Myth, Ritual, and Religion / Non-Aryan Myths Of The Origin Of The World And Of Man

Non-Aryan Myths Of The Origin Of The World And Of Man

Confusions of myth--Various origins of man and of things--Myths of
Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus,
Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans,
Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians--
Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various
conditions of society and culture.

The difficulties of classification which beset the study of
mythology have already been described. Nowhere are they more
perplexing than when we try to classify what may be styled
Cosmogonic Myths. The very word cosmogonic implies the pre-
existence of the idea of a cosmos, an orderly universe, and this
was exactly the last idea that could enter the mind of the myth-
makers. There is no such thing as orderliness in their mythical
conceptions, and no such thing as an universe. The natural
question, "Who made the world, or how did the things in the world
come to be?" is the question which is answered by cosmogonic myths.
But it is answered piecemeal. To a Christian child the reply is
given, "God made all things". We have known this reply discussed
by some little girls of six (a Scotch minister's daughters, and
naturally metaphysical), one of whom solved all difficulties by the
impromptu myth, "God first made a little place to stand on, and
then he made the rest". But savages and the myth-makers, whose
stories survive into the civilised religions, could adhere firmly
to no such account as this. Here occurs in the first edition of
this book the following passage: "They (savages) have not, and had
not, the conception of God as we understand what we mean by the
word. They have, and had at most, only the small-change of the
idea "God,"--here the belief in a moral being who watches conduct;
here again the hypothesis of a pre-human race of magnified, non-
natural medicine-men, or of extra-natural beings with human and
magical attributes, but often wearing the fur, and fins, and
feathers of the lower animals. Mingled with these faiths (whether
earlier, later, or coeval in origin with these) are the dread and
love of ancestral ghosts, often transmuting themselves into worship
of an imaginary and ideal first parent of the tribe, who once more
is often a beast or a bird. Here is nothing like the notion of an
omnipotent, invisible, spiritual being, the creator of our
religion; here is only la monnaie of the conception."

It ought to have occurred to the author that he was here traversing
the main theory of his own book, which is that RELIGION is one
thing, myth quite another thing. That many low races of savages
entertain, in hours of RELIGIOUS thought, an elevated conception of
a moral and undying Maker of Things, and Master of Life, a Father
in Heaven, has already been stated, and knowledge of the facts has
been considerably increased since this work first appeared (1887).
But the MYTHICAL conceptions described in the last paragraph
coexist with the religious conception in the faiths of very low
savages, such as the Australians and Andamanese, just as the same
contradictory coexistence is notorious in ancient Greece, India,
Egypt and Anahuac. In a sense, certain low savages HAVE the
"conception of God, as we understand what we mean by the word".
But that sense, when savages come to spinning fables about origins,
is apt to be overlaid and perplexed by the frivolity of their
mythical fancy.

With such shifting, grotesque and inadequate fables, the cosmogonic
myths of the world are necessarily bewildered and perplexed. We
have already seen in the chapter on "Nature Myths" that many
things, sun, moon, the stars, "that have another birth," and
various animals and plants, are accounted for on the hypothesis
that they are later than the appearance of man--that they
originally WERE men. To the European mind it seems natural to rank
myths of the gods before myths of the making or the evolution of
the world, because our religion, like that of the more philosophic
Greeks, makes the deity the fount of all existences, causa causans,
"what unmoved moves," the beginning and the end. But the myth-
makers, deserting any such ideas they may possess, find it
necessary, like the child of whom we spoke, to postulate a PLACE
for the divine energy to work from, and that place is the earth or
the heavens. Then, again, heaven and earth are themselves often
regarded in the usual mythical way, as animated, as persons with
parts and passions, and finally, among advancing races, as gods.
Into this medley of incongruous and inconsistent conceptions we
must introduce what order we may, always remembering that the order
is not native to the subject, but is brought in for the purpose of
study.

The origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has
excited the curiosity of the least developed minds. Every savage
race has its own myths on this subject, most of them bearing the
marks of the childish and crude imagination, whose character we
have investigated, and all varying in amount of what may be called
philosophical thought.

All the cosmogonic myths, as distinct from religious belief in a
Creator, waver between the theory of construction, or rather of
reconstruction, and the theory of evolution, very rudely conceived.
The earth, as a rule, is mythically averred to have grown out of
some original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which
floated on the waters, perhaps a handful of mud from below the
waters. But this conception does not exclude the idea that many of
the things in the world, minerals, plants and what not, are
fragments of the frame of a semi-supernatural and gigantic being,
human or bestial, belonging to a race which preceded the advent of
man.[1] Such were the Titans, demi-gods, Nurrumbunguttias in
Australia. Various members of this race are found active in myths
of the creation, or rather the construction, of man and of the
world. Among the lowest races it is to be noted that mythical
animals of supernatural power often take the place of beings like
the Finnish Wainamoinen, the Greek Prometheus, the Zulu
Unkulunkulu, the Red Indian Manabozho, himself usually a great
hare.

[1] Macrobius, Saturnal., i. xx.

The ages before the development or creation of man are filled up,
in the myths, with the loves and wars of supernatural people. The
appearance of man is explained in three or four contradictory ways,
each of which is represented in the various myths of most
mythologies. Often man is fashioned out of clay, or stone, or
other materials, by a Maker of all things, sometimes half-human or
bestial, but also half-divine. Sometimes the first man rises out
of the earth, and is himself confused with the Creator, a theory
perhaps illustrated by the Zulu myth of Unkulunkulu, "The Old, Old
One". Sometimes man arrives ready made, with most of the animals,
from his former home in a hole in the ground, and he furnishes the
world for himself with stars, sun, moon and everything else he
needs. Again, there are many myths which declare that man was
evolved out of one or other of the lower animals. This myth is
usually employed by tribesmen to explain the origin of their own
peculiar stock of kindred. Once more, man is taken to be the fruit
of some tree or plant, or not to have emerged ready-made, but to
have grown out of the ground like a plant or a tree. In some
countries, as among the Bechuanas, the Boeotians, and the
Peruvians, the spot where men first came out on earth is known to
be some neighbouring marsh or cave. Lastly, man is occasionally
represented as having been framed out of a piece of the body of the
Creator, or made by some demiurgic potter out of clay. All these
legends are told by savages, with no sense of their inconsistency.
There is no single orthodoxy on the matter, and we shall see that
all these theories coexist pell-mell among the mythological
traditions of civilised races. In almost every mythology, too, the
whole theory of the origin of man is crossed by the tradition of a
Deluge, or some other great destruction, followed by revival or
reconstruction of the species, a tale by no means necessarily of
Biblical origin.

In examining savage myths of the origin of man and of the world, we
shall begin by considering those current among the most backward
peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated
and improved the popular beliefs. The natives of Australia furnish
us with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of
professional priests and poets, but of all the old men and full-
grown warriors of the country. Here, as everywhere else, the
student must be on his guard against accepting myths which are
disguised forms of missionary teaching.[1]

[1] Taplin, The Narrinyeri. "He must also beware of supposing that
the Australians believe in a creator in our sense, because the
Narrinyeri, for example, say that Nurundere 'made everything'.
Nurundere is but an idealised wizard and hunter, with a rival of
his species." This occurs in the first edition, but "making all
things" is one idea, wizardry is another.

