The Myths of the New World Part 18

We are to seek the explanation of these wide-spread theories of the soul's journey in the equally prevalent tenet that the sun is its destination, and that that luminary has his abode beyond the ocean stream, which in all primitive geographies rolls its waves around the habitable land. This ocean stream is the water which all have to attempt to pa.s.s, and woe to him whom the spirit of the waters, represented either as the old woman, the dragon, or the dog of Hecate, seizes and overcomes. In the lush fancy of the Orient, the spirit of the waters becomes the spirit of evil, the ocean stream the abyss of h.e.l.l, and those who fail in the pa.s.sage the d.a.m.ned, who are foredoomed to evil deeds and endless torture.

No such ethical bearing as this was ever a.s.signed the myth by the red race before they were taught by Europeans. Father Brebeuf could only find that the souls of suicides and those killed in war were supposed to live apart from the others; "but as to the souls of scoundrels," he adds, "so far from being shut out, they are the welcome guests, though for that matter if it were not so, their paradise would be a total desert, as Huron and scoundrel (_Huron et larron_) are one and the same."[250-1] When the Minnetarees told Major Long and the Mannicicas of the La Plata the Jesuits,[250-2] that the souls of the bad fell into the waters and were swept away, these are, beyond doubt, attributable either to a false interpretation, or to Christian instruction. No such distinction is probable among savages. The Brazilian natives divided the dead into cla.s.ses, supposing that the drowned, those killed by violence, and those yielding to disease, lived in separate regions; but no ethical reason whatever seems to have been connected with this.[250-3] If the conception of a place of moral retribution was known at all to the race, it should be found easily recognizable in Mexico, Yucatan, or Peru. But the so-called "h.e.l.ls" of their religions have no such significance, and the spirits of evil, who were identified by early writers with Satan, no more deserve the name than does the Greek Pluto.

cupay or Supay, the Shadow, in Peru was supposed to rule the land of shades in the centre of the earth. To him went all souls not destined to be the companions of the Sun. This is all we know of his attributes; and the a.s.sertion of Garcila.s.so de la Vega, that he was the a.n.a.logue of the Christian Devil, and that his name was never p.r.o.nounced without spitting and muttering a curse on his head, may be invalidated by the testimony of an earlier and better authority on the religion of Peru, who calls him the G.o.d of rains, and adds that the famous Inca, Huayna Capac, was his high priest.[251-1]

"The devil," says Cogolludo of the Mayas, "is called by them Xibilha,[TN-14] which means he who disappears or vanishes."[251-2] In the legends of the Quiches, the name Xibalba is given as that of the under-world ruled by the grim lords One Death and Seven Deaths. The derivation of the name is from a root meaning to fear, from which comes the term in Maya dialects for a ghost or phantom.[251-3] Under the influence of a century of Christian catechizing, the Quiche legends portray this really as a place of torment, and its rulers as malignant and powerful; but as I have before pointed out, they do so, protesting that such was not the ancient belief, and they let fall no word that shows that it was regarded as the destination of the morally bad. The original meaning of the name given by Cogolludo points unmistakably to the simple fact of disappearance from among men, and corresponds in harmlessness to the true sense of those words of fear, Scheol, Hades, h.e.l.l, all signifying hidden from sight, and only endowed with more grim a.s.sociations by the imaginations of later generations.[252-1]

Mictlanteuctli, Lord of Mictlan, from a word meaning to die, was the Mexican Pluto. Like cupay, he dwelt in the subterranean regions, and his palace was named Tlalxicco, the navel of the earth. Yet he was also located in the far north, and that point of the compa.s.s and the north wind were named after him. Those who descended to him were oppressed by the darkness of his abode, but were subjected to no other trials; nor were they sent thither as a punishment, but merely from having died of diseases unfitting them for Tlalocan. Mictlanteuctli was said to be the most powerful of the G.o.ds. For who is stronger than Death? And who dare defy the Grave? As the skald lets Odin say to Bragi: "Our lot is uncertain; even on the hosts of the G.o.ds gazes the gray Fenris wolf."[252-2]

These various abodes to which the incorporeal man took flight were not always his everlasting home. It will be remembered that where a plurality of souls was believed, one of these, soon after death, entered another body to recommence life on earth. Acting under this persuasion, the Algonkin women who desired to become mothers, flocked to the couch of those about to die, in hope that the vital principle, as it pa.s.sed from the body, would enter theirs, and fertilize their sterile wombs; and when, among the Seminoles of Florida, a mother died in childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use.[253-1] So among the Tahkalis, the priest is accustomed to lay his hand on the head of the nearest relative of the deceased, and to blow into him the soul of the departed, which is supposed to come to life in his next child.[253-2] Probably, with a reference to the current tradition that ascribes the origin of man to the earth, and likens his life to that of the plant, the Mexicans were accustomed to say that at one time all men have been stones, and that at last they would all return to stones;[253-3] and, acting literally on this conviction, they interred with the bones of the dead a small green stone, which was called the principle of life.

