods, by whose miraculous help she was enabled to gather a full burden without disturbing the single hill. This miracle satisfied the mother-in-law; who said: "It is a sign that thou art indeed my daughter-in-law, and that those whom thou dost carry will be wise"; and shortly after this, Xquiq gave birth to the twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanqué.

The new comers were welcomed by all excepting Hunbatz and Hunchouen, who regarded their half-brothers as rivals and plotted their death; but Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, who from birth had shown their prowess as magicians, transformed the two flute-players into monkeys, condemning them to live in the trees. Hunbatz and Hunchouen, says the chronicler, "were invoked by musicians and singers aforetime, and also by painters and sculptors; but they were changed into beasts and became monkeys because of their pride and their maltreatment of their brothers." It is probable that the two were monkey-form gods of the arts, though it is also possible that the transformation is associated with that of the primeval age which ended with the metamorphosis of men into monkeys.

The next episode in the career of the two youths was the clearing of a field by means of magic tools which felled trees and dug the soil while their owners amused themselves at the chase; but at night the animals restored the vegetation. Accordingly the brothers concealed themselves to watch for the undoers of their work; and when by night the lion (puma) and the tiger (jaguar), the hare and the opossum, the deer, the coyote, the porcupine, and the peccary, together with the birds,[Pg 173] appeared and called to the felled trees to raise themselves, the brothers attempted to trap them. They succeeded only in seizing the tails of the deer and the rabbit (which, of course, explains the present decurtate state of these animals), but finally they captured the rat, which, to save its life, revealed to them the hiding-place of the rings and gloves and rubber ball with which their fathers had played tlachtli, and which their grandmother had concealed from them lest they, too, become lost through the fatal lure of the game. By a ruse the twins succeeded in getting possession of the apparatus, and like their fathers became passionately devoted to the sport.

When the Lords of Xibalba learned of this, they said: "Who, then, are these that begin again to play above our heads, shaking the earth without fear? Are not Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunahpu dead, who wished to exalt themselves before us?" Forthwith they dispatched a challenge to the new champions which the twins accepted; but before they departed for the underworld, each planted a reed in the house of their grandmother, saying that if any ill befell either of them, his reed would wither and die. They passed the underworld rivers, and coming to the four roads (here named black, white, red, and green), they set out upon the black path, though they took the precaution to send in advance an animal called Xan, with instructions to prick the leg of each lord in the realm below. The first two throned beings made no response, being manikins of wood; but the third uttered a cry, and his neighbour said: "What is it, Hun-Camé? What has pricked you?" The same thing happened to Vukub-Camé, Xiqiripat, Ahalpuh, Cuchumaquiq, Chamiabak, Ahalcana, Chamiaholom, Patan, Quiqxic, Quiqrixgag, and Quiqré (for such were the names of these princes): "it is thus that they revealed themselves, calling one another by name," each in turn. When the hero twins came, refusing to salute the wooden men, they addressed the Lords of Xibalba each by his title, much to the chagrin of[Pg 174] these; and, further, they declined a place on the heated stone, saying, "It is not our seat."

In succeeding episodes Hunahpu and Xbalanqué underwent the ordeals of the houses of the underworld. The House of Gloom was first; but the twins substituted red paint for the fire on the torches given them and thus preserved these undiminished. "Whence indeed, are you come?" cried the astonished Xibalbans; "who are you?" "Who can say whence we are," they answered; "we ourselves do not know." So they refused to reveal themselves and in the game of ball which followed they altogether defeated the Xibalbans; but since this only augmented the desire of the latter for the lives of the pair, the underworld lords demanded of the two heroes that they bring them four vases of flowers. Accordingly they sent the youths under guard to the House of Lances; but the brothers overcame the demons of this abode by promising them the flesh of all animals, while at the same time they persuaded the ants to bring the needed flowers from the gardens of Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé. Having failed with this test, the Xibalbans then dispatched their guests to the House of Cold, which they survived by kindling pine-knots. The next trial was the House of Tigers, but its ferocious denizens were diverted by bones which the brothers cast to them. The House of Fire was also harmless to them; but in the sixth, the House of Bats, or House of Camazotz, as its lord was called, they met their first discomfiture. All night the heroes lay prone, longing for the dawn; but at last Hunahpu for a moment raised his head, which was instantly shorn off by the vigilant Camazotz. Xbalanqué, in desperation, summoned the animals to his assistance; and the turtle, chancing to touch the bleeding neck of Hunahpu and becoming attached to it, was transformed into a head with the magic aid of the animals. The real head the Lords of Xibalba had suspended in the ball court, where they were reviling it when Xbalanqué and Hunahpu, with his turtle's head, appeared for the last round at the game; and[Pg 175] with the assistance of the animals Xbalanqué succeeded in winning the victory once more, and recovering Hunahpu's head, he restored it in place of the turtle's.

Having now met the ordeals set by the Xibalbans, the brothers undertook to show their own prowess, and, first of all, their contempt of death. Anticipating the action of the Lords of Xibalba in condemning them to death, they sought the counsel of two magicians, Xulu and Pacam, with whom they arranged for their resurrection; after which, sentenced to be burned, they mounted the funeral pyre and met their death, whereat all the Xibalbans were filled with joy, crying, "We have triumphed, indeed; and none too soon!" The bones, ground to powder at the advice of the two magicians, were cast upon the underworld waters; wherein on the fifth day two fish-men were to be seen, while the next day a pair of wretched beggars, poor and miserable, appeared among the Xibalbans. These beggars, however, were wonder-workers: they burned houses and immediately restored them; they even sacrificed and then resuscitated one another. Their fame soon reached the ears of Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé, and when the mendicant-magicians were brought before these lords, they were implored by the Xibalban kings to perform their miracles. Thereupon the beggars began their "dances": they killed and revivified the dog of the underworld princes; they burned and restored the royal palace; they sacrificed and brought to life a man—each deed at the command of Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé. Finally, overcome with excitement, the Lords of Xibalba cried, "Do likewise with us; immolate us also!" "Can death exist for you?" asked the beggars ironically. "Nevertheless, it is your right that we amuse you." But when they had sacrificed Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé, they restored them no more to life. "Then fled all the princes of Xibalba, seeing their kings dead, and their bodies laid open; but in a moment they themselves were sacrificed, two by two, a chastisement which was their due." A single prince escaped, begging for pity, while the[Pg 176] host of their vassals prostrated themselves before their conquerors.

Then the heroes revealed themselves, disclosing their names and the names of their fathers, saying, "We are the avengers of the sufferings of our sires; harken, now to your doom, ye of Xibalba! Since your fame and your power are no more, and ye merit no clemency, your race shall have little rule, and never again shall ye play the Game of Ball. Yours it shall be to make objects of burnt clay, pots and pans, and maize-grinders; and the animals that live in the brushwood and in solitude shall be your share. All the happy, all the cultivated, shall cease to be yours; the bees alone will continue to reproduce before your eyes. Ye, perverse, cruel, sad, wretched, who have done ill, now lament it!" Thus were degraded those who had been of bad faith, hypocritical, tyrannical; thus their power was ruined.

Meanwhile, in the upper world, the grandmother of the twins watching the two reeds, had mourned and rejoiced in turn, twice seeing them wither and twice revive. "The Living Reeds, the Level Earth, the Centre of the House, shall be the names of this place," she said. The twins talked with the heads of their father and uncle, paying them funeral honours and elevating them to the sky, the one to become the sun, the other the moon; and they raised up also the four hundred youths buried by Zipacna, to become stars in heaven, saying: "Henceforth ye shall be invoked by civilized peoples; ye shall be adored; and your names shall not perish."

Such, in its general character, is the mythic portion of the Popul Vuh. It is built up of elements found far and wide in North America and it reflects ideas practically universal among the civilized Nahuatlan and Mayan tribes; but it possesses one great distinction—that of presenting these concepts with an imaginative intensity unmatched by any other version, a quality which in some measure argues that the whole cycle is original with the Mayan stock. The myth certainly gives a[Pg 177] broad view of the south Mayan pantheons; and most of the elements in the proper names which can be interpreted are indicative of the cosmic nature of the personalities. According to Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hun signifies "one," Vukub is the word for "seven"; Hunahpu is "One Blowgun-Shooter," and it is quite likely that the blowgun was associated with celestial phenomena, as the game of tlachtli certainly is; Hunbatz is "One Monkey"; Hun-Camé is "One Dead," and so on. Vukub-Cakix ("Seven Macaws"), Vukub-Hunahpu ("Seven One-Blowgun-Shooter"), and Vukub-Camé ("Seven Dead") are clearly corresponding, or complementary, cosmic powers. The Abbé believes that Hurakan (from which comes our word "hurricane") and Cabrakan ("Earthquake") are deities imported from the Antilles. Camazotz ("Ruler of Bats,"—Brasseur; "Death Bat,"—Seler) is clearly the Elder of the Bats—the bat-god known to have been a dread and potent deity among the Maya, and, as the vampire, feared and propitiated far into South America.[102] Balam means "tiger"—that is, the jaguar, which, perhaps because of its spots, is symbol of the star-studded night and of the west. The four Quiché ancestors are clearly cosmic deities—Balam-Quitzé ("Smiling Tiger") perhaps of the east; Balam-Agab ("Night Tiger") of the west; Iqi-Balam ("Moon Tiger"); and Mahucatah ("Renowned Name," an epithet, in the Abbé's opinion). The Hero Brothers are, of course, familiar figures everywhere in American myth.

The Cakchiquel Annals do not, like the Popul Vuh, form a work of primarily literary or historical intent, but are, both in form and in content, part of a brief, the purpose of which is to establish certain territorial rights of members of the family of Xahila, thus falling into the class of native titulos, written in Spanish, several of which have been published. From its nature the composition has not, therefore, the dramatic character[Pg 178] of a mythic narrative; nevertheless its very purpose, as founding a title to lands anciently held, leads to the effort to establish this by the right of first occupation, and hence to stories of the first comers. That such accounts are reproduced more or less exactly from mythic narratives there can be no manner of doubt, internal traits showing near affinity with the tales of the Popul Vuh and kindred cycles.

The narrative begins with a record of "the sayings of our earliest fathers and ancestors, Gagavitz the name of one, Zactecauh the name of the other ... as we came from the other side of the sea, from the land of Tulan, where we were brought forth and begotten....

"These are the very words which Gagavitz and Zactecauh spake: 'Four men came from Tulan; one Tulan is at the sunrise, and one is at Xibalbay, and one is at the sunset; and we came from this one at the sunset; and one is where is God. Therefore there are four Tulans, they say, O our sons; from the sunset we came; from Tulan from beyond the sea; and it was at Tulan that, arriving, we were brought forth; coming, we were produced, as they say, by our fathers and our mothers.

"'And now the Obsidian Stone is brought forth by the precious Xibalbay, the glorious Xibalbay; and man is made by; the Maker, the Creator. The Obsidian Stone was his sustainer when man was made in misery and when man was formed; he was fed with wood, he was fed with leaves; he wished only the earth; he could not speak, he could not walk; he had no blood, he had no flesh; so say our fathers, our ancestors, O ye my sons. Nothing was found to feed him; at length something was found to feed him. Two brutes knew that there was food in the place called Paxil, where these creatures were, the Coyote and the Crow by name. Even in the refuse of maize it was found when the creature Coyote was killed as he was separating his maize and was searching for bread to knead, killed by the creature named Tiuh Tiuh; and from within the sea, by means of Tiuh Tiuh, was brought the blood of the serpent[Pg 179] and of the tapir with which the maize was to be kneaded; the flesh of man was formed of it by the Maker, the Creator; and well did they, the Maker and the Creator, know him who was born, him who was begotten; they made man as he was made, they formed man as they made him; so they tell. There were thirteen men, fourteen women; they, talked, they walked; they had blood, they had flesh. They married, and one had two wives. They brought forth daughters, they brought forth sons, those first men. Thus men were made, and thus the Obsidian Stone was made, for the enclosure of Tulan; thus we came to where the Zotzils were at the gates of Tulan; arriving, we were born; coming, we were produced; coming, we gave the tribute in the darkness, in the night, O our sons.' Thus spake Gagavitz and Zactecauh, O my sons; and what they said hath not been forgotten. They are our great ancestors; these are the words with which they encouraged us of old."

Monumental stela, Piedras Negras. This superb relief shows a divinity with quetzal-plume crest to whom a priest is presenting the group of bound captives, shown at the base. After photograph in the Peabody Museum.

These extracts indicate the style of the Annals, full of repetition and almost without relational expressions, but now and again lighted with passages of extraordinary vividness. The Obsidian Stone, Chay Abah, represented an important civic fetish or oracular talisman, if we may credit the description of Iximche, the Cakchiquel capital, transmitted by Fuentes y Guzman and quoted by Brinton.[104] On the summit of a small hill overlooking the town—so goes the account—"is a circular wall, not unlike the curb of a well, about a full fathom in height. The floor within is paved with cement, as the city streets. In the centre is placed a socle or pedestal of a glittering substance, like glass, but of what composition is not known. This circular structure was the tribunal or consistory of the Cakchiquel Indians, where not only was public hearing given to causes, but also the sentences were carried out. Seated around this wall, the judges heard the pleas and pronounced the sentences, in both civil and criminal cases. After this public decision, however, there remained an appeal for its revocation or confirmation. Three messengers were chosen[Pg 180] as deputies of the judges, and these went forth from the tribunal to a deep ravine, north of the palace, to a small but neatly fitted-up chapel or temple, where was located the oracle of the demon. This was a black and semi-transparent stone, of a finer grade than that called chay (obsidian). In its transparency, the demon revealed to them what should be their final decision." This passage is not the only indication of the employment of divination by crystal gazing in primitive America; and it is even possible that the translucent green stones so widely valued were primarily sacred because of divinatory properties. Not all sacred stones were of the emerald hue, however; for in the Cakchiquel narrative one of the deeds of Gagavitz is the ascent of a volcano where, it is said, he conquered the fire, bringing it captive in the form of a stone called Gak Chog, which, the chronicler is at pains to state, is not a green stone.

The mythic affinities of the Cakchiquel narrative are already apparent in the passages quoted. The city of Tulan (frequently "Tullan" in the text) is clearly become a name for certain cosmic stations, namely the houses of sunrise, sunset, zenith ("where is God"), and nadir (Tulan of Xibalbay, the underworld). The successive creations of men, experimental men first, and finally maize-formed men, is certainly the same myth as that of the Popul Vuh, which is briefly described also by Las Casas and which is probably intimately associated with a cult of the maize-gods. "If one looks closely at these Indians," says an early writer quoted by Brinton,[105] (manuscript known as the Crónica Franciscana), "he will find that everything they do and say has something to do with maize. A little more, and they would make a god of it. There is so much conjuring and fussing about their corn fields, that for them they will forget wives and children and any other pleasure, as if the only end and aim of life was to secure a crop of corn."

There are numerous mythic incidents in the continuation of the narrative after the creation. At Tulan the peoples were[Pg 181] divided into seven tribes, and it was from Tulan that, with idols of wood and of stone, they set out at the oracular command of the Obsidian Stone. The auguries were mostly evil: "A bird called 'the guard of the ravine' began to complain within the gate of Tulan, as we were going forth from Tulan. 'Ye shall die, ye shall be lost, I am your portent,' the creature said to us. 'Do ye not believe me? Truly your state shall be a sad one.'" The owl prophesied similar disaster, and another bird, the parroquet, "complained in the sky and said, 'I am your portent; ye shall die.' But we said to the creature, 'Speak not thus; thou art but the sign of spring. Thou wailest first when it is spring; when the rain ceaseth, thou wailest.'" They arrived at the sea-coast, and there a great number perished while they awaited a means of crossing, which finally came when "a red tree, our staff, which we had taken in passing from the gate of Tulan," was thrust into the sands, whereupon the waters divided, and all passed over. Then it was that Gagavitz and Zactecauh were elected leaders; and next they fought with the people of Nonoualcat and Zuyva, but though at first successful in the fight, they were eventually defeated: "Truly, it was fearful there among the houses; truly, the noise was great, the dust was oppressive; fighting was going on in the houses, fighting with the dogs, the wasps, fighting with all. One attack, two attacks we made, and we ourselves were routed; as truly as they were in the air, they were in the earth; they ascended and they descended, everywhere against us; and thus they showed their magic and their sorcery." After this defeat, the various tribes received the gods which were to be their protectors. "When we asked each other where our salvation was, it was said to us by the Quiché men: 'As it thundered and resounded in the sky, truly the sky must be our salvation'; so they said, and therefore the name Tohohil was given them." The Zotzil received Cakix, the macaw, as their deity; and the Cakchiquel said: "'Truly, in the middle of the valley lieth our salvation, entering there into the earth.' Therefore the name[Pg 182] Chitagah was given. Another, who said salvation was in the water, was called Gucumatz"; and so on, down the roll. The tribes then set forth and encounter "the spirit of the forest, the fire called Zakiqoxol," who kills many men. "Who are these boys whom we see?" says the spirit (who, it seems, is a giant); and Gagavitz and Zactecauh replied: "Let us see what kind of a hideous mole thou art? Who art thou? We shall kill thee. Why is it that thou guardest the road here?" "Do not kill me; I, who am here, I am the heart of the forest," and he asked for clothing. "They shall give to thee wherewith to clothe thyself," they answered; and "then they gave him wherewith to clothe himself, a change of garment, his blood-red cuirass, his blood-red shoes, the dying raiment of Zakiqoxol."

The narrative continues with episodes that may be historical. There are encounters, friendly and militant, with various tribes; Zactecauh is killed by falling down a ravine; the wanderers are delayed a year by the volcano which Gagavitz conquers; a certain being named Tolgom, son of "the Mud that Quivers," is captured and offered by the arrow sacrifice, this being the beginning of an annual festival at which children were similarly slain; and afterward the people come to the place where their dawn is to be and there they behold the sunrise. The warriors took wives from neighbouring tribes and "then also they began to adore the Demon.... It is said that the worship of the Demon increased with the face of our prosperity." To Gagavitz were born two sons, Caynoh and Caybatz, who were to be his successors; and "at that time King Gagavitz died, the same who came from Tulan; his children, our ancestors, Caynoh and Caybatz, were still very young when their father died. They buried him in the same place where their dawn appeared, in Paroxene."

Here the mythical part of the Annals ends. Caynoh and Caybatz may be a pair of heroes like Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, as some authorities deem; but the situation in which they are presented, subjects of a Quiché King, Tepeuh, indicates an[Pg 183] historical situation, finally reversed, as the narrative later shows, in sanguinary wars in which the Cakchiquel threw off the Quiché yoke. And here, as elsewhere in the New World, the coming Spaniard was enabled to profit by local dissensions; for Alvarado, whose entrance into Iximche is described as by an eyewitness, first allied himself with the Cakchiquel for the destruction of their neighbours and then destroyed his allies for the sake of their gold. So out of this broken past speaks the Xahila narrative—the one native voice from a lost civilization.

South of the Mayan peoples, in the territories formed by the projection of Central America between the Gulf of Honduras and Lake Nicaragua, the aboriginal inhabitants were represented by some ten linguistic stocks. On the western coast were several groups of Nahuatlan tribes who had come from far in the north, probably in recent times; on the other hand, the large Ulvan stock, back from the Mosquito Coast, are regarded as probably of Chibchan kinship, and their territories were contiguous with the Chibchans of Costa Rica, who brought the influence of the southern continent as far northward as the southern shores of the lake; the remaining tribal groups—Lencan, Subtiaban, Payan, Mosquitoan, Chiapanecan, etc.—have no certain linguistic affinity with any other peoples. Culturally, the whole region was aboriginally marked by an obvious inferiority both to the Mayan peoples to the north and the Chibchan to the south; though at the same time it reflected something of the civilization of each of these regions. As a whole, however, it possessed no single level, but ranged from the primitive savagery of the Mosquito Coast to something approaching a native culture in the western highlands.

The mythic lore of these peoples (not extensively reported) is in no way remarkable. The Nahuatlan tribes—Pipil and Niquiran—worshipped gods whose kinship with those of the[Pg 184] Aztec is apparent. Of the Pipil, Brasseur says[107]: "They adored the rising sun, as also statues of Quetzalcohuatl and Itzcueye, to whom they offered almost all their sacrifices," Itzcueye being a form of the earth goddess. Similarly the Niquiran deities mentioned by Oviedo, especially the creator pair, Tamagostad and Cipattonal, are identified with Oxomoco and Cipactonal of the Mexicans; while the calendar of the same tribe is Mexican in type. The chief centre of worship of the Pipil was named Mictlan, but the myth which Brasseur narrates in connexion with the establishment of this shrine is curiously analogous to certain Chibcha tales. The sacred city was on a promontory in Lake Huixa, and "it was there that one day a venerable old man was beheld to advance, followed by a girl of unequalled beauty, both clad in long blue robes, while the man was crowned with a pontifical mitre. They arose together from the lake, but they did not delay to separate; and the old man seated himself upon a stone on the summit of a high hill, where, by his order, was reared a beautiful temple called Mictlan." Similar cults of lake-spirits are indicated on the island of Zapatero, in Lake Nicaragua, where Squier discovered a whole series of remarkable idols, pillars surmounted by crudely carved crouching or seated figures, while statues of a similar type were found on another island, Pensacola. In several of these the human figure is hooded by an animal's head or jaw, or appears within the mouth of the monster—a motive which probably comes from the Mayan north.

The Chiapanecan people north of the Niquirian Nahua consulted an oracular Old Woman, who appears, as Oviedo relates the story,[108] to have been the spirit of the volcano Masaya. The caciques went in secret to consult her before undertaking any enterprise and sacrificed to her human victims, who, says Oviedo, offered themselves voluntarily. When Oviedo asked how the Old Woman looked, they replied that "she was old and wrinkled, with pendant breasts, thin, dishevelled hair,[Pg 185] long teeth like those of a dog, a skin darker than that of the Indians, and glowing eyes," a description which scarcely makes the voluntary sacrifice plausible. With the coming of the Christians her appearances were more and more rare.

Of such character were the ideas of the more advanced tribes of the western coast. The Sumo (of the Ulvan stock) tell a tale of their origin, reported by Lehmann[109]: "Between the Rio Patuca and the Rio Coco is a hill named Kaun'ápa, where is a rock with the sign of a human umbilical cord. There in olden time the Indians were born; there is the source of the people. A great Father, Maisahána, and a great Mother, Ituána, likewise existed, the latter being the same as Itóki, whom the Mosquito know as Mother Scorpion. First, the Mosquito were born and instructed in all things; but they were disobedient to their elders (as they still are) and departed toward the coast. Thereafter the Tuáchca were born, and then the Yusco who live on Rio Prinzapolca and Bambana; but since the Yusco were bad and lewd, the rest of the Sumo fought against them and killed all but a few, who live somewhere around the source of Rio Coco, near the Spaniards. Last the Ulua were born, who are indeed the youngest; and they were instructed in all things, especially medicine and song, wherefore they are known as 'Singers.'"

The Mother Scorpion of this myth is regarded by the Mosquito as dwelling at the end of the Milky Way, where she receives the souls of the dead; and from her, represented as a mother with many breasts, at which children take suck, come the souls of the new-born—a belief which points to a notion of reincarnation. The Mosquito[110] possess also a migration-myth, with stories of a culture hero named Wakna, and an ancient prophecy that they shall never be driven back from the coasts to which he led them. Along with this are reminiscences of the coming of cannibals—doubtless Carib—from overseas; and the usual quota of superstitions as to monsters of forest and waters. They are said, moreover, to have vague notions[Pg 186] of a supreme or superior god—which is altogether likely—and, in general, these Central American religions are, doubtless, as the early writers describe them, formed of an ill-defined belief in a Heaven Father, with deities of sun and stars as objects of worship, and spirits of earth and forest as objects of dread.

[Pg 187]

From the Isthmus of Panama the western coast of South America is marked by one of the loftiest and most abrupt mountain ranges of the world, culminating in the great volcanoes of Ecuador and the high peaks of western Argentina. A narrow coastal strip, dry and torrid in tropical latitudes; deep and narrow valleys; occasional plateaux or intramontane plains, especially the great plateau of central Bolivia—these are the primary diversifications from the high ranges which, rising precipitously on the Pacific side, decline more gradually toward the east into the vast forested regions of the central part of the continent and into the plains and pampas of the south.

Throughout this mountain region, from the plateau of Bogotá in the north to the neighbourhood of latitude 30º south, was continued in pre-Columbian times the succession of groups of civilized or semi-civilized peoples of which the most northerly were the Nahua of Mexico, or perhaps the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico. The ethnic boundary of the southern continent is to be drawn in Central America. The Guetare of Costa Rica, and perhaps the Sumo of Nicaragua, constitute northerly outposts of the territorially great Chibchan culture, the centre of which is to be found in the plateau of Bogotá, while its southerly extension leads to the Barbacoa of northern Ecuador. South of the Chibcha, in the Andean region lying between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, is the aboriginal home of the Quechua-Aymara peoples, nearly the whole of which, at the[Pg 188] time of the Conquest was embraced in the Empire of the Incas. This empire had even reached into the confines of the third culture area of the southern continent; for the Calchaqui of the mountains of northern Argentina, who were the most representative and probably the most advanced nation of the Diaguité group, had even then passed under Inca subjection. Other tribes of this most southerly of the civilized peoples of America had never been conquered; but bounded, as they were, by the aggressive empire of the north, by the warlike Araucanians to the south, and by the savages of the Gran Chaco to the east, their opportunities for independent development were slight; indeed, it is not improbable that the peoples of this group represent the last stand of a race that had once extended far to the north and had played an important part in the pre-Inca cultures of the central Andes. Beyond the Diaguité lay the domains of savagery, although the Araucanians of the Chilean-Argentine region were not uninfluenced by the northward civilizations and in most respects were superior to the wild tribes that inhabited the great body of the South American continent; but the indomitable love of liberty, which has kept them unconquered through many wars, gave to their territory a boundary-line marked no less by a sharp descent in culture than by its untouched independence.

In Columbian times these three Andean groups—the Chibchan tribes, the Quechua-Aymara, and the Diaguité-Calchaqui—possessed a civilization marked by considerable advancement in the arts of metallurgy (gold, silver, copper), pottery, and weaving, by agriculture (fundamentally, cultivation of maize), and by domestication of the llama and alpaca. In the art of building, in stone-work, and, generally, in that plastic and pictorial expression which is a sign of intellectual advancement, the central group far excelled its neighbours. Nor was this due to the fact that it alone, under Inca domination, had reached the stage of stable and diversified social organization; for the archaeology of Peru and[Pg 189] Bolivia shows that the Empire of the Incas was only the last in a series of central Andean civilizations which it excelled, if at all, in political power rather than in the arts, industrial or aesthetic.

Our knowledge of the religious and mythic ideas of these various groups reflects their relative importance at the time of the Spanish conquests more than their natural diversity. Of the Chibchan groups, only the ideas of a few tribes have been described, and these fragmentarily; of the mythology of the Calchaqui, who had yielded to Inca rule, even less has come down to us; while what is known of the religious conceptions of the pre-Inca peoples of the central region is mainly in the form of gleanings from the works of art left by these peoples, or from such of their cults as survived under the Inca state or in Inca tradition. Inevitably the central body of Andean myth, as transmitted to us, is that of the Incas, who, having reached the position of a great imperial clan, naturally glorified both their own gods and their own legendary history.

The Isthmus of Panama (and northward perhaps as far as the confines of Nicaragua) was aboriginally an outpost of the great Chibchan stock. Tribes of other stocks, some certainly northern in origin, dwelt within the region, but the predominant group was akin to the peoples of the neighbouring southern continent; although whether they were immigrants from the south or were parents of the southern stem can scarcely be known. So far as traditions tell, the uniform account given by the Bolivian tribes is of a northerly origin. The tales seem to point to the Venezuelan coast, and perhaps remotely to the Antilles, rather than to the Isthmus, and it is certain that there are broad similarities in culture—especially in the forms and use of ceremonial objects—pointing to the remote unity of the whole region from Haiti to Ecuador, and from Venezuela to[Pg 190] Nicaragua. It is entirely possible that within this region the drift of influence has been southerly; though it is more likely that counter-streams, northward and southward, must give the full explanation of the civilization.

On the linguistic side it is agreed that the Guetare of Costa Rica represent a branch of the Chibchan stock, while neighbouring tribes of the same stock are either now extinct or little known. The Spanish conquests in the Isthmian region were as ruthlessly complete as anywhere in America, and for the greater part our knowledge of the aborigines is the fruit of archaeology. In the writings of Oviedo and Cieza de León some facts may be gleaned—enough, indeed, to picture the general character of the rituals of the Indian tribes—but there is no competent contemporary relation of the native religion and beliefs.

Jade pendant representing a Vampire. After Hartman, Archaeological Researches on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, Plate XLIV. For reference to the significance of the bat, as a deity, see page 177 and Note 102.

Oviedo's description[113] of the tribes about the Gulf of Nicoya, where the civilizations of the two Americas meet, indicates a religion in which the great rites were human sacrifices of the Mexican type and feasts of intoxication. Archaeological researches in the same region have brought to light amulets and ornaments, some anthropomorphic in character, but many representing animal forms, usually highly conventionalized—alligators, jaguars and pumas, frogs, parrots, vampires, denizens of earth, air, and sea, all indicative of a populous pantheon of talismanic powers; while cruciform, swastika, and other symbolic ornamentation implies a development in the direction of abstraction sustained by Oviedo's mention of "folded books of deerskin parchment," which are probably the southern extension of the art of writing as known in the northern civilization. The archaeology of the Guetare region, in central, and of the Chiriqui region, in southern Costa Rica, disclose the same fantasy of grotesque and conventionalized animals—saurians, armadilloes, the cat-tribe, composites—indicative of a similarly zoomorphic pantheon. Benzoni, speaking of the tribes of this region, states that they worshipped idols in the forms[Pg 191] of animals, which they kept hidden in caves; while Andagoya declares that the priests of the Cuna or Cueva (dwelling at the juncture of the Isthmus and the southern continent) communed with the devil and that Chipiripa, a rain-god, was one of their most important deities; they are said, too, to have known of the deluge. Of the neighbouring Indians, about Uraba, Cieza de León gives us to know that "they certainly talk with the devil and do him all the honour they can.... He appears to them (as I have been told by one of themselves) in frightful and terrible visions, which cause them much alarm." Furthermore, "the devil gives them to understand that, in the place to which they go [after death], they will come to life in another kingdom which he has prepared for them, and that it is necessary to take food with them for the journey. As if hell was so very far off!"

Peter Martyr devotes the greater part of a book (the tenth of the Seventh Decade)[114] to a description of the rites and beliefs of the Indians of the region where the Isthmus joins the continent. Dabaiba, he says, was the name both of a river and of a divinity whose sanctuary was about forty leagues from Darien; and thither at certain seasons the caciques, even of the most distant countries, sent slaves to be strangled and burnt before the idol. "When the Spaniards asked them to what divinity they addressed their prayers, they responded that it is to the god who created the heavens, the sun, the moon, and all existing things; and from whom every good thing proceeds. They believe that Dabaiba, the divinity universally venerated in the country, is the mother of this creator." Their traditions told of a great drought which, making the rivers dry, caused the greater part of mankind to perish of thirst, while the survivors emigrated from the mountains to the sea-coast; for this reason they maintained priests and addressed prayers to their divinity, who would seem to be a rain-goddess. Another legend recorded by Peter Martyr tells of a frightful tempest which brought with it two great birds, "similar to the harpies of the Strophades,"[Pg 192] having "the face, chin, mouth, nose, teeth, eyes, brows, and physiognomy of a virgin." One of these seized the people and carried them off to the mountains to devour them, wherefore, to slay the man-eating bird, certain heroes carved a human figure on the end of a log, which they set in the ground so that the figure alone was visible. The hunters concealed themselves near by, and when the monster, mistaking the image for prey, sunk its talons into the wood, falling upon it, they slew it before it could release itself. "Those who killed the monster were honoured as gods." Interesting, too, is Martyr's account of the reason given for the sinfulness of incest: the dark spots on the moon represent a man cast into that damp and freezing planet to suffer perpetual cold in expiation of incest committed with his sister—the very myth that is told in North Greenland; and the belief that "only nobles have immortal souls" (or, more likely, that they alone enjoy a paradise) is cited to explain why numbers of servants gladly throw themselves into the graves of their masters, since thus they gain the right to accompany their lords into the afterworld of pleasure; all others, apparently, go down to a gloomy hades, though there may be truth in Martyr's statement that it is pollution which brings this fate.

The account of the religion of the Isthmian tribes in later times, by W. M. Gabb and Pittier de Fábrega,[115] probably represents faithfully their earlier beliefs. There are deities who are the protectors of game-animals, suggesting the Elders of the Kinds so characteristic of North American lore; though they appear to men in human form, taking vengeance on those who only wound in the chase: "When thou shootest, do it to kill, so that the poor beast doth not fall a prey to the worms," is the command of the King of the Tapirs to the unlucky hunter who is punished for his faulty work by being stricken with dumbness during the period in which a cane grows from a sprout to its full height. The Isthmian peoples recognize (as do most other Americans) a fainéant supreme being, Sibú, in the[Pg 193] world above, with a host of lesser, but dangerous, powers in the realm of environing nature; and there is a paradise, at least for the noble dead, situated at the zenith, though the way thither is beset by perils, monsters, and precipices. Las Casas also mentions the belief in a supreme deity, Chicuna, Lord of All Things, as extending from Darien to Nicaragua; and he says that along with this god the Sun, the Moon, and the Morning Star were worshipped, as well as divinities of wood and stone which presided over the elements and the sowings (sementeras).

The allusion to deities of the sementeras is interesting in connexion with the Bribri and Brunka (or Boruca) myths, published by Pittier de Fábrega. According to these tribes of Indians, men and animal kinds were originally born of seeds kept in baskets which Sibú entrusted to the lesser gods; but the evil powers were constantly hunting for these seeds, endeavouring to destroy them. One tale relates that after Surá, the good deity to whom the seed had been committed, had gone to his field of maize, Jáburu, the evil divinity, stole and ate the seed; and when Surá returned, killed and buried him, a cacao-tree and a calabash-tree growing from the grave. Sibú, the almighty one, resolving to punish Jáburu and demanding of him a drink of chocolate, the wives of the wicked deity roasted the cacao, and made a drinking-vessel of the calabash. "Then Sibú, the almighty god, willed—and whatever he wills has to be: 'May the first cup come to me!' and as it so came to pass, he said, 'My uncle, I present this cup to thee, so that thou drink!' Jáburu swallowed the chocolate at once, with such delight that his throat resounded, tshaaa! And he said, 'My uncle! I have drunk Surá's first fruit!' But just at this moment he began to swell, and he swelled and swelled until he blew up. Then Sibú, the almighty god, picked up again the seed of our kin, which was in Jáburu's body, and willed, 'Let Surá wake up again!' And as it so happened he gave him back the basket with the seed of our kin[Pg 194] to keep." In another tale a duel between Sibú and Jáburu, in which each should throw two cacao-pods at the other, and he should lose in whose hand a pod first broke, was the preliminary for the creation of men, which Sibú desired and Jáburu opposed. The almighty god chose green pods, the evil one ripe pods; and at the third throw the pod broke in Jáburu's hand, mankind being then born from the seed. A third legend, of a man-stealing eagle who devoured his prey in company with a jaguar (who is no true jaguar, but a bad spirit, having the form of a stone until his prey approaches), is evidently a version of the story of the bird-monster told by Peter Martyr.

