Chapter 14

With such an array of demons surrounding them, it is small marvel that for the Chilean peasant of today the devil is not an interesting person in popular mythology, as Señor Vicuña Cifuentes tells us,[209]playing a rôle altogether inferior to those of the local demons. Beneficent powers are rare in the Araucanian pantheon. Pillan may be regarded in this light, as also Ngúnemapun, a higher power recognized by the Araucans of today, says Guevara, although not mentioned in the older chronicles. He seems to be a doublet of Pillan, and may represent an epithet of this god, or even a still higher power to whom invocations were formerly addressed which the Spaniards supposed to be addressed to Pillan. Like the latter, Ngúnemapun dwells on high mountains, has the power of rendering himself invisible, and is given the customary form of a warrior. Beneficent also is Huitranalhue, friend of strangers and the protector of herds from thieves.

A curious feature of Araucanian religion is the absence of any cult of the sun. Possibly this is due to the fact that the sun was the great deity of their enemies, the Incas; so that even if it had been adored in the primitive period, it might have been degraded after the Incaic defeat on the same principle that caused a Florida tribe to establish a cult of the Devil, because he was the enemy of the Spaniard. The fact that the Araucanians had measured the solar year, which they divided into twelve months of thirty days each, adding five intercalary days or epagomenae, argues a sun-cult. Molina tells us that they began their year immediately after the December solstice, which they called the Head-and-Tail-of-the-Year, while the June solstice was called the Divider-of-the-Year. Dobrizhoffer says that the Picunche, or Moluche (Araucanians), like thePuelche, had no name for God.[210]"These ascribe all the good things they either possess or desire to the sun, and to the sun they pray for them"; and one of their priests, he says, when told of God, said: "Till this hour we never knew nor acknowledged anything greater or better than the sun." This certainly points to the probability that in primitive times the sun was an Araucanian god, though it appears that the moon has assumed the place of celestial importance in the later pantheon. Her ancient name, Anchimalguen, signifies, says Guevara, Woman (i. e., wife)-of-the-Sun; Anchimallen is the contemporary form. She is implored in adversity and praised in prosperity, say the chroniclers. Sometimes Anchimallen is of ill omen, appearing at night in the form of a stray guanaco and luring travellers to vain pursuit; but she also serves to give warning of enemies and to frighten away evil spirits. Molina gives a very interesting suggestion, namely, that all the female powers of the invisible world form a class of beneficent nymphs called Amchi-malghen. "There is not an Araucanian but imagines he has one of these in his service.Nien cai gni Amchi-malghen, 'I keep my nymph still,' is a common expression when they succeed in any undertaking."

The mythic tales of the Araucanians are (judging from somewhat meagre materials) of a class with those prevalent in neighbouring regions,—a cosmogony in which volcanic forces destroy the world by fire, while a deluge causes all to perish save a few who flee to the three-peaked mountain Thegtheg, the Mount of Levin, which moves upon the waters; a hero cycle in which two brothers, Konkel and Pediu, figure as transformers; and there are stories of a Sky-World above, and of seaward Islands of the Dead.[211]One of the most interesting elements of their mythology is their version of the oft-recurring conception of a Way Perilous to the abode of the departed. An old woman, in the form of a whale, bears the soul out to sea; but before his arrival in the Araucanian Hades he is obliged to pay toll for passing a narrow strait, where sits anothermalignant hag who exacts an eye from any poor wretch who has nothing better to pay.

Few peoples have had fame thrust upon them with so little reason as have the Patagonian Indians, and few myths have been more widely credited than that Patagonia was the home of a race of giants. The Tehuelche are, as a matter of fact, men of large size, probably averaging above six feet; and they are noted for the large development, especially of the upper parts of their body. Keane states that they are second in size among South American peoples, being exceeded by the Bororo. Possibly it was due to the fact that the first navigators of this region were men of south Europe, themselves short, which gave rise to the myth of Patagonian giants. Pigafetta,[212]the chief chronicler of Magellan's voyage, says of one of these "giants" that he was "so tall that our heads scarcely came up to his waist," and the anonymous "Genoese pilot" who has left an account of the same navigation reports that where they wintered, in 1520, "there were people like savages, and the men are from nine to ten spans in height, very well made." It is, indeed, possible that the stature of the modern Tehuelche is modified slightly from that of thePatagon, or "Big-Foot" ("the captain named this kind of people Pataghom," wrote Pigafetta); for since the middle of the eighteenth century the Tehuelche have been an equestrian people, living on horseback, one might say; and a recent observer says of them that "the lower limbs are sometimes disappointing, being, in fact, the lower limbs of a race of riders." Such an influence may well have produced a small diminution of the average stature over that at the time of the first observations.