In Southern Australia we learn that the Boonoorong, an Australian
coast tribe, ascribe the creation of things to a being named Bun-
jel or Pund-jel. He figures as the chief of an earlier
supernatural class of existence, with human relationships; thus he
"has a wife, WHOSE FACE HE HAS NEVER SEEN," brothers, a son, and so
on. Now this name Bun-jel means "eagle-hawk," and the eagle-hawk
is a totem among certain stocks. Thus, when we hear that Eagle-
hawk is the maker of men and things we are reminded of the Bushman
creator, Cagn, who now receives prayers of considerable beauty and
pathos, but who is (in some theories) identified with kaggen, the
mantis insect, a creative grasshopper, and the chief figure in
Bushman mythology.[1] Bun-jel or Pund-jel also figures in
Australian belief, neither as the creator nor as the eagle-hawk,
but "as an old man who lives at the sources of the Yarra river,
where he possesses great multitudes of cattle".[2] The term Bun-
jel is also used, much like our "Mr.," to denote the older men of
the Kurnai and Briakolung, some of whom have magical powers. One
of them, Krawra, or "West Wind," can cause the wind to blow so
violently as to prevent the natives from climbing trees; this man
has semi-divine attributes. From these facts it appears that this
Australian creator, in myth, partakes of the character of the totem
or worshipful beast, and of that of the wizard or medicine-man. He
carried a large knife, and, when he made the earth, he went up and
down slicing it into creeks and valleys. The aborigines of the
northern parts of Victoria seem to believe in Pund-jel in what may
perhaps be his most primitive mythical shape, that of an eagle.[3]
This eagle and a crow created everything, and separated the Murray
blacks into their two main divisions, which derive their names from
the crow and the eagle. The Melbourne blacks seem to make Pund-jel
more anthropomorphic. Men are his [Greek text omitted] figures
kneaded of clay, as Aristophanes says in the Birds. Pund-jel made
two clay images of men, and danced round them. "He made their
hair--one had straight, one curly hair--of bark. He danced round
them. He lay on them, and breathed his breath into their mouths,
noses and navels, and danced round them. Then they arose full-
grown young men." Some blacks seeing a brickmaker at work on a
bridge over the Yarra exclaimed, "Like 'em that Pund-jel make 'em
Koolin". But other blacks prefer to believe that, as Pindar puts
the Phrygian legend, the sun saw men growing like trees.

[1] Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Mythology, p. 6; Cape Monthly
Magazine, July, 1874, pp. 1-13; Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 210, 324.

[2] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 210.

[3] Brough Smyth, Natives of Victoria, vol. i. p. 423.

The first man was formed out of the gum of a wattle-tree, and came
out of the knot of a wattle-tree. He then entered into a young
woman (though he was the first man) and was born.[1] The Encounter
Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by
Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it allot to
mankind.

[1] Meyer, Aborigines of Encounter Bay. See, later, "Gods of the
Lowest Races".

Australian myths of creation are by no means exclusive of a
hypothesis of evolution. Thus the Dieyrie, whose notions Mr. Gason
has recorded, hold a very mixed view. They aver that "the good
spirit" Moora-Moora made a number of small black lizards, liked
them, and promised them dominion. He divided their feet into toes
and fingers, gave them noses and lips, and set them upright. Down
they fell, and Moora-Moora cut off their tails. Then they walked
erect and were men.[1] The conclusion of the adventures of one
Australian creator is melancholy. He has ceased to dwell among
mortals whom he watches and inspires. The Jay possessed many bags
full of wind; he opened them, and Pund-jel was carried up by the
blast into the heavens. But this event did not occur before Pund-
jel had taught men and women the essential arts of life. He had
shown the former how to spear kangaroos, he still exists and
inspires poets. From the cosmogonic myths of Australia (the
character of some of which is in contradiction with the higher
religious belief of the people to be later described) we may turn,
without reaching a race of much higher civilisation, to the
dwellers in the Andaman Islands and their opinions about the origin
of things.

[1] Gason's Dieyries, ap. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 20.

The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are remote from any
shores, and are protected from foreign influences by dangerous
coral reefs, and by the reputed ferocity and cannibalism of the
natives. These are Negritos, and are commonly spoken of as most
abject savages. They are not, however, without distinctions of
rank; they are clean, modest, moral after marriage, and most strict
in the observance of prohibited degrees. Unlike the Australians,
they use bows and arrows, but are said to be incapable of striking
a light, and, at all events, find the process so difficult that,
like the Australians and the farmer in the Odyssey,[1] they are
compelled "to hoard the seeds of fire". Their mythology contains
explanations of the origin of men and animals, and of their own
customs and language.

[1] Odyssey, v. 490.

The Andamanese, long spoken of as "godless," owe much to Mr. Man,
an English official, who has made a most careful study of their
beliefs.[1] So extraordinary is the contradiction between the
relative purity and morality of the RELIGION and the savagery of
the myths of the Andamanese, that, in the first edition of this
work, I insisted that the "spiritual god" of the faith must have
been "borrowed from the same quarter as the stone house" in which
he is mythically said to live. But later and wider study, and
fresh information from various quarters, have convinced me that the
relative purity of Andamanese religion, with its ethical sanction
of conduct, may well be, and probably is, a natural unborrowed
development. It is easy for MYTH to borrow the notion of a stone
house from our recent settlement at Port Blair. But it would not
be easy for RELIGION to borrow many new ideas from an alien creed,
in a very few years, while the noted ferocity of the islanders
towards strangers, and the inaccessibility of their abode, makes
earlier borrowing, on a large scale at least, highly improbable.
The Andamanese god, Puluga, is "like fire" but invisible, unborn
and immortal, knowing and punishing or rewarding, men's deeds, even
"the thoughts of their hearts". But when once mythical fancy plays
round him, and stories are told about him, he is credited with a
wife who is an eel or a shrimp, just as Zeus made love as an ant or
a cuckoo. Puluga was the maker of men; no particular myth as to
how he made them is given. They tried to kill him, after the
deluge (of which a grotesque myth is told), but he replied that he
was "as hard as wood". His legend is in the usual mythical
contradiction with the higher elements in his religion.

[1] Journ. Anthrop. Soc., vol. xii. p. 157 et seq.

