"I could discover," he says, "neither idolatry nor any othersect among them, though every one of their kings ... has a house apart from the town, in which there is nothing at all but some wooden images carved by them, calledcemis; nor is there anything done in those houses but what is for the service of thosecemis, they repairing to perform certain ceremonies, and pray there, as we do to our churches. In these houses they have a handsome round table, made like a dish, on which is some powder which they lay on the head of thecemiswith a certain ceremony; then through a cane that has two branches, clapped to their nose, they snuff up this powder: the words they say none of our people understand. This powder puts them beside themselves, as if they were drunk. They also give the image a name, and I believe it is their father's or grandfather's, or both; for they have more than one, and some above ten, all in memory of their forefathers.... The people and caciques boast among themselves of having the bestcemis. When they go to these, theircemis, they shun the Christians, and will not let them go into those houses; and if they suspect they will come, they take away theircemisand hide them in the woods for fear they should be taken from them; and what is most ridiculous, they used to steal one another'scemis. It happened once that the Christians on a sudden rushed into the house with them, and presently thecemicried out, speaking in their language, by which it appeared to be artificially made; for it being hollow they had applied a trunk to it, which answered to a dark corner of the house covered with boughs and leaves, where a man was concealed who spoke what the cacique ordered him. The Spaniards, therefore, reflecting on what it might be, kicked down thecemi, and found as has been said; and the cacique, seeing they had discovered his practice, earnestly begged of them not to speak of it to his subjects, or the other Indians, because he kept them in obedience by that policy."
This, the great Admiral quaintly concedes, "has some resemblance to idolatry." In fact, his description points clearlyto well-developed cults: there are temples, with altars, idols, oracles, and priests, and there is even a shrewd adaptation of religion to politics—the certain mark of sophistication in matters of cult. Benzoni, who visited the Indies some fifty years after their discovery, says of the islanders: "They worshipped, and still worship, various deities, many painted, others sculptured, some formed of clay, others of wood, or gold, or silver.... And although our priests still daily endeavour to destroy these idols, yet the ministers of their faith keep a great many of them hidden in caves and underground, sacrificing to them occultly, and asking in what manner they can possibly expel the Christians from their country." Idols of gold and silver have not been preserved to modern times, but examples in stone and wood and baked clay are in present-day collections, and one, at least, of the wooden images has a hollow head, open at the back for the reception of the speaking-tube by which the priest conveyed the wisdom of his cacique. A peculiar type of Antillean cultus-image, mentioned by Peter Martyr, among others, was made of "plaited cotton, tightly stuffed inside," though its use seems to have been rather in connexion with funeral rites (perhaps as apotropaic fetishes) than in worship of nature-powers.
The work of archaeologists, especially in the Greater Antilles, has brought to light many curious objects certainly connected with the old Antillean cults. There are idols and images, ranging in height from near three feet to an inch or so; and the latter, often perforated, were used, perhaps, as Peter Martyr describes: "When they are about to go into battle, they tie small images representing little demons upon their foreheads." There are, again, masks and grotesque faces, sometimes cunningly carved, sometimes crude pictographs. Most characteristic are the triangular stones with a human or an animal face on one side; the stone collars or yokes, some slender and some massive in construction, but all representing laborious toil; and the "elbow stones" with carved panels—objectsof which the true use and meaning is forgotten, though their connexion with cult is not to be doubted.[14]Possibly a hint of their meaning is to be found in the narrative of Columbus, which, after describing thezemis, goes on to say: "Most of the caciques have three great stones also, to which they and their people show a great devotion. The one they say helps corn and all sorts of grain; the second makes women be delivered without pain; and the third procures rain and fair weather, according as they stand in need of either."
PLATE II.
PLATE II.
Antillean triangular carved stones, lateral and top views. In addition to the grotesque masks, limbs are clearly indicated. For reference to their probable significance, see pages23-24and note14. After 25ARBE, Plates XLVI and XLIX.
From the namezemi(variously spelt by the older writers), applied to the Antillean cult-images, the aboriginal faith of this region has come to be calledzemiism; and it is not difficult, from the descriptions left us, to reconstruct its general character. "They believe," says Peter Martyr, "that thezemessend rain or sunshine in response to their prayers, according to their needs. They believe thezemesto be intermediaries between them and God, whom they represent as one, eternal, omnipotent, and invisible. Each cacique has hiszemes, which he honours with particular care. Their ancestors gave to the supreme and eternal Being two names, Iocauna and Guamaonocon. But this supreme Being was himself brought forth by a mother, who has five names, Attabeira, Mamona, Guacarapita, Iella, and Guimazoa." Here we have the typical American Indian conception of Mother Earth and Father Sky and a host of intermediary powers, deriving their potency in some dim way from the two great life-givers. In the namezemiitself is perhaps an indication of the animistic foundation of the religion, for by some authorities it is held to mean "animal" or "animal-being," while others see in it a corruption ofguami, "ruler"—a source which would ally it with one of the terms for the Supreme Being as given by Peter Martyr; for Guamaonocon is interpreted as meaning "Ruler of the Earth."
