Aboriginal American Authors Part 2

Neither of these translations is satisfactory. Ximenez wrote with all the narrow prejudices of a Spanish monk, while Bra.s.seur was a Euhemerist of the most advanced type, and saw in every myth the statement of a historical fact. There is need of a re-translation of the whole, with critical linguistic notes attached. A few years ago, I submitted the names and epithets of the divinities mentioned in the Popol Vuh to a careful a.n.a.lysis, and I think the results obtained show clearly how erroneous were the conceptions formed regarding them by both the translators of the doc.u.ment.[39] I shall not here go into the question of its age or authors.h.i.+p, about which diverse opinions have obtained; but I will predict that the more sedulously it is studied, the more certainly it will be shown to be a composition inspired by ideas and narratives familiar to the native mind long before the advent of Christianity.

I have been told that there are other versions of the _Popol Vuh_ still preserved among the Kiches, and it were ardently to be desired that they were sought out, as there are many reasons to believe that the copy we have is incomplete, or, at any rate, omits some prominent features of their mythology.

One branch of the Maya race, the Tzendals, inhabited a portion of the province of Chiapas. One of their hero-G.o.ds bore the name of _Votan_, a word from a Maya root, signifying the breast or heart, but from its faint resemblance to "Odin," and its still fainter similarity to "Buddha," their myth about him has given rise to many whimsical speculations. This myth was written down in the native tongue by a Christianized native, in the seventeenth century. The MS. came into the possession of Nunez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapas, who quotes from it in his _Const.i.tuciones Diocesanas_, printed in Rome, in 1702.

The indefatigable Boturini tells us that he tried in vain to find it, about 1740, and supposed it was lost.[40] But a copy of it was seen and described by Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera, in 1790.[41] Possibly it is still in existence, and there are few fragments of American literature which would better merit a diligent search. As to the meaning of the Votan myth, I have ventured an explanation of it in another work.[42]

In South America, the only native historical writers who employed their own tongue appear to have been of the Peruvian Qquichua stock. None of their productions have been published, but one or more are in existence and accessible. Prominent among them and deserving of early editing by competent hands, is an anonymous treatise, partly translated by Dr.

Francisco de Avila, in 1608, on the "Errors, False G.o.ds, Superst.i.tions and Diabolical Rites" of the natives of the provinces of Huarochiri, Mama and Chaclla. The original text is in Madrid, and Avila's translation, as far as it goes, has been rendered into English by Mr.

Clements R. Markham, and published in one of the Hackluyt Society's volumes.[43]

A member of the Inca family, already referred to, Don Luis Inca, is reported to have written a series of historical notes, _Advertencias_, "with his own hand and in his own tongue;" but what became of his ma.n.u.script is not known.[44]

There is another cla.s.s of historical doc.u.ments, which profess to be the production of native hands, and which are moderately numerous. These are the official letters and pet.i.tions drawn up by the chiefs in their own tongues, and forwarded to the Spanish authorities. Of these, two interesting specimens, one in the "Abolachi" tongue (a dialect of Muskokee), and the other in Timucuana, were published in fac-simile by the late Mr. Buckingham Smith, but in a very limited number of copies (only fifty in all). Others in Nahuatl and Maya, also in fac-simile, appear in that magnificent volume, the _Cartas de Indias_, issued by the Spanish Government in 1880. Doubtless more examples could be found in the public Archives in Spain, and they should all be collected into one volume. They were probably prompted by the Spanish local authorities; but it is likely that they show the true structure of the language, and, of course, they have a positive historical value.

It is related in the Proceedings of the Munic.i.p.al Council of Guatemala that, in 1692, the Captain Antonio de Fuentes y Guzman laid before the Council seven pet.i.tions, written in the native language, on the bark of trees.[45] Whatever of interest they contained was, no doubt, extracted by that laborious but imaginative writer, and included in his _History_, which has never been published, though several ma.n.u.script copies of it are in existence.

It will be seen that some of the so-called historical literature I have mentioned rests uncertain on the border line between fact and fancy.

These old stories may be vague memories of past deeds, set in a frame of mythical details; or they may be ancient myths, solar or meteorological, which came to receive credence as actual occurrences. The task remains for special students of such matters to sift and a.n.a.lyze them, and settle this debateable point.

