The Myths of the North American Indians Part 1

The Myths of the North American Indians.

by Lewis Spence.

PREFACE

The North American Indian has so long been an object of the deepest interest that the neglect of his picturesque and original mythologies and the tales to which they have given rise is difficult of comprehension. In boyhood we are wont to regard him as an instrument specially designed for the execution of tumultuous incident, wherewith heart-stirring fiction may be manufactured. In manhood we are too apt to consider him as only fit to be put aside with the matter of Faery and such evanescent stuff and relegated to the limbo of imagination.

Satiated with his constant recurrence in the tales of our youth, we are perhaps but too ready to hearken credulously to accounts which picture him as a disreputable vagabond, getting a precarious living by petty theft or the manufacture of bead ornaments.

It is, indeed, surprising how vague a picture the North American Indian presents to the minds of most people in Europe when all that recent anthropological research has done on the subject is taken into account.

As a matter of fact, few books have been published in England which furnish more than the scantiest details concerning the Red Race, and these are in general scarce, and, when obtained, of doubtful scientific value.

The primary object of this volume is to furnish the reader with a general view of the mythologies of the Red Man of North America, accompanied by such historical and ethnological information as will a.s.sist him in gauging the real conditions under which this most interesting section of humanity existed. The basic difference between the Indian and European mental outlook is insisted upon, because it is felt that no proper comprehension of American Indian myth or {vi} conditions of life can be attained when such a distinction is not recognized and allowed for. The difference between the view-point, mundane and spiritual, of the Red Man and that of the European is as vast as that which separates the conceptions and philosophies of the East and West. Nevertheless we shall find in the North American mythologies much that enters into the composition of the immortal tales of the older religions of the Eastern Hemisphere. All myth, Asiatic, European, or American, springs from similar natural conceptions, and if we discover in American mythology peculiarities which we do not observe in the systems of Greece, Rome, or Egypt, we may be certain that these arise from circ.u.mstances of environment and racial habit as modified by climate and kindred conditions alone.

In the last thirty years much has been accomplished in placing the study of the American aborigines on a sounder basis. The older school of ethnologists were for the most part obsessed with the wildest ideas concerning the origin of the Indians, and many of them believed the Red Man to be the degenerate descendant of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel or of early Phoenician adventurers. But these 'antiquaries' had perforce to give way to a new school of students well equipped with scientific knowledge, whose labours, under the admirable direction of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, have borne rich fruit. Many treatises of the utmost value on the ethnology, mythology, and tribal customs of the North American Indians have been issued by this conscientious and enterprising State department. These are written by men who possess first-hand knowledge of Indian life and languages, many of whom have faced great privations and hards.h.i.+ps in order to collect the material they have published. The series is, indeed, a monument to that n.o.bler type of heroism which science {vii} can kindle in the breast of the student, and the direct, unembellished verbiage of these volumes conceals many a life-story which for quiet, una.s.suming bravery and contempt for danger will match anything in the records of research and human endurance.

LEWIS SPENCE

EDINBURGH: _March_ 1914

CHAPTER I: DIVISIONS, CUSTOMS, AND HISTORY OF THE RACE

The First Indians in Europe

Almost immediately upon the discovery of the New World its inhabitants became a source of the greatest interest to all ranks and cla.s.ses among the people of Europe. That this should have been so is not a little surprising when we remember the ignorance which prevailed regarding the discovery of the new hemisphere, and that in the popular imagination the people of the new-found lands were considered to be inhabitants of those eastern countries which European navigation had striven so long and so fruitlessly to reach. The very name 'Indian' bestowed upon the men from the islands of the far western ocean proves the ill-founded nature and falsity of the new conditions which through the discovery of Columbus were imposed upon the science of geography. Why all this intense and vivid interest in the strange beings whom the Genoese commander carried back with him as specimens of the population of the new-found isles? The Spaniards were accustomed to the presence and sight of Orientals. They had for centuries dwelt side by side with a nation of Eastern speech and origin, and the things of the East held little of novelty for them. Is it not possible that the people, by reason of some natural motive difficult of comprehension, did not credit in their hearts the scientific conclusions of the day?

Something deeper and more primitive than science was at work in their minds, and some profound human instinct told them that the dusky and befeathered folk they beheld in the triumphal procession of the Discoverer were not the inhabitants of an Orient with which they were more or less familiar, but {2} erstwhile dwellers in a mystic continent which had been isolated from the rest of mankind for countless centuries.

There are not wanting circ.u.mstances which go far to prove that instinct, brus.h.i.+ng aside the conclusions of science, felt that it had rightly come upon the truth. The motto on the arms granted to Columbus is eloquent of the popular feeling when it states,

To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a new world,

and the news was greeted in London with the p.r.o.nouncement that it seemed "a thing more divine than human"--a conclusion which could scarcely have been arrived at if it was considered that the reaching of the farthest Orient point alone had been achieved.

