A people, called by Castañeda Tahus, apparently of Sinaloa in the neighborhood of Culiacan, regarded certain large serpents with sentiments of great veneration if not of worship.[IV-31] These reptiles seem also to have been regarded with considerable reverence in Yucatan. In 1517, Bernal Diaz noticed many figures of serpents in a temple he saw at Campeche. Juan de Grijalva, also, found at the same time many such figures at Champoton, among other idols of clay and wood.[IV-32]
We have already spoken of the Mexican Tlaloc and of the frequent appearance of the serpent in his worship; it does not appear, however, notwithstanding Mr Squier's assertion to the contrary, that the serpent was actually worshiped either in Yucatan or Mexico. Bernal Diaz, indeed, says positively in one passage, speaking of a town called Tenayuca, that "they worshiped here, in their chief temple, three serpents;" but the stout soldier was not one to make fine distinctions between gods and their attributes or symbols; nor, even with the best intentions, was he or any other of the conquistadores in a position to do justice to the faith of 'gentiles.'[IV-33]
We shall hereafter find the serpent closely connected with Quetzalcoatl in many of his manifestations, as well as with others of the Mexican gods.
THE DOG OF AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY.
From the serpent let us turn to the dog, with his relations the wolf and coyote, an animal holding a respectable place in American mythology. We have seen how many tribes derive, figuratively or literally, their origin from him, and how often he becomes legendarily important as the hero of some adventure or the agent of some deity. He is generally brought before us in a rather benevolent aspect, though an exception occurs to this in the case of the Chinooks at the mouth of the Columbia. With these the coyote figures as the chosen medium for the action of the Evil Spirit toward any given malevolent end—as the form taken by the Evil One to counteract some beneficence of the Good Spirit toward the poor Indian whom he loves.[IV-34]
Very different from this is the character of that Coyote of the Cahrocs whose good deeds we have so often had occasion to set forth. One feat of his yet remains to be told—how he stocked the river with salmon. Chareya, the creator, had made salmon, but he had put them in the big-water, and made a great fish-dam at the mouth of the Klamath, so that they could not go up; and this dam was closed with something of the nature of a white man's key, which key was given in charge to two old hags, not wholly unfamiliar to us, to keep and watch over it night and day, so that no Cahroc should get near it. Now fish being wanting to the Cahrocs, they were sorely pushed by hunger, and the voice of women and little children was heard imploring food. The Coyote determined to help them; he swore by the stool of Chareya that before another moon their lodges should drip with salmon, and the very dogs be satisfied withal. So he traveled down the Klamath many days' journey till he came to the mouth of the river and saw the big-water and heard the thunder of its waves. Up he went to the hut of the old women, rapped, and asked hospitality for the night; and he was so polite and debonair that the crones could find no excuse for refusing him. He entered the place and threw himself down by the fire, warming himself while they prepared salmon for supper, which they ate without offering him a bite. All night long he lay by the fire pretending to sleep, but thinking over his plans and waiting for the event that should put him in possession of the mighty key that he saw hanging so high above his reach. In the morning one of the hags took down the key and started off toward the dam to get some fish for breakfast. Like a flash the Coyote leaped at her, hurling himself between her feet; heels over head she pitched, and the key flew far from her hands. Before she well knew what had hurt her the Coyote stood at the dam with the key in his teeth, wrenching at the fastenings. They gave way; and with a great roar the green water raced through, all ashine with salmon, utterly destroying and breaking down the dam, so that ever after fish found free way up the Klamath.
COYOTES MUST NOT DANCE WITH STARS.
The end of the poor Coyote was rather sad, considering his kindness of heart and the many services he had rendered the Cahrocs. Like too many great personages, he grew proud and puffed up with the adulation of flatterers and sycophants—proud of his courage and cunning, and of the success that had crowned his great enterprises for the good of mankind—proud that he had twice deceived and outwitted the guardian hags to whom Chareya had entrusted the fire and the salmon—so proud that he determined to have a dance through heaven itself, having chosen as his partner a certain star that used to pass quite close by a mountain where he spent a good deal of his time. So he called out to the star to take him by the paw and they would go round the world together for a night; but the star only laughed, and winked in an excessively provoking way from time to time. The Coyote persisted angrily in his demand, and barked and barked at the star all round heaven, till the twinkling thing grew tired of his noise and told him to be quiet and he should be taken next night. Next night the star came quite up close to the cliff where the Coyote stood, who leaping was able to catch on. Away they danced together through the blue heavens. Fine sport it was for a while; but oh, it grew bitter cold up there for a Coyote of the earth, and it was an awful sight to look down to where the broad Klamath lay like a slack bowstring and the Cahroc villages like arrow-heads. Woe for the Coyote! his numb paws have slipped their hold on his bright companion; dark is the partner that leads the dance now, and the name of him is Death. Ten long snows the Coyote is in falling, and when he strikes the earth he is "smashed as flat as a willow-mat".—Coyotes must not dance with stars.[IV-35]
Eskimo Witchcraft—The Tinneh and the Koniagas—Kugans of the Aleuts—The Thlinkeets, the Haidahs, and the Nootkas—Paradise Lost of the Okanagans—The Salish, the Clallams, the Chinooks, the Cayuses, the Walla Wallas, and the Nez Percés—Shoshone Ghouls—Northern California—The Sun at Monterey—Ouiot and Chinigchinich—Antagonistic Gods of Lower California—Comanches, Apaches, and Navajos—Montezuma of the Pueblos—Moquis and Mojaves—Primeval Race of Northern California.
We now come to the broadest, whether or not it be the most important, branch of our subject, namely, the gods and spirits that men worship or know of. Commencing at the extreme north, we shall follow them through the various nations of our territory toward the south. Very wild and conflicting is the general mass of evidence bearing on a belief in supernatural existences. Not only from the nature of the subject is it allied to questions and matters the most abstruse and transcendental—in the expression of which the exactest dialectic terminology must often be at fault; much more the rude and stammering speech of savages—but it is also apt to call up prejudices of the most warping and contradictory kind in the minds of those through whose relation it must pass to us. However hopeless the task, I will strive to hold an equal beam of historical truth, and putting away speculations of either extreme, try to give the naked expression of the belief of the peoples we deal with—however stupid, however absurd—and not what they ought to believe, or may be supposed to believe, according to the ingenious speculations of different theorists.
ESKIMO SHAMANISM.
