CHAPTER XVII

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THE ABORIGINES OF AMERICA.

Darin besteht eben die Bedeutung der Amerikanishen Religionen, dass sie mehr als andere, wenigstens mehrals andere Religionen von Kulturvölkern, das primitive und unabgeschwächte Heidenthum darstellen.--DR. J. G. MÜLLER.

The religion of the American Indians and Alaskans partakes of the character of their national life; yet there are traces of the original ideas of God, the creation and early history of man and the world, which we find in the religions of the far Eastern nations. As we have before said, we believe the early inhabitants of America to have come from the eastern shores of Asia, having been washed along in their fishing vessels by the current of the Kuro Shiwo (or black stream), flowing by the western coasts of America, or perhaps crossing on the islands of the North Pacific, where Asia and America almost come together. They differ from the peoples of Eastern Asia, but, perhaps, only in such points as a different climate and different habits of life would produce.

All the people of the continent of America appear to have come from one stock. The squalid Esquimaux at one extremity of the chain, the polished Aztec or Inca at the other; agriculturists, and hunters, and canoe-men; tribes frequenting the shores of the great northern lakes, or scattered in the dense savannahs of the South; all their languages grow out of a few flexible tongues. They bear a resemblance to the Turanian languages--the Malaysian, the Japanese and others. We can divide the American peoples into two classes--the civilized and the savage. To the first class belong the Mexicans and Peruvians; to the latter, the savages of North America, including the Red Indians, the Alaskans and the inhabitants of the West Indies, and wild tribes of South America--the Patagonians, Guianians, etc.

THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA.

[Illustration: INDIAN MEDICINE MAN.]

These nations have the virtues of savage life--a sense of honor, according to their perceptions of duty, mutual fidelity among individuals, a fortitude which mocks at the most cruel torments, and a devotedness to their own tribe which makes self-immolation in its defense easy. On the other hand, they treat their wives brutally, and their children with indifference. The apathy under the good and ill of life which the Stoic affected is the grand element of the Indian’s character. Gloomy, stern and severe, he is, it would seem, a stranger to mirth and laughter; yet, in their legends, frequent reference is made to laughter. All outward expressions of pain or pleasure he regards as a weakness; and the only feeling to which he ever yields is the boisterous joy which he manifests in the moment of victory, or under the excitement of intoxication. He is capable of great exertions in war or the chase, but has an unconquerable aversion to regular labor. He is extremely improvident; eats enormously while he has an abundance of food, without thinking of the famine which may follow; and, when liquors are supplied to him, will continue drunk for days. Corresponding to the priests among other peoples, the Indians have “Medicine Men;” they believe that these possess great power, and they trust implicitly in all their directions.

THE GREAT SPIRIT.

Most of the Indians of North America believe in the existence of a supreme being, whom they call the Great Spirit; and of a subordinate one, whose nature is evil and hostile to man. To the latter their worship is principally addressed; the Good Spirit, in their opinion, needing no prayers to induce him to aid and protect His creatures. They generally believe in a future state, in which the souls of brave warriors and chaste wives enjoy a tranquil and happy existence with their ancestors and friends, spending their time in those exercises in which they delighted when on earth. The Dakotas believe that the road to these “villages of the dead” leads over a rock with an edge as sharp as a knife, on which only the good are able to keep their footing. The wicked fall off and descend to the region of the Evil Spirit, where they are hard-worked, and often flogged by their relentless master.

[Illustration: INDIAN MEDICINE MEN.]

Showing the hideous costumes and decorations they sometimes assume in their incantations.]

WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS.

As we shall find among the Chinese, the Indians worshiped the spirits of their dead ancestors. As among the Chinese, the periodical offering of cakes, libations, flesh or viands at the grave to ancestors, is seen to be an idea incorporated into the practice of the American, at least the Algonic Indians. These Indians, believing in the twofold nature of the soul, and that the soul sensorial abides for a time with the body in the grave, requiring food for its ghostly existence and journeyings, deposit meat and other food at and after the time of interment. _This custom is universal_, and was one of their earliest traits.

Few things in savage life are of more singular interest than the ceremonies of a burial. Some of the tribes, for instance, take the body of their dead, and having clothed it in the best robes and ornaments, furnish it with many articles which are supposed most desirable, and, wrapping the whole carefully in soft, wet hides, place the precious burden on a scaffold several feet high. In the course of time, the scaffold falls; then the relatives assemble and bury the remains, except the skull; this they place on the ground, where there are perhaps a hundred skulls in a circle, all looking inward. About this place of skulls the women are often seen, sitting with their work for hours at a time, holding in their laps the skull of a dead child; and not unfrequently they are seen to clasp these skulls in their arms and lie down, talking as if to a living child, until they fall asleep.

