Tzit-jizinde, "the Man who likes Everybody," who said he belonged to the Inoschujochin—Manzanita or Bearberry clan—showed me how to pray with hoddentin in time of lightning or storm or danger of any kind. Taking a small pinch in his fingers, he held it out at arm's length, standing up, and repeated his prayer, and then blew his breath hard. I was once with a party of Apache while a comet was visible. I called their attention to it, but they did not seem to care. On the other hand, Antonio told me that the "biggest dance" the Apache ever had was during the time that "the stars all fell out of the sky" (1833).
"The only act of a religious character which I observed ... was shortly after crossing the river they [i.e., the American officers] were met by a small party of the Indians, one of whom chalked a cross on the breast of each, with a yellow earth, which he carried in a satchel at his belt. Previous to doing so he muttered some words very solemnly with his hands uplifted and eyes thrown upwards. Again, on arriving at the camp of the people, the chief and others in greeting them took a similar vow, touching thereafter the yellow chalked cross. Sonora may have furnished them with some of their notions of a Deity."[264]
"The yellow earth," seen by Dr. Smart was, undoubtedly, hoddentin, carried in a medicine bag at the belt of a medicine-man. Some years ago I went out with Al. Seiber and a small party of Apache to examine three of their "sacred caves" in the Sierra Pinal and Sierra Ancha. No better opportunity could have been presented for noting what they did. The very last thing at night they intoned a "medicine" song, and at early dawn they were up to throw a pinch of hoddentin to the east.
Moses and John, two of the Apache mentioned above, requested permission to go off in the mountains after deer and bear, supposed to be plentiful in the higher altitudes. Before leaving camp, Moses blew a pinch of hoddentin toward the sun, repeating his prayer for success, and ending it with a sharp, snappy "ek," as if to call attention. In one of the sacred caves visited on this trip, the Apache medicine-men assembled for the purpose of holding their snake dance. This I have never seen among the Apache, but that they celebrate it and that it is fully the equal of the repulsive rite which I have witnessed and noted among the Tusayan[265] I am fully assured. I may make reference to some of its features in the chapter upon animal worship and ophic rites.
From a multiplicity of statements, the following are taken: Concepcion had seen the snake dance over on the Carrizo, near Camp Apache; the medicine-men threw hoddentin upon the snakes. He said: "After getting through with the snake, the medicine-man suffered it to glide off, covered with the hoddentin, thrown by admiring devotees."
Mike Burns had no remembrance of seeing hoddentin thrown to the sun. He had seen it thrown to the snake, "in a kind of worship."
Nott and Antonio stated that "when they find that a snake has wriggled across the trail, especially the trail to be followed by a war party, they throw hoddentin upon the trail." Nott took a pinch of hoddentin, showed how to throw it upon the snake, and repeated the prayer, which I recorded.
Corbusier instances a remedy in use among the Tonto Apache. This consisted in applying a rattlesnake to the head or other part suffering from pain. He continues: "After a time the medicine-man rested the snake on the ground again, and, still retaining his hold of it with his right hand, put a pinch of yellow pollen into its mouth with his left, and rubbed some along its belly."[266]
"He then held his hand out to a man, who took a pinch of the powder and rubbed it on the crown of a boy's head. Yellow pollen treated in this manner is a common remedy for headache, and may frequently be seen on the crowns of the heads of men and boys."[267]
Hoddentin is used in the same manner as a remedy for headache among the San Carlos Apache, but the medicine-men apply a snake to the person of a patient only when their "diagnosis" has satisfied them that he has been guilty of some unkindness to a snake, such as stepping upon it, in which case they pretend that they can cure the man by applying to the part affected the portion of the reptile's body upon which he trampled.
The Apache state that when their medicine-men go out to catch snakes for their snake dance, they recite a prayer and lay their left hand, in which is some hoddentin, at the opening of the snake's den, through which the reptile must crawl, and, after a short time the snake will come out and allow himself to be handled.
Hoddentin is also offered to other animals, especially the bear, of which the Apache, like their congeners the Navajo, stand in great awe and reverence. When a bear is killed, the dance which is held becomes frenzied; the skin is donned by all the men, and much hoddentin is thrown, if it can be obtained. One of these dances which I saw in the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, lasted all night, without a moment's cessation in the singing and prancing of the participants.
A great deal of hoddentin is offered to the "ka-chu" (great or jack rabbit).[268]
The Apache medicine-man, Nakay-do-klunni, called by the whites "Bobbydoklinny," exercised great influence over his people at Camp Apache, in 1881. He boasted of his power to raise the dead, and predicted that the whites should soon be driven from the land. He also drilled the savages in a peculiar dance, the like of which had never been seen among them. The participants, men and women, arranged themselves in files, facing a common center, like the spokes of a wheel, and while thus dancing hoddentin was thrown upon them in profusion. This prophet or "doctor" was killed in the engagement in the Cibicu canyon, August 30, 1881.
In a description of the "altars" made by the medicine-men of the Apache-Yuma at or near Camp Verde, Arizona, it is shown that this sacred powder is freely used. Figures were drawn upon the ground to represent the deities of the tribe, and the medicine-men dropped on all, except three of them, a pinch of yellow powder (hoddentin) which was taken from a small buckskin bag. This powder was put upon the head, chest, or other part of the body of the patient.
Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army,[269] says that the ceremony just described was "a most sacred one and entered into for the purpose of averting the diseases with which the Apache at Camp Verde had been afflicted the summer previous."
