PLATE XXIV.
PLATE XXIV.
Image of a youthful deity with elaborate head-dress seated in the mouth of the "Dragon of Quirigua" (seefrontispiece). After a photograph in the Peabody Museum.
It was for their pride and arrogance that Vukub-Cakix and his sons, Zipacna and Cabrakan, were successively overcome and destroyed by the hero brothers. "Attention, it is I who am the sun," cried Vukub-Cakix; "it is I who move the earth," said Zipacna; "and it is I that shake the sky and overturn the the whole earth," quoth Cabrakan. Indeed, such was their strength that they could move mountains, great and small, at will; and since such orgulous Titans could be overcome only by craft, even with demi-gods for their adversaries, it was by craft that Hunahpu and Xbalanqué conquered them.
Vukub-Cakix possessed a tree the fruit of which was his food, and the twins, concealing themselves in its branches, shot the giant in the cheek with a poisoned arrow when he came for his meal, though they did not escape uninjured, for he tore away one of Hunahpu's arms. The monster went home, roaring with pain, and the two plotters, disguising themselves as physicians, came offering to cure his malady and saying: "You suffer from a worm but you can be cured if your jaw is altered by removing the bad teeth." "It is by my teeth alone that I am king; all my beauty comes from my teeth and the balls of mine eyes." "We will put others in their place," they said; and so they substituted teeth of maize for the emerald teeth of the giant and flayed the splendour from his eyes. The splendour faded from him; he ceased to appear like a king; and soon he died, while Hunahpu recovered his arm, which Chimalmat, the wife of Vukub-Cakix, was basting on a spit; and the twins turned away in triumph. Zipacna was the next victim. First, the brothers conspired with four hundred youths (doubtless the same as the "Four Hundred Southerners" of the Huitzilopochtli myth) to lure Zipacna into a pitfall, where they tried to destroy him by hurling huge trees upon him; and when all was quiet, the plotters erected a house on the spot, making merry with drink and celebrating their triumph. But the giant was only craftily biding his time, and, rising suddenly, he cast house and revellers high into the heavens, where the four hundred became stars and constellations. The twins then decided upon another decoy. Since the food of Zipacna was sea-food, especially crabs, they modelled a great crab, and painting it cunningly they put it into a deep ravine. Encountering the giant on his food search, they pointed out this fine crab; he leaped after it, and they—wiser by experience—hurled mountains upon him, thus imprisoning him, though so desperate were his struggles for freedom that they turned him into stone to quiet him. The third giant, Cabrakan, was also made the victim of his own gluttony and pride. Thebrothers challenged him to shift a certain mountain, for he boasted that he could remove the greatest; but as he was preparing to show his strength, they suggested that he first partake of food, and shooting a bird, they cooked it for him, taking care to poison it in the process. The giant devoured the bird the more greedily in that it was his first taste of cooked meat; but immediately his strength began to fail, and his eyes to dim; and while the brothers twittingly urged him to make good his boasts, he sank to earth dead.
The great adventure of the heroic twins, however, was their triumph over the Lords of Death, and to this the second part of thePopul Vuhis devoted. The tale begins with the story of an earlier pair of Hero Brothers, Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Ahpu, sons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucané. Hunhun-Ahpu, in turn, was father of Hunbatz and Hunchouen, two youths who seem to be little more than foils for the hero twins later to be born; although they are described as wise in all the arts, as players of the flute, singers, blow-gun shooters, painters, sculptors, jewel-workers, and smiths.
Hunhun-Ahpu and his brother, Vukub-Ahpu, being devoted totlachtli, exercised themselves at this sport every day. As they played, they journeyed toward Xibalba, the underworld, whose lords, Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé, also were clever at the ball game. Therefore, thinking to trap the upper-world champions, they of the nether realm sent them a challenge—four owls were their messengers—to meet in an underworld match; and the brothers accepting the challenge, set out for Xibalba. Passing down a steep descent, they soon crossed a river in a deep gorge, next a boiling river, and then a river of blood, after which, beyond a fourth river, they came to cross-roads, red, black, white, and yellow. The guardian of the black road said: "I am the way to the king"; but it led them to a place where two wooden images were seated. These the brothers saluted; and receiving no response except the ribald laughter of the Xibalbans, the heroes knew that they hadbeen made butts of ridicule. The brothers angrily issued their challenge, and the Xibalbans invited them to seats on the throne of honour; but this proved to be a heated stone, and when they burned themselves, the princes of Xibalba could scarcely contain their merriment. The brothers were then given torches and conducted to the House of Gloom, with injunctions to keep the lights undiminished until the dawn; but the torches were speedily consumed, and when, next day, they were brought before Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé who demanded the lights, they could only reply, "They are consumed, Lords." Thereupon, at the command of the underworld-gods, the brothers were sacrificed, and their bodies were buried; only, the head of Hunhun-Ahpu was placed in a fruit-tree, where it was immediately transformed so as to be indistinguishable from the gourd-like fruits which the tree bore.