The Sioux Indians wrap their dead in skins, and lodge them in the branches of trees, never forgetting to place a wooden dish near the head, that the friend may quench his thirst in the long journey he is supposed to have begun.

Among the Patagonians the dead are frequently reduced to skeleton before burial, and are washed and arrayed in new clothing once a year. The bodies, while being prepared, are laid on platforms and guarded by the relatives, who, dressed in long robes, strike the ground continually with spears or staves, and keep up a mournful song to drive away the spirits, who they fear are unfriendly to the dead.

[Illustration: INDIAN BURIAL PLACE.]

The Indians, like the Africans, worship fetiches or material objects in which either the gods personally or some supernatural power is supposed to dwell. It not infrequently happens that if an Indian dreams of an idol or fetich of a certain form, when he wakes he proceeds to make it according to the pattern of his vision, and this is the secret history of many of the grotesque forms which are favorite symbols with them in their sacred rites. These they designate Manitos.

[Illustration: INDIAN IMAGE.

Seen in a dream and made by a Medicine Man.]

INDIAN LEGENDS.

The Indians’ hopes, fears, worships, and whole faith and life are found in their legends and myths. These are preserved by oral tradition, by being handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. In the leisure from hunting or war, they gather in the lodge or about the camp-fire and rehearse these stories. As Longfellow has sung:

“Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest, With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers, With their frequent repetitions, And their wild reverberations, As of thunder in the mountains? I should answer, I should tell you, I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha.

“Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe, that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not, That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God’s right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened.”

THE “SONG OF HIAWATHA.”

Hiawatha is a personage of miraculous birth, whom the Indians believed to have been sent among them to clear their rivers, forests and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. To the patient, toilsome investigations of Dr. H. R. Schoolcraft, our knowledge of Indian legends is due. The poet, Longfellow, has gracefully woven many of these legends together in his “Song of Hiawatha.”

Hiawatha is regarded as the messenger of the Great Spirit, sent down to them in the character of a wise man, and a prophet. But he comes clothed with all the attributes of humanity, as well as the power of performing miraculous deeds. He adapts himself perfectly to their manners, customs and ideas. He is brought up from a child among them. He is made to learn their mode of life. He takes a wife, builds a lodge, hunts and fishes like the rest of them, sings his war songs and medicine songs, goes to war, has his triumphs, has his friends and foes, suffers, wants, hungers, is in dread or joy; and, in fine, undergoes all the vicissitudes of his fellows. His miraculous gifts and powers are always adapted to his situation. When he is swallowed by a great fish, with his canoe, he escapes by the exertion of these powers, but always, as much as possible, in accordance with Indian maxims and means. He is provided with a magic canoe, which goes where it is bid; yet, in his fight with the great Wampura prince, he is counseled by a woodpecker to know where the vulnerable point of his antagonist lies. He rids the earth of monsters and giants, and clears away windfalls and obstructions to the navigation of streams. But he does not do these feats by miracles; he employs strong men to help him. When he means to destroy the great serpents, he changes himself into an old tree, and stands on the beach till they come out of the water to bask in the sun. Whatever man could do in strength or wisdom he could do. But he never does things above the comprehension or belief of his people; and whatever else he is, he is always true to the character of an Indian.

He leaps over extensive regions of country, like an _ignis-fatuus_, the false light caused by the vapors of the swamp which misleads the traveler. He appears suddenly like an incarnation of a god, or saunters over weary wastes a poor and starving hunter. His voice is at one moment deep and sonorous as a thunder-clap, and at another clothed with the softness of feminine supplication. Such is the character of whom Longfellow has sung.

INDIAN ALLEGORY OF WINTER AND SPRING.

An old man was sitting in his lodge, by the side of a frozen stream. It was the close of winter, and his fire was almost out. He appeared very old and very desolate. His locks were white with age, and he trembled in every joint. Day after day he passed in solitude, and he heard nothing but the sounds of the tempest, sweeping before it the new-fallen snow.

One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man approached and entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the blood of youth, his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile played upon his lips. He walked with a light and quick step. His forehead was bound with a wreath of sweet grass, in place of a warrior’s frontlet, and he carried a bunch of flowers in his hand.

“I blow my breath,” said the old man, “and the streams stand still. The water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.”

“I breathe,” said the young man, “and flowers spring up all over the plains.”