Other appellations of the Sky Father, who "lives in the sun," are Jocakuvague, Yocahu, Vague, and Maorocon orMaorocoti; while Fray Ramon Pane gives names for the Earth Mother closely paralleling Peter Martyr's list: Atabei ("First-in-Being"), Iermaoguacar, Apito, and Zuimaco. Guabancex was a goddess of wind and water, and had two subordinates, Guatauva, her messenger, and Coatrischie, the tempest-raiser. Yobanua-Borna was a rain-deity whose shrine was in a cavern, and who likewise had two subordinates, or ministers. The Haitians are said to have made pilgrimages to a cave in which were kept two statues of wood, gods again of rain, or of sun and rain; and it is likely that the double-figure images preserved from this region are representations of these or of some other pair of Antillean twin deities. Baidrama, or Vaybrama, was also seemingly a twinned divinity, and clearly was the strength-giver: "They say," Fray Ramon tells us, "in time of wars he was burnt, and afterwards being washed with the juice of yucca, his arms grew out again, his body spread, and he recovered his eyes"; and the worshippers of the god bathed themselves in the sap of the yucca when they desired strength or healing. Otherzemismentioned by Pane are Opigielguoviran, a dog-like being which plunged into a morass when the Spaniards came, never to be seen again; and Faraguvaol, a beam or tree-trunk with the power of wandering at will. Here there seems to be indication of a vegetation-cult, which is borne out by Pane's description of the way in which woodenzemiswere made—strikingly analogous to West African fetish-construction: "Those of wood are made thus: when any one is travelling he says he sees some tree that shakes its root; the man, in great fright, stops and asks who he is; it answers, 'My name is Buhuitihu [a name for priest, or medicine-man],[15]and he will inform you who I am.' The man repairing to the said physician, tells him what he has seen. The wizard, or conjurer, runs immediately to see the tree the other has told him of, sits down by it and makes itcogioba[an offering of tobacco].... He stands up, gives it all its titles, as if it were some great lord, and asks of it, 'Tellme who you are, what you do here, what you will have with me, and why you send for me? Tell me whether you will have me cut you, whether you will go along with me, and how you will have me carry you; and I will build you a house and endow it.' Immediately that tree, orcemi, becomes an idol, or devil, answers, telling how he will have him do it. He cuts it into such a shape as he is directed, builds his house, and endows it; and makescogiobafor it several times in the year, whichcogiobais to pray to it, to please it, to ask and know of the saidcemiwhat good or evil is to happen, and to beg wealth of it."
In such descriptions we get our picture of zemiism, a religion rising above the animism which was its obvious source, becoming predominantly anthropomorphic in its representations of superhuman beings, yet showing no signs of passing from crude fetish-worship to that symbolic use of images which marks the higher forms of idolatry. The ritual was apparently not bloody—offerings of tobacco, the use of purges and narcotics inducing vision and frenzy, and the dramatic dances, orareitos, which marked all solemn occasions and the great seasons of life, such as birth and marriage and death—these were the important features.Oblatio sacrificiorum pertinet ad jus naturale,says Las Casas (quoting St. Thomas Aquinas) in his description of Haitian rites; and to the law of man's nature may surely be ascribed that impulse which caused the Antillean to make his offerings to Heaven and Earth and to the powers that dwell therein.
Nor was he forgetful of the potencies within himself. With his nature-worship was a closely associated ancestor-worship. When they can no longer see the reflection of a person in the pupil of the eye, the soul is fled, say the Arawak—fled to become azemi. The early writers all dwell upon this belief in the potency and propinquity of the souls of the departed. They are shut up by day, but walk abroad by night, says Fray Ramon; and sometimes they return to their kinsmen inthe form of Incubi: "thus it is they know them: they feel their belly, and if they cannot find their navel, they say they are dead; for they say the dead have no navel." The navel is the symbol of birth and of the attachment of the body to its life; hence the dead, though they may possess all other bodily members, lack this; and the Indians have, says Pane, one name for the soul in the living body and another for the soul of the departed.
The bones of the dead, especially of caciques and great men, enclosed sometimes in baskets, sometimes in plaited cotton images, were regarded as powerful fetishes; and from what is told us of the funeral ceremonies certain beliefs may be inferred. The statement by Columbus, already quoted, closes with an account of some such rites: "When these Indians die, they have several ways of performing their obsequies, but the manner of burying their caciques is thus: they open and dry him at the fire, that he may keep whole. Of others they take only the head, others they bury in a grot or den, and lay a calabash of water and bread on his head; others they burn in the house where they die, and when they are at the last gasp, they suffer them not to die but strangle them; and this is done to caciques. Others are turned out of the house, and others put them into a hammock, which is their bed, laying bread and water by their head, never returning to see them any more. Some that are dangerously ill are carried to the cacique, who tells them whether they are to be strangled or not, and what he says is done. I have taken pains to find out what it is they believe, and whether they know what becomes of them after they are dead," and the answer was that "they go to a certain vale, which every great cacique supposes to be in his country, where they affirm they find their parents and all their predecessors, and that they eat, have women, and give themselves up to pleasures and pastimes." This is very much the belief of all the primitive world, but it has one interesting feature. The strangling of caciques and of thosenamed by caciques clearly indicates that there was a belief in a different fate for men who die by nature and men who die with the breath of life not yet exhausted; quite likely it was some Valhalla reserved for the brave, such as the Norseman found who escaped the "straw death," or the Aztec warrior whom Tonatiuh snatched up into the mansions of the Sun.
