PLATE XXXIX.
PLATE XXXIX.
1. Stone seat from Manabi, Ecuador. See page206. After Saville,Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador, Vol. II, Plate XXXVIII.
2. Painted wooden seat from Guiana—such ahallaas is referred to in the tale of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, page264. After30 ARBE, Plate V.
3. Central American carved stone metate in the collection of Geo. S. Walsh, Lincoln, Neb.
The time soon came, however, when he wished again to see his mother, but as Kaikoutji refused to allow Anuanaïtu to accompany the youth, he set off alone. Happy days were spent at home, he telling his adventures, the mother recounting the tales of long ago which had been dimly returning to her troubled memory; and when Maconaura would return to his wife, the old mother begged him to stay, while the peaiman warned him of danger; but he was resolved and departed once more, telling his mother that he would send her each day a bird to apprise her of his condition: if the owl came, she would know him lost. Arrived at the home of Anuanaïtu, he was met by his wife and mother-in-law, in tears, with the warning: "Away! quickly! Kaikoutji is furious at the news he has received!" Nevertheless Maconaura went on, and at the threshold of the lodge was met by Kaikoutji, who felling him with a blow, thrust an arrow between his eyes. Meantime Maconaura's mother had been hearing daily the mournfulbouta! bouta!of the otolin; but one day this was succeeded by the dismalpopopó!of the owl, and knowing that her son was dead, she, led by the bird of ill tidings, found first the young man's canoe and then his hidden body, with which she returned sadly to her own people.
The men covered the corpse with a pall of beautiful feathers, placing about it Maconaura's arms and utensils; the women prepared thetapanafor the funeral feast; and all assembled to hear the funeral chant, the last farewell of mother to son. She recounted the tragic tale of his love and death, and then, raising the cup oftapanato her lips, she cried: "Who has extinguished the light of my son? Who has sent him into the valley of shades? Woe! woe to him!... Alas! you see in me, O friends and brothers, only a poor, weak old woman. I can do nothing. Who of you will avenge me?" Forthwith two men sprang forward, seized the cup, and emptied it; beside thecorpse they intoned the Kenaima song, dancing the dance of vengeance; and into one of them the soul of a boa constrictor entered, into the other that of a jaguar.
The great feast oftapanawas being held at the village of Kaikoutji, where hundreds of natives were gathered, men, women, and children. They drank and vomited; drank and vomited again; till finally all were drunken. Then two men came, one in the hide of a jaguar, the other in the mottled scales of a boa constrictor; and in an instant Kaikoutji and all about him were struck down, some crushed by the jaguar's blows, others strangled in snaky folds. Nevertheless fear had rescued some from their drunkenness; and they seized their bows, threatening the assailants with hundreds of arrows, whereupon the two Kenaima ceased their attack, while one of them cried: "Hold, friends! we are in your hands, but let us first speak!" Then he recounted the tale of Maconaura, and when he had ceased, an old peaiman advanced, saying: "Young men, you have spoken well. We receive you as friends."
The feast was renewed more heartily than ever, but though Anuanaïtu, in her grief, had remained away, she now advanced, searching among the corpses. She examined them, one by one, with dry eyes; but at last she paused beside a body, her eyes filled with tears, and seating herself, long, long she chanted plaintively the praises of the dead. Suddenly she leaped up, with hair bristling and with face of fire, in vibrant voice in-toning the terrible Kenaima; and as she danced, the soul of a rattlesnake entered into her.
Meantime, in the other village, the people were celebrating thetapana, delirious with joy for the vengeance taken, while the mother of Maconaura, overcome by drink, lay in her hammock, dreaming of her son. Anuanaïtu entered, possessed, but she drew back moved when she heard her name pronounced by the dreaming woman: "Anuanaïtu, my child, you are good, as was also your mother! But why come you hither? My son, whom you have lost, is no more.... O son Maconaura,rejoice! Thou art happy, now, for thou art avenged in the blood of thy murderers! Ah, yes, thou art well avenged!" During this Anuanaïtu felt in her soul a dread conflict, the call of love struggling with the call of duty; but at the words, "avenged in blood," she restrained herself no longer, and throwing herself upon the old woman, she drew her tongue from her mouth, striking it with venomous poison; and leaning over her agonized victim, she spoke: "The cayman which your son killed beside the basket-net was my brother. Like my father, he had a cayman's head. I would pardon that. My father avenged his son's death in inflicting on yours the same doom that he had dealt—an arrow between the eyes. Your kindred have slain my father and all mine. I would have pardoned that, too, had they but spared my mother. Maconaura is the cause that what is most dear to me in the world is perished; and robbing him in my turn, I immolate what he held most precious!"
Uttering a terrible cry, she fled into the forest; and at the sound a change unprecedented occurred throughout all nature. The winds responded with a tempest which struck down the trees and uprooted the very oaks; thick clouds veiled the face of Adaheli, while sinister lightnings and the roar of thunders filled the tenebrous world; a deluge of rain mingled with the floods of rivers. The animals, until then peaceable, fell upon and devoured one another: the serpent struck with his venom, the cayman made his terrible jaws to crash, the jaguar tore the flesh of the harmless agouti. Anuanaïtu, followed by the savage hosts of the forest, pursued her insensate course until she arrived at the summit of an enormous rock, whence gushed a cascade; and there, on the brink of the precipice, she stretched forth her arms, leaned forward, and plunged into the depths. The waters received her and closed over her: nought was to be seen but a terrifying whirlpool.
If today some stranger pass beside a certain cascade, the Carib native will warn him not to speak its name. That would be his infallible death, for at the bottom of these watersMaconaura and Anuanaïtu dwell together in the marvellous palace of her who is the Soul of the Waters.
