LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

west to seize the declining sun, and its roars may be heard
in the echoing hills. As Tlaltecutli (“Lord of the Earth”)
it is the hideous Toad with Gaping Jaws, which must be
nourished with the blood of sacrificed men, precisely as the
Sun above must be nurtured; for the Mexican idea of warfare
seems to have been that it must be waged to keep perpetual
the ascending vapours and the descending flow from the
hearts of sacrificed victims, that Tonatiuh and Tlaltecutli
might gain sustenance in heaven and in earth.22

But the grimmest figure is that of Hades himself, Mictlan-
tecutli, the skeleton God of the Dead — also called, says
Sahagun, Tzontemoc (“He of the Falling Hair”). Sahagun
describes the journey to the abode of this divinity. When a
mortal — man, woman, child, lord, or thrall — died of disease,
his soul descended to Mictlan, and beside the corpse the last
words were spoken:23 “Our son, thou art finished with the
sufferings and fatigues of this life. It hath pleased Our Lord
to take thee hence, for thou hast not eternal life in this world:
our existence is as a ray of the sun. He hath given thee the
grace of knowing us and of associating in our common life.
Now the god Mictlantecutli, otherwise called Acolnauacatl
or Tzontemoc, as also the goddess Mictecaciuatl, hath made
thee to share his abode. We shall all follow thee, for it is our
destiny, and the abode is broad enough to receive the whole
world. Thou wilt be heard of no longer among us. Behold,
thou art gone to the domain of darkness, where there is neither
light nor window. Never shalt thou come hither again, nor
needst thou concern thyself for thy return, for thine absence
is eternal. Thou dost leave thy children poor and orphaned,
not knowing what will be their end nor how they will support
the fatigues of this life. As for us, we shall not delay to go to
join thee there where thou wilt be.” Similar words were spoken
to the relatives: “Hath this death come because some being
wisheth us ill or mocketh us? Nay, it is because Our Lord hath
willed that such be his end.” Then the body was wrapped,
 
 PLATE XI

Green stone image of Mictlantecutli, the skeleton
god of death and of the underworld. The original
is in the Stuttgart Museum.
 
 
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81

mummy-form, and a few drops of water were poured upon the
head: “Lo, the water of which thou hast made use in this
life”; and a vessel of water was presented: “This for thy
journey.” Next, certain papers were laid before the body in
due order: “Lo, with this thou shalt pass the two clashing
mountains.” “With this thou shalt pass the road where the
serpent awaiteth thee.” “With this thou shalt pass the place
of the green lizard.” “Lo, wherewithal thou shalt cross the
eight deserts.” “And the eight hills.” “And behold with
what thou canst traverse the place of the winds that bear ob-
sidian knives.” Thus the perils of the underworld were to be
passed and the soul, arrived before Mictlantecutli, was, after
four years, to fare on until he should arrive at Chiconauapan,
the “Nine-Fold Stream” of the underworld. Across this he
would be borne by the red dog which, sacrificed at his grave,
had been his faithful companion; and thence master and
hound would enter into the eternal house of the dead, Chico-
namictlan, the “Ninth Hell.”

Yet not all who died pursued this journey. To the terres-
trial paradise, Tlalocan, the abode of Tlaloc, rich with every
kind of fruit and abundant with joys, departed those slain by
lightning, the drowned, victims of skin-diseases, and persons
who died of dropsical affections — a heterogeneous lot whose
company is to be ascribed to the various attributes of the rain-
gods. With them should be included victims sacrificed to
these deities, who perhaps themselves became rain-makers
and servants of the Lords of the Rain. More fortunate still
were they who ascended to the mansions of the Sun — those
who fell in war, those who perished on the sacrificial altar or
were sacrificed by burning, and women who died in child-
birth. Those warriors, it was said, whose shields had been
pierced could behold the Sun through the holes; to the
others Tonatiuh was invisible; but all entered into the sky
gardens, whose trees were other than those of this world;
and there, after four years, they were transformed into
 82   LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

birds of bright plumage, drawing the honey from the celestial
blossoms.

It was in the eastern heavens that the souls of warriors
found their paradise. Here they met the Sun as he rose in the
morning, striking their bucklers with joyous cries and ac-
companying him on his journey to the meridian, where they
were encountered by the War Women of the western heavens,
the Ciuateteo, or Ciuapipiltin, souls of women who had gone
to war or had died in childbed. These escorted the Sun
down the western sky, bearing him on a gorgeous palanquin,
into Tamoanchan (“the House of the Descent”).24 At the
portals of the underworld they were met by the Lords of
Hell, who conducted the Sun into their abode; for when it ceases
to be day here, the day begins in the realm below. Possibly it
was from this association with the underworld powers that
the Ciuateteo acquired their sinister traits, for they were
sometimes identified with the descending stars, the Tzitzimime,
which follow the Sun’s descent and become embodied as
Demons of the Dark.

But the Sun has yet another comrade on his journey. As
the soul of the dead Aztec is accompanied and guided into the
nether world by his faithful dog, so the Sun has for com-
panion the dog Xolotl. Xolotl is a god who presides over the
game of tlachtli, the Mexican ball-game, analogous to tennis,
in which a rubber ball was bounced back and forth in a court,
not hurled or struck by hand, but by shoulder or thigh. As
with other Indian ball-games, this was regarded as symbolic
of the sun’s course, and Xolotl was said to play the game on a
magic court, which could be nothing else than the heavens.
He was, moreover, deity of twins and other monstrous forms
(for twins were regarded as monstrous), and it was hump-
backs and dwarfs that were sacrificed to the Sun on the occa-
sion of an eclipse, when it was deemed that the solar divinity
had need of them. A myth narrated by Sahagun possibly ex-
plains or reflects this belief. In the beginning of things there
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83

was no sun and no moon; but two of the gods immolated
themselves, and from their ashes rose the orbs of night and
day, although neither sun nor moon as yet had motion. Then
all the gods resolved to sacrifice themselves in order to give
life and motion to the heavenly bodies. Xolotl alone refused:
“Gods, I will not die,” he said; and when the priest of the
sacrifice came, he fled, transforming himself into a twin-
stalked maize plant, such as is called xolotl; discovered, he
escaped again and assumed the form of a maguey called
mexolotl; and evading capture a third time, he entered the
water and became a larva, axolotl — only to be found and
offered up. A second version of the legend, recorded by Men-
dieta, makes Xolotl the sacrificial celebrant who gave death
to the other gods and then to himself that the sun might have
life. In still another tale, recorded also by Mendieta, it is the
dog Xolotl who is sent to the Underworld for bones of the
forefathers, that the first human pair might be created; but
being pursued by Mictlantecutli, Xolotl stumbled, and the
bone that he carried was dropped and broken into fragments,
from which the various kinds of people sprang. Tales such as
these are strongly reminiscent of the coyote stories of the
northern continent, and it is possible that Xolotl himself is
only a special form of Coyote, the trickster and transformer,
especially as Ueuecoyotl (“Old Coyote”), borrowed from
the more primitive Otomi, was a recognized member of the
Aztec pantheon, as a god of feasts and dances, and perhaps
of trickery as well.

Of all the recorded beliefs connected with the dead the
most affecting is the brief account of the limbo of child-souls
reported by the clerical expositor of Codex Vaticanus A.
There was, he says,25 “a third place for souls which passed
from this life, to which went only the souls of children who
died before attaining the use of reason. They feigned the
existence of a tree from which milk distilled, where all chil-
dren who died at such an age were carried; since the Devil,
 84   LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

who is so inimical to the honour of God, even in this instance
wished to show his rivalry: for in the same way as our holy
doctors teach the existence of limbo for children who die
without baptism, or without the circumcision of the old law,
or without the sacrifice of the natural man, so he has caused
these poor people to believe that there was such a place for
their children; and he has superadded another error — the
persuading them that these children have to return thence to
repeople the world after the third destruction which they
suppose that it must undergo, for they believe that the world
has already been twice destroyed.” The belief in an infant
paradise, with its Tree of Life whence the souls of babes draw
nourishment, biding the day of their rebirth, is a pleasant
relief from the nightmarelike quality of most Aztec notions —
not less familiarly human than are the pious reflections of the
good friar who records it.
 CHAPTER III
MEXICO

{Continued)

I.   COSMOGONY1

MEXICAN cosmogonies conform to a wide-spread Ameri-
can type. There is first an ancient creator, little im-
portant in cult, who is the remote giver and sustainer of the
life of the universe; and next comes a generation of gods,
magicians and transformers rather than true creators, who
form and transform the beings of times primeval and eventually
bring the world to its present condition. The earlier world-
epochs, or “Suns,” as the Mexicans called them, are commonly
four in number, and each is terminated by the catastrophic
destruction of its Sun and of its peoples, fire and flood over-
whelming creation in successive cataclysms. Not all of this,
in single completeness, is preserved in any one account, but
from the various fragments and abridgements that are extant
the whole may be reasonably reconstructed.