"I ordered," says Columbus, "one Friar Ramon, who understood their language, to set down all their language and antiquities"; and it is to this Fray Ramon Pane, "a poor anchorite of the order of St. Jerome," as he tells us, that thanks are due for most of what is preserved of Taïno mythology. The myths which he gathered are from the island of Haiti, or Hispaniola, but it is safe to assume that they represent cycles of tales shared by all the Taïno peoples. They believe, says the friar, in an invisible and immortal Being, like Heaven, and they speak of the mother of this heaven-son, who was called, among other names, Atabei, "the First-in-Existence." "They also know whence they came, the origin of the sun and moon, how the sea was made, and whither the dead go."
The earliest Indians appeared, according to the legend, from two caverns of a certain mountain of Hispaniola—"most of the people that first inhabited the island came out of Cacibagiagua," while the others emerged from Amaiauva (it is altogether likely that the two caves represent two races or tribal stocks). Before the people came forth, a watchman, Marocael, guarded the entrances by night; but, once delaying his return into the caves until after dawn, the sun transformed him into a stone; while others, going a-fishing, were also caught by the sun and were changed into trees. As for the sun and moon, they, too, came from a certain grotto, called Giovava, to which, says Fray Ramon, the Indians paidgreat veneration, having it all painted "without any figure, but with leaves and the like"; and keeping in it two stonezemiswhich looked "as if they sweated"; to these they went when they wanted rain.
PLATE III.
PLATE III.
Antillean stone ring, of the ovate type, with carved panels. Stone rings, or "collars," form one of the types of symbolic stones from this region the significance of which has so profoundly puzzled archaeologists. Reference to their possible meaning will be found on page24and note14. there referred to. The specimen here figured is in the Museum of the American Indian, New York. Joyce (Central American Archaeology, pages 189-91) interprets the design as a human figure. The disks on either side of the head are ear-plugs; arms and hands may be seen supporting them; the pit between the elbows is the umbilicus; while the legs are represented by the upper segments of the decorated panels exterior to the disks.
The story of the origin of the sea is a little more complex. In introducing the tale, Fray Ramon says: "I, writing in haste and not having paper enough, could not place everything rightly.... Let us now return to what we should have said first, that is, their opinion concerning the origin and beginning of the sea." There was a certain man, Giaia, whose son, Giaiael ("Giaia's son"), undertook to kill his father, but was himself slain by the parent, who put the bones into a calabash, which he hung in the top of his house. One day he took the calabash down, and looking into it, an abundance of fishes, great and small, came forth, since into these the bones had changed. Later on, while Giaia was absent, there came to his house four sons, born at a birth from a certain woman, Itiba Tahuvava, who was cut open that they might be delivered—"the first that they cut out was Caracaracol, that is, 'Mangy.'" These four brothers took the calabash and ate of the fish, but seeing Giaia returning, in their haste they replaced it badly, with the result that "there ran so much water from it as overflowed all the country, and with it came out abundance of fish, and hence they believe the sea had its origin." Fray Ramon goes on to tell how, the four brothers being hungry, one of them begged cassaba bread of a certain man, but was struck by him with tobacco. Thereupon his shoulder swelled up painfully; and when it was opened, a live female tortoise issued forth—"so they built their house and bred up the tortoise."
"I understood no more of this matter, and what we have writ signifies but little," continues the friar; yet to the modern reader the tales have all the marks of a primitive cosmogony, a cosmogony having many analogues in similar tales from the two Americas. The notion of a cave or caves from whichthe parents of the human race and of the animal kinds issue to people the world is ubiquitous in America; so, too, is the notion of an age of transformations, in which beings were altered from their first forms. Peter Martyr, who tells the same stories in résumé, as he says, of Pane's manuscript, adds a number of interesting details; as that after the metamorphosis of Marocael, or Machchael, as Martyr calls him, the First Race were refused entrance into the caves when the sun rose "because they sought to sin," and so were transformed—a moral element which recalls similar motifs in Pueblo myths. But perhaps the most striking analogies are with the cosmogonies of the Algonquian and Iroquoian stocks. The four Caracarols (caracol, "shell," pluralcacaracol, is the evident derivation), one of whom was called "Mangy," recall the Stone Giants, and again recall the twins or (as in a Potawatomi version) quadruplets whose birth causes their mother's death, while the tortoise cut from the shoulder (Martyr says it was a woman by whom the brothers successively became fathers of sons and daughters) is at least suggestive of the cosmogonic turtle of North American myth. In the flood-legend, the idea of fishes being formed from bones is remotely paralleled by the Eskimo conception of the creation of fishes from the finger-bones of the daughter of Anguta; and Benzoni tells how, in his day, the Haitians still had a pumpkin as a relic, "saying that it had come out of the sea with all the fish in it."