There is another cla.s.s of narrations, about which there can be no doubt as to their purely imaginative origin. These are the animal myths, the fairy stories, the fireside tales of giants and magicians, with which the hours of leisure are whiled away. Several collections of these have been made, the words and phrases taken down precisely as the native story-teller delivered them, and thus they come strictly within the lines of aboriginal literature. They are the spontaneous outgrowth of the native mind, and are faithful examples of native speech.

Over a hundred such tales have been collected by Dr.

Couto de Magalhaes, as narrated by the Tupis of Brazil, and many of them have been published with all desirable fidelity, and with a philosophical introduction and notes, in a volume issued by the Brazilian government, under his editorial care.[46]

A similar collection of Tupi stories was made by the late Prof. Charles F. Hartt, whose early death was a loss to more than one branch of science. It was his intention to edit them with the necessary notes and vocabularies; but, so far as I know, the only specimens which appeared in print were those he laid before the American Philological a.s.sociation, in 1872.[47] The inquiries I have inst.i.tuted about his MSS.

have not been successful.

Numerous texts of this description have been obtained from the Klamath Indians by Mr. A.S. Gatschet, and from the Omaha by the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, both of which collections are in process of publication by the Bureau of Ethnology at Was.h.i.+ngton. Scattered specimens of stories of this kind have also been obtained by a number of travelers, and they are always a welcome aid to the study both of the psychology and language of a tribe.

Section 4. _Didactic Literature_.

The more civilized American tribes had made considerable advances in some of the natural sciences, and in none more than in practical astronomy. By close observation of the heavenly bodies they had elaborated a complicated and remarkably exact system of chronology. They had determined the length of the year with greater accuracy than the white invaders; and the different cycles by which they computed time allowed them to a.s.sign dates to occurrences many hundreds of years anterior.

Although there are local differences, the calendars in use in Central and Southern Mexico and in Central America were evidently derived from one and the same original. A great deal has been written upon them, but for all that many questions about them remain unanswered. We do not know the Maya method of intercalation; we do not understand the uses of the shorter Mexican year, of 260 days; we are at a loss to explain the purpose of doubling the length of certain months, as prevailed among the Cakchiquels; we are in the dark about the significance of the names of many days and months; we cannot see why the nations chose to begin the count of the year at different seasons; and there are ever so many more knotty problems about this remarkable system and its variations.

What we imperatively need is a supply of authentic aboriginal calendars, accurately reproduced, for purposes of comparison. Boturini collected a number of these, which he describes, and long before his day some specimens had been published by Valades and Gemelli Carreri.[48] They were, in ancient times, usually depicted by circular drawings, called by the Spaniards, Wheels (_ruedas_). After the Conquest they were written out, more in the form of our almanacs. One such, in the Maya tongue, with a translation, was contributed to Mr. Stephens' _Travels in Yucatan_, by the eminent Maya scholar, Don Juan Pio Perez.[49]

Several others were in his collection, and are accessible. Dr. Berendt succeeded in securing _fac similes_ of Kiche and Cakchiquel calendars, written out in the seventeenth century, and these are now in my possession. I fear we have no perfect examples of the Zapotec calendar, nor of that of the Tarascos of Michoacan, although an anonymous author, most of whose MS. has been preserved, reduced the latter to writing, and it may some day turn up.[50] The Aztec calendars collected by Boturini would, were they published, give us sufficient material, probably, to understand clearly the methods of that tribe.

One momentous purpose which the calendar served was for supplying omens and predictions; another was for the appointment of fasts and festivals, for the religious ritual. The calendar arranged for these objects was called, in the Nahuatl, _tonalamatl_, "the book of days," and in Maya _tzolante_, "that by which events are arranged." So intimately were all the acts of individual and national life bound up with these superst.i.tions, that an understanding of them is indispensable to a successful study of the psychology and history of the race.

After the Conquest some of the notions about judicial astrology, then prevalent in Europe, crept into the native understanding, and notably, in the _Books of Chilan Balam_ we find forecastes of lucky and unlucky days, and discussions of planetary influence, evidently borrowed from the Spanish almanacs of the seventeenth century.