The Eskimos do not appear to recognize any supreme deity, but only an indefinite number of supernatural beings varying in name, power, and character—the evil seeming to predominate. They carry on the person a small ivory image rudely carved to represent some animal, as a kind of talisman; these are thought to further success in hunting, fishing and other pursuits, but can hardly be looked upon with any great reverence, as they are generally to be bought of their owners for a reasonable price. All supernatural business is transacted through the medium of shamáns;—functionaries answering to the medicine-men of eastern Indian tribes;—of these there are both male and female, each practising on or for the benefit of his or her own respective sex. The rites of their black art differ somewhat, according to Dall, from those of their Tinneh neighbors, and very much from those of the Tschuktschi and other Siberian tribes; and their whole religion may be summed up as a vague fear finding its expression in witchcraft.[V-1]
The Tinneh, that great people stretching north of the fifty-fifth parallel nearly to the Arctic Ocean and to the Pacific, do not seem in any of their various tribes to have a single expressed idea with regard to a supreme power. The Loucheux branch recognize a certain personage, resident in the moon, whom they supplicate for success in starting on a hunting expedition. This being once lived among them as a poor ragged boy that an old woman had found and was bringing up; and who made himself ridiculous to his fellows by making a pair of very large snow-shoes; for the people could not see what a starveling like him should want with shoes of such unusual size. Times of great scarcity troubled the hunters, and they would often have fared badly had they not invariably on such occasions come across a new broad trail that led to a head or two of freshly killed game. They were glad enough to get the game and without scruples as to its appropriation; still they felt curious as to whence it came and how. Suspicion at last pointing to the boy and his great shoes, as being in some way implicated in the affair, he was watched. It soon became evident that he was indeed the benefactor of the Loucheux, and the secret hunter whose quarry had so often replenished their empty pots; yet the people were far from being adequately grateful, and continued to treat him with little kindness or respect. On one occasion they refused him a certain piece of fat—him who had so often saved their lives by his timely bounty! That night the lad disappeared, leaving only his clothes behind, hanging on a tree. He returned to them in a month, however, appearing as a man and dressed as a man. He told them that he had taken up his home in the moon; that he would always look down with a kindly eye to their success in hunting; but he added, that as a punishment for their shameless greed and ingratitude in refusing him the piece of fat, all animals should be lean the long winter through, and fat only in summer; as has since been the case.
SPIRITS WITH THE KONIAGAS AND TINNEH.
According to Hearne, the Tinneh believe in a kind of spirits, or fairies, called nantena, which people the earth, the sea, and the air, and are instrumental for both good and evil. Some of them believe in a good spirit called Tihugun, 'my old friend,' supposed to reside in the sun and in the moon; they have also a bad spirit, Chutsain, apparently only a personification of death, and for this reason called bad.
They have no regular order of shamáns; any one when the spirit moves him may take upon himself their duties and pretensions, though some by happy chances, or peculiar cunning, are much more highly esteemed in this regard than others, and are supported by voluntary contributions. The conjurer often shuts himself in his tent and abstains from food for days till his earthly grossness thins away, and the spirits and things unseen are constrained to appear at his behest. The younger Tinneh care for none of these things; the strong limb and the keen eye, holding their own well in the jostle of life, mock at the terrors of the invisible; but as the pulses dwindle with disease or age, and the knees strike together in the shadow of impending death, the shamán is hired to expel the evil things of which the patient is possessed. Among the Tacullies, a confession is often resorted to at this stage, on the truth and accuracy of which depend the chances of a recovery. As Harmon says, "the crimes which they most frequently confess discover something of their moral character and therefore deserve to be mentioned;" but in truth I cannot mention them; both with women and with men a filthiness and bestiality worse than the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah defy the stomach of description. The same thing is true of the tedious and disgusting rites performed by the Tinneh shamáns over the sick and at various other emergencies. They blow on the invalid, leap about him or upon him, shriek, sing, groan, gesticulate, and foam at the mouth, with other details of hocus-pocus varying indefinitely with tribe and locality. The existence of a soul is for the most part denied, and the spirits with whom dealings are had are not spirits that were ever in or of men; neither are they regarded by men with any sentiment of love or kindly respect; fear and self-interest are the bonds—where any bonds exist—that link the Tinneh with powers supernal or infernal.[V-2]
The Koniagas have the usual legion of spirits haunting water, earth, and air, whose wrath is only to be appeased by offerings to the shamáns; and sometimes, though very rarely, by human sacrifices of slaves. They have also a chief deity or spirit, called Shljam Schoá, and a power for evil called Eyak.[V-3]
Of the Aleuts, it is said that their rites showed a much higher religious development than was to be found among any of their neighbors; the labors of the Russian priests have, however, been successful enough among them to obliterate all remembrance of aught but the outlines of their ancient cult. They recognize a creator-god, but without worshiping him; he had made the world, but he did not guide it; men had nothing to do any longer with him, but only with the lesser kugans, or spirits, to whom the direction and care of earthly affairs have been committed. The stars and the sun and the moon were worshiped, or the spirits of them among others, and avenged themselves on those that adored them not. The offended sun smote the eyes of a scoffer with blindness, the moon stoned him to death, and the stars constrained him to count their number—hopeless task that always left the victim a staring maniac. The shamáns do not seem to have enjoyed that distinction among the Aleuts that their monopoly of mediation between man and the invisible world gave them among other nations. They were generally very poor, living in want and dying in misery; they had no part nor lot in the joys or sorrows of social life; never at feast, at wedding, or at a funeral was their face seen. They lived and wandered men forbid, driven to and fro by phantoms that were their masters and not their slaves. The Aleuts had no permanent idols, nor any worshiping-places built with hands; near every village was some sanctified high place or rock, sacred as a Sinai against the foot of woman or youth, and whoever profaned it became immediately mad or sick to death. Only the men and the old men visited the place leaving there their offerings of skins or feathers with unknown mysterious ceremonies.
The use of amulets was universal; and more than shield or spear to the warrior going to battle was a belt of sea-weed woven in magic knots. What a philosopher's stone was to a Roger Bacon or a Paracelsus, was the tkhimkee, a marvelous pebble thrown up at rare intervals by the sea, to the Aleutian hunter. No beast could resist its attraction; he that carried it had no need to chase his prey, he had only to wait and strike as the animal walked up to its death. Another potent charm was grease taken from a dead man's body; the spearhead touched with this was sure to reach a mortal spot in the whale at which it was hurled.
ALEUTIAN MYSTERY-DANCE.