In no other respect is the Patagonian remarkable. The race is divided into two great divisions, the northerly Puelche and the Tehuelche, of Patagonia proper, now both equestrianpeoples. Across the Strait of Magellan, in eastern Tierra del Fuego, dwell the Ona, still a pedestrian branch of the Patagonian race.

The Patagonians are a sluggish and peaceable people, quite self-sufficient when left to themselves, and in the south little influenced by the arts of civilization. Except for the changes which the introduction of horses has brought into their life, the description of the Genoese pilot is essentially true to this day:[213]"They have not got houses; they only go about from one place to another ... and eat meat nearly raw: they are all archers and kill many animals with arrows, and with the skins they make clothes.... Wherever night finds them, there they sleep; they carry their wives along with them with all the chattels they possess."

Accounts of Patagonian religion are all meagre; perhaps because the ideational content of their belief is itself meagre, for authorities agree that they are slow and unimaginative. The little information given by Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan's voyage, has, to be sure, a moving background. Two of the "giants," he says, were lured on shipboard, and there, while being entertained with gauds, were clamped with irons, the intention being to take them for a show to the Castilian king. "When they saw the trick which had been played them, they began to be enraged, and to foam like bulls, crying out very loudSetebos, that is to say, the great devil, that he should help them." It is from this passage that Shakespeare derived his conception of the god of Caliban. Pigafetta adds that the lesser devils, under Setebos, are called Cheleule. "This one who was in the ship with us, told us by signs that he had seen devils with two horns on their heads, and long hair down to their feet, who threw out fire from their mouths and rumps,"—but we can hardly doubt that the navigators' imaginations were here potent interpreters of the signs. Dobrizhoffer's eighteenth century description of Patagonian beliefs is essentially the same as that of Prichard in the twentieth century.[214]"They are all acquainted with the devil, whom they call Balichù [Valichu, Gualichu,are variants found in other sources]. They believe that there is an innumerable crowd of demons, the chief of whom they name El El, and all the inferior ones Quezubû [probably a form of the AraucanianHuecuvu]. They think, however, every kind of demon hostile and mischievous to the human race, and the origin of all evil, regarding them in consequence with dread and abhorrence." Dobrizhoffer goes on to state that the Puelche and the Araucanian Picunche alike revere the Sun, indicating the affinity of the beliefs of the two groups, which are probably at least remotely related. He continues: "The Patagonians call God Soychù [Souchais Pennant's variant], to-wit, that which cannot be seen, which is worthy of all veneration, which does not live in the world; hence they call the deadSoychuhèt, men that dwell with God beyond the world. They seem to hold two principles in common with the Gnostics and Manichaeans, for they say that God created both good and evil demons. The latter they greatly fear, but never worship. They believe every sick person to be possessed of an evil demon; hence their physicians always carry a drum with figures of devils painted on it, which they strike at the beds of sick persons, to drive the evil demon, which causes the disorder, from the body."