I am not sure that the Apache-Yuma have not borrowed the use of hoddentin from the Apache. My reason for expressing this opinion is that I have never seen an Apache without a little bag of hoddentin when it was possible for him to get it, whereas I have never seen an Apache-Yuma with it except when he was about to start out on the warpath. The "altars" referred to by Corbusier are made also by the Apache, Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan. Those of the Apache, as might be inferred from their nomadic state, were the crudest; those of the Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan display a wonderful degree of artistic excellence. The altars of the Navajo have been described and illustrated by Dr. Washington Matthews,[270] and those of the Tusayan by myself.[271]
Moses Henderson, wishing me to have a profitable interview with his father, who was a great snake doctor among the Apache, told me that when he brought him to see me I should draw two lines across each other on his right foot, and at their junction place a bead of the chalchihuitl, the cross to be drawn with hoddentin. The old man would then tell me all he knew.
The Apache, I learned, at times offer hoddentin to fire, an example of pyrodulia for which I had been on the lookout, knowing that the Navajo have fire dances, the Zuñi the Feast of the Little God of Fire, and the Apache themselves are not ignorant of the fire dance.
Hoddentin seems to be used to strengthen all solemn compacts and to bind faith. I had great trouble with a very bright medicine-man named Na-a-cha, who obstinately refused to let me look at the contents of a phylactery which he constantly wore until I let him know that I, too, was a medicine-man of eminence. The room in which we had our conversation was the quarters of the post surgeon, at that time absent on scout. The chimney piece was loaded with bottles containing all kinds of drugs and medicines. I remarked carelessly to Na-a-cha that if he doubted my powers I would gladly burn a hole through his tongue with a drop of fluid from the vial marked "Acid, nitric," but he concluded that my word was sufficient, and after the door was locked to secure us from intrusion he consented to let me open and examine the phylactery and make a sketch of its contents. To guard against all possible trouble, he put a pinch of hoddentin on each of my shoulders, on the crown of my head, and on my chest and back. The same performance was gone through with in his own case. He explained that hoddentin was good for men to eat, that it was good medicine for the bear, and that the bear liked to eat it. I thought that herein might be one clew to the reason why the Apache used it as a medicine. The bear loves the tule swamp, from which, in days primeval, he sallied out to attack the squaws and children gathering the tule powder or tule bulb. Poorly armed, as they then were, the Apache must have had great trouble in resisting him; hence they hope to appease him by offering a sacrifice acceptable to his palate. If acceptable to the chief animal god, as the bear seems to have been, as he certainly was the most dangerous, then it would have been also acceptable to the minor deities like the puma, snake, eagle, etc., and, by an easy transition, to the sun, moon, and other celestial powers. This opinion did not last long, as will be shown. From its constant association with all sacrifices and all acts of worship, hoddentin would naturally become itself sanctified and an object of worship, just as rattles, drums, standards, holy grails, etc., in different parts of the world have become fetichistic. I was not in the least surprised when I heard Moses Henderson reciting a prayer, part of which ran thus: "Hoddentin eshkin, bi hoddentin ashi" ("Hoddentin child, you hoddentin I offer"), and to learn that it was a personification of hoddentin.
The fact that the myths of the Apache relate that Assanut-li-je spilled hoddentin over the surface of the sky to make the Milky Way may be looked upon as an inchoate form of a calendar, just as the Aztecs transferred to their calendar the reed, rabbit, etc.
So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least, I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood had been shed, and everything they did—the bathing in the sweat lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon their heads by the Apache-Yuma—had a reference to the lustration or purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida, gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me by one of the women who gathered it.
Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.
The term "kunque" as it appears in this chapter is one of convenience only. Each pueblo, or rather each set of pueblos, has its own name in its own language, as, for example, the people of Laguna and Acoma, who employ it in all their ceremonies as freely as do the Zuñi, call it in their tongue "hinawa." In every pueblo which I visited—and I visited them all, from Oraibi of Tusayan, on the extreme west, to Picuris, on the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del Sur, in Texas—I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quantities and so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both astonished and gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to discover a lever which I could employ in prying into the meaning of other usages and ceremonials.
Behind the main door in the houses at Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Picuris, Laguna, Acoma, San Felipe, Jemez, and other towns, there is a niche containing a bowl or saucer filled with this sacred meal, of which the good housewife is careful to throw a pinch to the sun at early dawn and to the twilight at eventide. In every ceremony among the Pueblos naturally enough, more particularly among those who have been living farthest from the Mexicans, the lavish scattering of sacred meal is the marked feature of the occasion. At the snake dance of the Tusayan, in 1881, the altars were surrounded with baskets of pottery and with flat plaques of reeds, which were heaped high with kunque. When the procession moved out from under the arcade and began to make the round of the sacred stone the air was white with meal, and in my imagination I could see that it was a procession of Druids circling about a "sacred stone" in Ireland previous to the coming of St. Patrick. When the priests threw the snakes down upon the ground it was within a circle traced with kunque, and soon the snakes were covered with the same meal flung upon them by the squaws. There was only one scalp left among the Tusayan in 1881, but there were several among the Zuñi, and one or two each at Acoma and Laguna. In every one of these towns kunque was offered to the scalps.
At the feast of the Little God of Fire among the Zuñi, in 1881, my personal notes relate that "the moment the head of the procession touched the knoll upon which the pueblo is built the mass of people began throwing kunque upon the Little God and those with him as well as on the ground in front of, beside, and behind them. This kunque was contained in sacred basket-shaped bowls of earthenware. The spectators kept the air fairly misty with clouds of the sacred kunque. This procession passed around the boundaries of the pueblo of Zuñi, stopping at eight holes in the ground for the purpose of enacting a ceremonial of consecration suggestive of the 'terminalia' of the Romans. They visited each of the holes, which were 18 inches deep and 12 inches square, with a sandstone slab to serve as a cover. Each hole was filled with kunque and sacrificial plumes. * * * 'Every morning of the year, when the sky is clear, at the rising of Lucero [the morning star], at the crowing of the cock, we throw corn flour [kunque] to the sun. I am never without my bag of kunque; here it is [drawing it from his belt]. Every Zuñi has one. We offer it to the sun for good rain and good crops.'"[272]
Subsequently Pedro went on to describe in detail a phallic dance and ceremony, in which there was a sort of divination. The young maiden who made the lucky guess was richly rewarded, while her less fortunate companions were presented with a handful of kunque, which they kept during the ensuing year. This dance is called "ky'áklu," and is independent of the great phallic dance occurring in the month of December. Pedro also stated that until very recently the Zuñi were in the habit of celebrating a fire dance at Noche Buena (Christmas). There were four piles of wood gathered for the occasion, and upon each the medicine-men threw kunque in profusion. This dance, as Pedro described it, closely resembled one mentioned by Landa in his Cosas de Yucatan. High up on the vertical face of the precipice of Tâaiyalana there is a phallic shrine of the Zuñi to which I climbed with Mr. Frank Cushing. We found that the place had been visited by young brides who were desirous of becoming mothers. The offerings in every case included kunque.