“I shake my locks,” retorted the old man, “and snow covers the land. The leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath blows them away. The birds get up from the water and fly to a distant land. The animals hide themselves from my breath, and the very ground becomes as hard as flint.”

“I shake my ringlets,” rejoined the young man, “and warm showers of soft rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their heads out of the earth, like the eyes of children glistening with delight. My voice recalls the birds. The warmth of my breath unlocks the streams. Music fills the groves wherever I walk, and all nature rejoices.”

At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth came over the place. The tongue of the old man became silent. The robin and bluebird began to sing on the top of the lodge. The stream began to murmur by the door, and the fragrance of growing herbs and flowers came softly on the vernal breeze.

Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his entertainer. When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of Peboan. Streams began to flow from his eyes. As the sun increased, he grew less and less in stature, and anon had melted completely away. Nothing remained on the place of his lodge-fire but the miskodeed, a small white flower, with a pink border, which is one of the earliest species of northern plants.

ALASKA.

The Thlinkets, an Alaskan tribe, will illustrate the worship of the Alaskans generally. Their religion is a feeble Polytheism. Yehl is the maker of wood and waters. He put the sun, moon and stars in their places. He lives in the east, near the head-waters of the Naass River. He makes himself known in the east wind “Ssankheth,” and his abode is “Nass-shak-yehl.”

At that time the sun, moon and stars were kept by a rich chief in separate boxes, which he allowed no one to touch. Yehl, by strategy, secured and opened these boxes, so that the moon and stars shone in the sky. When the sun-box was opened, the people, astonished at the unwonted glare, ran off into the mountains, woods, and even into the water, becoming animals or fish. He also provided fire and water. Having arranged everything for the comfort of the Thlinkets, he disappeared where neither man nor spirit can penetrate.

As the good spirits, from the very nature of the case, will not harm them, the Alaskans pay but little attention to them. They give their chief attention to propitiating the evil spirits, so that their religion practically resolves itself into devil-worship or demonolatry. This is called Shamanism, or the giving of offerings to evil spirits to prevent them from doing mischief to the offerer. It is said to have been the old religion of the Tartar race before the introduction of Buddhism, and is still that of the Siberians. Indeed, Paul long ago declared, “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to _devils_ and not to God.” The one whose office it is to perform these rites is called a shaman, and is the sorcerer or medicine-man of the tribes. The shaman has control, not only of the spirits, but, through the spirits, of disease, of the elements, and of nature; he holds in his power success or misfortune, blessing or cursing. “The honor,” says Dali, “with which a shaman is regarded depends on the number of spirits under his control, who, properly employed contribute largely to his wealth.”

INDIAN SUN-WORSHIP.

We are informed that the worship of the sun lies at the foundation of all the ancient mythologies, deeply enveloped as they are, when followed over Asia Minor and Europe, in symbolic and linguistic subtleties and refinements. The symbolic fires erected on temples and altars to Baal, Chemash and Moloch, burned brightly in the valley of the Euphrates long before the pyramids of Egypt were erected, or its priestly-hoarded hieroglyphic wisdom resulted in a phonetic alphabet. In Persia these altars were guarded and religiously fed by a consecrated body of magical priesthood, who recognized a Deity in the essence of an eternal fire and a world-pervading light.

[Illustration: AMAZONIAN INDIANS WORSHIPING THE SUN.]

The same dogma, derived apparently from the east and not from the west, through Europe, was fully installed at Atacama and Cuzco, in Peru, at Cholulu, on the magnificent and volcano-lighted peaks of Mexico, and along the fertile deltas of the Mississippi valley. Altar-beds for a sacred fire, lit to the Great Spirit, under the name and symbolic form of Cuzis, or the sun, where the frankincense of the nicotiana was offered, with hymns and genuflections, have been discovered, in many instances, under the earth-heaps and artificial mounds and places of sepulture of the ancient inhabitants. Intelligent Indians yet living among the North American tribes, point out the symbol of the sun, in their ancient muzzinabikons or rock-inscriptions, and also amid the ideographic tracery and bark-scrolls of the hieratic, or priestly inscriptions, and of the magical medicine-songs.

AMAZON SUN-WORSHIP.

We turn away to the savage tribes of South America and find many of the forms of faith and worship which we have seen among the Northern Indians and among the nations of the Eastern world at about the time of the dispersion of the nations. Thus among the Amazon Indians of Western Brazil, we find the same worship of the sun that we have seen in Egypt, in Assyria, in Japan, and among the Indians of North America. A traveler among them says: “A sound fell upon our ears that seemed to issue from the depths of a distant cavern. We could tell it to be a chorus of voices, chanting some sad or solemn refrain. As we listened it grew louder, as if the chanters were drawing nearer; and in the same degree, it was becoming more joyful. All at once a procession appeared approaching the spot, men marching two and two, with files of women intermingled.