The primitive and barbarous appearance of the Indians in the train of Columbus deeply impressed the people of Spain. The savage had before this event been merely "a legendary and heraldic animal like the griffin and the phoenix." In the person of the Indian he was presented for the first time to the astonished gaze of a European people, who were quick to distinguish the differences in feature and general appearance between the Red Man and the civilized Oriental--although his resemblance to the Tartar race was insisted upon by some early writers.

Popular interest, instead of abating, grew greater, and with each American discovery the 'Indian' became the subject of renewed controversy. Works on the origin and customs of the American aborigines, of ponderous erudition but doubtful conclusions, were eagerly perused and discussed. These were not any more extravagant, however, than, many theories propounded at a much later date. In the early nineteenth century a school of enthusiastic antiquaries, perhaps the most {3} distinguished of whom was Lord Kingsborough, determined upon proving the ident.i.ty of the American aborigines with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and brought to bear upon the subject a perfect battery of erudition of the most extraordinary kind. His lords.h.i.+p's great work on the subject, _The Antiquities of Mexico_, absorbed a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds by its publication. The most absurd philological conclusions were arrived at in the course of these researches, examples of which it would but weary the reader to peruse.

Only a shade less ridiculous were the deductions drawn from Indian customs where these bore a certain surface resemblance to Hebrew rite or priestly usage.

Indians as Jews

As an example of this species of argument it will be sufficient to quote the following pa.s.sage from a work published in 1879:[1]

[1] _The Migration from s.h.i.+nar_, by Captain G. Palmer (London).

"The Indian high-priest wears a breastplate made of a white conch-sh.e.l.l, and around his head either a wreath of swan feathers, or a long piece of swan skin doubled, so as to show only the snowy feathers on each side. These remind us of the breastplate and mitre of the Jewish high-priest. They have also a magic stone which is transparent, and which the medicine-men consult; it is most jealously guarded, even from their own people, and Adair could never procure one. Is this an imitation of the Urim and Thummim? Again, they have a feast of first-fruits, which they celebrate with songs and dances, repeating 'Halelu-Halelu-Haleluiah' with great earnestness and fervour. They dance in three circles round the fire that cooks these fruits on a kind of altar, shouting the praises of {4} Yo-He-Wah (Jehovah?). These words are only used in their religious festivals."

To what tribe the writer alludes is not manifest from the context.

Welsh-Speaking Indians

An ethnological connexion has been traced for the Red Man of North America, with equal parade of erudition, to Phoenicians, Hitt.i.tes, and South Sea Islanders. But one of the most amusing of these theories is that which attempts to substantiate his blood-relations.h.i.+p with the inhabitants of Wales! The argument in favour of this theory is so quaint, and is such a capital example of the kind of learning under which American ethnology has groaned for generations, that it may be briefly examined. In the author's _Myths of Mexico and Peru_ (p. 5) a short account is given of the legend of Madoc, son of Owen Gwyneth, a Welsh prince, who quitted his country in disgust at the manner in which his brothers had part.i.tioned their father's territories. Sailing due west with several vessels, he arrived, says Sir Thomas Herbert in his _Travels_ (1634), at the Gulf of Mexico, "not far from Florida," in the year 1170. After settling there he returned to Wales for reinforcements, and once more fared toward the dim West, never to be heard of more. But, says the chronicler, "though the Cambrian issue in the new found world may seeme extinct, the Language to this day used among these Canibals, together with their adoring the crosse, using Beades, Reliques of holy men and some other, noted in them of Acusano and other places, ... points at our Madoc's former being there." The Cambrians, continued Sir Thomas, left in their American colony many names of "Birds, Rivers, Rocks, Beasts and the like, {5} some of which words are these: _Gwrando_, signifying in the Cambrian speech to give eare unto or hearken. _Pen-gwyn_, with us a white head, refered by the Mexicans to a Bird so-called, and Rockes complying with that Idiom.

Some promontories had like denominations, called so by the people to this day, tho' estranged and concealed by the Spaniard. Such are the Isles _Corroeso_. The Cape of _Brutaine_ or _Brittaine_. The floud _Gwyndowr_ or white water, _Bara_ bread, _Mam_ mother, _Tate_ father, _Dowr_ water, _Bryd_ time, _Bu_ or _Buch_ a Cow, _Clugar_ a Heathc.o.c.ke, _Llwynog_ a Fox, _Wy_ an Egge, _Calaf_ a Quill, _Trwyn_ a Nose, _Nef_ Heaven; and the like then used; by which, in my conceit, none save detracting Opinionatists can justly oppose such worthy testimonies and proofes of what I wish were generally allowed of."