There are dim Aleutian traditions of certain religious night dances held in the month of December. Wooden idols, or figures of some kind, were made for the occasion and carried from island to island with many esoteric ceremonies. Then was to be seen a marvelous sight. The men and women were put far apart; in the middle of each party a wooden figure was set up; certain great wooden masks or blinders were put on each person, so contrived that the wearer could see nothing outside a little circle round his feet. Then every one stripped, and there upon the snow, under the moonlight, in the bitter Arctic night, danced naked before the image—say rather before the god, for as they danced a kugan descended and entered into the wooden figure. Woe to him or to her whose drift-wood mask fell, or was lifted, in the whirl of that awful dance; the stare of the Gorgon was not more fatal than a glance of the demon that possessed the idol; and for any one to look on one of the opposite sex, however it came about, he might be even counted as one dead. When the dance was over, the idols and the masks were broken and cast away. It may be added that such masks as this were needed, even by prophets in their interviews with the great spirits that know all mortal consequences; and that when a man died such a mask was put over his eyes—O naked and shivering soul, face to face with the darkest kugan of all we will shelter thee what we can.[V-4]
The Thlinkeets are said not to believe in any supreme being. They have that Yehl, the Raven, and that Khanukh, the Wolf, whom we are already to some extent acquainted with; but neither the exact rank and character of these in the supernatural world, nor even their comparative rank, can be established above contradiction. Thus Yehl is said to be the creator of all beings and things, yet we have not forgotten how Khanukh wrung from the unwilling lips of him the confession: Thou art older that I. It is again said of Yehl that his power is unlimited; but alas, we have seen him helpless in the magic darkness raised by Khanukh, and howling as a frightened child might do in a gloomy corridor. The nature of Yehl is kind and he loves men, while the reverse is generally considered true of Khanukh; but Yehl, too, when his anger is stirred up sends sickness and evil fortune. Yehl existed before his birth upon earth; he cannot die nor even become older. Where the sources of the Nass are, whence the east-wind comes, is Nass-Shakieyehl, the home of Yehl; the east-wind brings news of him. By an unknown mother a son was born to him, who loves mankind even more than his father, and provides their food in due season. To conclude the matter, Yehl is, if not the central figure, at least the most prominent in the Thlinkeet pantheon, and the alpha and the omega of Thlinkeet philosophy and theology is summed up in their favorite aphorism: As Yehl acted and lived, so also will we live and do. After Yehl and Khanukh, the Thlinkeets believe in the brother and sister, Chethl and Ahgishanakhou, the Thunder or Thunder-bird, and the Under-ground Woman. Chethl is a kind of great northern rukh that snatches up and swallows a whale without difficulty, while his wings and eyes produce thunder and lightning as already described; his sister Ahgishanakhou sits alone below and guards the Irminsul that supports the world of the North-west.[V-5]
THE THLINKEET SHAMÁN.
The Thlinkeets have no idols, unless the little images sometimes carried by the magicians for charming with may be called by that name; they have no worship nor priests, unless their sorcerers and the rites of them may be entitled to these appellations. These sorcerers or shamáns seem to be much respected; their words and actions are generally believed and acquiesced in by all; though the death of a patient or victim, or supposed victim, is sometimes avenged upon them by the relatives of the deceased. Shamánism is mostly hereditary; as a natural course of things the long array of apparatus, masks, dresses, and so on, is inherited by the son or grandson of the deceased conjurer. The young man must, however, prove himself worthy of his position before it becomes assured to him, by calling up and communicating with spirits. The future shamán retires into a lonely forest or up some mountain, where he lives retired, feeding only on the roots of the panax-horridum, and waiting for the spirits to come to him, which they are generally supposed to do in from two to four weeks. If all go well the meeting takes place, and the chief of the spirits sends to the neophyte a river-otter, in the tongue of which animal is supposed to be hid the whole power and secret of shamánism. The man meets the beast face to face, and four times, each time in a different fashion, he pronounces the syllable 'Oh!' Upon this the otter falls instantly, reaching out at the same time its tongue, which the man cuts off and preserves; hiding it away in a close place, for if any one not initiated should look on this talisman the sight would drive him mad. The otter is skinned by the new shamán and the skin kept for a sign of his profession, while the flesh is buried; it was unlawful to kill a river-otter save on such occasions as have been described. If, however, the spirits will not visit the would-be shamán, nor give him any opportunity to get the otter-tongue as described above, the neophyte visits the tomb of a dead shamán and keeps an awful vigil over night, holding in his living mouth a finger of the dead man or one of his teeth; this constrains the spirits very powerfully to send the necessary otter. When all these things have been done the shamán returns to his family emaciated and worn out, and his new powers are immediately put to the test. His reputation depends on the number of spirits at his command. The spirits are called yek, and to every conjurer a certain number of them are attached as familiars, while there are others on whom he may call in an emergency; indeed every man of whatever rank or profession is attended by a familiar spirit or demon, who only abandons his charge when the man becomes exceedingly bad. The world of spirits in general is divided into three classes: keeyek, tákeeyek, and tékeeyek. The first-class, 'the Upper Ones,' dwell in the north and seem to be connected with the northern lights; they are the spirits of the brave fallen in battle. The other two classes are the spirits of those that died a natural death, and their dwelling is called takankóu. The tákeeyek, 'land-spirits,' appear to the shamáns in the form of land animals. With regard to the tékeeyek, 'sea-spirits' which appear in the form of marine animals, there is some dispute among the Thlinkeets as to whether these spirits were ever the spirits of men like those of the other two classes, or whether they were merely the souls of sea animals.
The supreme feat of a conjurer's power is to throw one of his liege spirits into the body of one who refuses to believe in his power; upon which the possessed is taken with swooning and fits. The hair of a shamán is never cut. As among the Aleuts, a wooden mask is necessary to his safe intercourse with any spirit; separate masks are worn for interviews with separate spirits. When a shamán sickens, his relatives fast for his recovery; when he dies, his body is not burned like that of other men, but put in a box which is set up on a high frame. The first night following his death his body is left in that corner of his hut in which he died. On the second night it is carried to another corner, and so on for four nights till it has occupied successively all the corners of the yourt, all the occupants of which are supposed to fast during this time. On the fifth day the body is tied down on a board, and two bones that the dead man had often used in his rites when alive are stuck, the one in his hair and the other in the bridge of his nose. The head is then covered with a willow basket, and the body taken to its place of sepulture, which is always near the sea-shore; no Thlinkeet ever passes the spot without dropping a little tobacco into the water to conciliate the manes of the mighty dead.[V-6]
SOLAR SPIRIT OF THE HAIDAHS.
The Haidahs believe the great solar spirit to be the creator and supreme ruler; they do not however confuse him with the material sun, who is a shining man walking round the fixed earth and wearing a "radiated" crown. Sometimes the moon is also connected in a confused indefinite way with the great spirit. There is an evil spirit who, according to Dunn, is provided with hoofs and horns, though nothing is said as to the fashion of them, whether orthodox or not. The Haidahs, at least those seen by Mr Poole on Queen Charlotte Island, have no worship, nor did they look upon themselves as in any way responsible to any deity for their actions. As with their northern neighbors, a belief in goblins, spectres, and sorcery seems to be the sum of their religion.