In the order of his narrative—though not, apparently, in the order in which he deemed the events ought to lie—Fray Ramon follows the story of the emergence of the First People from caves with the adventures of a hero whom he calls Guagugiana, but whom Peter Martyr terms Vagoniona. It is easy to recognize in this hero an example of the demiurgic Trickster-Transformer so common in American myth. Like the Trickster elsewhere, he has a servant or comrade, Giadruvava, and the first story that Pane tells is one of which we would fain have a fuller version, for even the fragmentarysketch of it is full of poetic suggestion. Guagugiana, it seems, was one of the cave-dwellers of the First Race. One day he sent forth his servant to seek a certain cleansing herb, but, as Pane has it, "the sun took him by the way, and he became a bird that sings in the morning, like the nightingale"; to which Peter Martyr adds that "on every anniversary of his transformation he fills the night air with songs, bewailing his misfortunes and imploring his master to come to his help."
In this tale, slender as it is, there is an element of unusual interest, fortified by various other allusions to Antillean beliefs. It would appear that the First People, the cave-dwellers, were of the nature of spirits or souls, and that the Sun was the true Transformer, whose strength-giving rays gave to each, as it emerged to light, the form which it was to keep. The disembodied soul (opia) haunts the night, moreover, as if night were its native season; in the day it is powerless, and men have no fear of it. Surely it is a beautiful myth which makes of the night-bird's song a longing for the free life of the spirit, or at least an expression of the feeling of kinship with the spirit-world.
The tale goes on to tell how Guagugiana, lamenting his lost comrade, resolved to go forth from the cave in which the First People dwelt. Yet he went not alone, for he called to the women: "Leave your husbands! Let us go into other countries, where we shall get jewels enough! Leave your children; we will come again for them; carry only herbs with you." The women, abandoning all save their nursing children (as Peter Martyr tells), followed Guagugiana to the island of Matenino, and there he left them; but the children he took away and abandoned them beside a brook—or perhaps, as Martyr implies, he brought them back and left them on the shore of the sea—where, starving, they cried, "Toa, toa," which is to say, "Milk, milk!" "And they thus crying and begging of the earth, saying, 'toa, toa,' like one that very earnestly begs a thing, they were transformed into little creatureslike dwarfs, and calledtona, because of their begging the earth." Martyr's more prosaic version says that they were transformed into frogs; but both authorities agree that this is how the men came to be left without wives; and doubtless it is this myth from which Columbus gained at least a part of his notion of the Amazon-like women "who dwell alone in the island of Matenino."
Other episodes in the career of Guagugiana, which Pane recounts in a confused way, are his going to sea with a companion whom he tricked into looking for precious shells and then threw overboard; his finding of a woman of the sea who taught him a cure for the pox; this woman's name was Guabonito, and she taught him the use of amulets and of ornaments of white stone and of gold. Peter Martyr's variant says: "He is supposed to go to meet a beautiful woman, perceived in the depths of the sea, from whom are obtained the white shells called by the nativescibas, and other shells of a yellowish colour calledguianos, of both of which they make necklaces; the caciques, in our own time, regard these trinkets as sacred." In this there is a striking suggestion of the Pueblo myths of the White-Shell Woman of the East and of the sea-dwelling Guardian of the yellow shells of the West; and it is quite to be inferred that the regard in which the caciques held these objects was due to a ritual and magical significance analogous to that which we know in the Pueblos.
"The Spaniards," says Peter Martyr,[17]"lived for some time in Hispaniola without suspecting that the islanders worshipped anything else than the stars, or that they had any kind of religion,... but after mingling with them for some years ... many of the Spaniards began to notice among them divers ceremonies and rites." These ceremonies are calledareitos, orareytos, by the Spanish writers; and from the earlydescriptions it is obvious that they were rites of the typical American kind, dramatic dances or mysteries performed in the great crises of national and personal life, or in the changes and climaxes of that course of the seasons, which is the life of Nature. As in the case of myths, so in the case of rites, it is chiefly those of Haiti which are described for us; but there is little reason to doubt that these are typical of all the Greater Antilles.
Birth, marriage, death, going to war, curing the sick, initiation, and puberty rites all seem to have had their appropriate ceremonies. Songs played an important part in these ceremonies; indeed, the wordareitois frequently restricted to funeral chants, or elegies in praise of heroes. But the chief rite known to us, and, we may feel assured, the chief rite of the whole Taïno culture, was the ceremony in honour of the Earth Goddess. This ceremony, as celebrated by the Haitians, is described by both Benzoni and Gómara with some detail. Gómara's account is as follows:[18]
"When the cacique celebrated the festival in honour of his principal idol, all the people attended the function. They decorated the idol very elaborately; the priests arranged themselves like a choir about the king, and the cacique sat at the entrance of the temple with a drum at his side. The men came painted black, red, blue, and other colours or covered with branches and garlands of flowers, or feathers and shells, wearing shell bracelets and little shells on their arms and rattles on their feet. The women also came with similar rattles, but naked, if they were maids, and not painted; if married, wearing only breechcloths. They approached dancing, and singing to the sound of the shells, and as they approached the cacique he saluted them with a drum. Having entered the temple, they vomited, putting a small stick into their throat, in order to show the idol that they had nothing evil in their stomach. They seated themselves like tailors and prayed with a low voice. Then there approached many women bearingbaskets and cakes on their heads and many roses, flowers, and fragrant herbs. They formed a circle as they prayed and began to chant something like an old ballad in praise of the god. All rose to respond at the close of the ballad; they changed their tone and sang another song in praise of the cacique, after which they offered the bread to the idol, kneeling. The priests took the gift, blessed, and divided it; and so the feast ended, but the recipients of the bread preserved it all the year and held that house unfortunate and liable to many dangers which was without it."