Not the quest of the Golden Fleece itself and the adventures of the Argonauts with clashing rocks and Amazonian women are so filled with extravagance and peril as is the search for El Dorado.[116] The legend of the Gilded Man and of his treasure city sprang from the soil of the New World in the very dawn of its discovery—whether wholly in the imaginations of conquistadores dazzled with dreams of gold, or partly from some custom, tale, or myth of the American Indians it is now impossible to say. In its earlier form it told of a priest, or king, or priest-king, who once a year smeared his body with oil, powdered himself with gold dust, and in gilded splendour, accompanied by nobles, floated to the centre of a lake, where, as the onlookers from the shore sang and danced, he first made offering of treasure to the waters and then himself leaped in to wash the gold from his body. Later, fostered by the readiness of the aborigines to rid themselves of the plague of white men by means of tales of treasure cities farther on, the story grew into pictures of the golden empire of Omagua, or Manoa, or Paytiti, or Enim, on the shores of a distant lake. Expedition after expedition journeyed in quest of the fabled capital. As early as 1530, Ambros von Alfinger, a German knight, set[Pg 195] out from the coast of Venezuela in search of a golden city, chaining his enslaved native carriers to one another by means of neck-rings and cutting off the heads of those who succumbed to fatigue to save the trouble of unlinking them; Alfinger himself was wounded in the neck by an arrow and died of the wound. In 1531 Diego de Ordaz conducted an expedition guided by a lieutenant who claimed to have been entertained in the city of Omoa by El Dorado himself; in 1536-38 George of Spires, afterward governor of Venezuela, made a journey of fifteen hundred miles into the interior; and another German, the red-bearded Nicholas Federman, departed upon the same quest. On the plains of Bogotá in 1539 they met Quesada and Belalcazar, who, coming from the north and from the south respectively, had subdued the Chibcha realm. Hernan Perez de Quesada, brother of the conqueror, led an unlucky expedition, behaving with such cruelty that his death from lightning was regarded as a divine retribution; while the expeditions of the chivalrous Philip von Hutten (1540-41) and of Orellana down the Amazon (1540-41) were followed by others, down to the time of Sir Walter Raleigh's quest in 1595,—all enlarging the geographical knowledge of South America and accumulating fables of cities of gold and nations of warlike women. Of all these adventures, however, the most amazing was the "jornada de Omagua y Dorado" which set out from Peru in 1559 under the leadership of Don Pedro de Ursua, a knight of Navarre. Ursua was a gentleman, worthy of his knighthood, but his company was crowded with cut-throats, of whom he himself was an early victim. Hernando de Guzman made himself master of the mutineers, and renouncing allegiance to the King of Castile, proclaimed himself Prince and King of all Tierra Firme; but he, in turn fell before his tyrant successor, Lope de Aguirre, whose fantastic and blood-thirsty insanity caused half the continent to shudder at his name, which is still remembered in Venezuelan folk-lore, where the phosphorescence of the swamp is called fuego de Aguirre in the[Pg 196] belief that under such form the tortured soul of the tyrant wanders abroad.

The true provenance of the story of the Gilded Man (if not of the treasure city) seems certainly to be the region about Bogotá in the realm of the Chibcha. Possibly the myth may refer to the practices of one of the nations conquered by the Muyscan Zipas before the coming of the Spaniards, and legendary even at that time; for as the tale is told, it seems to describe a ceremony in honour of such a water-spirit as we are everywhere told the Colombian nations venerated; and it may actually be that the Gilded Man was himself a sacrifice to or a personation of the deity. Whatever the origin, the legends of El Dorado have their node in the lands of the Chibcha—a circumstance not without its own poetic warrant, for from no other American people have jewelleries of cunningly wrought gold come in more abundance.

Colombian gold work. Ornaments in the forms of human and monstrous beings, doubtless mythological subjects. The originals are in the American Museum of Natural History.

Colombian gold work. The human figure apparently holds a staff or wand and may represent Bochica or similar personage. The originals are in the American Museum of Natural History.

The Zipa of Bogotá, at the period of the conquest, was the most considerable of the native rulers in what is now Colombia, having an empire only less in extent than those of the Peruvian Incas and of the Aztec Kings. He also was a recent lord, engaged at the very time of the coming of the whites in extending his power over neighbouring rulers; it is probable that Guatavita, east of Bogotá had fallen to the Zipa not many decades before the conquest and this Guatavita is supposed to have been the scene of the rite of El Dorado; in any case it had remained a famous shrine. Tunja was another power to the east of Bogotá declining before the rising power of the Zipas, its Zaque (as the Tunjan caciques were called) being saved from the Zipa's forces by the arrival of the Spaniards.

Besides these—the Chibcha proper[117]—there were in Colombia in the sixteenth century other civilized peoples, akin in culture and language, whose chief centres were in the elongated Cauca valley paralleling the Pacific coast. Farthest north were the tribes in the neighbourhood of Antioquia—the Tamahi and[Pg 197] Nutabi; south of these, about Cartago, were the most famous of gold-workers, the Quimbaya; while near the borders of what is now Ecuador dwelt the Coconuco and their kindred. All these peoples possessed skill in pottery, metal-working, and weaving; and the inhabitants of the Cauca valley were the most advanced of the Colombians in these arts. Indeed, the case of Peru seems to be in a measure repeated; for the Chibcha surpassed their neighbours in the strength of their military and political organization rather than in their knowledge of the arts. It is even possible that the Chibcha had been driven eastward by the western tribes, for the inhabitants of the Cauca valley possessed traditions of a northern origin, claiming to be immigrants; while the Chibcha still regarded certain spots in the territories of their western enemies, the Muzo, as sacred. Little is known of the mythic systems of any of these peoples save the Chibcha. The Antioquians preserved a deluge-myth (as doubtless did all the other Colombians); and they recognized a creator-god, Abirá, a spirit of evil, Canicubá, and a goddess, Dabeciba, who was the same as Dabaiba, the Darien Mother of the Creator. Cieza de León says[118] that the Antioquians "carve the likeness of a devil, very fierce and in human form, with other images and figures of cats which they worship; when they require water or sunshine for their crops, they seek aid from these idols." Of the Quimbaya Cieza tells how there appeared to a group of women making salt beside a spring the apparition of a disembowelled man who prophesied a pestilence that soon came. "Many women and boys affirmed that they saw the dead with their own eyes walking again. These people well understand that there is something in man besides the mortal body, though they do not hold that it is a soul, but rather some kind of transfiguration." The Sun, the Moon, and the Rainbow were important divinities with all these tribes, and they made offerings of gold and jewels and children to water-spirits in rivers and in springs. Human sacrifice was probably universal, and too many of the Indians,[Pg 198] as Cieza puts it, "not content with natural food, turned their bellies into tombs of their neighbours."

Fray Pedro Simon wrote his Noticias Historiales in 1623, some four score years from the conquest, giving in his fourth Noticia an account of the myths and rites of the Chibcha which is our primary source for the beliefs of these tribes. Like other American peoples the Chibcha recognized a Creator, apparently the Heaven Father, but like most others their active cults centred about lesser powers: the Sun (to whom human sacrifices were made), the Moon, the Rainbow, spirits of lakes and other genii locorum, culture deities, male and female, and the manes of ancestors. Idols of gold and copper, of wood and clay and cotton, represented gods and fetishes, and to them offerings were made, especially of emeralds and golden ornaments. Fray Pedro says that the Pijaos aborigines and some of those of Tunja had in their sanctuaries images having three heads or three faces on a single body which, the natives said, represented three persons with one heart; and he also records their use of crosses to mark the graves of those dead of snake-bite, as well as their belief that the souls of the dead fared to the centre of the earth, crossing the Stygian river on balsas made of spiders' webs, for which reason spiders were never killed. Like the Aztec they held that the lot of men slain in battle and of women dying in child-birth was especially delectable in the other world.

The worship of mountains, serpents, and lakes was implied in many of the Chibcha rites. Slaves were sacrificed, and their bodies were buried on hill-tops; children, who were the particular offering to the Sun, were sometimes taken to mountain-tops to be slain, their bodies being supposed to be consumed by the Sun; and an interesting case of the surrogate for human victims was the practice of sacrificing parrots which had been[Pg 199] taught to speak. In masked dances, addressed to the Sun, tears were represented on the masks as a supplication for pity; and another curious rite, apparently solar, was performed at Tunja, where twelve men in red, presumably typifying the moons of the year, danced about a blue man, who was doubtless the sky-god. The ceremony of El Dorado is only one of many rites in which the divinities of the sacred lakes were propitiated; and it is probable that these water-spirits were conceived in the form of snakes, as when, at Lake Guatavita, a huge serpent was supposed to issue from the depths to secure offerings left upon the bank.

The same concept of serpentiform water-deities appears in the curious and novel creation-myth of the Chibcha, briefly told by Fray Simon. In the beginning all was darkness, for light was imprisoned in a great house in charge of a being called Chiminigagua, whom the friar names as the Supreme God, omnipotent, ever good, and lord of all things. After creating huge black birds, to whom he gave the light, commanding them to carry it in their beaks until all the world was illumined and resplendent, Chiminigagua formed the Sun, the Moon (to be the Sun's wife and companion), and the rest of the universe. The human race was of another origin, for shortly after the creation of light, from Lake Iguaque, not far from Tunja, emerged a woman named Bachue or Turachogue ("the Good Woman"), bearing with her a boy just out of infancy. When he was grown, Bachue married him; and their prolific offspring—she brought forth four or six children at a birth—peopled the earth; but finally the two returned beneath the waters, Bachue enjoining upon the people to keep the peace, to obey the laws which she had given them, and in particular to preserve the cult of the gods; while the pair assumed the form of serpents, in which they were supposed sometimes to reappear to their worshippers.

The belief that the ancestors of men issued from a lake or spring was common to many Andean tribes, being found far[Pg 200] to the south, where the Indians of Cuzco pointed to Lake Titicaca as the place whence they had come. The myth is easy to explain for the obvious reason that lakesides are desirable abodes and that migrating tribes would hark back to abandoned lakeside homes as their primal sites; however, another suggestion is made plausible by various fragments of origin-myths which have been preserved, namely, that the Andean legends belong to the great cycle of American tales which make men immigrants to the upper world from an under-earth realm whence they have been driven by the malevolence of the water-monster, a serpent or a dragon. There are many striking parallels between the Colombian tales and those of the Pueblo tribes of North America—the great underworld-goddess, the serpent and the spider as subaqueous and subterranean powers, the return of the dead to the realm below, the importance of birds in cosmogony, the cult of the rainbow; and along with these there are tales of a culture hero and of a pair of divine brothers such as are common to nearly all American peoples.

1. Ceremonial dish of black ware with monster or animal forms found near Anoire, Antioquia. The original is in the Museum of the University of Nebraska.

2. Image of mother and child, red earthenware, from the coastal regions of Colombia. The original is in the Museum of the University of Nebraska.

Other Colombian legends of the origin of men include the Pijaos belief, recorded by Fray Simon, that their ancestors had issued from a mountain, and the tradition of the Muzo—western neighbours of the Chibcha—that a shadow, Aré, formed faces from sand, which became men and women when he sprinkled them with water. A true creation-story (as distinguished from tales of origin through generation) was told also by the people of Tunja. In the beginning all was darkness and fog, wherein dwelt the caciques of Ramiriqui and of Sogamozo, nephew and uncle. From yellow clay they fashioned men, and from an herb they created women; but since the world was still unillumined, after enjoining worship upon their creatures, they ascended to the sky, the uncle to become the Sun, the nephew the Moon. It was at Sogamozo that the dance of the twelve red men—each garlanded and carrying a cross, and each with a young bird borne as a crest above his head—was[Pg 201] danced about the blue sky-man, while all sang how human beings are mortal and must change their bodies into dust without knowing what shall be the fate of their souls.

Fray Simon relates an episode of these same Indians which is enlightening both as to the missionary and as to the aboriginal conception of the powers that be. After the first missionary had laboured among the natives of Tunja and Sogamozo, "the Demon there began to give contrary doctrines; and among other matters he sought to discredit the teaching of the Incarnation, telling them that such a thing had not yet taken place. Nevertheless, it should happen that the Sun, assuming human flesh in the body of a virgin of the pueblo of Guacheta, should cause her to bring forth that which she should conceive from the rays of the sun, although remaining virgin. This was bruited throughout the provinces, and the cacique of the pueblo named, wishing to prove the miracle, took two virgins, and leading them forth from his house every dawn, caused them to dispose themselves upon a neighbouring hill, where the first rays of the sun would shine upon them. Continuing this for some days, it was granted to the Demon by Divine permission (whose judgements are incomprehensible) that the event should issue according to his desire: in such manner that in a few days one of the damsels became pregnant, as she said, by the Sun." At the end of nine months the girl brought forth a hacuata, a large and beautiful emerald, which was treated as an infant, and after being carried for several days, became a living creature—"all by the order of the Demon." The child was called Goranchacha, and when he was grown he became cacique, with the title of "Child of the Sun." It is to be suspected that the story of the virgin-born son of the Sun was older than the first preaching of the Incarnation, and that Spanish ears had too eagerly misheard some tale of rites or myths which must have been analogous to the Inca legends of descent from the Sun and to their consecration of virgins to his worship.

[Pg 202]

Like the other civilized American nations the Chibcha preserved the tradition of a bearded old man, clothed in long robes who came from the east to instruct them in the arts of life and to raise them from primeval barbarism; and like other churchly writers Fray Pedro Simon regarded this as evidence of the preaching of the Gospel by an apostle. Nempterequeteva, or Nemquetheba, and Xue, or Zuhé, are two of the names of this culture hero, worshipped as the god Bochica. He taught the weaving of cotton, the cultivation of fruits, the building of houses, the adoration of the gods; and then he passed on his mysterious way, leaving as proof of his mission designs of crosses and serpents, and the custom of erecting crosses over the graves of the victims of snake-bite—to Fray Pedro an obvious reminiscence of the brazen serpent raised on a cross by Moses in the Wilderness. One of the epithets of this greybeard was Chiminizagagua, or "Messenger of Chiminigagua," the supreme god; and when the Spaniards appeared they were called Gagua, after the light-giver; but later, when their cruelties had set them in a different context, the aborigines changed the name to Suegagua ("Demon with Light") after their principal devil, Suetiva, "and this they give today to the Spaniards." Piedrahíta says the Spaniards were termed Zuhá, but he identifies the name as belonging to the hero Bochica.

A curious episode follows the departure of the culture hero. Among the people appeared a woman, beautiful and resplendent—"or, better to say, a devil in her figure"—who taught doctrines wholly opposed to the injunctions of Chiminizagagua. Dancing and carousal were the tenets of her evangel; and in displeasure at this, Chiminizagagua transformed the woman (variously known as Chie, Huytaca, or Xubchasgagua) into an owl, condemning her to walk the night. Humboldt says that Bochica changed his wife Chia into the Moon (chia signifies "moon" in the Chibchan tongue, says Acosta de Samper); and it seems altogether likely that in the culture[Pg 203] hero, Messenger of Light, and the festal heroine, with their opposite doctrines, we have a myth of sun and moon.

The Chibcha, of course, had their deluge-legend. In the version given by Fray Pedro Simon it is associated with the appearance of the rainbow as the symbol of hope; and since the rainbow cult was important throughout the Andean region, it may everywhere have been associated with some such myth as the friar recounts. Chibchachum, the tutelary of the natives of Bogotá, being offended by the people, who murmured against him and indeed openly offended, sent a flood to punish them, whereupon they, in their peril, appealed to Bochica, who appeared to them upon a rainbow, and, striking the mountains with his staff, opened a conduit for the waters. Chibchachum was punished, as Zeus punished the Titans, by being thrust beneath the earth to take the place of the lignum-vitae-trees which had hitherto upheld it, and his weary restlessness is the cause of earthquakes; while the rainbow, Chuchaviva, was thenceforth honoured as a deity, though not without fear; for Chibchachum, in revenge for his disgrace, announced that when it appeared, many would die. In the version of this tale given by Piedrahíta, Huytaca plays a part, for it is as a result of her artifices that the waters rise; but Bochica is again the deliverer, and the place opened for the issuance of the waters was shown at the cataract of Téquendama—"one of the wonders of the world."

The myth of Chibchachum, shaking the world which he supports, has its analogue not only in the tale of Atlas but also in the Tlingit legend of the Old Woman Below who jars the post that upholds the world. It would seem, however, not impossible that the story is an etymological myth, for Fray Pedro Simon says that Chibchachum means "Staff of the Chibcha," a name which might easily lend itself to the mythopoesy of the deluge-tale; nor is it unreasonable from the point of view of cultural advancement, for the Chibcha were beyond the stage in which it is profitable to refer all deifications to[Pg 204] natural phenomena. Chibchachum, says the friar, was god of commerce and industries—a complex divinity, not a mere hero of myth—and Bochica, the most universally venerated of Chibchan deities, was revered as a law-giver, divinity of caciques and captains; served with sacrifices of gold and tobacco, he was worshipped with fasts and hymns, and his image was that of a man with the golden staff of authority. There was a fox-god and a bear-god, but Nemcatacoa, the bear-god, was patron of weavers and dyers, and, oddly, of drunkards; in his bear's form he was supposed to sing and dance with his followers. Chukem, deity of boundaries and foot-races, must have been an American Hermes, and Bachue, goddess of agriculture and of the springs of life, was, no doubt, a personification of the earth itself, a Ge or Demeter. Chuchaviva, the Rainbow, aided women in child-birth and those sick with a fever—and we think of the images of the rainbow goddess on the sweat lodges of the Navaho far to the north, and of the rainbow insignia of the royal Incas in the imperial south. Certain it is that here we have to do with a pantheon that reflects the complexity of a life developed beyond the primitive needs of those whom we call nature-folk.

The most picturesque account of the landing of gigantic strangers on the desert-like Pacific coast, just south of the equator, is that given by Cieza de León.[120] "I will relate what I have been told, without paying attention to the various versions of the story current among the vulgar, who always exaggerate everything." With this proclamation of modesty, he proceeds with the tale which the natives, he says, have received from their ancestors of a remote time.

"There arrived on the coast, in boats made of reeds, as big as large ships, a party of men of such size that, from the knee downwards, their height was as great as the entire height of an[Pg 205] ordinary man, though he might be of good stature. Their limbs were all in proportion to the deformed size of their bodies, and it was a monstrous thing to see their heads, with hair reaching to the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates. They had no beards and were dressed in the skins of animals, others only in the dress which nature gave them, and they had no women with them. When they arrived at this point [Santa Elena], they made a sort of village, and even now the sites of their houses are pointed out. But as they found no water, in order to remedy the want they made some very deep wells, works which are truly worthy of remembrance, for such is their magnitude that they certainly must have been executed by very strong men. They dug these wells in the living rock until they met with water, and then they lined them with masonry from top to bottom in such sort that they will endure for many ages. The water in these wells is very good and wholesome, and always so cold that it is very pleasant to drink it. Having built their village and made their wells or cisterns where they could drink, these great men, or giants, consumed all the provisions they could lay their hands upon in the surrounding country, insomuch that one of them ate more meat than fifty of the natives of the country could. As all the food they could find was not sufficient to sustain them, they killed many fish with nets and other gear. They were detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed them, and the men also in another way; but the Indians were not sufficiently numerous to destroy this new people who had come to occupy their lands.... All the natives declare that God, our Lord, brought upon them a punishment in proportion to the enormity of their offence.... A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which, at one blow, they were all killed, and the fire consumed them. There only remained a few bones and skulls, which God allowed to[Pg 206] remain without being consumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment."

Cieza de León's story is only one among a number of accounts of this race of giants, come from the sea and destroyed long ago by flame from heaven for the sin of sodomy. To these legends recent investigations have added a new interest; for during excavations in the coast region to the north of Cape Santa Elena the members of the George G. Heye Expeditions (1906-08) discovered the remains of a unique aboriginal civilization in this region, among its monuments being stone-faced wells corresponding to those mentioned by the early narration. Another and peculiarly interesting type of monument, found here in abundance, is the stone seat, whether throne or altar, carved with human or animal figures to support it, and reminiscent of the duhos of the Antilles and of carved metates and seats found northward in the continent and beyond the Isthmus. It is the opinion of the excavators that these seats were thrones for deities; possibly also for human dignitaries, especially as clay figures represent men sitting upon such seats—images, perhaps, of household gods; while the figures of men, pumas, serpents, birds, monkeys, and other figures crouching caryatid-like are, no doubt, depictions of supporting powers, divine auxiliaries or gods themselves. Monstrous forms, composite animals, and grotesquely frog-like images of a female goddess in bas-relief on stele-like slabs—mute emblems of a forgotten pantheon—add curious interest to the vanished race, remembered only in distorted legend when the first-coming Spaniards received the tale from the aborigines.

Scene from a vase, Truxillo, showing balsa. The drawing is in the Chimu style. After Joyce, South American Archaeology, page 126.

Juan de Velasco,[121] in the beginning of his history of Quito, places the coming of the giants about the time of the Christian era; and six or seven centuries later, he declares, another incursion of men from the sea appeared on this coast, destined to leave a more permanent trace, for the present city of Caraques not only marks the site of their first power, but bears the name of the Cara. These invaders are said to have come[Pg 207] on balsas—the strange boats of this coast, formed of logs bound together, the longest at the centre, into the form of a hull, on which a platform was built, while masts bore cloth sails; and it is stated that the Spaniards encountered such craft capable of carrying forty or fifty men. The Cara were an adventurous people, and after dwelling for a time upon the coast, they advanced into the interior until, about 980 a. d., according to Velasco, they eventually established their power in the neighbourhood of Quito, where the Scyri (as the Cara king was called) became a powerful overlord. From that time until Quito was subdued by the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna Capac in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the Scyris reigned over the northern empire, constantly extending their territories by war; but their power was finally broken when the Inca added the emerald of the Scyris to the red fringe of Cuzco to complete his imperial crown.

The followers of the Scyris, Velasco says, were mere idolaters, having at the head of their pantheon the Sun and the Moon who had guided them on their journeys; and he describes the temples built to these deities on two opposite hills at Quito, that to the Sun having before the door two pillars which served to measure the solar year, while twelve lesser columns indicated the beginning of each month. Elsewhere in their empire were the usual local cults,—worship of animals and elements, with tales of descent from serpentiform water-spirits and with adoration of fish and of food animals—while on the coast the Sea was a great divinity, and the islands of Puna and La Plata were the seats of famous sanctuaries, at the former shrine prisoners being sacrificed to Tumbal, the war-god, by having their hearts torn out. The neighbouring coast was the seat of the veneration of the great emerald (mentioned by Cieza de León and Garcilasso de la Vega) which was famous as a god of healing; and it is altogether probable that the Scyris brought their regard for the emerald from this region in which the gem abounded, though this[Pg 208] may well have been merely a local intensification of that belief in the magic of green and blue gems which is broadcast in the two Americas.

Besides the stories of the giants and the Cara, there is a third legend of an ancient descent of seamen upon the equatorial coast. Balboa[122] is the narrator of the tale of the coming of Naymlap and his people to Lambeyeque, a few degrees south of Cape Santa Elena, and the story which he tells is given with a minuteness as to name and description that leaves no doubt of its native origin. At a very remote period there arrived from the north a great fleet of balsas, commanded by a brave and renowned chieftain, Naymlap. His wife was called Ceterni, and a list of court officers is given—Pitazofi, the trumpeter; Ninacolla, warden of the chief's litter and throne; Ninagentue, the cup-bearer; Fongasigde, spreader of shell-dust before the royal feet (a function which leads us to suspect that the royal feet, for magic reasons, were never to touch the earth); Ochocalo, chief of the cuisine; Xam, master of face-paints; and Llapchilulli, charged with the care of vestments and plumes. From this account of the entourage, one readily infers that the chieftain is more than man, himself a divinity; and, indeed, Balboa goes on to say that immediately after the new comers had landed, they built a temple, named Chot, wherein they placed an idol which they had brought and which, carved of green stone in the image of the chief, was called Llampallec, or "figure of Naymlap." After a long reign Naymlap disappeared, leaving the report that, given wings by his power, he had ascended to the skies; and his followers, in their affliction, went everywhere in search of their lord, while their children inhabited the territories which had been acquired. Cium, the successor of Naymlap, at the end of his reign, immured himself in a subterranean chamber, where he perished of hunger in order that he might leave the reputation of being immortal; and after Cium were nine other kings, succeeded by Tempellec, who undertook to move[Pg 209] the statue of Naymlap. But when a demon, in the form of a beautiful woman, had seduced him, it began to rain—a thing hitherto unknown on that dry coast—and continued for thirty days, this being followed by a year of famine, whereupon the priests, binding Tempellec hand and foot, cast him into the sea, after which the kingdom was changed into a republic.

This tale bears all the marks of authentic tradition. We may well suppose that Naymlap and his successors were magic kings, reigning during the period of their vigorous years and then sacrificed to make way for a successor who should anew incarnate the sacred life of Llampallec. Such rulers, as corn-spirits and embodiments of the communal soul of their people, have been made familiar by Sir James G. Frazer's monumental Golden Bough; and in this case it would appear that the sacred king was regarded as a marine divinity, probably as the son of Mother Sea. Certainly this would not merely explain the shell-dust spread beneath his feet, but it might also account for the punishment of Tempellec, who had brought the cataclysm of water to the land and so was cast back to his own element; while it is even possible that the worship of the emerald, which all writers mention in connexion with this coast, may have here received its especial impetus from the colour and translucency of the stone, suggesting the green waters of the ocean.

[Pg 210]

"In this land of Peru," wrote Cieza de León,[124] "are three desert ranges where men can in no wise exist. One of these comprises the montaña (forests) of the Andes, full of dense wildernesses where men cannot live, nor ever have lived. The second is the mountainous region, extending the whole length of the Cordillera of the Andes, which is intensely cold, and its summits are covered with eternal snow, so that in no way can people live in this region owing to the snow and the cold, and also because there are no provisions, all things being destroyed by the snow and the wind, which never ceases to blow. The third range comprises the sandy deserts from Tumbez to the other side of Tarapaca, in which there is nothing to be seen but sand-hills and the fierce sun which dries them up, without water, nor herb, nor tree, nor created thing, except birds which, by the gift of their wings, wander wherever they list. This kingdom, being so vast, has great deserts for the reasons I have now given.

"The inhabited region is after this fashion. In parts of the mountains of the Andes are ravines and dales, which open out into deep valleys of such width as often to form great plains between the mountains; and although the snow falls, it all remains on the higher part. As these valleys are closed in, they are not molested by the winds, nor does the snow reach them, and the land is so fruitful that all things which are sown yield abundantly; and there are trees and many birds and animals. The land being so fertile, is well peopled by the natives. They[Pg 211] make their villages with rows of stones roofed with straw, and live healthily and in comfort. Thus the mountains of the Andes form these dales and ravines in which there are populous villages, and rivers of excellent water flow near them, some of the rivers send their waters to the South Sea, entering by the sandy deserts which I have mentioned, and the humidity of their water gives rise to very beautiful valleys with great rows of trees. The valleys are two or three leagues broad, and great quantities of algoroba trees [Prosopis horrida] grow in them, which flourish even at great distances from any water. Wherever there are groves of trees the land is free from sand and very fertile and abundant. In ancient times these valleys were very populous, and still there are Indians in them, though not so many as in former days. As it never rains in these sandy deserts and valleys of Peru, they do not roof their houses as they do in the mountains, but build large houses of adobes [sun-dried bricks] with pleasant terraced roofs of matting to shade them from the sun, nor do the Spaniards use any other roofing than these reed mats. To prepare their fields for sowing, they lead channels from the rivers to irrigate the valleys, and the channels are made so well and with so much regularity that all the land is irrigated without any waste. This system of irrigation makes the valleys very green and cheerful, and they are full of fruit-trees both of Spain and of this country. At all times they raise good harvests of maize and wheat, and of everything that they sow. Thus, although I have described Peru as being formed of three desert ridges, yet from them, by the will of God, descend these valleys and rivers, without which no man could live. This is the cause why the natives were so easily conquered, for if they rebelled they would all perish of cold and hunger. Except the land which they inhabit, the whole country is full of snowy mountains, enormous and very terrible."

Cieza de León's description brings vividly before the imagination the physical surroundings which made possible the evolution[Pg 212] and the long history of the greatest of native American empires. Divided from one another by towering mountains and inhospitable deserts, the tribes and clans that filtered into this region at some remote period were compelled to develop in relative isolation; while, further, the conditions of existence were such that the inhabitants could not be nomadic huntsmen, nor even fishermen. Along the shores are vestiges of ancient shell-heaps, indicative of utterly primitive fisher-folk, and the sea always remained an important source of food for the coastal peoples; yet even here, as Cieza de León indicates, the growth of population was dependent upon an intensive cultivation of the narrow river-valleys rather than upon the conquest of new territories. Thus, the whole environment of life in Peru, montane and littoral, is framed by the fact of more or less constricted and protected valley centres, immensely productive in response to toil, but yielding no idyllic fruits to unlaborious ease. If the peoples who inhabited these valleys were not agriculturists when they entered them, they were compelled to become such in order that they might live and increase; and while the stupendous thrift of the aborigines, as evidenced by their stone-terraced gardens, their elaborate aqueducts, and their wonderful roads, still excites the astonishment of beholders, it is none the less intelligible as the inevitable consequence of prolonged human habitation. It is certain that the Peruvian peoples were the most accomplished of all Americans in the working of the soil; and it is possible that they were the originators of agriculture in America, for it was from Peru, apparently, that the growing of maize spread throughout wide regions of South America, Peru that developed the potato as a food-crop, and in Peru that the cultivation of cotton and various fruits and vegetables added greatest variety to the native farming. Peru, likewise, was the only American centre in which there was a domestic animal more important than the dog; and the antiquity of the taming of the llama and alpaca—useful not only for food and wool, but also as beasts of burden—is shown[Pg 213] by the fact that these animals show marked differentiation from the wild guanaco from which they are derived. The development of domestic species of this animal and, even more, the development of maize from its ancestral grasses (if indeed this were Peruvian)[125] imply many centuries of settled and industrious life, a consideration which adds strongly to the archaeological and legendary indications of a civilization that must be reckoned in millennia.

Machu Picchu, in the valley of the Urubamba, north of Cuzco. These ruins of an ancient Inca city were discovered by Hiram Bingham, of the Yale University and National Geographical Society expedition, in 1911, and are by him identified with the "Tampu-Tocco" of Inca tradition (see pages 216-18, and Plate XXXVIII). From photograph, courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition.

The conditions which thus fostered local and intensive cultural evolutions were scarcely less favourable—once the local valleys had reached a certain complexity—to the formation of extensive empires. As Cieza de León remarks, conquest was easy where refuge was difficult; and the Inca conquerors themselves found that the most effective weapon they could employ against the coastal cities was mastery of their aqueducts. The town which lost control of its water, drawn from the hills, could only surrender; and thus, the segregated valleys fell an easy prey to a powerful and aggressive people, gifted with engineering skill, such as the Inca race; while the empire won was not difficult to hold. At the time of the Spanish conquest that empire was truly immense. Tahuantinsuyu ("the Four Quarters") was the native name, and "the Quartered City" (Cuzco), its capital, was regarded as the Navel of the World. The four quarters, or provinces, were oriented from Cuzco: the southerly was Collasuyu, stretching from the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca southward; the eastern province was Antisuyu, extending down the slopes of the Andes into the regions of savagery; to the west lay Cuntisuyu, reaching to the coast and to the lands of the Yunca peoples; while to the north was Chinchasuyu, following the Andean valleys. Shortly before the Conquest the Inca dominion had been imposed upon the realm of the Scyris of Quito, so that the northern boundary lay beyond the equator; while the extreme southerly border had recently been extended over the Calchaqui tribes and down the coast to the edges of Araucania in the[Pg 214] neighbourhood of latitude 35º south. The imperial territories were naturally narrowed to the Andean region, for the tropical forests to the east offered no allurements to the mountain-loving race which, indeed, could endure only temporarily the heat of the western coast, so that Inca campaigners in this direction resorted to frequent reliefs lest their men be debilitated. On the other hand, the immense expanse north and south, notwithstanding the perfection of the roads and fortresses built by astute rulers to facilitate communication, caused a natural tension of the parts and a tendency to break at the appearance of even the least weakness at the centre. Such appears to have been the fatal defect underlying the conflict of Huascar, at Cuzco, with Atahualpa, whose initial strength lay in his possession of Quito, and whose career was brought to an untimely end by the advent of Pizarro. Despite the fact that Inca power had been clearly crescent within the generation, it is by no means certain that the political conditions which the Spaniards used to advantage might not, if left to themselves, have disrupted the great empire.

There is reason to think that such a rupture had occurred at least once before in the history of Andean civilization. The list of more than a hundred Peruvian kings given by the Licentiate Fernando Montesinos (writing about 1650)[126] was formerly viewed with much distrust, chiefly for the reason that the kings of the pre-Inca dynasties recorded by Montesinos are almost without exception unnamed by earlier and prime authorities on Peruvian history (including Garcilasso de la Vega and Cieza de León). Recent discoveries, however, both scholarly and archaeological, have brought a new plausibility to Montesinos's lists, and it appears probable that he derived them from the lost works of Blas Valera, one of the earliest men in the field, known to have had exceptional opportunities for a study of native lore; while at the same time the archaeological investigations of Max Uhle and the brilliant achievements of the expeditions headed by Hiram Bingham[Pg 215] have given a new definiteness to knowledge of pre-Inca conditions.[127]

It has long been known that Inca civilization was only the last in a series of Peruvian culture periods. Back of it, in the highlands, lay the Megalithic Age, so called from the great size of the stone blocks in its cyclopean masonry, the earliest centre of this culture being supposed to have been about Lake Titicaca, and especially Tiahuanaco, at the south of the lake—a site remarkable not only for the most extraordinary of all ancient American monuments, the monolithic gate and the surrounding precincts, but also for the importance ascribed to it in legend as a place of origin of nations. Other highland centres, however, hark back to the same period, and Cuzco itself, in old cyclopean walls, shows evidence of an age of Megalithic greatness upon which the later Inca civilization had supervened. Again, in the coastal region from Ica to Truxillo—the realms of the Yunca, according to the older chroniclers—there were several successive culture periods; and though it is possible that traditions such as that of Naymlap (see Chapter VI, Section V) indicate a foreign origin for the Yunca peoples, in any case their differing environment would account for much. The peoples of the littoral could have no herds of llamas, since the animal was unable to live in that region; and hence they looked mainly to cotton for their fabrics, while the sea gave them fair compensation in the matter of food. In the lesser arts, especially in that of the potter, they surpassed the highlanders and, indeed, all other Americans; but their building material was adobe, and they have left no magnificent monuments, as have the stone-workers of the hills. Nevertheless at some remote, pre-Inca period the ideas of the coast and those of the highlands met and interchanged: the art of Tiahuanaco is reflected in motive at Truxillo, while the vases of Nasca repeat the bizarre decoration of the monolith of Chavin de Huantar. The hoary sanctity of the great temple of Pachacamac was such that its Inca[Pg 216] conqueror adopted the god into his own pantheon; and it was just here, at the Yunca shrine of Pachacamac, that Uhle found evidence of a series of culture periods leading to a considerable antiquity. The indigenous coastal art had already passed its climax of expressive skill when the influence of Tiahuanaco appeared; but this influence lasted long enough to leave an enduring impress on the interregnum-like period which followed, awaiting, as it were, the return of the hills' influence, which came with the advent of the Inca. Such, in brief, is the restoration, and it seems to fit remarkably with Bingham's discoveries and with Montesinos's lists.