Leaving the Andaman islanders, but still studying races in the
lowest degree of civilisation, we come to the Bushmen of South
Africa. This very curious and interesting people, far inferior in
material equipment to the Hottentots, is sometimes regarded as a
branch of that race.[1] The Hottentots call themselves "Khoi-
khoi," the Bushmen they style "Sa". The poor Sa lead the life of
pariahs, and are hated and chased by all other natives of South
Africa. They are hunters and diggers for roots, while the
Hottentots, perhaps their kinsmen, are cattle-breeders.[2] Being
so ill-nourished, the Bushmen are very small, but sturdy. They
dwell in, or rather wander through, countries which have been
touched by some ancient civilisation, as is proved by the
mysterious mines and roads of Mashonaland. It is singular that the
Bushmen possess a tradition according to which they could once
"make stone things that flew over rivers". They have remarkable
artistic powers, and their drawings of men and animals on the walls
of caves are often not inferior to the designs on early Greek
vases.[3]

[1] See "Divine Myths of the Lower Races".

[2] Hahu, Tsuni Goam, p. 4. See other accounts in Waitz,
Anthropologie, ii. 328.

[3] Custom and Myth, where illustrations of Bushman art are given,
pp. 290-295.

Thus we must regard the Bushmen as possibly degenerated from a
higher status, though there is nothing (except perhaps the
tradition about bridge-making) to show that it was more exalted
than that of their more prosperous neighbours, the Hottentots. The
myths of the Bushmen, however, are almost on the lowest known
level. A very good and authentic example of Bushman cosmogonic
myth was given to Mr. Orpen, chief magistrate of St. John's
territory, by Qing, King Nqusha's huntsman. Qing "had never seen a
white man, but in fighting," till he became acquainted with Mr.
Orpen.[1] The chief force in Bushmen myth is by Dr. Bleek
identified with the mantis, a sort of large grasshopper. Though he
seems at least as "chimerical a beast" as the Aryan creative boar,
the "mighty big hare" of the Algonkins, the large spider who made
the world in the opinion of the Gold Coast people, or the eagle of
the Australians, yet the insect (if insect he be), like the others,
has achieved moral qualities and is addressed in prayer. In his
religious aspect he is nothing less than a grasshopper. He is
called Cagn. "Cagn made all things and we pray to him," said Qing.
"Coti is the wife of Cagn." Qing did not know where they came
from; "perhaps with the men who brought the sun". The fact is,
Qing "did not dance that dance," that is, was not one of the
Bushmen initiated into the more esoteric mysteries of Cagn. Till
we, too, are initiated, we can know very little of Cagn in his
religious aspect. Among the Bushmen, as among the Greeks, there is
"no religious mystery without dancing". Qing was not very
consistent. He said Cagn gave orders and caused all things to
appear and to be made, sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, animals,
and this, of course, is a lofty theory of creation. Elsewhere myth
avers that Cagn did not so much create as manufacture the objects
in nature. In his early day "the snakes were also men". Cagn
struck snakes with his staff and turned them into men, as Zeus, in
the Aeginetan myth, did with ants. He also turned offending men
into baboons. In Bushman myth, little as we really know of it, we
see the usual opposition of fable and faith, a kind creator in
religion is apparently a magician in myth.

[1] Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.

Neighbours of the Bushmen, but more fortunate in their wealth of
sheep and cattle, are the Ovaherero. The myths of the Ovaherero, a
tribe dwelling in a part of Hereraland "which had not yet been
under the influence of civilisation and Christianity," have been
studied by the Rev. H. Reiderbecke, missionary at Otyozondyupa.
The Ovaherero, he says, have a kind of tree Ygdrasil, a tree out of
which men are born, and this plays a great part in their myth of
creation. The tree, which still exists, though at a great age, is
called the Omumborombonga tree. Out of it came, in the beginning,
the first man and woman. Oxen stepped forth from it too, but
baboons, as Caliban says of the stars, "came otherwise," and sheep
and goats sprang from a flat rock. Black people are so coloured,
according to the Ovaherero, because when the first parents emerged
from the tree and slew an ox, the ancestress of the blacks
appropriated the black liver of the victim. The Ovakuru Meyuru or
"OLD ONES in heaven," once let the skies down with a run, but drew
them up again (as the gods of the Satapatha Brahmana drew the sun)
when most of mankind had been drowned.[1] The remnant pacified the
OLD ONES (as Odysseus did the spirits of the dead) by the sacrifice
of a BLACK ewe, a practice still used to appease ghosts by the
Ovaherero. The neighbouring Omnambo ascribe the creation of man to
Kalunga, who came out of the earth, and made the first three
sheep.[2]

[1] An example of a Deluge myth in Africa, where M. Lenormant found
none.

[2] South African Folk-Lore Journal, ii. pt. v. p. 95.

Among the Namaquas, an African people on the same level of nomadic
culture as the Ovaherero, a divine or heroic early being called
Heitsi Eibib had a good deal to do with the origin of things. If
he did not exactly make the animals, he impressed on them their
characters, and their habits (like those of the serpent in Genesis)
are said to have been conferred by a curse, the curse of Heitsi
Eibib. A precisely similar notion was found by Avila among the
Indians of Huarochiri, whose divine culture-hero imposed, by a
curse or a blessing, their character and habits on the beasts.[1]
The lion used to live in a nest up a tree till Heitsi Eibib cursed
him and bade him walk on the ground. He also cursed the hare, "and
the hare ran away, and is still running".[2] The name of the first
man is given as Eichaknanabiseb (with a multitude of "clicks"), and
he is said to have met all the animals on a flat rock, and played a
game with them for copper beads. The rainbow was made by Gaunab,
who is generally a malevolent being, of whom more hereafter.

[1] Fables of Yncas (Hakluyt Society), p. 127.

[2] Tsuni Goam, pp. 66, 67.

Leaving these African races, which, whatever their relative degrees
of culture, are physically somewhat contemptible, we reach their
northern neighbours, the Zulus. They are among the finest, and
certainly among the least religious, of the undeveloped peoples.
Their faith is mainly in magic and ghosts, but there are traces of
a fading and loftier belief.

The social and political condition of the Zulu is well understood.
They are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large
kraals or towns. They practise agriculture, and they had, till
quite recently, a centralised government and a large army, somewhat
on the German system. They appear to have no regular class of
priests, and supernatural power is owned by the chiefs and the
king, and by diviners and sorcerers, who conduct the sacrifices.
Their myths are the more interesting because, whether from their
natural scepticism, which confuted Bishop Colenso in his orthodox
days, or from acquaintance with European ideas, they have begun to
doubt the truth of their own traditions.[1] The Zulu theory of the
origin of man and of the world commences with the feats of
Unkulunkulu, "the old, old one," who, in some legends, was the
first man, "and broke off in the beginning". Like Manabozho among
the Indians of North America, and like Wainamoinen among the Finns,
Unkulunkulu imparted to men a knowledge of the arts, of marriage,
and so forth. His exploits in this direction, however, must be
considered in another part of this work. Men in general "came out
of a bed of reeds".[2] But there is much confusion about this bed
of reeds, named "Uthlanga". The younger people ask where the bed
of reeds was; the old men do not know, and neither did their
fathers know. But they stick to it that "that bed of reeds still
exists". Educated Zulus appear somewhat inclined to take the
expression in an allegorical sense, and to understand the reeds
either as a kind of protoplasm or as a creator who was mortal. "He
exists no longer. As my grandfather no longer exists, he too no
longer exists; he died." Chiefs who wish to claim high descent
trace their pedigree to Uthlanga, as the Homeric kings traced
theirs to Zeus. The myths given by Dr. Callaway are very
contradictory.

