A Brief Guide to Native American Myths and Legends (6 page)

‘The philosophical moralist contemplating such spectacles has thought to recognize in them one consoling trait. All history, it has been said, shows man living under an irritated
God, and seeking to appease him by sacrifice of blood; the essence of all religion, it has been added, lies in that of which sacrifice is the symbol – namely, in the offering up of self, in the rendering up of our will to the will of God.

‘But sacrifice, when not a token of gratitude, cannot be thus explained. It is not a rendering up, but a
substitution
of our will for God’s will. A deity is angered by neglect of his dues; he will revenge, certainly, terribly, we know not how or when. But as punishment is all he desires, if we punish ourselves he will be satisfied; and far better is such self-inflicted torture than a fearful looking-for of judgment to come. Craven fear, not without some dim sense of the implacability of nature’s laws, is at its roots.

‘Looking only at this side of religion, the ancient philosopher averred that the gods existed solely in the apprehensions of their votaries, and the moderns have asserted that “fear is the father of religion, love her late-born daughter”; that “the first form of religious belief is nothing else but a horror of the unknown”, and that “no natural religion appears to have been able to develop from a germ within itself anything whatever of real advantage to civilization”.

‘Looking around for other standards wherewith to measure the progress of the knowledge of divinity in the New World,
prayer
suggests itself as one of the least deceptive. “Prayer,” to quote the words of Novalis, ‘is in religion what thought is in philosophy. The religious sense prays, as the reason thinks.” Guizot, carrying the analysis farther, thinks that it is prompted by a painful conviction of the inability of our will to conform to the dictates of reason.

‘Originally it was connected with the belief that divine caprice, not divine law, governs the universe, and that material benefits rather than spiritual gifts are to be desired. The gradual recognition of its limitations and proper objects marks religious advancement. The Lord’s Prayer contains seven petitions, only one of which is for a temporal advantage, and it the least that can be asked for.

‘What immeasurable interval between it and the prayer of the Nootka Indian preparing for war:

‘“Great Quahootze, let me live, not be sick, find the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and kill a great many of him.”

‘Or, again, between it and a petition of a Huron to a local god, heard by Father Brébeuf:

‘“Oki, thou who liveth in this spot, I offer thee tobacco. Help us, save us from shipwreck, defend us from our enemies, give us a good trade and bring us back safe and sound to our villages.”

‘This is a fair specimen of the supplications of the lowest religions. Another equally authentic is given by Father Allouez. In 1670 he penetrated to an outlying Algonkin village, never before visited by a white man. The inhabitants, startled by his pale face and long black gown, took him for a divinity. They invited him to the council lodge, a circle of old men gathered round him, and one of them, approaching him with a double handful of tobacco, thus addressed him, the others grunting approval:

‘“This indeed is well, Blackrobe, that thou dost visit us. Have mercy upon us. Thou art a Manito. We give thee to smoke.

‘“The Naudowessies and Iroquois are devouring us. Have mercy upon us.

‘“We are often sick; our children die; we are hungry. Have mercy upon us. Hear me, O Manito, I give thee to smoke.

‘“Let the earth yield us corn; the rivers give us fish; sickness not slay us; nor hunger so torment us. Hear us, O Manito, we give thee to smoke.”

‘In this rude but touching petition, wrung from the heart of a miserable people, nothing but their wretchedness is visible. Not the faintest trace of an aspiration for spiritual enlightenment cheers the eye of the philanthropist, not the remotest conception that through suffering we are purified can be detected.’

The mythologies of the several stocks of the Red Race differ widely in conception and detail, and this has led many hasty investigators to form the conclusion that they were therefore of separate origin. But careful study has proved that they accord with all great mythological systems in their fundamental principles, and therefore with each other. The idea of God, often strange and grotesque perhaps, was nevertheless powerfully expressed in the Indian mythologies. Each division of the race possessed its own word to signify ‘spirit’. Some of these words meant ‘that which is above’, the higher one, ‘the invisible’, and these attributes accorded to deity show that the original Indian conception of it was practically the same as those which obtained among the primitive peoples of Europe and Asia. The idea of God was that of a great prevailing force who resided ‘in the sky’. Savage or primitive man observes that all brightness emanates from the firmament above him. His eyes are dazzled by its splendour. Therefore he concludes that it must be the abode of the source of all life, of all spiritual excellence.