Of the one hundred and two kings in these lists, the last ten form the Inca dynasty (a group with respect to which Montesinos is in essential agreement with other chroniclers), whose beginning is placed 1100-1200 a. d.; back of these are the twenty-eight lords of Tampu-Tocco; and still earlier the sixty-four rulers of the ancient empire, forty-six of them forming the amauta (or priest-king) dynasty which followed after the primal line of eighteen Sons of the Gods. Were this scheme of regal succession followed out in extenso the beginnings of the Megalithic Empire of the highlands should fall near the beginning of the first millennium before Christ, and that of the Tampu Tocco dynasty in the early years of our Era. Archaeological and other considerations lead, however, to estimates somewhat more conservative, placing the culmination of the early empire in the first centuries of the Christian era, and the sojourn at Tampu Tocco from about 600-1100 a. d.[128]

The Inca dynasty, established at Cuzco toward 1200 a. d., was the creator of the great empire which the Spaniards found, and its record is the traditional history of Peru, recounted by Garcilasso and Cieza. According to the legend, the Inca tribes had come to Cuzco from a place called Tampu-Tocco, a city of refuge in an inaccessible valley, where for centuries their ancestors had lived in seclusion, the cause of the retirement being as follows: in past generations, it was said, the Amauta[Pg 217] dynasty held sway over a great highland realm, extending from Tucuman in the south to Huanuco in the north, the empire having been formed perhaps by the earlier royal house, which was called Pirua, after the name of its first King. In the reign of the forty-sixth Amauta, there came an invasion of hordes from the south and east, preceded by comets, earthquakes, and dire divinations. The King Titu Yupanqui, borne on a golden litter, led his soldiers out to battle; he was slain by an arrow, and his discouraged followers retreated with his body. Cuzco fell, and after war came pestilence, leaving city and country uninhabitable, while the remnants of the Amauta people fled away to Tampu-Tocco, where they established themselves, leaving at Cuzco only a few priests who refused to abandon the shrine of the Sun. It was said that the art of writing was lost in this débâcle, and that the later art of reckoning by quipus, or knotted and coloured cords, was invented at Tampu-Tocco. Here, in a city free from pests and unmoved by earthquakes, the Kings of Tampu-Tocco reigned in peace, going occasionally to Cuzco to worship at the ancient shrine, over which, with its neighborhood, some shadowy authority was preserved. Finally a woman, Siyu-Yacu, of noble birth and high ambition, caused the report to be spread that her son, Rocca, had been carried off to be instructed by the Sun himself, and a few days later the youth, appearing in a garment glittering with gold, told the people that corruption of the ancient religion had caused their fall, but that their lost glories should be restored to them under his leadership. Thus Rocca became the first of the Incas, Cuzco was restored as capital, and the new empire started on a career which was to exceed the old in grandeur.

With the removal to Cuzco, Tampu-Tocco became no more than a monumental shrine where priests and vestals preserved the rites of the old religion and watched over the caves made sacred by the bones of former monarchs. The native writer Salcamayhua, who, like Garcilasso, makes Manco Capac the[Pg 218] founder of the Incas (Montesinos regards Manco Capac I as the first native-born king of the Pirua dynasty), tells how "at the place of his birth he ordered works to be executed, consisting of a masonry wall with three windows, which were emblems of the house of his fathers, whence he descended"; and the name Tampu-Tocco actually means "Tavern of the Windows," windows being an unusual feature of Peruvian architecture. As the event proves, the commemorative wall is still standing.

In 1911, Hiram Bingham, the leader of the expedition sent out by Yale University and the National Geographical Society, discovered in the wild valley of the Urubamba, north of Cuzco, the ruins of a mountain-seated city, one of the most wonderful, and (in its natural context) beautiful ruins in the world. Machu Picchu the place is called, and its discoverer identifies it with the Tampu-Tocco of Inca tradition. One of its most striking features is a wall with three great windows; it contains cave-made graves and temples; bones of the more recent dead indicate that those who last dwelt in it were priestesses and priests; and it gives evidence of long occupation. The more ancient stonework is the more beautiful in execution, seeming to hark back to the masterpieces of Megalithic civilization; the later portion is in Inca style. Especially interesting is the discovery of record stones, associated with the older period, indicating that an earlier method of chronology had been replaced in later times, for it is to the reign of the thirteenth King of Tampu-Tocco that the invention of quipus is ascribed. Ideally placed as a city of refuge in a remote cañon, so that its very existence was unknown to the Spanish conquerors; seated on a granite hill unmoved by earthquakes; with its elaborate structures and complicated terraces indicating generations of residence, Machu Picchu represents the connecting link between the old and the new empires in Peru and gives a suddenly vivid plausibility to the traditions recorded by Montesinos.

Sculptured monolith from Chavin de Huantar, now in the Museum of Lima. The design appears to be a deity armed with thunderbolts or elaborate wands, with a monster head surmounted by an elaborate head-dress. If the figure be viewed reversed the head-dress will be seen to consist of a series of masks each pendent from the protruding tongue of the mask above, a motive frequent in Nasca pottery (cf. Plate XXXII). The figure strongly suggests the central image of the Tiahuanaco monolithic gateway, but it is to be observed that serpent heads, from the girdle, the rays of the head-dress, and in the caduceus-like termination of the head-dress, take the place of the puma, fish and condor accessories of the Tiahuanaco monument. The relationship of this deity to those represented on Plates XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, and XXXVII, is scarcely to be doubted. Markham, Incas of Peru, page 34.

[Pg 219]

Thus, in shadowy fashion, the cycles of Andean civilization are restored. There are two great regions, the highland and the littoral, Inca and Yunca, each with a long history. The primitive fisher-families of the coast gave way to a civilization which may have received its impetus, as traditions indicate, from tribes sailing southward in great balsas; at any rate it had developed, doubtless before the Christian era, important and characteristic culture centres—Truxillo in the north, Nasca to the south—and great shrines, Pachacamac and Rimac, venerable to the Incas; while long after its own acme, and long before the Inca conquest, the coastal civilization had had important commerce with the ancient culture of the highlands. The origin of the pre-Inca empire from the Megalithic culture of Tiahuanaco leads back toward the middle of the first millenium b. c., perhaps to dimly remote centuries. It passed its floruit, marked by the rise of Cuzco as a great capital, and then followed barbarian migrations and wars; the retirement of a defeated handful to Tampu-Tocco; a long period of decline; and finally, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, a renaissance of culture, marked by a religious reform amounting to a new dispensation and stamping the revived power as essentially ecclesiastical in its claims,—for all Inca conquests were undertaken with a Crusader's plea for the expansion of the faith in the beneficent Sun and for the spread of knowledge of the Way of Life revealed through his children, the Inca.

It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between the development of this civilization and that of Europe during the same period. Cuzco and Rome rise to empire simultaneously; the ancient civilizations of Tiahuanaco, Nasca, and Truxillo, excelling the new power in art, but inferior in power of organization and engineering works, are the American equivalents of Greece and the Orient. Almost synchronously, Rome and Cuzco fall before barbarian invasions; and in each case centuries follow which can only be known as dark, during[Pg 220] which the empire breaks in chaos. Finally, both civilizations rise, again during the same period, as leaders in a new movement in religion, animated by a crusading zeal and basing their authority upon divine will. It is true that Rome does not attain the material power that was restored to Cuzco, but Christendom, at least, does attain this power. Such is the picture,—though it must be added that in the present state of knowledge it is plausible restoration only, not proven truth.

It is not possible to reconstruct in any detail the religions and mythologies of the pre-Inca civilizations of the central Andes, but of the four culture centres which have been most studied some traits are decipherable. Two of these centres are montane, two coastal. Of the former, the Megalithic highland civilization, whose first home is supposed to have been the region of Lake Titicaca, is assuredly ancient; the civilization of the Calchaqui, to the south of this, was a late conquest of the Incas and was doubtless a contemporary of Inca culture. On the coast, the Yunca developed in two branches, both, apparently, as ancient as the Megalithic culture, and both, again, late conquests of the Incas. To the north, extending from Tumbez to Paramount, with Chimu (Truxillo) as its capital, was the realm of the Grand Chimu—a veritable empire, for it comprised some twenty coastal valleys—while the twelve adjoining southern valleys, from Chancay to Nasca, were the seat of the Chincha Confederacy, a loose political organization with a characteristic culture of its own, though clearly akin to that of the Chimu region. All these centres having fallen under the sway of conquerors with a creed to impose (the Incas even erected a shrine to the Sun on the terraces of oracular Pachacamac), their religious traditions were waning in importance in the time of the conquistadores, who, unhappily, secured little of the lore that might[Pg 221] have been salved in their own day. There are fragments for the Chimu region in Balboa and Calancha, for the Chincha in Arriaga and Avila; but in the main it is upon the monuments—vases, burials, ruins of temples—that, in any effort to define the beliefs of these departed peoples, we must depend for a supplementation of the meagre notices recorded in Inca tradition or preserved by the early chroniclers.[129]

Fortunately these monuments permit of some interesting guesses which, surely, are no unjustified indulgence of human curiosity when the mute expression of dead souls is their matter; and in particular the wonderful drawings of the Truxillo and Nasca vases and the woven figures of their fabrics suggest analogical interpretation. Despite their family likeness, the styles of the two regions are distinct; and, as the investigations of Uhle show, they have undergone long and changing developments, with apogees well in the past. The zenith of Chimu art was marked by a variety and naturalism of design rivaled, if at all in America, only by the best Maya achievements; while Chincha expression realized its acme in polychrome designs truly marvellous in complexity of convention. That the art of both regions is profoundly mythological is obvious from the portrayals.

Striking features of this Yunca art are the monster-forms[130]—man-bird, man-beast, man-fish, man-reptile—and, again, the multiplication of faces or masks, both of men and of animals. The repetition of the human countenance is especially frequent in the art of Nasca, where series of masks are often enchained in complex designs, one most grotesque form of this concatenation representing a series of masks issuing, as it were, from the successive mouths, and joined by the protruding tongues. Again, there are dragon-like or serpentine monsters having a head at each extremity, recalling not only the two-headed serpent of Aztec and Maya art, but also the Sisiutl of the North-West Coast of North America—a region whose art, also, furnishes an impressive analogue, in complexity[Pg 222] of convention, to that of the Yunca. Frequently, in Nasca art, the fundamental design is a man-headed bird, or fish, or serpent, whose body and accoutrements are complexly adorned with representations of the heads or forms of other animals—the puma, for example, or even the mouse. Oftentimes heads, apparently decapitations, are borne in the hands of the central figure; and on one Truxillo vase there is a depiction[131] of what is surely a ceremonial dance in which the participants are masked and disguised as birds and animals; the remarkable Nasca robes in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (see Plates XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV) also suggest masked forms, the representations of the same personage varying in colour and in the arrangement of facial design.

Polychrome vase from the Nasca valley, showing the multi-headed deity represented also by Plate XXXI. The succession of masks connected by protruded tongues is a striking form of Nasca design. Examples are found elsewhere, even into Calchaqui territory. The vase here pictured is in the American Museum of Natural History.

The heads which are held in the hands and which adorn the costumes of these figures are regarded by some authorities as trophy heads, remotely related, perhaps, to those which are prepared as tokens of prowess by some of the Brazilian tribes; and, in fact, the discovery of the decapitated mummies of women and girls, buried in the guano deposits of the sacred islands of Guañape and Macabi, points to a remote period when human sacrifices were made, perhaps to a marine power, and certainly connected with some superstition as to the head. Another suggestion, however, will account for a greater variety of the forms. The dances with animal masks irresistibly recall the ancestral and totemic masked dances of such peoples as the Pueblo Indians of North America and of the tribes of the North-West Coast; the figures of bird-men, fish-men, and snake-men, with their bodies ornamented with other animal figures, are again reminiscent of the totemic emblems of the far North-West; and surely no image is better adapted to suggest the descent of a series of generations from an ancestral hero than the sequence of tongue-joined masks figured on the Nasca vases, each generation receiving its name, as it were, from the mouth of the preceding. The recurrence of certain constant designs, both on vases and in[Pg 223] fabrics, is at least analogous to the use of totemic signs on garments and utensils in the region of the North-West Coast.

It is certain that ancestor-worship was an important feature of Yunca religion, for Arriaga, speaking of the Chincha peoples, says that for festivals they gathered in ayllus (tribes or clans), each with mummies of its kinsfolk to which were offered vases, clothes, plumes, and the like. They had household gods (called Conopa or Huasi-camayoc), as distinguished from the communal deities, which were of several classes; more than three thousand of these Conopas it is said, were destroyed by the Spaniards. Garcilasso informs us that each coastal province worshipped a special kind of fish, "telling a pleasant tale to the effect that the First of all the Fish dwells in the sky"—a statement which is certainly in tone with a totemic interpretation.

In addition to the special idols of each province, says Garcilasso,[132] all the peoples of the littoral from Truxillo to Tarapaca adored the ocean in the form of a fish, out of gratitude for the food that it yielded, naming it Mama Cocha ("Mother Sea"); and it is indeed plausible that the Food-Giver of the Sea was a great deity in this region, although some of the Truxillo vases seem to indicate that the ocean was also regarded as the abode of dread and inimical monsters, since they portray the conflicts of men or heroes with crustacean and piscine monsters of the deep. Antonio de la Calancha, who was prior of the Augustines at Truxillo in 1619, gives a brief account of the Chimu pantheon.[133] The Ocean (Ni) and the earth (Vis) were worshipped, prayers being offered to the one for fish and to the other for good harvests. The great deity, however, was the Moon (Si), to which sacrifices of children were sometimes made; and this heavenly body, regarded as ruler of the elements and bringer of tempests, was held to be more powerful than the Sun. Possibly the crescent- or knife-shaped symbol which appears on the head-gear of vase representations of chieftains, in Truxillo ware, is a token of[Pg 224] this cult, which finds a parallel among the Araucanians of the far south, among whom, too, the Moon, not the Sun, is the lofty deity.

The language of the subjects of the Grand Chimu was Mochica, which was unrelated to any other in Peru; but though they regarded the Quichua-speaking Chincha as hereditary enemies, the religious conceptions of the two groups were not very different. In Arriaga's account,[134] the Chincha worshipped the Earth (Mama Pacha) as well as Mama Cocha (the Sea); and they also venerated the "Mamas," or Mothers, of maize and cacao. There were likewise tutelary deities for their several villages—just as each family had its Penates—and Garcilasso states that the god Chincha Camac was adored as the creator and guardian of all the Chincha. The worship of stones in fields and stones in irrigating channels is also mentioned (both for Chimu and for Chincha), and these may well have been in the nature of herms in valleys where fields were narrowly limited; while in addition there were innumerable huacas—sacred places, fetishes, oracles, idols, and, in short, anything marvellous, for Garcilasso, in explaining the meaning of the word, says that it was applied to everything exciting wonder, from the great gods and the peaks of the Andes to the birth of twins and the occurrence of hare-lip. It is in this connexion that he speaks of "sepulchres made in the fields or at the corners of their houses, where the devil spoke to them familiarly," a description suggestive of ancestral shrines; and it is quite possible that the word huaca is most properly applied in that sense in which it has survived, to tombs.

In Chincha territory were located the two great shrines of Rimac and Pachacamac, whose oracles even the Incas courted. Rimac, says Garcilasso, signifies "He who Speaks"; he adds that the valley was called Rimac from "an idol there, in the shape of a man, which spoke and gave answers to questions, like the oracle of the Delphic Apollo"; and Lima, which is in[Pg 225] the valley of Rimac, receives its appellation from a corruption of this name. A greater shrine, however, and an older oracle was Pachacamac. According to Garcilasso, the word means "Maker and Sustainer of the Universe" (pacha, "earth," camac, "maker"); and he is of opinion that the worship of this divinity originated with the Incas, who, nevertheless, regarded the god as invisible and hence built him no temples and offered him no sacrifices, but "adored him inwardly with the greatest veneration." Markham (not very convincingly) identifies Pachacamac with the great fish-deity of the coast, considering him as a supplanter of the older and purer deity, Viracocha.

One of the most interesting of coastal myths, quoted by Uhle, tells how Pachacamac, having created a man and a woman, failed to provide them with food; but when the man died, the woman was aided by the Sun, who gave her a son and taught the pair to live upon wild fruits. Angered at this interference, Pachacamac killed the youth, from whose buried body sprang maize and other cultivated plants; the Sun gave the woman another son, Wichama, whereupon Pachacamac slew the mother; while Wichama, in revenge, pursued Pachacamac, driving him into the sea, and thereafter burning up the lands in passion, transformed men into stones. This legend has been interpreted as a symbol of the seasons, but it is evident that its elements belong to wide-spread American cycles, for the mother and son suggest the Chibcha goddess, Bachue, while the formation of cultivated plants from the body of the slain youth is a familiar element in myths of the tropical forests and, indeed, in both Americas. From the story it is clear that Pachacamac is a creator god, antagonistic (if not superior) to the Sun, who seems to supplant him in power; but surely it is anomalous that the Earth-Maker should find his end by being driven into the sea unless, indeed, Pachacamac, spouse of Mother Sea, be the embodied Father Heaven, descending in fog and damp and driven seaward by the[Pg 226] dispelling Sun. Such an interpretation would make Pachacamac simply a local form of Viracocha; and this, certainly, is suggested in the descriptions, by Garcilasso and others, of the reverence paid to this divinity.

From Francisco de Avila's account[135] of the myths of the Huarochiri, in the valley of the Rimac, we may infer that Viracocha was known to the Chincha tribes, at one period probably as a supreme god. An idol called Coniraya (meaning according to Markham, "Pertaining to Heat") they addressed as "Coniraya Viracocha," saying, "Thou art Lord of all; thine are the crops, and thine are all the people"; and in every toil and difficulty they invoked this deity for aid.

Embroidered figure from a Nasca robe in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Nasca fabrics represent the highest achievement in textile art of aboriginal America. Figures of the type here shown are repeated with minor variations, each, no doubt, of symbolic significance, in a chequered or "all-over" design. The deity represented may be totemic, but obviously belongs to the same group as those shown in such pottery paintings as are represented in Plates XXXII and XXXIV.

One of the decorative designs that occurs and recurs on the vases of both the Chimu and Chincha regions—in the characteristic style of each—is the plumed serpent. What is apparently a modification of this is the man-headed serpent, or the warrior with a serpent's or dragon's tail, a further modification representing the man or deity as holding the serpent in one hand, while frequently, in the other hand, is a symbolic staff or weapon that in certain forms is startlingly like the classical thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. Another step shows only the serpent's head held in the one hand, while the staff, or thunderbolt, is made prominent; and, finally, in the style known as that of Tiahuanaco, from its resemblance to the ancient art of the highlands, a squat deity, holding a winged or snake-headed wand in each hand gives the counterfeit presentment of the central figure on the Tiahuanaco arch and the monolith of Chavin. In Central and North America the plumed serpent is a sky-symbol, associated with rainbow, lightning, rain, and weather; and it is not too much to follow the guesses hitherto ventured that this cycle of images, appearing in various forms in the different periods of Yunca art, is intimately associated with the ancient and nearly universal Jovis Pater of America—Father Sky. As in the old world, the eagle, so in South America the condor and the falcon are the[Pg 227] especial ministers of this deity; as also are the most powerful of the beasts of prey known in the region—the puma, or mountain lion; and, again, a fish, which we may suppose to typify lordship over the waters, as the condor and lion symbolize dominion over air and earth. Thus, as it were, through their grotesque masks and gorgeous fantasies, the pots and jars of the Yunca peoples mutely attest the universal reverence of mankind for the great powers of Nature.

What were the tales which the Yunca peoples told of their gods? The little that we know is almost wholly due to the unfinished manuscript of Francisco de Avila,[136] composed in 1608; but brief and fragmentary though this treatise be, ending abruptly with the heading of a Chapter VIII, which was never written, it throws a curiously suggestive light upon the archaeological discoveries of our own day, with their revelation of successive civilizations and successive cults in the coastal valleys.

Avila's narrative tells of a series of ages of the gods, each marked by its new ruler, which he confesses he did not well comprehend because of the contradictoriness of the legends. At all events, however, in the most ancient period there were "certain huacas, or idols,... supposed to have walked in the form of men. These huacas were called Yananamca Intanamca; and in a certain encounter they had with another huaca, called Huallallo Caruincho, they were conquered and destroyed by the said Huallallo, who remained as Lord and God of the land. He ordered that no woman should bring forth more than two children, of which one was to be sacrificed for him to eat, and the other,—whichever of the two the parents chose,—might be brought up. It was also a tradition that, in those days, all who died were brought to life again on the fifth day; and that what was sown in that land also sprouted, grew, and[Pg 228] ripened on the fifth day; and that all these three provinces [Huarochiri, Mama, Chaclla] were then a very hot country, which the Indians call Yunca or Ande." The last allusion probably refers to some recollection of a migration from the coast, for the Huarochiri region is in the highlands drained by the Rimac and Lurin rivers.

The story goes on to record the overthrow of Huallallo by another hero-god, Pariacaca; but before narrating this event, Avila turns aside to tell the tale of Coniraya Viracocha, whom he regards as certainly a great deity at one time, though whether before or after the rise of Pariacaca is not evident.

In ancient times Coniraya appeared as a poor Indian, clothed in rags and reviled by all. Nevertheless, he was the creator of all things, at whose command terraces arose to support the fields and channels were formed to irrigate them—feats which he accomplished by merely hurling his hollow cane. He was also all-wise with respect to gods and oracles, and the thoughts of others were open to him. This Coniraya fell in love with a certain virgin, Cavillaca; and as she sat weaving beneath a lucma-tree, he dropped near her a ripe fruit, containing his own generative seed. Eating the fruit unsuspectingly, she became with child; and when the babe was old enough to crawl, she assembled all "the huacas and principal idols of the land," determined to discover the child's father; but as, to her amazement and disgust, the infant crawled to the beggar-like Coniraya, she snatched it up and fled away toward the sea. "But Coniraya Viracocha desired the friendship and favour of the goddess; so, when he saw** her take flight, he put on magnificent golden robes, and leaving the astonished assembly of the gods, he ran after her, crying out: 'O my lady Cavillaca, turn your eyes and see how handsome and gallant am I,' with other loving and courteous words; and they say that his splendour illuminated the whole country." But Cavillaca only increased her speed, and plunging into the sea, mother and child were transformed into[Pg 229] two rocks, still to be seen. Coniraya, distanced, kept on his quest. He met a condor, and the condor having promised him success in his pursuit, he gave the condor the promise of long life, power to traverse wildernesses and valleys, and the right to prey; and upon those who should slay the condor he set the curse of death. Next he met a fox, but the fox told him his quest was vain; so he cursed the fox, telling it that it must hunt at night and be slain by men. The lion next promised him well, and he gave the lion power over prey and honour among men. The falcon was similarly blessed for fair promises, and parrots cursed for their ill omen. Arrived at the seaside, Coniraya discovered the vanity of his pursuit, but he was easily consoled; for on the beach he met two daughters of Pachacamac. In the absence of their mother, who was visiting Cavillaca in the sea, they were guarded by a great serpent, but Coniraya quieted the serpent by his wisdom. One of the maidens flew away in the form of a dove,—whence their mother was called Urpihuachac, "Mother of Doves"; but the other was more complaisant. "In those days it is said that there were no fishes in the sea, but that this Urpihuachac reared a few in a small pond. Coniraya was enraged that Urpihuachac should be absent in the sea, visiting Cavillaca; so he emptied the fishes out of her pond into the sea, and thence all the fishes now in the sea have been propagated."

That Coniraya is a deity of sun or sky appears evident from this tale; and he is, clearly, at the same time a demiurgic transformer, with not a little of the mere trickster about him. The condor, falcon, and lion are his servants and beneficiaries; foxes and parrots are his antipathies; he has something to do with the provision of fish, and he conquers the serpent of the sea-goddess. Avila says that the tradition is rooted in the customs of the province: the people venerate the condor, which they never kill, as also the lion; they have a horror of the fox, slaying it where they can; "as to the falcon, there is scarcely a festival in which one does not appear on the heads[Pg 230] of the dancers and singers; and we all know that they detest the parrots, which is not wonderful considering the mischief they do, though their chief reason is to comply with the tradition."

Vase from Nasca representing a deity with serpentiform body. The commonest motive in Nasca designs is the multiplication, in grotesque forms, of human masks. The deity here represented is commonly shown with a mask head-dress, masks upon either cheek, with a girdle of masks or trophy heads, and with masks elsewhere; while either the body is shown as serpentiform or serpent-like wands are wielded by the hands. It is probable that a sky-god is represented, possibly a local form of Viracocha. Compare Plates XXXI, XXXVI, XXXVII. The vase pictured is in the American Museum of Natural History.

Cataclysmic events which apparently followed the deeds of the Demiurge were a five-day deluge, in which all men were destroyed save one who was led by a speaking llama to a mountain height where he was safe; and a five-day darkness, during which stones knocked together, while both the stones with which they ground grain and the animals of their herds arose against their masters. It was after these cataclysms, in the days when there were as yet no kings, that five eggs appeared on a certain mountain, called Condor-coto: round them a wind blew, for until that time there had been no wind. These eggs were the birth-place of Pariacaca and his four brothers; but before the hero had come forth from his egg, one of his brothers, a great and rich lord, built his house on Anchicocha, adorning it with the red and yellow feathers of certain birds. This lord had llamas whose natural wool was of brilliant colours—some red, some blue, some yellow—so that it was unnecessary to dye it for weaving; but notwithstanding he was very wise, and even pretended to be God, the Creator, misfortune befell him in the form of a disgusting disease of which he was unable to cure himself, though he sought aid in every direction. Now at this time there was a poor and ill-clad Indian named Huathiacuri, "who, they say, was a son of Pariacaca and who learned many arts from his father," whom, in his egg, he visited in search of advice. This youth, having fallen in love with a daughter of the rich man, one day overheard foxes conversing about the great lord's illness. "The real cause," said a fox, "is that, when his wife was toasting a little maize, one grain fell on her skirt, as happens every day. She gave it to a man who ate it, and afterward she committed adultery with him. This is the reason that the rich man is sick, and a serpent is now hovering over his beautiful house to eat[Pg 231] it, while a toad with two heads is waiting under his grinding-stone with the same object." When Huathiacuri learned this, he told the girl that he knew the cure for her parent's malady; and though she did not believe him, she informed her father, who had the young man brought before him. Promised the price he demanded—the maiden's hand—the youth revealed her mother's iniquity and gave orders to kill two serpents, which were found in the roof, as well as a two-headed toad, which hopped forth when the grinding-stone was lifted. After this the rich man became well, and Huathiacuri received his bride. The sister of this girl, however, was married to a man who, resenting so beggarly a person in the family as Huathiacuri, challenged the latter to a series of contests—first, to a drinking-bout; next, to a match in splendour of costume, at which the youth appeared in a dress of snow; then to a dance, in lions' skins, wherein he won because of a rainbow that appeared round the head of the magic lion's skin which he wore; and, finally, to a contest in house-building, wherein all the animals aided him at night. Thus having vanquished his brother-in-law, Huathiacuri in turn issued a challenge to a dance, ending it in a wild race during which he transformed the brother-in-law into a deer and his wife into rock. The deer lived for some time by devouring people, but finally deer began to be eaten by men, not men by deer. Subsequent to all this, Pariacaca and his brothers issued from the eggs, causing a great tempest in which the rich man and his house were swept into the sea. Pariacaca is also said to have destroyed by a torrent a village of revellers who refused him drink when he appeared among them as a thirsty beggar, all but one girl who took pity upon him; and there is a story of his love for Choque Suso, a maiden whom he found in tears beside her withering maize-fields and for whom he opened an irrigation-channel, converting the girl herself into a stone which still guards the headwaters. After this, in Avila's narrative, comes a heading: "How the Indians of the Ayllu of[Pg 232] Copara still worship Choque Suso and this channel, a fact which I know not only from their stories, but also from judicial depositions which I have taken on the subject"—and there the manuscript abruptly ends.

Nevertheless, this fragment has given us enough to see, if not the system, at least the character of Chincha mythology. There are the generations of the elder gods, with transformations and cataclysms. There are the cosmic eggs—perhaps earth's centre and the four winds symbolized in the five of them. There is the toad-symbol of the underworld, and the serpent-symbol of the sky-world. The Rich Man, in his house of red and yellow feathers, is surely a sky-being—perhaps a sun-god, perhaps a lunar divinity whose ceaseless crescence and senescence, to and from its glory, may be imaged in his cureless disease. Pariacaca is clearly a deity of waters, probably a divine mountain, giving rain and irrigating streams, and clothing his son in the snow and the rainbow; while the women—Cavillaca, and the Mother of Doves, and Choque Suso, the Nymph of the Channel—who were turned into rocks speak again the hoary sanctity of these images of perdurability.

The Yunca peoples, both Chimu and Chincha, recalled a time when their ancestors entered the coastal valleys to make them their own, "destroying the former inhabitants,... a vile and feeble race," as Chincha tradition has it. In the uplands the followers of the Scyris of Quito were remembered as coming from the littoral; but for the rest, highland legends point almost uniformly to a southerly or south-easterly origin—where, indeed, the tale is not of an autochthonous beginning—and with general agreement it is to the plains about Titicaca that the stories lead, as to the most ancient seat of mankind. These traditions, coupled with the immemorial and wonderful ruins of the sacred place at Tiahuanaco—whether[Pg 233] the precinct of a city or of a temple—give a special fascination to this region as being plausibly the key to the solution of the problem of central Andean civilization.

Certainly no more puzzling key was ever given for the unlocking of a mystery, since the basin of Lake Titicaca is a plateau, some thirteen to fourteen thousand feet above sea-level, where cereals will not ripen, so that only potatoes and a few other roots, along with droves of hardy llamas and alpacas, form the reliance for subsistence of a population which at best is sparse. Yet in the midst of this plateau are ruins characterized by the use of enormous stones—only less than the great monoliths of Egypt—and by a skill in stone-working which implies an extraordinary development of the mason's art. It is the judgement of archaeologists who have visited the scene that nothing less than the huge endeavour of a dense population could have created the visible works; and there is a tradition, derived from an Indian quipu-reader and recorded by Oliva, that the real Tiahuanaco is a subterranean city, in vastness far exceeding the one above the ground. The apparent discrepancy between the capacity of the region for the support of population and the effort required to produce the megalithic works has led Sir Clements Markham to suggest that these structures may date from a period when the plateau was several thousand feet lower than at present (for the elevation of the Andes is geologically recent); it would seem, however, in view of the huge tasks which Inca engineers accomplished, and of the fact that sacred cities in remote sites were venerated by the Andeans, more reasonable to assume that the ruins of Tiahuanaco and the islands represent, in part at least, the devotion of distant princes, who here maintained another Delphi or Lhassa.

The speaking monument of this ancient shrine (and there is no more remarkable monolith in the world) is the carved monolithic gate, now broken. Above the portal (see Plate XXXV) is the decoration, a broad band in low relief; while a central[Pg 234] figure, elevated above the others, is a divine image—the god with rayed head and with wands or bolts in each hand, whose likeness is met in the Yunca region and on the Chavin stele. On either side, in three ranks of eight each, are forty-eight obeisant figures—kings, some have called them, but others see in them totemic symbols of clan ancestors, although it is not impossible that they are genii of earth and air and water: all are winged, all bear wands, and those of the middle tier are condor-headed, while the wand and crest and garb of each is adorned with heads of condor and puma and fish. In case of the central figure the two wands are adorned with condors' heads, and some of the rays of the head-dress terminate in pumas' heads, while on his dress are not only heads of condors, pumas, and human beings, but centrally, on the breast, is a crescent design most resembling a fish. Another curious feature, alike of the forty-eight and of the central god, are circles under the eyes, seemingly tears, which recall the wide-spread trope that rain is heaven's tears, and the fact that tears were sometimes painted on ceremonial masks used in supplications for rain. Beneath the design just described is a meander, perhaps the symbol of earth,[137] adorned with the same condor-heads; and framing plaque-like representations of what are surely celestial divinities (still with tearful eyes); and it is not beyond reason to suppose that the tiny trumpeter who appears above one of these rayed masks may be the Morning Star, herald of the day.

Monolithic Gateway, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. This is regarded by many as the most remarkable prehistoric monument in America. It is approximately ten by twelve and a half feet in front dimension, and is estimated to weigh nine to twelve tons. The decoration consists of a central figure, above the doorway, which is certainly a sky-god and probably Viracocha, and a banded frieze showing groups of mythic beings. For description see pages 233-34. After a photograph in the Peabody Museum.

There is little ground to doubt that this monument is cosmical in meaning (it may also be totemic, for at least the ruling Andeans became "Children of the Sun"), and that the central figure is a heaven-god or a sun-god. The most curious of its emblems, taking into account the nature of the region, is the fish; for while there are fish in Lake Titicaca, the natives (at least today) are little given to taking them. It is possible, as suggested by the crescent on the breast of the god, that the fish is here a symbol of the moon, which may have been mistress[Pg 235] of the waves; and this would lead us, analogically, to the capital of the Grand Chimu and the temple of Si An, where were the great deities, the Moon above and the Sea below. Certainly, if an animal form were sought to symbolize the crescent of the skies, none could be found more perfect than that of the fish; or, by extension, the bark by which man conquers the piscine realm might be conceived and imaged as symbol of the lunar ship.

Such an hypothesis implies a relation of Tiahuanaco to the coastal regions as well as to the mountain valleys; and this relationship, in a period long past, is demonstrated, representations of the deity of Tiahuanaco being found, drawn in Tiahuanaco style, on the Yunca vases. But what of its extension in the highlands? The Chavin stone (see Plate XXXI) from the region of the headwaters of Rio Marañon far to the north of Cuzco is, as monumental evidence of the ancient cult, second in importance only to the Tiahuanaco arch. The figure on this monument is in Nasca rather than in Tiahuanaco style, having as its head-dress an elaborate structure which, when viewed reversed, is found to be formed of that series of masks, each depending from the lolling tongue of its predecessor, which is so common on Nasca vases; while snakes' heads replace the condor-puma-fish adornments of the southern monument, and it is interesting to note that the whole structure terminates in a caduceus-like twist of serpents. The main figure, however, with its elaborate wands, ending exactly in the form of Jove's bolt, certainly follows the style of the central figure of Tiahuanaco, so that we are justified in assuming that it represents a similar conception—a celestial deity, from which proceed the serpentine rays, sunlight or lightning. To the far south, in the Calchaqui-Diaguité region, potsherds have been discovered implying the same central conception—the deity with mask and bolt, the dragon with head at each extremity, and a series of dragons' heads united by protruding tongues (a design whose far extension leads into the country[Pg 236] of the unconquered Araucanians in the Chilean Andes).[138] More remarkable are the ceremonial and votive objects discovered in this region, among them certain plaques which include a masterpiece (Plate XXXVI) bearing many traits that identify it with the monumental images: the rayed head, the tears beneath the eyes, the crescent-shaped breast-ornament, and, on either side of the central image, crested dragons which appear to take the place of the wands in the type figures.