One of the simpler tales (simple at least in its transmitted
form) is of the Tarascan deity, Tucupacha. “They hold him
to be creator of all things,” says Herrera,2 “that he gives life
and death, good and evil fortune, and they call upon him in
their tribulations, gazing toward the sky where they believe
him to be.” This deity first created heaven and earth and hell;
then he formed a man and a woman of clay, but they were
destroyed in bathing; again he made a human pair, using cin-
ders and metals, and from these the world was peopled. But
the god sent a flood, from which he preserved a certain priest,
Texpi, and his wife, with seeds and with animals, floating in an
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

ark-like log. Texpi discovered land by sending out birds, after
the fashion of Noah, and it is quite possible that the legend as
recounted is not altogether native.

More primitive in type and more interesting in form is the
Mixtec cosmogony narrated by Fray Gregorio Garcia, which
begins thus :3 “ In the year and in the day of obscurity and dark-
ness, when there were as yet no days nor years, the world was
a chaos sunk in darkness, while the earth was covered with
water, on which scum and slime floated.” This exordium,
with its effort to describe the void by negation and the be-
ginning of time by the absence of its denominations, is strik-
ingly reminiscent of the creation-narrative in Genesis ii. and
of the similar Babylonian cosmogony; the negative mode, em-
ployed in all three, is essentially true to that stage when human
thought is first struggling to grapple with abstractions, seeking
to define them rather by a process of denudation than by one
of limitation of the field of thought. The Mixtec tale proceeds
with a group of incidents, (i) The Deer-God and the Deer-
Goddess (the deer is an emblem of fecundity) — known also
as the Puma-Snake and the Jaguar-Snake, in which character
they doubtless represent the tawny heaven of the day-sky and
the starry vault of night — magically raised a cliff above the
abyss of waters, on the summit of which they placed an axe,
edge upward, upon which the heavens rested. (2) Here, at
the Place-where-the-Heavens-stood, they lived many cen-
turies, and here they reared their two boys, Wind-of-the-Nine-
Serpents and Wind-of-the-Nine-Caves, who possessed the
power of transforming themselves into eagles and serpents,
and even of passing through solid bodies. The symbolism of
these two boys as typifying the upper and the nether world is
obvious; they can only be one more example of the demiurgic
twins common in American cosmogony. (3) The brothers
inaugurated sacrifice and penance, the cultivation of flowers
and fruits; and with vows and prayers they besought their
ancestral gods to let the light appear, to cause the water to be
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87

separated from the earth, and to permit the dry land to be
freed from its covering. (4) The earth was peopled, but a
flood destroyed this First People, and the world was restored
by the “ Creator of all Things.”

It is probable that this Mixtec Creator-of-All-Things was the
same deity as he who was known to their Zapotec kindred as
Coqui-Xee or Coqui-Cilla (“Lord of the Beginning”), of whom
it was said that “he was the creator of all things and was him-
self uncreated.” Seler is of opinion that Coqui-Xee is a spirit
of “the beginning” in the sense of dawn and the east and the
rising sun, and that since he is also known as Piye-Tao, or
“the Great Wind,” he is none other than the Zapotec Quet-
zalcoatl, who also is an increate creator. Coqui-Xee, however,
is “merely the principle, the essence of the creative deity or of
deity in general without reference to the act of creating the
world and human beings”; for that act is rather to be ascribed
to the primeval pair (equivalent to the Deer-God and Deer-
Goddess of the Mixtec), Cozaana (“Creator, the Maker of all
Beasts”) and Huichaana (“Creator, the Maker of Men and
Fishes”).

The ideas of the Nahuatlan tribes were similar. Of the
Chichimec Sahagun4 says that “they had only a single god,
Mixcoatl, whose image they possessed; but they believed in
another invisible god, not represented by any image, called
Yoalli Ehecatl, that is to say, God invisible, impalpable,
beneficent, protector, omnipotent, by whose strength alone
the whole world lives, and who, by his sole knowledge, rules
voluntarily all things.” Mixcoatl (“Cloud-Snake”), the tribal
god of the Chichimec and Otomi, is certainly an analogue
of Quetzalcoatl or of Huitzilopochtli, like them figuring as
demiurge; and Yoalli Ehecatl (“Wind and Night,” or “Night-
Wind”) is an epithet applied to Tezcatlipoca, who also is
addressed as “Creator of Heaven and Earth.”

All of these gods are of the sky and atmosphere, and all of
them appear as creative powers, though mainly in the demiurgic
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

role. Back of and above them is the ancient Twofold One, the
Male-Female or Male and Female principle of generation,
which not only first created the world, but maintains it fecund.
This being, sometimes called Tloque Nauaque, or “Lord of
the By,” i. e. the Omnipresent, is represented as a divine pair,
known under several names. Sahagun commonly speaks of
them asOmetecutli and Omeciuatl (“Twi-Lord,” “Twi-Lady ”),
and in his account of the Toltec he states that they reign over
the twelve heavens and the earth; the existence of all things
depends upon them, and from them proceeds the “influence
and warmth whereby infants are engendered in the wombs of
their mothers.” Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciutl (“Lord of Our
Flesh,” “Lady of Our Flesh”) is another pair of names, used
with reference to the creation of the human body out of maize
and to its support thereby.5 A third pair of terms, appearing
in Mendieta and in the Annals of Quauhtitlan, is Citlallatonac
and Citlalicue (“Lord” and “Lady of the Starry Zones”).
In the Annals Quetzalcoatl, as high-priest of the Toltec, is said
to have dedicated a cult to “Citlalicue Citlallatonac, Tonaca-
ciuatl Tonacatecutli . . . who is clothed in charcoal, clothed
in blood, who giveth food to the earth; and he cried aloft, to
the Omeyocan, to the heaven lying above the nine that are
bound together.” Nevertheless, these deities — or rather
deity, for Tloque Nauaque seems to be, like the Zuni Awona-
wilona, bisexual in nature — received little recognition in the
formal cult; and it was said that they desired none.

In connexion with these primal creators appear the demiur-
gic transformers, Quetzalcoatl usually playing the important
part. According to Sahagun’s fragmentary accounts, the gods
were gathered from time immemorial in a place called Teotiua-
can. They asked: “Who shall govern and direct the world?
Who will be Sun?” Tecuciztecatl (“Cockle-Shell House”) and
the pox-afflicted Nanauatzin volunteered. They were dressed
in ceremonial garments and fasted for four days; and then the
gods ranged themselves about a sacrificial fire, which the candi-
 
 PLATE XII

Figures representing the heavenly bodies.

The upper figure, from Codex Vaticanus B, rep-
resents the conflict of light and darkness. The
Eagle is either the Morning Star or the Sun; the
Plumed Serpent is the symbol of the Cosmic Waters,
from whose throat the Hare, perhaps the Earth or
Moon, is being snatched by the Eagle. Similar
figures appear in other codices, the Serpent being
in one instance represented as torn by the Eagle’s
talons.

