A Brief Guide to Native American Myths and Legends (9 page)

Another mischievous deity of the Chinooks and other western peoples is Blue Jay. He is a turbulent braggart, schemer, and mischief-maker. He is the very clown of gods, and invariably in trouble himself if he is not manufacturing it for others. He has the shape of a jay-bird, which was given him by the Supernatural People because he lost to them in an archery contest. They placed a curse upon him, telling him the note he used as a bird would gain an unenviable notoriety as a bad omen. Blue Jay has an elder brother, the Robin, who is continually upbraiding him for his mischievous conduct in sententious phraseology. The story of the many tricks and pranks played by Blue Jay, not only on the long-suffering members of his tribe, but also upon the denizens of the supernatural world, must have afforded intense amusement around many an Indian camp-fire. Even the proverbial gravity of the Red Man could scarcely hold out against the comical adventures of this American Owl-glass.

North America is rich in thunder-gods. Of these a typical example is Haokah, the god of the Sioux. The countenance of this divinity was divided into halves, one of which expressed grief and the other cheerfulness – that is, on occasion he could either weep with the rain or smile with the sun. Heat affected him as cold, and cold was to him as heat. He beat the tattoo of the thunder on his great drum, using the wind as a drum-stick. In some phases he is reminiscent of Jupiter, for he hurls the lightning to earth in the shape of thunderbolts. He wears a pair of horns, perhaps to typify his connection with the lightning, or else with the chase, for many American thunder-gods are mighty hunters. This double conception
arises from their possession of the lightning-spear, or arrow, which also gives them in some cases the character of a war-god. Strangely enough, such gods of the chase often resembled in appearance the animals they hunted. For example, Tsui ’Kalu (Slanting Eyes), a hunter-god of the Cherokee Indians, seems to resemble a deer. He is of giant proportions, and dwells in a great mountain of the Blue Ridge Range, in Northwestern Virginia. He appears to have possessed all the game in the district as his private property. A Cherokee thunder-god is Asgaya Gigagei (Red Man). The facts that he is described as being of a red colour, thus typifying the lightning, and that the Cherokees were originally a mountain people, leave little room for doubt that he is a thunder-god, for it is around the mountain peaks that the heavy thunder-clouds gather, and the red lightning flashing from their depths looks like the moving limbs of the half-hidden deity. We also find occasionally invoked in the Cherokee religious formulae a pair of twin deities known as the ‘Little Men’, or ‘Thunder-boys’. This reminds us that in Peru twins were always regarded as sacred to the lightning, since they were emblematic of the thunder-and-lightning twins, Apocatequil and Piguerao. All these thunder-gods are analogous to the Aztec Tlaloc, the Kiche Hurakan, and the Otomi Mixcoatl.
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A well-known instance of the thunder- or hunter-god who possesses animal characteristics will occur to those who are familiar with the old English legend of Herne the Hunter, with his deer’s head and antlers.

The Dakota Indians worshipped a deity whom they addressed as Waukheon (Thunder-bird). This being was engaged in constant strife with the water-god, Unktahe, who was a cunning sorcerer, and a controller of dreams and witchcraft. Their conflict probably symbolizes the atmospheric changes which accompany the different seasons.

The idea of a future life was very widely disseminated among the tribes of North America. The general conception of such an existence was that it was merely a shadowy extension of terrestrial life, in which the same round of hunting and kindred pursuits was engaged in. The Indian idea of eternal bliss seems to have been an existence in the Land of the Sun, to which, however, only those famed in war were usually admitted.

That the Indians possessed a firm belief in a future state of existence is proved by their statements to the early Moravian missionaries, to whom they said: ‘We Indians shall not forever die. Even the grains of corn we put under the earth grow up and become living things.’ The old missionary adds: ‘They conceive that when the soul has been awhile with God it can, if it chooses, return to earth and be born again.’ This idea of rebirth, however, appears to have meant that the soul would return to the bones, that these would clothe themselves with flesh, and that the man would rejoin his tribe. By what process of reasoning they arrived at such a conclusion it would be difficult to ascertain, but the almost universal practice which obtained among the Indians both of North and South America of preserving the bones of the deceased plainly indicates that they possessed some strong religious reason for this belief. Many tribes which dwelt east of the Mississippi once in every decade collected the bones of those who had died within that period, carefully cleaned them, and placed them in a tomb lined with beautiful flowers, over which they erected a mound of wood, stone, or earth. Nor, indeed, were the ancient Egyptians more considerate of the remains of their fathers.