The names of this heaven-god, ancient in origin and wide in the range of his cult, have doubtless been many in the course of history; but though several of them have survived in the traditions which have been recorded, paramount among them all is that by which the divinity was known to the Inca—Viracocha (or Uiracocha). Montesinos's list of kings commences, says Markham,[139] "with the names of the deity, Illa Tici Uiracocha. We are told that the first word, Illa, means 'light.' Tici means 'foundation or beginning of things.' The word Uira is said to be a corruption of Pirua, meaning the 'depository or store-house of creation.'... The ordinary meaning of Cocha is a lake, but here it is said to signify an abyss—profundity. The whole meaning of the words would be, 'The splendour, the foundation, the creator, the infinite God.' The word Yachachic was occasionally added—'the Teacher.'"

Plaque probably representing Viracocha. The head is surmounted by a rayed disk, doubtless the sun; tears, symbolic of rain, stream from the eyes; above the hands, on either side, are dragon-like creatures which are doubtless the equivalent of the wands or serpents shown in the hands of similar figures, and which may represent the two servants of the god, as they appear in legend. After CA xii, Plate VIII.

Molina, Salcamayhua, Huaman Poma, all give Inca prayers addressed to Viracocha—prayers which are our best evidence for the character in which he was regarded. In the group recorded by Molina[140] the deity appears as lord of generation of plants and animals and humankind; and to him are addressed supplications for increase. But he is very clearly, also, a supreme creator: "O conquering Viracocha! Ever-present Viracocha! Thou who art in the ends of the earth without equal! Thou gavest life and valour to men, saying, 'Let this be a man!' and to women, saying, 'Let this be a woman!' Thou madest them and gavest them being! Watch over them[Pg 237] that they may live in health and peace. Thou who art in the high heavens, and among the clouds of the tempest, grant this with long life, and accept this sacrifice, O Creator!" In other prayers Viracocha is represented as creator of the sun, and hence as supreme over the great national god of the Incas; and in the rites which Molina describes, Viracocha (the creator), the Sun, and the Thunder form a triad, addressed in the order named. The same supremacy of Viracocha is recognized in the elaborate hymn recorded by Salcamayhua and translated by Markham after the emended text of Dr. Mossi and the Spanish version of Lafone Quevado:[141]

"O Uira-cocha! Lord of the universe;
Whether thou art male,
Whether thou art female,
Lord of reproduction,
Whatsoever thou mayest be,
O Lord of divination,
Where art thou?
Thou mayest be above,
Thou mayest be below,
Or perhaps around
Thy splendid throne and sceptre.
Oh, hear me!
From the sky above,
In which thou mayest be,
From the sea beneath,
In which thou mayest be,
Creator of the world,
Maker of all men;
Lord of all Lords,
My eyes fail me
For longing to see thee;
For the sole desire to know thee.
Might I behold thee,
Might I know thee,
Might I consider thee,
Might I understand thee.
Oh, look down upon me,
For thou knowest me.
The sun—the moon—
The day—the night—
[Pg 238]Spring—winter,
Are not ordained in vain
By thee, O Uira-cocha!
They all travel
To the assigned place;
They all arrive
At their destined ends,
Whithersoever thou pleasest.
Thy royal sceptre
Thou holdest.
Oh hear me!
Oh choose me!
Let it not be
That I should tire,
That I should die."

It were easy to accept a pantheistic interpretation of a divinity so addressed; it is plausible to regard that deity as androgynous, as Lafone Quevado suggests. What is certain is that here we have a creator-god superior to the world of visible nature, so that he was represented, according to Salcamayhua, by an oval plate of fine gold above the symbols of the heavenly bodies in the great temple at Cuzco. Salcamayhua, moreover, connects with Viracocha two other names, Tonapa and Tarapaca, which, he declares, are appellatives of a servant (or servants) of Viracocha; and here we have a glimpse into another cycle of mythic history.

The story, as Salcamayhua tells it,[142] begins with the remote Purunpacha—the time when all the nations were at war with each other, and there was no rest from tumults. "Then, in the middle of the night, they heard the Hapi-ñuños [harpy-like daemones] disappearing with mournful complaints, and crying,—'We are conquered, we are conquered, alas that we should lose our bands!'" This Salcamayhua interprets as a New-World equivalent of the death-cry of Old-World paganism, "Great Pan is dead!"—for from their cry, he says, "it must be understood that the devils were conquered by Jesus Christ our Lord on the cross on Mount Calvary."[Pg 239] Some time after the devils departed, there appeared "a bearded man, of middle height, with long hair, and a rather long shirt. They say that he was somewhat past his prime, for he already had grey hairs, and he was lean. He travelled by aid of a staff, teaching the natives with much love and calling them all his sons and daughters. As he went through the land, he performed many miracles. The sick were healed by his touch. He spoke all languages better than the natives." They called him, Salcamayhua says, Tonapa or Tarapaca ("Tarapaca means an eagle"), associating these names with that of Viracocha; "but was he not the glorious apostle, St. Thomas?"

Many tales are told of the miracles performed by Tonapa, among others the story, which Avila narrates of Pariacaca, of the overwhelming by flood of a village, the inhabitants of which had abused him; and similar legends in which the offenders were transformed into stones. "They further say that this Tonapa, in his wanderings, came to the mountains of Caravaya, where he erected a very large cross; and he carried it on his shoulders to the mountain of Carapucu, where he preached in a loud voice, and shed tears." In 1897 Bandelier[143] visited the village of Carabuco, on Lake Titicaca, and there saw the ancient cross, known for more than three centuries, which tradition associates with pre-Columbian times. "The meaning of Carapucu," Salcamayhua continues, "is when a bird called pucu-pucu sings four times at early dawn." May there not be here a clue to the meaning both of the myth and of the emblem? At dawn, when the herald birds first sing, the four quarters of the world, of which the cross is symbol, are shaped by the light of day—a token and a reminiscence of the first creation of Earth by shining Heaven.

Molina, Cieza de León, Sarmiento, Huaman Poma[144] tell of the making of sun and moon, and of the generations of men, associating this creation with the lake of Titicaca, its islands, and its neighbourhood. Viracocha is almost universally represented as the creator, and the story follows the main plot of[Pg 240] the genesis narratives known to the civilized nations of both Americas—a succession of world aeons, each ending in cataclysm. As told by Huaman Poma, five such ages had preceded that in which he lived. The first was an age of Viracochas, an age of gods, of holiness, of life without death, although at the same time it was devoid of inventions and refinements; the second was an age of skin-clad giants, the Huari Runa, or "Indigenes," worshippers of Viracocha; third came the age of Puron Runa, or "Common Men," living without culture; fourth, that of the Auca Runa, "Warriors," and fifth that of the Inca rule, ended by the coming of the Spaniards. As related by Sarmiento the first age was that of a sunless world inhabited by a race of giants, who, owing to the sin of disobedience, were cataclysmically destroyed; but two brothers, surviving on a hill-top, married two women descended from heaven (in Molina's version these are bird-women) and repeopled a part of the world. Viracocha, however, undertook a second creation at Lake Titicaca, this time with sun, moon, and stars; but out of jealousy, since at first the moon was the brighter orb, the sun threw a handful of ashes over his rival's face, thus giving the shaded colour which the moon now presents. Viracocha, we are told, was assisted by three servants, one of whom, Taguapaca, rebelled against him; for this he was bound and set adrift upon the lake (an event which, in a different form, is given by Salcamayhua as a part of the persecution of Tonapa); and then, taking his two remaining servitors with him, the deity "went to a place now called Tiahuanacu ... and in this place he sculptured and designed on a great piece of stone all the nations that he intended to create," after which he sent his servants forth to command all tribes and all nations to multiply. The last act of Viracocha's career was his miraculous departure across the western sea, "travelling over the water as if it were land, without sinking," and leaving behind him the prophecy that he would send his messengers once again to protect and to teach his people.

Vase painting of the sky-god, Tiahuanaco style, from Pachacamac. Compare Plates XXXI, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI. After Baessler, Contributions to the Archaeology of the Empire of the Incas, Vol. IV, Plate CIV.

[Pg 241]

The tales are surely explanatory of the monuments; and in both we see the general outlines of the ancient Peruvian religion. Supreme in the pantheon was the great creator-god, High Heaven itself, Illa Tici Viracocha. Attendant upon this divinity (perhaps ancient doublets in some cases) was a group of two or three servants or sons, who were assuredly also celestial—Sun and Moon, or Sun and Moon and Morning Star, or Sun and Thunder (for in Peru bidentalia were everywhere). Tonapa (whom Markham regards as properly Conapa, "Heat-Bearing," and the same being as Coniraya) is the Peruvian equivalent of Quetzalcoatl and Bochica[145]—the robed and bearded white man, bearing a magic staff, who comes from the east and after teaching men the way of life, departs over the sea. It is no marvel that the first missionaries and their converts saw in this being, with his cruciform symbol, an apostle of their own faith who had journeyed by way of the Orient to preach the Gospel. Yet certainly it is no mere imagination to find another interpretation of the story—what better image could fancy suggest for the daily course of the sun than that of a bright-faced man, bearded with rays, mantled in light, transforming the world of darkness into a world of beauty and the domain of the concealed into a domain of things known, before his departure across the western waters, promising to return, or to send again his messengers of light, to renew the luminous mission? When the Spaniards came, bearded and white, in shining mail and weaponed with fire, the Indians beheld the embodied form of the mythic hero, and so they applied to them the name which, is still theirs for a white man—viracocha. In such devious ways have the faiths and the fancies of Earth's two worlds commingled.

What ground there is for the ascription of something approaching monotheism to the Peruvians centres in the sky-deity rather than in the Sun, whose cult under the Incas, to some extent replaced that of the elder supreme god. "No one can doubt," says Lafone Quevado,[146] "that Pachacamac and Viracocha[Pg 242] were gods who correspond to our idea of a Supreme Being and that they were adored in America before the coming of Columbus; and it is logical to attribute to the same American soil the idea of such a conception, even when it occurs among the most savage tribes, since that simply presupposes an ethnic contact to which are opposed no insuperable difficulties of geography. The solar cult is farther from fetishism than is the idea of the Yahveh of the Jews from the solar cult: from this to the true God is a step, and the most savage nations of America found themselves surrounded by worshippers of the light of day."

The most striking feature of the Inca conquests is their professed motive—professed, that is, in Inca tradition, especially as represented by the writings of Garcilasso de la Vega—for the Incas proclaimed themselves apostles of a new creed and teachers of a new way of life; they were Children of the Sun, sent by their divine parent to bring to a darkened and barbarous world a purer faith and a more enlightened conduct. Garcilasso tells[147] how, when a boy, he inquired of his Inca uncle the origin of their race. "Know," said his kinsman, "that in ancient times all this region which you see was covered with forests and thickets, and the people lived like brute beasts without religion nor government, nor towns, nor houses, without cultivating the land nor covering their bodies, for they knew how to weave neither cotton nor wool to make garments. They dwelt two or three together in caves or clefts of the rocks, or in caverns under ground; they ate the herbs of the field and roots or fruit like wild beasts, and they also devoured human flesh; they covered their bodies with leaves and with the bark of trees, or with the skins of animals; in fine they lived like deer or other game, and even in their intercourse with women they were like brutes, for they knew nothing of cohabiting with separate wives.... Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human[Pg 243] race in the condition I have described, had compassion upon them and from heaven he sent down to earth a son and daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father, the Sun, that adoring Him, they might adopt Him as their God; and also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable and civilized men, and to teach them to dwell in houses and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks, and to use the fruits of the earth as rational beings, instead of existing like beasts. With these commands and intentions our Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the lake of Titicaca, saying to them that they might go where they pleased and that at every place where they stopped to eat or sleep they were to thrust into the ground a sceptre of gold which was half a yard long and two fingers in thickness, giving them this staff as a sign and a token that in the place where, by one blow on the earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the desire of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and establish their court. Finally He said to them: 'When you have reduced these people to our service, you shall maintain them in habits of reason and justice by the practice of piety, clemency, and meekness, assuming in all things the office of a pious father toward his beloved and tender children; for thus you will form a likeness and reflection of me. I do good to the whole world, giving light that men may see and do their business, making them warm when they are cold, cherishing their pastures and crops, ripening their fruits and increasing their flocks, watering their lands with dew and bringing fine weather in proper season. I take care to go around the earth each day that I may see the necessities that exist in the world and supply them, as the sustainer and benefactor of the heathen. I desire that you shall imitate this example as my children, sent to earth solely for the instruction and benefit of these men who live like beasts; and from this time I constitute and name you as kings and lords over all the tribes that you may instruct them in your rational works and government.'"

[Pg 244]

Viewed as theology, this utterance is remarkable. Even if it be taken (as perhaps it should be) rather as an excuse for conquests made than as their veritable pretext, the story still reflects an advanced stage of moral thinking, since utterly barbarous races demand no such justification for seizing from others what they desire; and in this broader scope the successors of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo soon interpreted their liberal commission. The third Inca, Lloque Yupanqui, decided, Garcilasso says,[148] that "all their policy should not be one of prayer and persuasion, but that arms and power should form a part, at least with those who were stubborn and pertinacious." Having assembled an army, the Inca crossed the border, and entering a province called Cana, he sent messengers to the inhabitants, "requiring them to submit to and obey the child of the Sun, abandoning their own vain and evil sacrifices, and bestial customs"—a formula that became thenceforth the Inca preliminary to a declaration of war. The Cana submitted, but, the chronicler says, when he passed to the province of Ayaviri, the natives "were so stubborn and rebellious that neither promises, nor persuasion, nor the examples of the other subjugated aborigines were of any avail; they all preferred to die defending their liberty." And so fell many a province, after vainly endeavouring to protect its native gods, as the realm of the Incas grew, always advancing under the pretext of religious reform, the mandate of the Sun.

But while the extension of the solar cult was made the excuse for the creation of an empire, it was more than a political device; for the Incas called themselves "children of the Sun" in the belief that they were directly descended from this deity and under his special care. Molina[149] tells of an adventure which he ascribes to Inca Yupanqui, meaning, apparently, Pachacuti, the greatest of the Incas. While, as a young man, the Inca prince was journeying to visit his father, Viracocha Inca, he passed a spring in which he saw a piece of crystal fall, wherein appeared the figure of an Indian. From the back of[Pg 245] his head issued three very brilliant rays, even as those of the Sun; serpents were twined round his arms, and on his head there was a llautu [the fringe, symbol of the sun's rays, worn on the forehead by the Incas as token of royalty] like that of the Inca. His ears were bored, and ear-pieces, resembling those used by the Incas, were inserted; he was also dressed in the manner of the Inca. The head of a lion came from between his legs, and on his shoulders there was another lion whose legs appeared to join over the shoulders of the man; while, furthermore, a sort of serpent was twined about his shoulders. This apparition said to the youth: "Come hither, my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt conquer many nations; therefore be careful to pay great reverence to me and remember me in thy sacrifices." The vision vanished, but the piece of crystal remained, "and they say that he afterward saw in it everything he wanted." The solar imagery and the analogy of this figure, with its lions and serpents, to the monumental representations of celestial deities, are at once apparent; and there is, too, in the tale, with its prophecy and its crystal-gazing more than a suggestion of the fast in the wilderness by which the North American Indian youth seeks a revelation of his personal medicine-helper, or totem. The Incas all had such personal tutelaries. That of Manco Capac was said to have been a falcon, called Inti; and the word came to mean the Sun itself in its character as deity—or, perhaps, as tutelary of the Inca clan, since the name Inti appears in the epithets applied to the "brothers" of more than one later Inca. Serpents, birds, and golden images were forms of these totemic familiars, each buried with the body of the Inca to whom it had pertained.

Just as individuals had their personal Genii of this character, so each clan had for ancestor its Genius, or tutelary, which might be a star, a mountain, a rock, or a spring. The Sun was such a Genius of the Incas, and it came to be an ever greater deity as Inca power spread by very reason of the growing importance of their clan; while its recognition by[Pg 246] members of allied and conquered septs came to be demanded very much, we may suppose, as the cultic acknowledgement of the Genius of the Roman Emperor was required in expression of loyalty to the reigning race.

The Inca pantheon was not narrow.[150] Besides the ancestral deities, there were innumerable huacas—sacred places, oracles, or idols—and whole classes of nature-powers; the generative Earth (Pacha Mama) and "mamas" of plant and animal kinds; meteorological potencies, especially the Rainbow and Thunder and Lightning, conceived as servants of the Sun; and, in the heaven itself, the Moon and the Constellations, by which the seasons were computed. Remote over all was the heaven-god and creator, Viracocha, with respect to whom the Sun itself was but a servitor. Salcamayhua declares that Manco Capac had set up a plate of fine gold, oval in shape, "which signified that there was a Creator of heaven and earth." Mayta Capac renewed this image—despising, tradition said, all created objects, even the highest, such as men and the sun and moon—and "he caused things to be placed round the plate, which I have shown that it may be perceived what these heathen thought." In illustration Salcamayhua gives a drawing which many authorities regard as the key to Peruvian mythology. At the top is a representation of the Southern Cross, the pole of the austral heavens. Below this is the oval symbol of the Creator, on one side of which is an image of the Sun, with the Morning Star beneath, while opposite is the Moon above the Evening Star. Under these is a group of twelve signs—a leaping puma, a tree, "Mama Cocha," a chart of this mountainous Earth surmounted by a rainbow and serving as source for a river into which levin falls, a group of seven circles called "shining eyes," and other emblems—the whole representing, so Stansbury Hagar argues, the Peruvian zodiac. Salcamayhua goes on to say that Huascar placed an image of the Sun in the place where the symbol of the Creator had been, and it was as thus[Pg 247] altered that the Spaniards found the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco.

It would appear, indeed, that the action of Huascar was only a final step in the rise of the solar cult to pre-eminence in Peru. Doubtless the sun had been a principal deity from an early period, but its close relation to the Inca clan made it progressively more and more important, so that by the time of the coming of the Spaniards it had risen, as a national divinity, to a position analogous to that of Ashur in the later Assyrian empire. Meantime the older heaven-god, Viracocha, presumably the tutelary of the pre-Inca empire and of Tiahuanaco, had faded into obscurity. To be sure, there was a temple to this god in Cuzco (so Molina and Salcamayhua attest); but to the Sun there were shrines all over the land, with priests and priestesses; while Cuzco was the centre of a magnificent imperial cult, the sanctuary honoured by royalty itself and served not only by the sacerdotal head of all Inca temple-service, a high priest of blood royal, but also by hundreds of devoted Virgins of the Sun, who, like the Roman Vestals, kept an undying fire on the altars of the solar god.

Yet Viracocha was not forgotten, even by the Incas who subordinated him officially to the Sun; and few passages in American lore are more striking than are the records of Inca doubt as to the Sun's divinity and power. Molina says of that very Inca to whom the vision of the crystal appeared that "he reflected upon the respect and reverence shown by his ancestors to the Sun, who worshipped it as a god; he observed that it never had any rest, and that it daily journeyed round the earth; and he said to those of his council that it was not possible that the Sun could be the God who created all things, for if he was, he would not permit a small cloud to obscure his splendour; and that if he was creator of all things, he would sometimes rest, and light up the whole world from one spot. Thus, it cannot be otherwise but there is someone who directs him, and this is the Pacha-yachachi,[Pg 248] the Creator." Garcilasso (quoting Blas Valera) states that the Inca Tupac Yupanqui likened the Sun rather to a tethered beast or to a shot arrow than to a free divinity, while Huayna Capac is credited with a similar judgement. In the prayers recorded by Molina, Viracocha is supreme, even over the Sun; and these petitions, it must be supposed, represent the deepest conviction of Inca religion.

Stories of Inca origins, as told by the chroniclers, present a certain confusion of incident that probably goes back to the native versions. There are obviously historical narratives mingled with clearly mythic materials and influencing each other. The islands of Titicaca and the ruins of Tiahuanaco appear as the source of remote provenance of the Incas; a place called Paccari-Tampu ("Tavern of the Dawn"), not far from Cuzco, and the mysterious hill of Tampu-Tocco ("Tavern of the Windows") are recorded as sites associated with their more immediate rise; yet as Manco Capac is associated with both origins, and as the narratives pertaining to both contain cosmogonic elements, the tales give the impression of blending and duplication.

"Temple of the three Windows," Machu Picchu. Windows are not a frequent feature of Inca architecture, and when Bingham discovered at Machu Picchu the temple with three conspicuous windows, here shown, this discovery seemed to give added plausibility to the theory that Machu Picchu is indeed the Tampu-Tocco of the Incas. See pages 248 ff. and compare Plate XXX. From photograph, courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition.

With different degrees of confusion all the chroniclers (Cieza de León, Garcilasso, Molina, Salcamayhua, Betanzos, Montesinos, Huaman Porno, and others) tell the story of the coming forth of Manco Capac and his brothers from Tampu-Tocco to create the empire; but of all the accounts Markham regards that given by Sarmiento as the most authentic.[151] According to this version, Tampu-Tocco was a house on a hill, provided with three windows, named Maras, Sutic, and Capac. Through the first of these came the Maras tribe, through Sutic came the Tampu tribe, and through Capac, the regal window, came four Ayars with their four wives—Ayar Manco and Mama Ocllo; Ayar Auca (the "joyous," or "fighting," Ayar) and Mama[Pg 249] Huaco (the "warlike"); Ayar Cachi (the "Salt" Ayar) and Mama Ipacura (the "Elder Aunt"); Ayar Uchu (the "Pepper" Ayar) and Mama Raua. The four pairs "knew no father nor mother, beyond the story they told that they came out of the said window by order of Ticci Viracocha; and they declared that Viracocha created them to be lords"; but it was believed that by the counsel of the fierce Mama Huaco they decided to go forth and subjugate peoples and lands. Besides the Maras and Tampu peoples, eight other tribes were associated with the Ayars, as vassals, when they began their quest, taking with them their goods and their families. Manco Capac carrying with him, as a palladium, a falcon, called Indi, or Inti—the name of the Sun-god—bore also a golden rod which was to sink into the land at the site where they were to abide; and Salcamayhua says that, in setting out, the hero was wreathed in rain-bows, this being regarded as an omen of success.

The journey was leisurely, and in course of it Sinchi Rocca, who was to be the second Inca, was born to Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac; but then came a series of magic transformations by which the three brothers disappeared, leaving the elder without a rival. Ayar Cachi (who, Cieza de León says,[152] "had such great power that, with stones hurled from his sling, he split the hills and hurled them up to the clouds") was the first to excite the envy of his brothers; and on the pretext that certain royal treasures had been forgotten in a cave of Tampu-Tocco, he was sent back to secure them, accompanied by a follower who had secret instructions from the brothers to immure him in the cave, once he was inside. This was done, and though Ayar Cachi made the earth shake in his efforts to break through, he could not do so. Nevertheless (Cieza tells us) he appeared to his brothers, "coming in the air with great wings of coloured feathers"; and despite their terror, he commanded them to go on to their destiny, found Cuzco, and establish the empire. "I shall remain in the form and fashion that ye shall see on a hill not distant from here; and it will be for your descendants a place[Pg 250] of sanctity and worship, and its name shall be Guanacaure [Huanacauri]. And in return for the good things that ye will have received from me, I pray that ye will always adore me as god and in that place will set up altars whereat to offer sacrifices. If ye do this, ye shall receive help from me in war; and as a sign that from henceforth ye are to be esteemed, honoured, and feared, your ears shall be bored in the manner that ye now behold mine." It was from this custom of boring and enlarging the ears that the Spaniards called the ruling caste Orejones ("Big-Ears"); and it was at the hill of Huanacauri that the Ayar instructed the Incas in the rites by which they initiated youths into the warrior caste.

At this mount, which became one of the great Inca shrines, both the Salt and the Pepper Ayars were reputed to have been transformed into stones, or idols, and it was here that the rainbow sign of promise was given. As they approached the hill—so the legend states—they saw near the rainbow what appeared to be a man-shaped idol; and "Ayar Uchu offered himself to go to it, for they said that he was very like it." He did so, sat upon the stone, and himself became stone, crying: "O Brothers, an evil work ye have wrought for me. It was for your sakes that I came where I must remain forever, apart from your company. Go! go! happy brethren, I announce to you that ye shall be great lords. I therefore pray that, in recognition of the desire I have always had to please you, ye shall honour and venerate me in all your festivals and ceremonies, and that I shall be the first to whom ye make offerings, since I remain here for your sakes. When ye celebrate the huarochico (which is the arming of the sons as knights), ye shall adore me as their father, for I shall remain here forever."

Finally Manco Capac's staff sank into the ground—"two shots of an arquebus from Cuzco"—and from their camp the hero pointed to a heap of stones on the site of Cuzco. "Showing this to his brother, Ayar Auca, he said, 'Brother! thou rememberest how it was arranged between us that thou shouldst go to[Pg 251] take possession of the land where we are to settle. Well! behold that stone.' Pointing it out, he continued, 'Go thither flying,' for they say that Ayar Auca had developed some wings; 'and seating thyself there, take possession of the land seen from that heap of rocks. We will presently come and settle and reside.' When Ayar Auca heard the words of his brother, opening his wings, he flew to that place which Manco Capac had pointed out; and seating himself there, he was presently turned into stone, being made the stone of possession. In the ancient language of this valley the heap was called cozco, whence the site has had the name of Cuzco to this day."

Markham placed the events commemorated in this myth at about 1100 a. d., and Bingham's remarkable discoveries of Machu Picchu and of the Temple of the Three Windows appear to prove the truth of tales of a Tampu-Tocco dynasty, preceding the coming to Cuzco. The tribal divisions (in their numbers, three and ten, strikingly suggestive of Roman legend) are surely in part historical, for Sarmiento gives names of members of the various ayllus in Cuzco in his own day. Yet it is clear that the Ayars are mythical beings. Garcilasso says[153] that the four pairs came forth in the beginning of the world; that in the various legends about them the three brothers disappear in allegory, leaving Manco Capac alone; and that the Salt Ayar signifies "instruction in the rational life," while the Pepper Ayar means "delight received in this instruction." The association of the two Ayars with initiation ceremonies and civic destiny points, in fact, to the character of culture heroes; and their names, Salt and Pepper, again suggest association with economic life, perhaps, in some way, as genii of earth and vegetation, though in the myth of Ayar Cachi the suggestion of a volcanic power is almost irresistible. Ayar Auca is clearly the genius loci of Cuzco, while Manco Capac himself, conceived as an Ayar, is little more than a culture hero. Perhaps the solution is to be found in Montesinos's lists, where Manco Capac is the first ruler of the dynasty of the oldest[Pg 252] emperors, after the god Viracocha himself, while the first Inca is Sinchi Rocca. The myth of the Ayars would then hark back to the Megalithic age and to the cosmogonies associated with Titicaca, while their connexion with the Incas, after the dynasty of Tampu-Tocco, would be, as it were, but a natural telescoping of ancient myth and later history, adding to Inca prestige.

In Inca lore there are other legends—the tale of the prince who was stolen by his father's enemies and who wept tears of blood, by this portent saving his life; the legend of the virgin of the Sun who loved a pipe-playing shepherd and of their transformation into rocks; the story of Ollantay, the general, who loved the Inca's daughter, preserved in the drama which Markham has translated; and along with these are many fragments of creation-stories and aetiological myths chronicled by the early writers. History and poetic fancy combine in these to give materials into which are woven beliefs and practices far more ancient than the Inca race, just as Hellenic myth contains distorted reflections of the pre-Greek age of the Aegean. By means of such tales the ancient shrines are made to speak again, as through oracles.

[Pg 253]

Among earth's great continental bodies South America is second only to Australia in isolation. This is true not only geographically, but also in regard to flora and fauna, and in respect of its human aborigines and their cultures. To be sure, within itself the continent shows a diversity as wide, perhaps, as that of any; and certainly no continent affords a sharper contrast both of environment and of culture than is that of the Andes and the civilized Andeans to the tropical forests with their hordes of unqualified savages. There are, moreover, streams of influence reaching from the southern toward the northern America—the one, by way of the Isthmus, tenuously extending the bond of civilization in the direction of the cultured nations of Central America and Mexico; the other carrying northward the savagery of the tropics by the thin line of the Lesser Antilles; and it is, of course, possible that this double movement, under way in Columbian days, was the retroaction of influences that had at one time moved in the contrary direction. Yet, on the whole, South America has its own distinct character, whether of savagery or of civilization, showing little certain evidence of recent influence from other parts of the globe. Au fond the cultural traits—implements, social organization, ideas—are of the types common to mankind at similar levels; but their special developments have a distinctly South American character, so that, whether we compare Inca with Aztec, or[Pg 254] Amazonian with Mississippian, we perceive without hesitancy the continental idiosyncracy of each. It is certain that South America has been inhabited from remote times; it is certain, too, that her aboriginal civilizations are ancient, reckoned even by the Old World scale. A daring hypothesis would make this continent an early, and perhaps the first home of the human species—a theory that would not implausibly solve certain difficulties, assuming that the differences which mark aboriginal North from aboriginal South America are due to the fact that the former continent was the meeting-place and confluence of two streams—a vastly ancient, but continuous, northward flow from the south, turned and coloured by a thinner and later wash of Asiatic sources.[154]

The peoples of South America are grouped by d'Orbigny,[155] as result of his ethnic studies of l'homme américain made during the expedition of 1826-33, into three great divisions, or races: the Ando-Peruvian, comprising all the peoples of the west coast as far as Tierra del Fuego; the Pampean, including the tribes of the open countries of the south; and the Brasilio-Guaranian, composed of the stocks of those tropical forests which form the great body of the South American continent. With modifications this threefold grouping of the South American aborigines has been maintained by later ethnologists. One of the most recent studies in this field (W. Schmidt, "Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Südamerika," in ZE xlv [1913]), while still maintaining the triple classification, nevertheless shows that the different groups have mingled and intermingled in confusing complexity, following successive cycles of cultural influence. Schmidt's division is primarily on the basis of cultural traits, with reference to which he distinguishes three primary groups: (1) Peoples of the "collective grade," who live by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of plants, with the few exceptions of tribes that have learned some agriculture from neighbours of a higher culture. In this group are the Gez, or Botocudo, and the Puri-Coroados stocks[Pg 255] of the east and south-east of Brazil; the stocks of the Gran Chaco, the Pampas, and Tierra del Fuego; while the Araucanians and certain tribes of the eastern cordilleras of the Andes are also placed in this class. (2) Groups of peoples of the Hackbaustufe, mostly practicing agriculture and marked by a general advance in the arts, as well as by the presence of a well-defined patriarchy and evidences of totemism in their social organization. In this group are included the great South American linguistic stocks—the Cariban, Arawakan, and Tupi-Guaranian, inhabiting the forests and semi-steppes of the regions drained by the Orinoco and Amazon and their tributaries, as well as the tribes of the north-east coast of the continent. (3) Groups of the cultured peoples of the Andes—Chibcha, Incaic, and Calchaqui.

The general arrangement of these three divisions follows the contour of the continent. The narrow mountain ridge of the west coast is the seat of the civilized peoples; the home of the lowest culture is the east coast, extending in a broad band of territory from the highlands of the Brazilian provinces of Pernambuco and Bahia south-westward to the Chilean Andes and Patagonia; between these two, occupying the whole centre of the continent, with a broad base along the northern coast and narrowing wedge-like to the south, is the region of the intermediate culture group.

Most of what is known of the mythology of South American peoples comes from tribes and nations of the second and third groups—from the Andeans whose myths have been sketched in preceding chapters, and from the peoples of the tropic forests. The region inhabited by the latter group is too vast to be treated as a simple unit; nor is there, in the chaotic intermixture of tongues and tribes, any clear ethnic demarcation of ideas. In default of other principle, it is appropriate and expedient, therefore, to follow the natural division of the territory into the geographical regions broadly determined by the great river-systems that traverse the continent. These[Pg 256] are three: in the north the Orinoco, with its tributaries, draining the region bounded on the west by the Colombian plateau and the Llanos of the Orinoco, and on the south by the Guiana Highlands; in the centre the Amazon, the world's greatest river, the mouth of which is crossed by the Equator, while the stream itself closely follows the equatorial line straight across the continent to the Andes, though its great tributaries drain the central continent, many degrees to the south; and in the south the Rio de la Plata, formed by the confluence of the Paraná and Uruguay, and receiving the waters of the territories extending from El Gran Chaco to the Pampas, beyond which the Patagonian plains and Chilean Andes taper southward to the Horn. In general, the Orinoco region is the home of the Carib and Arawak tribes; the Amazonian region is the seat and centre of the Tupi-Guaranians; while the region extending from the Rio de la Plata to the Horn is the aboriginal abode of various peoples, mostly of inferior culture. It should be borne in mind, however, that the simplicity of this plan is largely factitious. Linguistically, aboriginal South America is even more complex than North America (at least above Mexico); and the whole central region is a mélange of verbally unrelated stocks, of which, for the continent as a whole, Chamberlain's incomplete list gives no less than eighty-three.[156]

"The aborigines of Guiana," writes Brett,[157] "in their naturally wild and untaught condition, have had a confused idea of the existence of one good and supreme Being, and of many inferior spirits, who are supposed to be of various kinds, but generally of malignant character. The Good Spirit they regard as the Creator of all, and, as far as we could learn, they believe Him to be immortal and invisible, omnipotent and omniscient. But notwithstanding this, we have never discovered any trace of religious worship or adoration paid to Him by any tribe while[Pg 257] in its natural condition. They consider Him as a Being too high to notice them; and, not knowing Him as a God that heareth prayer, they concern themselves but little about Him." In another passage the same writer states that the natives of Guiana "all maintain the Invisibility of the Eternal Father. In their traditionary legends they never confound Him—the Creator,—the 'Ancient of Heaven'—with the mythical personages of what, for want of a better term, we must call their heroic age; and though sorcerers claim familiarity with, and power to control, the inferior (and malignant) spirits, none would ever pretend to hold intercourse with Him, or that it were possible for mortal man to behold Him." A missionary to the same region, Fray Ruiz Blanco,[158] earlier by some two hundred years, says of the religion of these aborigines that, "The false rites and diableries with which the multitude are readily duped are innumerable ... briefly ... there is the seated fact that all are idolaters, and there is the particular fact that all abhor and greatly fear the devil, whom they call Iboroquiamio."