“As its head emerged from among the thick-standing tree-trunks, we recognized our old Zummate friends, dressed in all the gala of a grand holiday, with plumed circlets upon their heads, feather armlets, and garters of the same, girt just below the knee.

“On reaching the malocca, they broke ranks, at the same time bursting into peals of joyous laughter. Then surrounding they embraced us, the chief in a speech again making us welcome to their village.

“We soon discovered the cause of their absence from home with all these mysterious proceedings. The day was a grand festival--a religious ceremony annually observed by the tribe, when every man, woman and child go forth into the woods, to worship the sun.

“There, near the mouth of the Amazon, and amid the mountains of Guiana, is found the same _culte_, observed by the ancient Peruvians in the days of Pizarro and the Mexicans before Cortez Christianized them.”

THE ARAUCANIANS.

The Araucanians, in the north-western part of South America, believe in a supreme being, and in many subordinate spirits, good and bad. They believe also in omens and divinations, but they have neither temples nor idols, nor religious rites; and discover upon the whole so little aptitude for the reception of religious ideas that the Catholic missionaries that have settled among them have had very little success in imbuing their minds with a knowledge of Christianity. They believe in a future state, and have a confused tradition respecting a deluge from which some persons were saved on a high mountain; but in other respects religious knowledge is lacking.

PATAGONIA.

The religion of the Patagonian is a Polytheism, the natives believing that there are great numbers of deities, some good and some evil. Each family is under the guardianship of one of the good deities, and all the members of that family join him when they die. Beside these gods there are subordinate demons, good to their own friends, but bad toward all others; so that, on the whole, the bad predominates in them. They are called by the name of Valichu.

Yet, among some of the Patagonian tribes, there is a considerable approach to personal religion. It has been thought with some reason that they are totally destitute of religion. This, however, is certainly not the case, as even our limited knowledge of these people, their language and their habits show that, even though they may not possess any definite system of worship, they are still impressed with the idea of some Being infinitely greater than themselves, who knows everything that they do. Thus they believe in an omniscient Being; and such a belief as this, limited and imperfect though it may be, is yet a step in the right direction.

To this unknown Being they return thanks for a supply of food after a long famine; so that we find them acknowledging that the great Being, who knows all their deeds, watches over them and is the giver of all good things. When, for example, they have procured a seal, after having been half starved for months, they assemble round a fire, and the oldest man present cuts for each person a piece of the seal, uttering over each portion a sort of prayer, and looking upward in devotion to the unseen God who had sent them meat in their need. Undisciplined as are the Patagonians, totally unaccustomed to self-denial and mad with hunger, not one of them will touch the food until this invocation has been repeated. Thus they show a devout spirit.

THE AZTECS.

The religion of the Mexicans breathed a savage spirit, which degraded them, in a moral point of view, far below the hordes of wandering Indians. Their deities, represented by misshapen images of serpents and other hideous animals, were the creation of the darkest passions of the human breast--of terror, hatred, cruelty and revenge. They delighted in blood, and thousands of human sacrifices were annually offered at their shrines.

The places of worship, called Teocallis, were pyramids composed of terraces placed one above another, like the temple of Belus at Babylon. These were built of clay, or of alternate layers of clay and unburnt bricks, but, in some cases, faced with slabs of polished stone, on which figures of animals were sculptured in relief. One or two small chapels stood upon the summit, inclosing images of the deity. The largest known Teocalli contains four stories or terraces, and has a breadth of 480 yards at the base and a height of 55 yards. These structures served as temples, tombs and observatories.

[Illustration: ANCIENT AZTEC IDOL.]

The Aztecs believed in one supreme, invisible creator of all things, the ruler of the universe, named Taotl--a belief, it is conjectured, not native to them, but derived from their predecessors, the Taoltecs. Under this supreme being stood thirteen chief and two hundred inferior deities, each of whom had his sacred day and festival. At their head was the patron god of the Aztecs, the frightful Huitzilopochtli, the Mexican _Mars_. His temples were the most splendid and imposing. In every city of the empire his altars were drenched with the blood of human sacrifice. Cortez and his companions were permitted by Montezuma to enter his temple in the city of Mexico, and to behold the god himself. He had a broad face, wide mouth and terrible eyes. He was covered with gold, pearls and precious stones, and was girt about with golden serpents. On his neck, a fitting ornament, were the faces of men wrought in silver, and their hearts in gold. Close by were braziers with incense, and on the braziers three real hearts of men who had that day been sacrificed. The smell of the place, we are told, was like that of a slaughter-house.