[1] These legends have been carefully collected and published by
Bishop Callaway (Trubner & Co., 1868).

[2] Callaway, p. 9.

In addition to the legend that men came out of a bed of reeds,
other and perhaps even more puerile stories are current. "Some men
say that they were belched up by a cow;" others "that Unkulunkulu
split them out of a stone,"[1] which recalls the legend of Pyrrha
and Deucalion. The myth about the cow is still applied to great
chiefs. "He was not born; he was belched up by a cow." The myth
of the stone origin corresponds to the Homeric saying about men
"born from the stone or the oak of the old tale".[2]

[1] Without anticipating a later chapter, the resemblances of these
to Greek myths, as arrayed by M. Bouche Leclercq (De Origine
Generis Humani), is very striking.

[2] Odyssey, xix. 103.

In addition to the theory of the natal bed of reeds, the Zulus,
like the Navajoes of New Mexico, and the Bushmen, believe in the
subterranean origin of man. There was a succession of emigrations
from below of different tribes of men, each having its own
Unkulunkulu. All accounts agree that Unkulunkulu is not
worshipped, and he does not seem to be identified with "the lord
who plays in heaven"--a kind of fading Zeus--when there is thunder.
Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, though ancestral spirits are
worshipped, because he lived so long ago that no one can now trace
his pedigree to the being who is at once the first man and the
creator. His "honour-giving name is lost in the lapse of years,
and the family rites have become obsolete."[1]

[1] See Zulu religion in The Making of Religion, pp. 225-229, where
it is argued that ghost worship has superseded a higher faith, of
which traces are discernible.

The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose
civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine
myths) occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial
condition in which some of the Digger Indians at present exist,
living on insects and unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to
the civilisation which the Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs.

The original facts about religion in America are much disputed, and
will be more appropriately treated later. It is now very usual for
anthropologists to say, like Mr. Dorman, "no approach to
monotheismn had been made before the discovery of America by
Europeans, and the Great Spirit mentioned in these (their) books is
an introduction by Christianity".[1] "This view will not bear
examination," says Mr. Tylor, and we shall later demonstrate the
accuracy of his remark.[2] But at present we are concerned, not
with what Indian religion had to say about her Gods, but with what
Indian myth had to tell about the beginnings of things.

[1] Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 15.

[2] Primitive Culture, 1873, ii. p. 340.

The Hurons, for example (to choose a people in a state of middle
barbarism), start in myth from the usual conception of a powerful
non-natural race of men dwelling in the heavens, whence they
descended, and colonised, not to say constructed, the earth. In
the Relation de la Nouvelle France, written by Pere Paul le Jeune,
of the Company of Jesus, in 1636, there is a very full account of
Huron opinion, which, with some changes of names, exists among the
other branches of the Algonkin family of Indians.

They recognise as the founder of their kindred a woman named
Ataentsic, who, like Hephaestus in the Iliad, was banished from the
sky. In the upper world there are woods and plains, as on earth.
Ataentsic fell down a hole when she was hunting a bear, or she cut
down a heaven-tree, and fell with the fall of this Huron Ygdrasil,
or she was seduced by an adventurer from the under world, and was
tossed out of heaven for her fault. However it chanced, she
dropped on the back of the turtle in the midst of the waters. He
consulted the other aquatic animals, and one of them, generally
said to have been the musk-rat, fished[1] up some soil and
fashioned the earth.[2] Here Ataentsic gave birth to twins,
Ioskeha and Tawiscara. These represent the usual dualism of myth;
they answer to Osiris and Set, to Ormuzd and Ahriman, and were
bitter enemies. According to one form of the myth, the woman of
the sky had twins, and what occurred may be quoted from Dr.
Brinton. "Even before birth one of them betrayed his restless and
evil nature by refusing to be born in the usual manner, but
insisting on breaking through his parent's side or arm-pit. He did
so, but it cost his mother her life. Her body was buried, and from
it sprang the various vegetable productions," pumpkins, maize,
beans, and so forth.[3]

[1] Relations, 1633. In this myth one Messon, the Great Hare, is
the beginner of our race. He married a daughter of the Musk-rat.

[2] Here we first meet in this investigation a very widely
distributed myth. The myths already examined have taken the origin
of earth for granted. The Hurons account for its origin; a speck
of earth was fished out of the waters and grew. In M. H. de
Charencey's tract Une Legende Cosmogonique (Havre, 1884) this
legend is traced. M. de Charencey distinguishes (1) a continental
version; (2) an insular version; (3) a mixed and Hindoo version.
Among continental variants he gives a Vogul version (Revue de
Philologie et d'Ethnographie, Paris, 1874, i. 10). Numi Tarom (a
god who cooks fish in heaven) hangs a male and female above the
abyss of waters in a silver cradle. He gives them, later, just
earth enough to build a house on. Their son, in the guise of a
squirrel, climbs to Numi Tarom, and receives from him a duck-skin
and a goose-skin. Clad in these, like Yehl in his raven-skin or
Odin in his hawk-skin, he enjoys the powers of the animals, dives
and brings up three handfuls of mud, which grow into our earth.
Elempi makes men out of clay and snow. The American version M. de
Charencey gives from Nicholas Perrot (Mem. sur les Moers, etc.,
Paris, 1864, i. 3). Perrot was a traveller of the seventeenth
century. The Great Hare takes a hand in the making of earth out of
fished-up soil. After giving other North American variants, and
comparing the animals that, after three attempts, fish up earth to
the dove and raven of Noah, M. de Charencey reaches the Bulgarians.
God made Satan, in the skin of a diver, fish up earth out of Lake
Tiberias. Three doves fish up earth, in the beginning, in the
Galician popular legend (Chodzko, Contes des Paysans Slaves, p.
374). In the INSULAR version, as in New Zealand, the island is
usually fished up with a hook by a heroic angler (Japan, Tonga,
Tahiti, New Zealand). The Hindoo version, in which the boar plays
the part of musk-rat, or duck, or diver, will be given in "Indian
Cosmogonic Myths".

[3] Brinton, American Hero-Myths, p. 54. Nicholas Perrot and
various Jesuit Relations are the original authorities. See "Divine
Myths of America". Mr. Leland, in his Algonkin Tales, prints the
same story, with the names altered to Glooskap and Malsumis, from
oral tradition. Compare Schoolcraft, v. 155, and i. 317, and the
versions of PP. Charlevoix and Lafitau. In Charlevoix the good and
bad brothers are Manabozho and Chokanipok or Chakekanapok, and out
of the bones and entrails of the latter many plants and animals
were fashioned, just as, according to a Greek myth preserved by
Clemens Alexandrinus, parsley and pomegranates arose from the blood
and scattered members of Dionysus Zagreus. The tale of Tawiscara's
violent birth is told of Set in Egypt, and of Indra in the Veda, as
will be shown later. This is a very common fable, and, as Mr.
Whitley Stokes tells me, it recurs in old Irish legends of the
birth of our Lord, Myth, as usual, invading religion, even
Christian religion.