Minds of a scientific stamp see the matter somewhat differently. "The natives of the Orinoco," Humboldt declares,[159] "know no other worship than that of the powers of nature; like the ancient Germans they deify the mysterious object which excites their simple admiration (deorum nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident)." From the point of view of an ethnologist of the school of Tylor, im Thurn describes the religion of the Indians of Guiana: Having no belief in a hierarchy of spirits, they can have, he says, "none in any such beings as in higher religions are called gods.... It is true that various words have been found in all, or nearly all, the languages, not only of Guiana, but also of the whole world, which have been supposed to be the names of a great spirit, supreme being, or god"; nevertheless, he concludes, "the conception of a God is not only totally foreign to Indian habits of thought, but belongs to a much higher stage of intellectual development than any attained by them."

[Pg 258]

It is from such contrary evidences as these that the true character of aboriginal beliefs must be reconstructed. Im Thurn says of the native names that they "to some extent acquired a sense which the missionaries imparted to them"; and when we meet, in such passages as that quoted from Brett, the ascription of attributes like omniscience and omnipotence to primitive divinities, there is indeed cause for humour at the missionary's expense. But there are logical idols in more than one trade; the ethnologists have their full share of them. Im Thurn gives us a list of indigenous appellations of the Great Spirit of Guiana:

Of all these names im Thurn remarks that in those whose meanings are known "only three ideas are expressed—(1) One who lived long ago and is now in sky-land; (2) the maker of the Indians; and (3) their father. None of these ideas," he continues, "in any way involve the attributes of a god...."[160] Obviously, acceptance of this negation turns upon one's understanding of the meaning of "god."

The Cariban Makonaima (there are many variants, such as Makanaima, Makunaima, and the like) is a creator-god and the hero of a cosmogony. It is possible that his name connects him with the class of Kenaima (or Kanaima), avengers of murder and bringers of death, who are often regarded as endowed with magical or mysterious powers; and in this case the term may be analogous to the Wakanda and Manito of the[Pg 259] northern continent. Schomburgk[161] states that Makunaima means "one who works in the night"; and if this be true, it is curious to compare with such a conception the group of Arawakan demiurgic beings whom he describes. According to the Arawak myths, a being Kururumany was the creator of men, while Kulimina formed women. Kururumany was the author of all good, but coming to earth to survey his creation, he discovered that the human race had become wicked and corrupt; wherefore he deprived them of everlasting life, leaving among them serpents, lizards, and other vermin. Wurekaddo ("She Who Works in the Dark") and Emisiwaddo ("She Who Bores Through the Earth") are the wives of Kururumany; and Emisiwaddo is identified as the cushi-ant, so that we have here an interesting suggestion of world-building ants, for which analogues are to be found far north in America, in the Pueblos and on the North-West Coast. There is, however, a fainéant god high above Kururumany, one Aluberi, pre-eminent over all, who has no concern for the affairs of men; while other supreme beings mentioned by Schomburgk are Amalivaca—who is, however, rather a Trickster-Hero—and the group that, among the Maipuri, corresponds to the Arawakan family of divine beings, Purrunaminari ("He Created Men"), Taparimarru, his wife, and Sisiri, his son, whom she, without being touched by him, conceived to him from the mere love he bore her—a myth in which, as Schomburgk observes, we should infer European influence.

Humboldt, in describing the religion of the Orinoco aborigines says[162] of them that "they call the good spirit Cachimana; it is the Manitou, the Great Spirit, that regulates the seasons and favours the harvests. Along with Cachimana there is an evil principle, Iolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in particular more active." On the whole, this characterization represents the consensus of observation of traveller, missionary, and scientist from Columbian days to the present and for the wilder tribes of the whole of both South and North America.[Pg 260] There is a good being, the Great Spirit, more or less remote from men, often little concerned with human or terrene affairs, but the ultimate giver of life and light, of harvest food and game food. There is an evil principle, sometimes personified as a Lord of Darkness, although more often conceived not as a person, but as a mischievous power, or horde of powers, manifested in multitudes of annoying forms. Among shamanistic tribes little attention is paid to the Good Power; it is too remote to be seriously courted; or, if it is worshipped, solemn festivals, elaborate mysteries, and priestly rites are the proper agents for attracting its attention. On the other hand, the Evil Power in all its innumerable and tricky embodiments, must be warded off by constant endeavour—by shamanism, "medicine," magic. The tribes of the Orinoco region are, ab origine, mainly in the shamanistic stage. The peaiman is at once priest, doctor, and magician, whose main duty is to discover the deceptive concealment of the malicious Kenaima and, by his exorcisms, to free men from the plague. That the Kenaima is of the nature of a spirit appears from the fact that the term is applied to human malevolences, especially when these find magic manifestation, as well as to evils emanating from other sources. Thus, the avenger of a murder is a Kenaima, and he must not only exact life for life; he must achieve his end by certain means and with rites insuring himself against the ill will of his victim's spirit. Again, the Were-Jaguar is a Kenaima. "A jaguar which displays unusual audacity," says Brett,[163] "will often unnerve even a brave hunter by the fear that it may be a Kanaima tiger. 'This,' reasons the Indian, 'if it be but an ordinary wild beast, I may kill with bullet or arrow; but what will be my fate if I assail the man-destroyer—the terrible Kanaima?'"

The Kenaima, the man-killer, whether he be the human avenger upon whom the law of a primitive society has imposed the task of exacting retribution, or whether he be the no less dreaded inflicter of death through disease, or magically induced[Pg 261] accident, or by shifting skins with a man-slaying beast, is only one type of the spirits of evil. Others are the Yauhahu and Orehu (Arawak names for beings which are known to the other tribes by other titles). The Yauhahu are the familiars of sorcerers, the peaimen, who undergo a long period of probationary preparation in order to win their favour and who hold it only by observing the most stringent tabus in the matter of diet. The Orehu are water-sprites, female like the mermaids, and they sometimes drag man and canoe down to the depths of their aquatic haunts; yet they are not altogether evil, for Brett tells a story, characteristically American Indian, of the origin of a medicine-mystery. In very ancient times, when the Yauhahu inflicted continual misery on mankind, an Arawak, walking besides the water and brooding over the sad case of his people, beheld an Orehu rise from the stream, bearing in her hand a branch which he planted as she bade him, its fruit being the calabash, till then unknown. Again she appeared, bringing small white pebbles, which she instructed him to enclose in the gourd, thus making the magic-working rattle; and instructing him in its use and in the mysteries of the Semecihi, this order was established among the tribes. The "Semecihi" are of course, the medicine-men of the Arawak, corresponding to the Carib peaimen, though the word itself would seem to be related to the Taïno zemi. Relation to the Islanders is, indeed, suggested by the whole myth, for the Orehu is surely only the mainland equivalent for the Haitian woman-of-the-sea, Guabonito, who taught the medicine-hero, Guagugiana, the use of amulets of white stones and of gold.

Not many primitive legends are more dramatically vivid than the Carib story of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu,[164] and few myths give a wider insight into the ideas and customs of a people. The theme of the tale is very clearly the coming of evil as the consequence[Pg 262] of a woman's deed, although the motive of her action is not mere curiosity, as in the tale of Pandora, but the more potent passion of revenge—or, rather, of that vengeful retribution of the lex talionis which is the primitive image of justice. In an intimate fashion, too, the story gives us the spirit of Kenaima at work, while its dénouement suggests that the restless Orehu, the Woman of the Waters, may be none other than the authoress of evil, the liberatress of ills.

In a time long past, so long past that even the grandmothers of our grandmothers were not yet born, the Caribs of Surinam say, the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees were forever in fruit; the animals lived in perfect harmony, and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the jaguar; the serpents had no venom; the rivers flowed evenly, without drought or flood; and even the waters of cascades glided gently down from the high rocks. No human creature had as yet come into life, and Adaheli, whom now we invoke as God, but who then was called the Sun, was troubled. He descended from the skies, and shortly after man was born from the cayman, born, men and women, in the two sexes. The females were all of a ravishing beauty, but many of the males had repellent features; and this was the cause of their dispersion, since the men of fair visage, unable to endure dwelling with their ugly fellows, separated from them, going to the West, while the hideous men went to the East, each party taking the wives whom they had chosen.

Now in the tribe of the handsome Indians lived a certain young man, Maconaura, and his aged mother. The youth was altogether charming—tall and graceful, with no equal in hunting and fishing, while all men brought their baskets to him for the final touch; nor was his old mother less skilled in the making of hammocks, preparation of cassava, or brewing of tapana. They lived in harmony with one another and with all their tribe, suffering neither from excessive heat nor from foggy chill, and free from evil beasts, for none existed in that region.

[Pg 263]

One day, however, Maconaura found his basket-net broken and his fish devoured, a thing such as had never happened in the history of the tribe; and so he placed a woodpecker on guard when next he set his trap; but though he ran with all haste when he heard the toc! toc! of the signal, he came too late; again the fish were devoured, and the net was broken. With cuckoo as guard he fared better, for when he heard the pon! pon! which was this bird's signal, he arrived in time to send an arrow between the ugly eyes of a cayman, which disappeared beneath the waters with a glou! glou! Maconaura repaired his basket-net and departed, only to hear again the signal, pon! pon! Returning, he found a beautiful Indian maiden in tears. "Who are you?" he asked. "Anuanaïtu," she replied. "Whence come you?" "From far, far." "Who are your kindred?" "Oh, ask me not that!" and she covered her face with her hands.

The maiden, who was little more than a child, lived with Maconaura and his mother; and as she grew, she increased in beauty, so that Maconaura desired to wed her. At first she refused with tears, but finally she consented, though the union lacked correctness in that Maconaura had not secured the consent of her parents, whose name she still refused to divulge. For a while the married pair lived happily until Anuanaïtu was seized with a great desire to visit her mother; but when Maconaura would go with her, she, in terror, urged the abandonment of the trip, only to find her husband so determined that he said, "Then I will go alone to ask you in marriage of your kin." "Never, never that!" cried Anuanaïtu; "That would be to destroy us all, us two and your dear mother!" But Maconaura was not to be dissuaded, for he had consulted a peaiman who had assured him that he would return safely; and so he set forth with his bride.

After several weeks their canoe reached an encampment, and Anuanaïtu said: "We are arrived; I will go in search of my mother. She will bring to you a gourd filled with blood and[Pg 264] raw meat, and another filled with beltiri [a fermented liquor] and cassava bread. Our lot depends on your choice." The young man, when his mother-in-law appeared, unhesitatingly took the beltiri and bread, whereupon the old woman said, "You have chosen well; I give my consent to your marriage, but I fear that my husband will oppose it strongly." Kaikoutji ("Jaguar") was the husband's name. The two women went in advance to test his temper toward Maconaura's suit; but his rage was great, and it was necessary to hide the youth in the forest until at last Kaikoutji was mollified to such a degree that he consented to see the young man, only to have his anger roused again at the sight, so that he cried, "How dare you approach me?" Maconaura responded: "True, my marriage with your daughter is not according to the rites. But I am come to make reparation. I will make for you whatever you desire." "Make me, then," cried the other contemptuously, "a halla [sorcerer's stool] with the head of a jaguar on one side and my portrait on the other." By midnight Maconaura had completed the work, excepting for the portrait; but here was a difficulty, for Kaikoutji kept his head covered with a calabash, pierced only with eye-holes; and when Maconaura asked his wife to describe her parent, she replied: "Impossible! My father is a peaiman; he knows all; he would kill us both." Maconaura concealed himself near the hammock of his father-in-law, in hopes of seeing his face; and first, a louse, then, a spider, came to annoy Kaikoutji, who killed them both without showing his visage. Finally, however, an army of ants attacked him furiously, and the peaiman, rising up in consternation, revealed himself—his whole horrible head. Maconaura appeared with the halla, completed, when morning came. "That will not suffice," said Kaikoutji, "in a single night you must make for me a lodge formed entirely of the most beautiful feathers." The young man felt himself lost, but multitudes of humming-birds and jacamars and others of brilliant plumage cast their feathers down to him, so that the[Pg 265] lodge was finished before daybreak, whereupon Maconaura was received as the recognized husband of Anuanaïtu.

1. Stone seat from Manabi, Ecuador. See page 206. After Saville, Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador, Vol. II, Plate XXXVIII.

2. Painted wooden seat from Guiana—such a halla as is referred to in the tale of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, page 264. After 30 ARBE, Plate V.

3. Central American carved stone metate in the collection of Geo. S. Walsh, Lincoln, Neb.

The time soon came, however, when he wished again to see his mother, but as Kaikoutji refused to allow Anuanaïtu to accompany the youth, he set off alone. Happy days were spent at home, he telling his adventures, the mother recounting the tales of long ago which had been dimly returning to her troubled memory; and when Maconaura would return to his wife, the old mother begged him to stay, while the peaiman warned him of danger; but he was resolved and departed once more, telling his mother that he would send her each day a bird to apprise her of his condition: if the owl came, she would know him lost. Arrived at the home of Anuanaïtu, he was met by his wife and mother-in-law, in tears, with the warning: "Away! quickly! Kaikoutji is furious at the news he has received!" Nevertheless Maconaura went on, and at the threshold of the lodge was met by Kaikoutji, who felling him with a blow, thrust an arrow between his eyes. Meantime Maconaura's mother had been hearing daily the mournful bouta! bouta! of the otolin; but one day this was succeeded by the dismal popopó! of the owl, and knowing that her son was dead, she, led by the bird of ill tidings, found first the young man's canoe and then his hidden body, with which she returned sadly to her own people.

The men covered the corpse with a pall of beautiful feathers, placing about it Maconaura's arms and utensils; the women prepared the tapana for the funeral feast; and all assembled to hear the funeral chant, the last farewell of mother to son. She recounted the tragic tale of his love and death, and then, raising the cup of tapana to her lips, she cried: "Who has extinguished the light of my son? Who has sent him into the valley of shades? Woe! woe to him!... Alas! you see in me, O friends and brothers, only a poor, weak old woman. I can do nothing. Who of you will avenge me?" Forthwith two men sprang forward, seized the cup, and emptied it; beside the[Pg 266] corpse they intoned the Kenaima song, dancing the dance of vengeance; and into one of them the soul of a boa constrictor entered, into the other that of a jaguar.

The great feast of tapana was being held at the village of Kaikoutji, where hundreds of natives were gathered, men, women, and children. They drank and vomited; drank and vomited again; till finally all were drunken. Then two men came, one in the hide of a jaguar, the other in the mottled scales of a boa constrictor; and in an instant Kaikoutji and all about him were struck down, some crushed by the jaguar's blows, others strangled in snaky folds. Nevertheless fear had rescued some from their drunkenness; and they seized their bows, threatening the assailants with hundreds of arrows, whereupon the two Kenaima ceased their attack, while one of them cried: "Hold, friends! we are in your hands, but let us first speak!" Then he recounted the tale of Maconaura, and when he had ceased, an old peaiman advanced, saying: "Young men, you have spoken well. We receive you as friends."

The feast was renewed more heartily than ever, but though Anuanaïtu, in her grief, had remained away, she now advanced, searching among the corpses. She examined them, one by one, with dry eyes; but at last she paused beside a body, her eyes filled with tears, and seating herself, long, long she chanted plaintively the praises of the dead. Suddenly she leaped up, with hair bristling and with face of fire, in vibrant voice in-toning the terrible Kenaima; and as she danced, the soul of a rattlesnake entered into her.

Meantime, in the other village, the people were celebrating the tapana, delirious with joy for the vengeance taken, while the mother of Maconaura, overcome by drink, lay in her hammock, dreaming of her son. Anuanaïtu entered, possessed, but she drew back moved when she heard her name pronounced by the dreaming woman: "Anuanaïtu, my child, you are good, as was also your mother! But why come you hither? My son, whom you have lost, is no more.... O son Maconaura,[Pg 267] rejoice! Thou art happy, now, for thou art avenged in the blood of thy murderers! Ah, yes, thou art well avenged!" During this Anuanaïtu felt in her soul a dread conflict, the call of love struggling with the call of duty; but at the words, "avenged in blood," she restrained herself no longer, and throwing herself upon the old woman, she drew her tongue from her mouth, striking it with venomous poison; and leaning over her agonized victim, she spoke: "The cayman which your son killed beside the basket-net was my brother. Like my father, he had a cayman's head. I would pardon that. My father avenged his son's death in inflicting on yours the same doom that he had dealt—an arrow between the eyes. Your kindred have slain my father and all mine. I would have pardoned that, too, had they but spared my mother. Maconaura is the cause that what is most dear to me in the world is perished; and robbing him in my turn, I immolate what he held most precious!"

Uttering a terrible cry, she fled into the forest; and at the sound a change unprecedented occurred throughout all nature. The winds responded with a tempest which struck down the trees and uprooted the very oaks; thick clouds veiled the face of Adaheli, while sinister lightnings and the roar of thunders filled the tenebrous world; a deluge of rain mingled with the floods of rivers. The animals, until then peaceable, fell upon and devoured one another: the serpent struck with his venom, the cayman made his terrible jaws to crash, the jaguar tore the flesh of the harmless agouti. Anuanaïtu, followed by the savage hosts of the forest, pursued her insensate course until she arrived at the summit of an enormous rock, whence gushed a cascade; and there, on the brink of the precipice, she stretched forth her arms, leaned forward, and plunged into the depths. The waters received her and closed over her: nought was to be seen but a terrifying whirlpool.

If today some stranger pass beside a certain cascade, the Carib native will warn him not to speak its name. That would be his infallible death, for at the bottom of these waters[Pg 268] Maconaura and Anuanaïtu dwell together in the marvellous palace of her who is the Soul of the Waters.

It is not merely the artistic symmetry of this tale—which may be due as much to the clever rendering by Father van Coll as to the genius of the savage raconteur—that justifies giving it at length. It is a wonderfully instructive picture of savage life, emotions, and customs; and a full commentary upon it would lead to an exposition of most that we know of the customs and thought of the Orinoco aborigines—such practices, for example, as im Thurn describes: the putting of red pepper in one's eyes to propitiate the spirits of rapids one is about to shoot; the method of Kenaima murder by pricking the tongue with poison; the perpetual vendetta which to the savage seems to hold not only between tribe and tribe of men, but also between tribe and tribe of animals; the tapana feasts in which men become inspired; or again, such mythic and religious conceptions as the cult of the jaguar and cayman, extending far throughout South and Central America; the still more universal notion of a community of First People, part man, part animal; the ominous birds and animal helpers; the central story of the visit of the hero-youth to the ogreish father-in-law, and of the trials to which he is subjected. In these and in other respects the story is of interest; but its chief attraction is surely in the fact that here we have an American Job or Œdipus, presenting, as Job presents, the problem of evil; and, like Greek tragedy, portraying the harsh conflict between the inexorable justice of the law of retribution and the loves and mercies which combat it, in the savage heart perhaps not less than in the civilized.

Both creation and cataclysm appear in the story of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, but this legend is only one among several tales of the kind gathered from various groups of Orinoco[Pg 269] natives, the fullest collection, "'old peoples' stories,' as the rising race somewhat contemptuously call them," being given by Brett. The creation myths are of the two familiar American types: true creations out of the void, and migrations of First Beings into a new land; while transformation-incidents, and especially the doughty deeds of the Transformer-Hero, a true demiurge, are characteristic of traditions of each type.

The Ackawoi make their Makonaima the creator, and Sigu, his son, the hero, in a tale which, says Brett,[165] they repeat "while striving to maintain a very grave aspect, as befitting the general nature of the subject." "In the beginning of this world the birds and beasts were created by Makonaima,—the great spirit whom no man hath seen. They, at that time, were all endowed with the gift of speech. Sigu, the son of Makonaima, was placed to rule over them. All lived in harmony together and submitted to his gentle dominion." Here we have the usual sequence: the generation of the world, followed by the Golden Age, with its vocal animals and universal peace; while as a surprise to his subject creatures, Makonaima caused a wonderful tree, bearing all good fruits, to spring from the earth—the tree which was the origin of all cultivated plants. The acouri first discovered this tree, selfishly trying to keep the secret to himself; and the woodpecker, set by Sigu to trace the acouri, proved a poor spy, since his tapping warned it of his presence; but when the rat solved the mystery, Sigu determined to fell the tree and plant its fruits broadcast. Only the lazy monkey refused to assist, and even mischievously hindered the others, so that Sigu, provoked, put him at the task of the Danaïdes—to fetch water in a basket-sieve. The stump of the tree proved to be filled with water, stocked with every kind of fish and from its riches Sigu proposed to supply all streams; but the waters began of themselves to flow so copiously that he was compelled hastily to cover the top with a basket which the mischievous monkey discovered; and raising it, the deluge poured forth. To save the animals, Sigu[Pg 270] sealed in a cave those which could not climb; the others he took with him into a high cocorite tree, where they remained through a long and uncomfortable night, Sigu dropping cocorite seeds from time to time to judge by the splash if the waters were receding, until finally the sound was no longer heard, and with the return of day the animals descended to repeople the earth. But they were no longer the same. The arauta still howls his discomfort from the trees; the trumpeter-bird, too greedily descending into the food-rich mud, had his legs, till then respectable, so devoured by ants that they have ever since been bonily thin; the bush-fowl snapped up the spark of fire which Sigu laboriously kindled, and got his red wattle for his greed; while the alligator had his tongue pulled out for lying (it is a common belief that the cayman is tongueless). Thus the world became what it is.

A second part of the tale tells how Sigu was persecuted by two wicked brothers who beat him to death, burned him to ashes, and buried him. Nevertheless, each time he rose again to life and finally ascended a high hill which grew upward as he mounted until he disappeared in the sky.

Probably the most far-known mythic hero of this region is Amalivaca, a Carib demiurge, concerning whom Humboldt reports various beliefs of the Tamanac (a Cariban tribe). According to Humboldt,[166] "the name Amalivaca is spread over a region of more than five thousand square leagues; he is found designated as 'the father of mankind,'or 'our great-grandfather' as far as the Caribbee nations"; and he likens him to the Aztec Quetzalcoatl. It is in connexion with the petroglyphs of their territory (similar rock-carvings are found far into the Antilles, the "painted cave" in which the Earth Goddess was worshipped in Haiti being, no doubt, an example) that the Tamanac give motive to their tale. Amalivaca, father of the Tamanac, arrived in a canoe in the time of the deluge, and he engraved images, still to be seen, of the sun and the moon and the animals high upon the rocks of Encaramada.[Pg 271] From this deluge one man and one woman were saved on a mountain called Tamancu—the Tamanac Ararat—and "casting behind them, over their heads, the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds contained in those fruits produce men and women, who repeopled the earth." After many deeds, in which Amalivaca regulated the world in true heroic fashion, he departed to the shores beyond the seas, whence he came and where he is supposed still to dwell.

Another myth, of the Cariban stock,[167] tells how Makonaima, having created heaven and earth, sat on a silk-cotton-tree by a river, and cutting off pieces of its bark, cast them about, those which touched the water becoming fish, and others flying in the air as birds, while from those that fell on land arose animals and men. Boddam-Whetham gives a later addition, accounting for the races of men: "The Great Spirit Makanaima made a large mould, and out of this fresh, clean clay the white man stepped. After it got a little dirty the Indian was formed, and the Spirit being called away on business for a long period the mould became black and unclean, and out of it walked the negro." As in case of other demiurges, there are many stories of the transformations wrought by Makonaima.

It is from the Warau that Brett obtains a story of a descent from the sky-world—a tale which has many replications in other parts of America, and of which there are other Orinoco variants. Long ago, when the Warau lived in the happy hunting-grounds above the sky, Okonorote, a young hunter, shot an arrow which missed its mark and was lost; searching for it, he found a hole through which it had fallen; and looking down, he beheld the earth beneath, with game-filled forests and savannahs. By means of a cotton rope he visited the lands below, and upon his return his reports were such as to induce the whole Warau tribe to follow him thither; but one unlucky dame, too stout to squeeze through, was stuck in the hole, and the Warau were thus prevented from ever returning to the sky-world. Since the lower world was exceedingly arid, the great[Pg 272] Spirit created a small lake of delicious water, but forbade the people to bathe in it—this to test their obedience. A certain family, consisting of four brothers—Kororoma, Kororomana, Kororomatu, and Kororomatítu—and two sisters—Korobona and Korobonáko—dwelt beside this mere; the men obeyed the injunction as to bathing, but the two sisters entered the water, and one of them swimming to the centre of the lake, touched a pole which was planted there. The spirit of the pool, who had been bound by the pole, was immediately released; and seizing the maiden, he bore her to his sub-aquatic den, whence she returned home pregnant; but the child, when born, was normal and was allowed to live. Again she visited the water demon and once more brought forth a child, but this one was only partly human, the lower portion of the body being that of a serpent. The brothers slew the monster with arrows; but after Korobona had nursed it to life in the concealment of the forest, the brothers, having discovered the secret, again killed the serpent-being, this time cutting it in pieces. Korobona carefully collected and buried all the fragments of her offspring's body, covering them with leaves and vegetable mould; and she guarded the grave assiduously until finally from it arose a terrible warrior, brilliant red in colour, armed for battle, this warrior being the first Carib, who forthwith drove from their ancient hunting-grounds the whole Warau tribe.

This myth contains a number of interesting features. It is obviously invented in part to explain why the Warau (who are execrated by whites and natives alike for their dirtiness) do not bathe; and it no doubt reflects their actual yielding before the invading Carib tribes. The Kororomana of the story can scarcely be other in origin that the Kururumany whom Schomburgk states to be the Arawak creator; while the whole group of four brothers are plausibly continental forms of the Haitian Caracarols, the shell-people who brought about the flood. The incident of the corpulent or pregnant woman (im Thurn gives[Pg 273] the latter version) stopping the egress of the primitive people from their first home appears in Kiowa, Mandan, and Pueblo tales in North America; while the pole rising from the lake has analogues in the Californian and North-West Coast regions. Im Thurn states that the Carib have a variant of this same story, in which they assign as the reason for the descent of their forefathers from Paradise their desire to cleanse the dirty and disordered world below—an amusing complement to the Warau notion!

The Warau have also their national hero, Aboré, who has something of the character of a true culture hero. Wowta, the evil Frog-Woman, made Aboré her slave while he was yet a boy, and when he grew up, she wished to marry him; but he cleverly trapped her by luring her into a hollow tree filled with honey, of which she was desperately fond, and there wedging her fast. He then made a canoe and paddled to sea to appear no more, though the Warau believe that he reached the land of the white men and taught them the arts of life; Wowta escaped from the tree only by taking the form of a frog, and her dismal croaking is still heard in the woods.

From the tribes of this region come various other myths, belonging, apparently, to the cosmogonic and demiurgic cycles. The Arawak tell of two destructions of the earth, once by flame and once by fire, each because men disobeyed the will of the Dweller-on-High, Aiomun Kondi; and they also have a Noachian hero, Marérewána, who saved himself and his family during the deluge by tying his canoe with a rope of great length to a large tree. Another Arawak tale begins with the incident which opens the story of Maconaura. The Sun built a dam to retain the fish in a certain place; but since, during his absence, it was broken, so that the fish escaped, he set the Woodpecker to watch, and, summoned by the bird's loud tapping, arrived in time to slay the alligator that was destroying his preserves, the reptile's scales being marks made by the club wielded by the Sun. Another tale, of which there are[Pg 274] both Arawak and Carib versions, tells how a young man married a vulture and lived in the sky-land, revisiting his own people by means of a rope which the spiders spun for him; but as the vultures would thereafter have nothing to do with him, with the aid of other birds he made war upon them and burned their settlement. In this combat the various birds, by injury or guile, received the marks which they yet bear; the owl found a package which he greedily kept to himself; opening it, the darkness came out, and has been his ever since. In the Surinam version, given by van Coll,[168] the hero of the tale is a peaiman, Maconaholo, and the story contains some of the incidents of the Maconaura tale. Two other traditions given by the same author are of special interest from the comparative point of view. One is the legend of an anchorite who had a wonderfully faithful dog. Wandering in the forest, the hermit discovered a finely cultivated field, with cassava and other food plants, and thinking, "Who has prepared all this for me?" he concealed himself in order to discover who might be his benefactor, when behold! his faithful dog appeared, transformed herself into a human being, laid aside her dog's skin, busied herself with the toil of cultivation, and, the task accomplished, again resumed her canine form. The native, carefully preparing, concealed himself anew, and when the dog came once more, he slyly stole the skin, carried it away in a courou-courou (a woman's harvesting basket), and burned it, after which the cultivator, compelled to retain woman's form, became his faithful wife and the mother of a large family. It would appear that, from an aboriginal point of view, both dog and woman are complimented by this tale.

The second tale of special interest is a Surinam equivalent of the story of Cain and Abel. Of three brothers, Halwanli, the eldest, was lord of all things inanimate and irrational; Ourwanama, the second, was a tiller of fields, a brewer of liquors, and the husband of two wives; Hiwanama, the youngest, was a huntsman. One day Hiwanama, chancing upon the territory of[Pg 275] Ourwanama, met one of his brother's wives, who first intoxicated him and then seduced him, while in revenge for this injury Ourwanama banished his brother, lying to his mother when she demanded the lost son. Afterward Ourwanama's wives were transformed, the one into a bird, the other into a fish; he himself, seized by the sea, was dragged to its depth; and the desolate mother bemoaned her lost children till finally Halwanli, going in search of Hiwanama, whom he found among the serpents and other reptiles of the lower world, brought him back to become the greatest of peaimen.

A missionary whom Humboldt quotes declares that a native said to him:[169] "Your God keeps himself shut up in a house, as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come"; and Humboldt remarks in comment that the Indians conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image: "on the banks of the Orinoco there exists no idol, as among all the nations who have remained faithful to the first worship of nature."

There is an echo of the eighteenth century philosophy of an idyllic primitive age in this statement, but there is truth in it, too; for throughout the forest regions of tropical America idols are of rare occurrence, while shrines, if such they may be called, are confined to places of natural marvel, the wandering tribes being true nature worshippers, with eyes ever open for tokens of mysterious power. Fetishes or talismans are, however, common; and in this very connexion Humboldt mentions the botuto, or sacred trumpet, as an object of veneration to which fruits and intoxicating liquors were offered; sometimes the Great Spirit himself makes the botuto to resound, and, as in so many other parts of the world, women are put to death if they but see this sacrosanct instrument or the ceremonies of its cult (and here we are in the very presence of Mumbo[Pg 276] Jumbo!). Certainly the use of the fetish-trumpet was widespread in South America and northward. Garcilasso tells of the use of dog-headed battle-trumpets by the wild tribes of Andean regions; while Boddam-Whetham affords us another indication of the trumpet's significance:[170] "Horn-blowing was a very useful accomplishment of our guide, as it kept us straight and frightened away the various evil spirits, from a water-mama to a wood-demon."

This latter author gives a vivid picture of the Orinoco Indian in the life of nature: "Above all other localities, an Indian is fond of an open, sandy beach whereon to pass the night.... There in the open, away from the dark, shadowy forest, he feels secure from the stealthy approach of the dreaded 'kanaima';... the magic rattle of the 'peaiman' ... has less terror for him when unaccompanied by the rustling of the waving branches; and there even the wild hooting of the 'didi' (the 'didi' is supposed to be a wild man of the woods, possessed of immense strength and covered with hair) is bereft of that intensity with which it pierces the gloomy depths of the surrounding woodland. It is strange that the superstitious fear of these Indians, who are bred and born in the forest and hills, should be chiefly based on natural forms and sounds. Certain rocks they will never point at with a finger, although your attention may be drawn to them by an inclination of the head. Some rocks they will not even look at, and others again they beat with green boughs. Common bird-cries become spirit-voices. Any place of difficult access, or little known, is invariably tenanted by huge snakes or horrible four-footed animals. Otters are transformed into mermaids, and water-tigers inhabit the deep pools and caves of their rivers."

This is the familiar picture of the animist, surrounded by monster-haunted marches, for which, in the works of many writers, the Guiana aborigines have afforded the repeated model. No description of the beliefs of these natives would be complete without mention of the superstitions and adorations[Pg 277] associated with Mt. Roraima, by which all travellers seem to be impressed. Schomburgk[171] says that the native loves Roraima as the Swiss loves his Alps: "All their festal songs have Roraima for object.... Each morning and each evening came old and young ... to greet us with bakong baimong ('good day') or saponteng ('good night') ... adding each time the words, matti Roraima-tau, Roraima-tau ('there, see our Roraima!'), with the word tau very slowly and solemnly drawled"; and one of their songs, which might be a fragment out of the Greek, runs:

On Roraima, says im Thurn, the natives declare there are huge white jaguars, white eagles, and other such creatures; and to this class he would add the "didis," half man, half monkey, who may very likely be a mere personification of the howling monkeys which, as Humboldt states, the aborigines so heartily detest. Boddam-Whetham, who ascended the mountain, tells of many superstitions, as of a magic circle which surrounds it, and of a demon-guarded sanctuary on the summit: "About half way up we met an unpleasant-looking Indian who informed us that he was a great 'peaiman,' and the spirit which he possessed ordered us not to go to Roraima. The mountain, he said, was guarded by an enormous 'camoodi,' which could entwine a hundred people in its folds. He himself had once approached its den and seen demons running about as numerous as quails.... Our Indians were rejoiced to see us back again, as they had not expected that the mountain-demons would allow us to return."

Like great mountains, the orbs of heaven excite the native's adoration, though it is by no means necessary, on that account, to follow certain theorists and to solarize or astralize all his myths. Fray Ruiz Blanco states that "the supreme gods of the Indians are the sun and the moon, at eclipses of which they[Pg 278] make great demonstrations, sounding warlike instruments and laying hold of weapons as a sign that they seek to defend them; they water their maize in order to placate them and in loud voice tell them that they will amend their ways, labour, and not be idle; and grasping their tools, they set themselves to toil at the hour of eclipse." Of similar reference is an observation of Humboldt's: "Some Indians who were acquainted with Spanish, assured us that zis signified not only the sun, but also the Deity. This appeared to me the more extraordinary since among all other American nations we find distinct words for God and the sun. The Carib does not confound Tamoussicabo, 'the Ancient of Heaven,' with veyou, 'the sun.'" In a similar connexion he remarks that in American idioms the moon is often called "the sun of night," or "the sun of sleep"; but that "our missionary asserted that jama, in Maco, indicated at the same time both the Supreme Being and the great orbs of night and day; while many other American tongues, for instance Tamanac and Caribbee, have distinct words to designate God, the Moon, and the Sun." It is, of course, quite possible that such terms as zis and jama belong to the class of Manito, Wakan, Huaca, and the like.

Humboldt records names for the Southern Cross and the Belt of Orion, and Brett mentions a constellation called Camudi from its fancied resemblance to the snake, though he does not identify it. The Carib, he says, call the Milky Way by two names, one of which signifies "the path of the tapir," while the other means "the path of the bearers of white clay"—a clay from which they make vessels: "The nebulous spots are supposed to be the track of spirits whose feet are smeared with that material"—a conceit which surely points to the well-nigh universal American idea of the Milky Way as the path of souls. The Carib also have names for Venus and Jupiter; and the Macusi, im Thurn says, regard the dew as the spittle of stars.