The Xibalbans were prohibited from approaching this tree, but a certain maiden, Xquiq ("Princess Blood"), having heard of it, said to herself: "Why should I not go to see this tree; in sooth, its fruits should be sweet, according to what I hear said of it." She approached the tree in admiration: "Are such the fruits of this tree? And should I die were I to pluck one?" Then the head in the midst said: "Do you indeed desire it? These round lumps among the branches of the tree are only death's-heads!" Nevertheless, Xquiq was insistent, whereupon Hunhun-Ahpu's head demanded that she stretch forth her hand, and, by a violent effort, he spat into it, saying: "This saliva and foam which I give thee is my posterity. Behold, my head will cease to speak, for it is only a death's-head, with no longer any flesh. So it is also with the head of even the greatest of princes; for it is the flesh alone that adorneth the visage, whence cometh the horror which besetteth men at the moment of death." He then directed the maiden to flee to the upper world, knowing that she would be pursued by the underworld-powers; and these, indeed, when they heard that Xquiq wasenceinte, demanded that she be sacrificed, sending Owl-Mento execute their doom. But the princess beguiled the Owls, inducing them to substitute for her heart the coagulated sap of the bloodwort, the odour of which they took to be the scent of blood, while she herself fled to the protection of the mother of Hunbatz and Hunchouen. The latter demanded proof that the new comer was indeed her daughter-in-law and sent Xquiq into the field for maize. There was but one hill in the field, whereupon the maiden appealed for aid to the gods, by whose miraculous help she was enabled to gather a full burden without disturbing the single hill. This miracle satisfied the mother-in-law; who said: "It is a sign that thou art indeed my daughter-in-law, and that those whom thou dost carry will be wise"; and shortly after this, Xquiq gave birth to the twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanqué.
The new comers were welcomed by all excepting Hunbatz and Hunchouen, who regarded their half-brothers as rivals and plotted their death; but Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, who from birth had shown their prowess as magicians, transformed the two flute-players into monkeys, condemning them to live in the trees. Hunbatz and Hunchouen, says the chronicler, "were invoked by musicians and singers aforetime, and also by painters and sculptors; but they were changed into beasts and became monkeys because of their pride and their maltreatment of their brothers." It is probable that the two were monkey-form gods of the arts, though it is also possible that the transformation is associated with that of the primeval age which ended with the metamorphosis of men into monkeys.
The next episode in the career of the two youths was the clearing of a field by means of magic tools which felled trees and dug the soil while their owners amused themselves at the chase; but at night the animals restored the vegetation. Accordingly the brothers concealed themselves to watch for the undoers of their work; and when by night the lion (puma) and the tiger (jaguar), the hare and the opossum, the deer, the coyote, the porcupine, and the peccary, together with the birds,appeared and called to the felled trees to raise themselves, the brothers attempted to trap them. They succeeded only in seizing the tails of the deer and the rabbit (which, of course, explains the present decurtate state of these animals), but finally they captured the rat, which, to save its life, revealed to them the hiding-place of the rings and gloves and rubber ball with which their fathers had playedtlachtli, and which their grandmother had concealed from them lest they, too, become lost through the fatal lure of the game. By a ruse the twins succeeded in getting possession of the apparatus, and like their fathers became passionately devoted to the sport.
When the Lords of Xibalba learned of this, they said: "Who, then, are these that begin again to play above our heads, shaking the earth without fear? Are not Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunahpu dead, who wished to exalt themselves before us?" Forthwith they dispatched a challenge to the new champions which the twins accepted; but before they departed for the underworld, each planted a reed in the house of their grandmother, saying that if any ill befell either of them, his reed would wither and die. They passed the underworld rivers, and coming to the four roads (here named black, white, red, and green), they set out upon the black path, though they took the precaution to send in advance an animal called Xan, with instructions to prick the leg of each lord in the realm below. The first two throned beings made no response, being manikins of wood; but the third uttered a cry, and his neighbour said: "What is it, Hun-Camé? What has pricked you?" The same thing happened to Vukub-Camé, Xiqiripat, Ahalpuh, Cuchumaquiq, Chamiabak, Ahalcana, Chamiaholom, Patan, Quiqxic, Quiqrixgag, and Quiqré (for such were the names of these princes): "it is thus that they revealed themselves, calling one another by name," each in turn. When the hero twins came, refusing to salute the wooden men, they addressed the Lords of Xibalba each by his title, much to the chagrin ofthese; and, further, they declined a place on the heated stone, saying, "It is not our seat."
In succeeding episodes Hunahpu and Xbalanqué underwent the ordeals of the houses of the underworld. The House of Gloom was first; but the twins substituted red paint for the fire on the torches given them and thus preserved these undiminished. "Whence indeed, are you come?" cried the astonished Xibalbans; "who are you?" "Who can say whence we are," they answered; "we ourselves do not know." So they refused to reveal themselves and in the game of ball which followed they altogether defeated the Xibalbans; but since this only augmented the desire of the latter for the lives of the pair, the underworld lords demanded of the two heroes that they bring them four vases of flowers. Accordingly they sent the youths under guard to the House of Lances; but the brothers overcame the demons of this abode by promising them the flesh of all animals, while at the same time they persuaded the ants to bring the needed flowers from the gardens of Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé. Having failed with this test, the Xibalbans then dispatched their guests to the House of Cold, which they survived by kindling pine-knots. The next trial was the House of Tigers, but its ferocious denizens were diverted by bones which the brothers cast to them. The House of Fire was also harmless to them; but in the sixth, the House of Bats, or House of Camazotz, as its lord was called, they met their first discomfiture. All night the heroes lay prone, longing for the dawn; but at last Hunahpu for a moment raised his head, which was instantly shorn off by the vigilant Camazotz. Xbalanqué, in desperation, summoned the animals to his assistance; and the turtle, chancing to touch the bleeding neck of Hunahpu and becoming attached to it, was transformed into a head with the magic aid of the animals. The real head the Lords of Xibalba had suspended in the ball court, where they were reviling it when Xbalanqué and Hunahpu, with his turtle's head, appeared for the last round at the game; andwith the assistance of the animals Xbalanqué succeeded in winning the victory once more, and recovering Hunahpu's head, he restored it in place of the turtle's.