According to another version of the origin of things, the maker of
them was one Michabous, or Michabo, the Great Hare. His birthplace
was shown at an island called Michilimakinak, like the birthplace
of Apollo at Delos. The Great Hare made the earth, and, as will
afterwards appear, was the inventor of the arts of life. On the
whole, the Iroquois and Algonkin myths agree in finding the origin
of life in an upper world beyond the sky. The earth was either
fished up (as by Brahma when he dived in the shape of a boar) by
some beast which descended to the bottom of the waters, or grew out
of the tortoise on whose back Ataentsic fell. The first dwellers
in the world were either beasts like Manabozho or Michabo, the
Great Hare, or the primeval wolves of the Uinkarets,[1] or the
creative musk-rat, or were more anthropomorphic heroes, such as
Ioskeha and Tawiscara. As for the things in the world, some were
made, some evolved, some are transformed parts of an early non-
natural man or animal. There is a tendency to identify Ataentsic,
the sky-woman, with the moon, and in the Two Great Brethren,
hostile as they are, to recognise moon and sun.[2]

[1] Powell, Bureau of Ethnology, i. 44.

[2] Dr. Brinton has endeavoured to demonstrate by arguments drawn
from etymology that Michabos, Messou, Missibizi or Manabozho, the
Great Hare, is originally a personification of Dawn (Myths of the
New World, p. 178). I have examined his arguments in the
Nineteenth Century, January, 1886, which may be consulted, and in
Melusine, January, 1887. The hare appears to be one out of the
countless primeval beast-culture heroes. A curious piece of magic
in a tradition of the Dene Hareskins may seem to aid Dr. Brinton's
theory: Pendant la nuit il entra, jeta au feu une tete de lievre
blanc et aussitot le jour se fit".--Petitot, Traditions Indiennes,
p. 173. But I take it that the sacrifice of a white hare's head
makes light magically, as sacrifice of black beasts and columns of
black smoke make rainclouds.

Some of the degraded Digger Indians of California have the
following myth of the origin of species. In this legend, it will
be noticed, a species of evolution takes the place of a theory of
creation. The story was told to Mr. Adam Johnston, who "drew" the
narrator by communicating to a chief the Biblical narrative of the
creation.[1] The chief said it was a strange story, and one that
he had never heard when he lived at the Mission of St. John under
the care of a Padre. According to this chief (he ruled over the
Po-to-yan-te tribe or Coyotes), the first Indians were coyotes.
When one of their number died, his body became full of little
animals or spirits. They took various shapes, as of deer,
antelopes, and so forth; but as some exhibited a tendency to fly
off to the moon, the Po-to-yan-tes now usually bury the bodies of
their dead, to prevent the extinction of species. Then the Indians
began to assume the shape of man, but it was a slow transformation.
At first they walked on all fours, then they would begin to develop
an isolated human feature, one finger, one toe, one eye, like the
ascidian, our first parent in the view of modern science. Then
they doubled their organs, got into the habit of sitting up, and
wore away their tails, which they unaffectedly regret, "as they
consider the tail quite an ornament". Ideas of the immortality of
the soul are said to be confined to the old women of the tribe,
and, in short, according to this version, the Digger Indians occupy
the modern scientific position.

[1] Schoolcraft, vol. v.

The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,[1]
are suspected of having been influenced by the Biblical narrative.
They say that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found
himself sitting in a chair. As he was all alone, he took a piece
of his body and a piece of earth, and made a man. He next made a
woman, steadied the earth by placing beasts beneath it at the
corners, and created plants and animals. Other men he made out of
bears. "He created the white man to make tools for the poor
Indians"--a very pleasing example of a teleological hypothesis and
of the doctrine of final causes as understood by the Winnebagoes.
The Chaldean myth of the making of man is recalled by the legend
that the Great Spirit cut out a piece of himself for the purpose;
the Chaldean wisdom coincides, too, with the philosophical acumen
of the Po-to-yan-te or Coyote tribe of Digger Indians. Though the
Chaldean theory is only connected with that of the Red Men by its
savagery, we may briefly state it in this place.

[1] Ibid., iv. 228.

According to Berosus, as reported by Alexander Polyhistor, the
universe was originally (as before Manabozho's time) water and mud.
Herein all manner of mixed monsters, with human heads, goat's
horns, four legs, and tails, bred confusedly. In place of the
Iroquois Ataentsic, a woman called Omoroca presided over the mud
and the menagerie. She, too, like Ataentsic, is sometimes
recognised as the moon. Affairs being in this state, Bel-Maruduk
arrived and cut Omoroca in two (Chokanipok destroyed Ataentsic),
and out of Omoroca Bel made the world and the things in it. We
have already seen that in savage myth many things are fashioned out
of a dead member of the extra-natural race. Lastly, Bel cut his
own head off, and with the blood the gods mixed clay and made men.
The Chaldeans inherited very savage fancies.[1]

[1] Cf. Syncellus, p. 29; Euseb., Chronic. Armen., ed. Mai, p. 10;
Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, i. 506.

One ought, perhaps, to apologise to the Chaldeans for inserting
their myths among the fables of the least cultivated peoples; but
it will scarcely be maintained that the Oriental myths differ in
character from the Digger Indian and Iroquois explanations of the
origin of things. The Ahts of Vancouver Island, whom Mr. Sproat
knew intimately, and of whose ideas he gives a cautious account
(for he was well aware of the limits of his knowledge), tell a
story of the usual character.[1] They believe in a member of the
extra-natural race, named Quawteaht, of whom we shall hear more in
his heroic character. As a demiurge "he is undoubtedly represented
as the general framer, I do not say creator, of all things, though
some special things are excepted. He made the earth and water, the
trees and rocks, and all the animals. Some say that Quawteaht made
the sun and moon, but the majority of the Indians believe that he
had nothing to do with their formation, and that they are deities
superior to himself, though now distant and less active. He gave
names to everything; among the rest, to all the Indian houses which
then existed, although inhabited only by birds and animals.
Quawteaht went away before the apparent change of the birds and
beasts into Indians, which took place in the following manner:--

"The birds and beasts of old had the spirits of the Indians
dwelling in them, and occupied the various coast villages, as the
Ahts do at present. One day a canoe manned by two Indians from an
unknown country approached the shore. As they coasted along, at
each house at which they landed, the deer, bear, elk, and other
brute inhabitants fled to the mountains, and the geese and other
birds flew to the woods and rivers. But in this flight, the
Indians, who had hitherto been contained in the bodies of the
various creatures, were left behind, and from that time they took
possession of the deserted dwellings and assumed the condition in
which we now see them."

[1] Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, pp. 210, 211.