In a picturesque passage Humboldt describes the beliefs[Pg 279] connected with the Grotto of Caripe, the source of the river of the same name. The cave is inhabited by nocturnal birds, guacharos (Steatornis caripensis); and the natives are convinced that the souls of their ancestors sojourn in its deep recesses. "Man," they say, "should avoid places which are enlightened neither by the sun nor by the moon"; and they maintain that poisoners and magicians conjure evil spirits before the entrance; while "to join the guacharos" is a phrase equivalent to being gathered to one's fathers in the tomb. Fray Ruiz records an analogous tenet: "They believe in the immortality of the soul and that departing from the body, it goes to another place—some souls to their own lands (heredades), but the most to a lake that they call Machira, where great serpents swallow them and carry them to a land of pleasure in which they entertain themselves with dancing and feasting." That ghosts of strong men return is an article of common credence: the soul of Lope de Aguirre, as reported not only by Humboldt, but by writers of our own day,[172] still haunts the savannahs in the form of a tongue of flame; and it may be supposed that the similar idea which Boddam-Whetham records among the negroes of Martinique with respect to the soul of Père Labat may be of American Indian origin. One striking statement, which Brett quotes from a Mr. M'Clintock, deserves repetition, as being perhaps as clear a statement as we have of that ambiguity of life and death, body and soul, from which the savage mind rarely works itself free: "He says that the Kapohn or Acawoio races (those who have embraced Christianity excepted) like to bury their dead in a standing posture, assigning this reason,—'Although my brother be in appearance dead, he (i. e. his soul) is still alive.' Therefore, to maintain by an outward sign this belief in immortality some of them bury their dead erect, which they say represents life, whereas lying down represents death. Others bury their dead in a sitting posture, assigning the same reason." It is unlikely that the Orinoco Indians have in mind such clear-cut symbolism[Pg 280] of their custom as this passage suggests; but it is altogether probable that the true reason for disposing the bodies of the dead in life-like postures is man's fundamental difficulty wholly to dissociate life from the stark and unresponsive body; and doubtless it is this very attitude of mind which leads them also to what Fray Ruiz calls the error of ascribing souls to even irrational beings—the same underlying theory which makes of primitive men animists, and of philosophers idealists.

[Pg 281]

On his second voyage Columbus began to hear of an island inhabited by rich and warlike women, who permitted occasional visits from men, but endured no permanent residence of males among them. The valour of Carib women, who fought resolutely along with their husbands and brothers gave plausibility to this legend; and soon the myth of an island or country of Amazons became accepted truth, a dogma with wonder-tellers and a lure to adventurers. At first the fabulous island seemed near at hand—"Matenino which lies next to Hispañola on the side toward the Indies"; but as island after island was visited and the fabled women not found, their seat was pushed further and further on, till it came to be thought of as a country lying far in the interior of the continent or—for the notion of its insular nature persisted—as an island somewhere in the course of the great river of the Amazons. By the middle of the sixteenth century, explorers from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west, were all on the lookout for the kingdom of women and all hearing and repeating tales about them with such conviction that, as the Padre de Acuña remarks,[174] "it is not credible that a lie could have been spread throughout so many languages, and so many nations, with such appearance of truth."

In 1540-41 Francisco de Orellana sailed down the Amazon to the sea, hearing tales of the women warriors, and, as his cleric companion, Fray Gaspar Carvajal, is credited with saying,[Pg 282] on one occasion encountering some of them; for they fought with Indians who defended themselves resolutely "because they were tributaries of the Amazons," and he, and other Spaniards, saw ten or twelve Amazons fighting in front of the Indians, as if they commanded them ... "very tall, robust, fair, with long hair twisted over their heads, skins round their loins, and bows and arrows in their hands, with which they killed seven or eight Spaniards." The description, in the circumstances described, does not inspire unlimited confidence in the friar's certainty of vision, but there is nothing incredible even in Indian women leading their husbands in combat. Pedro de Magelhães de Gandavo gives a very interesting account[175] (still sixteenth century) of certain Indian women who, as he says, take the vow of chastity, facing death rather than its violation. These women follow no occupation of their sex, but imitate the ways of men, as if they had ceased to be women, going to war and to the hunt along with the men. Each of them, he adds, is served and followed by an Indian woman with whom she says she is married, and they live together like spouses. Parallels for this custom, (and for the reverse, in which men assume the costume, labours, and way of life of women) are to be found far and wide in America,—indeed, to the Arctic Zone. Magelhães de Gandavo is authority, too, for the statement that the coastal tribes of Brazil, like the Carib of the north, have a dual speech, differing for the two sexes, at least in some words; but this is no extremely rare phenomenon.

More truly in the mythical vein is the account given in the tale of the adventures of Ulrich Schmidel. Journeying northward from the city of Asuncion, in a company under the command of Hernando de Ribera, Schmidel and his companions heard tales of the Amazons—whose land of gold and silver, the Indians astutely placed at a two months' journey from their own land. "The Amazons have only one breast," says Schmidel, "and they receive visits from men only twice or thrice a year. If a boy is born to them, they send him to the father; if a girl,[Pg 283] they raise her, burning the right breast that it may not grow, to the end that they may the more readily draw the bow, for they are very valiant and make war against their enemies. These women dwell in an isle, which can only be reached by canoes." In the same credulous vein, but with quaintly learned embellishments, is Sir Walter Raleigh's account: "I had knowledge of all the rivers between Orenoque and Amazones, and was very desirous to understand the truth of those warlike women, because of some it is believed, of others not. And though I digress from my purpose, yet I will set down that which hath been delivered me for truth of those women, and I spake with a cacique or lord of people, that told me he had been in the river, and beyond it also. The nations of these women are on the south side of the river in the provinces of Topago, and their chiefest strengths and retracts are in the islands situate on the south side of the entrance some sixty leagues within the mouth of the said river. The memories of the like women are very ancient as well in Africa as in Asia: in Africa these had Medusa for queen: others in Scithia near the rivers of Tanais and Thernodon: we find also that Lampedo and Marethesia were queens of the Amazons: in many histories they are verified to have been, and in divers ages and provinces: but they which are not far from Guiana do accompany with men but once in a year, and for the time of one month, which I gather by their relation, to be in April: and that time all kings of the border assemble, and queens of the Amazons; and after the queens have chosen, the rest cast lots for their Valentines. This one month they feast, dance, and drink of their wines in abundance; and the moon being done, they all depart to their own provinces. If they conceive, and be delivered of a son, they return him to the father; if of a daughter, they nourish it, and retain it: and as many as have daughters send unto the begetters a present: all being desirous to increase their sex and kind: but that they cut off the right dug of the breast, I do not find to be true. It was farther told me, that if in these[Pg 284] wars they took any prisoners that they used to accompany with these also at what time soever, but in the end for certain they put them to death: for they are said to be very cruel and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer to invade their territories. These Amazons have likewise great store of these plates of gold which they recover by exchange chiefly for a kind of green stones, which the Spaniards call Piedras hijadas, and we use for spleen stones: and for the disease of the stone we also esteem them. Of these I saw divers in Guiana: and commonly every king or cacique hath one, which their wives for the most part wear; and they esteem them as great jewels."

The Amazon stone, or piedra de la hijada, came to be immensely valued in Europe for wonderful medicinal effects,—a veritable panacea. Such stones were found treasured by the tribes of northern and north-central South America, passing by barter from people to people. "The form given to them most frequently," wrote Humboldt,[176] "is that of the Babylonian cylinders, longitudinally perforated, and loaded with inscriptions and figures. But this is not the work of the Indians of our day.... The Amazon stones, like the perforated and sculptured emeralds, found in the Cordilleras of New Grenada and Quito, are vestiges of anterior civilization." Later writers and investigators have identified the Amazon stones as green jade, probably the chalchihuitl which formed the esteemed jewel of the Aztecs; and it has been supposed that the centre from which spread the veneration for greenish and bluish stones—chiefly jade and turquoise—was somewhere in Mayan or Nahuatlan territory. Certainly it was widespread, extending from the Pueblos of New Mexico to the land of the Incas, and eastward into Brazil and the Antilles. That the South American tribes should have ascribed the origin of these treasures (at any rate, when questioned) to the Amazons, the treasure women, is altogether plausible. Nearly a century and a half after Raleigh's day, de la Condamine found the green jade stones still employed by the Indians to cure colic and epilepsy,—heirlooms,[Pg 285] they said, from their fathers who had received them from the husbandless women. That the Indians themselves have names for the Amazons is not strange—names with such meanings as the Women-Living-Alone, the Husbandless-Women, the Masterful-Women,—for the Europeans have been inquiring about such women ever since their coming; it is, however, worthy of note that Orellana, to whom is credited the first use of "Amazon" as a name for the great river, also heard a native name for the fabulous women; for Aparia, a native chief, after listening to Orellana's discourse on the law of God and the grandeur of the Castillean monarch, asked, as it were in rebuttal, whether Orellana had seen the Amazons, "whom in his language they call Coniapuyara, meaning Great Lord."

Modern investigators ascribe the myth of the Amazons, undeniably widespread at an early date, to various causes. The warlike character of many Indian women, already observed in the first encounters with Carib tribes by Columbus, is still attested by Spruce (1855): "I have myself seen that Indian women can fight ... the women pile up heaps of stones to serve as missiles for the men. If, as sometimes happens, the men are driven back to and beyond their piles of stones, the women defend the latter obstinately, and generally hold them until the men are able to rally to the combat." Another factor in the myth is supposed to have been rumours of the golden splendour of the Incaic empire, with perhaps vague tales of the Vestals of the Sun; and still another is the occurrence of anomalous social and sexual relationships of women, easily exaggerated in passing from tribe to tribe.

A special group of myths of the latter type is of pertinent interest. Ramon Pane and Peter Martyr give an example in the tale of Guagugiana enticing the women away to Matenino. A somewhat similar story is reported by Barboza Rodriguez from the Rio Jamunda: the women, led away by an elder or chief, were accustomed to destroy their male children; but one mother spared her boy, casting him into the water where he[Pg 286] lived as a fish by day, returning to visit her at night in human form; and the other women, discovering this, seduced the youth, who was finally disposed of by the jealous old man, whereupon the angry women fled, leaving the chief womanless. A like story is reported by Ehrenreich from Amazonas: The women gather beside the waters, where they make familiar with a water-monster, crocodilean in form, which is slain by the jealous men; then, the women rise in revolt, slay the men through deceit, and fare away on the stream. From Guiana Brett reports a myth on the same theme, the lover being, however, in jaguar form. Very likely the story of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu belongs to the same cycle; and it is of more than passing interest to observe that the story extends, along with the veneration of green and blue stones, to the Navaho and Pueblo tribes of North America, in the cosmogonies of which appears the tale of the revolt of the women, their unnatural relations with a water-monster, and their eventual return to the men.[177]

Vase from the Island of Marajó, with characteristic decoration. The funeral vases and other remains from this region have suggested to L. Netto that here was the fabled Isle of the Amazons (see pages 286-87). The vase pictured is in the American Museum of Natural History.

Possibly the whole mythic cycle is associated with fertility ideas. Even in the arid Pueblo regions it is water from below, welling up from Mother Earth, that appears in the myth, and a water-dwelling being that is the agent of seduction. In South America and the Antilles, where fish-food is important and where the fish and the tortoise are recurring symbols of fertility, it is natural to find the fabled women in this association. And in this connexion it may be well to recall the discoveries of L. Netto on the island of Marajó, at the mouth of the Amazon.[178] There he found two mounds, a greater and a smaller, in such proportion that he regarded them as forming the image of a tortoise. Within the greater, which he regarded as the seat of a chieftain's or chieftainess's residence,—commanding the country in every direction,—he discovered funeral urns and other objects of a quality far superior to those known to tribes of the neighbouring districts,—urns, hominiform in character, many of them highly decorated, and very many of the finest[Pg 287] holding the bones of women. "If the tradition of a veritable Amazonian Gyneocraty has ever had any raison d'être," said Netto, "certainly we see something enough like it in this nation of women ceramists, probably both powerful and numerous, and among whom the women-chiefs enjoyed the highest honours of the country."

"The rites of these infidels are almost the same," says the Padre de Acuña.[179] "They worship idols which they make with their own hands; attributing power over the waters to some, and, therefore, place a fish in their hands for distinction; others they choose as lords of the harvests; and others as gods of their battles. They say that these gods came down from Heaven to be their companions, and to do them good. They do not use any ceremony in worshipping them, and often leave them forgotten in a corner, until the time when they become necessary; thus, when they are going to war, they carry an idol in the bows of their canoes, in which they place their hopes of victory; and when they go out fishing, they take the idol which is charged with dominion over the waters; but they do not trust in the one or the other so much as not to recognize another mightier God."

This seventeenth century description is on the whole true to the results obtained by later observers of the rites and beliefs of the Amazonian Indians. To be sure, a certain amount of interpretation is desirable: the idolos of Acuña are hardly idols in the classical sense; rather they are in the nature of charms, fetishes, ritual paraphernalia, trophies,—all that goes under the name "medicine," as applied to Indian custom. And it is true, too, that in so vast a territory, and among peoples who, although all savages, differ widely in habit of life, there are indefinite variations both in custom and mental attitude. Some tribes are but hunters, fishers, and root-gatherers; others practice[Pg 288] agriculture also. Some are clothed; many are naked. Some practice cannibalism; others abhor the eaters of human flesh. Any student of the miscellaneous observations on the beliefs of the South American wild tribes, noted down by missionaries, officials, naturalists, adventurers, professional ethnologists, will at first surely feel himself lost in a chaos of contradiction. Nevertheless, granted a decent detachment and cool perspective, eventually he will be led to the opinion that these contradictions are not all due to the Indian; the prepossessions and understandings of the observers is no small factor; and even where the variation is aboriginal, it is likely to be in the local colour rather than in the underlying fact. In this broad sense Acuña's free characterization hits the essential features of Indian belief, in the tropical forests.

More than one later writer is in accord with the implicit emphasis which the Padre de Acuña places upon the importance on the food-giving animals and plants in Indian lore and rite. On these food sources in many parts of South America the abundant fish and other fluvial life is primary. Hugo Kunike has indeed, argued that the fish is the great symbol of fertility among the wild forest tribes, supporting the contention with analysis of the dances and songs, fishing customs, ornamentation-motives, and myths of these tribes.[180] Certainly he has shown that the fish plays an outstanding rôle in the imaginative as well as in the economic life of the Indian, appearing, in one group of myths, even as a culture hero and the giver of tobacco. Even more than the fish, the turtle ("the beef of the Amazon"), which is a symbol of generation in many parts of America, appears in Amazonian myth, where in versions of the Hare and the Tortoise (here the Deer replaces the Hare), of the contest of the Giant and the Whale pulling contrari-wise, and in similar fables the turtle appears as the Trickster. So, also, the frog, which appears in magical and cosmogonical rôles,—as in the Canopus myth narrated by Teschauer, where a man married a frog, and, becoming angered, cut off her leg and cast it into[Pg 289] the river, where the leg became the fish surubim (Pimelodes tigrinus), while the body rose to heaven to appear in the constellation. The like tale is told by other tribes with respect to Serpens and to the Southern Cross.

But important as water-life is to the Amazonian, it would appear from Père Tastevin's rebuttal of Kunike's contention that the Indian does not regard the fish with any speaking veneration. The truth would seem to be that in South America, as in North, it is the Elders of the Kinds, the ancestral guardians and perpetuators of the various species, both of plants and animals, that are appealed to,—dimly and magically by the tribes lower in intelligence, with conscious ritual by the others. Garcilasso de la Vega's description of the religions of the more primitive stratum of Peruvian times and peoples applies equally to the whole of America: "They venerated divers animals, some for their cruelty, as the tiger, the lion, the bear;... others for their craft, as the monkeys and the fox; others for fidelity, as the dog; for quickness, as the lynx;... eagles and hawks for their power to fly and supply themselves with game; the owl for its power to see in the dark.... They adored the earth, as giving them its fruits; the air, for the breath of life; the fire which warmed them and enabled them to eat properly; the llama which supplied troops of food animals;... the maize which gave them bread, and the other fruits of their country. Those dwelling on the coast had many divinities, but regarded the sea as the most potent of all, calling it their mother, because of the fish which it furnished with which they nourished their lives. All these, in general, venerated the whale because of its hugeness; but beside this, commonly in each province they devoted a particular cult to the fish which they took in greatest abundance, telling a pleasant tale to the effect that the First of all the Fish dwells in the sky, engendering all of its species, and taking care, each season, to send them a sufficiency of its kind for their good." Père Tastevin bears witness to the same belief today: "To be successful in fishing, it is[Pg 290] not to the fish that the Indian addresses himself, but to the mother of the animal he would take. If he goes to fish the turtle, he must first strike the prow of his canoe with the leaf of a small caladium which is called yurará taya, caladium of the turtle; he will strike in the same fashion the end of his turtle harpoon and the point of his arrow, and often he will carry the plant in his canoe. But let him beware lest he take the first turtle! She is the grandmother of the others; she is of a size which confounds the imagination, and she will drag down with her the imprudent fisherman to the bottom of the waters, where she will give him a fever without recovery. But if he respect her, he will be successful in his fishing for the rest of the day."

Universal among the tropical wild tribes is the love of dancing. In many of the tribes the dances are mask dances, the masks representing animals of all kinds; and the masks are frequently regarded as sacra, and are tabu to the women. In other cases, it is just the imitative powers of the child of nature that are called upon, and authorities agree that the Indian can and does imitate every kind of bird, beast, and fish with a bodily and vocal verisimilitude that gives to these dances, where many participate, the proper quality of a pandemonium. Authorities disagree as to the intent of the dancing; it is obvious to all that they are occasions of hilarity and fun; it is evident again that they lead to excitement, and especially when accompanied by the characteristic potations of native liquors, to warlike, sexual, or imaginative enthusiasm. Whether there is conscious magic underlying them (as cannot be doubted in the case of the similar dances of North America) is a matter of difference of opinion, and may well be a matter of differing fact,—the less intellectual tribes following blindly that instinct for rhythm and imitation which, says Aristotle, is native to all men, while with the others the dance has become consciously ritualized. Cook says[181] of the Bororo bakororó—a medley of hoots, squeaks, snorts, chirps, growls, and hisses, accompanied with appropriate actions,—that it "is always[Pg 291] sung on the vesper of a hunting expedition, and seems to be in honor of the animal the savages intend to hunt the following day.... After the singing of the bakororó that I witnessed, all the savages went outside the great hut, where they cleared a space of black ground, then formed animals in relief with ashes, especially the figure of the tapir, which they purposed to hunt the next day." This looks like magic,—though, to be sure, one need not press the similia similibus doctrine too far: human beings are gifted with imagination and the power of expressing it, and it is perhaps enough to assume that imitative and mask dances, images like to those described, or like the bark-cut figures and other animal signs described by von den Steinen among the Bakairi and other tribes, are all but the natural exteriorization of fantasy, perhaps vaguely, perhaps vividly, coloured with anticipations of the fruits of the chase.

If anything, there seems to be a clearer magical association in rites and games connected with plants than with those that mimic animals. Especially is this true of the manioc, or cassava, which is important not only as a food-giving plant, but as the source of a liquor, and, again, is dangerous for its poison,—which, as Teschauer remarks, must have caused the death of many during the long period in which the use of the plant was developed. Père Tastevin describes men and women gathering about a trough filled with manioc roots, each with a grater, and as they grate rapidly and altogether, a woman strikes up the song: "A spider has bitten me! A spider has bitten me! From under the leaf of the kará a spider has bitten me!" The one opposite answers: "A spider has bitten me! Bring the cure! Quick, make haste! A spider has bitten me!" And all break in with Yandú se suú, by which is understood nothing more than just the rhythmic tom-tom on the grater. Similar is the song of the sudarari—a plant whose root resembles the manioc, which multiplies with wonderful rapidity, and the presence of which in a manioc field is regarded as insuring large manioc roots: "Permit, O patroness, that we sing during[Pg 292] this beautiful night!" with the refrain, "Sudarari!" This, says Père Tastevin, is the true symbol of the fertility of fields, shared in a lesser way by certain other roots.

It is small wonder that the spirit or genius of the manioc figures in myth, nor is it surprising to find that the predominant myth is based on the motive of the North American Mondamin story. Whiffen remarks, of the north-western Amazonians:[182] "What I cannot but consider the most important of their stories are the many myths that deal with the essential and now familiar details of everyday life in connexion with the manihot utilissima and other fruits"; and he goes on to tell a typical story: The Good Spirit came to earth, showed the manioc to the Indians, and taught them to extract its evils; but he failed to teach them how the plant might be reproduced. Long afterward a virgin of the tribe, wandering in the woods, was seduced by a beautiful young hunter, who was none other than the manioc metamorphosed. A daughter born of this union led the tribe to a fine plantation of manioc, and taught them how to reproduce it from bits of the stalk. Since then the people have had bread. The more elaborate version of Couto de Magalhães tells how a chief who was about to kill his daughter when he found her to be with child, was warned in a dream by a white man not to do so, for his daughter was truly innocent and a virgin. A beautiful white boy was born to the maiden, and received the name Mani; but at the end of a year, with no apparent sign of ailing, he died. A strange plant grew upon his grave, whose fruit intoxicated the birds; the Indians then opened the grave, and in place of the body of Mani discovered the manioc root, which is thence called Mani-oka, "House of Mani." Teschauer gives another version in which Mani lived many years and taught his people many things, and at the last, when about to die told them that after his death they should find, when a year had passed, the greatest treasure of all, the bread-yielding root.

It is probable that some form of the Mani myth first suggested[Pg 293] to pious missionaries the extension of the legendary journeys of Saint Thomas among the wild tribes of the tropics. From Brazil to Peru, says Granada,[183] footprints and seats of Santo Tomás Apóstol, or Santo Tomé, are shown; and he associates these tales with the dissemination and cultivation of the all-useful herb, as probably formed by a Christianizing of the older culture myth. Three gifts are ascribed to the apostle,—the treasure of the faith, the cultivation of the manioc, and relief from epidemics. "Keep this in your houses," quoth the saint, "and the divine mercy will never withhold the good." The three gifts—a faith, a food, and a medicine,—are the almost universal donations of Indian culture heroes, and it is small wonder if minds piously inclined have found here a meeting-ground of religions. An interesting suggestion made by Señor Lafone Quevado would make Tupan, Tupa, Tumpa,—the widespread Brazilian name for god,—if not a derivative, at least a cognate form of Tonapa, the culture hero of the Lake Titicaca region, who was certainly identified as Saint Thomas by missionaries and Christian Indians at a very early date. That the myth itself is aboriginal there can be no manner of doubt,—Bochica and Quetzalcoatl are northern forms of it; nor need we doubt that Tupa or Tonapa is a native high deity—in all probability celestial or solar, as Lafone Quevado believes. The union of native god and Christian apostle is but the pretty marriage of Indian and missionary faiths.

One of the most poetical of Brazilian vegetation myths is told by Koch-Grünberg in connexion with the Yurupari festival,—a mask dance (yurupari means just "mask" according to Père Tastevin, although some have given it the significance of "demon") celebrated in conjunction with the ripening of fruits of certain palms. Women and small boys are excluded from the fête; indeed, it is death for women even to see the flutes and pipes,—as Humboldt said was true of the sacred trumpet of the Orinoco Indians in his day. The legend turns on the music of the pipes, and is truly Orphic in spirit....[Pg 294] Many, many years ago there came from the great Water-House, the home of the Sun, a little boy who sang with such wondrous charm that folk came from far and near to see him and harken. Milómaki, he was called, the Son of Miló. But when the folk had heard him, and were returned home, and ate of fish, they fell down and died. So their kinsfolk seized Milómaki, and built a funeral pyre, and burnt him, because he had brought death amongst them. But the youth went to his death still with song on his lips, and as the flames licked about his body, he sang: "Now I die, my son! now I leave this world!" And as his body began to break with the heat, still he sang in lordly tones: "Now bursts my body! now I am dead!" And his body was destroyed by the flames, but his soul ascended to heaven. From the ashes on the same day sprang a long green blade, which grew and grew, and even in another day had become a high tree, the first paxiuba palm. From its wood the people made great flutes, which gave forth as wonderful melodies as Milómaki had aforetime sung; and to this day the men blow upon them whenever the fruits are ripe. But women and little boys must not look upon the flutes, lest they die. This Milómaki, say the Yahuna, is the Tupana of the Indians, the Spirit Above, whose mask is the sky.

The region about the headwaters of the Rio Negro and the Yapura—the scene of Koch-Grünberg's travels—is the centre of the highest development of the mask dances, which seem to be recent enough with some of the tribes. In the legends of the Kabéua it is Kuai, the mythic hero and fertility spirit of the Arawak tribes, who is regarded as the introducer of the mask dances,—Kuai, who came with his brethren from their stone-houses in the hills to teach the dances to his children, and who now lives and dances in the sky-world. This is a myth which immediately suggests the similar tales of Zuñi and the other Pueblos, and the analogy suggested is more than borne out by what Koch-Grünberg[184] tells of the Katcina-like character of the masks. They all represent spirits or daemones.[Pg 295] They are used in ceremonies in honour of the ancestral dead, as well as in rituals addressed to nature powers. Furthermore, the spirit or daemon is temporarily embodied in the mask,—"the mask is for the Indian the daemon"; though, when the mask is destroyed at the end of a ceremonial, the Daemon of the Mask does not perish; rather he becomes máskara-anga, the Soul of the Mask; and, now invisible, though still powerful, he flies away to the Stone-house of the Daemones, whence only the art of the magician may summon him. "All masks are Daemones," said Koch-Grünberg's informant, "and all Daemones are lords of the mask."

What are the native beliefs of the wild tribes of South America about gods, and what is their natural religion? If an answer to this question may be fairly summarized from the expressions of observers, early and recent, it is this: the Indians generally believe in good powers and in evil powers, superhuman in character. The good powers are fewer and less active than the evil; at their head is the Ancient of Heaven. Little attention is paid to the Ancient of Heaven, or to any of the good powers,—they are good, and do not need attention. The evil powers are numerous and busy; the wise man must be ever on the alert to evade them,—turn them when he can, placate when he must.

Cardim is an early witness as to the beliefs of the Brazilian Indians.[185] "They are greatly afraid of the Devil, whom they call Curupira, Taguain, Pigtangua, Machchera, Anhanga: and their fear of him is so great, that only with the imagination of him they die, as many times already it hath happened."... "They have no proper name to express God, but they say the Tupan is the thunder and lightning, and that this is he that gave them the mattocks and the food, and because they have no other name more natural and proper, they call God Tupan."[Pg 296] Thevet says that "Toupan" is a name for the thunder or for the Great Spirit. Keane says of the Botocudo, perhaps the lowest of the Brazilian tribes: "The terms Yanchang, Tapan, etc., said to mean God, stand merely for spirit, demon, thunder, or at the most the thunder-god." Of these same people Ehrenreich reports: "The conception of God is wanting; they have no word for it. The word Tupan, appearing in some vocabularies, is the well-known Tupi-Guaranian word, spread by missionaries far over South America. The Botocudo understand by it, not God, but the Christian priest himself!" Neither have they a word for an evil principle; but they have a term for those souls of the departed which, wandering among men at night, can do them every imaginable ill, and "this raw animism is the only trace of religion—if one can so call it—as yet observed among them." Hans Staden's account of the religion of the Tupinambi, among whom he fell captive, drops the scale even lower: their god, he says, was a calabash rattle, called tammaraka, with which they danced; each man had his own, but once a year the paygis, or "prophets," pretended that a spirit come from a far country had endowed them with the power of conversing with all Tammarakas, and they would interpret what these said. Women as well as men could become paygis, through the usual Indian road to such endowment, the trance.

Similar in tenor is a recent account of the religion of the Bororo.[186] The principal element in it is the fear of evil spirits, especially the spirits of the dead. Bope and Mareba are the chief spirits recognized. "The missionaries spoke of the Bororos believing in a good spirit (Mareba) who lives in the fourth heaven, and who has a filha Mareba (son), who lives in the first heaven, but it is apparent that the priest merely heard the somewhat disfigured doctrines that had been learned from some missionary."... But why, asks the reader, should this conception come from the missionary rather than the Bororo in South America, when its North American parallel comes from the Chippewa rather than from the missionary?...[Pg 297] "In reality Bope is nothing else than the Digichibi of the Camacoco, Nenigo of the Kadioéo men, or Idmibi of the Kadioéo women, the Ichaumra or Ighamba of the Matsikui, i. e., the human soul, which is regarded as a bad spirit.... The Bororo often make images of animals and Bope out of wax. After they have been made they are beaten and destroyed."

Of the Camacan, a people of the southern part of Bahia, the Abbé Ignace says that while they recognize a supreme being, Gueggiahora, who dwells, invisible, above the stars which he governs, yet they give him no veneration, reserving their prayers for the crowd of spirits and bogeys—ghosts of the dead, thunderers and storm-makers, were-beasts, and the like, that inhabit their immediate environment, forming, as it were, earth's atmosphere. The Chorotes, too, believe in good and in bad spirits, paying their respects to the latter; while their neighbours, the Chiriguano, hold that the soul, after death, goes to the kingdom of the Great Spirit, Tumpa, where for a time he enjoys the pleasures of earth in a magnified degree; but this state cannot last, and in a series of degenerations the spirit returns to earth as a fox, as a rat, as a branch of a tree, finally to fall into dissolution with the tree's decay. Tumpa is, according to Pierini, the same as Tupa, the beneficent supreme spirit being known by these names among the Guarayo, although in their myths the principal personages are the hero brothers, Abaangui and Zaguaguayu, lords of the east and the west, and two other personages, Mbiracucha (perhaps the same as the Peruvian Viracocha) and Candir, the last two, like Abaangui, being shapers of lands and fathers of men.

D'Orbigny[187] describes a ritual dance of the Guarayo, men and women together, in which hymns were addressed to Tamoi, the Grandfather or Ancient of the Skies, who is called upon to descend and listen. "These hymns," he says, "are full of naïve figures and similitudes. They are accompanied by sounding reeds, for the reason that Tamoi ascended toward the[Pg 298] east from the top of a bamboo, while spirits struck the earth with its reeds. Moreover, the bamboo being one of the chief benefactions of Tamoi, they consider it as the intermediary between them and the divinity." Tamoi is besought in times of seeding, that he may send rain to revive the thirsting earth; his temple is a simple octagonal hut in the forest. "I have heard them ask of nature, in a most figurative and poetic style, that it clothe itself in magnificent vestments; of the flowers, that they bloom; of the birds, that they take on their richest plumage and resume their joyous song; of the trees, that they bedeck themselves with verdure; all to the end that these might join with them in calling upon Tamoi, whom they never implored in vain."

In another connexion d'Orbigny says: "The Guarani, from the Rio de la Plata to the Antilles and from the coasts of Brazil to the Bolivian Andes, revere, without fearing him, a beneficent being, their first father, Tamoi, or the Ancient of the Skies, who once dwelt among them, taught them agriculture, and afterwards disappeared toward the East, from whence he still protects them." Doubtless, this is too broad a generalization, and d'Orbigny's own reports contain numerous references to tribes who fear the evil rather than adore the good in nature. Nevertheless, there is not wanting evidence looking in the other direction. One of the most recent of observers, Thomas Whiffen, says of the northwest Brazilian tribes:[188] "On the whole their religion is a theism, inasmuch as their God has a vague, personal, anthropomorphic existence. His habitat is above the skies, the blue dome of heaven, which they look upon as the roof of the world that descends on all sides in contact with the earth. Yet again it is pantheism, this God being represented in all beneficent nature; for every good thing is imbued with his spirit, or with individual spirits subject to him."

According to Whiffen's account the Boro Good Spirit, Neva (in the same tribe Navena is the representative of all evil),[Pg 299] once came to earth, assuming human guise. The savannahs and other natural open places, where the sun shines freely and the sky is open above, are the spots where he spoke to men. But a certain Indian vexed Neva, the Good Spirit, so that he went again to live on the roof of the world; but before he went, he whispered to the tigers, which up to that time had hunted with men as with brothers, to kill the Indians and their brethren.

It is easy to see, from such a myth as this, how thin is the line that separates good and evil in the Indian's conception,—indeed, how hazy is his idea of virtue. Probably the main truth is that the Amazonian and other wild tribes generally believe in a Tupan or Tamoi, who is on the whole beneficent, is mainly remote and indifferent to mankind, and who, when he does reveal himself, is most likely to assume the form of (to borrow Whiffen's phrase) "a tempestipresent deity." "Although without temples, altars or idols," says Church, of the tribes of the Gran Chaco, "they recognize superior powers, one of whom is supreme and thunders from the sierras and sends the rain." Olympian Zeus himself is the Thunderer; in Scandinavia Tiu grows remote, and Thor with his levin is magnified. Similarly, in North America, the Thunderbirds loom huger in men's imagination than does Father Sky. On the whole for the South American tribes, the judgement of Couto de Magalhães seems sane; that the aboriginals of Brazil possessed no idea of a single and powerful God, at the time of the discovery, and indeed that their languages were incapable of expressing the idea; but that they did recognize a being superior to the others, whose name was Tupan. Observers from Acuña to Whiffen have noted individual sceptics among the Indians; certain tribes even (though the information is most likely from individuals) are said to believe in no gods and no spirits; and in some tribes the beliefs are obviously more inchoate than in others. But in the large, the South Americans are at one with all mankind in their belief in a Spirit of Good, whose abode is the[Pg 300] Above, and in their further belief in multitudes of dangerous spirit neighbours sharing with them the Here.

It would be a mistake to assume that all of these dangerous neighbours are invariably evil, just as it is erroneous to expect even the Ancient of the Skies to be invariably beneficent. In Cardim's list of the Brazilian names of the Devil he places first the Curupira.[189] But Curupira, or Korupira (as Teschauer spells it), is nearer to the god Pan than to Satan. Korupira is a daemon of the woods, guardian of all wild things, mischievous and teasing even to the point of malice and harm at times, but a giver of much good to those who approach him properly: he knows the forest's secrets and may be a wonderful helper to the hunter, and he knows, too, the healing properties of herbs. Like Pan he is not afoot like a normal man; and some say his feet turn backward, giving a deceptive trail; some say that his feet are double; some that he has but one rounded hoof. He is described as a dwarf, bald and one-eyed, with huge ears, hairy body, and blue-green teeth, and he rides a deer or a rabbit or a pig. He insists that game animals be killed, not merely wounded, and he may be induced to return lost cattle,—for he is a propitiable sprite, with a fondness for tobacco. A tale which illustrates his character, both for good and evil, is of the unlucky hunter, whom, in return for a present of tobacco, the Korupira helps; but the hunter must not tell his wife, and when she, suspecting a secret, follows her husband, the Korupira kills her. In another story the hunter, using the familiar ruse of pretended self-injury by means of which Jack induces the Giant to stab himself (an incident in which Coyote often figures in North America), gets the Korupira to slay himself; after a month he goes back to get the blue teeth of his victim, but as he strikes them the Korupira comes to life. He gives the hunter a magic bow, warning him not to use it against birds;[Pg 301] the injunction is disobeyed, the hunter is torn to pieces by the angry flocks, but the Korupira replaces the lost flesh with wax and brings the hunter to life. Again, he warns the hunter not to eat hot things; the latter disobeys, and forthwith melts away.