American funerary ritual and practice throughout the northern sub-continent plainly indicates a strong and vivid belief in the resurrection of the soul after death. Among many tribes the practice prevailed of interring with the deceased such
objects as he might be supposed to require in the other world. These included weapons of war and of the chase for men, and household implements and feminine finery in the case of women.

Among primitive peoples the belief is prevalent that inanimate objects possess doubles, or, as spiritualists would say, ‘astral bodies’, or souls, and some Indian tribes supposed that unless such objects were broken or mutilated – that is to say, ‘killed’ – their doubles would not accompany the spirit of the deceased on its journey.

Many methods of disposing of the corpse were, and are, in use among the American Indians. The most common of these were ordinary burial in the earth or under tumuli, burial in caves, tree-burial, raising the dead on platforms, and the disposal of cremated remains in urns.

Embalming and mummification were practised to a certain extent by some of the extinct tribes of the east coast, and some of the north-west tribes, notably the Chinooks, buried their dead in canoes, which were raised on poles. The rites which accompanied burial, besides the placing of useful articles and food in the grave, generally consisted in a solemn dance, in which the bereaved relatives cut themselves and blackened their faces, after which they wailed night and morning in solitary places. It was generally regarded as unlucky to mention the name of the deceased, and, indeed, the bereaved family often adopted another name to avoid such a contingency.

Most of the tribes appear to have believed that the soul had to undertake a long journey before it reached its destination. The belief of the Chinooks in this respect is perhaps a typical one. They imagine that after death the spirit of the deceased drinks at a large hole in the ground, after which it shrinks and passes
on to the country of the ghosts, where it is fed with spirit food and drink. After this act of communion with the spirit-world it may not return. They also believe that everyone is possessed of two spirits, a greater and a less. During illness the lesser soul is spirited away by the denizens of Ghost-land. The Navahos possess a similar belief, and say that the soul has none of the vital force which animates the body, nor any of the faculties of the mind, but a kind of third quality, or personality, like the
ka
of the ancient Egyptians, which may leave its owner and become lost, much to his danger and discomfort. The Hurons and Iroquois believe that after death the soul must cross a deep and swift stream, by a bridge formed by a single slender tree, upon which it has to combat the attacks of a fierce dog. The Athapascans imagine that the soul must be ferried over a great water in a stone canoe, and the Algonquins and Dakotas believe that departed spirits must cross a stream bridged by an enormous snake.

The Red Man appears to have possessed two wholly different conceptions of supernatural life. We find in Indian myth allusions both to a ‘Country of the Ghosts’ and to a ‘Land of the Supernatural People’. The first appears to be the destination of human beings after death, but the second is apparently the dwelling-place of a spiritual race some degrees higher than mankind. Both these regions are within the reach of mortals, and seem to be mere extensions of the terrestrial sphere. Their inhabitants eat, drink, hunt, and amuse themselves in the same manner as earthly folk, and are by no means invulnerable or immortal. The instinctive dread of the supernatural which primitive man possesses is well exemplified in the myths in which he is brought into contact with the denizens of Ghost-land or the Spirit-world. These myths were undoubtedly framed for the same purpose as the old Welsh poem on the harrying of hell, or the story of the Tourney of the twin brothers to Xibalba in the Central American
Popol Vuh.
That
is to say, the desire was felt for some assurance that man, on entering the spiritual sphere, would only be treading in the footsteps of heroic beings who had preceded him, who had vanquished the forces of death and hell and had stripped them of their terrors.