It is not merely the artistic symmetry of this tale—which may be due as much to the clever rendering by Father van Coll as to the genius of the savage raconteur—that justifies giving it at length. It is a wonderfully instructive picture of savage life, emotions, and customs; and a full commentary upon it would lead to an exposition of most that we know of the customs and thought of the Orinoco aborigines—such practices, for example, as im Thurn describes: the putting of red pepper in one's eyes to propitiate the spirits of rapids one is about to shoot; the method of Kenaima murder by pricking the tongue with poison; the perpetual vendetta which to the savage seems to hold not only between tribe and tribe of men, but also between tribe and tribe of animals; thetapanafeasts in which men become inspired; or again, such mythic and religious conceptions as the cult of the jaguar and cayman, extending far throughout South and Central America; the still more universal notion of a community of First People, part man, part animal; the ominous birds and animal helpers; the central story of the visit of the hero-youth to the ogreish father-in-law, and of the trials to which he is subjected. In these and in other respects the story is of interest; but its chief attraction is surely in the fact that here we have an AmericanJoborŒdipus, presenting, asJobpresents, the problem of evil; and, like Greek tragedy, portraying the harsh conflict between the inexorable justice of the law of retribution and the loves and mercies which combat it, in the savage heart perhaps not less than in the civilized.
Both creation and cataclysm appear in the story of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu, but this legend is only one among several tales of the kind gathered from various groups of Orinoconatives, the fullest collection, "'old peoples' stories,' as the rising race somewhat contemptuously call them," being given by Brett. The creation myths are of the two familiar American types: true creations out of the void, and migrations of First Beings into a new land; while transformation-incidents, and especially the doughty deeds of the Transformer-Hero, a true demiurge, are characteristic of traditions of each type.
The Ackawoi make their Makonaima the creator, and Sigu, his son, the hero, in a tale which, says Brett,[165]they repeat "while striving to maintain a very grave aspect, as befitting the general nature of the subject." "In the beginning of this world the birds and beasts were created by Makonaima,—the great spirit whom no man hath seen. They, at that time, were all endowed with the gift of speech. Sigu, the son of Makonaima, was placed to rule over them. All lived in harmony together and submitted to his gentle dominion." Here we have the usual sequence: the generation of the world, followed by the Golden Age, with its vocal animals and universal peace; while as a surprise to his subject creatures, Makonaima caused a wonderful tree, bearing all good fruits, to spring from the earth—the tree which was the origin of all cultivated plants. The acouri first discovered this tree, selfishly trying to keep the secret to himself; and the woodpecker, set by Sigu to trace the acouri, proved a poor spy, since his tapping warned it of his presence; but when the rat solved the mystery, Sigu determined to fell the tree and plant its fruits broadcast. Only the lazy monkey refused to assist, and even mischievously hindered the others, so that Sigu, provoked, put him at the task of the Danaïdes—to fetch water in a basket-sieve. The stump of the tree proved to be filled with water, stocked with every kind of fish and from its riches Sigu proposed to supply all streams; but the waters began of themselves to flow so copiously that he was compelled hastily to cover the top with a basket which the mischievous monkey discovered; and raising it, the deluge poured forth. To save the animals, Sigusealed in a cave those which could not climb; the others he took with him into a high cocorite tree, where they remained through a long and uncomfortable night, Sigu dropping cocorite seeds from time to time to judge by the splash if the waters were receding, until finally the sound was no longer heard, and with the return of day the animals descended to repeople the earth. But they were no longer the same. The arauta still howls his discomfort from the trees; the trumpeter-bird, too greedily descending into the food-rich mud, had his legs, till then respectable, so devoured by ants that they have ever since been bonily thin; the bush-fowl snapped up the spark of fire which Sigu laboriously kindled, and got his red wattle for his greed; while the alligator had his tongue pulled out for lying (it is a common belief that the cayman is tongueless). Thus the world became what it is.
A second part of the tale tells how Sigu was persecuted by two wicked brothers who beat him to death, burned him to ashes, and buried him. Nevertheless, each time he rose again to life and finally ascended a high hill which grew upward as he mounted until he disappeared in the sky.
Probably the most far-known mythic hero of this region is Amalivaca, a Carib demiurge, concerning whom Humboldt reports various beliefs of the Tamanac (a Cariban tribe). According to Humboldt,[166]"the nameAmalivacais spread over a region of more than five thousand square leagues; he is found designated as 'the father of mankind,'or 'our great-grandfather' as far as the Caribbee nations"; and he likens him to the Aztec Quetzalcoatl. It is in connexion with the petroglyphs of their territory (similar rock-carvings are found far into the Antilles, the "painted cave" in which the Earth Goddess was worshipped in Haiti being, no doubt, an example) that the Tamanac give motive to their tale. Amalivaca, father of the Tamanac, arrived in a canoe in the time of the deluge, and he engraved images, still to be seen, of the sun and the moon and the animals high upon the rocks of Encaramada.From this deluge one man and one woman were saved on a mountain called Tamancu—the Tamanac Ararat—and "casting behind them, over their heads, the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds contained in those fruits produce men and women, who repeopled the earth." After many deeds, in which Amalivaca regulated the world in true heroic fashion, he departed to the shores beyond the seas, whence he came and where he is supposed still to dwell.
Another myth, of the Cariban stock,[167]tells how Makonaima, having created heaven and earth, sat on a silk-cotton-tree by a river, and cutting off pieces of its bark, cast them about, those which touched the water becoming fish, and others flying in the air as birds, while from those that fell on land arose animals and men. Boddam-Whetham gives a later addition, accounting for the races of men: "The Great Spirit Makanaima made a large mould, and out of this fresh, clean clay the white man stepped. After it got a little dirty the Indian was formed, and the Spirit being called away on business for a long period the mould became black and unclean, and out of it walked the negro." As in case of other demiurges, there are many stories of the transformations wrought by Makonaima.