In this rite it is easy to recognize a festival in honour of a divinity of fertility, probably a corn deity, or perhaps a goddess who is the mother of corn spirits. Benzoni says of the Haitians that "they worshipped two wooden figures as the gods of abundance, and at some periods of the year many Indians went on a pilgrimage to them." These may be the twozemisof the painted grotto of the Sun and the Moon, mentioned by Ramon Pane and Peter Martyr, for the latter says that "they go on pilgrimages to that cavern just as we go to Rome"; but it is certain that they were associated with agriculture, since it was to them that prayers were made for rain and fruitfulness. In an interesting old picture, printed in Picart, the rite of the Earth Goddess is represented, much as described by Gómara and Benzoni. The goddess herself is shown with several heads, each that of a different animal, and near her are two lesser idols of grotesque form. It is possible that the Earth was conceived as the mother of all life, animal as well as vegetable, and that her two attendants represented yucca and maize, the two principal food plants of the Antilleans. Some authorities regard the chief of the Taïno gods, the son of the great First-in-Being, as a yucca spirit; and, indeed, the name of the plant appears to enter into such forms as Iocauna, Jocakuvague, Yocahuguama. Yet it is little likely that we shall ever have certainty on this point, for of the poems which, Peter Martyr tells us, the sons ofchiefs sang to the people on feast days, in the form of sacred chants, none are preserved to us.
PLATE IV.
PLATE IV.
Dance, or Areito, of the Haitian Indians in honor of the Earth Goddess. The ceremony is described by both Benzoni and Gómara, the latter's description being quoted in this volume, pages33-34. After the drawing in Picart,The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the known World, London, 1731-37, Plate No. 78.
That the Taïno had, besides these great public festivals, rites for the individual also is abundantly witnessed in the old books. Like all American Indians, they were mystics and vision-seekers. Benzoni says that when the doctors wished to cure a man who was ill, he was lulled into unconsciousness by tobacco smoke, and "on returning to his senses he told a thousand stories of his having been at the council of the gods and other high visions"—a description which recalls im Thurn's account of his own experiences in the hands of an Arawakpeaiman.[19]Something analogous to the individual totem, or "medicine," of other Indians was certainly known to them. "The islanders," says Peter Martyr, "pay homage to numerouszemes, each person having his own. Some are made of wood, because it is amongst the trees and in the darkness of night they have received the message of the gods. Others, who have heard the voice among the rocks, make theirzemesof stone; while others, who heard their revelation while they were cultivating theirages—the kind of cereal I have already mentioned [sweet potato, or yam],—make theirs of roots." Martyr goes on to describe trances, induced, he thinks, by tobacco, in which the chiefs seek prophetic revelations, stammered out in incoherent words. One of the most interesting of the early stories tells of such a prophecy received from Yocahuguama, the yucca spirit. Doubtless the earliest version of the tale is that of Ramon Pane:[20]
"That great lord who, they say, is in heaven ... is this Cazziva [cassava], who kept a sort of abstinence here, which all of them generally perform; for they shut themselves up six or seven days, without taking any sustenance but the juice of herbs, with which they also wash themselves. After this time they begin to eat something that is nourishing. During the time they have been without eating, weakness makes them say they have seen something they earnestly desired,for they all perform that abstinence in honour of thecemiesto know whether they shall obtain victory over their enemies, or to acquire wealth or any other thing they desire. They say this cacique affirmed he spoke with Giocauvaghama, who told him that whosoever survived him would not long enjoy his power, because they should see a people clad, in their country, who would rule over and kill them, and they should die for hunger. They thought at first these should be the cannibals, but afterwards considering that they only plundered and fled, they believed it was some other people thecemispoke of; and now they believe it is the admiral and those that came with him." This is the first of those stories of clothed and bearded strangers (the beard is added in some versions), coming to overthrow the gods and kingdoms of the Indians, which were encountered in various portions of the New World. So much importance was attached to it, says Gómara, that a song was formed commemorating it, sung as anareitoin a ceremonial dance.
Not only Columbus, but other early writers praised the peacefully happy and amiably virtuous character of the Indians of the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles; and though this description may have been in some degree coloured by their ideal of what dwellers in the Fortunate Isles ought to be, there is yet little in the old accounts of these Indians to contravene their good report. With small question, however, this same picture served only to intensify the grimness of its companion portrait, for the folk of the Lesser Antilles, the "Caribbee Islands" of seamen's romance, were painted as hard and mirthless savages, murderers and marauders, ferocious in war, and abhorrent cannibals—altogether such as would be dramatically appropriate as the aborigines of islands that were to become the paradise of pirates.