Most of the Aborigines of the Continent possessed a keen sense of locality, and often a certain rude skill in cartography. The relative position of spots and proportionate distances were approximately represented by rough drawings. They knew the boundaries of their lands, the courses of streams, the trend of sh.o.r.es, and could display them intelligently. These maps, as they are called, present a very different appearance from ours. Those of the Aztecs are rather pictured diagrams, something like those we find in fifteenth century books of travel. A fair specimen, though of date later than the Conquest, was published not long since, in Madrid.[51]

The Maya maps are even more conventional. A central point is taken, usually a town, around which is drawn either a circle or a square, on the four sides of which are placed the figures of the four cardinal points, and within the figures are the various symbols which denote the villages, wells, ponds, and other objects which are to be designated.

Specimens of some of these, all after the Conquest, however, have been published by Mr. Stephens and Canon Carrillo,[52] and others are found in the various _Books of Chilan Balam_.

Very few strictly scholastic works seem to have been produced by the natives. Nearly all those which I have seen for use in the Mission schools appear to be the productions of the white instructors, generally, of course, aided by some intelligent native. I have in my possession an _Ortografia en Lengua Kekchi_, picked up by Dr.

Berendt in Vera Paz, which was the work of Domingo Coy, an Indian of Coban (MS. pp. 32). But on examination it proves to be merely an adaptation of a _Manual de Ortografia Castellana_, in use in the schools, and not an original effort. For all that, it is not without linguistic value. In Mexico a useful little book of instruction in Nahuatl has been prepared by the licentiate Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia, a scholar of indigenous extraction.[53] An older work, of a similar character, by Don Antonio Tobar, a descendant of the Montezumas, is mentioned by bibliographers, but never was printed, and has probably perished.[54]

It has always been part of the policy of both Catholic and Protestant missions to permit the natives to enter the career of the church; in the territories of both confessions instances are moderately numerous of priests and preachers of half or full Indian blood. Most of these educated men, however, rather shunned the cultivation of their maternal tongues, and preferred, when they wrote at all, to choose that of their white brethren, the Spanish, Portuguese or English. The extensive theological literature which we possess, printed or in ma.n.u.script, in American tongues, and in many it is quite ample, is scarcely ever the result of the efforts of the Christian teachers of indigenous affiliations.

A notable exception was the licentiate Bartolome de Alva, a native Mexican, descended from the Tezcucan kings, who composed, in Nahuatl and Spanish, a _Confessionario_, which was printed at Mexico in 1634.

It contains some interesting references to the mythology and superst.i.tions of the natives.[55]

The Indian Elias Boudinot and other Cherokees have printed many essays and tracts in that tongue, but whether original or merely translated I do not know. The sermons of the native Protestant missionaries to their fellows were probably extempore addresses. At any rate, I have not seen any in ma.n.u.script or print. A volume of the kind exists, however, in ma.n.u.script, in the Library of the _Inst.i.tuto Historico_ of Rio Janeiro, which it would be very desirable to have printed. It is the _Sermones e Exemplos em lengua Guarani_, by Nicolas j.a.puguay, cura of the Parish of San Francisco in 1727.[56] But when it is edited, let us hope that it will be a more favorable example of critical care than the _Crestomathia da Lingua Brasilica_, edited by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira Franca (Leipzig, 1859), which, according to Professor Hartt, is "badly arranged, carelessly edited, and disfigured by innumerable typographical errors."[57]

A curious variety of religious literature is what are called the Pa.s.sions, _Las Pasiones_, which are found among the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early period among the sodalities (_cofradias_), organized under the name of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume, called its Regulations (_Ordenanzas_), containing, among other matters, a series of invocations, founded on the history of the Pa.s.sion of Christ. During Holy Week, certain members of the fraternity, called _fiscales_, gather in the church, around one of their number, who reads a sentence in a loud voice. The fiscales repeat it in a chanting tone, with a uniform and monotonous cadence. It is probable that these chants are the compositions of the Indians themselves. Dr. Berendt obtained several copies of these, some in the Chapaneca of Chiapas, and others in the Zoque of the Isthmus, which are now in my hands.

Section 5. _Oratorical Literature._

The love of the American Indian for oratorical display has been commented on by almost all writers who have studied his disposition.

