Acosta describes a Mexican feast, held in our month of May, in which appeared an idol called Huitzlipotchli, made of "mays rosty," "semence de blettes," and "amassoient avec du miel."[366]
In the above citations it will be seen that huauhtly or yuauhtli and tzoally were one and the same. We also find some of the earliest if not the very earliest references to the American popped corn.
That the Mexicans should have had such festivals or feasts in honor of their god of battles is no more extraordinary than that in our own country all military reunions make it a point to revert to the "hard tack" issued during the campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Many other references to the constant use as a food, or at least as a sacrificial food, of the bledos might be supplied if needed. Thus Diego Duran devotes the twelfth chapter of his third book to an obscure account of a festival among the Tepanecs, in which appeared animal gods made of "masa de semilla de bledos," which were afterwards broken and eaten.
Torquemada speaks of such idols employed in the worship of snakes and mountains.[367] In still another place this authority tells us that similar figures were made and eaten by bride and groom at the Aztec marriage ceremony.[368]
The ceremonial manner in which these seeds were ground recalls the fact that the Zuñi regard the stones used for grinding kunque as sacred and will not employ them for any other purpose.
Idols made of dough much after the fashion of the Aztecs are to be found among the Mongols. Meignan speaks of seeing "an idol, quite open to the sky and to the desert, representing the deity of travelers. It was made of compressed bread, covered over with some bituminous substance, and perched on a horse of the same material, and held in its hand a lance in Don Quixote attitude. Its horrible features were surmounted with a shaggy tuft of natural hair. A great number of offerings of all kinds were scattered on the ground all around. Five or six images, formed also of bread, were bending in an attitude of prayer before the deity."[369]
Dr. Edwin James, the editor of Tanner's Narrative,[370] cites the "Calica Puran" to show that medicinal images are employed by the people of the East Indies when revenge is sought upon an enemy; "water must be sprinkled on the meal or earthen victim which represents the sacrificer's enemy."
In those parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished, a substitutive ceremony was practiced "by forming a human figure of flour-paste, or clay, which they carry into the temples, and there cut off its head or mutilate it, in various ways, in presence of the idols."[371]
Gomara describes the festival in honor of the Mexican God of Fire, called "Xocothuecl," when an idol was used made of every kind of seed and was then enwrapped in sacred blankets to keep it from breaking. "Hacian aquella noche un ídolo de toda suerte de semillas, envolvíanlo en mantas benditas, y liábanlo, porque no se deshiciese."[372]
These blessed blankets are also to be seen at the Zuñi feast of the Little God of Fire, which occurs in the month of December. It is a curious thing that the blessed blankets of the Zuñi are decorated with the butterfly, which appeared upon the royal robes of Montezuma.
What other seeds were used in the fabrication of these idols is not very essential to our purpose, but it may be pointed out that one of them was the seed of the "agenjo," which was the "chenopodium" or "artemisia," known to us as the "sagebrush."
Of the Mexicans we learn from a trustworthy author: "Tambien usaban alguna manera de comunion ó recepcion del sacramento, y es que hacian unos idolitos chiquitos de semilla de bledos ó cenizos, ó de otras yerbas, y ellos mismos se los recibian, como cuerpo ó memoria de sus dioses."[373]
Mendieta wrote his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana in 1596, "al tiempo que esto escribo (que es por Abril del año de noventa y seis)"[374] and again,[375] "al tiempo que yo esto escribo."
The Mexicans, in the month of November, had a festival in honor of Tezcatlipuca. "Hacian unos bollos de masa de maíz y semejante de agenjos, aunque son de otra suerte que los de acá, y echábanlos á cocer en ollas con agua sola. Entre tanto que hervian y se cocian los bollos, tañian los muchachos un atabal ... y después comíanselos con gran devocion."[376]
Gomara's statement, that while these cakes of maize and wormwood seed were cooking the young men were beating on drums, would find its parallel in any account that might be written of the behavior of the Zuñi, while preparing for their sacred feasts. The squaws grind the meal to be used on these occasions to the accompaniment of singing by the medicine-men and much drumming by a band of assistants selected from among the young men and boys.
Mr. Francis La Flèche, a nearly full-blood Omaha Indian, read before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., in 1888, a paper descriptive of the funeral customs of his people, in which he related that when an Indian was supposed to be threatened with death the medicine-men would go in a lodge sweat-bath with him and sing, and at the same time "pronouncing certain incantations and sprinkling the body of the client with the powder of the artemisia, supposed to be the food of the ghosts."[377]
To say that a certain powder is the food of the ghosts of a tribe is to say indirectly that the same powder was once the food of the tribe's ancestors.