Antiquity of Man in America

To turn to more substantial conclusions concerning the racial affinities of the Red Man, we find that it is only within very recent times that anything like a reasoned scientific argument has been arrived at. Founding upon recently acquired geological, anthropological, and linguistic knowledge, inquirers into the deeper realms of American ethnology have solved the question of how the Western Hemisphere was peopled, and the arguments they adduce are so convincing in their nature as to leave no doubt in the minds of unbiased persons.

It is now admitted that the presence of man in the Old World dates from an epoch so far distant as to be calculated only by reference to geological periods of which we know the succession but not the duration, and research has proved that the same holds good of the Western Hemisphere. Although man undoubtedly found his way from the Old World to the {6} New, the period at which he did so is so remote that for all practical purposes he may be said to have peopled both hemispheres simultaneously. Indeed, "his relative antiquity in each has no bearing on the history of his advancement."

It is known that the American continent offers no example of the highly organized primates--for example, the larger apes--in which the Old World abounds, save man himself, and this circ.u.mstance is sufficient to prove that the human species must have reached America as strangers.

Had man been native to the New World there would have been found side by side with him either existing or fossil representatives of the greater apes and other anthropoid animals which ill.u.s.trate his pedigree in the Old World.

The Great Miocene Bridge

Again, many careful observers have noticed the striking resemblance between the natives of America and Northern Asia. At Bering Strait the Old World and the New are separated by a narrow sea-pa.s.sage only, and an elevation of the sea-bed of less than two hundred feet would provide a 'land-bridge' at least thirty miles in breadth between the two continents. It is a geological fact that Bering Strait has been formed since the Tertiary period, and that such a 'land-bridge' once existed, to which American geologists have given the name of 'the Miocene bridge.' By this 'bridge,' it is believed, man crossed from Asia to America, and its subsequent disappearance confined him to the Western Hemisphere.

American Man in Glacial Times

That this migration occurred before the Glacial period is proved by the circ.u.mstance that chipped {7} flints and other implements have been discovered in ice-drift at points in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota, to which it is known that the southern margin of the ice-sheet extended.

This proves that man was driven southward by the advancing ice, as were several Old World animal species which had migrated to America.

However, it is difficult in many cases to accept what may seem to be evidence of the presence of prehistoric man in North America with any degree of confidence, and it will be well to confine ourselves to the most authentic instances. In the loess of the Mississippi at Natchez Dr. d.i.c.kson found side by side with the remains of the mylodon and megalonyx human bones blackened by time. But Sir Charles Lyell pointed out that these remains might have been carried by the action of water from the numerous Indian places of burial in the neighbourhood. In New Orleans, while trenches were being dug for gas-pipes, a skeleton was discovered sixteen feet from the surface, the skull of which was embedded beneath a gigantic cypress-tree. But the deposit in which the remains were found was subsequently stated to be of recent origin. A reed mat was discovered at Pet.i.t Anse, Louisiana, at a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet, among a deposit of salt near the tusks or bones of an elephant. In the bottom-lands of the Bourbeuse River, in Missouri, Dr. Koch discovered the remains of a mastodon. It had sunk in the mud of the marshes, and, borne down by its own ponderous bulk, had been unable to right itself. Espied by the hunters of that dim era, it had been attacked by them, and the signs of their onset--flint arrow-heads and pieces of rock--were found mingled with its bones.

Unable to dispatch it with their comparatively puny weapons, they had built great fires round it, the cinder-heaps of which remain to the {8} height of six feet, and by this means they had presumably succeeded in suffocating it.

In Iowa and Nebraska Dr. Aughey found many evidences of the presence of early man in stone weapons mingled with the bones of the mastodon. In California, Colorado, and Wyoming scores of stone mortars, arrow-heads, and lance-points have been discovered in deposits which show no sign of displacement. Traces of ancient mining operations are also met with in California and the Lake Superior district, the skeletons of the primitive miners being found, stone hammer in hand, beneath the ma.s.ses of rock which buried them in their fall. As the object of these searchers was evidently metal of some description, it may reasonably be inferred that the remains are of comparatively late date.

The Calaveras Skull

In 1866 Professor J. D. Whitney discovered the famous 'Calaveras' skull at a depth of about a hundred and thirty feet in a bed of auriferous gravel on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California. The skull rested on a bed of lava, and was covered by several layers of lava and volcanic deposit. Many other remains were found in similar geological positions, and this was thought to prove that the Calaveras skull was not an isolated instance of the presence of man in America in Tertiary times. The skull resembles the Eskimo type, and chemical a.n.a.lysis discovered the presence of organic matter. These circ.u.mstances led to the conclusion that the great age claimed by Whitney for the relic was by no means proved, and this view was strengthened by the knowledge that displacements of the deposits in which it had been discovered had frequently been caused by volcanic agency.