With some at least of the Haidahs there was in existence a rite of this sorcery attended by circumstances of more than ordinary barbarity and ferocity. When the salmon season is over and the provisions of winter have been stored away, feasting and conjuring begin. The chief—who seems to be the principal sorcerer, and indeed to possess little authority save from his connection with the preterhuman powers—goes off to the loneliest and wildest retreat he knows of or can discover in the mountains or forest, and half starves himself there for some weeks till he is worked up to a frenzy of religious insanity and the nawloks—fearful beings of some kind not human—consent to communicate with him by voices or otherwise. During all this observance, the chief is called taamish, and woe to the unlucky Haidah who happens by chance so much as to look on him during its continuance; even if the taamish do not instantly slay the intruder, his neighbors are certain to do so when the thing comes to their knowledge, and if the victim attempt to conceal the affair, or do not himself confess it, the most cruel tortures are added to his fate. At last the inspired demoniac returns to his village, naked save a bear-skin or a ragged blanket, with a chaplet on his head and a red band of alder-bark about his neck. He springs on the first person he meets, bites out and swallows one or more mouthfuls of the man's living flesh wherever he can fix his teeth, then rushes to another and another, repeating his revolting meal till he falls into a torpor from his sudden and half-masticated surfeit of flesh. For some days after this he lies in a kind of coma, "like an over-gorged beast of prey," as Dunn says; the same observer adding that his breath during that time is "like an exhalation from a grave." The victims of this ferocity dare not resist the bite of the taamish; on the contrary, they are sometimes willing to offer themselves to the ordeal, and are always proud of its scars.[V-7]
NOOTKA GODS.
The Nootkas acknowledge the existence of a great personage called Quahootze, whose habitation is apparently in the sky, but of whose nature little is known. When a storm begins to rage dangerously the Nootkas climb to the top of their houses and looking upwards to this great god, they beat drums and chant and call upon his name, imploring him to still the tempest. They fast, as something agreeable to the same deity, before setting out on the hunt, and, if their success warrant it, hold a feast in his honor after their return. This festival is held usually in December, and it was formerly the custom to finish it with a human sacrifice, an atrocity now happily fallen into disuse; a boy, with knives stuck through the superficial flesh of his arms, legs, and sides, being exhibited as a substitute for the ancient victim.
Matlose is a famous hob-goblin of the Nootkas; he is a very Caliban of spirits; his head is like the head of something that might have been a man but is not; his uncouth bulk is horrid with black bristles; his monstrous teeth and nails are like the fangs and claws of a bear. Whoever hears his terrible voice falls like one smitten, and his curved claws rend a prey into morsels with a single stroke.
The Nootkas, like so many American peoples, have a tradition of a supernatural teacher and benefactor, an old man that came to them up the Sound long ago. His canoe was copper, and the paddles of it copper; every thing he had on him or about him was of the same metal. He landed and instructed the men of that day in many things; telling them that he came from the sky, that their country should be eventually destroyed, that they should all die, but after death rise and live with him above. Then all the people rose up angry, and took his canoe from him, and slew him; a crime from which their descendants have derived much benefit, for copper and the use of it have remained with them ever since. Huge images, carved in wood, still stand in their houses intended to represent the form and hold in remembrance the visit of this old man—by which visit is not improbably intended to be signified an avatar or incarnation of that chief deity, or great spirit, worshiped by many Californian tribes as 'the Old Man above.'
The Ahts regard the moon and the sun as their highest deities, the moon being the husband and the sun the wife. To the moon chiefly, as the more powerful deity, they pray for what they require; and to both moon and sun, as to all good deities, their prayers are addressed directly and without the intervention of the sorcerers. Quawteaht—which seems to be a local Aht modification of Quahootze—who made most things that are in the world, was the first to teach the people to worship these luminaries who, over all and seeing all, are more powerful than himself, though more distant and less active. There is also that Tootooch, thunder-bird, of which so much has been already said.
The Nootkas, in general, believe in the existence of numberless spirits of various kinds, and in the efficacy of sorcery. As in neighboring nations, the shamán gains or renews his inspiration by fasting and solitary meditation in some retired place, re-appearing at the end of his vigil half-starved and half-insane, but filled with the black virtue of his art. He does not generally collect a meal of living human flesh like the taamish of the preceding family, but he is satisfied with what his teeth can tear from the corpses in the burial-places. Old women are admitted to a share in the powers of sorcery and prophecy and the interpretation of omens and dreams; the latter a most important function, as few days and nights pass over a Nootka house that do not give occasion by some vision or occurrence for the office of the sibyl or the augur.[V-8]
PARADISE LOST OF THE OKANAGANS.
The Okanagans believe in a good spirit or master of life, called Elemehumkillanwaist or Skyappe; and in a bad spirit Kishtsamah or Chacha; both moving constantly through the air, so that nothing can be done without their knowledge. The Okanagans have no worship public or private, but before engaging in anything of importance they offer up a short prayer to the good spirit for assistance; again on state occasions, a pipe is passed round and each one smokes three whiffs toward the rising sun, the same toward the setting, and the same respectively toward the heaven above and the earth beneath. Then they have their great mythic ruler and heroine, Scomalt, whose story is intimately connected with a kind of Okanagan fall or paradise lost. Long ago, so long ago that the sun was quite young and very small and no bigger than a star, there was an island far out at sea called Samahtumiwhoolah, or the White Man's Island. It was inhabited by a white race of gigantic stature, and governed by a tall fair woman called Scomalt; and she was a great and strong 'medicine,' this Scomalt. At last the peace of the island was destroyed by war, and the noise of battle was heard, the white men fighting the one with the other; and Scomalt was exceedingly wroth. She rose up and said: lo, now I will drive these wicked far from me; my soul shall be no longer vexed concerning them, neither shall they trouble the faithful of my people with their strivings any more. And she drove the rebellious together to the uttermost end of the island, and broke off the piece of land on which they were huddled, and pushed it out to sea to drift whither it would. This floating island was tossed to and fro many days and buffeted of the winds exceedingly, so that all the people thereon died save one man and one woman, who, seeing their island was ready to sink, made themselves a canoe and gat them away toward the west. After paddling day and night for many suns, they came to certain islands, whence steering through them, they came at last to where the mainland was, being the territory that the Okanagans now inhabit; it was, however, much smaller in those days, having grown much since. This man and woman were so sorely weather-beaten when they landed that they found their original whiteness quite gone, and a dusky reddish color in its place. All the people of the continent are descended from this pair, and the dingy skin of their storm-tossed ancestors has become a characteristic of the race. And even, as in time past the wrath of the fair Scomalt loosed the island of their ancestors from its mainland, and sent it adrift with its burden of sinful men, so in a time to come, the deep lakes, that like some Hannibal's vinegar soften the rocks of the foundations of the world, and the rivers that run for ever and gnaw them away, shall set the earth afloat again; then shall the end of the world be, the awful itsowleigh.[V-9]
The Salish tribes believe the sun to be the chief deity, and certain ceremonies, described by Mr Lord as having taken place on the death of a chief, seem to indicate that fire is in some way connected with the great light.[V-10] The chief is ex officio a kind of priest, presiding for the most part at the various observances by which the deity of the sun is recognized. There is the usual belief in sorcery and second sight, and individuals succeed, by force of special gifts for fasting and lonely meditation, in having themselves accounted conjurers—an honor of dubious profit, as medicine-men are constantly liable to be shot by an enraged relative of any one whose death they may be supposed to have brought about.