Having now met the ordeals set by the Xibalbans, the brothers undertook to show their own prowess, and, first of all, their contempt of death. Anticipating the action of the Lords of Xibalba in condemning them to death, they sought the counsel of two magicians, Xulu and Pacam, with whom they arranged for their resurrection; after which, sentenced to be burned, they mounted the funeral pyre and met their death, whereat all the Xibalbans were filled with joy, crying, "We have triumphed, indeed; and none too soon!" The bones, ground to powder at the advice of the two magicians, were cast upon the underworld waters; wherein on the fifth day two fish-men were to be seen, while the next day a pair of wretched beggars, poor and miserable, appeared among the Xibalbans. These beggars, however, were wonder-workers: they burned houses and immediately restored them; they even sacrificed and then resuscitated one another. Their fame soon reached the ears of Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé, and when the mendicant-magicians were brought before these lords, they were implored by the Xibalban kings to perform their miracles. Thereupon the beggars began their "dances": they killed and revivified the dog of the underworld princes; they burned and restored the royal palace; they sacrificed and brought to life a man—each deed at the command of Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé. Finally, overcome with excitement, the Lords of Xibalba cried, "Do likewise with us; immolate us also!" "Can death exist for you?" asked the beggars ironically. "Nevertheless, it is your right that we amuse you." But when they had sacrificed Hun-Camé and Vukub-Camé, they restored them no more to life. "Then fled all the princes of Xibalba, seeing their kings dead, and their bodies laid open; but in a moment they themselves were sacrificed, two by two, a chastisement which was their due." A single prince escaped, begging for pity, while thehost of their vassals prostrated themselves before their conquerors.
Then the heroes revealed themselves, disclosing their names and the names of their fathers, saying, "We are the avengers of the sufferings of our sires; harken, now to your doom, ye of Xibalba! Since your fame and your power are no more, and ye merit no clemency, your race shall have little rule, and never again shall ye play the Game of Ball. Yours it shall be to make objects of burnt clay, pots and pans, and maize-grinders; and the animals that live in the brushwood and in solitude shall be your share. All the happy, all the cultivated, shall cease to be yours; the bees alone will continue to reproduce before your eyes. Ye, perverse, cruel, sad, wretched, who have done ill, now lament it!" Thus were degraded those who had been of bad faith, hypocritical, tyrannical; thus their power was ruined.
Meanwhile, in the upper world, the grandmother of the twins watching the two reeds, had mourned and rejoiced in turn, twice seeing them wither and twice revive. "The Living Reeds, the Level Earth, the Centre of the House, shall be the names of this place," she said. The twins talked with the heads of their father and uncle, paying them funeral honours and elevating them to the sky, the one to become the sun, the other the moon; and they raised up also the four hundred youths buried by Zipacna, to become stars in heaven, saying: "Henceforth ye shall be invoked by civilized peoples; ye shall be adored; and your names shall not perish."
Such, in its general character, is the mythic portion of thePopul Vuh. It is built up of elements found far and wide in North America and it reflects ideas practically universal among the civilized Nahuatlan and Mayan tribes; but it possesses one great distinction—that of presenting these concepts with an imaginative intensity unmatched by any other version, a quality which in some measure argues that the whole cycle is original with the Mayan stock. The myth certainly gives abroad view of the south Mayan pantheons; and most of the elements in the proper names which can be interpreted are indicative of the cosmic nature of the personalities. According to Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hun signifies "one," Vukub is the word for "seven"; Hunahpu is "One Blowgun-Shooter," and it is quite likely that the blowgun was associated with celestial phenomena, as the game oftlachtlicertainly is; Hunbatz is "One Monkey"; Hun-Camé is "One Dead," and so on. Vukub-Cakix ("Seven Macaws"), Vukub-Hunahpu ("Seven One-Blowgun-Shooter"), and Vukub-Camé ("Seven Dead") are clearly corresponding, or complementary, cosmic powers. The Abbé believes that Hurakan (from which comes our word "hurricane") and Cabrakan ("Earthquake") are deities imported from the Antilles. Camazotz ("Ruler of Bats,"—Brasseur; "Death Bat,"—Seler) is clearly the Elder of the Bats—the bat-god known to have been a dread and potent deity among the Maya, and, as the vampire, feared and propitiated far into South America.[102]Balam means "tiger"—that is, the jaguar, which, perhaps because of its spots, is symbol of the star-studded night and of the west. The four Quiché ancestors are clearly cosmic deities—Balam-Quitzé ("Smiling Tiger") perhaps of the east; Balam-Agab ("Night Tiger") of the west; Iqi-Balam ("Moon Tiger"); and Mahucatah ("Renowned Name," an epithet, in the Abbé's opinion). The Hero Brothers are, of course, familiar figures everywhere in American myth.
The CakchiquelAnnalsdo not, like thePopul Vuh, form a work of primarily literary or historical intent, but are, both in form and in content, part of a brief, the purpose of which is to establish certain territorial rights of members of the family of Xahila, thus falling into the class of nativetitulos, written in Spanish, several of which have been published. From its nature the composition has not, therefore, the dramatic characterof a mythic narrative; nevertheless its very purpose, as founding a title to lands anciently held, leads to the effort to establish this by the right of first occupation, and hence to stories of the first comers. That such accounts are reproduced more or less exactly from mythic narratives there can be no manner of doubt, internal traits showing near affinity with the tales of thePopul Vuhand kindred cycles.
The narrative begins with a record of "the sayings of our earliest fathers and ancestors, Gagavitz the name of one, Zactecauh the name of the other ... as we came from the other side of the sea, from the land of Tulan, where we were brought forth and begotten....
"These are the very words which Gagavitz and Zactecauh spake: 'Four men came from Tulan; one Tulan is at the sunrise, and one is at Xibalbay, and one is at the sunset; and we came from this one at the sunset; and one is where is God. Therefore there are four Tulans, they say, O our sons; from the sunset we came; from Tulan from beyond the sea; and it was at Tulan that, arriving, we were brought forth; coming, we were produced, as they say, by our fathers and our mothers.