The Peruvians seem to have made use of the same kind of sacrificial cakes kneaded with the blood of the human victim. We are told that in the month of January no strangers were allowed to enter the city of Cuzco, and that there was then a distribution of corn cakes made with the blood of the victim, which were to be eaten as a mark of alliance with the Inca. "Les daban unos Bollos de Maíz, con sangre de el sacrificio, que comian, en señal de confederacion con el Inga."[378]
Balboa says that the Peruvians had a festival intended to signalize the arrival of their young men at manhood, in which occurred a sort of communion consisting of bread kneaded by the young virgins of the sun with the blood of victims. This same kind of communion was also noted at another festival occurring in our month of September of each year. ("Un festin composé de pain pétri par les jeunes vierges du Soleil avec le sang des victimes."[379]) There were other ceremonial usages among the Aztecs, in which the tule rush itself, "espadaña," was employed, as at childbirth, marriage, the festivals in honor of Tlaloc, and in the rough games played by boys. It is possible that from being a prehistoric food the pollen of the tule, or the plant which furnished it, became associated with the idea of sustenance, fertility, reproduction, and therefore very properly formed part of the ritual necessary in weddings or connected with the earliest hours of a child's life, much as rice has been used so freely in other parts of the world.[380]
Among the Aztecs the newly born babe was laid upon fresh green tule rushes, with great ceremony, while its name was given to it.[380]
Gomara says that the mats used in the marriage ceremonies of the Aztecs were made of tules. "Esteras verdes de espadañas."[381]
"They both sat down upon a new and curiously wrought mat, which was spread in the middle of the chamber close to the fire." The marriage bed was made "of mats of rushes, covered with small sheets, with certain feathers, and a gem of chalchihuitl in the middle of them."[382]
The third festival of Tlaloc was celebrated in the sixth month, which would about correspond to our 6th of June.[383] But there was another festival in honor of the Tlaloc, which seems very hard to understand. A full description is given by Bancroft.[384] To celebrate this it was incumbent upon the priests to cut and carry to the temples bundles of the tule, which were woven into a sacred mat, after which there was a ceremonial procession to a tule swamp in which all bathed.
The Aztecs, like the Apache, had myths showing that they sprang originally from a reed swamp. There was an Aztec god, Napatecutli, who was the god of the tule and of the mat-makers.[385] This rush was also strewn as part of several of their religious ceremonies.
Fosbrooke[386] has this to say about certain ceremonies in connection with the churches in Europe: "At certain seasons the Choir was strewed with hay, at others with sand. On Easter sabbath with ivy-leaves; at other times with rushes." He shows that hay was used at Christmas and the vigil of All Saints, at Pentecost, Athelwold's Day, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and Ascension, etc.
The Mexican populace played a game closely resembling our "blind man's buff" in their seventeenth month, which was called Tititl and corresponded to the winter solstice. In this game, called "nechichiquavilo," men and boys ran through the streets hitting every one whom they met with small bags or nets ("taleguillas ó redecillas") filled with tule powder or fine paper ("llenas de flor de las espadañas ó de algunos papeles rotos").[387]
The same thing is narrated by other early Spanish writers upon Mexico.
In the myths of Guatemala it is related that there were several distinct generations of men. The first were made of wood, without heart or brains, with worm-eaten feet and hands. The second generation was an improvement upon this, and the women are represented as made of tule. "Las mugeres fueron hechas de corazon de espadaña."[388]
Picart, enumerating the tree gods of the Romans, says that they had deified "les Roseaux pour les Rivieres."[389]
This very general dissemination among the Indians of the American continent of the sacred use of the powder of the tule, of images, idols, or sacrificial cakes made of such prehistoric foods, certainly suggests that the Apache and the Aztecs, among whom they seem to have been most freely used on ceremonial occasions, were invaders in the country they respectively occupied, comparatively recent in their arrival among the contiguous tribes like the Zuñi and Tusayan who on corresponding occasions offered to their gods a cultivated food like corn. The Tlascaltec were known in Mexico as the "bread people," possibly because they had been acquainted with the cultivation of the cereals long before the Aztecs. Similarly, there was a differentiation of the Apache from the sedentary Pueblos. The Apache were known to all the villages of the Pueblos as a "corn-buying tribe," as will presently be shown. It is true that in isolated cases and in widely separated sections the Apache have for nearly two centuries been a corn-planting people, because we find accounts in the Spanish chronicles of the discovery and destruction by their military expeditions of "trojes" or magazines of Apache corn near the San Francisco (or Verde) River, in the present Territory of Arizona, as early as the middle of the last century. But the general practice of the tribe was to purchase its bread or meal from the Pueblos at such times as hostilities were not an obstacle to free trade. There was this difference to be noted between the Apache and the Aztecs: The latter had been long enough in the valley of Anahuac to learn and adopt many new foods, as we learn from Duran, who relates that at their festivals in honor of Tezcatlipoca, or those made in pursuance of some vow, the women cooked an astonishing variety of bread, just as, at the festivals of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos in our own time, thirty different kinds of preparations of corn may be found.[390] I was personally informed by old Indians in the pueblos along the Rio Grande that they had been in the habit of trading with the Apache and Comanche of the Staked Plains of Texas until within very recent years; in fact, I remember seeing such a party of Pueblos on its return from Texas in 1869, as it reached Fort Craig, New Mexico, where I was then stationed. I bought a buffalo robe from them. The principal article of sale on the side of the Pueblos was cornmeal. The Zuñi also carried on this mixed trade and hunting, as I was informed by the old chief Pedro Pino and others. The Tusayan denied that they had ever traded with the Apache so far to the east as the buffalo country, but asserted that the Comanche had once sent a large body of their people over to Walpi to trade with the Tusayan, among whom they remained for two years. There was one buffalo robe among the Tusayan at their snake dance in 1881, possibly obtained from the Ute to the north of them.