On his second voyage Columbus encountered men of thisrace, finding them treacherous and fierce. Unlike the Taïno, the men wore their hair long and they painted themselves with strange devices; their beards were plucked out, and their eyes and eyebrows were stained to give them a terrible appearance—at least so thought Chanca, who describes them for us. The women—that is, the true Carib women, not the captives, of whom they had many—were as savage fighters as the men; and the Spaniards distinguished them from the captive Taïno women by the leg-bands, fastened below the knee and above the ankle, which caused the leg-muscles to swell out—a trait recorded by im Thurn of the true Carib of Guiana.
There is small question that these people came from the mouth of the Orinoco in the southern continent just as the ancestors of the Taïno had doubtless come before them; and even at the time of the discovery they were invading the Greater Antilles and had secured a foothold in Porto Rico. Nevertheless, they had already been in the lesser islands for a period sufficiently long to differentiate them, in a degree, from their continental congeners and to develop among them a distinctly Antillean type of Carib culture, related on the one hand to the continent they had left, on the other to the islands they had conquered. Doubtless the fundamental modification was due not so much to the change of habitat or to the difference between alluvial and insular life as to the fact—repeated from Columbus onward—that they spared and married with the women of the dispossessed tribes and so fell heirs to many of their arts and ideas.
Of all Carib customs, after their cannibalism (the word "cannibal" is a variant of "Carib"), the most striking is the couvade—the Custom whereby the husband and father, at the birth of a child, takes to his bed, or rather hammock, as if he were suffering the pangs of labour. For forty days he remains in retirement, fasting or on meagre diet; and at the end of this period a feast is held at which the invited guestslacerate the skin of the patient with their nails and wash the wounds with a solution of red pepper, he bearing his pain heroically. Even then his trials are not at an end; for six moons more he must be careful of his food—should he eat turtle, the child will become deaf, and so of other creatures, bird and fish,—such being Père du Tertre's description of this rite, still in vogue on the southern continent.
Other Carib festivals are mentioned by Davies. A ceremony attended a council of war, the killing of an enemy, and the return from war; the launching of a canoe, the building of a house, and the making of a garden; the birth of a child and the cutting of its hair; adolescence and participation in the first war-party; the death of parents, husband, or wife. They had, of course, their doctors or medicine-men—thepeaimenof the continent, apparently calledboiiby the islanders, a name which is surely a variant of the Taïnobuhuitihuand doubtless was adopted from the latter; especially as Maboya ("the Great Boye" or "Great Snake") is a name recorded for the tutelary power of theseboii, or "snakes." Maboya, or Mapoia, is the god who sends the hurricane; and here we have an interesting point of contact with the mythology of the great isthmus, since Hurakan, the hurricane, is the Mayan storm-god. Du Tertre says that there were many Maboyas; and it may be that the term is the insular equivalent for "Kenaima," by which the mainland Carib designate a member of the class of death-bringing powers.
Good spirits were also recognized. The names Akambou and Yris are found for the highest of all, and the name Chemin—doubtless related tozemi—is applied to the sky-god. It may be that the island Carib possessed a whole pantheon of celestial deities, or perhaps the name for the Great Spirit varied from island to island, as similar names vary among the related tribes of Guiana.
Fragments of the legends of the island Carib are preserved. Louquo, the first man, came down from the sky; other menwere born from his body; and after his death he ascended into the heavens. The sky itself is eternal; the earth, at first soft, was hardened by the sun's rays. The First Race of men were nearly exterminated by a deluge, from which a lucky few escaped in a canoe. After death the soul of the valiant Carib ascends to heaven; the stars are Carib souls. All these are beliefs which we need not ascribe to Old World suggestion, for they are found far and wide in America; and equally native must be the Carib notion that each man has three souls—one in his heart, one in his head, and one in his shoulders—though it is only the heart-soul that ascends to paradise at death, while the other two wander abroad as dangerous and evil powers. The islanders possessed also a legend of their origin or migration from among the Galibi, their continental relatives, "Galibi" being, apparently, yet another variant of "Carib." Their ancestor, Kalinago, they said, wearying of life among his own people, embarked for the conquest of new lands, and after a long voyage settled in Santo Domingo with his kin, where his numerous children, conspiring against him, gave him poison. His body died, but his soul found an avatar in a terrible fish, Atraioman; while his slayers, pursued by his vengeance, scattered afar among all the isles. Wherever they went, they destroyed the men, but spared the women; and they placed the heads of their enemies in rocky caves that they might show their sons and their sons' sons these symbols of the valour of their fathers. According to some tales all brave Caribs at death enter a paradise where they forever wage successful war against the Arawak, while cowards are condemned in the future world to be enslaved to Arawak masters.