Whether any nations accepted the doctrine of metempsychosis, and thought that "the souls of their grandams might haply inhabit a partridge," we are without the means of knowing. La Hontan denies it positively of the Algonkins; but the natives of Popoyan refused to kill doves, says Coreal,[254-1] because they believe them inspired by the souls of the departed. And Father Ignatius Chome relates that he heard a woman of the Chiriquanes in Buenos Ayres say of a fox: "May that not be the spirit of my dead daughter?"[254-2] But before accepting such testimony as decisive, we must first inquire whether these tribes believed in a multiplicity of souls, whether these animals had a symbolical value, and if not, whether the soul was not simply presumed to put on this shape in its journey to the land of the hereafter: inquiries which are unanswered. Leaving, therefore, the question open, whether the sage of Samos had any disciples in the new world, another and more fruitful topic is presented by their well-ascertained notions of the resurrection of the dead.

This seemingly extraordinary doctrine, which some have a.s.serted was entirely unknown and impossible to the American Indians,[254-3] was in fact one of their most deeply-rooted and wide-spread convictions, especially among the tribes of the eastern United States. It is indissolubly connected with their highest theories of a future life, their burial ceremonies, and their modes of expression. The Moravian Brethren give the grounds of this belief with great clearness: "That they hold the soul to be immortal, and perhaps think the body will rise again, they give not unclearly to understand when they say, 'We Indians shall not for ever die; even the grains of corn we put under the earth, grow up and become living things.' They conceive that when the soul has been a while with G.o.d, it can, if it chooses, return to earth and be born again."[255-1] This is the highest and typical creed of the aborigines. But instead of simply being born again in the ordinary sense of the word, they thought the soul would return to the bones, that these would clothe themselves with flesh, and that the man would rejoin his tribe. That this was the real, though often doubtless the dimly understood reason of the custom of preserving the bones of the deceased, can be shown by various arguments.

This practice was almost universal. East of the Mississippi nearly every nation was accustomed, at stated periods--usually once in eight or ten years--to collect and clean the osseous remains of those of its number who had died in the intervening time, and inter them in one common sepulchre, lined with choice furs, and marked with a mound of wood, stone, and earth. Such is the origin of those immense tumuli filled with the mortal remains of nations and generations which the antiquary, with irreverent curiosity, so frequently chances upon in all portions of our territory. Throughout Central America the same usage obtained in various localities, as early writers and existing monuments abundantly testify.

Instead of interring the bones, were they those of some distinguished chieftain, they were deposited in the temples or the council-houses, usually in small chests of canes or splints. Such were the charnel-houses which the historians of De Soto's expedition so often mention, and these are the "arks" which Adair and other authors, who have sought to trace the descent of the Indians from the Jews, have likened to that which the ancient Israelites bore with them on their migrations. A widow among the Tahkalis was obliged to carry the bones of her deceased husband wherever she went for four years, preserving them in such a casket handsomely decorated with feathers.[256-1] The Caribs of the mainland adopted the custom for all without exception. About a year after death the bones were cleaned, bleached, painted, wrapped in odorous balsams, placed in a wicker basket, and kept suspended from the door of their dwellings.[256-2] When the quant.i.ty of these heirlooms became burdensome, they were removed to some inaccessible cavern, and stowed away with reverential care. Such was the cave Ataruipe, a visit to which has been so eloquently described by Alexander von Humboldt in his "Views of Nature."

So great was the filial respect for these remains by the Indians, that on the Mississippi, in Peru, and elsewhere, no tyranny, no cruelty, so embittered the indigenes against the white explorers as the sacrilegious search for treasures perpetrated among the sepulchres of past generations. Unable to understand the meaning of such deep feeling, so foreign to the European who, without a second thought, turns a cemetery into a public square, or seeds it down in wheat, the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay accuse the natives of wors.h.i.+pping the skeletons of their forefathers,[257-1] and the English in Virginia repeated it of the Powhatans.

The question has been debated and variously answered, whether the art of mummification was known and practised in America. Without entering into the discussion, it is certain that preservation of the corpse by a long and thorough process of exsiccation over a slow fire was nothing unusual, not only in Peru, Popoyan, the Carib countries, and Nicaragua, but among many of the tribes north of the Gulf of Mexico, as I have elsewhere shown.[257-2] The object was essentially the same as when the bones alone were preserved; and in the case of rulers, the same homage was often paid to their corpses as had been the just due of their living bodies.