DEITIES OF THE CLALLAMS.
The Clallams, a coast tribe on the mainland opposite the south end of Vancouver Island, have a principal good deity called by various names, and an evil spirit called Skoocoom; to these some add a certain Teyutlma, 'the genius of good fortune.' The medicine-men of the tribe are supposed to have much influence both for good and evil with these spirits and with all the demon race, or sehuiáb as the latter are sometimes called. In this tribe the various conjurers are united by the bonds of a secret society, the initiation into which is attended by a good deal of ceremony and expense. Three days and three nights must the novice of the order fast alone in a mysterious lodge prepared for him, round which during all that time the brethren already initiated sing and dance. This period elapsed, during which it would seem that the old nature has been killed out of him, he is taken up like one dead and soused into the nearest cold water, where he is washed till he revives; which thing they call "washing the dead." When his senses are sufficiently gathered to him, he is set on his feet; upon which he runs off into the forest, whence he soon reappears a perfect medicine-man, rattle in hand and decked out with the various trappings of his profession. He then parts all his worldly gear among his friends, himself henceforth to be supported only by the fees of his new calling.[V-11]
Ikánam, the creator of the universe, is a powerful deity among the Chinooks, who have a mountain named after him from a belief that he there turned himself into stone. After him, or before him as many say, comes Italapas, the Coyote, who created men after an imperfect fashion,[V-12] taught them how to make nets and catch salmon, how to make a fire, and how to cook; for this the first fruits of the fishing season are always sacred to him, and his figure is to be found carved on the head of almost every Chinook canoe on the Columbia. They have a fire-spirit, an evil spirit, and a body of familiar spirits, tamanowas. Each person has his special spirit, selected by him at an early age, sometimes by fasting and other mortification of the flesh, sometimes by the adoption of the first object the child or young man sees, or thinks he sees, on visiting the woods. These spirits have a great effect on the imagination of the Chinooks, and their supposed directions are followed under pain of mysterious and awful punishments; people converse—"particularly when in the water"—with them, apparently talking to themselves in low monotonous tones. Some say that when a man dies his tamanowa passes to his son; but the whole matter is darkened with much mystery and secrecy; the name of one's familiar spirit or guardian never being mentioned even to the nearest friend. A similar custom forbids the mention of a dead man's name, at least till many years have elapsed after the bereavement.
The Chinook medicine-men are possessed of the usual powers of converse and mediation with the spirits good and evil; there are two classes of them, employed in all cases of sickness—the etaminuas, or priests, who intercede for the soul of the patient, and, if necessary, for its safe passage to the land of spirits—and the keelalles, or doctors, sometimes women, whose duty it is to administer medical as well as spiritual aid.[V-13]
With the Cayuses and the Walla-Wallas any one may become a medicine-man; among the Nez Percés the office belongs to an hereditary order. Women are sometimes trained to the profession, but they are not believed to hold such extreme powers as the males, nor are they murdered on the supposed exercise of some fatal influence. For, as with the Chinooks[V-14] so here, the reputation of sorcerer is at once the most terrible to others and the most dangerous to one's self that one can have. His is a power of life, and death; his evil eye can wither and freeze a hated life if not as swiftly at least as surely as the stare of the Medusa; he is mortal, however—he can slay your friend or yourself, and death is bitter, but then how sweet an anodyne is revenge! There is no strong magic can avail when the heart's blood trickles down the avenger's shaft, no cunning enchantment that can keep the life in when his tomahawk crumbles the skull like a potsherd—and so it comes about that the conjurers walk everywhere with their life in their hand, and are constrained to be very wary in their exercise of their nefarious powers.[V-15]
SHOSHONE DEMONS.
The Shoshone legends people certain parts of the mountains of Montana with little imps or demons called ninumbees, who are about two feet long, perfectly naked, and provided each with a tail. These limbs of the evil one are accustomed to eat up any unguarded infant they may find, leaving in its stead one of their own baneful race. When the mother comes to suckle what she supposes to be her child, the fiendish changeling seizes her breast and begins to devour it; then, although her screams and the alarm thereby given soon force the malicious imp to make his escape, there is no hope further; she dies within the twenty-four hours, and if not well watched in the meantime, the little demon will even return and make an end of her by finishing his interrupted meal. There is another variety of these hobgoblins call pahonahs, 'water-infants,' who devour women and children as do their brother-fiends of the mountain, and complete the ring of ghoulish terror that closes round the Shoshone child and mother.[V-16]
The Californian tribes, taken as a whole, are pretty uniform in the main features of their theogonic beliefs. They seem, without exception, to have had a hazy conception of a lofty, almost supreme being; for the most part referred to as a Great Man, the Old Man Above, the One Above; attributing to him, however, as is usual in such cases, nothing but the vaguest and most negative functions and qualities. The real, practical power that most interested them, who had most to do with them and they with him, was a demon, or body of demons, of a tolerably pronounced character. In the face of divers assertions to the effect that no such thing as a devil proper has ever been found in savage mythology, we would draw attention to the following extract from the Pomo manuscript of Mr Powers—a gentleman who, both by his study and by personal investigation, has made himself one of the best qualified authorities on the belief of the native Californian, and whose dealings have been for the most part with tribes that have never had any friendly intercourse with white men:—"Of course the thin and meagre imagination of the American savages was not equal to the creation of Milton's magnificent imperial Satan, or of Goethe's Mephistopheles, with his subtle intellect, his vast powers, his malignant mirth; but in so far as the Indian fiends or devils have the ability, they are wholly as wicked as these. They are totally bad, they have no good thing in them, they think only evil; but they are weak and undignified and absurd; they are as much beneath Satan as the 'Big Indians' who invent them are inferior in imagination to John Milton."[V-17]
A definite location is generally assigned to the evil one as his favorite residence or resort; thus the Californians in the county of Siskiyou, give over Devil's Castle, its mount and lake, to the malignant spirits, and avoid the vicinity of these places with all possible care.
SACRED FIRES.