Specimens of native eloquence have been introduced into school books, and declaimed by many an aspiring young Cicero. Most of them are, doubtless, as fict.i.tious as Logan's celebrated speech, which was exalted by the great Jefferson almost to a level with the outbursts of Demosthenes, to be reduced again to very small proportions by the criticisms of Brantz Mayer.[58]

In fact, in spite of all that has been said about the native oratory, we are in a very inadequate position to judge of it correctly, and this because we have no accurate reports in the original tongues of their speeches. Translations, more or less loose, more or less imaginary, we have in abundance; but, for critical purposes, they are simply worthless.

Yet that even the ruder tribes in both the northern and southern continents, attached great weight to the cultivation of oratory, is amply evident. James Adair, who is competent authority, tells us that the southern Indians studied public speaking a.s.siduously, and that their speeches "abound with bolder tropes and figures than illiterate interpreters can well comprehend or explain."[59] Mr. Howse writes that, among the Crees, those who possess oratorical talent are in demand by the Chiefs, who employ them to deliver the official harangues.[60] Among the Aztecs, the very word for chief, _tlatoani_, literally means "orator" (from the verb _tlatoa_, to harangue). In the far south, among the Araucanians of Chili, and their relatives the migratory hordes of the Pampas, no gift is in higher estimation than that of an easy and perspicuous delivery. This alone enables the humblest to rise to the position of chieftain.[61] So it was over the whole continent.

In most of their languages, the oratorical was markedly different from the familiar or colloquial style. The former was given to ant.i.thesis, repet.i.tion, elaborate figures, unusual metaphors, and more sonorous and lengthened expressions. The Rev. Mr. Byington gives a number of the oratorical affectations in the Choctaw, as _akakano_ for _ak_, _okakocha_ for _ok_, etc.[62]

Some genuine specimens of the oratory of the northern tribes are preserved by Mr. Hale, in the Iroquois _Book of Rites_, to which I have referred on a previous page. The speeches it contains were learned by heart, and transmitted from generation to generation, long before they were committed to writing, and long after some of the words and expressions they contain had become lost to the colloquial language of the tribe.

The ancient Mexicans were much given to this sort of formal speech-making. They had a large number of cut-and-dried orations, which professional rhetoricians delivered on all important occasions in life.

The new-born child was harangued at, in good set terms, when it was but a few days old. Betrothals, marriages, festivals, the commencement of p.u.b.erty and of pregnancy, etc., were all celebrated by the delivery of discourses. Fathers taught their children, teachers their pupils, monarchs their va.s.sals, war chiefs their soldiers, by such declamations.

The general name for these speeches was _huehuetlatolli_, ancient orations.[63]

Many have been preserved, and a tolerably complete collection could be made in the original tongue. To effect this, we should have to have recourse to the original Nahuatl MS. of Sahagun's history, which, I have already said, exists in Madrid; next, to the extremely rare work of the eminent Nahuatl scholar, Father Juan Baptista, _Platicas Morales_, in which, according to Vetancurt, he gives, in the original, the ancient addresses of fathers to their children, and of rulers to their subjects;[64] and lastly, to the recently published, though very early written, _Mexican Grammar_, of the Franciscan Andre de Olmos, which contains a number of these discourses, carefully edited and translated by the accomplished scholar, M. Remi Simeon.[65]

The numerous prayers to the heathen G.o.ds, preserved by Sahagun, are, doubtless, faithfully recorded, and are accurate examples of the elevated literary style of the ancient Aztecs. They should, by all means, be printed, so that they could be accessible to those who would acquaint themselves with the genius of the language and the psychology of the people.

In the Qquichua of Peru, a few similar prayers to Viracocha have been saved from oblivion, in the pages of Cristobal de Molina. One or more copies of his _Relacion_ are in the United States, but it has only appeared in print through a translation by Mr. Markham, in the Hackluyt Society's publications.[66] Some modern prayers of the Mayas are to be found in the collection of Bra.s.seur,[67] and, doubtless, several of the so-called ancient "prophecies," preserved in the _Books of Chilan Balam_, are, in fact, specimens of the impa.s.sioned and mystic rhapsodies with which the priests of their heathendom entertained their hearers, as Cortes and his followers heard, one day, on the island of Cozumel.[68]

Section 6. _Poetical Literature._