The opinion underlying all these customs was, that a part of the soul, or one of the souls, dwelt in the bones; that these were the seeds which, planted in the earth, or preserved unbroken in safe places, would, in time, put on once again a garb of flesh, and germinate into living human beings. Language ill.u.s.trates this not unusual theory. The Iroquois word for bone is _esken_--for soul, _atisken_, literally that which is within the bone.[257-3] In an Athapascan dialect bone is _yani_, soul _i-yune_.[257-4] The Hebrew Rabbis taught that in the bone _lutz_, the coccyx, remained at death the germ of a second life, which, at the proper time, would develop into the purified body, as the plant from the seed.

But mythology and supersitions[TN-15] add more decisive testimony. One of the Aztec legends of the origin of man was, that after one of the destructions of the world the G.o.ds took counsel together how to renew the species. It was decided that one of their number, Xolotl, should descend to Mictlan, the realm of the dead, and bring thence a bone of the perished race. The fragments of this they sprinkled with blood, and on the fourth day it grew into a youth, the father of the present race.[258-1] The profound mystical significance of this legend is reflected in one told by the Quiches, in which the hero G.o.ds Hunahpu and Xblanque succ.u.mb to the rulers of Xibalba, the darksome powers of death.

Their bodies are burned, but their bones are ground in a mill and thrown in the waters, lest they should come to life. Even this precaution is insufficient--"for these ashes did not go far; they sank to the bottom of the stream, where, in the twinkling of an eye, they were changed into handsome youths, and their very same features appeared anew. On the fifth day they displayed themselves anew, and were seen in the water by the people,"[258-2] whence they emerged to overcome and destroy the powers of death and h.e.l.l (Xibalba).

The strongest a.n.a.logies to these myths are offered by the superst.i.tious rites of distant tribes. Some of the Tupis of Brazil were wont on the death of a relative to dry and pulverize his bones and then mix them with their food, a nauseous practice they defended by a.s.serting that the soul of the dead remained in the bones and lived again in the living.[259-1] Even the lower animals were supposed to follow the same law. Hardly any of the hunting tribes, before their original manners were vitiated by foreign influence, permitted the bones of game slain in the chase to be broken, or left carelessly about the encampment. They were collected in heaps, or thrown into the water. Mrs. Eastman observes that even yet the Dakotas deem it an omen of ill luck in the hunt, if the dogs gnaw the bones or a woman inadvertently steps over them; and the Chipeway interpreter, John Tanner, speaks of the same fear among that tribe. The Yurucares of Bolivia carried it to such an inconvenient extent, that they carefully put by even small fish bones, saying that unless this was done the fish and game would disappear from the country.[259-2] The traveller on our western prairies often notices the buffalo skulls, countless numbers of which bleach on those vast plains, arranged in circles and symmetrical piles by the careful hands of the native hunters. The explanation they offer for this custom gives the key to the whole theory and practice of preserving the osseous relics of the dead, as well human as brute. They say that, "the bones contain the spirits of the slain animals, and that some time in the future they will rise from the earth, re-clothe themselves with flesh, and stock the prairies anew."[259-3] This explanation, which comes to us from indisputable authority, sets forth in its true light the belief of the red race in a resurrection. It is not possible to trace it out in the subtleties with which theologians have surrounded it as a dogma. The very attempt would be absurd. They never occurred to the Indian. He thought that the soul now enjoying the delights of the happy hunting grounds would some time return to the bones, take on flesh, and live again. Such is precisely the much discussed statement that Garcila.s.so de la Vega says he often heard from the native Peruvians. He adds that so careful were they lest any of the body should be lost that they preserved even the parings of their nails and clippings of the hair.[260-1] In contradiction to this the writer Acosta has been quoted, who says that the Peruvians embalmed their dead because they "had no knowledge that the bodies should rise with the soul."[260-2] But, rightly understood, this is a confirmation of La Vega's account. Acosta means that the Christian doctrine of the body rising from the dust being unknown to the Peruvians (which is perfectly true), they preserved the body just as it was, so that the soul when it returned to earth, as all expected, might not be at a loss for a house of flesh.