It is from the Warau that Brett obtains a story of a descent from the sky-world—a tale which has many replications in other parts of America, and of which there are other Orinoco variants. Long ago, when the Warau lived in the happy hunting-grounds above the sky, Okonorote, a young hunter, shot an arrow which missed its mark and was lost; searching for it, he found a hole through which it had fallen; and looking down, he beheld the earth beneath, with game-filled forests and savannahs. By means of a cotton rope he visited the lands below, and upon his return his reports were such as to induce the whole Warau tribe to follow him thither; but one unlucky dame, too stout to squeeze through, was stuck in the hole, and the Warau were thus prevented from ever returning to the sky-world. Since the lower world was exceedingly arid, the greatSpirit created a small lake of delicious water, but forbade the people to bathe in it—this to test their obedience. A certain family, consisting of four brothers—Kororoma, Kororomana, Kororomatu, and Kororomatítu—and two sisters—Korobona and Korobonáko—dwelt beside this mere; the men obeyed the injunction as to bathing, but the two sisters entered the water, and one of them swimming to the centre of the lake, touched a pole which was planted there. The spirit of the pool, who had been bound by the pole, was immediately released; and seizing the maiden, he bore her to his sub-aquatic den, whence she returned home pregnant; but the child, when born, was normal and was allowed to live. Again she visited the water demon and once more brought forth a child, but this one was only partly human, the lower portion of the body being that of a serpent. The brothers slew the monster with arrows; but after Korobona had nursed it to life in the concealment of the forest, the brothers, having discovered the secret, again killed the serpent-being, this time cutting it in pieces. Korobona carefully collected and buried all the fragments of her offspring's body, covering them with leaves and vegetable mould; and she guarded the grave assiduously until finally from it arose a terrible warrior, brilliant red in colour, armed for battle, this warrior being the first Carib, who forthwith drove from their ancient hunting-grounds the whole Warau tribe.
This myth contains a number of interesting features. It is obviously invented in part to explain why the Warau (who are execrated by whites and natives alike for their dirtiness) do not bathe; and it no doubt reflects their actual yielding before the invading Carib tribes. The Kororomana of the story can scarcely be other in origin that the Kururumany whom Schomburgk states to be the Arawak creator; while the whole group of four brothers are plausibly continental forms of the Haitian Caracarols, the shell-people who brought about the flood. The incident of the corpulent or pregnant woman (im Thurn givesthe latter version) stopping the egress of the primitive people from their first home appears in Kiowa, Mandan, and Pueblo tales in North America; while the pole rising from the lake has analogues in the Californian and North-West Coast regions. Im Thurn states that the Carib have a variant of this same story, in which they assign as the reason for the descent of their forefathers from Paradise their desire to cleanse the dirty and disordered world below—an amusing complement to the Warau notion!
The Warau have also their national hero, Aboré, who has something of the character of a true culture hero. Wowta, the evil Frog-Woman, made Aboré her slave while he was yet a boy, and when he grew up, she wished to marry him; but he cleverly trapped her by luring her into a hollow tree filled with honey, of which she was desperately fond, and there wedging her fast. He then made a canoe and paddled to sea to appear no more, though the Warau believe that he reached the land of the white men and taught them the arts of life; Wowta escaped from the tree only by taking the form of a frog, and her dismal croaking is still heard in the woods.
From the tribes of this region come various other myths, belonging, apparently, to the cosmogonic and demiurgic cycles. The Arawak tell of two destructions of the earth, once by flame and once by fire, each because men disobeyed the will of the Dweller-on-High, Aiomun Kondi; and they also have a Noachian hero, Marérewána, who saved himself and his family during the deluge by tying his canoe with a rope of great length to a large tree. Another Arawak tale begins with the incident which opens the story of Maconaura. The Sun built a dam to retain the fish in a certain place; but since, during his absence, it was broken, so that the fish escaped, he set the Woodpecker to watch, and, summoned by the bird's loud tapping, arrived in time to slay the alligator that was destroying his preserves, the reptile's scales being marks made by the club wielded by the Sun. Another tale, of which there areboth Arawak and Carib versions, tells how a young man married a vulture and lived in the sky-land, revisiting his own people by means of a rope which the spiders spun for him; but as the vultures would thereafter have nothing to do with him, with the aid of other birds he made war upon them and burned their settlement. In this combat the various birds, by injury or guile, received the marks which they yet bear; the owl found a package which he greedily kept to himself; opening it, the darkness came out, and has been his ever since. In the Surinam version, given by van Coll,[168]the hero of the tale is a peaiman, Maconaholo, and the story contains some of the incidents of the Maconaura tale. Two other traditions given by the same author are of special interest from the comparative point of view. One is the legend of an anchorite who had a wonderfully faithful dog. Wandering in the forest, the hermit discovered a finely cultivated field, with cassava and other food plants, and thinking, "Who has prepared all this for me?" he concealed himself in order to discover who might be his benefactor, when behold! his faithful dog appeared, transformed herself into a human being, laid aside her dog's skin, busied herself with the toil of cultivation, and, the task accomplished, again resumed her canine form. The native, carefully preparing, concealed himself anew, and when the dog came once more, he slyly stole the skin, carried it away in acourou-courou(a woman's harvesting basket), and burned it, after which the cultivator, compelled to retain woman's form, became his faithful wife and the mother of a large family. It would appear that, from an aboriginal point of view, both dog and woman are complimented by this tale.
The second tale of special interest is a Surinam equivalent of the story of Cain and Abel. Of three brothers, Halwanli, the eldest, was lord of all things inanimate and irrational; Ourwanama, the second, was a tiller of fields, a brewer of liquors, and the husband of two wives; Hiwanama, the youngest, was a huntsman. One day Hiwanama, chancing upon the territory ofOurwanama, met one of his brother's wives, who first intoxicated him and then seduced him, while in revenge for this injury Ourwanama banished his brother, lying to his mother when she demanded the lost son. Afterward Ourwanama's wives were transformed, the one into a bird, the other into a fish; he himself, seized by the sea, was dragged to its depth; and the desolate mother bemoaned her lost children till finally Halwanli, going in search of Hiwanama, whom he found among the serpents and other reptiles of the lower world, brought him back to become the greatest of peaimen.
A missionary whom Humboldt quotes declares that a native said to him:[169]"Your God keeps himself shut up in a house, as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come"; and Humboldt remarks in comment that the Indians conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image: "on the banks of the Orinoco there exists no idol, as among all the nations who have remained faithful to the first worship of nature."