The trade carried on by the "buffalo" Indians with the Pueblos was noticed by Don Juan de Oñate as early as 1599. He describes them as "dressed in skins, which they also carried into the settled provinces to sell, and brought back in return cornmeal."[391]
Gregg[392] speaks of the "Comancheros" or Mexicans and Pueblos who ventured out on the plains to trade with the Comanche, the principal article of traffic being bread. Whipple[393] refers to this trade as carried on with all the nomadic tribes of the Llano Estacado, one of which we know to have been the eastern division of the Apache. The principal article bartered with the wild tribes was flour, i.e., cornmeal.
In another place he tells us of "Pueblo Indians from Santo Domingo, with flour and bread to barter with the Kái-ò-wàs and Comanches for buffalo robes and horses."[394] Again, Mexicans were seen with flour, bread, and tobacco, "bound for Comanche land to trade. We had no previous idea of the extent of this Indian trade."[395] Only one other reference to this intertribal commerce will be introduced.
Vetancurt[396] mentions that the Franciscan friars, between 1630 and 1680, had erected a magnificent "temple" to "Our Lady of the Angels of Porciúncula," and that the walls were so thick that offices were established in their concavities. On each side of this temple, which was erected in the pueblo of Pecos (situated at or near the head of the Pecos River, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fé, New Mexico, on the eastern rim of the Llano Estacado), were three towers. At the foot of the hill was a plain about one league in circumference, to which the Apache resorted for trade. These were the Apache living on the plains of Texas. They brought with them buffalo robes, deer skins and other things to exchange for corn. They came with their dog-trains loaded, and there were more than five hundred traders arriving each year.
Observe that here we have the first and only reference to the use of dog trains by the Apache who in every other case make their women carry all plunder in baskets on their backs. In this same extract from Vetancurt there is a valuable remark about Quivira: "Este es el paso para los reinos de la Quivira."
In the citation from the Spanish poet Villagrá, already given, the suggestion occurs that some relationship existed between the powder scattered so freely during the Spanish "carnestolendas" and the "kunque" thrown by the people of Tusayan upon the Spaniards and their horses when the Spaniards first entered that country. This analogy is a very striking one, even though the Spaniards have long since lost all idea of the meaning of the practice which they still follow. It is to be noted, however, that one of the occasions when this flour is most freely used is the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en), when the ghosts or ancestors of the community were to be the recipients of every attention.[397]
In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the "gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli, which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox.
There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to cure and rejuvenate.
In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C. 200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth, wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."[398]
There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the plant.
No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews[399] has referred to it under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially the pollen of corn."
This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish.
The Apache, we have shown, offer up in sacrifice their traditional food, the pollen of the tule. The Zuñi, as we have also shown, offer up their traditional food, the meal of corn, to which there have since been added sea shells and other components with a symbolical significance. The Navajo, the progeny of both, naturally seek to effect a combination or compromise of the two systems and make use of the pollen of the corn. Kohl narrates an Ojibwa legend to the effect that their god Menaboju, returning from the warpath, painted his face with "pleasant yellow stripes ... of the yellow foam that covers the water in spring," and he adds that this is "probably the yellow pollen that falls from the pine." He quotes[400] another legend of the magic red powder for curing diseases once given by the snake spirit of the waters to an Ojibwa.
Godfrey Higgins[401] has this to say of the use of pollen by the ancients which he recognizes as connected with the principle of fertility:
Αρωμα, the sweet smell, means also a flower, that is Pushpa or Pushto. This was the language of the followers of the Phasah or the Lamb—it was the language of the Flower, of the Natzir, of the Flos-floris of Flora, of the Arouma, and of the flour of Ceres, or the Eucharistia. It was the language of the pollen, the pollen of plants, the principle of generation, of the Pole or Phallus.