Prichard's description adds nothing to this.[215]The religion of the Indians consists "in the old simple beliefs in good spirits and devils, but chiefly devils.... The dominant Spirit of Evil is called Gualicho. And he abides as an ever-present terror behind their strange, free, and superstitious lives. They spend no small portion of their time in either fleeing from his wrath or in propitiating it. You may wake in the dawn to see a band of Indians suddenly rise and leap upon their horses, and gallop away across the pampa, howling and gesticulating. They are merely scaring the Gualicho away from their tents back to his haunts in the Cordillera—the wild and unpenetrated mountains, where he and his subordinate demons groanin chosen spots the long nights through." The Good Spirit of the Tehuelche, says Prichard, is far more quiescent. Long ago he made one effort to benefit mankind, when he created the animals in the caves of "God's Hill" and gave them to his people for food, but since then he has shown little interest in earthly matters. Of the practices of the Tehuelche shaman—perhaps an innovation since the day of Dobrizhoffer—Prichard gives an odd instance, narrated by another white observer: "In the middle of the level white pampa two figures upon galloping horses were visible. As we came nearer we saw that one was a man clothed in achiripaand acapain which brown was the predominating colour. He was mounted on a heavy-necked powerfulcebrunohorse, his stirrups were of silver, and his gear of raw-hide seemed smart and good. As he rode he yelled with all his strength, producing a series of the most horrible and piercing shrieks. But strange as was this wild figure, his companion, victim or quarry, was stranger and more striking still. For on an ancientzainosat perched a little brown maiden, whose aspect was forlorn and pathetic to the last degree. She rode absolutely naked in the teeth of the bitter cold, her breast, face and limbs blotched and smeared with the rash of some eruptive disease, and her heavy-lidded eyes, strained and open, staring ahead across the leagues of empty snow-patched plain. Presently the man redoubled his howls, and bearing down upon thezainoflogged and frightened it into yet greater speed. The whole scene might have been mistaken for some ancient barbaric and revolting form of punishment; whereas, in real truth, it was an anxious Indian father trying, according to his lights, to cure his daughter of measles!" Devils are known to dislike noise and cold, says Prichard; hence, the unlucky patient without a shred to protect her and "the almost incredible uproar made by the old gentleman upon the dark brown horse."

D'Orbigny says[216]of the Tehuelche, "they fear rather than revere their Achekanet-kanet, turn by turn genius of ill and genius of good," and of the Puelche that, like the Patagonians,they believe in a genius of ill, named Gualichu, or Arraken, who sometimes becomes beneficent, without need of prayer. Falkner (cited by King inThe Voyage of the Beagle, vol. ii, p. 161) mentions "at the head of their good deities," Guayarakunny, lord of the dead. "They think," he says, "that the good deities have habitations in vast caverns under the earth, and that when an Indian dies his soul goes to live with the deity who presides over his particular family. They believe that their good deities made the world, and that they first created the Indians in the subterranean caverns above mentioned; gave them the lance, bow and arrows, and the balls [bolas], to fight and hunt with, and then turned them out to shift for themselves. They imagine that the deities of the Spaniards created them in a similar manner, but that, instead of lances, bows, etc., they gave them guns and swords. They say that when the beasts, birds, and lesser animals were created, those of the more nimble kind came immediately out of the caverns; but that the bulls and cows being the last, the Indians were so frightened at the sight of their horns, that they stopped the entrances of their caves with great stones. This is the grave reason why they had no black cattle in their country, till the Spaniards brought them over; who, more wisely, had let them out of their caves."

A more recent account of what is a kindred, if not the same myth is given by Ramon Lista.[216]The creator-hero, in this version, is named El-lal. "El-lal came into the world in a strange way. His father Nosjthej (a kind of Saturn), wishing to devour him, had snatched him from his mother's womb. He owed his rescue to the intervention of theterguerr(a rodent) which carried him away to its cave; this his father tried in vain to enter. After having learned from the famous rodent the properties of different plants and the directions of the mountain-paths, El-lal himself invented the bow and arrow, and with these weapons began the struggle against the wild animals—puma, fox, condor,—and conquered them all. But the fatherreturned. Forgetting the past El-lal taught him how to manipulate the bow and the sling, and joyfully showed him the trophies of the chase—tortoise shells, condor's wings, etc. Nosjthej took up his abode in the cave and soon acted as master of it. Faithful to his fierce instincts, he wanted to kill his son; he followed him across the Andes, but, when on the point of reaching him, he saw a dense forest arise between him and his son. El-lal was saved; he descended to the plain, which meanwhile had become peopled with men. Among them was a giant, Goshy-e, who devoured children; El-lal tried to fight him, but he was invulnerable; the arrows broke against his body. Then El-lal transformed himself into a gadfly, entered the giant's stomach, and wounded him fatally with this sting. It was not until he had accomplished all these feats, and had proved himself a clever huntsman, that El-lal thought of marrying. He asked the hand of the daughter of the Sun, but she did not think him worthy of her and escaped him by a subterfuge. Disenchanted, El-lal decided to leave the earth, where, he considered, his mission was at an end, since man, who had in the meantime appeared in the plain and in the mountain valleys, had learned from him the use of fire, weapons, etc. Borne on the wings of a swan across the ocean towards the east, he found eternal rest in the verdant island which rose among the waves at the places where the arrows shot by him had fallen on the surface of the water."