Crossing the northern continent of America to the west, we are in
the domains of various animal culture-heroes, ancestors and
teachers of the human race and the makers, to some extent, of the
things in the world. As the eastern tribes have their Great Hare,
so the western tribes have their wolf hero and progenitor, or their
coyote, or their raven, or their dog. It is possible, and even
certain in some cases, that the animal which was the dominant totem
of a race became heir to any cosmogonic legends that were floating
about.

The country of the Papagos, on the eastern side of the Gulf of
California, is the southern boundary of the province of the coyote
or prairie wolf. The realm of his influence as a kind of
Prometheus, or even as a demiurge, extends very far northwards. In
the myth related by Con Quien, the chief of the central Papagos,[1]
the coyote acts the part of the fish in the Sanskrit legend of the
flood, while Montezuma undertakes the role of Manu. This Montezuma
was formed, like the Adams of so many races, out of potter's clay
in the hands of the Great Spirit. In all this legend it seems
plain enough that the name of Montezuma is imported from Mexico,
and has been arbitrarily given to the hero of the Papagos.
According to Mr. Powers, whose manuscript notes Mr. Bancroft quotes
(iii. 87), all the natives of California believe that their first
ancestors were created directly from the earth of their present
dwelling-places, and in very many cases these ancestors were
coyotes.

[1] Davidson, Indian Affairs Report, 1865, p. 131; Bancroft, iii.
75.

The Pimas, a race who live near the Papagos on the eastern coast of
the Gulf of California, say that the earth was made by a being
named Earth-prophet. At first it appeared like a spider's web,
reminding one of the West African legend that a great spider
created the world. Man was made by the Earth-prophet out of clay
kneaded with sweat. A mysterious eagle and a deluge play a great
part in the later mythical adventures of war and the world, as
known to the Pimas.[1]

[1] Communicated to Mr. Bancroft by Mr. Stout of the Pima Agency.

In Oregon the coyote appears as a somewhat tentative demiurge, and
the men of his creation, like the beings first formed by Prajapati
in the Sanskrit myth, needed to be reviewed, corrected and
considerably augmented. The Chinooks of Oregon believe in the
usual race of magnified non-natural men, who preceded humanity.

These semi-divine people were called Ulhaipa by the Chinooks, and
Sehuiab by the Lummies. But the coyote was the maker of men. As
the first of Nature's journeymen, he made men rather badly, with
closed eyes and motionless feet. A kind being, named Ikanam,
touched up the coyote's crude essays with a sharp stone, opening
the eyes of men, and giving their hands and feet the powers of
movement. He also acted as a "culture-hero," introducing the first
arts. [1]

[1] [Frauchere's Narrative, 258; Gibb's Chinook Vocabulary;
Parker's exploring Tour, i. 139;] Bancroft, iii. 96.

Moving up the West Pacific coast we reach British Columbia, where
the coyote is not supposed to have been so active as our old friend
the musk-rat in the great work of the creation. According to the
Tacullies, nothing existed in the beginning but water and a musk-
rat. As the animal sought his food at the bottom of the water, his
mouth was frequently filled with mud. This he spat out, and so
gradually formed by alluvial deposit an island. This island was
small at first, like earth in the Sanskrit myth in the Satapatha
Brahmana, but gradually increased in bulk. The Tacullies have no
new light to throw on the origin of man.[1]

[1] Bancroft, iii. 98; Harmon's Journey, pp. 302, 303.

The Thlinkeets, who are neighbours of the Tacullies on the north,
incline to give crow or raven the chief role in the task of
creation, just as some Australians allot the same part to the
eagle-hawk, and the Yakuts to a hawk, a crow and a teal-duck. We
shall hear much of Yehl later, as one of the mythical heroes of the
introduction of civilisation. North of the Thlinkeets, a bird and
a dog take the creative duties, the Aleuts and Koniagas being
descended from a dog. Among the more northern Tinnehs, the dog who
was the progenitor of the race had the power of assuming the shape
of a handsome young man. He supplied the protoplasm of the
Tinnehs, as Purusha did that of the Aryan world, out of his own
body. A giant tore him to pieces, as the gods tore Purusha, and
out of the fragments thrown into the rivers came fish, the
fragments tossed into the air took life as birds, and so forth.[1]
This recalls the Australian myth of the origin of fish and the
Ananzi stories of the origin of whips.[2]

[1] Hearne, pp. 342, 343; Bancroft, iii. 106.

[2] See "Divine Myths of Lower Races". M. Cosquin, in Contes de
Lorraine, vol. i. p. 58, gives the Ananzi story.

Between the cosmogonic myths of the barbarous or savage American
tribes and those of the great cultivated American peoples, Aztecs,
Peruvians and Quiches, place should be found for the legends of
certain races in the South Pacific. Of these, the most important
are the Maoris or natives of New Zealand, the Mangaians and the
Samoans. Beyond the usual and world-wide correspondences of myth,
the divine tales of the various South Sea isles display
resemblances so many and essential that they must be supposed to
spring from a common and probably not very distant centre. As it
is practically impossible to separate Maori myths of the making of
things from Maori myths of the gods and their origin, we must pass
over here the metaphysical hymns and stories of the original divine
beings, Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, and of their cruel but
necessary divorce by their children, who then became the usual
Titanic race which constructs and "airs" the world for the
reception of man.[1] Among these beings, more fully described in
our chapter on the gods of the lower races, is Tiki, with his wife
Marikoriko, twilight. Tane (male) is another of the primordial
race, children of earth and heaven, and between him and Tiki lies
the credit of having made or begotten humanity. Tane adorned the
body of his father, heaven (Rangi), by sticking stars all over it,
as disks of pearl-shells are stuck all over images. He was the
parent of trees and birds, but some trees are original and divine
beings. The first woman was not born, but formed out of the sun
and the echo, a pretty myth. Man was made by Tiki, who took red
clay, and kneaded it with his own blood, or with the red water of
swamps. The habits of animals, some of which are gods, while
others are descended from gods, follow from their conduct at the
moment when heaven and earth were violently divorced. New Zealand
itself, or at least one of the isles, was a huge fish caught by
Maui (of whom more hereafter). Just as Pund-jel, in Australia, cut
out the gullies and vales with his knife, so the mountains and
dells of New Zealand were produced by the knives of Maui's brothers
when they crimped his big fish.[2] Quite apart from those childish
ideas are the astonishing metaphysical hymns about the first
stirrings of light in darkness, of "becoming" and "being," which
remind us of Hegel and Heraclitus, or of the most purely
speculative ideas in the Rig-Veda.[3] Scarcely less metaphysical
are the myths of Mangaia, of which Mr. Gill[4] gives an elaborate
account.

[1] See "Divine Myths of Lower Races".

[2] Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 115-121; Bastian, Heilige Sage der
Polynesier, pp. 36-50; Shortland, Traditions of New Zealanders.

[3] See chapter on "Divine Myths of the Lower Races," and on "Indian
Cosmogonic Myths"

[4] Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, pp. 1-22.