There is an echo of the eighteenth century philosophy of an idyllic primitive age in this statement, but there is truth in it, too; for throughout the forest regions of tropical America idols are of rare occurrence, while shrines, if such they may be called, are confined to places of natural marvel, the wandering tribes being true nature worshippers, with eyes ever open for tokens of mysterious power. Fetishes or talismans are, however, common; and in this very connexion Humboldt mentions thebotuto, or sacred trumpet, as an object of veneration to which fruits and intoxicating liquors were offered; sometimes the Great Spirit himself makes thebotutoto resound, and, as in so many other parts of the world, women are put to death if they but see this sacrosanct instrument or the ceremonies of its cult (and here we are in the very presence of MumboJumbo!). Certainly the use of the fetish-trumpet was widespread in South America and northward. Garcilasso tells of the use of dog-headed battle-trumpets by the wild tribes of Andean regions; while Boddam-Whetham affords us another indication of the trumpet's significance:[170]"Horn-blowing was a very useful accomplishment of our guide, as it kept us straight and frightened away the various evil spirits, from a water-mama to a wood-demon."
This latter author gives a vivid picture of the Orinoco Indian in the life of nature: "Above all other localities, an Indian is fond of an open, sandy beach whereon to pass the night.... There in the open, away from the dark, shadowy forest, he feels secure from the stealthy approach of the dreaded 'kanaima';... the magic rattle of the 'peaiman' ... has less terror for him when unaccompanied by the rustling of the waving branches; and there even the wild hooting of the 'didi' (the 'didi' is supposed to be a wild man of the woods, possessed of immense strength and covered with hair) is bereft of that intensity with which it pierces the gloomy depths of the surrounding woodland. It is strange that the superstitious fear of these Indians, who are bred and born in the forest and hills, should be chiefly based on natural forms and sounds. Certain rocks they will never point at with a finger, although your attention may be drawn to them by an inclination of the head. Some rocks they will not even look at, and others again they beat with green boughs. Common bird-cries become spirit-voices. Any place of difficult access, or little known, is invariably tenanted by huge snakes or horrible four-footed animals. Otters are transformed into mermaids, and water-tigers inhabit the deep pools and caves of their rivers."
This is the familiar picture of the animist, surrounded by monster-haunted marches, for which, in the works of many writers, the Guiana aborigines have afforded the repeated model. No description of the beliefs of these natives would be complete without mention of the superstitions and adorationsassociated with Mt. Roraima, by which all travellers seem to be impressed. Schomburgk[171]says that the native loves Roraima as the Swiss loves his Alps: "All their festal songs have Roraima for object.... Each morning and each evening came old and young ... to greet us withbakong baimong('good day') orsaponteng('good night') ... adding each time the words,matti Roraima-tau, Roraima-tau('there, see our Roraima!'), with the wordtauvery slowly and solemnly drawled"; and one of their songs, which might be a fragment out of the Greek, runs:
"Roraima of the red rocks, wrapped in clouds, ever-fertile source of streams!"
"Roraima of the red rocks, wrapped in clouds, ever-fertile source of streams!"
On Roraima, says im Thurn, the natives declare there are huge white jaguars, white eagles, and other such creatures; and to this class he would add the "didis," half man, half monkey, who may very likely be a mere personification of the howling monkeys which, as Humboldt states, the aborigines so heartily detest. Boddam-Whetham, who ascended the mountain, tells of many superstitions, as of a magic circle which surrounds it, and of a demon-guarded sanctuary on the summit: "About half way up we met an unpleasant-looking Indian who informed us that he was a great 'peaiman,' and the spirit which he possessed ordered us not to go to Roraima. The mountain, he said, was guarded by an enormous 'camoodi,' which could entwine a hundred people in its folds. He himself had once approached its den and seen demons running about as numerous as quails.... Our Indians were rejoiced to see us back again, as they had not expected that the mountain-demons would allow us to return."
Like great mountains, the orbs of heaven excite the native's adoration, though it is by no means necessary, on that account, to follow certain theorists and to solarize or astralize all his myths. Fray Ruiz Blanco states that "the supreme gods of the Indians are the sun and the moon, at eclipses of which theymake great demonstrations, sounding warlike instruments and laying hold of weapons as a sign that they seek to defend them; they water their maize in order to placate them and in loud voice tell them that they will amend their ways, labour, and not be idle; and grasping their tools, they set themselves to toil at the hour of eclipse." Of similar reference is an observation of Humboldt's: "Some Indians who were acquainted with Spanish, assured us thatzissignified not only the sun, but also the Deity. This appeared to me the more extraordinary since among all other American nations we find distinct words for God and the sun. The Carib does not confoundTamoussicabo, 'the Ancient of Heaven,' withveyou, 'the sun.'" In a similar connexion he remarks that in American idioms the moon is often called "the sun of night," or "the sun of sleep"; but that "our missionary asserted thatjama, in Maco, indicated at the same time both the Supreme Being and the great orbs of night and day; while many other American tongues, for instance Tamanac and Caribbee, have distinct words to designate God, the Moon, and the Sun." It is, of course, quite possible that such terms aszisandjamabelong to the class of Manito, Wakan, Huaca, and the like.
Humboldt records names for the Southern Cross and the Belt of Orion, and Brett mentions a constellation called Camudi from its fancied resemblance to the snake, though he does not identify it. The Carib, he says, call the Milky Way by two names, one of which signifies "the path of the tapir," while the other means "the path of the bearers of white clay"—a clay from which they make vessels: "The nebulous spots are supposed to be the track of spirits whose feet are smeared with that material"—a conceit which surely points to the well-nigh universal American idea of the Milky Way as the path of souls. The Carib also have names for Venus and Jupiter; and the Macusi, im Thurn says, regard the dew as the spittle of stars.