Again he says:
Buddha was a flower, because as flour or pollen he was the principle of fructification or generation. He was flour because flour was the fine or valuable part of the plant of Ceres, or wheat, the pollen which, I am told, in this plant, and in this plant alone, renews itself when destroyed. When the flour, pollen, is killed, it grows again several times. This is a very beautiful type or symbol of the resurrection. On this account the flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχαριστία. In this pollen we have the name of pall or pallium and of Pallas, in the first language meaning wisdom.... When the devotee ate the bread he ate the pollen, and thus ate the body of the God of generation; hence might come transubstantiation.
Lupton,[402] in 1660, describes a "powder of the flowers [pollen?] of elder, gathered on a midsummer day," which was taken to restore lost youth. Brand, it may be as well to say, traces back the custom of throwing flour into the faces of women and others on the streets at Shrovetide, in Minorca and elsewhere, to the time of the Romans.[403]
In writing the description of the Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, I ventured to advance the surmise that the corn flour with which the sacred snakes were covered, and with which the air was whitened, would be found upon investigation to be closely related to the crithomancy or divination by grains of the cereals, as practiced among the ancient Greeks. Crithomancy, strictly speaking, meant a divination by grains of corn. The expression which I should have employed was alphitomancy, a divination "by meal, flower, or branne."[404] But both methods of divination have been noticed among the aborigines of America.
In Peru the medicine-men were divided into classes, as were those of ancient Egypt. These medicine-men "made the various means of divination specialities." Some of them predicted by "the shapes of grains of maize taken at random."[405] In Guatemala grains of corn or of chile were used indiscriminately, and in Guazacualco the medicine-women used grains of frijoles or black beans. In Guatemala they had what they called "ahquij." "Este modo de adivinar se llama ahquij, malol-tzitè, malol-ixim, esto es: el que adivina por el sol, ó por granos de maiz ó chile."[406]
In Guazacualco the medicine-women "hechaban suertes con granos de Frisoles, a manera de Dados, i hacian sus invocaciones, porque eran Hechiceros: i si el Dado decia bien, proseguian en la cura, diciendo que sanaria: i si mal, no bolvian al enfermo."[407]
Herrera in the preceding paragraph recognizes the close similarity between this sacred ceremony of casting lots or divining, and the more orthodox method of gambling, pure and simple, which has in every case been derived from a sacred origin.
"Les Hachus [one class of Peruvian priests] consultaient l'avenir au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux."[408]
The Mexicans "para saber si los enfermos habian de morir, ó sanar de la enfermedad que tenian, echaban un puñado de maiz lo mas grueso que podian haber, y lanzábanlo siete ó ocho veces, como lanzan los dados los que los juegan, y si algun grano quedaba enhiesto, decian que era señal de muerte."[409]
Father Brebœuf relates that at the Huron feast of the dead, which occurred every 8 or 10 years and which he saw at Ossossane, "a few grains of Indian corn were thrown by the women upon the sacred relics."[410]
No exhaustive and accurate examination of the subject of hoddentin could be made without bringing the investigator face to face with the curious analogue of "down" throwing and sprinkling which seemingly obtains with tribes which at some period of their history have been compelled to rely upon birds as a main component of their diet. Examples of this are to be met with on both sides of the Pacific as well as in remote Australia, and were the matter more fully examined there is no doubt that some other identifications might be made in very unexpected quarters. The down used by the Tchuktchi on occasions of ceremony had a suggestion of religion about it.[411] "On leaving the shore, they sung and danced. One who stood at the head of the boat was employed in plucking out the feathers of a bird's skin and blowing them in the air."