A more agreeable picture of Carib nature is suggested by their belief in Icheiri—a kind of Lares and Penates—to whom in each cabin was erected an altar of banana leaves or of cane, upon which were placed offerings of cassava flour and of the first fruits of the field, these Icheiri being conceived askindly and familiar intermediaries between man below and the distant heaven power above. There were also spirits that could enter into a man to lead him to inspired vision—"medicine" spirits, or tutelaries. The god Yris seems to have been of this character, for du Tertre, who received the story from one of the missionaries in Santo Domingo, relates that Yris entered into a certain woman and transported her far above the sun, where she saw lands of a marvellous beauty with verdant mountains from which gushed springs of living water; and the god promised her that after her death she should come thither to dwell with him forever. The savage mystic, too, it would appear, has her visions of a divine spouse, who shall one day welcome her into the heaven above the heavens.
From the Rio Grande to the southern continent extends the great land bridge connecting North and South America, forming a region which might properly be called Middle America. This region divides naturally into several sections. To the north is the body of Mexico, its coastal lands mounting abruptly on the western side, but rising more gradually on the eastern littoral toward the broad central plateau, the shape of which—roughly triangular, with its apex in the lofty mountains of the south—conforms to that of the whole land north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Next to this is the low-lying peninsular region of Yucatan, ascending into mountains toward the Pacific, and forming a great broadening of the southward tapering land. A second bulge is Central America, lying between the Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Gulf, and terminating in the thin Isthmus forming an arc about the Bay of Panama.
The physiography of the region is an index to its pre-Columbian ethnography.[22]The northern portion, including Lower California and, roughly, the mainlands in its latitudes, was a region of wild tribes, the best of them much inferior in culture to the Pueblo Indians on the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and the lowest as destitute of arts as any in America. Yuman and Waicurian tribes in Lower California; Seri on the Island of Tiburon and the neighbouring mainland; Piman in the north central and western mainlands; Apache in the desert-like lands south of the Rio Grande; and Tamaulipecanon the east, coasting the Gulf of Mexico—these are the principal groups of this region, peoples whose ideas and myths differ little from those of their kindred groups of the arid South-west of North America. The Piman group, however, possesses a special interest in that it forms a possible connexion between the Shoshonean to the north and the Nahuatlan nations of the Aztec world. Such peoples as the Papago, Yaqui, Tarahumare, and Tepehuane are the wilder cousins of the Nahua, while the Tepecano, Huichol, and Cora tribes, just to the south, distinctly show Aztec acculturation. In general, the Mexican tribes north of the Tropic of Cancer belong, in habit and thought, with the groups of the South-West of the northern continent; ethnically, Middle America falls south of the Tropic.
Below this line, extending as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is the region dominated by the empire of the Aztec, marked by the civilization which bears their name.[23]As a matter of fact, although at the time of the culmination of their power this whole region was politically subordinated to the Aztec (it was not completely conquered by them), it contained several centres of culture, each in degree distinct. To the north, about the Panuco, were the Huastec, a branch of the Maya stock; while immediately south of them, and also on the Gulf Coast, were the Totonac, possibly of Maya kinship. The central highlands, immediately west of these peoples, were occupied by the Otomi, primitive and warlike foes of the Aztec emperors. On their west, in turn, the Otomi had a common frontier with Nahuatlan tribes—Huichol, Cora, and others—forming a transitional group between the wild tribes of the north and the civilized Nahua. Quite surrounded by Nahuatlan and Otomian tribes was the Tarascan stock of Michoacan, a group of peoples whose culture certainly ante-dates that of the Nahua, of whom, indeed, they may have been the teachers. Still to the south—their territories nearly conterminous with the state of Oaxaca—were the Zapotecan peoples,chief among them the Zapotec and Mixtec, whose civilization ranks with those of Nahua and Maya in individual quality, while in native vitality it has proved stronger than either.
The Zoquean tribes (Mixe, Zoque, and others), back from the Gulf of Tehuantepec, form a transition to the next great culture centre, that of the Maya nations. The territories of this most remarkable of all American civilizations included the whole of Yucatan, the greater portions of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and the lands bordering on both sides of the Gulf of Honduras. Thus the Mayan regions dominate the strategy of the Americas, since they not only control the juncture of the continents, but, stretching out toward the Greater Antilles, command the passage between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It is easily conceivable that, had a free maritime commerce grown up, the Maya might have become, not merely the Greeks, but the Romans, of the New World.
Central America, occupied by no less than a dozen distinct linguistic stocks, forms a fourth cultural district. Its peoples show not only the influences of the Maya and Nahua to the north (a tribe of the Nahuatlan stock had penetrated as far south as Lake Nicaragua), but also of the Chibchan civilization of the southern continent, dominant in the Isthmus of Panama, and extending beyond Costa Rica up into Nicaragua. In addition, there is more than a suggestion of influence from the Antilles and from the sea-faring Carib. Here, we can truly say, is the meeting-place of the continents.
The nodes of interest in the culture and history of Middle America are the Aztec and Maya civilizations, which are justly regarded as marking the highest attainment of native Americans.[24]Neither Aztec nor Maya could vie with the Peruvian peoples in the engineering and political skill which made the empire of the Incas such a marvel of organization; but in the general level of the arts, in the intricacy of their science, and above all in the possession of systems of hieroglyphic writing and of monumental records the Middle Americanshad touched a level properly comparable with the earliest civilizations of the Old World, nor can theirs have been vastly later than Old World culture in origin.