Before man has discovered the uses of that higher machinery of reason, philosophy, and has learned to marshal his theological ideas by its light, such deities as he worships conform very much to his own ethical standard. They mirror his morality, or lack of it. They are, like himself, savage, cruel, insatiable in their appetites. Very likely, too, the bestial attributes of the totemic gods cling to those deities who have been evolved out of that system. Among savage people ideas of good and evil as we conceive them are non-existent. To them ‘good’ merely implies everything which is to their advantage, ‘evil’ that which injures or distresses them. It is only when such a system as totemism, with its intricate taboos and stringent laws bearing on the various relationships of life, comes to be adopted that a ‘moral’ order arises. Slaughter of
the totem animal becomes a ‘crime’ – sacrilege. Slaughter of a member of the totem clan, of a blood-brother, must be atoned for because he is of the totem blood. Marriage with a woman of the same totem blood becomes an offence. Neglect to pay fitting homage and sacrifice to the gods or totem is regarded with severity, especially when the evolution of a priestly caste has been achieved. As the totem is an ancestor, so all ancestors are looked upon with reverence, and deference to living progenitors becomes a virtue. In such ways a code of ‘morality’ is slowly but certainly produced.

But, oddly enough, the gods are usually exempt from these laws by which their worshippers are bound. We find them murderous, unfilial, immoral, polygamous, and often irreverent. This may be accounted for by the circumstance that their general outlines were filled in before totemism had become a fully developed system, or it may mean that the savage did not believe that divine beings could be fettered by such laws as he felt himself bound to obey. However that may be, we find the American gods neither better nor worse than those of other mythological systems. Some of them are prone to a sort of Puckish trickery and are fond of practical joking: they had not reached the exalted nobility of the pantheon of Olympus. But what is more remarkable – and this applies to the deities of all primitive races – we find that they possess no ideas of good and evil. We find them occasionally worshipping gods of their own – usually the creative deities – and that may perhaps be accounted unto them for righteousness. But they are only ‘good’ to their worshippers inasmuch as they ensure them abundant crops or game, and only ‘bad’ when they cease to do so. They are not worshipped because they are the founts of truth and justice, but for the more immediately cogent reason that, unless placated by the steam of sacrifice, they will cease to provide an adequate food-supply to man, and may malevolently send destruction upon their neglectful worshippers.
In the relations between god and man among early peoples a specific contract is implied: ‘Sacrifice unto us, provide us with those offerings the steam of which is our food, continue to do so, and we will see to it that you do not lack crops and game and the essentials of life. Fail to observe these customs and you perish.’ Under such a system it will readily be granted that such horrors as human sacrifice were only undertaken because they were thought to be absolutely necessary to the existence of the race, as a whole, and were not prompted by any mere wanton delight in bloodshed.

Dealing with this point, the late Professor Brinton says in his
Myths of the New World
:

‘The confusion of these distinct ideas [monotheism and polytheism] has led to much misconception of the native creeds. But another and more fatal error was that which distorted them into a dualistic form, ranging on one hand the good spirit with his legion of angels, on the other the evil one with his swarm of fiends, representing the world as the scene of their unending conflict, man as the unlucky football who gets all the blows.

‘This notion, which has its historical origin among the Parsees of ancient Iran, is unknown to savage nations. “The Hidatsa,” says Dr Matthews, “believe neither in a hell nor a devil.” “The idea of the devil,” justly observes Jacob Grimm, “is foreign to all primitive religions.” Yet Professor Mueller, in his voluminous work on those of America, after approvingly quoting this saying, complacently proceeds to classify the deities as good or bad spirits!