Another "devil" mentioned by Cardim is the Anhanga. The Anhanga is formless, and lives indeed only in thought, especially in dreams; in reality, he is the Incubus, the Nightmare. The Anhanga steals a child from its mother's hammock, and puts it on the ground beneath. The child cries, "Mother! Mother! Beware the Anhanga which lies beneath us!" The mother strikes, hitting the child; while the laughing Anhanga departs, calling back, "I have fooled you! I have fooled you!" In another tale, which recalls to us the tragedy of Pentheus and Agave, a hunter meets a doe and a fawn in the forest. He wounds the fawn, which calls to its mother; the mother returns, and the hunter slays her, only to discover that it is his own mother, whom the wicked sprite (here the Yurupari) had transformed into a doe.

But even more to be feared than the daemones are the ghosts and beast-embodied souls.[190] Like most other peoples in a parallel stage of mental life, the South American Indians very generally believe in metempsychosis, souls of men returning to earth in animal and even vegetal forms, and quite consistently with the malevolent purpose of wreaking vengeance upon olden foes. The belief has many characteristic modifications: in some cases the soul does not leave the body until the flesh is decayed; in many instances it passes for a time to a life of joy and dancing, a kind of temporary Paradisal limbo; but always it comes sooner or later back to fulfill its destiny as a were-beast.[191] The South American tiger, or jaguar, is naturally the form in which the reincarnate foe is most dreaded, and no mythic conception is wider spread in the continent than is that of the were-jaguar, lying in wait for his human foe,—who, if Garcilasso's account of jaguar-worshipping tribes is[Pg 302] correct, offered themselves unresistingly when the beast was encountered.

It is probable that the conception of the were-jaguar, or of beast reincarnations, is associated in part at least with the enigmatical question of tropical American cannibalism.[192] A recent traveller, J. D. Haseman, who visited a region of reputed cannibalism, and found no trace of the practice, is of the opinion that it has no present existence, if indeed it ever had any. But against this view is the unanimous testimony of nearly all observers, with explicit descriptions of the custom, from Hans Staden and Cardim down to Koch-Grünberg and Whiffen. Hans Staden, who was held as a slave among the Tupinambi of the Brazilian coast, describes a visit which he made to his Indian master for the purpose of begging that certain prisoners be ransomed. "He had before him a great basket of human flesh, and was busy gnawing a bone. He put it to my mouth and asked if I did not wish to eat. I said to him: 'There is hardly a wild animal that will eat its kind; how then shall I eat human flesh?' Then he, resuming his meal: 'I am a tiger, and I find it good.'" Cardim's description of cannibal rites is in many ways reminiscent of the Aztec sacrifice of the devoted youth to Tezcatlipoca: the victim is painted and adorned, is given a wife, and indeed so honoured that he does not even seek to escape,—"for they say that it is a wretched thing to die, and lie stinking, and eaten with worms"; throughout, the ritual element is obvious. On the other hand, the conception of degradation is clearly a strong factor. Whiffen makes this the foremost reason for the practice. The Indian, he says, has very definite notions as to the inferiority of the brute creation. To resemble animals in any way is regarded as degrading; and this, he regards as the reason for the widespread South American custom of removing from the body all hair except from the scalp, and again for the disgrace attendant upon the birth of twins. But animals are slaughtered as food for men: what disgrace, then to the captured enemy comparable with being[Pg 303] used as food by his captor? Undoubtedly, the vengeful nature of anthropophagy is a strong factor in maintaining the custom; from Hans Staden on, writers tell us that while the captive takes his lot fatalistically his last words are a reminder to his slayers that his kindred are preparing a like end for them. Probably the unique and curious South American method of preparing the heads of slain enemies as trophies, by a process of removing the bones, shrinking, and decorating, is a practice with the same end—the degradation of the enemy,—corresponding, of course, to the scalping and head-taking habits of other American tribes.

Trophy head prepared by Jivaro Indians, Ecuador, now in the Peabody Museum. In the preparation of such trophies the bones are carefully removed, the head shrunken and dried, and frequently, as in this example, ornamented with brilliant feathers. The custom of preparing the heads of slain enemies or of sacrificial victims as trophies was widespread in aboriginal America, North and South, the North American custom of scalping being probably a late development from this earlier practice. It is possible that some at least of the masks which appear upon mythological figures in Nasca and other representations are meant to betoken trophy heads.

It is to be expected that with the custom of anthropophagy widespread, it should be constantly reflected in myth. A curious and enlightening instance is in the Bakairi hero-tale reported by von den Steinen:[193] A jaguar married a Bakairi maiden; while he was gone ahunting, his mother, Mero, the mother of all the tiger kind, killed the maiden, whose twin sons were saved from her body by a Caesarian section. The girl's body was then served up to the jaguar husband, without his knowledge. When he discovered the trick—infuriated at the trick and at having eaten his wife's flesh,—he was about to attack Mero: "I am thy mother!" she cried, and he desisted. Here we have the whole moral problem of the house of Pelops primitively adumbrated.

More in the nature of the purely ogreish is the tale related by Couto de Magalhães,[194] the tale of Ceiuci, the Famished Old Woman (who he says, is none other than the Pleiades). A young man sat in a tree-rest, when Ceiuci came to the waters beneath to fish. She saw the youth's shadow, and cast in her line. He laughed. She looked up. "Descend," she cried; and when he refused, she sent biting ants after him, compelling him to drop into the water. Thence she snared him, and went home with her game. While she was gone for wood to cook her take, her daughter looked into the catch, and saw the youth, at his request concealing him. "Show me my game or I will[Pg 304] kill you," commanded the ogress. In company with the youth the maiden takes flight—the "magic flight," which figures in many myths, South American and North. As they flee they drop palm branches which are transformed into animals and these Ceiuci stops to devour. But in time all kinds of animals have been formed, and the girl can help the youth no longer. "When you hear a bird singing kan kan, kan kan, kan kan," she says, in leaving him, "my mother is not far." He goes on till he hears the warning. The monkeys hide him and Ceiuci passes. He resumes his journey, and again hears the warning chant. He begs the serpents to hide him; they do so, and the ogress passes once more. But the serpents now plan to devour the youth; he hears them laying their plot and calls upon the macauhau, a snake-eating bird, to help him; and the bird eats the serpents. Finally, the youth reaches a river, where he is aided by the herons to cross. From a tree he beholds a house, and going thither he finds an old woman complaining that her maniocs are being stolen by the agouti. The man tells her his story. He had started out as a youth; he is now old and white-haired. The woman recognizes him as her son, and she takes him in to live with her. Couto de Magalhães sees in this tale an image of the journey of life with its perils and its loves; the love of man for woman is the first solace sought, but abiding rest is found only in mother love. At least the story will bear this interpretation; nor will it be alone as a South American tale in which the moral meaning is conscious.

When the Greeks began to speculate about "the thing the Sophists call the world," they named it sometimes the Heaven, Ouranos, sometimes the Realm of Order, Cosmos; and the two terms seemed to them one in meaning, for the first and striking evidence of law and order in nature which man discovers is in the regular and recurrent movements of the heavenly[Pg 305] bodies. But it takes a knowledge of number and a sense of time to be able to truly discern this orderliness of the celestial sequences; and both of these come most naturally to peoples dwelling in zones wherein the celestial changes are reflected in seasonal variations of vegetation and animal life. In the well-nigh seasonless tropics, and among peoples gifted with no powers of enumeration (for there are many South American tribes that cannot number the ten digits), it is but natural to expect that the cycles of the heavens should seem as lawless as does their own instable environment, and the stars themselves to be actuated by whims and lusts analogous to their own.

This Song of the Turtle, of the Paumari tribes, says Steere,[195] reflects their own aimless life, wandering from flat to flat of the ever-shifting river; and it might be taken, too, as the image of the heavenly motions, as these appear to peoples for whom there is no art of counting. Some writers, to be sure, have sought to asterize the greater portion of South American myth, on the general hypothesis that sun-worship dominates the two Americas; but this is fancy, with little warrant in the evidence. Sun, moon, and stars, darkness and day, all find mythic expression; but there is little trace among the wild tribes of anything approaching ritual devoted to these, or of aught save mythopoesy in the thought of them.

The most rudimentary level is doubtless represented by the Botocudo, with whom, says Ehrenreich,[196] taru signifies either sun or moon, but principally the shining vault of heaven, whether illuminated by either of these bodies or by lightning; further, the same word, in suitable phrase, comes to mean both wind and weather, and even night. In contrast with this we have the extraordinary assurance that the highly intelligent Passé tribe believes (presumably by their own induction) that the earth moves and the sun is stationary. The intermediate, and[Pg 306] perhaps most truly mythic stage of speculation is represented in the Bakairi tales told by von den Steinen, in which the sun is placed in a pot in the moving heaven; every evening, Evaki, the wife of the bat who is the lord of darkness, claps to the lid, concealing the sun while the heaven returns to its former position. Night and sleep are often personified in South American stones,—as in the tale of the stork who tried to kill sleep,—and here Evaki, the mistress of night, is represented as stealing sleep from the eyes of lizards, and dividing it among all living beings.

A charming allegory of the Amazon and its seasons is recorded by Barboza Rodriguez. Many years ago the Moon would become the bride of the Sun; but when they thought to wed, they found that this would destroy the earth: the burning love of the Sun would consume it, the tears of the Moon would flood it; and fire and water would mutually destroy each other, the one extinguished, the other evaporated. Hence, they separated, going on either side. The Moon wept a day and a night, so that her tears fell to earth and flowed down to the sea. But the sea rose up against them, refusing to mingle the Moon's tears with its waters; and hence it comes that the tears still flow, half a year outward, half a year inward. Myths of the Pleiades are known to the Indians throughout Brazil, who regard the first appearance of this constellation in the firmament as the sign of renewing life, after the dry season,—"Mother of the Thirsty" is one interpretation of its name. One myth tells of an earthly hunter who pierced the sky with arrows and climbed to heaven in quest of his beloved. Being athirst he asked water of the Pleiades. She gave it him, saying: "Now thou hast drunk water, thou shalt see whence I come and whither I go. One month long I disappear and the following month I shine again to the measure of my appointed time. All that beholds me is renewed." Teschauer credits many Brazilian Indians with an extensive knowledge of the stars—their course, ascension, the time of their appearance and disappearance,[Pg 307] and the changes of the year that correspond, but this seems somewhat exaggerated in view of the limited amount of the lore cited in its support,—legends of the Pleiades and Canopus already mentioned, and in addition only Orion, Venus, and Sirius. Of course the Milky Way is observed, and as in North America it is regarded as the pathway of souls. So, in the odd Taulipang legend given by Koch-Grünberg, the Moon, banished from its house by a magician, reflects: "Shall I become a tapir, a wild-pig, a beast of the chase, a bird? All these are eaten! I will ascend to the sky! It is better there than here; I will go there, from thence to light my brothers below." So with his two daughters he ascended the skies, and the first daughter he sent to a heaven above the first heaven, and the second to a third heaven; but he himself remained in the first heaven. "I will remain here," he said, "to shine upon my brothers below. But ye shall illuminate the Way for the people who die, that the soul shall not remain in darkness!"

On an analogous theme but in a vein that is indeed grim is the Cherentes star legend reported by de Oliveira.[197] The sun is the supreme object of worship in this tribe, while the moon and the stars, especially the Pleiades, are his cult companions. In the festival of the dead there is a high pole up which the souls of the shamans are supposed to climb to hold intercourse with kinsfolk who are with the heavenly spheres; and it is this pole and the beliefs which attach to it that is, doubtless, the subject of the myth. The tale is of a young man who, as he gazed up at the stars, was attracted by the exceptional beauty of one of them: "What a pity that I cannot shut you up in my gourd to admire you to my heart's content!" he cried; and when sleep came, he dreamed of the star. He awoke suddenly, amazed to find standing beside him a young girl with shining eyes: "I am the bright star you wished to keep in your gourd," she said; and at her insistence he put her into the gourd, whence he could see her beautiful eyes gazing upward. After this the young man had no rest, for he was filled with apprehension[Pg 308] because of his supermundane guest; only at night the star would come from her hiding-place and the young man would feast his eyes on her beauty. But one day the star asked the young man to go hunting, and at a palm-tree she required that he climb and gather for her a cluster of fruit; as he did so, she leaped upon the tree and struck it with a wand, and immediately it grew until it touched the sky, whereto she tied it by its thick leaves and they both jumped into the sky-world. The youth found himself in the midst of a desolate field, and the star, commanding him not to stir, went in quest of food. Presently he seemed to hear the sound of festivity, songs and dances, but the star, returning, bade him above all not to go to see the dancing. Nevertheless, when she was gone again, the youth could not repress his curiosity and he went toward the sound.... "What he saw was fearful! It was a new sort of dance of the dead! A crowd of skeletons whirled around, weird and shapeless, their putrid flesh hanging from their bones and their eyes dried up in their sunken orbits. The air was heavy with their foul odour." The young man ran away in horror. On his way he met the star who blamed him for his disobedience and made him take a bath to cleanse him of the pollution. But he could no longer endure the sky-world, but ran to the spot where the leaves were tied to the sky and jumped on to the palm-tree, which immediately began to shrink back toward the earth: "You run away in vain, you shall soon return," the star called after him; and so indeed it was, for he had barely time to tell his kindred of his adventure before he died. And "thus it was known among the Indians that no heaven of delight awaits them above, even though the stars shine and charm us."

The uniting of heaven and earth by a tree or rock which grows from the lower to the upper world is found in many forms, and is usually associated with cosmogonic myths (true creation stories are not common in Brazil). Such a story is the Mundurucu tale, reported by Teschauer,[198] which begins with a chaotic darkness from which came two men, Karusakahiby,[Pg 309] and his son, Rairu. Rairu stumbled on a bowl-shaped stone; the father commanded him to carry it; he put it upon his head, and immediately it began to grow. It grew until it formed the heavens, wherein the sun appeared and began to shine. Rairu, recognizing his father as the heaven-maker, knelt before him; but Karu was angry because the son knew more than did he. Rairu was compelled to hide in the earth. The father found him and was about to strike him, but Rairu said: "Strike me not, for in the hollow of the earth I have found people, who will come forth and labour for us." So the First People were allowed to issue forth, and were separated into their tribes and kinds according to colour and beauty. The lazy ones were transformed into birds, bats, pigs, and butterflies. A somewhat similar Kaduveo genesis, narrated by Frič, tells how the various tribes of men were led from the underground world and successively assigned their several possessions; last of all came the Kaduveo, but there were no more possessions to distribute; accordingly to them was assigned the right to war upon the other Indians and to steal their lands, wives, and children.

The Mundurucu genesis opens: "In the beginning the world lay in darkness." In an opposite and indeed very unusual way begins the cosmogonic myth recorded by Couto de Magalhães:[199] "In the beginning there was no night; the day was unbroken. Night slept at the bottom of the waters. There were no animals, but all things could speak." It is said, proceeds the tale, that at this time the daughter of the Great Serpent married a youth who had three faithful servants. One day he said to these servants: "Begone! My wife desires no longer to lie with me." The servants departed, and the husband called upon his wife to lie with him. She replied: "It is not yet night." He answered: "There is no night; day is without end." She: "My father owns the night. If you wish to lie with me, seek it at the river's source." So he called his three servants, and the wife dispatched them to secure a nut of the tucuma (a palm of bright orange colour, important to the Indians as a food and[Pg 310] industrial plant). When they reached the Great Serpent he gave them the nut, tightly sealed: "Take it. Depart. But if you open it, you are lost." They set out in their canoe, but presently heard from within the nut: "Ten ten ten, ten ten ten." It was the noise of the insects of the night. "What is this noise? Let us see," said one. The leader answered: "No: we will be lost. Make haste." But the noise continued and finally all drew together in the canoe, and with fire melted the sealing of the fruit. The imprisoned night streamed forth! The leader cried: "We are lost! Our mistress already knows that we have freed the night!" At the same time the mistress, in her house, said to her husband: "They have loosed the night. Let us await the day." Then all things in the forests metamorphosed themselves into animals and birds; all things in the waters became water-fowl and fishes; and even the fisherman in his canoe was transformed into a duck, his head into the duck's head, his paddle into its web feet, his boat into its body. When the daughter of the Great Serpent saw Venus rise, she said: "The dawn is come. I shall divide day from night." Then she unravelled a thread, saying: "Thou shalt be cubuju [a kind of pheasant]; thou shalt sing as dawn breaks." She whitened its head and reddened its feathers, saying: "Thou shalt sing always at dawn of day." Then she unravelled another thread, saying: "Thou shalt be inambu" [a perdrix that sings at certain hours of the night]; and powdering it with cinders: "Thou shalt sing at eve, at midnight, and at early morn." From that time forth the birds sang at the time appropriate to them, in day or night. But when the three servants returned, their mistress said to them: "Ye have been unfaithful. Ye have loosed the night. Ye have caused the loss of all. For this ye shall become monkeys, and swing among the branches for all time."

[Pg 311]

Purchas's translation of Cardim begins:[200] "It seemeth that this people had no knowledge of the beginning and creation of the world, but of the deluge it seemeth they have some notice: but as they have no writings nor characters such notice is obscure and confused; for they say that the waters drowned all men, and that one only escaped upon a Janipata with a sister of his that was with child and that from these two they have their beginning and from thence began their multiplying and increase."

This is a fair characterization of the general cosmogonical ideas of the South American wild tribes. There is seldom any notion of creation; there is universally, it would seem, some legend of a cataclysm, or series of them, fire and flood, offering such general analogies to the Noachian story as naturally to suggest to men unacquainted with comparative mythology the inference that the tale of Noah was indeed the source of all. Following the deluge or conflagration there is a series of incidents which might be regarded as dispersal stories,—tales of transformations and migrations by means of which the tribes of animals and men came to assume their present form. Very generally, too, the Transformer-Heroes are the divine pair, sometimes father and son, but commonly twin brothers, who give the animals their lasting forms, instruct men in the arts, and after Herculean labors depart, the one to become lord of the east and the day, the other lord of the west and the night, the one lord of life, the other lord of death and the ghost-world. It is not unnatural to see in this hero pair the sun and the moon, as some authorities do, though it would surely be a mistake to read into the Indian's thought the simple identification which such a statement implies: a tale is first of all a tale, with the primitive man; and if it have an allegorical meaning this is rarely one which his language can express in other terms than the tale itself.

[Pg 312]

One of the best known of the South American deluge stories is the Caingang legend[201] which the native narrator had heard "from the mother of the mother of his mother, who had heard it in her day from her ancient progenitors." The story is the common one of people fleeing before the flood to a hill and clinging to the branches of a tree while they await the subsidence of the waters,—an incident of a kind which may be common enough in flood seasons, and which might be taken as a mere reflection of ordinary experience but for the fact of the series of transformations which follow the return to dry land; and these include not only the formation of the animal kinds, but the gift of song from a singing gourd and a curious process of divination, taught by the ant-eater, by means of which the sex of children is foretold.

The flood is only one incident in a much more comprehensive cycle of events, assembled variously by various peoples, but having such a family likeness that one may without impropriety regard the group as the tropical American Genesis. Of this cycle the fullest versions are those of the Yuracare, as reported by d'Orbigny, and of the Bakairi, as reported by von den Steinen.[202]

In the Bakairi tale the action begins in the sky-world. A certain hunter encountered Oka, the jaguar, and agreed to make wives for Oka if the latter would spare him. He made two wives out of wood, blowing upon them. One of these wives swallowed two finger-bones, and became with child. Mero, the mother of Oka and of the jaguar kind, slew the woman, but Kuara, the brother of Oka, performed the Caesarian operation and saved the twins, who were within her body. These twins were the heroes, Keri and Kame. To avenge their mother they started a conflagration which destroyed Mero, themselves hiding in a burrow in the earth. Kame came forth too soon and was burned, but Keri blew upon his ashes and restored him to life. Keri in his turn was burned and restored by Kame. First, in their resurrected lives did these two assume human[Pg 313] form. Now begins the cycle of their labours. They stole the sun and the moon from the red and the white vultures, and gave order to their way in the heavens, keeping them in pots, coverable, when the light of these bodies should be concealed: sun, moon, and ruddy dawn were all regarded as made of feathers. Next, heaven and earth, which were as yet close together, were separated. Keri said to the heavens: "Thou shalt not remain here. My people are dying. I wish not that my people die." The heavens answered: "I will remain here!" "We shall exchange places," said Keri; whereupon he came to earth and the sky rose to where it now is. The theft of fire from the fox, who kept it in his eye; the stealing of water from the Great Serpent, with the formation of rivers; the swallowing of Kame by a water monster, and his revivescence by Keri; the institution of the arts of house-building, fishery, dancing; and the separation of human kinds;—all these are incidents leading up to the final departure of Keri and Kame, who at the last ascend a hill, and go thence on their separate ways. "Whither are they gone? Who knows? Our ancestors knew not whither they went. Today no one knows where they are."

The Bakairi dwell in the central regions of Brazil; the Yuracare are across the continent, near the base of the Andes. From them d'Orbigny obtained a version of the same cosmogony, but fuller and with more incidents. The world began with sombre forests, inhabited by the Yuracare. Then came Sararuma and burned the whole country. One man only escaped, he having constructed an underground refuge. After the conflagration he was wandering sadly through the ruined world when he met Sararuma. "Although I am the cause of this ill, yet I have pity on you," said the latter, and he gave him a handful of seeds from whose planting sprang, as by magic, a magnificent forest. A wife appeared, as it were ex nihilo, and bore sons and a daughter to this man. One day the maiden encountered a beautiful tree with purple flowers, called Ulé. Were it but a man, how she would love it! And she painted[Pg 314] and adorned the tree in her devotion, with sighs and hopes,—hopes that were not in vain, for the tree became a beautiful youth. Though at first she had to bind him to keep him from wandering away, the two became happy spouses. But one day Ulé, hunting with his brothers, was slain by a jaguar. His bride, in her grief like Isis, gathered together the morsels of his torn body. Again, her love was rewarded and Ulé was restored to life, but as they journeyed he glanced in a pool, saw a disfigured face, where a bit of flesh had not been recovered, and despite the bride's tears took his departure, telling her not to look behind, no matter what noise she heard. But she was startled into doing this, became lost, and wandered into a jaguar's lair. The mother of the jaguars took pity upon her, but her four sons were for killing her. To test her obedience they commanded her to eat the poisonous ants that infested their bodies; she deceived three of them by substituting seeds for the ants, which she cast to the ground; but the fourth had eyes in the back of his head, detected the ruse and killed her. From her body was torn the child which she was carrying, Tiri, who was raised in secret by the jaguar mother.

When Tiri was grown he one day wounded a paca, which said: "You live in peace with the murderers of your mother, but me, who have done you no harm, you wish to kill." Tiri demanded the meaning of this, and the paca told him the tale. Tiri then lay in wait for the jaguar brothers, slaying the first three with arrows, but the jaguar with eyes in the back of his head, climbed into a tree, calling upon the trees, the sun, stars, and moon to save him. The moon snatched him up, and since that time he can be seen upon her bosom, while all jaguars love the night. Tiri, who was the master of all nature, taught cultivation to his foster-mother, who now had no sons to hunt for her. He longed for a companion, and created Caru, to be his brother, from his own finger-nail; and the two lived in great amity, performing many deeds. Once, invited to a feast, they spilled a vase of liquor which flooded the whole earth and[Pg 315] drowned Caru; but when the waters were subsided, Tiri found his brother's bones and revived him. The brothers then married birds, by whom they had children. The son of Caru died and was buried. Tiri then told Caru at the end of a certain time to go seek his son, who would be revived, but to be careful not to eat him. Caru, finding a manioc plant on the grave, ate of it. Immediately a great noise was heard, and Tiri said: "Caru has disobeyed and eaten his son; in punishment he and all men shall be mortal, and subject to all toils and all sufferings."

In following adventures the usual transformations take place, and mankind, in their tribes, are led forth from a great rock, Tiri saying to them: "Ye must divide and people all the earth, and that ye shall do so I create discord and make you enemies of one another." Thus arose the hostility of tribes. Tiri now decided to depart, and he sent birds in the several directions to discover in which the earth extends farthest. Those sent to the east and the north speedily returned, but the bird sent toward the setting sun was gone a long time, and when at last it returned it brought with it beautiful feathers. So Tiri departed into the West, and disappeared.

[Pg 316]

The Rio de la Plata is the third of the great river systems which drain the South American continent. It combines the waters of the Uruguay, draining the hilly region of southern Brazil, with those of the Paraná, which through its numerous tributaries taps the heart of the south central portion of the continent. The Paraná and its continuation, the Paraguay, flowing almost due south from the centre of the continent, form a kind of axis, dividing the hilly lands on the east from the great woodland plains known as the Chaco, stretching westward to the Andes, from whose age-worn detritus they were doubtless formed. The northern boundary of the Chaco is in the neighbourhood of the Tropic of Capricorn; southward the plains extend far into Argentina, narrowing with the encroaching mountains, and finally giving way to the grassy pampas, in the latitude of Buenos Aires. These, in turn, extend southward to the Patagonian plains—geologically one of earth's youngest regions,—of which the terminus is the mountain region meeting the southern straits. Parallel with this stretch of open country, which diminishes in width as the southern latitudes are approached, is the Andean ridge, almost due north and south in sense, scarcely varying the width of the western coastal region which it marks off, but eastward extending in heavier lines of ridges and broader plateaus as the centre of the continent is approached. South of latitude 40º the western coastal region, with the sinking of the Andean range, merges in a long archipelago leading on to Tierra del Fuego and[Pg 317] its satellite islands, beyond the Straits of Magellan,—an archipelago which is the far southern counterpart of that reaching along North America from Puget Sound to the Aleutian Isles.

The aboriginal peoples of the region thus described fall into a number of groups of exceptional interest to the ethnologist. In the Chaco, to the north, are to be found, to this day, tribes practically untouched by the influence of civilization—tribes in the state which for untold centuries must have been that of the peoples of central South America. Some of them show signs of having been under the influence of the cultured peoples of the Andean regions, preserving in their fabrics, for example, figured designs strikingly like those of Incaic Peru. It has even been suggested that the region is in no small part peopled by descendants of Indians who in former times fled from the west, first before the armies of the Incas, later before the advance of Spanish power.

This constant pressure, which can in a measure be followed in historic times, has had its effect in pushing southward peoples whose origin must be sought in the central region. Such a people are the Abipone—a group of tribes which owe their especial fame among South American Indians perhaps more to the fact that they were so faithfully pictured by Father Dobrizhoffer, during the period in which they were gathered in missions, than to their own qualities, striking as these are. In any case, the Abipone, who in the eighteenth century had become an equestrian people of the open country, had, according to their own tradition, moved southward out of the forests, bearing with them many of the traits still to be found among the tribes of the Chaco.

The Calchaqui civilization, of the Andean region just north of latitude 30º was one of the latest conquests of the Inca power, and represents its southerly extension. The actual dividing line, as recorded by Garcilasso, was the river Rapel, latitude 34º, where, according to the historian, the Inca Tupac Yupanqui was held in his southward advance by the Araucanian[Pg 318] (or Aucanian) tribes who formed the population of Chile and west central Argentina. The Araucanians enjoy the proud distinction of being to this day an unconquered people; for they held their own in long and bloody wars with the Spaniards, as before they had held against the aggressive Incas. Further, in their general culture, and in intellectual vigor, they stand at the head of the peoples of southerly South America.

Scarcely less in romantic interest is the group of peoples—the Puelche and Tehuelche tribal stocks—forming the Patagonian race, whose tall stature, exaggerated in the imagination of early discoverers, made of them a race of giants. Like the Pampean tribes they early become horsemen, expert with the bolas; and with no permanent villages and no agriculture, they remain equestrian nomads of the southern plains. The Ona of Tierra del Fuego represent a non-equestrian as they are also a non-canoe-using branch of the Patagonian race. Altogether different are the canoe peoples of the southern archipelago, the Alakaluf and the Yahgan. These have shared with the Australian Blacks, with the Botocudo, and with one or two other groups of human beings, the reputation of representing the lowest grade of human intelligence and attainment. They were long thought to be hopelessly imbruted, though this judgement is being somewhat revised in the face of the achievements of missionary workers among them. Still there are few more striking contrasts in the field of ethnology than is that between the culture of the peoples of the Pacific archipelago of the northern America, with their elaborate society, art, and mythology, and the mentally deficient and culturally destitute savages of the island region of austral America.

In d'Orbigny's classification the Pampean race is divided into three groups. Of these the most northerly is the Moxean, comprising tribes about the headwaters of the Madeira. Next[Pg 319] southward is the Chiquitean branch, with their centre on the divide between the headwaters of the Madeira and those of the southward flowing Paraguay and Pilcomayo rivers; hence marking the division of the Amazonian and La Plata systems. Still south of these is the main Pampean branch, its northerly reach being represented by the Toba, Lengua, and other Chaco stocks; its centre by the Mocobi, Abipone, and the Charrua of Uruguay (whom other authorities ally with the Brazilian stocks); its southerly division comprising the Puelche and the Tehuelche, or Patagonians proper. So far as the Pampean branch is concerned, this grouping corresponds with ideas still received.

D'Orbigny gives scant materials as to the mythic beliefs of the Indians of the Pampean tribes, yet some are of more than ordinary interest. Thus, of the Mataguaya, he says[204] that they regard eclipses as due to a great bird, with spread wings, assailing the star eclipsed,—which is in harmony with widespread South American notions; so, for example, in the Chiquitean idea, recorded by Father Fernandez, the eclipsed moon is darkened by its own blood drawn by savage dogs. Still more interesting is the statement, drawn from Guevara's Historia del Paraguay, that the Mocobi regard the Southern Cross as the image of a rhea pursued by dogs. This is the very form in which the Great Wain is interpreted in North America; as far as north Greenland it is regarded as a bear or deer pursued by dogs or by hunters. Fragments of a Mocobi cosmic myth are also given: The Sun is a man, the Moon is a woman. Once, long ago, the Sun fell from the sky. The Mocobi raised it and placed it again in the sky, but it fell a second time and burned all the forests. The Mocobi saved themselves by changing themselves into caymans and other amphibians. A man and a woman climbed a tree to save themselves, a flame singed their faces, and they were changed into apes.... This tale is obviously related to the hero cycle of which the Bakairi and Yuracare stories are versions.

[Pg 320]

But among the Indians of this region it is of the Abipone, neighbours of the Mocobi, that our knowledge is fullest, owing to the classical narrative of Martin Dobrizhoffer[205] who, in the eighteenth century, was for eighteen years a Jesuit missionary in Paraguay. In general Dobrizhoffer's account of the Abipone corresponds so closely with what is now familiar knowledge of Indian ideas—animism, shamanism, necromancy, and in their own region belief in were-jaguars and the like,—that it is valuable rather for verification than interpretation. In the field of religion, the Father is interested in superstitions rather than in myth, of which he gives little. His comments, however, have a quality of personality that imparts an entirely dramatic verve to his narrative of the encounter of the two minds—Jesuit and savage.

"Haec est summa delicti, nolle recognoscere quem ignorare non possit, are the words of Tertullian, in his Apology for the Christians. Theologians agree in denying that any man in possession of his reason can, without a crime, remain ignorant of God for any length of time. This opinion I warmly defended in the University of Cordoba, where I finished the four years' course of theology begun at Gratz in Styria. But what was my astonishment, when on removing from thence to a colony of Abipones, I found that the whole language of these savages does not contain a single word which expresses God or a divinity. To instruct them in religion, it was necessary to borrow the Spanish word for God, and insert into the catechism Dios ecnam coagarik, God the creator of things." He goes on to tell how, camped in the open with a party of Indians, the serene sky delighting the eyes with its twinkling stars, he began a conversation with the Cacique Ychoalay: "Do you behold the splendour of the Heaven, with its magnificent arrangement of stars? Who can suppose that all this is produced by chance?... Who can be mad enough to imagine that all these beauties of the Heavens are the effect of chance, and that the revolutions and vicissitudes of the celestial bodies are regulated without the[Pg 321] direction of an omniscient mind? Whom do you believe to be their creator and governor?" "My father," replied Ychoalay, "our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were wont to contemplate the earth alone, solicitous only to see whether the plain afforded grass and water for their horses. They never troubled themselves about what went on in the Heavens, and who was the creator and governor of the stars."

Such incomprehension of things theological seemed to the missionaries to argue a sub-human nature in the Indians, and Dobrizhoffer, after remarking that Paul III was obliged to issue a bull in which he pronounced Indians to be really men, capable of understanding the Catholic faith and of receiving its sacraments, goes on himself to argue that they are in fact intelligent human beings in spite of this incredible density. And then he continues: "I said that the Abipones were commendable for their wit and strength of mind; but ashamed of my too hasty praise, I retract my words and pronounce them fools, idiots, and madmen. Lo! this is the proof of their insanity! They are unacquainted with God, and with the very name of God, yet they affectionately salute the evil spirit, whom they call Aharaigichi, or Queevèt, with the title of grandfather, Groaperikie. Him they declare to be their grandfather, and that of the Spaniards, but with this difference, that to the latter he gives gold and silver and fine clothes, but to them he transmits valour." Here the lips of the reader begin to flicker with amusement,—it is easy to see the devil under the mask of strange gods! Father Dobrizhoffer continues: "The Abipones think the Pleiades to be the representation of their grandfather; and as that constellation disappears at certain periods from the sky of South America, upon such occasions, they suppose that their grandfather is sick, and are under a yearly apprehension that he is going to die: but as soon as those seven stars are again visible in the month of May, they welcome their grandfather, as if returned and restored from sickness, with joyful shouts, and the festive sound of pipes and trumpets, congratulating[Pg 322] him on the recovery of his health. 'What thanks do we owe thee! and art thou returned at last? Ah! thou hast happily recovered!' With such exclamations, expressive of their joy and folly, do they fill the air."

Dobrizhoffer devotes a learned and amusing chapter to "Conjectures why the Abipones take the Evil Spirit for their Grandfather and the Pleiades for the representation of him"; in which, finding no Scriptural explanation, he concludes that the cult came ultimately from Peru (the Peruvian's knowledge of God did not come along with it because "vice is more easily learnt than virtue"). As a matter of fact the Pleiades cult extends throughout Brazil, its seasonal reappearance being the occasion, as Dobrizhoffer narrates, of a great feast of intoxication and joy, a veritable Dionysia. And it is hardly to be doubted that the Abipone, as their own traditions indicate, came from the north, probably from the Chaco. It is to a contemporary missionary, Barbrooke Grubb, who has spent an even longer time in the Chaco than did the Jesuit among the Abipone, that we owe the completer interpretation of the ideas which Dobrizhoffer sketched. The Chaco Indians are as near untouched savages as any people on the globe, so that their beliefs are essentially uncontaminated.

The mythology of the Chaco tribes, says Grubb,[206] is founded on the idea of a Creator, symbolized by the beetle. First, the material universe was made; then the Beetle-Creator sent forth from its hole in the earth a race of First Beings, who for a time ruled all. Afterward the Beetle formed a man and a woman from the clay which it threw up from its hole, the two being joined like the Siamese twins. They were persecuted by the beings who preceded them, whereupon the Beetle separated them and endowed them with the power of reproduction, whence the world was peopled and came to its present state.