In a number of particulars the civilizations of the Middle and South American centres show curious parallels. In each case we are in the presence of an aggressively imperial highland (Aztec, Inca) and of a decadent lowland (Maya, Yunca) culture. In each case the lowland culture is the more advanced aesthetically and apparently of longer history. Both highland powers clearly depend upon remote highland predecessors for their own culture (Aztec harks back to Toltec, Inca to Tiahuanaco); and in both regions it is a pretty problem for the archaeologist to determine whether this more remote highland civilization is ancestrally akin to the lowland. Again, in both the apogee of monument building and of the arts seems to have passed when the Spaniards arrived; indeed, empire itself was weakening. The Aztec and the Inca tribes (perhaps the most striking parallel of all) emerged from obscurity about the same time to proceed on the road to empire, for the traditional Aztec departure from Aztlan and the Inca departure from Tampu Tocco alike occurred in the neighbourhood of 1200a. d.Finally, it was Ahuitzotl, the predecessor of Montezuma II, who brought Aztec power to its zenith, and it was Huayna Capac, the father of Atahualpa, who gave Inca empire its greatest extent; while both the Aztec empire under Montezuma, which fell to Cortez in 1519, and the Inca empire under Atahualpa, conquered by Pizarro in 1524, were internally weakening at the time. But the crowning misfortune common to the two empires was the possession of gold, maddening the eyes of theconquistadores.
In 1517 Hernandez de Cordova, sailing from Cuba for the Bahamas, was driven out of his course by adverse gales;Yucatan was discovered; and a part of the coast of the Gulf of Campeche was explored. Battles were fought, and hardships were endured by the discoverers, but the reports of a higher civilization which they brought back to Cuba, coupled with specimens of curious gold-work, induced the governor of the island to equip a new expedition to continue the exploration. This venture, of four vessels under the command of Juan de Grijalva, set out in May, 1518, and following the course of its predecessor, coasted as far as the province of Panuco, visiting the Isla de los Sacrificios—near the site of the future Vera Cruz—and doing profitable trading with some of the vassals of the Aztec emperor. A caravel which he dispatched to Cuba with some of his golden profit induced the governor to undertake a larger military expedition to effect the conquest of the empire discovered; for now men began to realize that a truly imperial realm had been revealed. This third expedition was placed under the command of Hernando Cortez; it sailed from Cuba in February, 1519, and landed on the island of Cozumel, in Maya territory, where the Spaniards were profoundly impressed at finding the Cross an object of veneration. The course was resumed, and a battle was fought near the mouth of the Rio de Tabasco; but Cortez was in search of richer lands and so moved onward, beyond the lands of the Maya, until on Good Friday, April 21, 1519, he landed with all his forces on the site of Vera Cruz. The two years of the Conquest followed—the tale of which, for fantastic and romantic adventure, for egregious heroism and veritable gluttony of bloodshed, has few competitors in human annals: its climacterics being the seizure of Montezuma in November, 1519;la noche triste, July 1, 1520, when the invaders were driven from Tenochtitlan; and, finally, the defeat and capture of Guatemotzin, August 13, 1521.
The reader of the tale cannot but be profoundly moved both by what the Spaniards found and by what they did. He will be moved with regret at the wanton destruction of so muchthat was in its way splendid in Aztec civilization. He will be moved with revulsion and wonder that such a civilization could support a religion which, though not without elements of poetic exaltation, was drugged with obscene and bloody rites; and he will feel only a shuddering thankfulness that this faith is of the past. But when he turns to the agents of its destruction and reads their chronicles, furious with carnage, he will surely say, with Clavigero, that "the Spaniards cannot but appear to have been the severest instruments fate ever made use of to further the ends of Providence," and amid conflicting horrors he will be led again into regretful sympathy for the final victims.
An apologist for human nature would say that neitherconquistadornorpapa(as the Spaniards named the Aztec priest) was quite so despicable as his deeds, that both were moved by a faith that had redeeming traits. Outwardly, aesthetically, the whole scene is bizarre and devilish; inwardly, it is not without devotion and heroism. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, adventurer not only with Cortez, but with Cordova and Grijalva before him, one of the sturdiest of the conquerors and destined to be their foremost chronicler, records for us one unforgettable incident which presents the whole inwardness and outwardness of the situation—gorgeous cruelty and simple humanity—in a single image. It was four days after the army of Cortez had entered the Mexican capital; and after having been shown the wonders of the populous markets of Tenochtitlan, the visitors were escorted, at their own request, to the platform top of the great teocalli overlooking Tlatelolco, the mart of Mexico. From the platform Montezuma proudly pointed to the quartered city below, and beyond that to the gleaming lake and the glistening villages on its borders—all a local index of his imperial domains. "We counted among us," says the chronicler,[26]"soldiers who had traversed different parts of the world: Constantinople, Italy, Rome; they said that they had seen nowhere a place so well aligned, so vast,ordered with such art, and covered with so many people." Cortez turned to Montezuma: "You are a great lord," he said. "You have shown us your great cities; show us now your gods."