The Discovery of America Part 14

[Footnote 217: It is not meant that stone implements did not continue to be used in some parts of Europe far into the Middle Ages. But this was not because iron was not perfectly well known, but because in many backward regions it was difficult to obtain or to work, so that stone continued in use. As my friend, Mr. T. S. Perry, reminds me, Helbig says that stone-pointed spears were used by some of the English at the battle of Hastings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots under William Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century.

_Die Italiker in der Poebene_, Leipsic, 1879, p. 42. Helbig's statement as to Hastings is confirmed by Freeman, _Norman Conquest of England_, vol. iii. p. 473.]

[Footnote 218: My use of the word "inventing" is, in this connection, a slip of the pen. Of course the tales of "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," the Sciopedae, etc., as told by Sir John Mandeville, were not invented by the mediaeval imagination, but copied from ancient authors. They may be found in Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, lib. vii., and were mentioned before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecataeus, according to Stepha.n.u.s of Byzantium. Cf. Aristophanes, _Aves_, 1553; Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor_, ed. Salmasius, cap. 240. Just as these sheets are going to press there comes to me Mr. Perry's acute and learned _History of Greek Literature_, New York, 1890, in which this subject is mentioned in connection with the mendacious and medical Ktesias:--These stories have probably acquired a literary currency "by exercise of the habit, not unknown even to students of science, of indiscriminate copying from one's predecessors, so that in reading Mandeville we have the ghosts of the lies of Ktesias, almost sanctified by the authority of Pliny, who quoted them and thereby made them a part of mediaeval folk-lore--and from folk-lore, probably, they took their remote start" (p. 522).]

[Footnote 219: "En that var gravara ok safvali ok allskonar skinnavara" (Rafn, p. 59),--i. e. gray fur and sable and all sorts of skinwares; in another account, "skinnavoru ok algra skinn," which in the Danish version is "skindvarer og aegte graaskind" (id. p. 150),--i. e. skinwares and genuine gray furs. Cartier in Canada and the Puritans in Ma.s.sachusetts were not long in finding that the natives had good furs to sell.]

[Footnote 220: Rafn, p. 156.]

[Footnote 221: Much curious information respecting the use of elephants in war may be found in the learned work of the Chevalier Armandi, _Histoire militaire des elephants_, Paris, 1843. As regards Thorfinn's bull, Mr. Laing makes the kind of blunder that our British cousins are sometimes known to make when they get the Rocky Mountains within sight of Bunker Hill monument. "A continental people in that part of America," says Mr. Laing, "could not be strangers to the much more formidable bison." _Heimskringla_, p. 169. Bisons on the Atlantic coast, Mr. Laing?! And then his comparison quite misses the point; a bison, if the natives had been familiar with him, would not have been at all formidable as compared to the bull which they had never before seen. A horse is much less formidable than a cougar, but Aztec warriors who did not mind a cougar were paralyzed with terror at the sight of men on horseback. It is the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's natives were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and deer, but a deer isn't a bull.]

[Sidenote: Meaning of the epithet "Skraelings."]

These incidents are of surpa.s.sing interest, for they were attendant upon the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The Northmen called them "Skraelings," a name which one is at first sight strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb _skraekja_, identical with the English _screech_. A crowd of excited Indians might most appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is not correct. The word _skraeling_ survives in modern Norwegian, and means a feeble or puny or _insignificant_ person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in all probability correct, that the name "Skraelings," as applied to the natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant "inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however, that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians "savages," we do not a.s.sert ident.i.ty or relations.h.i.+p between them; and so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.

[Footnote 222: The Phoenicians, however (who in this connection may be cla.s.sed with Europeans), must have met with some such people in the course of their voyages upon the coasts of Africa. I shall treat of this more fully below, p. 327.]

[Footnote 223: As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all noisy (alharaquientos). _Segunda Parte de la Cronica del Peru_, cap. xxiii.]