The lower figure, from Codex Borgia, portrays
Sun, Moon, and Morning Star. The Sun-god is
within the rayed disk; he holds a bundle of spears
in one hand, a spear-thrower in the other; a stream
of blood, apparently from a sacrifice offered by the
Morning Star, which has the form of an ocelot,
nourishes the Sun. The Moon appears as a Hare
upon the face of the crescent, which is filled with
water and set upon a background of dark sky.
 2
 I
 MEXICO   89

dates were asked to enter. Tecuciztecatl recoiled from the
intense heat until encouraged by the example of Nanauatzin,
who plunged into it; and because of this Nanauatzin became
the Sun, while Tecuciztecatl assumed second place as Moon.
The gods now ranged themselves to await the appearance of
the Sun, but not knowing where to expect it, and gazing in
various directions, some of them, including Quetzalcoatl,
turned their faces toward the east, where the Sun finally
manifested himself, close-followed by the Moon. Their light
being then equal, was so bright that none might endure it, and
the deities accordingly asked one another, “How can this be?
Is it good that they should shine with equal light?” One of
them ran and threw a rabbit into the face of Tecuciztecatl,
which thenceforth shone as does now the moon; but since the
sun and the moon rested upon the earth, without rising,
the gods saw that they must immolate themselves to give
motion to the orbs of light. Xolotl fled, but was finally caught
and sacrificed; yet even so the orbs did not stir until the wind
blew with such violence as to compel them — first, the sun, and
afterward the moon. Quetzalcoatl, the wind-god, is, of course,
thus the giver of life to sun and moon as he is also, in the prayers
the bearer of the breath of life from the divine pair to the new-
born.

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

heavens, symbolized by his mirror, now fiery, now murky,
reflecting the encompassed universe. He is the red Tezcatli-
poca and the black — the heaven of day and the heaven of
night. He is the Warrior of the North and the Warrior of the
South, symbolizing the course of the yearly sun, which, in the
latitude of Mexico, culminates with the alternating seasons
to the north and to the south of the zenith. His emblems in-
clude the Fire-Snake, symbol of heavenly fires; and again he
is Iztli-Tezcatlipoca, the Stone-Knife God of the underworld,
of blood-letting penance, and of human sacrifice. Sahagun
says of him that he raised wars, enmities, and discords wherever
he went; nevertheless, he was the ruler of the world, and from
him proceeded all prosperities and enrichments. Frequently
he is represented as a jaguar, which to the Mexicans was the
dragon of the eclipse, a were-beast, and the patron of magicians;
cross-roads were marked by seats for Tezcatlipoca, the god
who traversed all ways; and he was called the Wizard and the
Transformer. In himself he was invisible and impalpable,
penetrating all things; or, if he appeared to men, it was as
a flitting shadow; yet he could assume multifarious mon-
strous forms to tempt and try men, striking them with disease
and death. As Yoalli Ehecatl, the Night Wind, he wandered
about in search of evil-doers, and sinners summoned him in
their confessions. On the other hand, he was “the Youth”
(Telpochtli), and as Omacatl (“Two-Reed”) he was lord of
banquets and festivities.

It is evident that Tezcatlipoca is the Great Transformer,
identified with the heavens and all its breaths, twofold in all
things: day, night; life, death; good, evil. Certainly he seems
to have been held in more awe than any other Mexican god
and well merits the supremacy (not political, but religious)
which tradition assigns to him. The most notable of the
prayers which Sahagun transcribes are filled with poetic
veneration for this deity, and had we only these invocations
as record — not also tales of the fearful human sacrifices —
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63

we should assuredly assign to their Aztec composers a pure
and noble religious sentiment. Perhaps theirs was so, for
men’s actions everywhere seem worse than the creeds which
impel them. Thus, in time of plague the priests prayed:

“0 mighty Lord, under whose wings we seek protection, defence,
and shelter! Thou art invisible, impalpable, as the air and as the
night. I come in humility and in littleness, daring to appear before
Thy Majesty. I come uttering my words like one choking and
stammering; my speech is wandering, like as the way of one who
strayeth from the path and stumbleth. I am possessed of the fear
of exciting thy wrath against me rather than the hope of meriting
thy grace. But, Lord, do with my body as it pleaseth thee, for thou
hast indeed abandoned us according to thy counsels taken in heaven
and in hell. Oh, sorrow! thine anger and thine indignation are de-
scended upon us in all our days . . .

“O Lord, very kindly! Thou knowest that we mortals are like
unto children which, when punished, weep and sigh, repenting their
faults. It is thus that these men, ruined by thy chastisements, re-
proach themselves grievously. They confess in thy presence; they
atone for their evil deeds, imposing penance upon themselves. Lord,
very good, very compassionate, very noble, very precious! let the
chastisement which thou hast inflicted suffice, and let the ills which
thou hast sent in castigation find their end! ”

Throughout the prayers there are characterizations of the god,
not a few of them echoing a kind of world-weary melancholy
that seems so typical of Aztec supplications. When the new
king is crowned, the priest prays: “Perchance, deeming him-
self worthy of his high employ, he will think to perpetuate
himself long therein. Will not this be for him a dream of
sorrow? Will he find in this dignity received at thy hands an
occasion of pride and presumption, till it hap that he despise
the world, assuming to himself a sumptuous show? Thy
Majesty knoweth well whereto he must come within a few
brief days — for we men are but thy spectacle, thy theatre,
serving for thy laughter and diversion.” And when the king
is dead: “Thou hast given him to taste in this world a few of
thy sweets and suavities, making them to pass before his
 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

64

eyes like the will-o’-the-wisp, which vanisheth in an instant;
such is the dignity of the post wherein thou didst place him,
and in which he had a few days in thy service, prostrate, in
tears, breathing his devoted prayers unto thy Majesty.”
Again: “Thou art invisible and impalpable, and we believe
that thy gaze doth penetrate the stones and into the hearts
of the trees, seeing clearly all that is concealed therein. So
dost thou see and comprehend what is in our hearts and in
our thoughts; before thee our souls are as a waft of smoke or
as a vapour that riseth from the earth.”

Perhaps the most striking rite in the Aztec year was the
springtime sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca — near Easter, Sahagun
says. In the previous year a youth had been selected from a
group of captives trained for the purpose, physically without
blemish and having all accomplishments possible. He was
trained to sing and to play the flute, to carry flowers and to
smoke with elegance; he was dressed in rich apparel and was
constantly accompanied by eight pages. The king himself
provided for his habiliment, since “he held him already to be
a god.” For nearly a year this youth was entertained and
feasted, honoured by the nobility and venerated by the popu-
lace as the living embodiment of Tezcatlipoca. Twenty days
before the festival his livery was changed, and his long hair
was dressed like that of an Aztec chieftain. Four maidens, deli-
cately reared, were assigned to him as wives, called by the
names of four goddesses — Xochiquetzal (“ Flowering Quetzal-
Plume”), Xilonen (“Young Maize”), Atlatonan (a goddess
of the coast), and Uixtociuatl (goddess of the salt water).
Five days previous to the sacrifice a series of feasts and dances
was begun, continued during each of the following four days
in separate quarters of the city. Then came the final day; the
youth was taken beyond the city; his goddess-wives aban-
doned him; and he was brought to a little road-side temple for
the consummation of the rite. He ascended its four stages,
breaking a flute at each stage, till at the top he was seized,
 ill

I
 PLATE VIII

Figure from the Codex Borgia representing the red
and the black Tezcatlipoca facing one another
across a tlachtli court upon which is shown a sacri-
ficial victim painted with the red and white stripes
of the Morning and Evening Star (Venus). The
red Tezcatlipoca symbolizes day, the black Tez-
catlipoca, night; the ball court is a symbol of the
universe; the Morning and Evening Star might
very naturally be looked upon as a sacrifice to the
heaven god.
 
 
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65

and the priest opening his breast with a single blow, pre-
sented his heart to the sun. Immediately another youth was
chosen for the following year, for the Tezcatlipoca must never
die. It was said, remarks Sahagun, that this youth’s fate
signified that those who possess wealth and march amid
pleasures during life will end their career in grief and poverty;
while Torquemada more grimly comments that “the soul of
the victim went down to the company of his false gods, in hell.”
For the student of to-day, however, the rite is but another
significant symbol of the god who dies and is born again.