In the account given in the National Tribune, Washington, District of Columbia, May 20, 1886, of the mode of life of the Zuñi woman Wehwa while in the national capital, and while engaged in the kirmes, we read:
She also strewed sacred corn meal along on her way to the theater to bring good luck to her and the other dancers. * * * She has gone from her comfortable room to pray in the street at daylight every morning, whatever the weather has been. * * * At such times she strews corn meal all around her until the front-door steps and the sidewalk are much daubed with dough. But this is not the corn meal in common use in the United States, but is sacred meal ground in Zuñi with sacred stones.[273]
So long a time has elapsed since any of the Pueblos have been on the warpath that no man can describe their actual war customs except from the dramatic ceremonial of their dances or from the stories told him by the "old men." The following from an eyewitness will therefore be of interest: "Before the Pueblos reached the heights they were ordered to scale they halted on the way to receive from their chiefs some medicine from the medicine bags which each of them carried about his person. This they rubbed upon their heart, as they said, to make it big and brave, and they also rubbed it upon other parts of their bodies and upon their rifles for the same purpose."[274]
The constant use of kunque by the different Pueblo tribes has been noticed from the first days of European contact. In the relation of Don Antonio de Espejo (1583) we are told that upon the approach of the Spaniards to the town of Zaguato, lying 28 leagues west of Zuñi, "a great multitude of Indians came forth to meete them, and among the rest their Caçiques, with so great demonstration of joy and gladnes, that they cast much meale of Maiz upon the ground for the horses to tread upon."[275]
I am under the impression that the ruins of this village are those near the ranch of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, at Keam's Canyon, Arizona, called by the Navajo "Talla-hogandi," meaning "singing house," in reference to the Spanish mission which formerly existed there. This village is, as I have hitherto shown, the ruin of the early pueblo of Awátubi.
In his poem descriptive of the conquest of New Mexico, entitled "Nueva Mejico," Alcala de Henares, 1610, Villagrá uses the following language:[276]
It is gratifying to observe that the Spanish writer in the remote wilds of America struck upon an important fact in ethnology: that the throwing of "harina" or flour by the people of Tusayan (Mohoçe or Moqui), Cibola, and Zuñi (observe the odd separation of "Zibola" from either Moqui or Zuñi) was identical with the "carnestolendas" of Spain, in which, on Shrove Tuesday, the women and girls cover all the men they meet with flour. The men are not at all backward in returning the compliment, and the streets are at times filled with the farinaceous dust.
"Harina de maiz azul" is used by Mexicans in their religious ceremonies, especially those connected with the water deities.[277] The Peruvians, when they bathed and sacrificed to cure themselves of sickness, "untandose primero con Harina de Maiz, i con otras cosas, con muchas, i diversas ceremonias, i lo mismo hacen en los Baños."[278] The kunque of the Peruvians very closely resembled that of the Zuñi. We read that it was a compound of different-colored maize ground up with sea shells.[279] The Peruvians had a Priapic idol called Hua-can-qui, of which we read: "On offre à cette idole une corbeille ornée de plumes de diverses couleurs et remplie d'herbes odoriférantes; on y met aussi de la farine de maïs que l'on renouvelle tous les mois, et les femmes se lavent la figure avec celle que l'on ôte, en accompagnant cette ablution de plusieurs cérémonies superstitieuses."[280]
The tribes seen on the Rio Colorado in 1540 by Alarcon "carry also certaine little long bagges about an hand broade tyed to their left arme, which serve them also instead of brasers for their bowes, full of the powder of a certaine herbe, whereof they make a certaine beverage."[281] We are at a loss to know what this powder was, unless hoddentin. The Indians came down to receive the son of the sun, as Alarcon led them to believe him to be, in full gala attire, and no doubt neglected nothing that would add to their safety.
"Ils mirent dans leur bouche du maïs et d'autres semences, et les lancèrent vers moi en disant que c'était la manière dont ils faisaient les sacrifices au soleil."[282]
Kohl speaks of seeing inside the medicine wigwam, during the great medicine ceremonies of the Ojibwa, "a snow-white powder."[283] In an address delivered by Dr. W. J. Hoffman before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., May 2, 1888, upon the symbolism of the Midēᐟ, Jesᐟsakkid, and Wâbeno of the Ojibwa of Minnesota, he stated in reply to a question from me that he had not been able to find any of the "snow-white powder" alluded to by Kohl in Kitchi-gami.[284]
In Yucatan, when children were baptized, one of the ceremonies was that the chac, or priest in charge, should give the youngster a pinch of corn meal, which the boy threw in the fire. These chacs were priests of the god who presided over baptism and over hunting.[285]
At the coronation of their kings the Aztecs had a sacred unction, and a holy water, drawn from a sacred spring, and "about his neck is tied a small gourd, containing a certain powder, which is esteemed a strong preservative against disease, sorcery, and treason."[286]
"At the entrance to one of the narrow defiles of the Cordilleras ... a large mass of rock with small cavities upon its surface, into which the Indians, when about to enter the pass, generally deposit a few glass beads, a handful of meal, or some other propitiatory offering to the 'genius' supposed to preside over the spot and rule the storm."