"'And now the Obsidian Stone is brought forth by the precious Xibalbay, the glorious Xibalbay; and man is made by; the Maker, the Creator. The Obsidian Stone was his sustainer when man was made in misery and when man was formed; he was fed with wood, he was fed with leaves; he wished only the earth; he could not speak, he could not walk; he had no blood, he had no flesh; so say our fathers, our ancestors, O ye my sons. Nothing was found to feed him; at length something was found to feed him. Two brutes knew that there was food in the place called Paxil, where these creatures were, the Coyote and the Crow by name. Even in the refuse of maize it was found when the creature Coyote was killed as he was separating his maize and was searching for bread to knead, killed by the creature named Tiuh Tiuh; and from within the sea, by means of Tiuh Tiuh, was brought the blood of the serpentand of the tapir with which the maize was to be kneaded; the flesh of man was formed of it by the Maker, the Creator; and well did they, the Maker and the Creator, know him who was born, him who was begotten; they made man as he was made, they formed man as they made him; so they tell. There were thirteen men, fourteen women; they, talked, they walked; they had blood, they had flesh. They married, and one had two wives. They brought forth daughters, they brought forth sons, those first men. Thus men were made, and thus the Obsidian Stone was made, for the enclosure of Tulan; thus we came to where the Zotzils were at the gates of Tulan; arriving, we were born; coming, we were produced; coming, we gave the tribute in the darkness, in the night, O our sons.' Thus spake Gagavitz and Zactecauh, O my sons; and what they said hath not been forgotten. They are our great ancestors; these are the words with which they encouraged us of old."
PLATE XXV.
PLATE XXV.
Monumental stela, Piedras Negras. This superb relief shows a divinity with quetzal-plume crest to whom a priest is presenting the group of bound captives, shown at the base. After photograph in the Peabody Museum.
These extracts indicate the style of theAnnals, full of repetition and almost without relational expressions, but now and again lighted with passages of extraordinary vividness. The Obsidian Stone, Chay Abah, represented an important civic fetish or oracular talisman, if we may credit the description of Iximche, the Cakchiquel capital, transmitted by Fuentes y Guzman and quoted by Brinton.[104]On the summit of a small hill overlooking the town—so goes the account—"is a circular wall, not unlike the curb of a well, about a full fathom in height. The floor within is paved with cement, as the city streets. In the centre is placed a socle or pedestal of a glittering substance, like glass, but of what composition is not known. This circular structure was the tribunal or consistory of the Cakchiquel Indians, where not only was public hearing given to causes, but also the sentences were carried out. Seated around this wall, the judges heard the pleas and pronounced the sentences, in both civil and criminal cases. After this public decision, however, there remained an appeal for its revocation or confirmation. Three messengers were chosenas deputies of the judges, and these went forth from the tribunal to a deep ravine, north of the palace, to a small but neatly fitted-up chapel or temple, where was located the oracle of the demon. This was a black and semi-transparent stone, of a finer grade than that calledchay(obsidian). In its transparency, the demon revealed to them what should be their final decision." This passage is not the only indication of the employment of divination by crystal gazing in primitive America; and it is even possible that the translucent green stones so widely valued were primarily sacred because of divinatory properties. Not all sacred stones were of the emerald hue, however; for in the Cakchiquel narrative one of the deeds of Gagavitz is the ascent of a volcano where, it is said, he conquered the fire, bringing it captive in the form of a stone called Gak Chog, which, the chronicler is at pains to state, is not a green stone.
The mythic affinities of the Cakchiquel narrative are already apparent in the passages quoted. The city of Tulan (frequently "Tullan" in the text) is clearly become a name for certain cosmic stations, namely the houses of sunrise, sunset, zenith ("where is God"), and nadir (Tulan of Xibalbay, the underworld). The successive creations of men, experimental men first, and finally maize-formed men, is certainly the same myth as that of thePopul Vuh, which is briefly described also by Las Casas and which is probably intimately associated with a cult of the maize-gods. "If one looks closely at these Indians," says an early writer quoted by Brinton,[105](manuscript known as theCrónica Franciscana), "he will find that everything they do and say has something to do with maize. A little more, and they would make a god of it. There is so much conjuring and fussing about their corn fields, that for them they will forget wives and children and any other pleasure, as if the only end and aim of life was to secure a crop of corn."
There are numerous mythic incidents in the continuation of the narrative after the creation. At Tulan the peoples weredivided into seven tribes, and it was from Tulan that, with idols of wood and of stone, they set out at the oracular command of the Obsidian Stone. The auguries were mostly evil: "A bird called 'the guard of the ravine' began to complain within the gate of Tulan, as we were going forth from Tulan. 'Ye shall die, ye shall be lost, I am your portent,' the creature said to us. 'Do ye not believe me? Truly your state shall be a sad one.'" The owl prophesied similar disaster, and another bird, the parroquet, "complained in the sky and said, 'I am your portent; ye shall die.' But we said to the creature, 'Speak not thus; thou art but the sign of spring. Thou wailest first when it is spring; when the rain ceaseth, thou wailest.'" They arrived at the sea-coast, and there a great number perished while they awaited a means of crossing, which finally came when "a red tree, our staff, which we had taken in passing from the gate of Tulan," was thrust into the sands, whereupon the waters divided, and all passed over. Then it was that Gagavitz and Zactecauh were elected leaders; and next they fought with the people of Nonoualcat and Zuyva, but though at first successful in the fight, they were eventually defeated: "Truly, it was fearful there among the houses; truly, the noise was great, the dust was oppressive; fighting was going on in the houses, fighting with the dogs, the wasps, fighting with all. One attack, two attacks we made, and we ourselves were routed; as truly as they were in the air, they were in the earth; they ascended and they descended, everywhere against us; and thus they showed their magic and their sorcery." After this defeat, the various tribes received the gods which were to be their protectors. "When we asked each other where our salvation was, it was said to us by the Quiché men: 'As it thundered and resounded in the sky, truly the sky must be our salvation'; so they said, and therefore the name Tohohil was given them." The Zotzil received Cakix, the macaw, as their deity; and the Cakchiquel said: "'Truly, in the middle of the valley lieth our salvation, entering there into the earth.' Therefore the nameChitagah was given. Another, who said salvation was in the water, was called Gucumatz"; and so on, down the roll. The tribes then set forth and encounter "the spirit of the forest, the fire called Zakiqoxol," who kills many men. "Who are these boys whom we see?" says the spirit (who, it seems, is a giant); and Gagavitz and Zactecauh replied: "Let us see what kind of a hideous mole thou art? Who art thou? We shall kill thee. Why is it that thou guardest the road here?" "Do not kill me; I, who am here, I am the heart of the forest," and he asked for clothing. "They shall give to thee wherewith to clothe thyself," they answered; and "then they gave him wherewith to clothe himself, a change of garment, his blood-red cuirass, his blood-red shoes, the dying raiment of Zakiqoxol."