This cosmogony is of the familiar primitive Indian type. Falkner, in the passage cited, goes on to describe Patagonian beliefs in regard to the fates of human souls: "Some say that the stars are old Indians; that the Milky Way is the field where the old Indians hunt ostriches [more likely, this myth attaches to the Southern Cross, as Guevara says it does with the Indians of Paraguay; and as, in North America, it attaches to the Ursa Major], and that the Magellan clouds are the feathers of the ostriches which they kill. They have an opinion that the creation is not yet exhausted; nor is all of it yet come out to thedaylight of this upper world. The wizards, beating their drums, and rattling their hide bags full of shells or stones, pretend to see into other regions under the earth. Each wizard is supposed to have familiar spirits in attendance, who give supernatural information, and execute the conjurer's will. They believe that the souls of their wizards, after death, are of the number of these demons, called Valichu, to whom every evil, or unpleasant event is attributed."

Mutatis mutandisthis description would apply perfectly to the shamanistic beliefs and practices of the Polar North, and it is not without significance that Prichard is drawn to point the essential analogy between the austral and boreal aborigines of America. Substitute the kayak for the horse, the seal for the guanaco, with such differences in habit as these imply, and the differences of the two peoples (psychologically, for it must be owned that in stature they are antipodes) become slight. Certainly their beliefs are almost identical: a beneficent, but precarious food-giver; a host of spiteful and dangerous powers of wind and weather; a sky-world and an underworld, with hunter-souls pursuing their earthly vocation; fey-sighted wizards and medicine-men with drums. To be sure this represents the foundation stratum of Indian ideas throughout the two Americas, the simplest form of American religious myth; but there is surely a dramatic propriety in finding this simplest form, almost in its first purity, at the wide extremes of the two continents.

Have the conceptions travelled, from pole almost to pole? or are they separate inspirations to a universal human nature from a never vastly varying environmental nature? This is a riddle not easy to solve; for while it is not difficult to imagine unrelated peoples severally framing the notion that men and animals are born out of the womb of Earth or that the image of their own hunting parties is written in the constellations—for, as Molina remarks, more than one people have "regulated the things of heaven by those of the earth,"—still it is odd tofind such particular agreements constant from latitude to latitude throughout a hemisphere.

The Yahgan and Alakaluf tribes of Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent archipelago enjoy the unenviable distinction of being rated as among the lowest of human beings both as to actual culture and possible development. The earlier navigators regarded them as little more than animals—and often, unfortunately, treated them no better. Even Darwin, viewing them with the naturalist's eye, saw little but annoyance in their presence and formed a dismal estimate of their powers. "We were always much surprised at the little notice, or rather none whatever, which was evinced respecting many things, even such as boats, the use of which must have been evident. Simple circumstances,—such as the whiteness of our skins, the beauty of scarlet cloth or blue beads, the absence of women, our care in washing ourselves,—excited their admiration far more than a grand or complicated object, such as the ship."[218]Darwin, however, noted that the Indians had a sense of fairness in trade, and when missionaries settled among them other good qualities appeared. Thomas Bridges, who lived with the Yahgan as missionary for years, wrote of them, in 1891: "We find the natives work well and happily when assured of adequate reward. They shear our sheep, make fences, saw out boards and planks of all kinds, work well with the pick and spade, are good boatmen and pleasant companions." With such a tribute from one who had lived long with them it can hardly be doubted that the Yahgan are better than the common report of them,—indeed, quite the children of nature which the not unaffecting anecdotes of York Minster and Jemmy Button, among the voyages of theBeagle, should lead us to expect.

"Jemmy Button," says Captain Fitzroy,[219]"was very superstitious and a great believer in omens and dreams. He wouldnot talk of a dead person, saying, with a grave shake of the head, 'no good, no good talk; my country never talk of dead man.' While at sea, on board theBeagle, about the middle of the year 1832, he said one morning to Mr. Bynoe, that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Bynoe tried to laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in the Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had died some months previously. He did not forget to remind Mr. Bynoe (his most confidential friend) of their former conversation, and, with a significant shake of the head said, it was 'bad—very bad.' Yet these simple words seemed to express the extent of his sorrow."... Here is surely as good a case of the "veridical" apparition as any Researcher could desire.