In Langsdorff's Travels[412] we learn that some of the dancers of the Koluschan of Sitka have their heads powdered with the small down feathers of the white-headed eagle and ornamented with ermine; also, that the hair and bodies of the Indians at the mission of Saint Joseph, New California, were powdered with down feathers.[413]
The Indians from the North Pacific coast seen visiting the mission of San Francisco, by Kotzebue in 1816, "had their long disordered hair covered with down."[414]
Bancroft says of the Nootka of the northwest coast of British America: "the hair is powdered plentifully with white feathers, which are regarded as the crowning ornament for manly dignity in all these regions."[415]
The bird's down used by the Haida of British North America in their dances seems very closely related to hoddentin. They not only put it upon their own persons, but "delight to communicate it to their partners in bowing," and also "blow it into the air at regular intervals through a painted tube." They also scattered down as a sign of welcome to the first European navigators.[416]
In all these dances, ceremonial visits, and receptions of strangers the religious element can be discerned more or less plainly. The Indians west of the Mississippi with whom Father Hennepin was a prisoner in 1680, and who appear to have been a branch of the Sioux (Issati or Santee and Nadouessan), had a grand dance to signalize the killing of a bear. On this occasion, which was participated in by the "principaux chefs et guerriers," we learn that there was this to be noted in their dress: "ayant même leurs cheveux frottez d'huile d'ours & parsemez de plumes, rouges & blanches & les têtes chargées de duvet d'oiseaux."[417]
"Swan's and bustard's down" was used by the Accancess [i.e., the Arkansas of the Siouan stock] in their religious ceremonies.[418]
Of the war dress of the members of the Five Nations we learn from an early writer: "Their heads [previously denuded of all hair except that of the crown] are painted red down to the eye-brows and sprinkled over with white down."[419]
The Indians of Virginia at their war dances painted themselves to make them more terrible: "Pour se rendre plus terriblee, ils sément des plumes, du duvet, ou du poil de quelque bête sur la peinture toute fraiche."[420] Down was also used by the medicine-men of the Carib.[421] The down of birds was used in much the same way by the tribes of Cumaná, a district of South America not far from the mouth of the Orinoco, in the present territory of Venezuela;[422] by the Tupinambis, of Brazil, who covered the bodies of their victims with it;[423] by the Chiribchi, of South America,[424] and by the tribes of the Isthmus of Darien.[425] This down has also been used by some of the Australians in their sacred dances.[426] "The hair, or rather the wool upon their heads, was very abundantly powdered with white powder.... They powder not only their heads, but their beards too."[427]
In China "there is a widespread superstition that the feathers of birds, after undergoing certain incantations, are thrown up into the air, and being carried away by the wind work blight and destruction wherever they alight."
The down of birds seems not to have been unknown in Europe. To this day it is poured upon the heads of the bride and groom in weddings among the Russian peasantry.[428]
This leads up to the inquiry whether or not the application of tar and feathers to the person may not at an early period have been an act of religious significance, perverted into a ridiculous and infamous punishment by a conquering and unrelenting hostile sect. The subject certainly seems to have awakened the curiosity of the learned Buckle, whose remarks may as well be given.
Richard, during his stay in Normandy (1189), made some singular laws for regulating the conduct of the pilgrims in their passage by sea. "A robber, convicted of theft, shall be shaved in the manner of a champion; and boiling pitch poured upon his head, and the feathers of a pillow shaken over his head to distinguish him; and be landed at the first port where the ships shall stop."[429]
The circumstances mentioned in the text respecting tarring and feathering is a fine subject for comment by the searchers into popular antiquities.[430]
Speaking of the "duvet" or down, with which many American savage tribes deck themselves, Picart observes very justly: "Cet ornement est bizare, mais dans le fond l'est il beaucoup plus que cette poudre d'or dont les Anciens, se poudroient la tête, ou que cette poudre composée d'amidon avec laquelle nos petits maitres modernes affectent de blanchir leurs cheveux ou leurs perruques?"[431]
Picart does not say, and perhaps it would not be wise for us to surmise, that these modes of powdering had a religious origin.
The custom of powdering the hair seems to be a savage "survival;" at least, it is still to be found among the Friendly Islanders, among whom it was observed by Forster.[432] These islanders used a white lime powder, also one of blue and another of orange made of turmeric.
The Sandwich Islanders plastered their hair over "with a kind of lime made from burnt shells,"[433] and Dillon speaks of the Friendly Islanders using lime, as Forster has already informed us.[434] The Hottentots made a lavish use of the medicinal powder of the buchu, which they plastered on their heads, threw to their sacred animals, and used liberally at their funerals.[435] Kolben dispels all doubt by saying: "These powderings are religious formalities." He also alludes to the use, in much the same manner, of ashes by the same people.[436]
The use of ashes also occurs among the Zuñi, the Apache (at times), and the Abipone of Paraguay. Ashes are also "thrown in the way of a whirlwind to appease it."[437]
In the Witches' Sabbath, in Germany, "it was said that the witches burned a he goat, and divided its ashes among themselves."[438]
In all the above cases, as well as in that of the use of ashes in the Christian churches, it is possible that the origin of the custom might be traced back either to a desire to share in the burnt offering or else in that of preserving some of the incinerated dust of the dead friend or relative for whom the tribe or clan was in mourning. Ashes in the Christian church were not confined to Lent alone; they "were worn four times a year, as in the beginning of Lent."[439]
Tuphramancy or divination by ashes was one of the methods of forecast in use among the priests of pagan Rome.[440]
In Northumberland the custom prevailed of making bonfires on the hills on St. Peter's day. "They made encroachments, on these occasions, upon the bonfires of the neighbouring towns, of which they took away some of the ashes by force: This they called 'carrying off the flower (probably the flour) of the wake.'[441] Moresin thinks this a vestige of the ancient Cerealia."