In a picturesque passage Humboldt describes the beliefsconnected with the Grotto of Caripe, the source of the river of the same name. The cave is inhabited by nocturnal birds, guacharos (Steatornis caripensis); and the natives are convinced that the souls of their ancestors sojourn in its deep recesses. "Man," they say, "should avoid places which are enlightened neither by the sun nor by the moon"; and they maintain that poisoners and magicians conjure evil spirits before the entrance; while "to join the guacharos" is a phrase equivalent to being gathered to one's fathers in the tomb. Fray Ruiz records an analogous tenet: "They believe in the immortality of the soul and that departing from the body, it goes to another place—some souls to their own lands (heredades), but the most to a lake that they callMachira, where great serpents swallow them and carry them to a land of pleasure in which they entertain themselves with dancing and feasting." That ghosts of strong men return is an article of common credence: the soul of Lope de Aguirre, as reported not only by Humboldt, but by writers of our own day,[172]still haunts the savannahs in the form of a tongue of flame; and it may be supposed that the similar idea which Boddam-Whetham records among the negroes of Martinique with respect to the soul of Père Labat may be of American Indian origin. One striking statement, which Brett quotes from a Mr. M'Clintock, deserves repetition, as being perhaps as clear a statement as we have of that ambiguity of life and death, body and soul, from which the savage mind rarely works itself free: "He says that the Kapohn or Acawoio races (those who have embraced Christianity excepted) like to bury their dead in a standing posture, assigning this reason,—'Although my brother be in appearance dead, he (i. e.his soul) is still alive.' Therefore, to maintain by an outward sign this belief in immortality some of them bury their deaderect, which they say represents life, whereas lying down represents death. Others bury their dead in asittingposture, assigning the same reason." It is unlikely that the Orinoco Indians have in mind such clear-cut symbolismof their custom as this passage suggests; but it is altogether probable that the true reason for disposing the bodies of the dead in life-like postures is man's fundamental difficulty wholly to dissociate life from the stark and unresponsive body; and doubtless it is this very attitude of mind which leads them also to what Fray Ruiz calls the error of ascribing souls to even irrational beings—the same underlying theory which makes of primitive men animists, and of philosophers idealists.
On his second voyage Columbus began to hear of an island inhabited by rich and warlike women, who permitted occasional visits from men, but endured no permanent residence of males among them. The valour of Carib women, who fought resolutely along with their husbands and brothers gave plausibility to this legend; and soon the myth of an island or country of Amazons became accepted truth, a dogma with wonder-tellers and a lure to adventurers. At first the fabulous island seemed near at hand—"Matenino which lies next to Hispañola on the side toward the Indies"; but as island after island was visited and the fabled women not found, their seat was pushed further and further on, till it came to be thought of as a country lying far in the interior of the continent or—for the notion of its insular nature persisted—as an island somewhere in the course of the great river of the Amazons. By the middle of the sixteenth century, explorers from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west, were all on the lookout for the kingdom of women and all hearing and repeating tales about them with such conviction that, as the Padre de Acuña remarks,[174]"it is not credible that a lie could have been spread throughout so many languages, and so many nations, with such appearance of truth."
In 1540-41 Francisco de Orellana sailed down the Amazon to the sea, hearing tales of the women warriors, and, as his cleric companion, Fray Gaspar Carvajal, is credited with saying,on one occasion encountering some of them; for they fought with Indians who defended themselves resolutely "because they were tributaries of the Amazons," and he, and other Spaniards, saw ten or twelve Amazons fighting in front of the Indians, as if they commanded them ... "very tall, robust, fair, with long hair twisted over their heads, skins round their loins, and bows and arrows in their hands, with which they killed seven or eight Spaniards." The description, in the circumstances described, does not inspire unlimited confidence in the friar's certainty of vision, but there is nothing incredible even in Indian women leading their husbands in combat. Pedro de Magelhães de Gandavo gives a very interesting account[175](still sixteenth century) of certain Indian women who, as he says, take the vow of chastity, facing death rather than its violation. These women follow no occupation of their sex, but imitate the ways of men, as if they had ceased to be women, going to war and to the hunt along with the men. Each of them, he adds, is served and followed by an Indian woman with whom she says she is married, and they live together like spouses. Parallels for this custom, (and for the reverse, in which men assume the costume, labours, and way of life of women) are to be found far and wide in America,—indeed, to the Arctic Zone. Magelhães de Gandavo is authority, too, for the statement that the coastal tribes of Brazil, like the Carib of the north, have a dual speech, differing for the two sexes, at least in some words; but this is no extremely rare phenomenon.
More truly in the mythical vein is the account given in the tale of the adventures of Ulrich Schmidel. Journeying northward from the city of Asuncion, in a company under the command of Hernando de Ribera, Schmidel and his companions heard tales of the Amazons—whose land of gold and silver, the Indians astutely placed at a two months' journey from their own land. "The Amazons have only one breast," says Schmidel, "and they receive visits from men only twice or thrice a year. If a boy is born to them, they send him to the father; if a girl,they raise her, burning the right breast that it may not grow, to the end that they may the more readily draw the bow, for they are very valiant and make war against their enemies. These women dwell in an isle, which can only be reached by canoes." In the same credulous vein, but with quaintly learned embellishments, is Sir Walter Raleigh's account: "I had knowledge of all the rivers between Orenoque and Amazones, and was very desirous to understand the truth of those warlike women, because of some it is believed, of others not. And though I digress from my purpose, yet I will set down that which hath been delivered me for truth of those women, and I spake with a cacique or lord of people, that told me he had been in the river, and beyond it also. The nations of these women are on the south side of the river in the provinces of Topago, and their chiefest strengths and retracts are in the islands situate on the south side of the entrance some sixty leagues within the mouth of the said river. The memories of the like women are very ancient as well in Africa as in Asia: in Africa these had Medusa for queen: others in Scithia near the rivers of Tanais and Thernodon: we find also that Lampedo and Marethesia were queens of the Amazons: in many histories they are verified to have been, and in divers ages and provinces: but they which are not far from Guiana do accompany with men but once in a year, and for the time of one month, which I gather by their relation, to be in April: and that time all kings of the border assemble, and queens of the Amazons; and after the queens have chosen, the rest cast lots for their Valentines. This one month they feast, dance, and drink of their wines in abundance; and the moon being done, they all depart to their own provinces. If they conceive, and be delivered of a son, they return him to the father; if of a daughter, they nourish it, and retain it: and as many as have daughters send unto the begetters a present: all being desirous to increase their sex and kind: but that they cut off the right dug of the breast, I do not find to be true. It was farther told me, that if in thesewars they took any prisoners that they used to accompany with these also at what time soever, but in the end for certain they put them to death: for they are said to be very cruel and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer to invade their territories. These Amazons have likewise great store of these plates of gold which they recover by exchange chiefly for a kind of green stones, which the Spaniards call Piedras hijadas, and we use for spleen stones: and for the disease of the stone we also esteem them. Of these I saw divers in Guiana: and commonly every king or cacique hath one, which their wives for the most part wear; and they esteem them as great jewels."