Whether or no the First Beings, hostile to man, are to be identified with the Kilyikhama, a class of nature daemones, Grubb does not make clear. He does, however, describe[Pg 323] numerous of these daemonic forms,—the white Kilyikhama, heard whistling in his little craft on the swampy waters; the boy Kilyikhama with lights on each side of his head, the thieving Kilyikhama; and most dreaded of all the daemon, immensely tall and extremely thin, with eyes like balls of fire, whose appearance presages instant death. In addition to these daemones, Aphangak, ghosts of men, are intensely feared, and there are ghosts of animals, too, to be dreaded,—though, curiously, none of fish or serpents. The Milky Way is supposed to be the path of the Kilyikhama, some of whom, in the form of large white birds, are believed there to await their opportunity to descend into the bodies of men. A very curious burial custom is also associated with the Galaxy: when a person is laid out (sometimes even before the dying has breathed his last) an incision is made in the side of the body and heated stones are inserted; these stones are supposed to ascend into the Milky Way whence they await their opportunity to fall upon the person (wizard or other) who has caused the death. "Consequently the Indians are very frightened when they see a falling star." Whirlwinds are believed to be the passing of spirits, and the whole realm of the meteorological is full of portents,—the rainbow, oddly enough, conceived as a serpentine monster, being a sign of calamity rather than an arc of hope.

Of the Pleiades Grubb says that they are known by two names—Mounting-in-the-South and Holders-Together. "Their rising is connected with the beginning of spring, and feasts are held at this time, generally of a markedly immoral character." That they call the constellation Aksak, Grandfather, is not, in the missionary's opinion, due to the fact that it is the image or embodiment of the devil (as Dobrizhoffer supposed of the similar Abiponean custom). Aksak is rather a term applied to any person or thing whose nature is not quite understood or with whom power and authority rest: "what is most important of all, they term the creator beetle aksak." Grubb concludes: "In my opinion, the statement of Dobrizhoffer[Pg 324] that the Abipones looked upon themselves as descendants, or, it may be, the creation of their 'grandfather the devil,' is nothing more nor less than the widespread tradition that man was created by the beetle, and, therefore, their originator, instead of being a devil, was rather a creating god." Perhaps, after all, Tertullian is right.

The missionary also speaks of "a remarkable theory" held by the Indians, that among the stars there are countries similar to their own, with forests and lakes, which he would explain either as tales of the mirage or as due to "a childlike notion that the sky is solid." The "childlike notion" is, of course, but another instance of a conception that prevails among the native tribes of the two Americas, as far as north Greenland; and along with this notion is that of an underworld to which ghosts descend, which he elsewhere mentions as characteristic of the Chaco,—though his account of their varying ideas as to the habitations of the dead shows well enough that these savage theorists are as uncertain in their location of the abode of shades as was Homer himself.

The Araucanian, or Auca, tribes—of which the Mapuche, Pehuenche, and Huiliche are the more important divisions, while the southerly Chono and Chiloe are remote branches—are the aborigines of the southern Andean region, inhabiting both slopes of the mountains, extending to the sea on the Pacific side and out into the Patagonian plains on the Atlantic side. Of all the extreme austral Indians they represent from pre-Columbian times the highest culture, though it is evident that the process of acculturation was recent when the whites first appeared, resulting from contact with Inca and Calchaqui civilizations. The whole group of Araucanians proper was organized into a confederacy, with four principal divisions, uniting for common defence,—an organization very similar[Pg 325] to that of the Iroquois Confederacy in North America, and equally effective; for the Araucanians not only put a stop to the southerly aggressions of the Incas, but they also successfully resisted the Spaniards, establishing for themselves a unique place in the history of American aborigines in contact with the white race. In manner of life the Araucanians were originally little if any in advance of their Patagonian neighbours; but as a result of their contact with the northerly Andean peoples, their own northern branches had acquired, when the Spaniards first came, a rudimentary agriculture, the potter's and the weaver's arts, some skill with gold and silver, and the habit of domesticating the guanaco,—and this culture was gradually extending to the south. As a whole, however, Araucanian culture represents a sharp descent, marked by the boundaries of the Incaic empire.

The romantic history of the Araucanians, and especially their heroic wars with the Spaniards, have naturally attracted to them an unusual measure of historical and anthropological investigation, so the literature is copious. Molina's History, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, is the best-known work in the field, and is, in a sense, the classic exposition of Araucanian institutions, though both for extent and accuracy it has been superseded by later works, pre-eminently those of José Medina and Tomás Guevara.[207] The first volume of the latter's great Historia de la Civilización de Araucania is devoted to "Antropolojía Araucana," and in it is given a summary of the native pantheon.

First of the gods is Pillan, often regarded as the Araucanian equivalent of the Tupan of the forest regions of Brazil, god of thunder and spirit of fire. "This conception represents a survival of the prehistoric idea which considers fire as the life-principle, carried to the point of adoring it as an invisible and personal power ... forces of nature, such as this, being personified in the mind of the barbarian." Pillan, however, while a personal, is also a collective power: caciques at their death[Pg 326] and warriors who fall in battle pass into the category of Pilli, some being converted into volcanic forces, others ascending to the clouds. "From this source," says Guevara, "is due the belief, conserved almost to this time, that a tempest is a battle between their ancestors and their enemies, and the custom of encouraging their own and imprecating the others according to the turn of the battle: if the clouds move toward the south victory pertains to those of their race; if to the north—the country of the Spaniards—they suppose the latter to be victorious."... Inevitably one recalls the bodeful thunder-storm in Julius Caesar,—

"Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets."

Pillan, as the supreme god of a warlike people, was naturally regarded as the god of war. "They made his habitation," says our author, "in all those parts whence breaks the thunder: on the crest of high mountains, in the clouds, and in the volcanoes, whose eruptions are so often accompanied by electrical phenomena." The deity's name is, as a matter of fact, preserved in the names of various peaks.

Molina[208] states that the word Pillan is derived from pilli, meaning "soul," and that the god has various attributive designations, such as Spirit-of-Heaven (Guenu-pillan), the Great Being, the Thunderer; and along with these, suspiciously European, such epithets as the Creator, the Omnipotent, the Eternal. On the whole, it is not unreasonable to assume that the true aboriginal meaning of the word is "mysterious power" and that the idea itself belongs with the group of conceptions of a semi-pantheistic nature power, of which Wakanda and Manito are the best-known names.

That Pillan stands at the head of a hierarchy of nature[Pg 327] powers is the unanimous testimony of authorities. Molina believes that the government of Pillan is modelled on that of the Araucanian confederacy. He is the great chief of the invisible world, having under him his high-chiefs and under-chiefs to conduct cosmic affairs. As with most primitive folk, the great majority of these lesser deities are considered as malignant, or at least as dangerous, rather than as beneficent powers. The Huecuvu (Guecubu, in Molina) are a group of daemones capable of assuming animal and human forms. The Indians "attribute natural phenomena to the implacable hatred of these agents of Pillan. They sow the fields with caterpillars, weaken animals with disease, quake the earth, and devour the fish in rivers and lakes. The Huecuvu corresponds with great exactness to the idea of demon." Evil also is Epunamun (whom Molina regarded as a war-god, apparently on the strength of the Padre Olivares's statement that he presided at councils of war, where "though they have no confidence in his councils, they frequently follow them, rather than offend through disobedience"). Epunamun is represented as having deformed legs, and he probably belongs to that extraordinary group of South American monster-bogeys having feet reversed or knees that bend backward. The Cherruve are the spirits or senders of shooting-stars and comets, figured (quite to the taste of the Mediaeval European) as man-headed serpents. Similar is the Ihuaivilu, a seven-headed fire-monster, inhabiting volcanic neighbourhoods. Meulen appears to be anything but the benevolent deity that Molina deemed it; he is the spirit of the whirlwind, disappearing in the ground in the form of a lizard when the whirlwind is dissipated; in modern folklore he appears as El Destolanado, devouring all children who cross his path.

The category of demonic beings is by no means exhausted with these wind and fire powers. The old Chilean mythic lore is filled with composite and metamorphosing beast-bogeys and witch-beings, many of which have been handed on to the modern[Pg 328] peasantry; so that it is now often impossible to tell what elements are native and what communicated. Many still bear native names. Perimontum is a phantom appearing from the other world to announce some extraordinary event. The Am is the ghost of a murdered man; the Alhue is a mischievous sprite whose sport is to frighten men. Colocolo is a small, invisible or subterranean animal or bird, whose cry, colo colo! is sometimes heard; anyone drinking its saliva will die. Negúruvilu, or Guirivilo, is a cat-like monster armed with a claw-pointed tail; it lives in the depths of the waters, whence it sallies forth to kill men and animals, assuming a serpentine form as it envelops them. There are numerous other water-monsters, some marine, some amphibians, their most various forms being naturally found among the Chiletes of the southern archipelago. El Caleuche, the witch-boat, is interesting for the fact that here, in the far Pacific south, it represents what might almost be called an outcropping of the similar conceptions found among the Eskimo and the pelagic tribes of the North-West Coast. The witch-boat is seen at night, illuminated, and it carries fishermen down to the treasure-houses at the bottom of the sea. Another monster of this region is Camahueto, capable of wrecking large boats; while Cuero, known to the Araucanians as Trelquehuecuve, is a sort of huge octopus, whose arms end in claws and whose ears are covered with eyes; it has great powers of dilation and contraction, and seizes and slays all that fall within its reach; when it goes ashore to sun itself and wishes to return to its element, it raises a gale which pushes it into the water. Huaillepeñ, or Guallipén, is in the form of a calf-headed sheep, with deformed legs; it issues from streams and pools on misty mornings and frightens pregnant women, causing their children to be born deformed. The Imbunche are monsters into which babes stolen by witches have been transformed; the Trauco is an old witch appearing in the form of a child and having the habits of an incubus; the Pihuicheñ, or Piguchén, is a vampire-like serpent that can transform itself[Pg 329] into a frog, a blood-sucker and death-bringer, while the Chonchoñ, a vampire having the form of a human head whose huge ears serve as wings for its nocturnal flights, is reminiscent of the travelling heads which form so important a group of bogeys on the North American continent.

With such an array of demons surrounding them, it is small marvel that for the Chilean peasant of today the devil is not an interesting person in popular mythology, as Señor Vicuña Cifuentes tells us,[209] playing a rôle altogether inferior to those of the local demons. Beneficent powers are rare in the Araucanian pantheon. Pillan may be regarded in this light, as also Ngúnemapun, a higher power recognized by the Araucans of today, says Guevara, although not mentioned in the older chronicles. He seems to be a doublet of Pillan, and may represent an epithet of this god, or even a still higher power to whom invocations were formerly addressed which the Spaniards supposed to be addressed to Pillan. Like the latter, Ngúnemapun dwells on high mountains, has the power of rendering himself invisible, and is given the customary form of a warrior. Beneficent also is Huitranalhue, friend of strangers and the protector of herds from thieves.

A curious feature of Araucanian religion is the absence of any cult of the sun. Possibly this is due to the fact that the sun was the great deity of their enemies, the Incas; so that even if it had been adored in the primitive period, it might have been degraded after the Incaic defeat on the same principle that caused a Florida tribe to establish a cult of the Devil, because he was the enemy of the Spaniard. The fact that the Araucanians had measured the solar year, which they divided into twelve months of thirty days each, adding five intercalary days or epagomenae, argues a sun-cult. Molina tells us that they began their year immediately after the December solstice, which they called the Head-and-Tail-of-the-Year, while the June solstice was called the Divider-of-the-Year. Dobrizhoffer says that the Picunche, or Moluche (Araucanians), like the[Pg 330] Puelche, had no name for God.[210] "These ascribe all the good things they either possess or desire to the sun, and to the sun they pray for them"; and one of their priests, he says, when told of God, said: "Till this hour we never knew nor acknowledged anything greater or better than the sun." This certainly points to the probability that in primitive times the sun was an Araucanian god, though it appears that the moon has assumed the place of celestial importance in the later pantheon. Her ancient name, Anchimalguen, signifies, says Guevara, Woman (i. e., wife)-of-the-Sun; Anchimallen is the contemporary form. She is implored in adversity and praised in prosperity, say the chroniclers. Sometimes Anchimallen is of ill omen, appearing at night in the form of a stray guanaco and luring travellers to vain pursuit; but she also serves to give warning of enemies and to frighten away evil spirits. Molina gives a very interesting suggestion, namely, that all the female powers of the invisible world form a class of beneficent nymphs called Amchi-malghen. "There is not an Araucanian but imagines he has one of these in his service. Nien cai gni Amchi-malghen, 'I keep my nymph still,' is a common expression when they succeed in any undertaking."

The mythic tales of the Araucanians are (judging from somewhat meagre materials) of a class with those prevalent in neighbouring regions,—a cosmogony in which volcanic forces destroy the world by fire, while a deluge causes all to perish save a few who flee to the three-peaked mountain Thegtheg, the Mount of Levin, which moves upon the waters; a hero cycle in which two brothers, Konkel and Pediu, figure as transformers; and there are stories of a Sky-World above, and of seaward Islands of the Dead.[211] One of the most interesting elements of their mythology is their version of the oft-recurring conception of a Way Perilous to the abode of the departed. An old woman, in the form of a whale, bears the soul out to sea; but before his arrival in the Araucanian Hades he is obliged to pay toll for passing a narrow strait, where sits another[Pg 331] malignant hag who exacts an eye from any poor wretch who has nothing better to pay.

Few peoples have had fame thrust upon them with so little reason as have the Patagonian Indians, and few myths have been more widely credited than that Patagonia was the home of a race of giants. The Tehuelche are, as a matter of fact, men of large size, probably averaging above six feet; and they are noted for the large development, especially of the upper parts of their body. Keane states that they are second in size among South American peoples, being exceeded by the Bororo. Possibly it was due to the fact that the first navigators of this region were men of south Europe, themselves short, which gave rise to the myth of Patagonian giants. Pigafetta,[212] the chief chronicler of Magellan's voyage, says of one of these "giants" that he was "so tall that our heads scarcely came up to his waist," and the anonymous "Genoese pilot" who has left an account of the same navigation reports that where they wintered, in 1520, "there were people like savages, and the men are from nine to ten spans in height, very well made." It is, indeed, possible that the stature of the modern Tehuelche is modified slightly from that of the Patagon, or "Big-Foot" ("the captain named this kind of people Pataghom," wrote Pigafetta); for since the middle of the eighteenth century the Tehuelche have been an equestrian people, living on horseback, one might say; and a recent observer says of them that "the lower limbs are sometimes disappointing, being, in fact, the lower limbs of a race of riders." Such an influence may well have produced a small diminution of the average stature over that at the time of the first observations.

In no other respect is the Patagonian remarkable. The race is divided into two great divisions, the northerly Puelche and the Tehuelche, of Patagonia proper, now both equestrian[Pg 332] peoples. Across the Strait of Magellan, in eastern Tierra del Fuego, dwell the Ona, still a pedestrian branch of the Patagonian race.

The Patagonians are a sluggish and peaceable people, quite self-sufficient when left to themselves, and in the south little influenced by the arts of civilization. Except for the changes which the introduction of horses has brought into their life, the description of the Genoese pilot is essentially true to this day:[213] "They have not got houses; they only go about from one place to another ... and eat meat nearly raw: they are all archers and kill many animals with arrows, and with the skins they make clothes.... Wherever night finds them, there they sleep; they carry their wives along with them with all the chattels they possess."

Accounts of Patagonian religion are all meagre; perhaps because the ideational content of their belief is itself meagre, for authorities agree that they are slow and unimaginative. The little information given by Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan's voyage, has, to be sure, a moving background. Two of the "giants," he says, were lured on shipboard, and there, while being entertained with gauds, were clamped with irons, the intention being to take them for a show to the Castilian king. "When they saw the trick which had been played them, they began to be enraged, and to foam like bulls, crying out very loud Setebos, that is to say, the great devil, that he should help them." It is from this passage that Shakespeare derived his conception of the god of Caliban. Pigafetta adds that the lesser devils, under Setebos, are called Cheleule. "This one who was in the ship with us, told us by signs that he had seen devils with two horns on their heads, and long hair down to their feet, who threw out fire from their mouths and rumps,"—but we can hardly doubt that the navigators' imaginations were here potent interpreters of the signs. Dobrizhoffer's eighteenth century description of Patagonian beliefs is essentially the same as that of Prichard in the twentieth century.[214] [Pg 333]"They are all acquainted with the devil, whom they call Balichù [Valichu, Gualichu, are variants found in other sources]. They believe that there is an innumerable crowd of demons, the chief of whom they name El El, and all the inferior ones Quezubû [probably a form of the Araucanian Huecuvu]. They think, however, every kind of demon hostile and mischievous to the human race, and the origin of all evil, regarding them in consequence with dread and abhorrence." Dobrizhoffer goes on to state that the Puelche and the Araucanian Picunche alike revere the Sun, indicating the affinity of the beliefs of the two groups, which are probably at least remotely related. He continues: "The Patagonians call God Soychù [Soucha is Pennant's variant], to-wit, that which cannot be seen, which is worthy of all veneration, which does not live in the world; hence they call the dead Soychuhèt, men that dwell with God beyond the world. They seem to hold two principles in common with the Gnostics and Manichaeans, for they say that God created both good and evil demons. The latter they greatly fear, but never worship. They believe every sick person to be possessed of an evil demon; hence their physicians always carry a drum with figures of devils painted on it, which they strike at the beds of sick persons, to drive the evil demon, which causes the disorder, from the body."

Prichard's description adds nothing to this.[215] The religion of the Indians consists "in the old simple beliefs in good spirits and devils, but chiefly devils.... The dominant Spirit of Evil is called Gualicho. And he abides as an ever-present terror behind their strange, free, and superstitious lives. They spend no small portion of their time in either fleeing from his wrath or in propitiating it. You may wake in the dawn to see a band of Indians suddenly rise and leap upon their horses, and gallop away across the pampa, howling and gesticulating. They are merely scaring the Gualicho away from their tents back to his haunts in the Cordillera—the wild and unpenetrated mountains, where he and his subordinate demons groan[Pg 334] in chosen spots the long nights through." The Good Spirit of the Tehuelche, says Prichard, is far more quiescent. Long ago he made one effort to benefit mankind, when he created the animals in the caves of "God's Hill" and gave them to his people for food, but since then he has shown little interest in earthly matters. Of the practices of the Tehuelche shaman—perhaps an innovation since the day of Dobrizhoffer—Prichard gives an odd instance, narrated by another white observer: "In the middle of the level white pampa two figures upon galloping horses were visible. As we came nearer we saw that one was a man clothed in a chiripa and a capa in which brown was the predominating colour. He was mounted on a heavy-necked powerful cebruno horse, his stirrups were of silver, and his gear of raw-hide seemed smart and good. As he rode he yelled with all his strength, producing a series of the most horrible and piercing shrieks. But strange as was this wild figure, his companion, victim or quarry, was stranger and more striking still. For on an ancient zaino sat perched a little brown maiden, whose aspect was forlorn and pathetic to the last degree. She rode absolutely naked in the teeth of the bitter cold, her breast, face and limbs blotched and smeared with the rash of some eruptive disease, and her heavy-lidded eyes, strained and open, staring ahead across the leagues of empty snow-patched plain. Presently the man redoubled his howls, and bearing down upon the zaino flogged and frightened it into yet greater speed. The whole scene might have been mistaken for some ancient barbaric and revolting form of punishment; whereas, in real truth, it was an anxious Indian father trying, according to his lights, to cure his daughter of measles!" Devils are known to dislike noise and cold, says Prichard; hence, the unlucky patient without a shred to protect her and "the almost incredible uproar made by the old gentleman upon the dark brown horse."

D'Orbigny says[216] of the Tehuelche, "they fear rather than revere their Achekanet-kanet, turn by turn genius of ill and genius of good," and of the Puelche that, like the Patagonians,[Pg 335] they believe in a genius of ill, named Gualichu, or Arraken, who sometimes becomes beneficent, without need of prayer. Falkner (cited by King in The Voyage of the Beagle, vol. ii, p. 161) mentions "at the head of their good deities," Guayarakunny, lord of the dead. "They think," he says, "that the good deities have habitations in vast caverns under the earth, and that when an Indian dies his soul goes to live with the deity who presides over his particular family. They believe that their good deities made the world, and that they first created the Indians in the subterranean caverns above mentioned; gave them the lance, bow and arrows, and the balls [bolas], to fight and hunt with, and then turned them out to shift for themselves. They imagine that the deities of the Spaniards created them in a similar manner, but that, instead of lances, bows, etc., they gave them guns and swords. They say that when the beasts, birds, and lesser animals were created, those of the more nimble kind came immediately out of the caverns; but that the bulls and cows being the last, the Indians were so frightened at the sight of their horns, that they stopped the entrances of their caves with great stones. This is the grave reason why they had no black cattle in their country, till the Spaniards brought them over; who, more wisely, had let them out of their caves."

A more recent account of what is a kindred, if not the same myth is given by Ramon Lista.[216] The creator-hero, in this version, is named El-lal. "El-lal came into the world in a strange way. His father Nosjthej (a kind of Saturn), wishing to devour him, had snatched him from his mother's womb. He owed his rescue to the intervention of the terguerr (a rodent) which carried him away to its cave; this his father tried in vain to enter. After having learned from the famous rodent the properties of different plants and the directions of the mountain-paths, El-lal himself invented the bow and arrow, and with these weapons began the struggle against the wild animals—puma, fox, condor,—and conquered them all. But the father[Pg 336] returned. Forgetting the past El-lal taught him how to manipulate the bow and the sling, and joyfully showed him the trophies of the chase—tortoise shells, condor's wings, etc. Nosjthej took up his abode in the cave and soon acted as master of it. Faithful to his fierce instincts, he wanted to kill his son; he followed him across the Andes, but, when on the point of reaching him, he saw a dense forest arise between him and his son. El-lal was saved; he descended to the plain, which meanwhile had become peopled with men. Among them was a giant, Goshy-e, who devoured children; El-lal tried to fight him, but he was invulnerable; the arrows broke against his body. Then El-lal transformed himself into a gadfly, entered the giant's stomach, and wounded him fatally with this sting. It was not until he had accomplished all these feats, and had proved himself a clever huntsman, that El-lal thought of marrying. He asked the hand of the daughter of the Sun, but she did not think him worthy of her and escaped him by a subterfuge. Disenchanted, El-lal decided to leave the earth, where, he considered, his mission was at an end, since man, who had in the meantime appeared in the plain and in the mountain valleys, had learned from him the use of fire, weapons, etc. Borne on the wings of a swan across the ocean towards the east, he found eternal rest in the verdant island which rose among the waves at the places where the arrows shot by him had fallen on the surface of the water."

This cosmogony is of the familiar primitive Indian type. Falkner, in the passage cited, goes on to describe Patagonian beliefs in regard to the fates of human souls: "Some say that the stars are old Indians; that the Milky Way is the field where the old Indians hunt ostriches [more likely, this myth attaches to the Southern Cross, as Guevara says it does with the Indians of Paraguay; and as, in North America, it attaches to the Ursa Major], and that the Magellan clouds are the feathers of the ostriches which they kill. They have an opinion that the creation is not yet exhausted; nor is all of it yet come out to the[Pg 337] daylight of this upper world. The wizards, beating their drums, and rattling their hide bags full of shells or stones, pretend to see into other regions under the earth. Each wizard is supposed to have familiar spirits in attendance, who give supernatural information, and execute the conjurer's will. They believe that the souls of their wizards, after death, are of the number of these demons, called Valichu, to whom every evil, or unpleasant event is attributed."

Mutatis mutandis this description would apply perfectly to the shamanistic beliefs and practices of the Polar North, and it is not without significance that Prichard is drawn to point the essential analogy between the austral and boreal aborigines of America. Substitute the kayak for the horse, the seal for the guanaco, with such differences in habit as these imply, and the differences of the two peoples (psychologically, for it must be owned that in stature they are antipodes) become slight. Certainly their beliefs are almost identical: a beneficent, but precarious food-giver; a host of spiteful and dangerous powers of wind and weather; a sky-world and an underworld, with hunter-souls pursuing their earthly vocation; fey-sighted wizards and medicine-men with drums. To be sure this represents the foundation stratum of Indian ideas throughout the two Americas, the simplest form of American religious myth; but there is surely a dramatic propriety in finding this simplest form, almost in its first purity, at the wide extremes of the two continents.

Have the conceptions travelled, from pole almost to pole? or are they separate inspirations to a universal human nature from a never vastly varying environmental nature? This is a riddle not easy to solve; for while it is not difficult to imagine unrelated peoples severally framing the notion that men and animals are born out of the womb of Earth or that the image of their own hunting parties is written in the constellations—for, as Molina remarks, more than one people have "regulated the things of heaven by those of the earth,"—still it is odd to[Pg 338] find such particular agreements constant from latitude to latitude throughout a hemisphere.

The Yahgan and Alakaluf tribes of Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent archipelago enjoy the unenviable distinction of being rated as among the lowest of human beings both as to actual culture and possible development. The earlier navigators regarded them as little more than animals—and often, unfortunately, treated them no better. Even Darwin, viewing them with the naturalist's eye, saw little but annoyance in their presence and formed a dismal estimate of their powers. "We were always much surprised at the little notice, or rather none whatever, which was evinced respecting many things, even such as boats, the use of which must have been evident. Simple circumstances,—such as the whiteness of our skins, the beauty of scarlet cloth or blue beads, the absence of women, our care in washing ourselves,—excited their admiration far more than a grand or complicated object, such as the ship."[218] Darwin, however, noted that the Indians had a sense of fairness in trade, and when missionaries settled among them other good qualities appeared. Thomas Bridges, who lived with the Yahgan as missionary for years, wrote of them, in 1891: "We find the natives work well and happily when assured of adequate reward. They shear our sheep, make fences, saw out boards and planks of all kinds, work well with the pick and spade, are good boatmen and pleasant companions." With such a tribute from one who had lived long with them it can hardly be doubted that the Yahgan are better than the common report of them,—indeed, quite the children of nature which the not unaffecting anecdotes of York Minster and Jemmy Button, among the voyages of the Beagle, should lead us to expect.

"Jemmy Button," says Captain Fitzroy,[219] "was very superstitious and a great believer in omens and dreams. He would[Pg 339] not talk of a dead person, saying, with a grave shake of the head, 'no good, no good talk; my country never talk of dead man.' While at sea, on board the Beagle, about the middle of the year 1832, he said one morning to Mr. Bynoe, that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Bynoe tried to laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in the Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had died some months previously. He did not forget to remind Mr. Bynoe (his most confidential friend) of their former conversation, and, with a significant shake of the head said, it was 'bad—very bad.' Yet these simple words seemed to express the extent of his sorrow."... Here is surely as good a case of the "veridical" apparition as any Researcher could desire.

"Ideas of a spiritual existence—of beneficent and evil powers," describes the nearest notion Captain Fitzroy could get of Fuegian religion. The powers of evil are especially the powers of wind and weather—naturally enough in a part of the globe world-famous for its bitter gales and treacherous waters. "If anything was said or done that was wrong, in their opinion it was certain to cause bad weather. Even the shooting of young birds, before they were able to fly, was thought a heinous offence. I remember York Minster saying one day to Mr. Bynoe, when he had shot some young ducks with the old bird—'Oh, Mr. Bynoe, very bad to shoot little duck—come wind—come rain—blow—very much blow.'" Primitive as they are, here are moral ideas—-whether one explain, reconditely, the sparing of the young of game as an instinctive conservation of the food supply, or, simply, as due to a natural and chivalrous pity for the helpless young.

Our information in regard to the spirit-beings believed in by the Fuegians is at best nebulous. Captain Fitzroy tells of "a great black man ... supposed to be always wandering about[Pg 340] the woods and mountains, who is certain of knowing every word and action, who cannot be escaped, and who influences the weather according to men's conduct," and again of thin wild men, "who have no belly," (surely, the "skeleton men" of the Eskimo and of other North American tribes). Dr. Hyades,[220] in his report of the gleanings of the French Mission to Cape Horn, half a century after the famous expeditions of the Adventure and Beagle, gives a fuller, though still meagre description of these wild folk of Yahgan fancy,—irresistibly reminiscent of the Fog People and the Inland Dwellers of the Eskimo at the other extreme of the hemisphere. The Oualapatou, Wild Men from the West, are ever-present terrors. They are heard in the noises of the night, and hearing them, the Yahgan incontinently flee. These Wild Men, they say, enter their huts at night, cut the throats of the occupants and devour their limbs. From their confused accounts, says Dr. Hyades, it would appear that the Oualapatou are the dead returned to earth to eat the living; they are invisible, except at the moment of seizing their victims, but they are heard imitating the cries of birds and animals. Another class of wild beings are the Kachpikh, fantastic beings that live in desert caves or in thick forests. These, too, are invisible, but they hate man and cause disease and death. Still another class (reported by the Missionary Bridges) are called Hannouch. Some of these are supposed to have an eye in the back of their heads; others are hairless and sleep standing up supported by a tree; they hold in hand a white stone which they hurl with inevitable aim at any object soever, and they sometimes attack and wound men. One man, said to have been stolen away as a child by the Hannouch, was named Hannouchmachaaïnan, "stolen-by-the-Hannouch." Any man who goes off to live by himself is called a Hannouch, while a demented person is regarded as tormented by one of these beings.

The Fuegian's equivalent for the Eskimo's Angakok is the Yakamouch. Bridges' account is quoted by Hyades: "Nearly[Pg 341] every old man of the people is a Yakamouch, for it is very easy to become one; they are recognizable at a glance from the gray colour of their hair, a colour produced by the daily application of a whitish clay. They make frequent incantations in which they appear to address a mysterious being named Aïapakal; they claim to possess, from a spirit called Hoakils, a supernatural power of life and death; they recount their dreams, and when they have eaten in dream any person, this signifies that that person will die. It is believed that they can draw from the bodies of the sick the cause of their ill, called aïkouch, visible in the form of an arrow or a harpoon point of flint, which they cause, moreover, to issue from their own stomachs at will.... They seem to believe that these sorcerers can influence the weather for good or bad; they throw shells into the wind to cause it to cease and they give themselves over to incantations and contortions." Women also may be Yakamouch, and there is even a report that formerly none but women professed the art.

The Fuegians are a vanishing people,—even in a vanishing race. They have long and often been cited as a people without religion. After recounting what is here narrated of their beliefs, Dr. Hyades concludes: "In all these legends, we see no reason seriously to admit a belief in supernatural beings or in a future life, and consequently a religious sentiment, among the Fuegians." This judgement, however, is not wholly supported by the observations of others. According to the fathers of the Salesian mission[221] the Alakaluf believe in "an invisible being called Taquatú, whom they imagine to be a giant who travels by day and night in a big canoe, over the sea and rivers, and who glides as well through the air over the tops of the trees without bending their branches; if he finds any men or women idle or not on the alert he takes them without more ado into his great boat and carries them far away from home." Captain Low, of the Fitzroy expedition, asserted that there was not only a belief in "an immense black man" (Yaccy-ma) responsible[Pg 342] for all sorts of evil, among the west Patagonian channel natives, but also that they believed in "a good spirit whom they called Yerri Yuppon," invoked in time of distress and danger. On the other point, of belief in a future life, there is no doubt but that the Fuegians recognize some form of ghost, or breath-spirit, which haunts the walks of men. One missionary says of the Yahgan that he thinks that "when a man dies, his breath goes up to heaven"; nothing similar occurs in the case of animals.

Of myth in the legendary form only meagre fragments have been gathered from the Fuegians, and of these the greater part come from the Ona, who are akin to the Tehuelche.[222] According to Ona lore there formerly "lived on earth bearded white men; the sun and moon were then husband and wife; when men began to war, the sun and moon returned to the sky and sent down a red star, the planet Mars, which turned into a giant on the way; the giant killed all men, then made two mountains or clods of clay, from one of which rose the first Ona man and from the other the first Ona woman." The same tribe have a tradition of a cataclysm which separated the island on which they dwell from the mainland. Both the Ona and the Yahgan have traditions of a flood and tales of earth-born men; and each of these peoples has also a mythic hero (Kuanip is the Ona, Oumoara the Yahgan name) concerning whom tales are told. Some of their stories appear to relate to historical transformations in the mode of tribal life, as the tradition (maintained by both tribes) that in former times the women were the tribal rulers, that the men rebelled, and invented initiation rites and the ruse of masked spirits in order to keep the women in subjection—a type of myth which, however, is rather more plausibly of an aetiological than of an historical character. In the main, nature is the theme of mythic thought, and there is perhaps no more unique a group of ideas among these peoples of the Far South than the Yahgan conception of the relations of the celestial beings: the moon, they say, is the wife of the rainbow,[Pg 343] while the sun is elder brother to the moon and to shining Venus.

There is much in the culture and fancies of these peoples of austral America to recall the culture and fancies of their remote kinsmen of the Polar North. The two Americas measure, as it were, the longitude of human habitation, marked off zone by zone into every variety of climate and terrain to which men's lives can be accommodated. Moreover, the native peoples of this New World show a oneness of race nowhere else to be found over so great an area; so that, in spite of differences in culture almost as great as those which mark the heights and depths of human condition in the more anciently peopled hemisphere, there is a recognizable unity binding together Eskimo and Aztec, Inca and Yahgan. Now what is surely most impressive is that this unity is best represented neither by physical appearance nor material achievement (where, indeed, the differences are most magnified), but by a conservation of ideas and of the symbolic language of myth which is at bottom one. Not that there is any single level of thought common to all, for there is surely a world of intelligence between the imaginative splendour of Mayan art and science and tradition and the dimly haunted soul of the Fuegian who "supposes the sun and moon, male and female, to be very old indeed, and that some old man, who knew their maker, had died without leaving information on this subject";[223] but that no matter what the failure to build or the erosion of superstructure, or indeed no matter what the variety of superstructures as, for example, made apparent in the characteristic colours of North American and South American mythologies, there is still au fond a single racial complexion of mind, with a recognizable kinship of the spiritual life. Through vast geographical distances, among peoples long mutually forgotten if ever mutually known, in every variety of natural garb, polar and tropical, forest and sea, this kinship persists, not favoured by, but in spite of, environments[Pg 344] the most changing. It is not necessary here invariably to assume migrations of ideas, passed externally from tribe to tribe, although evidence of these, recent and remote, is frequent enough; it is not sufficient to postulate merely the psychical unity of our common human nature, although this, too, is a factor which we should not neglect; but along with these we may reasonably conceive that the American race, through its long isolation, even in its most tenuously connected branches retains a certain deep communion of thought and feeling, a lasting participation in its own mode of insight and its own quest of inspiration, which unites it across the stretches of time and space. The arctic tern is said to summer in the two polar zones, arctic and antarctic, trued to its enormous flight by the most mystifying of all animal instincts. Perhaps it is some human instinct as profound and as mystifying which joins in one thought the scattered peoples of the two continents, charting in modes more subtle than their obvious forms can suggest the impulses which lead men to see their environmental world not as their physical eyes perceive it, but, belied by their eyes, as inner and whispering voices proclaim it to be.

[Pg 347]