The medicine-man of these people is a personage of some importance, dressing in the most costly furs; he is a non-combatant, not coming on the field till after the fight; among other duties, it is absolutely necessary for him to visit any camp from which the tribe has been driven by the enemy, there to chant the death-song and appease the angry spirit that wrought this judgment of defeat, for only after this has been done is it thought safe to light again the lodge-fires on the old hearths. Once lit these lodge-fires are never allowed to go out during times of peace; it would be a bad omen, and omens are everything with these men, and deducible from all things. The power of prophecy is thoroughly believed in, and is credited not only to special seers, but also to distinguished warriors going into battle; in the latter case, as far at least as their own several fate is concerned; this, according to Mr Miller, they often predict with startling accuracy.[V-18]
There is a strange sacredness mixed up with the sweat-house and its use, among the Cahrocs, the Eurocs, and many other tribes. The men of every village spend the winter and rainy season in its warm shelter; but squaws are forbidden to enter, under penalty of death, except when they are initiated into the ranks of the 'medicines.' So consistent are the Indians in this matter, that women are not allowed even to gather the wood that is to be burned in the sacred fire of a sweat-house; all is done by men, and that only with certain precautions and ceremonies. The sacred fire is lit every year in September by a 'medicine' who has gone out into the forest and fasted and meditated for ten days; and, till a certain time has elapsed, no secular eye must behold so much as the smoke of it under awful penalties. The flame once burning is never suffered to go out till the spring begins to render further heat unnecessary and inconvenient.
On one only occasion is the ban lifted from the head of women; when a female is being admitted to the medicine ranks, she is made to dance in the sweat-house till she falls exhausted. It does not appear, however, that even by becoming a medicine can she hope to see twice the interior of this lodge.
The admission of a man to the medicine is a much severer affair. He must retire to the forest for ten days, eating no meat the while, and only enough acorn-porridge to keep the life in him; the ten days past, he returns to the sweat-house and leaps up and down till he falls, just as the woman did.
The doctors or sorcerers are of two kinds, 'root doctors' and 'barking doctors.' To the barking doctor falls the diagnosis of a case of sickness. He, or she, squats down opposite the patient, and barks at him after the manner of an enraged cur, for hours together. If it be a poisoning case, or a case of malady inflicted by some conjurer, the barking doctor then goes on to suck the evil thing out through the skin or administer emetics, as may be deemed desirable. If the case, however, be one of less serious proportions, the 'barker,' after having made his diagnosis, retires, and the root-doctor comes in, who, with his herbs and simples and a few minor incantations, proceeds to cure the ailment. If a patient die, then the medicine is forced to return his fee; and if he refuse to attend on anyone and the person die, then he is forced to pay to the relatives a sum equal to that which was tendered to him as a fee in the beginning of the affair; thus like all professions, that of a medicine has its draw-backs as well as advantages.
Several Northern Californian tribes have secret societies which meet in a lodge set apart, or in a sweat-house, and engage in mummeries of various kinds, all to frighten their women. The men pretend to converse with the devil, and make their meeting-place shake and ring again with yells and whoops. In some instances, one of their number, disguised as the master fiend himself, issues from the haunted lodge, and rushes like a madman through the village, doing his best to frighten contumacious women and children out of their senses. This, it would seem, has been going on from time immemorial and the poor women are still gulled by it, and even frightened into more or less prolonged fits of wifely propriety and less easy virtue.
CALIFORNIAN DEITIES.
The coast tribes of Del Norte County, California, live in constant terror of a malignant spirit that takes the form of certain animals, the form of a bat, of a hawk, of a tarantula, and so on—but especially delights in and affects that of a screech-owl. The belief of the Russian-River tribes and others is practically identical with this.
The Cahrocs have, as we already know, some conception of a great deity, called Chareya, the Old Man Above; he is wont to appear upon earth at times to some of the most favored sorcerers; he is described as wearing a close tunic, with a medicine-bag, and as having long white hair that falls venerably about his shoulders. Practically, however, the Cahrocs, like the majority of Californian tribes, venerate chiefly the coyote. Great dread is also had of certain forest-demons of nocturnal habits; these, say the Eurocs, take the form of bears and shoot arrows at benighted wayfarers.[V-19]
Between the foregoing outlines of Californian belief and those connected with the remaining tribes, passing south, we can detect no salient difference till we reach the Olchones, a coast tribe between San Francisco and Monterey; the sun here begins to be connected, or identified by name, with that great spirit, or rather, that Big Man, who made the earth and who rules in the sky.[V-20] So we find it again both around Monterey and around San Luis Obispo; the first fruits of the earth were offered in these neighborhoods to the great light, and his rising was greeted with cries of joy.[V-21]
Father Gerónimo Boscana[V-22] gives us the following relation of the faith and worship of the Acagchemem nations, in the valley and neighborhood of San Juan Capistrano, California. Part of it would fall naturally into that part of this work alloted to origin; but the whole is so intimately mixed with so much concerning the life, deeds, and worship of various supernatural personages that it has seemed better to fit its present position than any other. Of the first part of the tradition there are two versions—if indeed they be versions of the same tradition. We give first that version held by the serranos, or highlanders, of the interior country, three or four leagues inland from the said San Juan Capistrano:—
Before the material world at all existed there lived two beings, brother and sister, of a nature that can not be explained; the brother living above, and his name meaning the Heavens, the sister living below and her name signifying Earth. From the union of these two, there sprang a numerous offspring. Earth and sand were the first fruits of this marriage; then were born rocks and stones; then trees both great and small; then grass and herbs; then animals; lastly was born a great personage called Ouiot, who was a "grand captain." By some unknown mother many children of a medicine race were born to this Ouiot. All these things happened in the north; and afterward when men were created they were created in the north; but as the people multiplied they moved toward the south, the earth growing larger also and extending itself in the same direction.
THE COYOTE OF THE ACAGCHEMEMS.
In process of time, Ouiot becoming old, his children plotted to kill him, alleging that the infirmities of age made him unfit any longer to govern them or attend to their welfare. So they put a strong poison in his drink, and when he drank of it a sore sickness came upon him; he rose up and left his home in the mountains and went down to what is now the sea-shore, though at that time there was no sea there. His mother, whose name is the Earth, mixed him an antidote in a large shell, and set the potion out in the sun to brew; but the fragrance of it attracted the attention of the Coyote, who came and overset the shell. So Ouiot sickened to death, and though he told his children that he would shortly return and be with them again, he has never been seen since. All the people made a great pile of wood and burnt his body there, and just as the ceremony began the Coyote leaped upon the body, saying that he would burn with it; but he only tore a piece of flesh from the stomach and ate it and escaped. After that the title of the Coyote was changed from Eyacque, which means Sub-captain, to Eno, that is to say, Thief and Cannibal.
When now the funeral rites were over, a general council was held and arrangements made for collecting animal and vegetable food; for up to this time the children and descendants of Ouiot had nothing to eat but a kind of white clay. And while they consulted together, behold a marvelous thing appeared before them, and they spoke to it saying: Art thou our captain, Ouiot. But the spectre said: Nay, for I am greater than Ouiot; my habitation is above, and my name is Chinigchinich. Then he spoke further, having been told for what they were come together: I create all things, and I go now to make man, another people like unto you; as for you I give you power, each after his kind, to produce all good and pleasant things. One of you shall bring rain, and another dew, and another make the acorn grow, and others other seeds, and yet others shall cause all kinds of game to abound in the land; and your children shall have this power for ever, and they shall be sorcerers to the men I go to create, and shall receive gifts of them, that the game fail not and the harvests be sure. Then Chinigchinich made man; out of the clay of the lake he formed him, male and female; and the present Californians are the descendants of the one or more pairs there and thus created.