The narrative continues with episodes that may be historical. There are encounters, friendly and militant, with various tribes; Zactecauh is killed by falling down a ravine; the wanderers are delayed a year by the volcano which Gagavitz conquers; a certain being named Tolgom, son of "the Mud that Quivers," is captured and offered by the arrow sacrifice, this being the beginning of an annual festival at which children were similarly slain; and afterward the people come to the place where their dawn is to be and there they behold the sunrise. The warriors took wives from neighbouring tribes and "then also they began to adore the Demon.... It is said that the worship of the Demon increased with the face of our prosperity." To Gagavitz were born two sons, Caynoh and Caybatz, who were to be his successors; and "at that time King Gagavitz died, the same who came from Tulan; his children, our ancestors, Caynoh and Caybatz, were still very young when their father died. They buried him in the same place where their dawn appeared, in Paroxene."
Here the mythical part of theAnnalsends. Caynoh and Caybatz may be a pair of heroes like Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, as some authorities deem; but the situation in which they are presented, subjects of a Quiché King, Tepeuh, indicates anhistorical situation, finally reversed, as the narrative later shows, in sanguinary wars in which the Cakchiquel threw off the Quiché yoke. And here, as elsewhere in the New World, the coming Spaniard was enabled to profit by local dissensions; for Alvarado, whose entrance into Iximche is described as by an eyewitness, first allied himself with the Cakchiquel for the destruction of their neighbours and then destroyed his allies for the sake of their gold. So out of this broken past speaks the Xahila narrative—the one native voice from a lost civilization.
South of the Mayan peoples, in the territories formed by the projection of Central America between the Gulf of Honduras and Lake Nicaragua, the aboriginal inhabitants were represented by some ten linguistic stocks. On the western coast were several groups of Nahuatlan tribes who had come from far in the north, probably in recent times; on the other hand, the large Ulvan stock, back from the Mosquito Coast, are regarded as probably of Chibchan kinship, and their territories were contiguous with the Chibchans of Costa Rica, who brought the influence of the southern continent as far northward as the southern shores of the lake; the remaining tribal groups—Lencan, Subtiaban, Payan, Mosquitoan, Chiapanecan, etc.—have no certain linguistic affinity with any other peoples. Culturally, the whole region was aboriginally marked by an obvious inferiority both to the Mayan peoples to the north and the Chibchan to the south; though at the same time it reflected something of the civilization of each of these regions. As a whole, however, it possessed no single level, but ranged from the primitive savagery of the Mosquito Coast to something approaching a native culture in the western highlands.
The mythic lore of these peoples (not extensively reported) is in no way remarkable. The Nahuatlan tribes—Pipil and Niquiran—worshipped gods whose kinship with those of theAztec is apparent. Of the Pipil, Brasseur says[107]: "They adored the rising sun, as also statues of Quetzalcohuatl and Itzcueye, to whom they offered almost all their sacrifices," Itzcueye being a form of the earth goddess. Similarly the Niquiran deities mentioned by Oviedo, especially the creator pair, Tamagostad and Cipattonal, are identified with Oxomoco and Cipactonal of the Mexicans; while the calendar of the same tribe is Mexican in type. The chief centre of worship of the Pipil was named Mictlan, but the myth which Brasseur narrates in connexion with the establishment of this shrine is curiously analogous to certain Chibcha tales. The sacred city was on a promontory in Lake Huixa, and "it was there that one day a venerable old man was beheld to advance, followed by a girl of unequalled beauty, both clad in long blue robes, while the man was crowned with a pontifical mitre. They arose together from the lake, but they did not delay to separate; and the old man seated himself upon a stone on the summit of a high hill, where, by his order, was reared a beautiful temple called Mictlan." Similar cults of lake-spirits are indicated on the island of Zapatero, in Lake Nicaragua, where Squier discovered a whole series of remarkable idols, pillars surmounted by crudely carved crouching or seated figures, while statues of a similar type were found on another island, Pensacola. In several of these the human figure is hooded by an animal's head or jaw, or appears within the mouth of the monster—a motive which probably comes from the Mayan north.
The Chiapanecan people north of the Niquirian Nahua consulted an oracular Old Woman, who appears, as Oviedo relates the story,[108]to have been the spirit of the volcano Masaya. The caciques went in secret to consult her before undertaking any enterprise and sacrificed to her human victims, who, says Oviedo, offered themselves voluntarily. When Oviedo asked how the Old Woman looked, they replied that "she was old and wrinkled, with pendant breasts, thin, dishevelled hair,long teeth like those of a dog, a skin darker than that of the Indians, and glowing eyes," a description which scarcely makes the voluntary sacrifice plausible. With the coming of the Christians her appearances were more and more rare.