The notions thus entertained by the red race on the resurrection are peculiar to it, and stand apart from those of any other. They did not look for the second life to be either better or worse than the present one; they regarded it neither as a reward nor a punishment to be sent back to the world of the living; nor is there satisfactory evidence that it was ever distinctly connected with a moral or physical theory of the destiny of the universe, or even with their prevalent expectation of recurrent epochs in the course of nature. It is true that a writer whose personal veracity is above all doubt, Mr. Adam Hodgson, relates an ancient tradition of the Choctaws, to the effect that the present world will be consumed by a general conflagration, after which it will be reformed pleasanter than it now is, and that then the spirits of the dead will return to the bones in the bone mounds, flesh will knit together their loose joints, and they shall again inhabit their ancient territory.[261-1]

There was also a similar belief among the Eskimos. They said that in the course of time the waters would overwhelm the land, purify it of the blood of the dead, melt the icebergs, and wash away the steep rocks. A wind would then drive off the waters, and the new land would be peopled by reindeers and young seals. Then would He above blow once on the bones of the men and twice on those of the women, whereupon they would at once start into life, and lead thereafter a joyous existence.[261-2]

But though there is nothing in these narratives alien to the course of thought in the native mind, yet as the date of the first is recent (1820), as they are not supported (so far as I know) by similar traditions elsewhere, and as they may have arisen from Christian doctrines of a millennium, I leave them for future investigation.

What strikes us the most in this a.n.a.lysis of the opinions entertained by the red race on a future life is the clear and positive hope of a hereafter, in such strong contrast to the feeble and vague notions of the ancient Israelites, Greeks, and Romans, and yet the entire inertness of this hope in leading them to a purer moral life. It offers another proof that the fulfilment of duty is in its nature nowise connected with or derived from a consideration of ultimate personal consequences. It is another evidence that the religious is wholly distinct from the moral sentiment, and that the origin of ethics is not to be sought in connection with the ideas of divinity and responsibility.

FOOTNOTES:

[233-1] _Journal Historique_, p. 351: Paris, 1740.

[234-1] _Rep. of the Commissioner of Ind. Affairs_, 1854, pp. 211, 212.

The old woman is once more a personification of the water and the moon.

[234-2] Baegert, _Acc. of the Aborig. Tribes of the Californian Peninsula_, translated by Chas. Rau, in Ann. Rep. Smithson. Inst., 1866, p. 387.

[235-1] Of the Nicaraguans Oviedo says: "Ce n'est pas leur cur qui va en haut, mais ce qui les faisait vivre; c'est-a-dire, le souffle qui leur sort par la bouche, et que l'on nomme _Julio_" (_Hist. du Nicaragua_, p.

36). The word should be _yulia_, kindred with _yoli_, to live.

(Buschmann, _Uber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen_, p. 765.) In the Aztec and cognate languages we have already seen that _ehecatl_ means both _wind_, _soul_, and _shadow_ (Buschmann, _Spuren der Aztek. Spr. in Nordlichen Mexico_, p. 74).

[236-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, An 1636, p. 104; "Keating's _Narrative_," i. pp. 232, 410.

[237-1] French, _Hist. Colls. of Louisiana_, iii. p. 26.

[237-2] Mrs. Eastman, _Legends of the Sioux_, p. 129.

[237-3] _Voy. a la Louisiane fait en 1720_, p. 155: Paris, 1768.

[239-1] Dupratz, _Hist. of Louisiana_, ii. p. 219; Dumont, _Mems. Hist.

sur la Louisiane_, i. chap. 26.

[240-1] _Rel. de la Prov. de Cueba_, p. 140.

[240-2] Coreal, _Voiages aux Indes Occidentales_, ii. p. 94: Amsterdam, 1722.

[241-1] _Senate Rep. on the Ind. Tribes_, p. 358: Wash. 1867.

[241-2] Egede, _Nachrichten von Gronland_, p. 145.

[242-1] Alger, _Hist. of the Doctrine of a Future Life_, p. 76.

[243-1] Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek Country_, p. 80.

[244-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1634, pp. 17, 18.

[244-2] Muller, _Amer. Urreligionen_, p. 229.

[244-3] La Vega, _Hist. des Incas._, lib. ii. cap. 7.

[244-4] _Ueber die Ureinwohner von Peru_, p. 41.

[245-1] Coreal, _Voy. aux Indes Occident._, i. p. 224; Muller, _Amer.

Urrelig._, p. 289.

[246-1] Oviedo, _Hist. du Nicaragua_, p. 22.

[246-2] Torquemada, _Monarquia Indiana_, lib. vi. cap. 27.

[247-1] Sahagun, _Hist. de la Nueva Espana_, lib. x. cap. 29.

[248-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1636, p. 105.

[248-2] Molina, _Hist. of Chili_, ii. p. 81, and others in Waitz, _Anthropologie_, iii. p. 197.

[249-1] _Nachrichten von Gronland aus dem Tagebuche vom Bischof Paul Egede_, p. 104: Kopenhagen, 1790.

[250-1] _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1636, p. 105.