So ends the known tradition of the mountaineers; we must now go back and take up the story anew at its beginning, as told by the playanos, or people of the valley of San Juan Capistrano. These say that an invisible all-powerful being, called Nocuma, made the world and all that it contains of things that grow and move. He made it round like a ball and held it in his hands, where it rolled about a good deal at first, till he steadied it by sticking a heavy black rock called tosaut into it, as a kind of ballast. The sea was at this time only a little stream running round the world, and so crowded with fish that their twinkling fins had no longer room to move; so great was the press that some of the more foolish fry were for effecting a landing and founding a colony, upon the dry land, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that they were persuaded by their elders, that the killing air and baneful sun and the want of feet must infallibly prove the destruction before many days of all who took part in such a desperate enterprise. The proper plan was evidently to improve and enlarge their present home; and to this end, principally by the aid of one very large fish, they broke the great rock tosaut in two, finding a bladder in the centre filled with a very bitter substance. The taste of it pleased the fish, so they emptied it into the water, and instantly the water became salt and swelled up and overflowed a great part of the old earth, and made itself the new boundaries that remain to this day.
Then Nocuma created a man, shaping him out of the soil of the earth, calling him Ejoni. A woman also the great god made, presumably of the same material as the man, calling her Aé. Many children were born to this first pair, and their descendants multiplied over the land. The name of one of these last was Sirout, that is to say, Handful of Tobacco, and the name of his wife was Ycaiut, which means Above; and to Sirout and Ycaiut was born a son, while they lived in a place north-east about eight leagues from San Juan Capistrano. The name of this son was Ouiot, that is to say Dominator; he grew a fierce and redoubtable warrior; haughty, ambitious, tyrannous, he extended his lordship on every side, ruling everywhere as with a rod of iron; and the people conspired against him. It was determined that he should die by poison; a piece of the rock tosaut was ground up in so deadly a way that its mere external application was sufficient to cause death. Ouiot, notwithstanding that he held himself constantly on the alert, having been warned of his danger by a small burrowing animal called the cucumel, was unable to avoid his fate; a few grains of the cankerous mixture were dropped upon his breast while he slept, and the strong mineral ate its way to the very springs of his life. All the wise men of the land were called to his assistance; but there was nothing for him save to die. His body was burned on a great pile with songs of joy and dances, and the nation rejoiced.
THE FIRST MEDICINE-MAN.
While the people were gathered to this end, it was thought advisable to consult on the feasibility of procuring seed and flesh to eat instead of the clay which had up to this time been the sole food of the human family. And while they yet talked together, there appeared to them, coming they knew not whence, one called Attajen, "which name implies man, or rational being." And Attajen, understanding their desires, chose out certain of the elders among them, and to these gave he power; one that he might cause rain to fall, to another that he might cause game to abound, and so with the rest, to each his power and gift, and to the successors of each for ever. These were the first medicine-men.
Many years having elapsed since the death of Ouiot, there appeared in the same place one called Ouiamot, reputed son of Tacu and Auzar—people unknown, but natives; it is thought by Boscana, of "some distant land." This Ouiamot is better known by his great name Chinigchinich, which means Almighty. He first manifested his powers to the people on a day when they had met in congregation for some purpose or other; he appeared dancing before them crowned with a kind of high crown made of tall feathers stuck into a circlet of some kind, girt with a kind of petticoat of feathers, and having his flesh painted black and red. Thus decorated he was called the tobet. Having danced some time, Chinigchinich called out the medicine-men, or puplems as they were called, among whom it would appear the chiefs are always numbered, and confirmed their power; telling them that he had come from the stars to instruct them in dancing and all other things, and commanding that in all their necessities they should array themselves in the tobet, and so dance as he had danced, supplicating him by his great name, that thus they might receive of their petitions. He taught them how to worship him, how to build vanquechs, or places of worship, and how to direct their conduct in various affairs of life. Then he prepared to die, and the people asked him if they should bury him; but he warned them against attempting such a thing: If ye buried me, he said, ye would tread upon my grave, and for that my hand would be heavy upon you; look to it, and to all your ways, for lo, I go up where the high stars are, where mine eyes shall see all the ways of men; and whosoever will not keep my commandments nor observe the things I have taught, behold disease shall plague all his body, and no food shall come near his lips, the bear shall rend his flesh, and the crooked tooth of the serpent shall sting him.
SANCTUARIES OF REFUGE.
The vanquech, or place of worship, seems to have been an unroofed inclosure of stakes, within which, on a hurdle, was placed the image of the god Chinigchinich. This image was the skin of a coyote or that of a mountain-cat stuffed with the feathers of certain birds, and with various other things, so that it looked like a live animal; a bow and some arrows were attached to it on the outside, and other arrows were thrust down its throat so that the feathers of them appeared at the mouth as out of a quiver. The whole place of the inclosure was sacred, and not to be approached without reverence; it does not seem that sacrifices formed any part of the worship there offered, but only prayer, and sometimes a kind of pantomime connected with the undertaking desired to be furthered—thus, desiring success in hunting one mimicked the actions of the chase, leaping and twanging one's bow. Each vanquech was a city of refuge, with rights of sanctuary exceeding any ever granted in Jewish or Christian countries. Not only was every criminal safe there whatever his crime, but the crime was as it were blotted out from that moment, and the offender was at liberty to leave the sanctuary and walk about as before; it was not lawful even to mention his crime; all that the avenger could do was to point at him and deride him, saying: Lo, a coward, who has been forced to flee to Chinigchinich! This flight was rendered so much a meaner thing in that it only turned the punishment from the head of him that fled upon that of some of his relatives; life went for life, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, even to the third and fourth generation, for justice' sake.