The Amazon stone, orpiedra de la hijada, came to be immensely valued in Europe for wonderful medicinal effects,—a veritable panacea. Such stones were found treasured by the tribes of northern and north-central South America, passing by barter from people to people. "The form given to them most frequently," wrote Humboldt,[176]"is that of the Babylonian cylinders, longitudinally perforated, and loaded with inscriptions and figures. But this is not the work of the Indians of our day.... The Amazon stones, like the perforated and sculptured emeralds, found in the Cordilleras of New Grenada and Quito, are vestiges of anterior civilization." Later writers and investigators have identified the Amazon stones as green jade, probably thechalchihuitlwhich formed the esteemed jewel of the Aztecs; and it has been supposed that the centre from which spread the veneration for greenish and bluish stones—chiefly jade and turquoise—was somewhere in Mayan or Nahuatlan territory. Certainly it was widespread, extending from the Pueblos of New Mexico to the land of the Incas, and eastward into Brazil and the Antilles. That the South American tribes should have ascribed the origin of these treasures (at any rate, when questioned) to the Amazons, the treasure women, is altogether plausible. Nearly a century and a half after Raleigh's day, de la Condamine found the green jade stones still employed by the Indians to cure colic and epilepsy,—heirlooms,they said, from their fathers who had received them from the husbandless women. That the Indians themselves have names for the Amazons is not strange—names with such meanings as the Women-Living-Alone, the Husbandless-Women, the Masterful-Women,—for the Europeans have been inquiring about such women ever since their coming; it is, however, worthy of note that Orellana, to whom is credited the first use of "Amazon" as a name for the great river, also heard a native name for the fabulous women; for Aparia, a native chief, after listening to Orellana's discourse on the law of God and the grandeur of the Castillean monarch, asked, as it were in rebuttal, whether Orellana had seen the Amazons, "whom in his language they callConiapuyara, meaning Great Lord."
Modern investigators ascribe the myth of the Amazons, undeniably widespread at an early date, to various causes. The warlike character of many Indian women, already observed in the first encounters with Carib tribes by Columbus, is still attested by Spruce (1855): "I have myself seen that Indian women can fight ... the women pile up heaps of stones to serve as missiles for the men. If, as sometimes happens, the men are driven back to and beyond their piles of stones, the women defend the latter obstinately, and generally hold them until the men are able to rally to the combat." Another factor in the myth is supposed to have been rumours of the golden splendour of the Incaic empire, with perhaps vague tales of the Vestals of the Sun; and still another is the occurrence of anomalous social and sexual relationships of women, easily exaggerated in passing from tribe to tribe.
A special group of myths of the latter type is of pertinent interest. Ramon Pane and Peter Martyr give an example in the tale of Guagugiana enticing the women away to Matenino. A somewhat similar story is reported by Barboza Rodriguez from the Rio Jamunda: the women, led away by an elder or chief, were accustomed to destroy their male children; but one mother spared her boy, casting him into the water where helived as a fish by day, returning to visit her at night in human form; and the other women, discovering this, seduced the youth, who was finally disposed of by the jealous old man, whereupon the angry women fled, leaving the chief womanless. A like story is reported by Ehrenreich from Amazonas: The women gather beside the waters, where they make familiar with a water-monster, crocodilean in form, which is slain by the jealous men; then, the women rise in revolt, slay the men through deceit, and fare away on the stream. From Guiana Brett reports a myth on the same theme, the lover being, however, in jaguar form. Very likely the story of Maconaura and Anuanaïtu belongs to the same cycle; and it is of more than passing interest to observe that the story extends, along with the veneration of green and blue stones, to the Navaho and Pueblo tribes of North America, in the cosmogonies of which appears the tale of the revolt of the women, their unnatural relations with a water-monster, and their eventual return to the men.[177]
PLATE XL.
PLATE XL.
Vase from the Island of Marajó, with characteristic decoration. The funeral vases and other remains from this region have suggested to L. Netto that here was the fabled Isle of the Amazons (see pages286-87). The vase pictured is in the American Museum of Natural History.
Possibly the whole mythic cycle is associated with fertility ideas. Even in the arid Pueblo regions it is water from below, welling up from Mother Earth, that appears in the myth, and a water-dwelling being that is the agent of seduction. In South America and the Antilles, where fish-food is important and where the fish and the tortoise are recurring symbols of fertility, it is natural to find the fabled women in this association. And in this connexion it may be well to recall the discoveries of L. Netto on the island of Marajó, at the mouth of the Amazon.[178]There he found two mounds, a greater and a smaller, in such proportion that he regarded them as forming the image of a tortoise. Within the greater, which he regarded as the seat of a chieftain's or chieftainess's residence,—commanding the country in every direction,—he discovered funeral urns and other objects of a quality far superior to those known to tribes of the neighbouring districts,—urns, hominiform in character, many of them highly decorated, and very many of the finestholding the bones of women. "If the tradition of a veritable Amazonian Gyneocraty has ever had anyraison d'être," said Netto, "certainly we see something enough like it in this nation of women ceramists, probably both powerful and numerous, and among whom the women-chiefs enjoyed the highest honours of the country."
"The rites of these infidels are almost the same," says the Padre de Acuña.[179]"They worship idols which they make with their own hands; attributing power over the waters to some, and, therefore, place a fish in their hands for distinction; others they choose as lords of the harvests; and others as gods of their battles. They say that these gods came down from Heaven to be their companions, and to do them good. They do not use any ceremony in worshipping them, and often leave them forgotten in a corner, until the time when they become necessary; thus, when they are going to war, they carry an idol in the bows of their canoes, in which they place their hopes of victory; and when they go out fishing, they take the idol which is charged with dominion over the waters; but they do not trust in the one or the other so much as not to recognize another mightier God."