In myth Tezcatlipoca plays the leading role as adversary
of Quetzalcoatl, the ruler and god of the Toltec city of Tollan.
In Sahagun’s version of the story, three magicians, Huitzil-
opochtli, Titlacauan (“We are his Slaves,” an epithet of
Tezcatlipoca), and Tlacauepan, the younger brother of the
others, undertook by magic and wile to drive Quetzalcoatl
from the country and to overthrow the Toltec power. The
three deities are obviously tribal gods of Nahuatlan nations,
and Tezcatlipoca, who plays the chief part in the legends, is
clearly the god of first importance at this early period, possi-
bly the principal deity of all the Nahua; he was also the fore-
most divinity of Tezcuco, which, almost to the eve of the
Conquest, was the leading partner in the Aztec confederacy.
As the tale goes, Quetzalcoatl was ailing; Tezcatlipoca ap-
peared in the guise of an old man, a physician, and admin-
istered to the ailing god, not medicine, but a liquor which in-
toxicated him. Texcatlipoca then assumed the form of a
nude Indian of a strange tribe, a seller of green peppers, and
walked before the palace of Uemac, temporal chief of the
Toltec. Here he was seen by the chief’s daughter, who fell ill
of love for him. Uemac ordered the stranger brought before
him and demanded of Toueyo (as the stranger called himself)
why he was not clothed as other men. “It is not the custom
of my country,” Toueyo answered. “You have inspired my
daughter with caprice; you must cure her,” said Uemac. “That
 66

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

is impossible; kill me; I would die, for I do not deserve such
words, seeking as I am only to earn an honest living.” “Never-
theless, you shall cure her,” replied the chief, “it is necessary;
have no fear.” So he caused the marriage of his daughter with
the stranger, who thus became a chieftain among the Toltec.
Winning a victory for his new countrymen, he announced a
feast in Tollan; and when the multitudes were assembled, he
caused them to dance to his singing until they were as men in-
toxicated or demented; they danced into a ravine and were
changed into rocks, they fell from a bridge and became stones
in the waters below. Again, in company with Tlacauepan, he
appeared in the market-place of Tollan and caused the infant
Huitzilopochtli to dance upon his hand. The people, crowd-
ing near, crushed several of their number dead; enraged, they
slew the performers and, on the advice of Tlacauepan, fas-
tened ropes to their bodies to drag them out; but all who
touched the cords fell dead. By this and other magical de-
vices great numbers of the Toltec were slain, and their dominion
was brought to an end.

3. Quetzalcoatl 14

The most famous and picturesque of New World mythic
figures is that of Quetzalcoatl, although primarily his renown
is due less to the undoubted importance of his cult than to
his association with the coming and the beliefs of the white
men. According to native tradition, Quetzalcoatl had been
the wise and good ruler of Tollan in the Golden Age of Ana-
huac, lawgiver, teacher of the arts, and founder of a purified
religion. Driven from his kingdom by the machinations of
evil magicians, he departed over the eastern sea for Tlapallan,
the land of plenty, promising to return and reinstitute his
kindly creed on some future anniversary of the day of his de-
parture. He was described as an old man, bearded, and white,
clad in a long robe; as with other celestial gods, crosses were
 MEXICO

67

associated with his representations and shrines. When Cortez
landed, the Mexicans were expecting the return of Quetzal-
coatl; and, according to Sahagun, the very outlooks who first
beheld the ships of the Spaniards had been posted to watch
for the coming god. The white men (perhaps the image was
aided by their shining armour, their robed priests, their
crosses) were inevitably assumed to be the deity, and among
the gifts sent to them by Montezuma were the turquoise mask,
feather mantle, and other apparel appropriate to the god. It
is certain that the belief materially aided the Spaniards in the
early stages of their advance, and it is small wonder that the
myth which was so helpful to their ambitions should have ap-
pealed to their imaginations. The missionary priests, gaining
some idea of native traditions and finding among them ideas,
emblems, and rites analogous to those of Christendom (the
deluge, the cross, baptism, sacraments, confession), not un-
naturally saw in the figure of the robed and bearded reformer
of religion a Christian teacher, and they were not slow to iden-
tify him with St. Thomas, the Apostle. When an almost
identical story was found throughout Central America, the
Andean region, and, indeed, wide-spread in South America,
the same explanation was adopted, and the wanderings of
the Saint became vast beyond the dreams of Marco Polo or
any other vaunted traveller, while memorials of his miracles
are still displayed in regions as remote from Mexico as the
basin of La Plata. Naturally, too, the interest of the subject
has not waned with time, for whether we view the Quetzal-
coatl myth in relation to its association with European ideas
or with respect to its aboriginal analogues in the two Americas,
it presents a variety of interest scarcely equalled by any other
tale of the New World.

The name of the god is formed of quetzal, designating the
long, green tail-plumes of Pharomacrus mocinno, and coatl
(“serpent”); it means, therefore, “the Green-Feather Snake,”
and immediately puts Quetzalcoatl into the group of celestial
 68

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

powers of which the plumed serpent is a symbol, among the
Hopi and Zuiii to the north as well as among Andean peoples
far to the south. Sahagun says that Quetzalcoatl is a wind-
god, who “sweeps the roads for the rain-gods, that they may
rain.” Quetzal-plumes were a symbol of greening vegetation,
• and it is altogether probable that the Plumed Serpent-God was
originally a deity of rain-clouds, the sky-serpent embodiment
of the rainbow or the lightning. The turquoise snake-mask
or bird-mask, characteristic of the god, is surely an emblem
of the skies, and like other sky-gods he carries a serpent-
shaped spear-thrower. The beard (which other Mexican
deities sometimes wear) is perhaps a symbol of descending
rain, perhaps (as on some Navaho figures) of pollen, or fer-
tilization. Curiously enough, Quetzalcoatl is not commonly
shown as the white god which the tradition would lead us to
expect, but typically with a dark-hued body; it may be that
the dark hue and the robe of legend are both emblems of
rain-clouds.

The tradition of his whiteness may come from his stellar
associations, for though he is sometimes shown with emblems
of moon or sun, he is more particularly identified with the
morning star. According to the Annals of Quauhtitlan, Quet-
zalcoatl, when driven from Tollan, immolated himself on the
shores of the eastern sea, and from his ashes rose birds with
shining feathers (symbols of warrior souls mounting to the
sun), while his heart became the Morning Star, wandering
for eight days in the underworld before it ascended in splendour.
In numerous legends Quetzalcoatl is associated with Tez-
catlipoca, commonly as an antagonist; and if we may believe
one tale, recounted by Mendieta, Tezcatlipoca, defeating
Quetzalcoatl in ball-play (a game directly symbolic of the
movements of the heavenly orbs), cast him out of the land into
the east, where he encountered the sun and was burned. This
story (clearly a variant of the tale of the banishment of Quet-
zalcoatl told in the Annals of Quauhtitlan and by Sahagun) is
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69

interpreted by Seler as a myth of the morning moon, driven
back by night (the dark Tezcatlipoca) to be consumed by the
rising sun. A reverse story represents Tezcatlipoca, the sun,
as stricken down by the club of Quetzalcoatl, transformed
into a jaguar, the man-devouring demon of night, while
Quetzalcoatl becomes sun in his place. Normally Quetzal-
coatl is a god of the eastern heavens, and sometimes he is pic-
tured as the caryatid or upbearer of the sky of that quarter.

Perhaps it is in this character that he was conceived as a
lord of life, a meaning naturally intensified by his association
with the rejuvenating rains and with the wind, which is the
breath of life. A woman who had become pregnant was
praised by the relatives of her husband for her faithfulness in
religious devotions. “It is for these,” they said, “that our
lord Quetzalcoatl, author and creator, has vouchsafed this
grace — even as it was decreed in the sky by that one who is
man and woman under the names Ometecutli and Omeciuatl.”
Moreover the new-born was addressed: “Little son and lord,
person of high value, of great price and esteem! 0 precious
stone, emerald, topaz, rare plume, fruit of lofty generation!
be welcome among us! Thou hast been formed in the highest
places, above the ninth heaven, where the two supreme gods
dwell. The Divine Majesty hath cast thee in his mould, as
one casts a golden bead; thou hast been pierced, like a rich
stone artistically wrought, by thy father and mother, the
great god and the great goddess, assisted by their son, Quet-
zalcoatl.” The deity also figures as a world creator, as in the
Sahagun manuscript in the Academia de la Historia, from
which Seler translates:

“And thus said our fathers, our grandfathers,

They said that he made, created, and formed us
Whose creatures we are, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl;

And he made the heavens, the sun, the earth.”