[Footnote 224: For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's discoveries as indicating "that the Indian was preceded by a people like the Eskimos, whose stone implements are found in the Trenton gravel." _Pre-Columbian Discovery_, p. 132. Quite so; but that was in the Glacial Period (!!), and when the edge of the ice-sheet slowly retreated northward, the Eskimo, who is emphatically an Arctic creature, doubtless retreated with it, just as he retreated from Europe. See above, p. 18. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that there were any Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine hundred years ago.]

[Sidenote: Personal appearance of the Skraelings.]

Our chronicle describes the Skraelings of Vinland as swarthy in hue, ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.[225]

This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it is worthy of note that a very keen observer, Marc Lescarbot, in his minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of the Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes.[226]

Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which in the Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the Frenchman also had in mind.

[Footnote 225: "Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu illt har a hofdhi. Their voru mjok eygdhir ok breidhir i kinnum," i. e. "Hi homines erant nigri, truculenti specie, foedam in capite comam habentes, oculis magnis et genis latis."

Rafn, p. 149. The Icelandic _svartr_ is more precisely rendered by the identical English _swarthy_ than by the Latin _niger_.]

[Footnote 226: "Mais qut a noz Sauvages, pour ce qui regarde les eux ilz ne les ont ni bleuz, ni verds, mais noirs pour la pluspart, ainsi que les cheveux; & neantmoins ne sont pet.i.ts, cme ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien agreable." Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, Paris, 1612, tom. ii. p. 714.]

[Sidenote: The Skraelings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely Algonquins.]

These Skraelings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think, be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro, was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] We seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skraelings came up the river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their voices (_et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant_), and, leaping ash.o.r.e, began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls these canoes "skin-boats" (_hudhkeipar_), whence it has been inferred that the writer had in mind the _kayaks_ and _umiaks_ of the Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]

[Footnote 227: "Hun fann fyrir ser mann daudhan, thar var Thorbrandr Snorrason, ok stodh h.e.l.l.u.s.teinn i hofdhi honum; sverdhit la bert i hja honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis pla.n.u.s impactus stet.i.t; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit." Rafn, p.

154.]

[Footnote 228: These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's _Danish Greenland_, pp. 113, 179.]

[Footnote 229: Cf. Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 366, 367.]

One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the Skraelings is a singular manoeuvre which they are said to have practised in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft, this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the "balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and attached to a pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly; and then it was daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It was borne by several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe, it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group of men on a sudden, it produced consternation and death."[231] This is a most remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming a.s.sailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many warriors without gaining their point, suddenly turned and fled to their canoes, and paddled away with astonis.h.i.+ng celerity. Throughout the account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with Indians.

[Footnote 230: "That sa their Karlsefni at Skraelingar faerdhu upp a stong knott stundar mykinn thvi naer til at jafna sem saudharvomb, ok helzt blan at lit, ok fleygdhu af stonginni upp a landit yfir lidh theirra Karlsefnis, ok let illilega vidhr, thar sem nidhr kom. Vidh thetta slo otta myklum a Karlsefni ok allt lidh hans, sva at tha fsti engis annars enn flja, ok halda undan upp medh anni, thviat theim thotti lidh Skraelinga drifa at ser allum megin, ok letta eigi, fyrr enn their koma til hamra nokkurra, ok veittu thar vidhrtoku hardha," i. e.

"Viderunt Karlsefniani quod Skraelingi longurio sustulerunt glob.u.m ingentem, ventri ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere caeruleo; hune ex longurio in terram super manum Karlsefnianorum contorserunt, qui ut decidit, dirum sonuit. Hac re terrore perculsus est Karlsefnius suique omnes, ut nihil aliud cuperent quam fugere et gradum referre sursum secundum fluvium: credebant enim se ab Skraelingis undique circ.u.mveniri. Hinc non gradum st.i.tere, priusquam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi acriter resistebant." Rafn, p. 153.]