"Ideas of a spiritual existence—of beneficent and evil powers," describes the nearest notion Captain Fitzroy could get of Fuegian religion. The powers of evil are especially the powers of wind and weather—naturally enough in a part of the globe world-famous for its bitter gales and treacherous waters. "If anything was said or done that was wrong, in their opinion it was certain to cause bad weather. Even the shooting of young birds, before they were able to fly, was thought a heinous offence. I remember York Minster saying one day to Mr. Bynoe, when he had shot some young ducks with the old bird—'Oh, Mr. Bynoe, very bad to shoot little duck—come wind—come rain—blow—very much blow.'" Primitive as they are, here are moral ideas—-whether one explain, reconditely, the sparing of the young of game as an instinctive conservation of the food supply, or, simply, as due to a natural and chivalrous pity for the helpless young.

Our information in regard to the spirit-beings believed in by the Fuegians is at best nebulous. Captain Fitzroy tells of "a great black man ... supposed to be always wandering aboutthe woods and mountains, who is certain of knowing every word and action, who cannot be escaped, and who influences the weather according to men's conduct," and again of thin wild men, "who have no belly," (surely, the "skeleton men" of the Eskimo and of other North American tribes). Dr. Hyades,[220]in his report of the gleanings of the French Mission to Cape Horn, half a century after the famous expeditions of theAdventureandBeagle, gives a fuller, though still meagre description of these wild folk of Yahgan fancy,—irresistibly reminiscent of the Fog People and the Inland Dwellers of the Eskimo at the other extreme of the hemisphere. The Oualapatou, Wild Men from the West, are ever-present terrors. They are heard in the noises of the night, and hearing them, the Yahgan incontinently flee. These Wild Men, they say, enter their huts at night, cut the throats of the occupants and devour their limbs. From their confused accounts, says Dr. Hyades, it would appear that the Oualapatou are the dead returned to earth to eat the living; they are invisible, except at the moment of seizing their victims, but they are heard imitating the cries of birds and animals. Another class of wild beings are the Kachpikh, fantastic beings that live in desert caves or in thick forests. These, too, are invisible, but they hate man and cause disease and death. Still another class (reported by the Missionary Bridges) are called Hannouch. Some of these are supposed to have an eye in the back of their heads; others are hairless and sleep standing up supported by a tree; they hold in hand a white stone which they hurl with inevitable aim at any object soever, and they sometimes attack and wound men. One man, said to have been stolen away as a child by the Hannouch, was namedHannouchmachaaïnan, "stolen-by-the-Hannouch." Any man who goes off to live by himself is called a Hannouch, while a demented person is regarded as tormented by one of these beings.

The Fuegian's equivalent for the Eskimo's Angakok is the Yakamouch. Bridges' account is quoted by Hyades: "Nearlyevery old man of the people is a Yakamouch, for it is very easy to become one; they are recognizable at a glance from the gray colour of their hair, a colour produced by the daily application of a whitish clay. They make frequent incantations in which they appear to address a mysterious being named Aïapakal; they claim to possess, from a spirit called Hoakils, a supernatural power of life and death; they recount their dreams, and when they have eaten in dream any person, this signifies that that person will die. It is believed that they can draw from the bodies of the sick the cause of their ill, calledaïkouch, visible in the form of an arrow or a harpoon point of flint, which they cause, moreover, to issue from their own stomachs at will.... They seem to believe that these sorcerers can influence the weather for good or bad; they throw shells into the wind to cause it to cease and they give themselves over to incantations and contortions." Women also may be Yakamouch, and there is even a report that formerly none but women professed the art.

The Fuegians are a vanishing people,—even in a vanishing race. They have long and often been cited as a people without religion. After recounting what is here narrated of their beliefs, Dr. Hyades concludes: "In all these legends, we see no reason seriously to admit abeliefin supernatural beings or in a future life, and consequently a religious sentiment, among the Fuegians." This judgement, however, is not wholly supported by the observations of others. According to the fathers of the Salesian mission[221]the Alakaluf believe in "an invisible being called Taquatú, whom they imagine to be a giant who travels by day and night in a big canoe, over the sea and rivers, and who glides as well through the air over the tops of the trees without bending their branches; if he finds any men or women idle or not on the alert he takes them without more ado into his great boat and carries them far away from home." Captain Low, of the Fitzroy expedition, asserted that there was not only a belief in "an immense black man" (Yaccy-ma) responsiblefor all sorts of evil, among the west Patagonian channel natives, but also that they believed in "a good spirit whom they called Yerri Yuppon," invoked in time of distress and danger. On the other point, of belief in a future life, there is no doubt but that the Fuegians recognize some form of ghost, or breath-spirit, which haunts the walks of men. One missionary says of the Yahgan that he thinks that "when a man dies, his breath goes up to heaven"; nothing similar occurs in the case of animals.