It is in another character, however, that Quetzalcoatl is
romantically of most interest. His cult was less sanguinary
 70

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

than that of most Aztec divinities, though assuredly not an-
tagonistic to human sacrifice, as some traditions say. He was a
penance-inflicting god, perhaps particularly a deity of priests
and their lore; yet he was also associated with education and
the rearing of the young. He is named as the patron of the
arts, the teacher of metallurgy and of letters, and in tradition
he is the god of the cultured people of yore from whom the
Aztec derived their civilization. A part of the story, as nar-
rated by Sahagun, has been told: how Quetzalcoatl was the
aged and wise priest-king of Tollan, driven thence by the magic
and guile of Tezcatlipoca and his companions. The tale goes
on to tell how Quetzalcoatl, chagrined and ailing, resolved to
depart from his kingdom for his ancient home, Tlapallan. He
burned his houses built of shell and silver, buried his treasure,
changed the cacao-trees into mesquite, and set forth, pre-
ceded by servants in the form of birds of rich plumage. Com-
ing to Quauhtitlan, he demanded a mirror and gazing into it,
he said, “I am old,” wherefore he named the city “the old
Quauhtitlan.” Seating himself at another place and gazing
back upon Tollan, as he wept, his tears pierced the rock, which
also bore thenceforth the marks where his hands had rested.
He encountered certain magicians, who demanded of him, before
they would let him pass, the arts of refining silver, of working
in wood, stone, and feathers, and of painting; and as he crossed
the sierra, all his companions, who were dwarfs and hump-
backs, died of the cold. Many other localities received memo-
rials of his passage: at one place he played a game of ball, at
another shot arrows into a tree so that they formed a cross,
at another caused underworld houses to be built — all clearly
cosmic symbols — and finally coming to the sea, he departed
for Tlapallan on his serpent-raft. In Ixtlilxochitl’s history,
Quetzalcoatl first appeared in the third period of the world,
taught the arts, instituted the worship of the cross — “tree of
nourishment and of life” — and ended the period with his
departure. Tradition names the last king of the Toltec “Topil-
 kf

I
 PLATE IX

Figures from the Codex Borgia, representing cos-
mic tutelaries.

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

had touched a level properly comparable with the earliest
civilizations of the Old World, nor can theirs have been vastly
later than Old World culture in origin.

In a number of particulars the civilizations of the Middle
and South American centres show curious parallels. In each
case we are in the presence of an aggressively imperial high-
land (Aztec, Inca) and of a decadent lowland (Maya, Yunca)
culture. In each case the lowland culture is the more advanced
aesthetically and apparently of longer history. Both highland
powers clearly depend upon remote highland predecessors for
their own culture (Aztec harks back to Toltec, Inca to Tia-
huanaco); and in both regions it is a pretty problem for the
archaeologist to determine whether this more remote high-
land civilization is ancestrally akin to the lowland. Again, in
both the apogee of monument building and of the arts seems
to have passed when the Spaniards arrived; indeed, empire
itself was weakening. The Aztec and the Inca tribes (perhaps
the most striking parallel of all) emerged from obscurity about
the same time to proceed on the road to empire, for the tradi-
tional Aztec departure from Aztlan and the Inca departure
from Tampu Tocco alike occurred in the neighbourhood of
1200 a. d. Finally, it was Ahuitzotl,' the predecessor of
Montezuma II, who brought Aztec power to its zenith, and it
was Huayna Capac, the father of Atahualpa, who gave Inca
empire its greatest extent; while both the Aztec empire under
Montezuma, which fell to Cortez in 1519, and the Inca empire
under Atahualpa, conquered by Pizarro in 1524, were in-
ternally weakening at the time. But the crowning misfortune
common to the two empires was the possession of gold, mad-
dening the eyes of the conquistadores.

II.   CONQUISTADORES 4

In 1517 Hernandez de Cordova, sailing from Cuba for the
Bahamas, was driven out of his course by adverse gales;
 MEXICO

45

Yucatan was discovered; and a part of the coast of the Gulf
of Campeche was explored. Battles were fought, and hard-
ships were endured by the discoverers, but the reports of a
higher civilization which they brought back to Cuba, coupled
with specimens' of curious gold-work, induced the governor
of the island to equip a new expedition to continue the ex-
ploration. This venture, of four vessels under the command of
Juan de Grijalva, set out in May, 1518, and following the
course of its predecessor, coasted as far as the province of
Panuco, visiting the Isla de los Sacrificios — near the site of
the future Vera Cruz — and doing profitable trading with
some of the vassals of the Aztec emperor. A caravel which he
dispatched to Cuba with some of his golden profit induced the
governor to undertake a larger military expedition to effect
the conquest of the empire discovered; for now men*began to
realize that a truly imperial realm had been revealed. This
third expedition was placed under the command of Hernando
Cortez; it sailed from Cuba in February, 1519, and landed on
the island of Cozumel, in Maya territory, where the Spaniards
were profoundly impressed at finding the Cross an object of
veneration. The course was resumed, and a battle was fought
near the mouth of the Rio de Tabasco; but Cortez was in
search of richer lands and so moved onward, beyond the lands
of the Maya, until on Good Friday, April 21, 1519, he landed
with all his forces on the site of Vera Cruz. The two years of
the Conquest followed — the tale of which, for fantastic and
romantic adventure, for egregious heroism and veritable
gluttony of bloodshed, has few competitors in human annals:
its climacterics being the seizure of Montezuma in November,
1519; la noche triste, July 1, 1520, when the invaders were
driven from Tenochtitlan; and, finally, the defeat and capture
of Guatemotzin, August 13, 1521.

The reader of the tale cannot but be profoundly moved both
by what the Spaniards found and by what they did. He will
be moved with regret at the wanton destruction of so much
 46   LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

that was in its way splendid in Aztec civilization. He will be
moved with revulsion and wonder that such a civilization
could support a religion which, though not without elements
of poetic exaltation, was drugged with obscene and bloody
rites; and he will feel only a shuddering thankfulness that this
faith is of the past. But when he turns to the agents of its
destruction and reads their chronicles, furious with carnage,
he will surely say, with Clavigero, that “the Spaniards can-
not but appear to have been the severest instruments fate
ever made use of to further the ends of Providence,” and amid
conflicting horrors he will be led again into regretful sym-
pathy for the final victims.

An apologist for human nature would say that neither con-
quistador nor papa (as the Spaniards named the Aztec priest)
was quite so despicable as his deeds, that both were moved by
a faith that had redeeming traits. Outwardly, aesthetically,
the whole scene is bizarre and devilish; inwardly, it is not with-
out devotion and heroism. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, adven-
turer not only with Cortez, but with Cordova and Grijalva
before him, one of the sturdiest of the conquerors and destined
to be their foremost chronicler, records for us one unforget-
table incident which presents the whole inwardness and
outwardness of the situation — gorgeous cruelty and simple
humanity — in a single image. It was four days after the army
of Cortez had entered the Mexican capital; and after having
been shown the wonders of the populous markets of Tenoch-
titlan, the visitors were escorted, at their own request, to the
platform top of the great teocalli overlooking Tlatelolco, the
mart of Mexico. From the platform Montezuma proudly
pointed to the quartered city below, and beyond that to the
gleaming lake and the glistening villages on its borders — all
a local index of his imperial domains. “We counted among
us,” says the chronicler,5 “soldiers who had traversed different
parts of the world: Constantinople, Italy, Rome; they said
that they had seen nowhere a place so well aligned, so vast,
 mm

0*441(1

-ilQ jin


 PLATE V

Aztec goddess, probably Coatlicue, the mother
of Huitzilopochtli, an earth goddess (see page 74).
The statue is one of two Aztec monuments (the
other being the “Calendar Stone,” Plate XIV)
discovered under the pavement of the principal
plaza of Mexico City in 1790, and is possibly the
very image which Bernal Diaz mistook for “Huichi-
lobos” (see pages 46-49, and Note 5). The goddess
wears the serpent apron, and carries a death’s head
at the girdle; her own head is formed of two serpent
heads, facing, rising from her shoulders. The im-
portance of Coatlicue in Aztec legend is evidenced
by the story of the embassy sent, to her by Mon-
tezuma I (see page 116). After an engraving in
AnMM, first series, Vol. II.
 
 
 MEXICO

47

ordered with such art, and covered with so many people.”
Cortez turned to Montezuma: “You are a great lord,” he
said. “You have shown us your great cities; show us now
your gods.”