The mourning at Iddah, in Guinea, consists in smearing the forehead "with wood ashes and clay water, which is allowed to dry on. They likewise powder their hair with wood ashes."[442]
The last ceremonial powder to be described is dust from the ground, as among some of the Australians who smear their heads with pipe-clay as a sign of mourning.[443]
The French writers mention among the ceremonies of the Natchez one in which the Great Sun "gathered dust, which he threw back over his head, and turned successively to the four quarters of the world in repeating the same act of throwing dust."[444]
Mention is made of "an old woman who acted as beadle" of a church, who "once brought to the bedside of a dying person some of the sweepings from the floor of the altar, to ease and shorten a very lingering death."[445]
Altar dust was a very ancient remedy for disease. Frommann says that, of the four tablets found in a temple of Esculapius, one bore this inscription: "Lucio affecto lateris dolore; veniret et ex ara tollerit cinerem et una cum vino comisceret et poneret supra latus; et convaluit," etc.[446]
It seems then that the mediæval use of altar dust traces back to the Roman use of altar ashes.
So hard is it to eradicate from the minds of savages ideas which have become ingrafted upon their nature that we need not be surprised to read in the Jesuit relations of affairs in Canada (1696-1702) that, at the Mission of Saint Francis, where the Indians venerated the memory of a saintly woman of their own race, Catheraine Tagikoo-ita, "pour guérir les malades que les rémèdes ordinaires ne soulagent point, on avale dans l'eau ou dans un bouillon un peu de la poussière de son tombeau."
A few persons are to be found who endeavor to collect the dust from the feet of one hundred thousand Brahmins. One way of collecting this dust is by spreading a cloth before the door of a house where a great multitude of Brahmins are assembled at a feast, and, as each Brahmin comes out, he shakes the dust from his feet as he treads upon this cloth. Many miraculous cures are declared to have been performed upon persons using this dust.[447]
A widow among the Armenian devil-worshipers is required "to strew dust on her head and to smear her face with clay."[448]
The eating of clay would appear to have once prevailed all over the world. In places the custom has degenerated into ceremonial or is to be found only in myths. The Aztec devotee picked up a pinch of clay in the temple of Tezcatlipoca and ate it with the greatest reverence.[449]
Sahagun is quoted by Squier[450] as saying that the Mexicans swore by the sun and "by our sovereign mother, the Earth," and ate a piece of earth.
But the use of clay by the Mexicans was not merely a matter of ceremony; clay seems to have been an edible in quite common use.
Edible earth was sold openly in the markets of Mexico; "yaun tierra," says Gomara in the list of foods given by him.[451]
The eating of clay was forbidden to Mexican women during pregnancy.
Diego Duran describes the ceremonial eating of clay in the temples of Mexico; "Llegó el dedo al suelo, y cogiendo tierra en él lo metió en la boca; á la cual ceremonia llamaban comer tierra santa."[452] And again he says that in their sacrifices the Mexican nobles ate earth from the feet of the idols. "Comian tierra de la que estaba á los pies del Ydolo."[453] But the Mexicans did not limit themselves to a ceremonial clay-eating alone. Thomas Gage relates that "they ate a kind of earth, for at one season in the yeer they had nets of mayle, with the which they raked up a certaine dust that is bred upon the water of the Lake of Mexico, and that is kneaded together like unto oas of the sea."[454]
Diego Duran[455] mentions the ceremonial clay-eating at the feast of Tezcatlipoca agreeing with the note already taken from Kingsborough.
There is reference to clay-eating in one of the myths given in the Popol-Vuh. The Quiche deities Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, desiring to overcome the god Cabrakan, fed him upon roasted birds, but they took care to rub one of the birds with "tizate" and to put white powder around it. The circle of white powder was, no doubt, a circle of hoddentin or something analogous thereto, intended to prevent any baleful influence being exercised by Cabrakan. "Mais ils frottèrent l'un des oiseaux avec du tizate et lui mirent de la poussière blanche à l'entour."[456]
In a footnote the word "tizate" is explained to be a very friable whitish earth, used in polishing metals, making cement, etc.: "Terre blanchâtre fort friable, et dont ils se servent pour polir les métaux, faire du ciment, etc."
Cabeza de Vaca says that the Indians of Florida ate clay—"de la terre."[457] He says also[458] that the natives offered him many mesquite beans, which they ate mixed with earth—"mele avec de la terre."[459]
The Jaguaces of Florida ate earth (tierra).[460]
At the trial of Vasco Pocallo de Figueroa, in Santiago de Cuba, in 1522, "for cruelty to the natives," he sought to make it appear that the Indians ate clay as a means of suicide: "el abuso de los Indios en comer tierra ... seguian matandose de intento comiendo tierra."[461]
The Muiscas had in their language the word "jipetera," a "disease from eating dirt."[462] Whether the word "dirt" as here employed means filth, or earth and clay, is not plain; it probably means clay and earth.