To supply victims for the sacrifices, the emperors made war on all the neighboring and subsidiary States, or in case of revolt, in any city of their dominions, and levied a certain number of men, women and children by way of indemnity. The victims were borne in triumphal processions and to the sound of music, to the summit of the great temples, where the priests, in sight of assembled crowds, bound them to the sacrificial stone, and opening the breast tore from it the bleeding heart which was either laid before the image of the gods, or eaten by the worshipers, after having been carefully cut up and mixed with maize. In the years immediately preceding the Spanish conquest, not less than 20,000 victims were annually immolated.

These atrocities were sometimes, though incongruously, blended with milder forms of worship, in which fruits, flowers and perfumes were offered up amid joyous outbursts of song and dance. According to their mythology, Taotl, who delighted in these purer sacrifices, had once reigned in Anahuac (a name which at first probably applied only to the country in the immediate vicinity of the capital, though afterward it was applied to the whole Aztec empire) in the golden age of the world but being obliged, from some unexplained cause, to retire from earth, he departed by way of the Mexican Gulf, promising to return.

This wide-spread tradition accelerated the success of the Spaniards, whose light skins and long dark hair and beards were regarded as evidences of their affinity with the long-looked-for divinity. The Mexican priesthood formed a rich and powerful order of the State and were so numerous that Cortez found as many as 5,000 attached to the temple of Mexico. The education of the young of both sexes remained, till the age of puberty, in the hands of the priests and priestesses, and the sacerdotal class were thus able to exercise a widely-diffused influence, which, under the later rulers, was almost equal to that of the emperor himself. The women shared in all the occupations of the men, and were taught, like them, the arts of reading, writing, ciphering, singing in chorus, dancing, etc., and they were even initiated into the secrets of astronomy and astrology. These facts indicate a civilization far above that of many other nations and tribes.

[Illustration: SUN-WORSHIP AMONG THE PERUVIANS.]

THE INCAS.

The government of Peru was a theocracy. The Inca was at once the temporal sovereign and the supreme pontiff. He was regarded as the descendant and representative of the great deity, the sun, who was supposed to inspire his counsels, and speak through his orders and decrees. Hence even slight offenses were punished with death, because they were regarded as insults offered to the divinity. The race of the Incas was held sacred. To support its pretensions, it was very desirable that it should be kept pure and distinct from the people; but human passions are often too strong for the dictates of policy; and though the marriages of the family were confined to their own race, the emperor, as well as the other males of the blood royal, kept large harems stocked with beauties drawn from all parts of the empire, and multiplied a spurious progeny, in whom the blood of the “children of the sun” was blended with that of the “children of the earth.” Among a simple-minded and credulous people the claims of the Incas to a celestial origin seem to have been implicitly believed. They were blindly obeyed, and treated with a respect bordering on adoration, by the nobles and the common people.

The Peruvians worshiped the sun, moon, the evening star, the spirit of thunder and the rainbow, and had erected temples in Cuzco to all these deities. That of the sun, which was the most magnificent, had its walls covered with plates of pure gold. The sacrifices consisted of the objects most prized by the people--of grain, and of fruits, of a few animals, and of the productions of their own industry. Sun-worship, as it is the most rational of all forms of idolatry, is also generally the most mild; and doubtless this results from the tendency which it has to fix the thoughts on the marks of beneficence and wisdom which are displayed in the works of nature. The Peruvian temples were accordingly never polluted, like those of Mexico, with the blood of human victims; and the Incas even went farther, and signalized their zeal against such horrid rites, by suppressing them in all the countries they conquered.

[Illustration: ANCIENT PERUVIAN TEMPLE OF THE SUN.]

The temple of the Sun at Cuzco, called _Coricancha_ or “Place of Gold,” was the most magnificent edifice in the empire. On the western wall, and opposite the eastern portal, was a splendid representation of the sun, the god of the nation. It consisted of a human face in gold, with innumerable golden rays emanating from it in every direction; and when the early beams of the morning sun fell upon this brilliant golden disc, they were reflected from it as from a mirror, and again reflected throughout the whole temple by the numberless plates, cornices, bands and images of gold, until the temple seemed to glow with a sunshine more intense and glorious than that of nature.

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