“He invited us into a tower,” continues the chronicler,
“into a part in form like a great hall where were two altars
covered with rich woodwork. Upon the altars were reared
two massive forms, like giants with ponderous bodies. The
first, placed at the right, was, they say, Huichilobos [Huit-
zilopochtli], their god of war. His countenance was very large,
the eyes huge and terrifying; all his body, including the head,
was covered with gems, with gold, with pearls large and small,
adherent by means of a glue made from farinaceous roots.
The body was cinctured with great serpents fabricked of gold
and precious stones; in one hand he held a bow, and in the
other arrows. A second little idol, standing beside the great
divinity like a page, carried for him a short spear and a buckler
rich in gold and gems. From the neck of Huichilobos hung
masks of Indians and hearts in gold or in silver surmounted
by blue stones. Near by were to be seen burners with incense
of copal; three hearts of Indians sacrificed that very day
burned there, continuing with the incense the sacrifice that
had just taken place. The walls and floor of this sanctuary
were so bathed with congealing blood that they exhaled a
horrid odour.

“Turning our gaze to the left, we saw there another great
mass, of the height of Huichilobos. Its face resembled the
snout of a bear, and its shining eyes were made of mirrors
called tezcatl in the language of the country; its body was cov-
ered with rich gems, in like manner with Huichilobos, for
they are called brothers. They adore Tezcatepuca [Tezcatli-
poca] as god of the lower worlds, and attribute to him the
care of the souls of Mexicans. His body was bound about with
little devils having the tails of snakes. About him also upon
the walls there was such a crust of blood and the floor so
 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

48

soaked with it that not the butcheries of Castile exhale such
a stench. There was to be seen, moreover, the offering of five
hearts of victims sacrificed that day. At the culminating point
of the temple was a niche of woodwork, richly carved; within
it, a statue representing a being half man, half crocodile, en-
riched with jewels and partly covered by a mantle. They
said that this idol was the god of sowings and of fruits; the
half of his body contained all the grains of the country. I do
not recall the name of this divinity; what I do know is that
here also all was soiled with blood, wall and altar, and that the
stench was such that we did not delay to go forth to take the
air. There we found a drum of immense size; when struck it
gave forth a lugubrious sound, such as an infernal instrument
could not want. It could be heard for two leagues about, and
it was said to be stretched with the skins of gigantic serpents.

“Upon the terrace were to be seen an endless number of
things diabolical in appearance: speaking trumpets, horns,
knives, many hearts of Indians burned as incense to idols;
and all covered with blood in such quantity that I vowed it to
malediction! As moreover, everywhere arose the odours of a
charnel, it moved us strongly to depart from these exhalations
and above all from so repulsive a sight.

“ It was then that our general, by means of our interpreter,
said to Montezuma, smiling: ‘Sire, I cannot understand how
being so great a prince and so wise as you are, that you have
not perceived in your reflections that your idols are not gods,
but evilly named demons. That Your Majesty may recognize
this and all your priests be convinced, grant me the grace of
finding it good that I erect a Cross upon the height of this
tower, and that in the same part of the sanctuary where are
your Huichilobos and Tezcatepuca, we construct a shrine and
elevate the image of Our Lady; and you will see the fear which
she will inspire in these idols, of which you are the dupes.’
Montezuma replied partly in anger, while the priests made
menacing gestures: ‘Sir Malinche, if I had thought that you
 MEXICO

49

could offer blasphemies, such as you have just done, I had
not shown you my deities. Our gods we hold to be good; it is
they who give us health, rains, good harvests, storms, victo-
ries, and all that we desire. We ought to adore them and
make them sacrifices. What I beg of you is that you will say
not a word more that is not in their honour.’ Our general,
having heard and seeing his emotion, thought best not to reply;
so, affecting a gay air, he said: ‘ It is already the hour that we
and Your Majesty must part.’ To which Montezuma an-
swered, true, but as for him, he must pray and make sacrifice
in expiation of the sin he had committed in giving us access
to his temple, which had had for consequence our presenta-
tion to his gods and the want of respect through which we had
rendered ourselves culpable, blaspheming against them.” So
the Spaniards departed, leaving Montezuma to his expiatory
prayers and no doubt bloody sacrifices.

III.   THE AZTEC PANTHEON6

Within the precincts of the temple-pyramid, and not far
from it, was a lesser building which Bernal Diaz describes, a
house of idols, diabolisms, serpents, tools for carving the
bodies of sacrificed victims, and pots and kettles to cook them
for the cannibal repasts of the priests, the entrance being
formed by gaping jaws “such as one pictures at the mouth of
Inferno, showing great teeth for the devouring of poor souls.”
The place was foul with blood and black with smoke, “and for
my part,” says Diaz, “I was accustomed to call it ‘Hell.’”

It is indeed doubtful whether the human imagination has
ever elsewhere conjured up such soul-satisfying devils as are
the gods of the Aztec pantheon. Beside them Old World
demons seem prankishly amiable sprites: the Mediaeval
imagination at best (or worst) gives us but a somewhat de-
ranged barnyard, while even Chinese devils modulate into
pleasantly decorative motifs. But the Aztec gods, in their
 50

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

formal presentments, and seldom less in their material char-
acters, ugly, ghastly, foul, afford unalloyed shudders which
time cannot still nor custom stale. To be sure, the ensemble
frequently shows a vigour of design which suggests decora-
tion (though the decorative spirit is never sensitive, as it
often is in Maya art); but this suggestion is too illusory to
abide: it passes like a mist, and the imagination is gripped by
the raw horror of the Thing. Aztec religious art seems, in fact,
to move in a more primitively realistic atmosphere than that
in which the religious art of other peoples has come to simi-
larly adept expression; it shows little of that tendency —
which Yucatan and Peru in America, as well as the ancient and
Oriental nations, had all attained — to subordinate the idea to
the expressional form, and to soften even the horrible with the
suavity of aesthetic charm. The Aztec gods were as grimly busi-
ness-like in form as the realities of their service were fearful.

In number these divinities were myriad and in relations
chaotic. There were clan and tribal, city and national gods,
not only of the victorious race, but of their confederates and
subjects, for the Aztec followed the custom of pagan con-
querors, holding it safest to honour the deities native to the
land; and several of their greatest divinities were assuredly
inherited from vanquished peoples — Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc
among them — though an odd and somewhat amusing fact is
that a multitude of the godling idols of ravaged cities were
kept in a kind of prison-house in the Aztec capital, where, it
was assumed, they were incapable of assisting their former
worshippers. There were gods of commerce and industries,
headed by Tacatecutli, god of merchant-adventurers, whose
“peaceful penetration” opened paths for the imperial armies;
gods of potters and weavers and mat-makers, of workers in
wood and stone and metal; gods of agriculture, of sowing and
ripening and reaping; gods of fishermen; gods of the elements
— earth, air, fire, and water; gods of mountains and volca-
noes; creator-gods; animal-gods; gods of medicine, of disease
 MEXICO ,   51

and death, and of the underworld; deity patrons of drunken-
ness and of carnal vice, and deity protectors of the flowers
which these strange peoples loved. The whole heterogeneous
world was filled with divinities, reflecting the old fears of
primitive man and the old tumults of history, each god jealous
of his right and gluttonous of blood — a kind of horrid ex-
teriorization of human passion and desire.

However, this motley pantheon is not without certain
principles of order. The regulations of an elaborate social
system, divided by clan and caste and rank and guild, are re-
duplicated in it; for to every phase of Mexican life religious
rites and divine tutelage were attached. Still more significant
as a means of hierarchic classification is the relation of the
divine beings to the divisions of time and space. A cult of the
quarters of space and their tutelaries and of the powers of
sky-realms above and of earth-realms below is almost uni-
versal among American Indian groups showing any advance-
ment in culture; the gods of the quarters, for example, are
bringers of wind and rain, upholders of heaven, animal chiefs;
the gods above are storm-deities and rulers of the orbs and
dominions of light, on the whole beneficent; the powers below,
under the hegemony of the earth goddess, are spirits of vegeta-
tion and lords of death and things noxious. This is the most
primitive stage in which the family of Heaven and Earth
begin to assume form as an hierarchic pantheon. But the
seasons, beginning with the diurnal alternation of the rule of
light and darkness, and proceeding thence to the changing
phases of the moon and the seasonal journeys of the sun, con-
stantly shift the domination of the world from deity to deity
and from group to group. Thus the lords of day are not the
lords of night, nor are the fates of the mounting morn those
of descending eve: the Sun himself changes his disposition
with the hours. Similarly, the Moon’s phases are tempers
rather than forms; and the year, divided among the gods, runs
the cycle of their influences.
 52