Of myth in the legendary form only meagre fragments have been gathered from the Fuegians, and of these the greater part come from the Ona, who are akin to the Tehuelche.[222]According to Ona lore there formerly "lived on earth bearded white men; the sun and moon were then husband and wife; when men began to war, the sun and moon returned to the sky and sent down a red star, the planet Mars, which turned into a giant on the way; the giant killed all men, then made two mountains or clods of clay, from one of which rose the first Ona man and from the other the first Ona woman." The same tribe have a tradition of a cataclysm which separated the island on which they dwell from the mainland. Both the Ona and the Yahgan have traditions of a flood and tales of earth-born men; and each of these peoples has also a mythic hero (Kuanip is the Ona, Oumoara the Yahgan name) concerning whom tales are told. Some of their stories appear to relate to historical transformations in the mode of tribal life, as the tradition (maintained by both tribes) that in former times the women were the tribal rulers, that the men rebelled, and invented initiation rites and the ruse of masked spirits in order to keep the women in subjection—a type of myth which, however, is rather more plausibly of an aetiological than of an historical character. In the main, nature is the theme of mythic thought, and there is perhaps no more unique a group of ideas among these peoples of the Far South than the Yahgan conception of the relations of the celestial beings: the moon, they say, is the wife of the rainbow,while the sun is elder brother to the moon and to shining Venus.

There is much in the culture and fancies of these peoples of austral America to recall the culture and fancies of their remote kinsmen of the Polar North. The two Americas measure, as it were, the longitude of human habitation, marked off zone by zone into every variety of climate and terrain to which men's lives can be accommodated. Moreover, the native peoples of this New World show a oneness of race nowhere else to be found over so great an area; so that, in spite of differences in culture almost as great as those which mark the heights and depths of human condition in the more anciently peopled hemisphere, there is a recognizable unity binding together Eskimo and Aztec, Inca and Yahgan. Now what is surely most impressive is that this unity is best represented neither by physical appearance nor material achievement (where, indeed, the differences are most magnified), but by a conservation of ideas and of the symbolic language of myth which is at bottom one. Not that there is any single level of thought common to all, for there is surely a world of intelligence between the imaginative splendour of Mayan art and science and tradition and the dimly haunted soul of the Fuegian who "supposes the sun and moon, male and female, to be very old indeed, and that some old man, who knew their maker, had died without leaving information on this subject";[223]but that no matter what the failure to build or the erosion of superstructure, or indeed no matter what the variety of superstructures as, for example, made apparent in the characteristic colours of North American and South American mythologies, there is stillau fonda single racial complexion of mind, with a recognizable kinship of the spiritual life. Through vast geographical distances, among peoples long mutually forgotten if ever mutually known, in every variety of natural garb, polar and tropical, forest and sea, this kinship persists, not favoured by, but in spite of, environmentsthe most changing. It is not necessary here invariably to assume migrations of ideas, passed externally from tribe to tribe, although evidence of these, recent and remote, is frequent enough; it is not sufficient to postulate merely the psychical unity of our common human nature, although this, too, is a factor which we should not neglect; but along with these we may reasonably conceive that the American race, through its long isolation, even in its most tenuously connected branches retains a certain deep communion of thought and feeling, a lasting participation in its own mode of insight and its own quest of inspiration, which unites it across the stretches of time and space. The arctic tern is said to summer in the two polar zones, arctic and antarctic, trued to its enormous flight by the most mystifying of all animal instincts. Perhaps it is some human instinct as profound and as mystifying which joins in one thought the scattered peoples of the two continents, charting in modes more subtle than their obvious forms can suggest the impulses which lead men to see their environmental world not as their physical eyes perceive it, but, belied by their eyes, as inner and whispering voices proclaim it to be.