Besides Chinigchinich they worshiped, or at any rate feared, a god called Touch; who inhabited the mountains and the bowels of the earth, appearing, however, from time to time in the form of various animals of a terrifying kind. Every child at the age of six or seven received, sent to him from this god, some animal as a protector. To find out what this animal or spirit in the shape of animal was, narcotic drinks were swallowed, or the subject fasted and watched in the vanquech for a given time, generally three days. He whose rank entitled him to wait for his guardian apparition in the sacred inclosure, was set there by the side of the god's image, and on the ground before him was sketched by one of the wise men an uncouth figure of some animal. The child was then left to complete his vigil, being warned at the same time to endure its hardships with patience, in that any attempt to infringe upon its rules, by eating or drinking or otherwise, would be reported to the god by the sprawling figure the enchanter had drawn in the clay, and that in such a case the punishment of Chinigchinich would be terrible. After all this was over, a scar was made on the child's right arm, and sometimes on the thick part of the leg also, by covering the part, "according to the figure required," with a peculiar herb dried and powdered, and setting fire to it. This was a brand or seal required by Chinigchinich, and was besides supposed to strengthen the nerves and give "a better pulse for the management of the bow."[V-23]
The Acagchemems, like many other Californian tribes,[V-24] regard the great buzzard with sentiments of veneration, while they seem to have had connected with it several rites and ideas peculiar to themselves. They called this bird the panes, and once every year they had a festival of the same name, in which the principal ceremony was the killing of a buzzard without losing a drop of its blood. It was next skinned, all possible care being taken to preserve the feathers entire, as these were used in making the feathered petticoat and diadem, already described as part of the tobet. Last of all the body was buried within the sacred inclosure amid great apparent grief from the old women, they mourning as over the loss of relative or friend. Tradition explained this: the panes had indeed been once a woman, whom, wandering in the mountain ways, the great god Chinigchinich had come suddenly upon and changed into a bird. How this was connected with the killing of her anew every year by the people, and with certain extraordinary ideas held relative to that killing is, however, by no means clear; for it was believed that as often as the bird was killed it was made alive again, and more, and faith to move mountains—that the birds killed in one same yearly feast in many separate villages were one and the same bird. How these things were or why, none knew, it was enough that they were a commandment and ordinance of Chinigchinich, whose ways were not as the ways of men.[V-25]
AND THERE WAS WAR IN HEAVEN.
The Pericues of Lower California were divided into two sects, worshiping two hostile divinities who made a war of extermination upon each other. The tradition explains that there was a great lord in heaven, called Niparaya, who made earth and sea, and was almighty and invisible. His wife was Anayicoyondi, a goddess who, though possessing no body, bore him in a divinely mysterious manner three children; one of whom, Quaayayp, was a real man and born on earth, on the Acaragui mountains. Very powerful this young god was, and a long time he lived with the ancestors of the Pericues, whom it is almost to be inferred that he created; at any rate we are told that he was able to make men, drawing them up out of the earth. The men at last killed this their great hero and teacher, and put a crown of thorns upon his head.[V-26] Somewhere or other he remains lying dead to this day, and he remains constantly beautiful, neither does his body know corruption. Blood drips constantly from his wounds, and he can speak no more, being dead; yet there is an owl that speaks to him. And besides the before-spoken-of god Niparaya in heaven, there was another and hostile god called Wac or Tuparan. According to the Niparaya sect, this Wac had made war on their favorite god, and been by him defeated and cast forth of heaven into a cave under the earth, of which cave the whales of the sea were the guardians. With a perverse, though not unnatural obstinacy, the sect that held Wac or Tuparan to be their great god persisted in holding ideas peculiar to themselves with regard to the truth of the foregoing story; and their account of the great war in heaven and its results differed from the other, as differ the creeds of heterodox and orthodox everywhere; they ascribe, for example, part of the creation to other gods besides Niparaya.[V-27] The Cochimis and remaining natives of the Californian peninsula seem to have held in the main much the same ideas with regard to the gods and powers above them as the Pericues held, and the sorcerers of all had the common blowings, leapings, fastings, and other mummeries that make these professors of the sinister art so much alike everywhere in our territory.[V-28]
The natives of Nevada have ideas respecting a great kind Spirit of some kind, as well as a myth concerning an evil one; but they have no special class set apart as medicine-men.[V-29] The Utah belief seems to be as nearly as possible identical with that of Nevada.[V-30]
The Comanches acknowledge more or less vaguely a Supreme Spirit, but seem to use the Sun and the Earth as mediators with and, in some sort, as embodiments of him. They have a recognized body of sorcerers called puyacantes, and various religious ceremonies and chants; for the most part of a simple kind, and directed to the Sun as the great source of life, and to the Earth as the producer and receptacle of all that sustains life. According to the Abbé Domenech, every Comanche wears a little figure of the sun attached to his neck, or has a picture of it painted on his shield; from the ears of each hang also two crescents, which may possibly represent the moon.[V-31]
The Apaches recognize a supreme power in heaven under the name Yaxtaxitaxitanne, the creator and master of all things; but they render him no open service nor worship. To any taciturn cunning man they are accustomed to credit intercourse with a preternatural power of some kind, and to look to him as a sort of oracle in various emergencies. This is, in fact, their medicine-man, and in cases of illness he pretends to perform cures by the aid of herbs and ceremonies of various kinds.[V-32]
The Navajos, having the usual class of sorcerers, call their good deity Whaillahay, and their evil one Chinday; the principal use of their good god seems to be to protect them from their evil one. In smoking they sometimes puff their tobacco-smoke toward heaven with great formality; this is said to bring rain; to the same end certain long round stones, thought to be cast down by the clouds in a thunderstorm, are used with various ceremonies.
The sun, moon, and stars are thought to be powers connected with rain and fine weather; while the god Montezuma of their Pueblo neighbors is unknown among them.[V-33]
MONTEZUMA OF THE PUEBLOS.
All the Pueblo cities, though speaking different languages hold substantially the same faith. They seem to assent to the statement of the existence of a great and good spirit whose name is too sacred to be mentioned; but most say that Montezuma is his equal; and some, again, that the Sun is the same as or equal to Montezuma. There are, besides, the lesser divinities of water—Montezuma being considered in one aspect as the great rain-god, and as such often mentioned as being aided by or being in connection with a serpent. Over and above all these, the existence of a general class or body of evil spirits is taken for granted.
Many places in New Mexico claim to be the birthplace of the great leader, teacher, and god Montezuma. At any rate he is traditionally supposed to have appeared among the Pueblos before they had arrived at or built their present towns. Some traditions would make him either the ancestor or the creator of the same people; but the most regard him as a kind of semi or wholly divine priest, prophet, leader, and legislator. Under restrictions pointed out in a former note,[V-34] we may fairly regard him as at once the Melchizedek, the Moses, and the Messiah of these Pueblo desert wanderers from an Egypt that history is ignorant of, and whose name even tradition whispers not. He taught his people to build cities with tall houses, to construct estufas, or semi-sacred sweat-houses, and to kindle and guard the sacred fire.
At Acoma, it is said by some, was established the first Pueblo, and thence the people marched southward, forming others. Acoma was one, and Pecos another. At this last, Montezuma planted a tree upside down, and said that, on his leaving them, a strange nation should oppress them for many years, years also in which there should be no rain, but that they were to persist in watching the sacred fire until the tree fell, when he would return, with a white race which should destroy their enemies; and then rain should fall again and the earth be fertile. It is said that this tree fell from its abnormal position, as the American army entered Santa Fé.