Again, "on receiving a plate of broth, an Indian, before eating, spills a little upon the ground; he scatters broadcast a few pinches of the meal that is given him, and pours out a libation before raising the wine cup to his lips, as acts of thanksgiving for the blessings he receives."[287]
When Capt. John Smith was captured by the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia in 1607 he was taken to "a long house," where, on the morning following "a great grim fellow" came skipping in, "all painted over with coale, mingled with oyle. With most strange gestures and passions he began his invocation, and environed the fire with a circle of meale." This priest was followed by six others, who "with their rattles began a song, which ended, the chiefe priest layd downe five wheat cornes." This ceremony was apparently continued during the day and repeated on the following two days.[288] Capt. Smith's reception by the medicine-men of the Virginians is described by Picart.[289] These medicine-men are called "prêtres," and we are informed that they sang "des chants magiques." The grains of wheat ("grains de blé") were "rangez cinq à cinq."
Gomara tells us that in the religious festivals of Nicaragua there were used certain "taleguillas con polvos," but he does not tell what these "polvos" were; he only says that when the priests sacrifice themselves they cured the wounds, "curan las heridas con polvo de herbas ó carbon."[290]
While the Baron de Graffenreid was a prisoner in the hands of the Tuscarora, on the Neuse River, in 1711, the conjurer or high priest ("the priests are generally magicians and even conjure up the devil") "made two white rounds, whether of flour or white sand, I do not know, just in front of us."[291]
Lafitau says of one of the medicine-women of America: "Elle commença d'abord par préparer un espace de terrain qu'elle nétoya bien & qu'elle couvrit de farine, ou de cendre très-bien bluttée (je ne me souviens pas exactement laquelle des deux)."[292]
In a description of the ceremonial connected with the first appearance of the catamenia in a Navajo squaw, there is no reference to a use of anything like hoddentin, unless it may be the corn which was ground into meal for a grand feast, presided over by a medicine-man.[293]
When a woman is grinding corn or cooking, and frequently when any of the Navajo, male or female, are eating, a handful of corn meal is put in the fire as an offering (to the sun).[294]
The Pueblos of New Mexico are described as offering sacrifices of food to their idols. "Los Indios del Norte tienan multitud de Idolos, en pequeños Adoratorios, donde los ponen de comer."[295]
Maj. Backus, U. S. Army, describes certain ceremonies which he saw performed by the Navajo at a sacred spring near Fort Defiance, Arizona, which seems to have once been a geyser:
I once visited it with three other persons and an Indian doctor, who carried with him five small bags, each containing some vegetable or mineral substance, all differing in color. At the spring each bag was opened and a small quantity of its contents was put into the right hand of each person present. Each visitor, in succession, was then required to kneel down by the spring side, to place his closed hand in the water up to his elbow, and after a brief interval to open his hand and let fall its contents into the spring. The hand was then slowly withdrawn and each one was then permitted to drink and retire.[296]
Columbus in his fourth voyage touched the mainland, going down near Brazil. He says:
In Cariay and the neighboring country there are great enchanters of a very fearful character. They would have given the world to prevent my remaining there an hour. When I arrived they sent me immediately two girls very showily dressed; the eldest could not be more than eleven years of age and the other seven, and both exhibited so much immodesty that more could not be expected from public women. They carried concealed about them a magic powder.[297]
The expedition of La Salle noticed, among the Indians on the Mississippi, the Natchez, and others, "todos los dias, que se detuvieren en aquel Pueblo, ponia la Cacica, encima de la Sepultura de Marle [i.e., a Frenchman who had been drowned], una Cestilla llena de Espigas de Maíz, tostado."[298]
"He showed me, as a special favor, that which give him his power—a bag with some reddish powder in it. He allowed me to handle it and smell this mysterious stuff, and pointed out two little dolls or images, which, he said, gave him authority over the souls of others; it was for their support that flour and water were placed in small birch-rind saucers in front."[299]
On page 286, narrative of the Jeannette Arctic expedition, Dr. Newcomb says: "One day, soon after New Year's, I was out walking with one of the Indians. Noticing the new moon, he stopped, faced it, and, blowing out his breath, he spoke to it, invoking success in hunting. The moon, he said, was 'Tyunne,' or ruler of deers, bears, seals, and walrus." The ceremony herein described I have no doubt was analogous in every respect to hoddentin-throwing. As the Indians mentioned were undoubtedly Tinneh, my surmise seems all the more reasonable.[300]
Tanner relates that among the Ojibwa the two best hunters of the band had "each a little leather sack of medicine, consisting of certain roots pounded fine and mixed with red paint, to be applied to the little images or figures of the animals we wish to kill."[301]
"In the parish of Walsingham, in Surrey, there is or was a custom which seems to refer to the rites performed in honor of Pomona. Early in the spring the boys go round to the several orchards in the parish and whip the apple trees.... The good woman gives them some meal."[302]
Among the rustics of Great Britain down to a very recent period there were in use certain "love powders," the composition of which is not known, a small quantity of which had to be sprinkled upon the food of the one beloved.[303]
Attached to the necklace of human fingers before described, captured from one of the chief medicine-men of the Cheyenne Indians, is a bag containing a powder very closely resembling hoddentin, if not hoddentin itself.
It is said that the Asinai made sacrifice to the scalps of their enemies, as did the Zuñi as late as 1881. "Ofrecen á las calaveras pinole molido y de otras cosas comestibles."[304]
Perrot says the Indians of Canada had large medicine bags, which he calls "pindikossan," which, among other things, contained "des racines ou des poudres pour leur servir de médecines."[305]
In an article on the myth of Manibozho, by Squier, in American Historical Magazine Review, 1848, may be found an account of the adventures of two young heroes, one of whom is transferred to the list of gods. He commissioned his comrade to bring him offerings of a white wolf, a polecat, some pounded maize, and eagles' tails.