[1]That there is an ultimate community of culture and thought between the Andean and Mexican regions can hardly be doubted. Furthermore, it is not merely primitive, but belongs to an era of some advancement in the arts. Spinden (Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America[New York, 1917], and elsewhere) has termed the early stage the "archaic period," and he plausibly argues for its Mexican origination and southward migration. But at any rate since near the beginning of the Christian Era the civilizations of the two regions have developed in virtual independence.

[2]The most admirable general introduction to the whole subject of American ethnography is Wissler,The American Indian(New York, 1917).

[3]The transition from the Antilles to Guiana is, however, rather more marked than is that from the Orinoco to the Amazonian regions. Virtually the whole South American region bounded by the Andes, the Caribbean Sea, and the Argentinian Pampas is one ethnographically; so that, in the present work, Chapters VIII and IX are descriptive of a single region. However, the great rivers have always been natural routes of exploration, and this has given to the river systems an ethnographically factitious, but bibliographically real differentiation.

[4]Wm. Henry Brett,Legends and Myths of the Aboriginal Indians of British Guiana(London, no date).

[5]For a history of this interesting movement in certain phases of European culture see Gilbert Chinard,L'Exotisme américain(Paris, 1911).

[6]Among early writers on Antillean religion the most important are Christopher Columbus, Ramon Pane, and Peter Martyr d'Anghiera. Columbus left Fray Ramon Pane in Haiti with instructions to report on the religious beliefs of the natives; and in Fernando Columbus'sHistorie, ch. lxii, Pane's narrative is incorporated, introduced by a brief quotation from Christopher Columbus, describing Zemiism.After Pane, the account of Haitian religion in Peter Martyr's "First Decade" is the most important source, although Benzoni, Gómara, Herrera, Las Casas, and Oviedo give additional or corroborative information. Of recent writings those of J. W. Fewkes, embodying the results of careful archaeological studies, form the most important contribution. Part ii of Joyce'sCentral American and West Indian Archaeologygives a general survey of the field, which is more briefly treated in livre ii, 3e partie, of Beuchat'sManuel, and in its comparative aspects by Wissler,The American Indian.

[7]Beuchat, Joyce [a], and Fewkes [b] describe the condition of the Antilleans at the time of the discovery as reconstructed from early accounts and archaeological investigations. Of the early writings, the descriptions of Las Casas are the most detailed. The use ofTaïnoto designate the island Arawakan tribes follows Fewkes [b], p. 26: "Among the first words heard by the comrades of Columbus when they landed in Guadeloupe were 'Taïno! taïno!'—'Peace! peace!' or 'We are friends.' The designation 'taïno' has been used by several writers as a characteristic name for the Antillean race. Since it is both significant and euphonious, it may be adopted as a convenient substitute for the adjective 'Antillean' to designate a cultural type. The author applies the term to the original sedentary people of the West Indies, as distinguished from the Carib." The incident to which reference is made is described inSelect Letters of Columbus (HS), p. 28. It is perhaps worth while to note that Peter Martyr (tr. MacNutt, i. 66, 81) says thattaïnosignifies "a virtuous man." The wordcarib, caniba,is the source of ourcannibal. It is possible that it means "man-eater" and is of Taïno origin. Columbus, in theJournalof the first voyage (tr. Bourne, p. 223), is authority for the statement that "Carib" is the Hispaniolan form of the name. Im Thurn (p. 163) says that the Guiana Carib call themselvesCarinya, which would seem to show that the word is an autonym, in which case it may mean, as Herrera says (III. v), "valiant." It is rather curious, if the insular Carib were the inveterate cannibals the earlier writers make them to be, that those of the mainland should have held the practice in abhorrence, for which we have Humboldt's statement,Voyage(tr. Ross, ii. 413).

[8]A term of some interest iscacique, which is generally regarded as Haitian in origin, being, says Peter Martyr (tr. MacNutt, i. 82) their word for "king." Bastian, however, affirms that it is Arabic (ii. 293, note): "Das Wort Cazique ist nicht amerikanisch, sino arabigo, usado entre los alarabes de Africa en el Reyno de Mazagan, con el qual nombran al principal y cabeças de los aduares, como tambien le nombran Xeque (meint Simon)."

[9]The literature of the discovery is summarized by Beuchat,"Bibliographie," ch. iv. Christopher Columbus'sLettersandJournal, tr. Major, Markham, and Bourne, are here quoted.

