American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent

Other names applied to this hero-god were Nemterequeteba, Bóchica, and Zuhe, or Sua, the last mentioned being also the ordinary word for the Sun. He was reported to have been of light complexion, and when the Spaniards first arrived they were supposed to be his envoys, and were called sua or gagua, just as from the memory of a similar myth in Peru they were addressed as Viracochas.

In his form as Bóchica, he is represented as the supreme male divinity, whose female associate is the Rainbow, Cuchaviva, goddess of rains and waters, of the fertility of the fields, of medicine, and of child-bearing in women, a relationship which I have already explained.[22] (#x7_x_7_i47)

Wherever the widespread Tupi-Guaranay race extended–from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the boundless plains of the Pampas, north to the northernmost islands of the West Indian Archipelago–the early explorers found the natives piously attributing their knowledge of the arts of life to a venerable and benevolent old man whom they called "Our Ancestor," Tamu, or Tume, or Zume.

The early Jesuit missionaries to the Guaranis and affiliated tribes of Paraguay and southern Brazil, have much to say of this personage, and some of them were convinced that he could have been no other than the Apostle St. Thomas on his proselytizing journey around the world.

The legend was that Pay Zume, as he was called in Paraguay (Pay = magician, diviner, priest), came from the East, from the Sun-rising, in years long gone by. He instructed the people in the arts of hunting and agriculture, especially in the culture and preparation of the manioca plant, their chief source of vegetable food. Near the city of Assumption is situated a lofty rock, around which, says the myth, he was accustomed to gather the people, while he stood above them on its summit, and delivered his instructions and his laws, just as did Quetzalcoatl from the top of the mountain Tzatzitepec, the Hill of Shouting. The spot where he stood is still marked by the impress of his feet, which the pious natives of a later day took pride in pointing out as a convincing proof that their ancestors received and remembered the preachings of St. Thomas.[23] (#x7_x_7_i48) This was not a suggestion of their later learning, but merely a christianized term given to their authentic ancient legend. As early as 1552, when Father Emanuel Nobrega was visiting the missions of Brazil, he heard the legend, and learned of a locality where not only the marks of the feet, but also of the hands of the hero-god had been indelibly impressed upon the hard rock. Not satisfied with the mere report, he visited the spot and saw them with his own eyes, but indulged in some skepticism as to their origin.[24] (#x7_x_7_i49)

The story was that wherever this hero-god walked, he left behind him a well-marked path, which was permanent, and as the Muyscas of New Granada pointed out the path of Bochica, so did the Guaranays that of Zume, which the missionaries regarded "not without astonishment."[25] (#x7_x_7_i50) He lived a certain length of time with his people and then left them, going back over the ocean toward the East, according to some accounts. But according to others, he was driven away by his stiff-necked and unwilling auditors, who had become tired of his advice. They pursued him to the bank of a river, and there, thinking that the quickest riddance of him was to kill him, they discharged their arrows at him. But he caught the arrows in his hand and hurled them back, and dividing the waters of the river by his divine power he walked between them to the other bank, dry-shod, and disappeared from their view in the distance.

Like all the hero-gods, he left behind him the well-remembered promise that at some future day he should return to them, and that a race of men should come in time, to gather them into towns and rule them in peace.[26] (#x7_x_7_i52) These predictions were carefully noted by the missionaries, and regarded as the "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" of the advent of Christianity; but to me they bear too unmistakably the stamp of the light-myth I have been following up in so many localities of the New World for me to entertain a doubt about their origin and meaning.

I have not yet exhausted the sources from which I could bring evidence of the widespread presence of the elements of this mythical creation in America. But probably I have said enough to satisfy the reader on this point. At any rate it will be sufficient if I close the list with some manifest fragments of the myth, picked out from the confused and generally modern reports we have of the religions of the Athabascan race. This stem is one of the most widely distributed in North America, extending across the whole continent south of the Eskimos, and scattered toward the warmer latitudes quite into Mexico. It is low down in the intellectual scale, its component tribes are usually migratory savages, and its dialects are extremely synthetic and of difficult phonetics, requiring as many as sixty-five letters for their proper orthography. No wonder, therefore, that we have but limited knowledge of their mental life.