The Mangaian ideas of the world are complex, and of an early
scientific sort. The universe is like the hollow of a vast cocoa-
nut shell, divided into many imaginary circles like those of
mediaeval speculation. There is a demon at the stem, as it were,
of the cocoa-nut, and, where the edges of the imaginary shell
nearly meet, dwells a woman demon, whose name means "the very
beginning". In this system we observe efforts at metaphysics and
physical speculation. But it is very characteristic of rude
thought that such extremely abstract conceptions as "the very
beginning" are represented as possessing life and human form. The
woman at the bottom of the shell was anxious for progeny, and
therefore plucked a bit out of her own right side, as Eve was made
out of the rib of Adam. This piece of flesh became Vatea, the
father of gods and men. Vatea (like Oannes in the Chaldean legend)
was half man, half fish. "The Very Beginning" begat other children
in the same manner, and some of these became departmental gods of
ocean, noon-day, and so forth. Curiously enough, the Mangaians
seem to be sticklers for primogeniture. Vatea, as the first-born
son, originally had his domain next above that of his mother. But
she was pained by the thought that his younger brothers each took a
higher place than his; so she pushed his land up, and it is now
next below the solid crust on which mortals live in Mangaia. Vatea
married a woman from one of the under worlds named Papa, and their
children had the regular human form. One child was born either
from Papa's head, like Athene from the head of Zeus, or from her
armpit, like Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus. Another child may be
said, in the language of dog-breeders, to have "thrown back," for
he wears the form of a white or black lizard. In the Mangaian
system the sky is a solid vault of blue stone. In the beginning of
things the sky (like Ouranos in Greece and Rangi in New Zealand)
pressed hard on earth, and the god Ru was obliged to thrust the two
asunder, or rather he was engaged in this task when Maui tossed
both Ru and the sky so high up that they never came down again. Ru
is now the Atlas of Mangaia, "the sky-supporting Ru".[1] His lower
limbs fell to earth, and became pumice-stone. In these Mangaian
myths we discern resemblances to New Zealand fictions, as is
natural, and the tearing of the body of "the Very Beginning" has
numerous counterparts in European, American and Indian fable. But
on the whole, the Mangaian myths are more remarkable for their
semi-scientific philosophy than for their coincidences with the
fancies of other early peoples.

[1] Gill, p. 59.

The Samoans, like the Maoris and Greeks, hold that heaven at first
fell down and lay upon earth.[1] The arrowroot and another plant
pushed up heaven, and "the heaven-pushing place" is still known and
pointed out. Others say the god Ti-iti-i pushed up heaven, and his
feet made holes six feet deep in the rocks during this exertion.
The other Samoan myths chiefly explain the origin of fire, and the
causes of the characteristic forms and habits of animals and
plants. The Samoans, too, possess a semi-mythical, metaphysical
cosmogony, starting from NOTHING, but rapidly becoming the history
of rocks, clouds, hills, dew and various animals, who intermarried,
and to whom the royal family of Samoa trace their origin through
twenty-three generations. So personal are Samoan abstract
conceptions, that "SPACE had a long-legged stool," on to which a
head fell, and grew into a companion for Space. Yet another myth
says that the god Tangaloa existed in space, and made heaven and
earth, and sent down his daughter, a snipe. Man he made out of the
mussel-fish. So confused are the doctrines of the Samoans.[2]

[1] Turner's Samoa, p. 198.

[2] Turner's Samoa, pp. 1-9.

Perhaps the cosmogonic myths of the less cultivated races have now
been stated in sufficient number. As an example of the ideas which
prevailed in an American race of higher culture, we may take the
Quiche legend as given in the Popol Vuh, a post-Christian
collection of the sacred myths of the nation, written down after
the Spanish conquest, and published in French by the Abbe Brasseur
de Bourbourg.[1]

[1] See Popol Vuh in Mr. Max Muller's Chips from a German Workshop,
with a discussion of its authenticity. In his Annals of the
Cakchiquels, a nation bordering on the Quiches, Dr. Brinton
expresses his belief in the genuine character of the text. Compare
Bancroft, iii. p. 45. The ancient and original Popol Vuh, the
native book in native characters, disappeared during the Spanish
conquest.

The Quiches, like their neighbours the Cakchiquels, were a highly
civilised race, possessing well-built towns, roads and the arts of
life, and were great agriculturists. Maize, the staple of food
among these advanced Americans, was almost as great a god as Soma
among the Indo-Aryans. The Quiches were acquainted with a kind of
picture-writing, and possessed records in which myth glided into
history. The Popol Vuh, or book of the people, gives itself out as
a post-Columbian copy of these traditions, and may doubtless
contain European ideas. As we see in the Commentarias Reales of
the half-blood Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, the conquered people
were anxious to prove that their beliefs were by no means so
irrational and so "devilish" as to Spanish critics they appeared.
According to the Popol Vuh, there was in the beginning nothing but
water and the feathered serpent, one of their chief divine beings;
but there also existed somehow, "they that gave life". Their names
mean "shooter of blow-pipe at coyote," "at opossum," and so forth.
They said "Earth," and there WAS earth, and plants growing thereon.
Animals followed, and the Givers of life said "Speak our names,"
but the animals could only cluck and croak. Then said the Givers,
"Inasmuch as ye cannot praise us, ye shall be killed and eaten".
They then made men out of clay; these men were weak and watery, and
by water they were destroyed. Next they made men of wood and women
of the pith of trees. These puppets married and gave in marriage,
and peopled earth with wooden mannikins. This unsatisfactory race
was destroyed by a rain of resin and by the wild beasts. The
survivors developed into apes. Next came a period occupied by the
wildest feats of the magnified non-natural race and of animals.
The record is like the description of a supernatural pantomime--the
nightmare of a god. The Titans upset hills, are turned into stone,
and behave like Heitsi Eibib in the Namaqua myths.

Last of all, men were made of yellow and white maize, and these
gave more satisfaction, but their sight was contracted. These,
however, survived, and became the parents of the present stock of
humanity.

Here we have the conceptions of creation and of evolution combined.
Men are MADE, but only the fittest survive; the rest are either
destroyed or permitted to develop into lower species. A similar
mixture of the same ideas will be found in one of the Brahmanas
among the Aryans of India. It is to be observed that the Quiche
myths, as recorded in Popol Vuh, contain not only traces of belief
in a creative word and power, but many hymns of a lofty and
beautifully devotional character.

"Hail! O Creator, O Former! Thou that hearest and understandest
us, abandon us not, forsake us not! O God, thou that art in heaven
and on the earth, O Heart of Heaven, O Heart of Earth, give us
descendants and posterity as long as the light endures."

This is an example of the prayers of the men made out of maize,
made especially that they might "call on the name" of the god or
gods. Whether we are to attribute this and similar passages to
Christian influence (for Popol Vuh, as we have it, is but an
attempt to collect the fragments of the lost book that remained in
men's minds after the conquest), or whether the purer portions of
the myth be due to untaught native reflection and piety, it is not
possible to determine. It is improbable that the ideas of a
hostile race would be introduced into religious hymns by their
victims. Here, as elsewhere in the sacred legends of civilised
peoples, various strata of mythical and religious thought coexist.