Laplanders sprinkle cow and calf with flour.[306]
Cameron met an old chief on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, of whom he says: "His forehead and hair were daubed with vermilion, yellow, and white powder, the pollen of flowers."[307]
In the incantations made by the medicine-men of Africa, near the head of the Congo, to preserve his expedition from fire, Cameron saw the sacrifice of a goat and a hen, and among other features a use of powdered bark closely resembling hoddentin: "Scraping the bark off the roots and sticks, they placed it in the wooden bowl and reduced it to powder." The head medicine-man soon after "took up a handful of the powdered bark and blew some toward the sun and the remainder in the opposite direction."[308]
The magic powder, called "uganga," used as the great weapon of divination of the mganga, or medicine-men of some of the African tribes, as mentioned by Speke,[309] must be identical with the powder spoken of by Cameron.
Near the village of Kapéka, Cameron was traveling with a caravan in which the principal man was a half-breed Portuguese named Alvez. "On Alvez making his entry he was mobbed by women, who shrieked and yelled in honor of the event and pelted him with flour." This was Alvez's own home and all this was a sign of welcome.[310]
Speke describes a young chief wearing on his forehead "antelope horns, stuffed with magic powder to keep off the evil eye."[311]
After describing an idol, in the form of a man, in a small temple on the Lower Congo, Stanley says: "The people appear to have considerable faith in a whitewash of cassava meal, with which they had sprinkled the fences, posts, and lintels of doors."[312]
"According to Consul Hutchinson (in his interesting work 'Impressions of Western Africa'), the Botikaimon [a medicine-man], previous to the ceremony of coronation, retires into a deep cavern, and there, through the intermediary of a 'rukaruka' (snake demon), consults the demon Maon. He brings back to the king the message he receives, sprinkles him with a yellow powder called 'tsheoka,' and puts upon his head the hat his father wore."[313] In a note, it is stated that: "Tsheoka is a vegetable product, obtained, according to Hutchinson, by collecting a creamy coat that is found on the waters at the mouth of some small rivers, evaporating the water, and forming a chalky mass of the residue."[314] Schultze says[315] that the Congo negroes "appease the hurricane" by "casting meal into the air."
The voudoo ceremonies of the negroes of New Orleans, which would seem to have been transplanted from Africa, include a sprinkling of the congregation with a meal which has been blessed by the head medicine-man or conjurer.
At the feast of Huli, at the vernal equinox (our April fool's day), the Hindu throw a purple powder (abir) upon each other with much sportive pleasantry. A writer in "Asiatick Researches"[316] says they have the idea of representing the return of spring, which the Romans called "purple."
During the month of Phalgoonu, there is a festival in honor of Krishna, when the "Hindus spend the night in singing and dancing and wandering about the streets besmeared with the dolu (a red) powder, in the daytime carrying a quantity of the same powder about with them, which, with much noise and rejoicing, they throw over the different passengers they may meet in their rambles. Music, dancing, fireworks, singing, and many obscenities take place on this occasion."[317]
On pages 434-435 of my work, "Scatalogic Rites of all Nations," are to be found extracts from various authorities in regard to the Hindu feast of Holi or Hulica, in which this statement occurs: "Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the streets, carrying sacks full of bright-red vegetable powder. With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling color."
"Red powder (gulál) is a sign of a bad design of an adulterous character. During the Holi holidays, the Maháráj throws gulál on the breasts of female and male devotees."[318]
"In India, the devotees throw red powder on one another at the festival of the Huli, or vernal equinox. This red powder, the Hindoos say, is the imitation of the pollen of plants, the principle of fructification, the flower of the plant."[319]
The women of the East Indies (Brahmins), on the 18th of January, celebrate a feast in honor of the goddess Parvati: "Leur but est d'obtenir une longue vie pour leurs maris, & qu'elles ne deviennent jamais veuves. Elles font une Image de Parvati avec de la farine de riz & du grain rouge qu'elles y mêlent; elles l'ornent d'habits & de fleurs & après l'avoir ainsi servie pendant neuf jours, elles la portent le dixiéme dans un Palenquin hors de la Ville. Une foule de femmes mariées la suivent, on la jette ensuite dans un des étangs sacrez, où on la laisse, & chacune s'en retourne chez elle."[320]
Speaking of the methods in use among the Lamas for curing disease, Rev. James Gilmour says: "Throwing about small pinches of millet seed is a usual part of such a service."[321]
Dr. W. W. Rockhill described to me a Tibetan festival, which includes a procession of the God of Mercy, in which procession there are masked priests, holding blacksnake whips in their hands, and carrying bags of flour which they throw upon the people.
The use of these sacred powders during so many different religious festivals and ceremonies would seem to resemble closely that made by the Apache of hoddentin and the employment of kunque by the Zuñi and others; and from Asia it would seem that practices very similar in character found their way into Europe. Of the Spanish witches it is related:
When they entered people's houses they threw a powder on the faces of the inmates, who were thrown thereby into so deep a slumber that nothing could wake them, until the witches were gone.... Sometimes they threw these powders on the fruits of the field and produced hail which destroyed them. On these occasions the demon accompanied them in the form of a husbandman, and when they threw the powders they said:
Higgins says: "The flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχᾰριστία."[323]
What relation these powders have had to the "carnestolendas" of the Spanish and Portuguese, already alluded to, and the throwing of "confetti" by the Italians, which is a modification, it would be hard to say. Some relation would appear to be suggested.
There are some suggestions of a former use of pollen among the Israelites and Egyptians.