Conspicuous in their myths is the tale of the Two Brothers. These mysterious beings are upon the earth before man appears. Though alone, they do not agree, and the one attacks and slays the other. Another brother appears on the scene, who seems to be the one slain, who has come to life, and the two are given wives by the Being who was the Creator of things. These two women were perfectly beautiful, but invisible to the eyes of mortals. The one was named, The Woman of the Light or The Woman of the Morning; the other was the Woman of Darkness or the Woman of Evening. The brothers lived together in one tent with these women, who each in turn went out to work. When the Woman of Light was at work, it was daytime; when the Woman of Darkness was at her labors, it was night.

In the course of time one of the brothers disappeared and the other determined to select a wife from one of the two women, as it seems he had not yet chosen. He watched what the Woman of Darkness did in her absence, and discovered that she descended into the waters and enjoyed the embraces of a monster, while the Woman of Light passed her time in feeding white birds. In course of time the former brought forth black man-serpents, while the Woman of Light was delivered of beautiful boys with white skins. The master of the house killed the former with his arrows, but preserved the latter, and marrying the Woman of Light, became the father of the human race, and especially of the Dènè Dindjié, who have preserved the memory of him.[27] (#x7_x_7_i53)

In another myth of this stock, clearly a version of the former, this father of the race is represented as a mighty bird, called Yêl, or Yale, or Orelbale, from the root ell, a term they apply to everything supernatural. He took to wife the daughter of the Sun (the Woman of Light), and by her begat the race of man. He formed the dry land for a place for them to live upon, and stocked the rivers with salmon, that they might have food. When he enters his nest it is day, but when he leaves it it is night; or, according to another myth, he has the two women for wives, the one of whom makes the day, the other the night.

In the beginning Yêl was white in plumage, but he had an enemy, by name Cannook, with whom he had various contests, and by whose machinations he was turned black. Yêl is further represented as the god of the winds and storms, and of the thunder and lightning.[28] (#x7_x_7_i54)

Thus we find, even in this extremely low specimen of the native race, the same basis for their mythology as in the most cultivated nations of Central America. Not only this; it is the same basis upon which is built the major part of the sacred stories of all early religions, in both continents; and the excellent Father Petitot, who is so much impressed by these resemblances that he founds upon them a learned argument to prove that the Dènè are of oriental extraction,[29] (#x7_x_7_i55) would have written more to the purpose had his acquaintance with American religions been as extensive as it was with those of Asiatic origin.

There is one point in all these myths which I wish to bring out forcibly. That is, the distinction which is everywhere drawn between the God of Light and the Sun. Unless this distinction is fully comprehended, American mythology loses most of its meaning.

The assertion has been so often repeated, even down to the latest writers, that the American Indians were nearly all sun-worshipers, that I take pains formally to contradict it. Neither the Sun nor the Spirit of the Sun was their chief divinity.

Of course, the daily history of the appearance and disappearance of light is intimately connected with the apparent motion of the sun. Hence, in the myths there is often a seeming identification of the two, which I have been at no pains to avoid. But the identity is superficial only; it entirely disappears in other parts of the myth, and the conceptions, as fundamentally distinct, must be studied separately, to reach accurate results. It is an easy, but by no means a profound method of treating these religions, to dismiss them all by the facile explanations of "animism," and "sun and moon worship."

I have said, and quoted strong authority to confirm the opinion, that the native tribes of America have lost ground in morals and have retrograded in their religious life since the introduction of Christianity. Their own faiths, though lower in form, had in them the germs of a religious and moral evolution, more likely, with proper regulation, to lead these people to a higher plane of thought than the Aryan doctrines which were forced upon them.

This may seem a daring, even a heterodox assertion, but I think that most modern ethnologists will agree that it is no more possible for races in all stages of culture and of widely different faculties to receive with benefit any one religion, than it is for them to thrive under one form of government, or to adopt with advantage one uniform plan of building houses. The moral and religious life is a growth, and the brash wood of ancient date cannot be grafted on the green stem. It is well to remember that the heathendoms of America were very far from wanting living seeds of sound morality and healthy mental education. I shall endeavor to point this out in a few brief paragraphs.

In their origin in the human mind, religion and morality have nothing in common. They are even antagonistic. At the root of all religions is the passionate desire for the widest possible life, for the most unlimited exercise of all the powers. The basis of all morality is self-sacrifice, the willingness to give up our wishes to the will of another. The criterion of the power of a religion is its ability to command this sacrifice; the criterion of the excellence of a religion is the extent to which its commands coincide with the good of the race, with the lofty standard of the "categorical imperative."

