The Myths of the New World

Gumilla, Hist. del Orinoco, ii. cap. 23.

180

Doc. Hist. of New York, iv. p. 130.

181

Gama, Des. de las dos Piedras, ii. p. 41; Gallatin, Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc., i. p. 343.

182

Adrian Van Helmont, Workes, p. 142, fol.: London, 1662.

183

The moon is nipa or nipaz; nipa, I sleep; nipawi, night; nip, I die; nepua, dead; nipanoue, cold. This odd relationship was first pointed out by Volney (Duponceau, Langues de l’Amérique du Nord, p. 317). But the kinship of these words to that for water, nip, nipi, nepi, has not before been noticed. This proves the association of ideas on which I lay so much stress in mythology. A somewhat similar relationship exists in the Aztec and cognate languages, miqui, to die, micqui, dead, mictlan, the realm of death, te-miqui, to dream, cec-miqui, to freeze. Would it be going too far to connect these with metzli, moon? (See Buschmann, Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im Nördlichen Mexico, p. 80.)

184

Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, vol. iii. p. 485.

185

Rel. de la Nouv. France, 1634, p. 16.

186

Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 21.

187

Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. p. 247.

188

Hist. de la Médecine, i. p. 34.

189

Gama, Des. de las dos Piedras, etc., ii. pp. 100-102. Compare Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. i. cap. vi.

190

Codex Chimalpopoca, in Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, i. p. 183. Gama and others translate Nanahuatl by el buboso, Brasseur by le syphilitique, and the latter founds certain medical speculations on the word. It is entirely unnecessary to say to a surgeon that it could not possibly have had the latter meaning, inasmuch as the diagnosis between secondary or tertiary syphilis and other similar diseases was unknown. That it is so employed now is nothing to the purpose. The same or a similar myth was found in Central America and on the Island of Haiti.

191

Rel. de la Nouv. France, 1648, p. 75.

192

Charlevoix is in error when he identifies Michabo with the Spirit of the Waters, and may be corrected from his own statements elsewhere. Compare his Journal Historique, pp. 281 and 344: ed. Paris, 1740.

193

Bradford, American Antiquities, p. 833; Martius, Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 32; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, i. p. 271.

194

La Vega, Hist. des Incas, liv. vi. cap. 9.

195

Lett. sur les Superstitions du Pérou, p. 111.

196

Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, iv. p. 224.

197

Chantico, according to Gama, means “Wolf’s Head,” though I cannot verify this from the vocabularies within my reach. He is sometimes called Cohuaxolotl Chantico, the snake-servant Chantico, considered by Gama as one, by Torquemada as two deities (see Gama, Des. de las dos Piedras, etc., i. p. 12; ii. p. 66). The English word cantico in the phrase, for instance, “to cut a cantico,” though an Indian word, is not from this, but from the Algonkin Delaware gentkehn, to dance a sacred dance. The Dutch describe it as “a religious custom observed among them before death” (Doc. Hist. of New York, iv. p. 63). William Penn says of the Lenape, “their worship consists of two parts, sacrifice and cantico,” the latter “performed by round dances, sometimes words, sometimes songs, then shouts; their postures very antic and differing.” (Letter to the Free Society of Traders, 1683, sec. 21.)

198

Charlevoix, Hist. Gén. de la Nouv. France, i. p. 394: Paris, 1740. On the different species of dogs indigenous to America, see a note of Alex. von Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur., i. p. 134. It may be noticed that Chichimec, properly Chichimecatl, the name of the Aztec tribe who succeeded the ancient Toltecs in Mexico, means literally “people of the dog,” and was probably derived from some mythological fable connected with that animal.

199

Narr. of the Captiv. of John Tanner, p. 362. From the word for fire in many American tongues is formed the adjective red. Thus, Algonkin, skoda, fire, miskoda, red; Kolosch, kan, fire, kan, red; Ugalentz, takak, fire, takak-uete, red; Tahkali, cūn, fire, tenil-cūn, red; Quiche, cak, fire, cak, red, etc. From the adjective red comes often the word for blood, and in symbolism the color red may refer to either of these ideas. It was the royal color of the Incas, brothers of the sun, and a llama swathed in a red garment was the Peruvian sacrifice to fire (Garcia, Or. de los Indios, lib. iv. caps. 16, 19). On the other hand the war quipus, the war wampum, and the war paint were all of this hue, boding their sanguinary significance. The word for fire in the language of the Delawares, Nanticokes, and neighboring tribes puzzles me. It is taenda or tinda. This is the Swedish word taenda, from whose root comes our tinder. Yet it is found in vocabularies as early as 1650, and is universally current to-day. It has no resemblance to the word for fire in pure Algonkin. Was it adopted from the Swedes? Was it introduced by wandering Vikings in remote centuries? Or is it only a coincidence?

200

Compare D’Orbigny, L’Homme Américain, i. p. 243, Müller, Amer. Urreligionen, p. 51, and Squier, Serpent Symbol in America, p. 111. This is a striking instance of the confusion of ideas introduced by false systems of study, and also of the considerable misapprehension of American mythology which has hitherto prevailed.

201

La Hontan, Voy. dans l’Amér. Sept., p. ii. 127; Rel. Nouv. France, 1637, p. 54.

202

Copway, Trad. Hist. of the Ojibway Nation, p. 165. Kesuch in Algonkin signifies both sky and sun (Duponceau, Langues de l’Amér. du Nord, p. 312). So apparently does kin in the Maya.

203

Payne’s manuscripts quoted by Mr. Squier in his Serpent Symbol in America were compiled within this century, and from the extracts given can be of no great value.

204