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

The Aztec and other pantheons of the civilized Mexicans
evince all of these elements with complications. Both cos-
mography and calendar are more complex than among the
more northerly Americans, and there is a veritable tangle of
space-craft and time-craft, with astrological and necromantic
conceptions, bound up with every human desire and every
natural activity. Certainly the most curious feature of this
lore is the influence of certain numbers — especially four
(and five) and nine; and, again, six (and seven) and thirteen.
These number-groups are primarily related to space-divisions.
Thus four is the number of cardinal points, North, South,
East, and West, to which a fifth point is added if the pou sto,
or point of the observer, is included; by a process of redupli-
cation, of which there are several instances in North America,
the number of earth’s cardinal points became the number of
the sky-tiers above and of the earth-tiers below, so that the
cosmos becomes a nine-storeyed structure, with earth its
middle plane. Sometimes (this is characteristic of the Pueblo
Indians) orientation is with reference to six points — the
four directions and the Above and the Below (the pou sto,
when added, becomes a seventh — a grouping which recalls
to us the seven forms of Platonic locomotion — up, down,
forward, backward, right, left, and axial). With these direc-
tions colours, jewels, herbs, and animals are symbolically
associated, becoming emblems of the ruling powers of the
quarters. The number-groups thus cosmographically formed
react upon time-conceptions, especially where ritual is con-
cerned. Thus the Pueblo Indians celebrate lesser festivals of
five days (a day of preparation and four of ritual), and greater
feasts of nine days (reduplicating the four) the whole, in
some cases at least, being comprised in a longer period of
twenty days. The rites of the year among the Zuni and some
others are divided into two six-month groups, and each month
is dedicated to or associated with one of the six colour-symbols
of the six directions; while the Hopi — a fact of especial in-
 MEXICO

S3

terest — make use of thirteen points on the horizon for the
determination of ceremonial dates.7

 THE ANTILLES

25

Maorocoti; while Fray Ramon Pane gives names for the Earth
Mother closely paralleling Peter Martyr’s list: Atabei (“First-
in-Being”), Iermaoguacar, Apito, and Zuimaco. Guabancex
was a goddess of wind and water, and had two subordinates,
Guatauva, her messenger, and Coatrischie, the tempest-
raiser. Yobanua-Borna was a rain-deity whose shrine was in
a cavern, and who likewise had two subordinates, or ministers.
The Haitians are said to have made pilgrimages to a cave in
which were kept two statues of wood, gods again of rain, or
of sun and rain; and it is likely that the double-figure images
preserved from this region are representations of these or of
some other pair of Antillean twin deities. Baidrama, or Vay-
brama, was also seemingly a twinned divinity, and clearly
was the strength-giver: “They say,” Fray Ramon tells us,
“in time of wars he was burnt, and afterwards being washed
with the juice of yucca, his arms grew out again, his body
spread, and he recovered his eyes”; and the worshippers of
the god bathed themselves in the sap of the yucca when they
desired strength or healing. Other zemis mentioned by Pane
are Opigielguoviran, a dog-like being which plunged into a
morass when the Spaniards came, never to be seen again; and
Faraguvaol, a beam or tree-trunk with the power of wander-
ing at will. Here there seems to be indication of a vegetation-
cult, which is borne out by Pane’s description of the way in
which wooden zemis were made — strikingly analogous to
West African fetish-construction: “Those of wood are made
thus: when any one is travelling he says he sees some tree
that shakes its root; the man, in great fright, stops and asks
who he is; it answers, ‘My name is Buhuitihu [a name for
priest, or medicine-man],10 and he will inform you who I am.’
The man repairing to the said physician, tells him what he
has seen. The wizard, or conjurer, runs immediately to see
the tree the other has told him of, sits down by it and makes
it cogioba [an offering of tobacco] . . . He stands up, gives it
all its titles, as if it were some great lord, and asks of it, ‘Tell
 26

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

me who you are, what you do here, what you will have with me,
and why you send for me? Tell me whether you will have me
cut you, whether you will go along with me, and how you will
have me carry you; and I will build you a house and endow it.’
Immediately that tree, or cemi, becomes an idol, or devil,
answers, telling how he will have him do it. He cuts it into
such a shape as he is directed, builds his house, and endows
it; and makes cogioba for it several times in the year, which
cogioba is to pray to it, to please it, to ask and know of the
said cemi what good or evil is to happen, and to beg wealth
of it.”

In such descriptions we get our picture of zemiism, a reli-
gion rising above the animism which was its obvious source,
becoming predominantly anthropomorphic in its representa-
tions of superhuman beings, yet showing no signs of passing
from crude fetish-worship to that symbolic use of images
which marks the higher forms of idolatry. The ritual was ap-
parently not bloody — offerings of tobacco, the use of purges
and narcotics inducing vision and frenzy, and the dramatic
dances, or areitos, which marked all solemn occasions and the
great seasons of life, such as birth and marriage and death —
these were the important features. Oblatio sacrificiorum per-
tinet ad jus naturale, says Las Casas (quoting St. Thomas
Aquinas) in his description of Haitian rites; and to the law
of man’s nature may surely be ascribed that impulse which
caused the Antillean to make his offerings to Heaven and Earth
and to the powers that dwell therein.

Nor was he forgetful of the potencies within himself. With
his nature-worship was a closely associated ancestor-worship.
When they can no longer see the reflection of a person in the
pupil of the eye, the soul is fled, say the Arawak — fled to
become a %emi. The early writers all dwell upon this belief
in the potency and propinquity of the souls of the departed.
They are shut up by day, but walk abroad by night, says
Fray Ramon; and sometimes they return to their kinsmen in
 THE ANTILLES

2 7

the form of Incubi: “thus it is they know them: they feel their
belly, and if they cannot find their navel, they say they are
dead; for they say the dead have no navel.” The navel is the
symbol of birth and of the attachment of the body to its life;
hence the dead, though they may possess all other bodily
members, lack this; and the Indians have, says Pane, one
name for the soul in the living body and another for the soul of
the departed.

The bones of the dead, especially of caciques and great men,
enclosed sometimes in baskets, sometimes in plaited cotton
images, were regarded as powerful fetishes; and from what is
told us of the funeral ceremonies certain beliefs may be in-
ferred. The statement by Columbus, already quoted, closes
with an account of some such rites: “When these Indians die,
they have several ways of performing their obsequies, but
the manner of burying their caciques is thus: they open and
dry him at the fire, that he may keep whole. Of others they
take only the head, others they bury in a grot or den, and lay
a calabash of water and bread on his head; others they bum
in the house where they die, and when they are at the last
gasp, they suffer them not to die but strangle them; and this
is done to caciques. Others are turned out of the house, and
others put them into a hammock, which is their bed, laying
bread and water by their head, never returning to see them
any more. Some that are dangerously ill are carried to the
cacique, who tells them whether they are to be strangled or
not, and what he says is done. I have taken pains to find out
what it is they believe, and whether they know what becomes
of them after they are dead,” and the answer was that “they
go to a certain vale, which every great cacique supposes to be
in his country, where they affirm they find their parents and
all their predecessors, and that they eat, have women, and
give themselves up to pleasures and pastimes.” This is very
much the belief of all the primitive world, but it has one in-
teresting feature. The strangling of caciques and of those
 28   LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

named by caciques clearly indicates that there was a belief
in a different fate for men who die by nature and men who
die with the breath of life not yet exhausted; quite likely it
was some Valhalla reserved for the brave, such as the Norse-
man found who escaped the “straw death,” or the Aztec
warrior whom Tonatiuh snatched up into the mansions of
the Sun.

IV.   TAINO MYTHS11

“I ordered,” says Columbus, “one Friar Ramon, who un-
derstood their language, to set down all their language and
antiquities”; and it is to this Fray Ramon Pane, “a poor
anchorite of the order of St. Jerome,” as he tells us, that
thanks are due for most of what is preserved of Tamo myth-
ology. The myths which he gathered are from the island of
Haiti, or Hispaniola, but it is safe to assume that they repre-
sent cycles of tales shared by all the Tamo peoples. They be-
lieve, says the friar, in an invisible and immortal Being, like
Heaven, and they speak of the mother of this heaven-son,
who was called, among other names, Atabei, “the First-in-
Existence.” “They also know whence they came, the origin
of the sun and moon, how the sea was made, and whither the
dead go.”