The mythologies of the North American Indians possess no place of punishment, any more than they possess any deities who are frankly malevolent toward humanity. Should a place of torment be discernible in any Indian mythology at the present day it may unhesitatingly be classed as the product of missionary sophistication. Father Brébeuf, an early French missionary, could only find that the souls of suicides and those killed in war were supposed to dwell apart from the others. ‘But as to the souls of scoundrels,’ he adds, ‘so far from being shut out, they are welcome guests; though for that matter, if it were not so their paradise would be a total desert, as “Indian” and “scoundrel” are one and the same.’

Over the length and breadth of the American continent a peculiar sanctity is attached by the aborigines to the four points of the compass. This arises from the circumstance that from these quarters come the winds which carry the fertilizing rains. The Red Man, a dweller in vast undulating plains where landmarks are few, recognized the necessity of such guidance in his wanderings as could alone be received from a strict adherence to the position of the four cardinal points. These he began to regard with veneration as his personal safeguards, and recognized in them the dwelling-places of powerful beings, under whose care he was. Most of his festivals and celebrations had symbolical or direct allusions to the four points of the compass. The ceremony of smoking, without which no treaty could be commenced or ratified, was usually begun by the chief of the tribe exhaling tobacco-smoke toward the four quarters of the earth. Among some tribes other points were also recognized, as, for example, one in the
sky and one in the earth. All these points had their symbolical colours, and were presided over by various animal or other divinities. Thus the Apaches took black for the east, white for the south, yellow for the west, and blue for the north, the Cherokees red, white, black, and blue for the same points, and the Navahos white, blue, yellow, and black, with white and black for the lower regions and blue for the upper or ethereal world.

The North American tribes have various ways of computing time. Some of them rely merely upon the changes in season and the growth of crops for guidance as to when their annual festivals and seasonal celebrations should take place. Others fix their system of festivals on the changes of the moon and the habits of animals and birds. It was, however, upon the moon that most of these peoples depended for information regarding the passage of time. Most of them assigned twelve moons to the year, while others considered thirteen a more correct number. The Kiowa reckoned the year to consist of twelve and a half moons, the other half being carried over to the year following.

The Zuñi of New Mexico allude to the year as a ‘passage of time’, and call the seasons the ‘steps of the year’. The first six months of the Zuñi year possess names which have an agricultural or natural significance, while the last six have ritualistic names. Captain Jonathan Carver, who travelled among the Sioux at the end of the eighteenth century, says that some tribes among them reckoned their years by moons, and made them consist of twelve lunar months, observing when thirty moons had waned to add a supernumerary one, which they termed the ‘lost moon’. They gave a name to each month as follows, the year beginning at the first new moon after the spring equinox: March, Worm Moon; April, Moon of Plants; May, Moon of Flowers; June, Hot Moon; July, Buck Moon; August, Sturgeon Moon; September, Corn Moon; October,
Travelling Moon; November, Beaver Moon; December, Hunting Moon; January, Cold Moon; February, Snow Moon. These people had no division into weeks, but counted days by ‘sleeps’, half-days by pointing to the sun at noon, and quarter-days by the rising and setting of the sun, for all of which they possessed symbolic signs. Many tribes kept records of events by means of such signs, as has already been indicated. The eastern Sioux measure time by knotted leather thongs, similar to the
quipos
of the ancient Peruvians. Other tribes have even more primitive methods. The Hupa of California tell a person’s age by examining his teeth. The Maidu divide the seasons into Rain Season, Leaf Season, Dry Season, and Falling-leaf Season. The Pima of Southern Arizona record events by means of notched sticks, which no one but the persons who mark them can understand.

The chief reason for the computation of time among savage peoples is the correct observance of religious festivals. With the rude methods at their command they are not always able to hit upon the exact date on which these should occur. These festivals are often of a highly elaborate nature, and occupy many days in their celebration, the most minute attention being paid to the proper performance of the various rites connected with them. They consist for the most part of a preliminary fast, followed by symbolic dances or magical ceremonies, and concluding with a gluttonous orgy. Most of these observances possess great similarity one to another, and visible differences may be accounted for by circumstances of environment or seasonal variations.