With these axioms well in mind, we can advance with confidence to examine the claims of a religion. It will rise in the scale just in proportion as its behests, were they universally adopted, would permanently increase the happiness of the human race.

In their origin, as I have said, morality and religion are opposites; but they are opposites which inevitably attract and unite. The first lesson of all religions is that we gain by giving, that to secure any end we must sacrifice something. This, too, is taught by all social intercourse, and, therefore, an acute German psychologist has set up the formula," All manners are moral,"[30] (#x7_x_7_i56) because they all imply a subjection of the personal will of the individual to the general will of those who surround him, as expressed in usage and custom.

Even the religion which demands bloody sacrifices, which forces its votaries to futile and abhorrent rites, is at least training its adherents in the virtues of obedience and renunciation, in endurance and confidence.

But concerning American religions I need not have recourse to such a questionable vindication. They held in them far nobler elements, as is proved beyond cavil by the words of many of the earliest missionaries themselves. Bigoted and bitter haters of the native faiths, as they were, they discovered in them so much that was good, so much that approximated to the purer doctrines that they themselves came to teach, that they have left on record many an attempt to prove that there must, in some remote and unknown epoch, have come Christian teachers to the New World, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew, monks from Ireland, or Asiatic disciples, to acquaint the natives with such salutary doctrines. It is precisely in connection with the myths which I have been relating in this volume that these theories were put forth, and I have referred to them in various passages.

The facts are as stated, but the credit of developing these elevated moral conceptions must not be refused to the red race. They are its own property, the legitimate growth of its own religious sense.

The hero-god, the embodiment of the Light of Day, is essentially a moral and beneficent creation. Whether his name be Michabo, Ioskeha, or Quetzalcoatl, Itzamna, Viracocha or Tamu, he is always the giver of laws, the instructor in the arts of social life, the founder of commonwealths, the patron of agriculture. He casts his influence in favor of peace, and against wars and deeds of violence. He punishes those who pursue iniquity, and he favors those who work for the good of the community.

In many instances he sets an example of chaste living, of strict temperance, of complete subjection of the lusts and appetites. I have but to refer to what I have already said of the Maya Kukulcan and the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, to show this. Both are particularly noted as characters free from the taint of indulgence.

Thus it occurred that the early monks often express surprise that these, whom they chose to call savages and heathens, had developed a moral law of undeniable purity. "The matters that Bochica taught," says the chronicler Piedrahita, "were certainly excellent, inasmuch as these natives hold as right to do just the same that we do." "The priests of these Muyscas," he goes on to say, "lived most chastely and with great purity of life, insomuch that even in eating, their food was simple and of small quantity, and they refrained altogether from women and marriage. Did one transgress in this respect, he was dismissed from the priesthood."[31] (#x7_x_7_i57)

The prayers addressed to these deities breathe as pure a spirit of devotion as many now heard in Christian lands. Change the names, and some of the formulas preserved by Christobal de Molina and Sahagun would not jar on the ears of a congregation in one of our own churches.

Although sanguinary rites were common, they were not usual in the worship of these highest divinities, but rather as propitiations to the demons of the darkness, or the spirits of the terrible phenomena of nature. The mild god of light did not demand them.

To appreciate the effect of all this on the mind of the race, let it be remembered that these culture-heroes were also the creators, the primal and most potent of divinities, and that usually many temples and a large corps of priests were devoted to their worship, at least in the nations of higher civilization. These votaries were engaged in keeping alive the myth, in impressing the supposed commands of the deity on the people, and in imitating him in example and precept. Thus they had formed a lofty ideal of man, and were publishing this ideal to their fellows. Certainly this could not fail of working to the good of the nation, and of elevating and purifying its moral conceptions.

That it did so we have ample evidence in the authentic accounts of the ancient society as it existed before the Europeans destroyed and corrupted it, and in the collections of laws, all distinctly stamped with the seal of religion, which have been preserved, as they were in vogue in Anahuac, Utatlan, Peru and other localities.[32] (#x7_x_7_i58) Any one who peruses these will see that the great moral principles, the radical doctrines of individual virtue, were clearly recognized and deliberately enforced as divine and civil precepts in these communities. Moreover, they were generally and cheerfully obeyed, and the people of many of these lands were industrious, peaceable, moral, and happy, far more so than they have ever been since.