Venegas asserts that the Indians of California ate earth. The traditions of the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, California, and vicinity show that "they had fed upon a kind of clay," which they "often used upon their heads by way of ornament."[463]
The Tátu Indians of California mix "red earth into their acorn bread ... to make the bread sweet and make it go further."[464]
Long[465] relates that when the young warrior of the Oto or Omaha tribes goes out on his first fast he "rubs his person over with a whitish clay," but he does not state that he ate it.
Sir John Franklin[466] relates that the banks of the Mackenzie River in British North America contain layers of a kind of unctuous mud, probably similar to that found near the Orinoco, which the Tinneh Indians "use occasionally as food during seasons of famine, and even at other times chew as an amusement.... It has a milky taste and the flavour is not disagreeable."
Father de Smet[467] says of the Athapascan: "Many wandering families of the Carrier tribe ... have their teeth worn to the gums by the earth and sand they swallow with their nourishment." This does not seem to have been intentionally eaten.
"Some of the Siberian tribes, when they travel, carry a small bag of their native earth, the taste of which they suppose will preserve them from, all the evils of a foreign sky."[468]
We are informed that the Tunguses of Siberia eat a clay called "rock marrow," which they mix with marrow. "Near the Ural Mountains, powdered gypsum, commonly called 'rock meal,' is sometimes mixed with bread, but its effects are pernicious."[469]
"The Jukabiri of northeastern Siberia have an earth of sweetish and rather astringent taste," to which they "ascribe a variety of sanatory properties."[470]
There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger, but Grey mentions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the Mene (a species of Hæmadorum), is eaten by the natives of West Australia.[471]
The Apache and Navajo branches of the Athapascan family are not unacquainted with the use of clay as a comestible, although among the former it is now scarcely ever used and among the latter used only as a condiment to relieve the bitterness of the taste of the wild potato; in the same manner it is known to both the Zuñi and Tusayan.
Wallace says that eating dirt was "a very common and destructive habit among Indians and half-breeds in the houses of the whites."[472]
"Los apassionados à comer tierra son los Indios Otomacos."[473]
"The earth which is eaten by the Ottomacs [of the Rio Orinoco] is fat and unctuous."[474]
Waitz[475] cites Heusinger as saying that the Ottomacs of the Rio Orinoco eat large quantities of a fatty clay.
Clay was eaten by the Brazilians generally.[476]
The Romans had a dish called "alica" or "frumenta," made of the grain zea mixed with chalk from the hills at Puteoli, near Naples.[477]
According to the myths of the Cingalese, their Brahmins once "fed on it [earth] for the space of 60,000 years."[478]
It has been shown that the Apache, on several occasions, as when going out to meet strangers, entering into solemn agreements, etc., made use of the hoddentin. A similar use of food, generally prehistoric, can be noted in other regions of the world.
It was a kind of superstitious trial used among the Saxons to purge themselves of any accusation by taking a piece of barley bread and eating it with solemn oaths and execrations that it might prove poisonous or their last morsel if what they asserted or denied was not true.[479] Those pieces of bread were first execrated by the priest, from which he infers that at a still earlier day sacramental bread may have been used for the same purpose.
At Rome, in the time of Cicero and Horace, a master who suspected that his slaves had robbed him conducted them before a priest. They were each obliged to eat a cake over which the priest had "pronounced some magical words (carmine infectum)."[480]
The people living on the coast of Coramandel have an ordeal consisting in the chewing of unboiled rice. No harm will attach to him who tells the truth, but the perjurer is threatened with condign punishment in this world and in that to come.[481] Bread is bitten when the Ostaaks of Siberia take a solemn oath, such as one of fealty to the Czar.[482]
Since the employment of hoddentin, or tule pollen, as a sacred commemorative food would seem to have been fairly demonstrated, before closing this section I wish to add a few paragraphs upon the very general existence of ritualistic farinaceous foods in all parts of the world. They can be detected most frequently in the ceremonial reversion to a grain or seed which has passed or is passing out of everyday use in some particular form given to the cake or bread or some circumstance of time, place, and mode of manufacture and consumption which stamps it as a "survival." So deeply impressed was Grimm[483] with the wide horizon spreading around the consideration of this topic that he observed: "Our knowledge of heathen antiquities will gain both by the study of these drinking usages which have lasted into later times and also of the shapes given to baked meats, which either retained the actual forms of ancient idols or were accompanied by sacrificial observances. A history of German cakes and bread rolls might contain some unexpected disclosures.... Even the shape of cakes is a reminiscence of the sacrifices of heathenism."