Manna, which we are assured was at one time a source of food to the Hebrews, was afterward retained as an offering in the temples. Forlong, however, denies that it ever could have entered into general consumption. He says:
Manna, as food, is an absurdity, but we have the well-known produce of the desert oak or ash—Fraxinus.... An omer of this was precious, and in this quantity, at the spring season, not difficult to get; it was a specially fit tribute to be "laid up" before any Phallic Jah, as it was the pollen of the tree of Jove and of Life, and in this sense the tribe lived spiritually on such "spiritual manna" as this god supplied or was supplied with.[324]
The detestation in which the bean was held by the high-caste people of Egypt does not demonstrate that the bean was not an article of food to a large part of the population, any more than the equal detestation of the occupation of swineherd would prove that none of the poor made use of swine's flesh. The priesthood of Egypt were evidently exerting themselves to stamp out the use of a food once very common among their people, and to supersede it with wheat or some other cereal. They held a man accursed who in passing through a field planted with beans had his clothing soiled with their pollen. Speke must have encountered a survival of this idea when he observed in equatorial Africa, near the sources of the Nile, and among people whose features proclaimed their Abyssinian origin, the very same aversion. He was unable to buy food, simply because he and some of his followers had eaten "the bean called maharagŭé." Such a man, the natives believed, "if he tasted the products of their cows, would destroy their cattle."[325]
One other point should be dwelt upon in describing the kunque of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos. It is placed upon one of the sacred flat baskets and packed down in such a manner that it takes the form of one of the old-fashioned elongated cylindro-conical cheeses. It should be noted also that by something more than a coincidence this form was adhered to by the peoples farther to the south when they arranged their sacred meal upon baskets.
At the festival of the god Teutleco the Aztecs made "de harina de maiz un montecillo muy tupido de la forma de un queso."[326] This closely resembles the corn meal heaps seen at the snake dance of the Tusayan.
The Zuñi, in preparing kunque or sacred meal for their religious festivals, invariably made it in the form of a pyramid resting upon one of their flat baskets. It then bore a striking resemblance to the pyramids or phalli which the Egyptians offered to their deities, and which Forlong thinks must have been "just such Lingham-like sweet-bread as we still see in Indian Sivaic temples."[327] Again, "the orthodox Hislop, in his Two Babylons, tells us that 'bouns,' buns, or bread offered to the gods from the most ancient times were similar to our 'hotcross' buns of Good Friday, that ... the buns known by that identical name were used in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarti) as early as the days of Kekrops, the founder of Athens, 1500 years B. C."[328]
Forlong[329] quotes Capt. Wilford in Asiatick Researches, vol. 8, p. 365, as follows:
When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to goddesses, they offered cakes called mulloi, shaped like the female organ; and Dulare tells us that the male organ was similarly symbolised in pyramidal cakes at Easter by the pious Christians of Saintogne, near Rochelle, and handed about from house to house; that even in his day the festival of Palm Sunday was called La Fête des Pinnes, showing that this fête was held to be on account of both organs, although, of course, principally because the day was sacred to the palm, the ancient tree Phallus.... We may believe that the Jewish cakes and show bread were also emblematic.
Mr. Frank H. Cushing informs me that there is an annual feast among the Zuñi in which are to be seen cakes answering essentially to the preceding description.
The peculiar manner in which the medicine-men of the Apache use the hoddentin (that is, by putting a pinch upon their own tongues); the fact that men and women make use of it in the same way, as a restorative when exhausted; its appearance in myth in connection with Assanutlije, the goddess who supplied the Apache and Navajo with so many material benefits, all combine to awaken the suspicion that in hoddentin we have stumbled upon a prehistoric food now reserved for sacrificial purposes only. That the underlying idea of sacrifice is a food offered to some god is a proposition in which Herbert Spencer and W. Robertson Smith concur. In my opinion, this definition is incomplete; a perfect sacrifice is that in which a prehistoric food is offered to a god, and, although in the family oblations of everyday life we meet with the food of the present generation, it would not be difficult to show that where the whole community unites in a function of exceptional importance the propitiation of the deities will be effected by foods whose use has long since faded away from the memory of the laity.
The sacred feast of stewed puppy and wild turnips forms a prominent part of the sun dance of the Sioux, and had its parallel in a collation of boiled puppy (catullus), of which the highest civic and ecclesiastical dignitaries of pagan Rome partook at stated intervals.
The reversion of the Apache to the food of his ancestors—the hoddentin—as a religious offering has its analogue in the unleavened bread and other obsolete farinaceous products which the ceremonial of more enlightened races has preserved from oblivion. Careful consideration of the narrative of Cabeza de Vaca sustains this conclusion. In the western portion of his wanderings we learn that for from thirty to forty days he and his comrades passed through tribes which for one-third of the year had to live on "the powder of straw" (on the powder of bledos), and that afterwards the Spaniards came among people who raised corn. At that time, Vaca, whether we believe that he ascended the Rio Concho or kept on up the Rio Grande, was in a region where he would certainly have encountered the ancestors of our Apache tribe and their brothers the Navajo. The following is Herrera's account of that part of Vaca's wanderings: "Padeciendo mucha hambre en treinta i quatro Jornadas, pasando por una Gente que la tercera parte del Año comen polvos de paja, i los huvieron de comer, por haver llegado en tal ocasion."[330]
This powder (polvo) of paja or grass might at first sight seem to be grass seeds; but why not say "flour," as on other occasions? The phrase is an obscure one, but not more obscure than the description of the whole journey. In the earlier writings of the Spaniards there is ambiguity because the new arrivals endeavored to apply the names of their own plants and animals to all that they saw in the western continent. Neither Castañeda nor Cabeza de Vaca makes mention of hoddentin, but Vaca does say that when he had almost ended his journey: "La côte ne possède pas de maïs; on n'y mange que de la poudre de paille de blette." "Blette" is the same as the Spanish "bledos."[331] "Nous parvînmes chez une peuplade qui, pendant le tiers de l'année, ne vit que de poudre de paille." "We met with a people, who the third part of the yeere eate no other thing save the powder of straw."[332]
Davis, who seems to have followed Herrera, says: "These Indians lived one-third of the year on the powder of a certain straw.... After leaving this people they again arrived in a country of permanent habitations, where they found an abundance of maize.... The inhabitants gave them maize both in grain and flour."[333]
The Tusayan Indians were formerly in the habit of adding a trifle of chopped straw to their bread, but more as our own bakers would use bran than as a regular article of diet.