There was also a manifest progress in the definition of the idea of God, that is, of a single infinite intelligence as the source and controlling power of phenomena. We have it on record that in Peru this was the direct fruit of the myth of Viracocha. It is related that the Inca Yupangui published to his people that to him had appeared Viracocha, with admonition that he alone was lord of the world, and creator of all things; that he had made the heavens, the sun, and man; and that it was not right that these, his works, should receive equal homage with himself. Therefore, the Inca decreed that the image of Viracocha should thereafter be assigned supremacy to those of all other divinities, and that no tribute nor sacrifice should be paid to him, for He was master of all the earth, and could take from it as he chose.[33] (#x7_x_7_i59) This was evidently a direct attempt on the part of an enlightened ruler to lift his people from a lower to a higher form of religion, from idolatry to theism. The Inca even went so far as to banish all images of Viracocha from his temples, so that this, the greatest of gods, should be worshiped as an immaterial spirit only.

A parallel instance is presented in Aztec annals. Nezahualcoyotzin, an enlightened ruler of Tezcuco, about 1450, was both a philosopher and a poet, and the songs which he left, seventy in number, some of which are still preserved, breathe a spirit of emancipation from the idolatrous superstition of his day. He announced that there was one only god, who sustained and created all things, and who dwelt above the ninth heaven, out of sight of man. No image was fitting for this divinity, nor did he ever appear bodily to the eyes of men. But he listened to their prayers and received their souls.[34] (#x7_x_7_i60)

These traditions have been doubted, for no other reason than because it was assumed that such thoughts were above the level of the red race. But the proper names and titles, unquestionably ancient and genuine, which I have analyzed in the preceding pages refute this supposition.

We may safely affirm that other and stronger instances of the kind could be quoted, had the early missionaries preserved more extensively the sacred chants and prayers of the natives. In the Maya tongue of Yucatan a certain number of them have escaped destruction, and although they are open to some suspicion of having been colored for proselytizing purposes, there is direct evidence from natives who were adults at the time of the Conquest that some of their priests had predicted the time should come when the worship of one only God should prevail. This was nothing more than another instance of the monotheistic idea finding its expression, and its apparition is not more extraordinary in Yucatan or Peru than in ancient Egypt or Greece.

The actual religious and moral progress of the natives was designedly ignored and belittled by the early missionaries and conquerors. Bishop Las Casas directly charges those of his day with magnifying the vices of the Indians and the cruelties of their worship; and even such a liberal thinker as Roger Williams tells us that he would not be present at their ceremonies, "Lest I should have been partaker of Satan's Inventions and Worships."[35] (#x7_x_7_i61) This same prejudice completely blinded the first visitors to the New World, and it was only the extravagant notion that Christianity had at some former time been preached here that saved us most of the little that we have on record.

Yet now and then the truth breaks through even this dense veil of prejudice. For instance, I have quoted in this chapter the evidence of the Spanish chroniclers to the purity of the teaching attributed to Bochica. The effect of such doctrines could not be lost on a people who looked upon him at once as an exemplar and a deity. Nor was it. The Spaniards have left strong testimony to the pacific and virtuous character of that nation, and its freedom from the vices so prevalent in lower races.[36] (#x7_x_7_i62)

Now, as I dismiss from the domain of actual fact all these legendary instructors, the question remains, whence did these secluded tribes obtain the sentiments of justice and morality which they loved to attribute to their divine founders, and, in a measure, to practice themselves?

The question is pertinent, and with its answer I may fitly close this study in American native religions.

If the theory that I have advocated is correct, these myths had to do at first with merely natural occurrences, the advent and departure of the daylight, the winds, the storm and the rains. The beneficent and injurious results of these phenomena were attributed to their personifications. Especially was the dispersal of darkness by the light regarded as the transaction of all most favorable to man. The facilities that it gave him were imputed to the goodness of the personified Spirit of Light, and by a natural association of ideas, the benevolent emotions and affections developed by improving social intercourse were also brought into relation to this kindly Being. They came to be regarded as his behests, and, in the national mind, he grew into a teacher of the friendly relations of man to man, and an ideal of those powers which "make for righteousness." Priests and chieftains favored the acceptance of these views, because they felt their intrinsic wisdom, and hence the moral evolution of the nation proceeded steadily from its mythology. That the results achieved were similar to those taught by the best religions of the eastern world should not excite any surprise, for the basic principles of ethics are the same everywhere and in all time.