[Footnote 231: Schoolcraft, _Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge_, Philadelphia, 1860, 6 vols. 4to, vol. i. p. 89; a figure of this weapon is given in the same volume, plate xv. fig. 2, from a careful description by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief.]

[Sidenote: The uniped.]

The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of superst.i.tion, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a glittering speck upon the sh.o.r.e at an opening in the woods. They hailed it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but that is hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.[233]

Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of living to fight another day. In a narrative otherwise characterized by sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it to have come down from the original sources, counts for as much or as little as Henry Hudson's description of a mermaid.[234]

[Footnote 232: Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm, p. 330.]

[Footnote 233: Here the narrator seems determined to give us a genuine smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped comes to a place where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of the sea, he runs (glides, or hops?) across the water without sinking. In Vigfusson's version, however, the marvellous is eliminated, and the creature simply runs over the stubble and disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where the narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from ancient cla.s.sical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged people, are mentioned by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2: "Item hominum genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, mirae pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_, viii. 4.]

[Footnote 234: Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15, 1608. For the description, with its droll details, see _Purchas his Pilgrimes_, iii. 575.]

[Sidenote: Misleading a.s.sociations with the word "saga."]

[Sidenote: Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.]

[Sidenote: The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure folk-lore.]

It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible source of misapprehension due to the a.s.sociations with which a certain Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called "sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a "saga" as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that to some such misleading a.s.sociation of ideas is due the particular form of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society,--"that there is the same sort of reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as true the details related about the discoveries of the former than there is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235]

The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation, and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the vagaries of many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time. But the first statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult to find a comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and Leif, between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the Trojan War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian dramatists, is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards contents. It is in a high degree probable that this ma.s.s of folk-lore surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before the first Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenae conducted an expedition against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the Charlemagne of mediaeval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the West.[236] Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore.

If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events, these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history.

The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'c.u.mhail.[237]

[Footnote 235: _Proceedings Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc._, December, 1887.]

[Footnote 236: I used this argument twenty years ago in qualification of the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W.

c.o.x and others. See my _Myths and Mythmakers_, pp. 191-202; and cf. Freeman on "The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English History," in his _Historical Essays_, i. 1-39.]

[Footnote 237: Curtin, _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.

12, 204, 303; Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts_, pp. 203-311.]

[Sidenote: The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore.]

It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the cla.s.s of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs. Here we have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but often much like a s.h.i.+p's log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens to stray into it, the incongruity is as conspicuous as in the case of Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in the Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To a.s.sert a likeness between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far astray.

[Sidenote: Mythical and historical sagas.]

As already observed, I suspect that misleading a.s.sociations with the word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this particular kind of blunder,--for it is nothing less than a blunder.

Resemblance is tacitly a.s.sumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga.

Well, between the Iliad and _some_ Icelandic sagas there is a real and strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well marked and sharply contrasted cla.s.ses. In the one cla.s.s belong the Eddic Lays, and the _mythical sagas_, such as the Volsunga, the stories of Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally different in source, we may for our present purpose group the _romantic sagas_, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of folk-lore. In the other cla.s.s come the _historical sagas_, such as those of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous biographies and annals.[238] These writings give us history, and often very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they meant it otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word to the Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate chronicles, and call them alike "stories."

[Footnote 238: Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's "Prolegomena" to his edition of _Sturlunga Saga_, Oxford, 1878, vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account in Horn's _History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North_, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.]

[Sidenote: The western or Hauks-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga.]

The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly based belongs to the cla.s.s of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The western version is the earlier and in some respects the better. It is found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as _Hauks-bok_ (AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson, between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is the one which has generally been printed under the t.i.tle, "Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni." It is the one to which I have most frequently referred in the present chapter.[239]

[Footnote 239: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in _Gronlands historiske Mindesmaerker_, i. 352-443. The most essential part of it may now be found, under its own name, in Vigfusson's _Icelandic Prose Reader_, pp. 123-140.]