This seventeenth century description is on the whole true to the results obtained by later observers of the rites and beliefs of the Amazonian Indians. To be sure, a certain amount of interpretation is desirable: theidolosof Acuña are hardly idols in the classical sense; rather they are in the nature of charms, fetishes, ritual paraphernalia, trophies,—all that goes under the name "medicine," as applied to Indian custom. And it is true, too, that in so vast a territory, and among peoples who, although all savages, differ widely in habit of life, there are indefinite variations both in custom and mental attitude. Some tribes are but hunters, fishers, and root-gatherers; others practiceagriculture also. Some are clothed; many are naked. Some practice cannibalism; others abhor the eaters of human flesh. Any student of the miscellaneous observations on the beliefs of the South American wild tribes, noted down by missionaries, officials, naturalists, adventurers, professional ethnologists, will at first surely feel himself lost in a chaos of contradiction. Nevertheless, granted a decent detachment and cool perspective, eventually he will be led to the opinion that these contradictions are not all due to the Indian; the prepossessions and understandings of the observers is no small factor; and even where the variation is aboriginal, it is likely to be in the local colour rather than in the underlying fact. In this broad sense Acuña's free characterization hits the essential features of Indian belief, in the tropical forests.
More than one later writer is in accord with the implicit emphasis which the Padre de Acuña places upon the importance on the food-giving animals and plants in Indian lore and rite. On these food sources in many parts of South America the abundant fish and other fluvial life is primary. Hugo Kunike has indeed, argued that the fish is the great symbol of fertility among the wild forest tribes, supporting the contention with analysis of the dances and songs, fishing customs, ornamentation-motives, and myths of these tribes.[180]Certainly he has shown that the fish plays an outstanding rôle in the imaginative as well as in the economic life of the Indian, appearing, in one group of myths, even as a culture hero and the giver of tobacco. Even more than the fish, the turtle ("the beef of the Amazon"), which is a symbol of generation in many parts of America, appears in Amazonian myth, where in versions of the Hare and the Tortoise (here the Deer replaces the Hare), of the contest of the Giant and the Whale pulling contrari-wise, and in similar fables the turtle appears as the Trickster. So, also, the frog, which appears in magical and cosmogonicalrôles,—as in the Canopus myth narrated by Teschauer, where a man married a frog, and, becoming angered, cut off her leg and cast it intothe river, where the leg became the fishsurubim(Pimelodes tigrinus), while the body rose to heaven to appear in the constellation. The like tale is told by other tribes with respect to Serpens and to the Southern Cross.
But important as water-life is to the Amazonian, it would appear from Père Tastevin's rebuttal of Kunike's contention that the Indian does not regard the fish with any speaking veneration. The truth would seem to be that in South America, as in North, it is the Elders of the Kinds, the ancestral guardians and perpetuators of the various species, both of plants and animals, that are appealed to,—dimly and magically by the tribes lower in intelligence, with conscious ritual by the others. Garcilasso de la Vega's description of the religions of the more primitive stratum of Peruvian times and peoples applies equally to the whole of America: "They venerated divers animals, some for their cruelty, as the tiger, the lion, the bear;... others for their craft, as the monkeys and the fox; others for fidelity, as the dog; for quickness, as the lynx;... eagles and hawks for their power to fly and supply themselves with game; the owl for its power to see in the dark.... They adored the earth, as giving them its fruits; the air, for the breath of life; the fire which warmed them and enabled them to eat properly; the llama which supplied troops of food animals;... the maize which gave them bread, and the other fruits of their country. Those dwelling on the coast had many divinities, but regarded the sea as the most potent of all, calling it their mother, because of the fish which it furnished with which they nourished their lives. All these, in general, venerated the whale because of its hugeness; but beside this, commonly in each province they devoted a particular cult to the fish which they took in greatest abundance, telling a pleasant tale to the effect that the First of all the Fish dwells in the sky, engendering all of its species, and taking care, each season, to send them a sufficiency of its kind for their good." Père Tastevin bears witness to the same belief today: "To be successful in fishing, it isnot to the fish that the Indian addresses himself, but to the mother of the animal he would take. If he goes to fish the turtle, he must first strike the prow of his canoe with the leaf of a small caladium which is calledyurará taya, caladium of the turtle; he will strike in the same fashion the end of his turtle harpoon and the point of his arrow, and often he will carry the plant in his canoe. But let him beware lest he take the first turtle! She is the grandmother of the others; she is of a size which confounds the imagination, and she will drag down with her the imprudent fisherman to the bottom of the waters, where she will give him a fever without recovery. But if he respect her, he will be successful in his fishing for the rest of the day."
Universal among the tropical wild tribes is the love of dancing. In many of the tribes the dances are mask dances, the masks representing animals of all kinds; and the masks are frequently regarded assacra, and are tabu to the women. In other cases, it is just the imitative powers of the child of nature that are called upon, and authorities agree that the Indian can and does imitate every kind of bird, beast, and fish with a bodily and vocal verisimilitude that gives to these dances, where many participate, the proper quality of a pandemonium. Authorities disagree as to the intent of the dancing; it is obvious to all that they are occasions of hilarity and fun; it is evident again that they lead to excitement, and especially when accompanied by the characteristic potations of native liquors, to warlike, sexual, or imaginative enthusiasm. Whether there is conscious magic underlying them (as cannot be doubted in the case of the similar dances of North America) is a matter of difference of opinion, and may well be a matter of differing fact,—the less intellectual tribes following blindly that instinct for rhythm and imitation which, says Aristotle, is native to all men, while with the others the dance has become consciously ritualized. Cook says[181]of the Bororobakororó—a medley of hoots, squeaks, snorts, chirps, growls, and hisses, accompanied with appropriate actions,—that it "is alwayssung on the vesper of a hunting expedition, and seems to be in honor of the animal the savages intend to hunt the following day.... After the singing of thebakororóthat I witnessed, all the savages went outside the great hut, where they cleared a space of black ground, then formed animals in relief with ashes, especially the figure of the tapir, which they purposed to hunt the next day." This looks like magic,—though, to be sure, one need not press thesimilia similibusdoctrine too far: human beings are gifted with imagination and the power of expressing it, and it is perhaps enough to assume that imitative and mask dances, images like to those described, or like the bark-cut figures and other animal signs described by von den Steinen among the Bakairi and other tribes, are all but the natural exteriorization of fantasy, perhaps vaguely, perhaps vividly, coloured with anticipations of the fruits of the chase.