‘This view, which has obtained without question in earlier works on the native religions of America, has arisen partly from habits of thought difficult to break, partly from mistranslations of native words, partly from the foolish axiom of the early missionaries, “The gods of the Gentiles are devils.” Yet their own writings furnish conclusive proof that no such distinction existed out of their own fancies. The same word (
otkon
) which Father Bruyas employs to translate into
Iroquois the term “devil”, in the passage “The devil took upon himself the figure of a serpent”, he is obliged to use for “spirit” in the phrase, “At the resurrection we shall be spirits”, which is a rather amusing illustration how impossible it was by any native word to convey the idea of the spirit of evil.

‘When, in 1570, Father Rogel commenced his labours among the tribes near the Savannah River, he told them that the deity they adored was a demon who loved all evil things, and they must hate him; whereas his auditors replied, that so far from this being the case, he whom he called a wicked being was the power that sent them all good things, and indignantly left the missionary to preach to the winds.

‘A passage often quoted in support of this mistaken view is one in Winslow’s
Good News from New England
, written in 1622. The author says that the Indians worship a good power called Kiehtan, and another “who, as farre as wee can conceive, is the Devill”, named Hobbamock, or Hobbamoqui. The former of these names is merely the word “great”, in their dialect of Algonkin, with a final
n
, and is probably an abbreviation of Kittanitowit, the great Manitou, a vague term mentioned by Roger Williams and other early writers, manufactured probably by them and not the appellation of any personified deity. The latter, so far from corresponding to the power of evil, was, according to Winslow’s own statement, the kindly god who cured diseases, aided them in the chase, and appeared to them in dreams as their protector. Therefore, with great justice, Dr Jarvis has explained it to mean “the
oke
or tutelary deity which each Indian worships”, as the word itself signifies.

‘So in many instances it turns out that what has been reported to be the evil divinity of a nation, to whom they pray to the neglect of a better one, is in reality the highest power they recognize.’

The mythologies of the Red Man are infinitely more rich in creative and deluge myths than those of any other race in the
two hemispheres. Tales which deal with the origin of man are exceedingly frequent, and exhibit every phase of the type of creative story. Although many of these are similar to European and Asiatic myths of the same class, others show great originality, and strikingly present to our minds the characteristics of American aboriginal thought.

The creation-myths of the various Indian tribes differ as much from one another as do those of Europe and Asia. In some we find the great gods moulding the universe, in others we find them merely discovering it. Still others lead their people from subterranean depths to the upper earth. In many Indian myths we find the world produced by the All-Father sun, who thickens the clouds into water, which becomes the sea. In the Zuñi record of creation Awonawilona, the creator, fecundates the sea with his own flesh, and hatches it with his own heat. From this green scums are formed, which become the fourfold mother Earth and the all-covering father Sky, from whom sprang all creatures. ‘Then from the nethermost of the four caves of the world the seed of men and the creatures took form and grew; even as with eggs in warm places worms quickly form and appear, and, growing, soon burst their shells and there emerge, as may happen, birds, tadpoles, or serpents: so man and all creatures grew manifoldly and multiplied in many kinds. Thus did the lowermost world-cave become overfilled with living things, full of unfinished creatures, crawling like reptiles over one another in black darkness, thickly crowding together and treading one on another, one spitting on another and doing other indecency, in such manner that the murmurings and lamentations became loud, and many amidst the growing confusion sought to escape, growing wiser and more manlike. Then Po-shai-an-K’ia, the foremost and the wisest of men, arising from the nethermost sea, came among men and the living things, and pitying them, obtained egress from that first world-cave through such a dark and narrow path that some seeing somewhat, crowding after, could not follow him, so eager
mightily did they strive one with another. Alone then did Po-shai-an-K’ia come from one cave to another into this world, then island-like, lying amidst the world-waters, vast, wet, and unstable. He sought and found the Sun-Father, and besought him to deliver the men and the creatures from that nethermost world.’
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