Barcia[334] makes no allusion to anything resembling hoddentin or "polvos de bledos" in his brief account of Vaca's journey. But Buckingham Smith, in his excellent translation of Vaca's narrative, renders "polvos de paja" thus: "It was probably the seed of grass which they ate. I am told by a distinguished explorer that the Indians to the west collect it of different kinds and from the powder make bread, some of which is quite palatable." And for "polvos de bledos": "The only explanation I can offer for these words is little satisfactory. It was the practice of the Indians of both New Spain and New Mexico to beat the ear of young maize, while in the milk, to a thin paste, hang it in festoons in the sun, and, being thus dried, was preserved for winter use."
This explanation is very unsatisfactory. Would not Vaca have known it was corn and have said so? On the contrary, he remarks in that very line in Smith's own translation: "There is no maize on the coast."
The appearance of all kinds of grass seeds in the food of nearly all the aborigines of our southwestern territory is a fact well known, but what is to be demonstrated is the extensive use of the "powder" of the tule or cat-tail rush. Down to our day, the Apache have used not only the seeds of various grasses, but the bulb of the wild hyacinth and the bulb of the tule. The former can be eaten either raw or cooked, but the tule bulb is always roasted between hot stones. The taste of the hyacinth bulb is somewhat like that of raw chestnuts. That of the roasted tule bulb is sweet and not at all disagreeable.[335]
Father Jacob Baegert[336] enumerates among the foods of the Indians of southern California "the roots of the common reed" (i.e., of the tule).
Father Alegre, speaking of the tribes living near the Laguna San Pedro,[337] in latitude 28° north—two hundred leagues north of the City of Mexico—says that they make their bread of the root, which is very frequent in their lakes, and which is like the plant called the "anea" or rush in Spain. "Forman el pan de una raiz muy frecuente en sus lagunas, semejante á las que llaman aneas en España."[338]
The Indians of the Atlantic Slope made bread of the bulb of a plant which Capt. John Smith[339] says "grew like a flag in marshes." It was roasted and made into loaves called "tuckahoe."[340]
Kalm, in his Travels in North America,[341] says of the tuckahoe:
It grows in several swamps and marshes and is commonly plentiful. The hogs greedily dig up its roots with their noses in such places, and the Indians of Carolina likewise gather it in their rambles in the woods, dry it in the sun, grind, and make bread of it. Whilst the root is fresh it is harsh and acrid, but, being dried, it loses the greater part of its acrimony. To judge by these qualities, the tuckahoe may very likely be the Arum virginianum.
The Shoshoni and Bannock of Idaho and Montana eat the tule bulb.[342]
Something analogous to hoddentin is mentioned by the chronicler of Drake's voyage along the California coast about A. D. 1540. Speaking of the decorations of the chiefs of the Indians seen near where San Francisco now stands, he says another mark of distinction was "a certain downe, which groweth up in the countrey upon an herbe much like our lectuce, which exceeds any other downe in the world for finenesse and beeing layed upon their cawles, by no winds can be removed. Of such estimation is this herbe amongst them that the downe thereof is not lawfull to be worne, but of such persons as are about the king, ... and the seeds are not used but onely in sacrifice to their gods."[343]
Mr. Cushing informs me that hoddentin is mentioned as a food in the myths of the Zuñi under the name of oneya, from oellu, "food."
In Kamtchatka the people dig and cook the bulbs of the Kamtchatka lily, which seems to be some sort of a tuber very similar to that of the tule.
"Bread is now made of rye, which the Kamtchadals raise and grind for themselves; but previous to the settlement of the country by the Russians the only native substitute for bread was a sort of baked paste, consisting chiefly of the grated tubers of the purple Kamtchatkan lily."[344]
There would seem to be the best of reason for an identification of hoddentin with the "yiauhtli" which Sahagun and Torquemada tell us was thrown by the Aztecs in the faces of victims preparatory to sacrificing them to the God of Fire, but the explanation given by those authors is not at all satisfactory. The Aztecs did not care much whether the victim suffered or not; he was sprinkled with this sacred powder because he had assumed a sacred character.
Padre Sahagun[345] says that the Aztecs, when about to offer human sacrifice, threw "a powder named 'yiauhtli' on the faces of those whom they were about to sacrifice, that they might become deprived of sensation and not suffer much pain in dying."
In sacrificing slaves to the God of Fire, the Aztec priests "tomaban ciertos polvos de una semilla, llamada Yauhtli, y polvoreaban las caras con ellas, para que perdiesen el sentido, y no sintiesen tanto la muerte cruel, que las daban."[346]
Guautli, generally spelled "yuautli," one of the foods paid to Montezuma as tribute, may have been tule pollen. Gallatin says: "I can not discover what is meant by the guautli. It is interpreted as being semilla de Bledo; but I am not aware of any other native grain than maize having been, before the introduction of European cereales, an article of food of such general use, as the quantity mentioned seems to indicate."[347]
Among the articles which the king of Atzapotzalco compelled the Aztecs to raise for tribute is mentioned "ahuauhtli (que es como bledos)."[348]
Lafitau[349] gives a description of the Iroquois mode of preparing for the warpath. He says that the Iroquois and Huron called war "n'ondoutagette" and "gaskenragette." "Le terme Ondouta signifie le duvet qu'on tire de l'épy des Roseaux de Marais & signifie aussi la plante toute entiere, dont ils se servent pour faire les nattes sur quoi ils couchent, de sorte qu'il y a apparence qu'ils avoient affecté ce terme pour la Guerre, parce que chaque Guerrier portoit avec soy sa natte dans ces sortes d'expeditions."