If anything, there seems to be a clearer magical association in rites and games connected with plants than with those that mimic animals. Especially is this true of the manioc, or cassava, which is important not only as a food-giving plant, but as the source of a liquor, and, again, is dangerous for its poison,—which, as Teschauer remarks, must have caused the death of many during the long period in which the use of the plant was developed. Père Tastevin describes men and women gathering about a trough filled with manioc roots, each with a grater, and as they grate rapidly and altogether, a woman strikes up the song: "A spider has bitten me! A spider has bitten me! From under the leaf of thekaráa spider has bitten me!" The one opposite answers: "A spider has bitten me! Bring the cure! Quick, make haste! A spider has bitten me!" And all break in withYandú se suú, by which is understood nothing more than just the rhythmic tom-tom on the grater. Similar is the song of thesudarari—a plant whose root resembles the manioc, which multiplies with wonderful rapidity, and the presence of which in a manioc field is regarded as insuring large manioc roots: "Permit, O patroness, that we sing duringthis beautiful night!" with the refrain, "Sudarari!" This, says Père Tastevin, is the true symbol of the fertility of fields, shared in a lesser way by certain other roots.
It is small wonder that the spirit or genius of the manioc figures in myth, nor is it surprising to find that the predominant myth is based on the motive of the North American Mondamin story. Whiffen remarks, of the north-western Amazonians:[182]"What I cannot but consider the most important of their stories are the many myths that deal with the essential and now familiar details of everyday life in connexion with themanihot utilissimaand other fruits"; and he goes on to tell a typical story: The Good Spirit came to earth, showed the manioc to the Indians, and taught them to extract its evils; but he failed to teach them how the plant might be reproduced. Long afterward a virgin of the tribe, wandering in the woods, was seduced by a beautiful young hunter, who was none other than the manioc metamorphosed. A daughter born of this union led the tribe to a fine plantation of manioc, and taught them how to reproduce it from bits of the stalk. Since then the people have had bread. The more elaborate version of Couto de Magalhães tells how a chief who was about to kill his daughter when he found her to be with child, was warned in a dream by a white man not to do so, for his daughter was truly innocent and a virgin. A beautiful white boy was born to the maiden, and received the name Mani; but at the end of a year, with no apparent sign of ailing, he died. A strange plant grew upon his grave, whose fruit intoxicated the birds; the Indians then opened the grave, and in place of the body of Mani discovered the manioc root, which is thence calledMani-oka, "House of Mani." Teschauer gives another version in which Mani lived many years and taught his people many things, and at the last, when about to die told them that after his death they should find, when a year had passed, the greatest treasure of all, the bread-yielding root.
It is probable that some form of the Mani myth first suggestedto pious missionaries the extension of the legendary journeys of Saint Thomas among the wild tribes of the tropics. From Brazil to Peru, says Granada,[183]footprints and seats ofSanto Tomás Apóstol, orSanto Tomé, are shown; and he associates these tales with the dissemination and cultivation of the all-useful herb, as probably formed by a Christianizing of the older culture myth. Three gifts are ascribed to the apostle,—the treasure of the faith, the cultivation of the manioc, and relief from epidemics. "Keep this in your houses," quoth the saint, "and the divine mercy will never withhold the good." The three gifts—a faith, a food, and a medicine,—are the almost universal donations of Indian culture heroes, and it is small wonder if minds piously inclined have found here a meeting-ground of religions. An interesting suggestion made by Señor Lafone Quevado would make Tupan, Tupa, Tumpa,—the widespread Brazilian name for god,—if not a derivative, at least a cognate form of Tonapa, the culture hero of the Lake Titicaca region, who was certainly identified as Saint Thomas by missionaries and Christian Indians at a very early date. That the myth itself is aboriginal there can be no manner of doubt,—Bochica and Quetzalcoatl are northern forms of it; nor need we doubt that Tupa or Tonapa is a native high deity—in all probability celestial or solar, as Lafone Quevado believes. The union of native god and Christian apostle is but the pretty marriage of Indian and missionary faiths.
One of the most poetical of Brazilian vegetation myths is told by Koch-Grünberg in connexion with the Yurupari festival,—a mask dance (yuruparimeans just "mask" according to Père Tastevin, although some have given it the significance of "demon") celebrated in conjunction with the ripening of fruits of certain palms. Women and small boys are excluded from the fête; indeed, it is death for women even to see the flutes and pipes,—as Humboldt said was true of the sacred trumpet of the Orinoco Indians in his day. The legend turns on the music of the pipes, and is truly Orphic in spirit....Many, many years ago there came from the great Water-House, the home of the Sun, a little boy who sang with such wondrous charm that folk came from far and near to see him and harken. Milómaki, he was called, the Son of Miló. But when the folk had heard him, and were returned home, and ate of fish, they fell down and died. So their kinsfolk seized Milómaki, and built a funeral pyre, and burnt him, because he had brought death amongst them. But the youth went to his death still with song on his lips, and as the flames licked about his body, he sang: "Now I die, my son! now I leave this world!" And as his body began to break with the heat, still he sang in lordly tones: "Now bursts my body! now I am dead!" And his body was destroyed by the flames, but his soul ascended to heaven. From the ashes on the same day sprang a long green blade, which grew and grew, and even in another day had become a high tree, the first paxiuba palm. From its wood the people made great flutes, which gave forth as wonderful melodies as Milómaki had aforetime sung; and to this day the men blow upon them whenever the fruits are ripe. But women and little boys must not look upon the flutes, lest they die. This Milómaki, say the Yahuna, is the Tupana of the Indians, the Spirit Above, whose mask is the sky.