Of such character were the ideas of the more advanced tribes of the western coast. The Sumo (of the Ulvan stock) tell a tale of their origin, reported by Lehmann[109]: "Between the Rio Patuca and the Rio Coco is a hill named Kaun'ápa, where is a rock with the sign of a human umbilical cord. There in olden time the Indians were born; there is the source of the people. A great Father, Maisahána, and a great Mother, Ituána, likewise existed, the latter being the same as Itóki, whom the Mosquito know as Mother Scorpion. First, the Mosquito were born and instructed in all things; but they were disobedient to their elders (as they still are) and departed toward the coast. Thereafter the Tuáchca were born, and then the Yusco who live on Rio Prinzapolca and Bambana; but since the Yusco were bad and lewd, the rest of the Sumo fought against them and killed all but a few, who live somewhere around the source of Rio Coco, near the Spaniards. Last the Ulua were born, who are indeed the youngest; and they were instructed in all things, especially medicine and song, wherefore they are known as 'Singers.'"
The Mother Scorpion of this myth is regarded by the Mosquito as dwelling at the end of the Milky Way, where she receives the souls of the dead; and from her, represented as a mother with many breasts, at which children take suck, come the souls of the new-born—a belief which points to a notion of reincarnation. The Mosquito[110]possess also a migration-myth, with stories of a culture hero named Wakna, and an ancient prophecy that they shall never be driven back from the coasts to which he led them. Along with this are reminiscences of the coming of cannibals—doubtless Carib—from overseas; and the usual quota of superstitions as to monsters of forest and waters. They are said, moreover, to have vague notionsof a supreme or superior god—which is altogether likely—and, in general, these Central American religions are, doubtless, as the early writers describe them, formed of an ill-defined belief in a Heaven Father, with deities of sun and stars as objects of worship, and spirits of earth and forest as objects of dread.
From the Isthmus of Panama the western coast of South America is marked by one of the loftiest and most abrupt mountain ranges of the world, culminating in the great volcanoes of Ecuador and the high peaks of western Argentina. A narrow coastal strip, dry and torrid in tropical latitudes; deep and narrow valleys; occasional plateaux or intramontane plains, especially the great plateau of central Bolivia—these are the primary diversifications from the high ranges which, rising precipitously on the Pacific side, decline more gradually toward the east into the vast forested regions of the central part of the continent and into the plains and pampas of the south.
Throughout this mountain region, from the plateau of Bogotá in the north to the neighbourhood of latitude 30º south, was continued in pre-Columbian times the succession of groups of civilized or semi-civilized peoples of which the most northerly were the Nahua of Mexico, or perhaps the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico. The ethnic boundary of the southern continent is to be drawn in Central America. The Guetare of Costa Rica, and perhaps the Sumo of Nicaragua, constitute northerly outposts of the territorially great Chibchan culture, the centre of which is to be found in the plateau of Bogotá, while its southerly extension leads to the Barbacoa of northern Ecuador. South of the Chibcha, in the Andean region lying between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, is the aboriginal home of the Quechua-Aymara peoples, nearly the whole of which, at thetime of the Conquest was embraced in the Empire of the Incas. This empire had even reached into the confines of the third culture area of the southern continent; for the Calchaqui of the mountains of northern Argentina, who were the most representative and probably the most advanced nation of the Diaguité group, had even then passed under Inca subjection. Other tribes of this most southerly of the civilized peoples of America had never been conquered; but bounded, as they were, by the aggressive empire of the north, by the warlike Araucanians to the south, and by the savages of the Gran Chaco to the east, their opportunities for independent development were slight; indeed, it is not improbable that the peoples of this group represent the last stand of a race that had once extended far to the north and had played an important part in the pre-Inca cultures of the central Andes. Beyond the Diaguité lay the domains of savagery, although the Araucanians of the Chilean-Argentine region were not uninfluenced by the northward civilizations and in most respects were superior to the wild tribes that inhabited the great body of the South American continent; but the indomitable love of liberty, which has kept them unconquered through many wars, gave to their territory a boundary-line marked no less by a sharp descent in culture than by its untouched independence.
In Columbian times these three Andean groups—the Chibchan tribes, the Quechua-Aymara, and the Diaguité-Calchaqui—possessed a civilization marked by considerable advancement in the arts of metallurgy (gold, silver, copper), pottery, and weaving, by agriculture (fundamentally, cultivation of maize), and by domestication of the llama and alpaca. In the art of building, in stone-work, and, generally, in that plastic and pictorial expression which is a sign of intellectual advancement, the central group far excelled its neighbours. Nor was this due to the fact that it alone, under Inca domination, had reached the stage of stable and diversified social organization; for the archaeology of Peru andBolivia shows that the Empire of the Incas was only the last in a series of central Andean civilizations which it excelled, if at all, in political power rather than in the arts, industrial or aesthetic.
Our knowledge of the religious and mythic ideas of these various groups reflects their relative importance at the time of the Spanish conquests more than their natural diversity. Of the Chibchan groups, only the ideas of a few tribes have been described, and these fragmentarily; of the mythology of the Calchaqui, who had yielded to Inca rule, even less has come down to us; while what is known of the religious conceptions of the pre-Inca peoples of the central region is mainly in the form of gleanings from the works of art left by these peoples, or from such of their cults as survived under the Inca state or in Inca tradition. Inevitably the central body of Andean myth, as transmitted to us, is that of the Incas, who, having reached the position of a great imperial clan, naturally glorified both their own gods and their own legendary history.
The Isthmus of Panama (and northward perhaps as far as the confines of Nicaragua) was aboriginally an outpost of the great Chibchan stock. Tribes of other stocks, some certainly northern in origin, dwelt within the region, but the predominant group was akin to the peoples of the neighbouring southern continent; although whether they were immigrants from the south or were parents of the southern stem can scarcely be known. So far as traditions tell, the uniform account given by the Bolivian tribes is of a northerly origin. The tales seem to point to the Venezuelan coast, and perhaps remotely to the Antilles, rather than to the Isthmus, and it is certain that there are broad similarities in culture—especially in the forms and use of ceremonial objects—pointing to the remote unity of the whole region from Haiti to Ecuador, and from Venezuela toNicaragua. It is entirely possible that within this region the drift of influence has been southerly; though it is more likely that counter-streams, northward and southward, must give the full explanation of the civilization.