No American people reached such a pitch of civilisation as the
Aztecs of Anahuac, whose capital was the city of Mexico. It is
needless here to repeat the story of their grandeur and their fall.
Obscure as their history, previous to the Spanish invasion, may be,
it is certain that they possessed a highly organised society,
fortified towns, established colleges or priesthoods, magnificent
temples, an elaborate calendar, great wealth in the precious
metals, the art of picture-writing in considerable perfection, and
a despotic central government. The higher classes in a society
like this could not but develop speculative systems, and it is
alleged that shortly before the reign of Montezuma attempts had
been made to introduce a pure monotheistic religion. But the
ritual of the Aztecs remained an example of the utmost barbarity.
Never was a more cruel faith, not even in Carthage. Nowhere did
temples reek with such pools of human blood; nowhere else, not in
Dahomey and Ashanti, were human sacrifice, cannibalism and torture
so essential to the cult that secured the favour of the gods. In
these dark fanes--reeking with gore, peopled by monstrous shapes of
idols bird-headed or beast-headed, and adorned with the hideous
carvings in which we still see the priest, under the mask of some
less ravenous forest beast, tormenting the victim--in these
abominable temples the Castilian conquerors might well believe that
they saw the dwellings of devils.

Yet Mexican religion had its moral and beautiful aspect, and the
gods, or certain of the gods, required from their worshippers not
only bloody hands, but clean hearts.

To the gods we return later. The myths of the origin of things may
be studied without a knowledge of the whole Aztec Pantheon. Our
authorities, though numerous, lack complete originality and are
occasionally confused. We have first the Aztec monuments and
hieroglyphic scrolls, for the most part undeciphered. These merely
attest the hideous and cruel character of the deities. Next we
have the reports of early missionaries, like Sahagun and Mendieta,
of conquerors, like Bernal Diaz, and of noble half-breeds, such as
Ixtlilxochitl.[1]

[1] Bancroft's Native Races of Pacific Coast of North America, vol.
iii., contains an account of the sources, and, with Sahagun and
Acosta, is mainly followed here. See also J. G. Muller, Ur.
Amerik. Rel., p. 507. See chapter on the "Divine Myths of Mexico".

There are two elements in Mexican, as in Quiche, and Indo-Aryan,
and Maori, and even Andaman cosmogonic myth. We find the purer
religion and the really philosophic speculation concurrent with
such crude and childish stories as usually satisfy the intellectual
demands of Ahts, Cahrocs and Bushmen; but of the purer and more
speculative opinions we know little. Many of the noble, learned
and priestly classes of Aztecs perished at the conquest. The
survivors were more or less converted to Catholicism, and in their
writings probably put the best face possible on the native
religion. Like the Spanish clergy, their instructors, they were
inclined to explain away their national gods by a system of
euhemerism, by taking it for granted that the gods and culture-
heroes had originally been ordinary men, worshipped after their
decease. This is almost invariably the view adopted by Sahagun.
Side by side with the confessions, as it were, of the clergy and
cultivated classes coexisted the popular beliefs, the myths of the
people, partaking of the nature of folk-lore, but not rejected by
the priesthood.

Both strata of belief are represented in the surviving cosmogonic
myths of the Aztecs. Probably we may reckon in the first or
learned and speculative class of tales the account of a series of
constructions and reconstructions of the world. This idea is not
peculiar to the higher mythologies, the notion of a deluge and
recreation or renewal of things is almost universal, and even among
the untutored Australians there are memories of a flood and of an
age of ruinous winds. But the theory of definite epochs,
calculated in accordance with the Mexican calendar, of epochs in
which things were made and re-made, answers closely to the Indo-
Aryan conception of successive kalpas, and can only have been
developed after the method of reckoning time had been carried to
some perfection. "When heaven and earth were fashioned, they had
already been four times created and destroyed," say the fragments
of what is called the Chimalpopoca manuscript. Probably this
theory of a series of kalpas is only one of the devices by which
the human mind has tried to cheat itself into the belief that it
can conceive a beginning of things. The earth stands on an
elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and it is going too far to
ask what the tortoise stands on. In the same way the world's
beginning seems to become more intelligible or less puzzling when
it is thrown back into a series of beginnings and endings. This
method also was in harmony with those vague ideas of evolution and
of the survival of the fittest which we have detected in myth. The
various tentative human races of the Popol Vuh degenerated or were
destroyed because they did not fulfil the purposes for which they
were made. In Brahmanic myth we shall see that type after type was
condemned and perished because it was inadequate, or inadequately
equipped--because it did not harmonise with its environment.[1]
For these series of experimental creations and inefficient
evolutions vast spaces of time were required, according to the
Aztec and Indo-Aryan philosophies. It is not impossible that
actual floods and great convulsions of nature may have been
remembered in tradition, and may have lent colour and form to these
somewhat philosophic myths of origins. From such sources probably
comes the Mexican hypothesis of a water-age (ending in a deluge),
an earth-age (ending in an earthquake), a wind-age (ending in
hurricanes), and the present dispensation, to be destroyed by fire.

[1] As an example of a dim evolutionary idea, note the myths of the
various ages as reported by Mendieta, according to which there were
five earlier ages "or suns" of bad quality, so that the contemporary
human beings were unable to live on the fruits of the earth.

The less philosophic and more popular Aztec legend of the
commencement of the world is mainly remarkable for the importance
given in it to objects of stone. For some reason, stones play a
much greater part in American than in other mythologies. An
emerald was worshipped in the temple of Pachacamac, who was,
according to Garcilasso, the supreme and spiritual deity of the
Incas. The creation legend of the Cakchiquels of Guatemala[1]
makes much of a mysterious, primeval and animated obsidian stone.
In the Iroquois myths[2] stones are the leading characters. Nor
did Aztec myth escape this influence.

[1] Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels.

[2] Erminie Smith, Bureau of Ethnol. Report, ii.

There was a god in heaven named Citlalatonac, and a goddess,
Citlalicue. When we speak of "heaven" we must probably think of
some such world of ordinary terrestrial nature above the sky as
that from which Ataentsic fell in the Huron story. The goddess
gave birth to a flint-knife, and flung the flint down to earth.
This abnormal birth partly answers to that of the youngest of the
Adityas, the rejected abortion in the Veda, and to the similar
birth and rejection of Maui in New Zealand. From the fallen flint-
knife sprang our old friends the magnified non-natural beings with
human characteristics, "the gods," to the number of 1600. The gods
sent up the hawk (who in India and Australia generally comes to the
front on these occasions), and asked their mother, or rather
grandmother, to help them to make men, to be their servants.
Citlalicue rather jeered at her unconsidered offspring. She
advised them to go to the lord of the homes of the departed,
Mictlanteuctli, and borrow a bone or some ashes of the dead who are
with him. We must never ask for consistency from myths. This
statement implies that men had already been in existence, though
t

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