[10]The question of Amazons (cf.infra,Ch. IX, i), is a curious commingling of Old and New World myth, with, perhaps, some foundation in primitive custom, especially linguistic. Thus Beuchat, p. 509 (citing Raymond Breton and Lucien Adam; cf. also Ballet, citing du Tertre, pp. 398-99), states that the Caribs of the Isles had separate vocabularies, in part at least, for men and women, and that the women's speech contained a majority of Arawak words. This argument should not be pushed too far, however, for there are a number of South American languages with well-differentiated man-tongue and woman-tongue, where a similar origin of the difference is not shown. On his first voyage Columbus (letters to de Santangel and Sanchez), though he did not meet them, heard of "ferocious men, eaters of human flesh, wearing their hair long like women." On the second voyage—as described by Chanca in his "Letter to the Chapter of Seville" (Select Letters)—the Caribs were encountered and found to be holding in slavery many Taïno women: "In their attacks upon the neighbouring islands, these people capture as many of the women as they can, especially those who are young and beautiful, and keep them as concubines; and so great a number do they carry off, that in fifty houses no men were to be seen" (p. 31). It is added that the Caribs ate the children born of these captive women (a custom ascribed also to some South American cannibalistic tribes); but as it is said in the same connexion that captive boys were not devoured until they grew up, "for they say that the flesh of boys and women is not good to eat," the story is scarcely plausible. Herrera repeats that the Caribs ate no women, but kept them as slaves, in association with the statement that the natives of Dominica ate a friar, and dying of a flux caused by his flesh, gave over their cannibalism. These stories seem to point to a ritualistic element in the cannibalism, for to the Carib the flesh of warriors was the only man's meat. Of course, in the notion of Amazons there was an element of myth as well as of custom, and the myth was certainly known to Columbus, if we may trust the authenticity (and there is small reason to doubt it) of the paragraph with which Ramon Pane's narrative is introduced. For the myth in question seesupra, pp.31-32, and cf. Pane, chh. iii-v.

[11]The story of the search for the Fountain of Youth and of the colony of Antillean Indians in Florida is to be found in Fontaneda, pp. 17-19. The influence of Antillean culture has been traced well to the north of Florida, where it may have been extended by the pre-Muskhogean population; see also Herrera, III. v.

[12]The story of Hathvey, or Hatuey, is given by Fewkes [b], pp. 211-12, and by Joyce [a], p. 244; its source is Las Casas [a], III. xxv.

[13]West Indian idolatry, called Zemiism, is earliest described in the passage attributed to Christopher Columbus (Fernando Columbus, ch. lxi); other authorities here quoted are Benzoni, pp. 78-80; Peter Martyr, "First Decade," ix (tr. MacNutt, i. 167-78); Ramon Pane, ch. xix-xxiv (tr. Pinkerton, xii. 87-89); and Las Casas [b], chh. clxvi-vii; cf. also Fewkes, especially [b], [e], Joyce [a], and Beuchat.

[14]The most interesting artifacts from the Antilles are the stone rings, triangles, and elbows, which must be regarded as certainly ritualistic in character, and probably as used in fertility rites. This is not only indicated by Columbus and Ramon Pane, but is supported by numerous analogies. Ramon Pane (ch. xix) says: "The stonecemisare of several sorts: some there are which, they say, the physicians take out of the body of the sick, and those they look upon as best to help women in labour. Others there are that speak, which are shaped like a long turnip, with the leaves long and extended, like the shrub-bearing capers. Those leaves, for the most part, are like those of the elm. Others have three points, and they think they cause the yucca to thrive." It is perhaps not far-fetched to see in the triangular stones analogues of the mountain-man images of the Tlaloque in Mexico, or of the similar images from South America, certainly used in connexion with rain ceremonies. Very likely separate forms were employed for different plants, as maize or yucca. The stone rings, again, could very reasonably be those which were supposed to help women in labour, as seems to have been the case with the analogous rings and yokes from Yucatan (see Fewkes,25 ARBE, pp. 259-61). Even if the two types of stones were combined, as seems altogether likely, at least for magic and divination, there is congruity in the relationship of both types to fertility, animal and vegetable respectively. Señor J. J. Acosta has suggested that the Antillean stone rings represent the bodies, and the triangular stones the heads, of serpents; and this is not without plausibility in view of the frequency with which serpents are regarded as fertility emblems. It may be worth recalling, too, that an Antillean name for doctor, or medicine-man, signified "serpent."

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