This does not seem to be the correct explanation. Rather, it was because they undoubtedly made some sacrificial meal of this "duvet," or pollen, and used it as much as the Apache do hoddentin, their sacred meal made of the pollen of the tule, which is surely a species of "roseaux de marais."
The great scarcity of corn among the people passed while en route to Cibola is commented upon in an account of Coronado's expedition to Cibola, in Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas de América y Oceanía.[350]
We are also informed[351] that the people of Cibola offered to their idols "polbos amarillos de flores."
Castañeda speaks of the people beyond Chichilticale making a bread of the mesquite which kept good for a whole year. He seems to have been well informed regarding the vegetable foods of the tribes passed through by Coronado's expedition.[352]
That the "blettes" or "bledos" did not mean the same as grass is a certainty after we have examined the old writers, who each and all show that the bledos meant a definite kind of plant, although exactly what this plant was they fail to inform us. It can not be intended for the sunflower, which is mentioned distinctly by a number of writers as an article of diet among the Indians of the Southwest.[353]
An examination of the Spanish writers who most carefully transmitted their observations upon the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs and other nations in Mexico and South America brings out two most interesting features in this connection. The first is that there were commemorative feasts of prehistoric foods, and the second that one or more of these foods has played an important part in the religion of tribes farther north. The first of these foods is the "tzoalli," which was the same as "bledos," which latter would seem beyond question to have been hoddentin or yiauhtli. Brasseur de Bourbourg's definition simply states that the tzoalli was a compound of leguminous grains peculiar to Mexico and eaten in different ways: "Le Tzohualli était un composé de graines légumineuses particulières au Mexique, qu'on mangeait de diverses manières."[354]
In the month called Tepeilhuitl the Aztecs made snakes of twigs and covered them with dough of bledos (a kind of grain or hay seed). Upon these they placed figures, representing mountains, but shaped like young children.[355] This month was the thirteenth on the Mexican calendar, which began on our February 1. This would put it October 1, or thereabout.
Squier cites Torquemada's description of the sacrifices called Ecatotontin, offered to the mountains by the Mexicans. In these they made figures of serpents and children and covered them with "dough," named by them tzoalli, composed of the seeds of bledos.[356]
A dramatic representation strongly resembling those described in the two preceding paragraphs was noted among the Tusayan of Arizona by Mr. Taylor, a missionary, in 1881, and has been mentioned at length in The Snake Dance of the Moquis. Clavigero relates that the Mexican priests "all eat a certain kind of gruel which they call Etzalli."[357]
Torquemada relates that the Mexicans once each year made an idol or statue of Huitzlipotchli of many grains and the seeds of bledos and other vegetables which they kneaded with the blood of boys who were sacrificed for the purpose. "Juntaban muchos granos y semilla de Bledos, y otras legumbres, y molianlas con mucha devocion, y recato, y de ellas amasaban, y formaban la dicha Estatua, del tamaño y estatura de un Hombre. El licor, con que se resolbian y desleian aquellas harinas era sangre de Niños, que para este fin se sacrificaban."[358]
It is remarkable the word "maiz" does not occur in this paragraph. Huitzlipotchli being the God of War, it was natural that the ritual devoted to his service should conserve some, if not all, of the foods, grains, and seeds used by the Mexicans when on the warpath in the earliest days of their history; and that this food should be made into a dough with the blood of children sacrificed as a preliminary to success is also perfectly in accordance with all that we know of the mode of reasoning of this and other primitive peoples. Torquemada goes on to say that this statue was carried in solemn procession to the temple and idol of Huitzlipotchli and there adorned with precious jewels (chalchihuitl), embedded in the soft mass. Afterward it was carried to the temple of the god Paynalton, preceded by a priest carrying a snake in the manner that the priests in Spain carried the cross in the processions of the church. "Con una Culebra mui grande, y gruesa en las manos, tortuosa, y con muchas bueltas, que iba delante, levantada en alto, á manera de Cruz, en nuestras Procesiones."[359] This dough idol, he says, was afterwards broken into "migajas" (crumbs) and distributed among the males only, boys as well as men, and by them eaten after the manner of communion; "este era su manera de comunion."[360] Herrera, speaking of this same idol of Vitzliputzli, as he calls him, says it was made by the young women of the temple, of the flour of bledos and of toasted maize, with honey, and that the eyes were of green, white, or blue beads, and the teeth of grains of corn. After the feast was over, the idol was broken up and distributed to the faithful, "á manera de comunion." "Las Doncellas recogidas en el templo, dos Dias antes de la Fiesta, amasaban harina de Bledos, i de Maiz tostado, con miel, y de la masa hacian un Idolo grande, con los ojos de cuentas grandes, verdes, açules, ò blancas; i por dientes granos de maiz."[361]
H. H. Bancroft speaks of the festival in honor of Huitzilopochtli, "the festival of the wafer or cake." He says: "They made a cake of the meal of bledos, which is called tzoalli," which was afterward divided in a sort of communion.[362] Diego Duran remarks that at this feast the chief priest carried an idol of dough called "tzoally," which is made of the seeds of bledos and corn made into a mass with honey.[363] "Un ydolo de masa, de una masa que llaman tzoally, la cual se hace de semilla de bledos y maiz amasado con miel." This shows that "bledos" and "maiz" were different things.[364] A few lines farther on Duran tells us that this cake, or bread, was made by the nuns of the temple, "las mozas del recogimiento de este templo," and that they ground up a great quantity of the seed of bledos, which they call huauhtly, together with toasted maize. "Molian mucha cantidad de semilla de bledos que ellos llaman huauhtly juntamente con maiz tostado."[365] He then shows that the "honey" (miel) spoken of by the other writers was the thick juice of the maguey. "Despues de molido, amasabanlo con miel negra de los magueis."