On the linguistic side it is agreed that the Guetare of Costa Rica represent a branch of the Chibchan stock, while neighbouring tribes of the same stock are either now extinct or little known. The Spanish conquests in the Isthmian region were as ruthlessly complete as anywhere in America, and for the greater part our knowledge of the aborigines is the fruit of archaeology. In the writings of Oviedo and Cieza de León some facts may be gleaned—enough, indeed, to picture the general character of the rituals of the Indian tribes—but there is no competent contemporary relation of the native religion and beliefs.
PLATE XXVI.
PLATE XXVI.
Jade pendant representing a Vampire. After Hartman,Archaeological Researches on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, Plate XLIV. For reference to the significance of the bat, as a deity, see page177and Note102.
Oviedo's description[113]of the tribes about the Gulf of Nicoya, where the civilizations of the two Americas meet, indicates a religion in which the great rites were human sacrifices of the Mexican type and feasts of intoxication. Archaeological researches in the same region have brought to light amulets and ornaments, some anthropomorphic in character, but many representing animal forms, usually highly conventionalized—alligators, jaguars and pumas, frogs, parrots, vampires, denizens of earth, air, and sea, all indicative of a populous pantheon of talismanic powers; while cruciform, swastika, and other symbolic ornamentation implies a development in the direction of abstraction sustained by Oviedo's mention of "folded books of deerskin parchment," which are probably the southern extension of the art of writing as known in the northern civilization. The archaeology of the Guetare region, in central, and of the Chiriqui region, in southern Costa Rica, disclose the same fantasy of grotesque and conventionalized animals—saurians, armadilloes, the cat-tribe, composites—indicative of a similarly zoomorphic pantheon. Benzoni, speaking of the tribes of this region, states that they worshipped idols in the formsof animals, which they kept hidden in caves; while Andagoya declares that the priests of the Cuna or Cueva (dwelling at the juncture of the Isthmus and the southern continent) communed with the devil and that Chipiripa, a rain-god, was one of their most important deities; they are said, too, to have known of the deluge. Of the neighbouring Indians, about Uraba, Cieza de León gives us to know that "they certainly talk with the devil and do him all the honour they can.... He appears to them (as I have been told by one of themselves) in frightful and terrible visions, which cause them much alarm." Furthermore, "the devil gives them to understand that, in the place to which they go [after death], they will come to life in another kingdom which he has prepared for them, and that it is necessary to take food with them for the journey. As if hell was so very far off!"
Peter Martyr devotes the greater part of a book (the tenth of the Seventh Decade)[114]to a description of the rites and beliefs of the Indians of the region where the Isthmus joins the continent. Dabaiba, he says, was the name both of a river and of a divinity whose sanctuary was about forty leagues from Darien; and thither at certain seasons the caciques, even of the most distant countries, sent slaves to be strangled and burnt before the idol. "When the Spaniards asked them to what divinity they addressed their prayers, they responded that it is to the god who created the heavens, the sun, the moon, and all existing things; and from whom every good thing proceeds. They believe that Dabaiba, the divinity universally venerated in the country, is the mother of this creator." Their traditions told of a great drought which, making the rivers dry, caused the greater part of mankind to perish of thirst, while the survivors emigrated from the mountains to the sea-coast; for this reason they maintained priests and addressed prayers to their divinity, who would seem to be a rain-goddess. Another legend recorded by Peter Martyr tells of a frightful tempest which brought with it two great birds, "similar to the harpies of the Strophades,"having "the face, chin, mouth, nose, teeth, eyes, brows, and physiognomy of a virgin." One of these seized the people and carried them off to the mountains to devour them, wherefore, to slay the man-eating bird, certain heroes carved a human figure on the end of a log, which they set in the ground so that the figure alone was visible. The hunters concealed themselves near by, and when the monster, mistaking the image for prey, sunk its talons into the wood, falling upon it, they slew it before it could release itself. "Those who killed the monster were honoured as gods." Interesting, too, is Martyr's account of the reason given for the sinfulness of incest: the dark spots on the moon represent a man cast into that damp and freezing planet to suffer perpetual cold in expiation of incest committed with his sister—the very myth that is told in North Greenland; and the belief that "only nobles have immortal souls" (or, more likely, that they alone enjoy a paradise) is cited to explain why numbers of servants gladly throw themselves into the graves of their masters, since thus they gain the right to accompany their lords into the afterworld of pleasure; all others, apparently, go down to a gloomy hades, though there may be truth in Martyr's statement that it is pollution which brings this fate.
The account of the religion of the Isthmian tribes in later times, by W. M. Gabb and Pittier de Fábrega,[115]probably represents faithfully their earlier beliefs. There are deities who are the protectors of game-animals, suggesting the Elders of the Kinds so characteristic of North American lore; though they appear to men in human form, taking vengeance on those who only wound in the chase: "When thou shootest, do it to kill, so that the poor beast doth not fall a prey to the worms," is the command of the King of the Tapirs to the unlucky hunter who is punished for his faulty work by being stricken with dumbness during the period in which a cane grows from a sprout to its full height. The Isthmian peoples recognize (as do most other Americans) afainéantsupreme being, Sibú, in theworld above, with a host of lesser, but dangerous, powers in the realm of environing nature; and there is a paradise, at least for the noble dead, situated at the zenith, though the way thither is beset by perils, monsters, and precipices. Las Casas also mentions the belief in a supreme deity, Chicuna, Lord of All Things, as extending from Darien to Nicaragua; and he says that along with this god the Sun, the Moon, and the Morning Star were worshipped, as well as divinities of wood and stone which presided over the elements and the sowings (sementeras).