[Footnote 1 (#x6_x_6_i81): "In der Sprache herrscht immer und erneut sich stets die sinnliche Anschauung, die vor Jahrtausenden mit dem gläubigen Sinn vermählt die Mythologien schuf, und gerade durch sie wird es am klarsten, wie Sprachenschöpfung und mythologische Entwicklung, der Ausdruck des Denkens und Glaubens, einst Hand in Hand gegangen." Dr. F.L.W. Schwartz, Der Ursprung der Mythologie dargelegt an Griechischer und Deutscher Sage, p. 23 (Berlin, 1860).]

[Footnote 2 (#x6_x_6_i82): Girard de Rialle, La Mythologie Comparée, vol. I, p. 363 (Paris, 1878).]

[Footnote 3 (#x6_x_6_i83): Girard de Rialle, ibid, p. 862.]

[Footnote 4 (#x6_x_6_i83): Those who would convince themselves of this may read the work of Don Francisco Pimentel, Memoria sobre las Causas que han originado la Situation Actual de la Raza Indigena de Mexico (Mexico, 1864), and that of the Licentiate Apolinar Garcia y Garcia, Historia de la Guerra de Castas de Yucatan, Prologo (Mérida, 1865). That the Indians of the United States have directly and positively degenerated in moral sense as a race, since the introduction of Christianity, was also very decidedly the opinion of the late Prof. Theodor Waitz, a most competent ethnologist. See Die Indianer Nordamerica's. Eine Studie, von Theodor Waitz, p. 39, etc. (Leipzig, 1865). This opinion was also that of the visiting committee of the Society of Friends who reported on the Indian Tribes in 1842; see the Report of a Visit to Some of the Tribes of Indians West of the Mississippi River, by John D. Lang and Samuel Taylor, Jr. (New York, 1843). The language of this Report is calm, but positive as to the increased moral degradation of the tribes, as the, direct result of contact with the whites.]

[Footnote 5 (#x6_x_6_i88): P. Francisco Xavier Alegre, Historia de la Compañia de Jesus en la Nueva España, Tomo i, pp. 91, 92 (Mexico, 1841). The authorities whom Alegre quotes are P.P. Alonso de la Rea, Cronica de Mechoacan (Mexico, 1648), and D. Basalenque, Cronica de San Augustin de Mechoacan (Mexico, 1673). I regret that I have been unable to find either of these books in any library in the United States. It is a great pity that the student of American history is so often limited in his investigations in this country, by the lack of material. It is sad to think that such an opulent and intelligent land does not possess a single complete library of its own history.]

[Footnote 6 (#x6_x_6_i91): Relacion de las Ceremonias y Ritos, etc., de Mechoacan, in the Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de España, vol. liii, pp. 13, 19, 20. This account is anonymous, but was written in the sixteenth century, by some one familiar with the subject. A handsome MS. of it, with colored illustrations (these of no great value, however), is in the Library of Congress, obtained from the collection of the late Col. Peter Force.]

[Footnote 7 (#x6_x_6_i91): See above, chapter iv, §1 (#x4_x_4_i164)]

[Footnote 8 (#x6_x_6_i97): Popol Vuh, le Livre Sacré des Quichés, p. 9 (Paris, 1861).]

[Footnote 9 (#x6_x_6_i100): The Names of the Gods in the Kiche Myths, Central America, by Daniel G. Brinton, M.D., in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for 1881.]

[Footnote 10 (#x6_x_6_i110): The references to the Votan myth are Nuñez de la Vega, Constituciones Diocesanas, Prologo (Romae, 1702); Boturini, Idea de una Nueva Historia de la America septentrional, pp. 114, et seq., who discusses the former; Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera, Teatro Critico Americano, translated, London, 1822; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des Nations Civilisées de Mexique, vol. i, chap, ii, who gives some additional points from Ordoñez; and H. de Charencey, Le Mythe de Votan; Etude sur les Origines Asiatiques de la Civilization Américaine. (Alencon, 1871).]