The first bread or cake to be mentioned in this part of the subject is the pancake, still so frequently used on the evening of Shrove Tuesday. In antiquity it can be traced back before the Reformation, before the Crusades were dreamed of, before the Barbarians had subverted Rome, before Rome itself had fairly taken shape.
There seems to have been a very decided religious significance in the preparation of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. In Leicestershire, "On Shrove Tuesday a bell rings at noon, which is meant as a signal for the people to begin frying their pancakes."[484]
"The Norman Crispellæ (Du Cange) are evidently taken from the Fornacalia, on the 18th of February, in memory of the method of making bread, before the Goddess Fornax invented ovens."[485]
Under "Crispellæ," Du Cange says: "Rustici apud Normannos vocant Crespes, ova pauca mixta cum farina, et in sartagine frixa," and says that they are "ex herba, farina et oleo."[486] These same Crispellæ are to be seen on the Rio Grande during Christmas week.
In the Greek Church and throughout Russia there is to the present time a "pancake feast" at Shrovetide.[487]
At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend's house to another, masked, and committing every conceivable prank. "Then the people feasted on blinnies—a pancake similar to the English crumpet."[488]
In the pancake we have most probably the earliest form of farinaceous food known to the nations which derived their civilization from the basin of the Mediterranean. Among these nations wheat has been in use from a time far beyond the remotest historical period, and to account for its introduction myth has been invoked; but this wheat was cooked without leaven, or was fried in a pan, after the style of the tortilla still used in Spanish-speaking countries, or of the pancake common among ourselves. Pliny[489] says that there were no bakers known in Rome until nearly six hundred years after the foundation of the city, in the days of the war with Persia; but he perhaps meant the public bakers authorized by law. The use of wheat and the art of baking bread, as we understand it to-day, were practically unknown to the nations of northern Europe until within the recent historical period.[490]
Nothing would be more in consonance with the mode of reasoning of a primitive people than that, at certain designated festivals, there should be a recurrence to the earlier forms of food, a reversion to an earlier mode of life, as a sort of propitiation of the gods or goddesses who had cared for the nation in its infancy and to secure the continuance of their beneficent offices. Primitive man was never so certain of the power of the gods of the era of his own greatest development that he could rely upon it implicitly and exclusively and ignore the deities who had helped him to stand upon his feet. Hence, the recurrence to pancakes, to unleavened breads of all kinds, among various peoples. This view of the subject was made plain to me while among the Zuñi Indians. Mr. Frank H. Cushing showed me that the women, when baking the "loaves" of bread, were always careful to place in the adobe ovens a tortilla with each batch of the newer kind, and no doubt for the reason just given.
The unleavened bread of the earliest period of Jewish history has come down to our own times in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, still observed by the Hebrews in all parts of the world, in the bread used in the eucharistic sacrifice by so large a portion of the Christian world, and apparently in some of the usages connected with the half-understood fast known as the "Ember Days." Brand quotes from an old work in regard to the Ember Days: "They were so called 'because that our elder fathers wolde on these days ete no brede but cakes made under ashes.'"[491]
The sacred cake or "draona" of the Parsi "is a small round pancake or wafer of unleavened bread, about the size of the palm of the hand. It is made of wheaten flour and water, with a little clarified butter, and is flexible."[492] A variety of the "draona," called a "frasast," is marked with the finger nail and set aside for the guardian spirits of the departed.[493]
Cakes and salt were used in religious rites by the ancients. The Jews probably adopted their appropriation from the Egyptians.[494] "During all the Passover week—14th to 21st Nisan, i.e., during this week's moon—Shemites fast, only eating unleavened bread, and most diligently—not without reason—cleansing their houses." "And especially had all leavened matter to be removed, for the new leavener had now arisen, and prayers with curses were offered up against any portions which might have escaped observation. The law of their fierce Jahveh was that, whoever during all this festival tasted leavened bread, 'that soul should be cut off,' which Godwyn mollifies by urging that this only meant the offender should die without children; which was still a pretty considerable punishment for eating a piece of bread!"[495]
"The great day of Pentecost is the 6th of Sivan, or, say, the 22d of May, 1874. From the first barley two loaves were then made, 'the offering of which was the distinguishing rite of the day of Pentecost.'"[496]
On St. Bridget's Eve every farmer's wife in Ireland makes a cake, called bairinbreac; the neighbors are invited, the madder of ale and the pipe go round, and the evening concludes with mirth and festivity.[497] Vallencey identifies this as the same kind of offering that was made to Ceres, and to "the queen of heaven, to whom the Jewish women burnt incense, poured out drink offerings, and made cakes for her with their own hands."[498]