The allusion to deities of thesementerasis interesting in connexion with the Bribri and Brunka (or Boruca) myths, published by Pittier de Fábrega. According to these tribes of Indians, men and animal kinds were originally born of seeds kept in baskets which Sibú entrusted to the lesser gods; but the evil powers were constantly hunting for these seeds, endeavouring to destroy them. One tale relates that after Surá, the good deity to whom the seed had been committed, had gone to his field of maize, Jáburu, the evil divinity, stole and ate the seed; and when Surá returned, killed and buried him, a cacao-tree and a calabash-tree growing from the grave. Sibú, the almighty one, resolving to punish Jáburu and demanding of him a drink of chocolate, the wives of the wicked deity roasted the cacao, and made a drinking-vessel of the calabash. "Then Sibú, the almighty god, willed—and whatever he wills has to be: 'May the first cup come to me!' and as it so came to pass, he said, 'My uncle, I present this cup to thee, so that thou drink!' Jáburu swallowed the chocolate at once, with such delight that his throat resounded,tshaaa!And he said, 'My uncle! I have drunk Surá's first fruit!' But just at this moment he began to swell, and he swelled and swelled until he blew up. Then Sibú, the almighty god, picked up again the seed of our kin, which was in Jáburu's body, and willed, 'Let Surá wake up again!' And as it so happened he gave him back the basket with the seed of our kinto keep." In another tale a duel between Sibú and Jáburu, in which each should throw two cacao-pods at the other, and he should lose in whose hand a pod first broke, was the preliminary for the creation of men, which Sibú desired and Jáburu opposed. The almighty god chose green pods, the evil one ripe pods; and at the third throw the pod broke in Jáburu's hand, mankind being then born from the seed. A third legend, of a man-stealing eagle who devoured his prey in company with a jaguar (who is no true jaguar, but a bad spirit, having the form of a stone until his prey approaches), is evidently a version of the story of the bird-monster told by Peter Martyr.
Not the quest of the Golden Fleece itself and the adventures of the Argonauts with clashing rocks and Amazonian women are so filled with extravagance and peril as is the search for El Dorado.[116]The legend of the Gilded Man and of his treasure city sprang from the soil of the New World in the very dawn of its discovery—whether wholly in the imaginations ofconquistadoresdazzled with dreams of gold, or partly from some custom, tale, or myth of the American Indians it is now impossible to say. In its earlier form it told of a priest, or king, or priest-king, who once a year smeared his body with oil, powdered himself with gold dust, and in gilded splendour, accompanied by nobles, floated to the centre of a lake, where, as the onlookers from the shore sang and danced, he first made offering of treasure to the waters and then himself leaped in to wash the gold from his body. Later, fostered by the readiness of the aborigines to rid themselves of the plague of white men by means of tales of treasure cities farther on, the story grew into pictures of the golden empire of Omagua, or Manoa, or Paytiti, or Enim, on the shores of a distant lake. Expedition after expedition journeyed in quest of the fabled capital. As early as 1530, Ambros von Alfinger, a German knight, setout from the coast of Venezuela in search of a golden city, chaining his enslaved native carriers to one another by means of neck-rings and cutting off the heads of those who succumbed to fatigue to save the trouble of unlinking them; Alfinger himself was wounded in the neck by an arrow and died of the wound. In 1531 Diego de Ordaz conducted an expedition guided by a lieutenant who claimed to have been entertained in the city of Omoa by El Dorado himself; in 1536-38 George of Spires, afterward governor of Venezuela, made a journey of fifteen hundred miles into the interior; and another German, the red-bearded Nicholas Federman, departed upon the same quest. On the plains of Bogotá in 1539 they met Quesada and Belalcazar, who, coming from the north and from the south respectively, had subdued the Chibcha realm. Hernan Perez de Quesada, brother of the conqueror, led an unlucky expedition, behaving with such cruelty that his death from lightning was regarded as a divine retribution; while the expeditions of the chivalrous Philip von Hutten (1540-41) and of Orellana down the Amazon (1540-41) were followed by others, down to the time of Sir Walter Raleigh's quest in 1595,—all enlarging the geographical knowledge of South America and accumulating fables of cities of gold and nations of warlike women. Of all these adventures, however, the most amazing was the "jornada de Omagua y Dorado" which set out from Peru in 1559 under the leadership of Don Pedro de Ursua, a knight of Navarre. Ursua was a gentleman, worthy of his knighthood, but his company was crowded with cut-throats, of whom he himself was an early victim. Hernando de Guzman made himself master of the mutineers, and renouncing allegiance to the King of Castile, proclaimed himself Prince and King of all Tierra Firme; but he, in turn fell before his tyrant successor, Lope de Aguirre, whose fantastic and blood-thirsty insanity caused half the continent to shudder at his name, which is still remembered in Venezuelan folk-lore, where the phosphorescence of the swamp is calledfuego de Aguirrein thebelief that under such form the tortured soul of the tyrant wanders abroad.
The true provenance of the story of the Gilded Man (if not of the treasure city) seems certainly to be the region about Bogotá in the realm of the Chibcha. Possibly the myth may refer to the practices of one of the nations conquered by the Muyscan Zipas before the coming of the Spaniards, and legendary even at that time; for as the tale is told, it seems to describe a ceremony in honour of such a water-spirit as we are everywhere told the Colombian nations venerated; and it may actually be that the Gilded Man was himself a sacrifice to or a personation of the deity. Whatever the origin, the legends of El Dorado have their node in the lands of the Chibcha—a circumstance not without its own poetic warrant, for from no other American people have jewelleries of cunningly wrought gold come in more abundance.