The earliest Indians appeared, according to the legend,
from two caverns of a certain mountain of Hispaniola —
“most of the people that first inhabited the island came out of
Cacibagiagua,” while the others emerged from Amaiauva (it
is altogether likely that the two caves represent two races or
tribal stocks). Before the people came forth, a watchman,
Marocael, guarded the entrances by night; but, once delay-
ing his return into the caves until after dawn, the sun trans-
formed him into a stone; while others, going a-fishing, were
also caught by the sun and were changed into trees. As for
the sun and moon, they, too, came from a certain grotto,
called Giovava, to which, says Fray Ramon, the Indians paid
 
 PLATE III

Antillean stone ting, of the ovate type, with
carved panels. Stone rings, or “collars,” form one
of the types of symbolic stones from this region the
significance of which has so profoundly puzzled
archaeologists. Reference to their possible meaning
will be found on page 24 and in the note (page 350)
there referred to. The specimen here figured is in
the Museum of the American Indian, New York.
Joyce (Central American Archaeology, pages 189-91)
interprets the design as a human figure. The disks
on either side of the head are ear-plugs; arms and
hands may be seen supporting them; the pit be-
tween the elbows is the umbilicus; while the legs
are represented by the upper segments of the dec-
orated panels exterior to the disks.
 
 i

1

1

I

I

i

I
 THE ANTILLES

29

great veneration, having it all painted “without any figure,
but with leaves and the like”; and keeping in it two stone
zemis which looked “as if they sweated”; to these they went
when they wanted rain.

The story of the origin of the sea is a little more complex.
In introducing the tale, Fray Ramon says: “I, writing in
haste and not having paper enough, could not place every-
thing rightly. . . . Let us now return to what we should have
said first, that is, their opinion concerning the origin and be-
ginning of the sea.” There was a certain man, Giaia, whose
son, Giaiael (“Giaia’s son”), undertook to kill his father, but
was himself slain by the parent, who put the bones into a
calabash, which he hung in the top of his house. One day he
took the calabash down, and looking into it, an abundance of
fishes, great and small, came forth, since into these the bones
had changed. Later on, while Giaia was absent, there came to
his house four sons, born at a birth from a certain woman,
Itiba Tahuvava, who was cut open that they might be de-
livered — “the first that they cut out was Caracaracol, that is,
‘Mangy.’” These four brothers took the calabash and ate of
the fish, but seeing Giaia returning, in their haste they re-
placed it badly, with the result that “there ran so much water
from it as overflowed all the country, and with it came out
abundance of fish, and hence they believe the sea had its origin.”
Fray Ramon goes on to tell how, the four brothers being hungry,
one of them begged cassaba bread of a certain man, but was
struck by him with tobacco. Thereupon his shoulder swelled
up painfully; and when it was opened, a live female tortoise
issued forth — “so they built their house and bred up the
tortoise.”

“I understood no more of this matter, and what we have
writ signifies but little, ” continues the friar; yet to the modern
reader the tales have all the marks of a primitive cosmogony,
a cosmogony having many analogues in similar tales from
the two Americas. The notion of a cave or caves from which
 3°

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the parents of the human race and of the animal kinds issue
to people the world is ubiquitous in America; so, too, is the
notion of an age of transformations, in which beings were
altered from their first forms. Peter Martyr, who tells the
same stories in resume, as he says, of Pane’s manuscript, adds
a number of interesting details; as that after the metamor-
phosis of Marocael, or Machchael, as Martyr calls him, the
First Race were refused entrance into the caves when the sun
rose “because they sought to sin,” and so were transformed —
a moral element which recalls similar motifs in Pueblo myths.
But perhaps the most striking analogies are with the cosmog-
onies of the Algonquian and Iroquoian stocks. The four
Caracarols (caracol, “shell,” plural cacaracol, is the evident
derivation), one of whom was called “Mangy,” recall the
Stone Giants, and again recall the twins or (as in a Potawatomi
version) quadruplets whose birth causes their mother’s death,
while the tortoise cut from the shoulder (Martyr says it was
a woman by whom the brothers successively became fathers
of sons and daughters) is at least suggestive of the cosmo-
gonic turtle of North American myth. In the flood-legend,
the idea of fishes being formed from bones is remotely paralleled
by the Eskimo conception of the creation of fishes from the
finger-bones of the daughter of Anguta; and Benzoni tells
how, in his day, the Haitians still had a pumpkin as a relic,
“ saying that it had come out of the sea with all the fish in it.”
In the order of his narrative — though not, apparently, in
the order in which he deemed the events ought to lie — Fray
Ramon follows the story of the emergence of the First People
from caves with the adventures of a hero whom he calls Gua-
gugiana, but whom Peter Martyr terms Vagoniona. It is
easy to recognize in this hero an example of the demiurgic
Trickster-Transformer so common in American myth. Like
the Trickster elsewhere, he has a servant or comrade, Gia-
druvava, and the first story that Pane tells is one of which we
would fain have a fuller version, for even the fragmentary
 THE ANTILLES

3i

sketch of it is full of poetic suggestion. Guagugiana, it seems,
was one of the cave-dwellers of the First Race. One day he
sent forth his servant to seek a certain cleansing herb, but,
as Pane has it, “the sun took him by the way, and he became
a bird that sings in the morning, like the nightingale”; to which
Peter Martyr adds that “on every anniversary of his trans-
formation he fills the night air with songs, bewailing his mis-
fortunes and imploring his master to come to his help.”

In this tale, slender as it is, there is an element of unusual
interest, fortified by various other allusions to Antillean be-
liefs. It would appear that the First People, the cave-dwellers,
were of the nature of spirits or souls, and that the Sun was the
true Transformer, whose strength-giving rays gave to each,
as it emerged to light, the form which it was to keep. The dis-
embodied soul (opia) haunts the night, moreover, as if night
were its native season; in the day it is powerless, and men
have no fear of it. Surely it is a beautiful myth which makes of
the night-bird’s song a longing for the free life of the spirit, or
at least an expression of the feeling of kinship with the spirit-
world.

The tale goes on to tell how Guagugiana, lamenting his lost
comrade, resolved to go forth from the cave in which the First
People dwelt. Yet he went not alone, for he called to the
women: “Leave your husbands! Let us go into other coun-
tries, where we shall get jewels enough! Leave your children;
we will come again for them; carry only herbs with you.”
The women, abandoning all save their nursing children (as
Peter Martyr tells), followed Guagugiana to the island of
Matenino, and there he left them; but the children he took
away and abandoned them beside a brook — or perhaps, as
Martyr implies, he brought them back and left them on the
shore of the sea — where, starving, they cried, “Toa, toa,”
which is to say, “Milk, milk!” “And they thus crying and
begging of the earth, saying, ‘toa, toa,’ like one that very
earnestly begs a thing, they were transformed into little crea-
 32

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

tures like dwarfs, and called tona, because of their begging the
earth.” Martyr’s more prosaic version says that they were
transformed into frogs; but both authorities agree that this is
how the men came to be left without wives; and doubtless it
is this myth from which Columbus gained at least a part of
his notion of the Amazon-like women “who dwell alone in the
island of Matenino.”

Other episodes in the career of Guagugiana, which Pane
recounts in a confused way, are his going to sea with a com-
panion whom he tricked into looking for precious shells and
then threw overboard; his finding of a woman of the sea who
taught him a cure for the pox; this woman’s name was Gua-
bonito, and she taught him the use of amulets and of orna-
ments of white stone and of gold. Peter Martyr’s variant
says: “He is supposed to go to meet a beautiful woman, per-
ceived in the depths of the sea, from whom are obtained the
white shells called by the natives cibas, and other shells of a
yellowish colour called guianos, of both of which they make
necklaces; the caciques, in our own time, regard these trinkets
as sacred.” In this there is a striking suggestion of the Pueblo
myths of the White-Shell Woman of the East and of the sea-
dwelling Guardian of the yellow shells of the West; and it is
quite to be inferred that the regard in which the caciques
held these objects was due to a ritual and magical significance
analogous to that which we know in the Pueblos.

V.   THE AREITOS

“The Spaniards,” says Peter Martyr,12 “lived for some
time in Hispaniola without suspecting that the islanders wor-
shipped anything else than the stars, or that they had any
kind of religion, . . . but after mingling with them for some
years . . . many of the Spaniards began to notice among them
divers ceremonies and rites.” These ceremonies are called
areitos, or areytos, by the Spanish writers; and from the early
 THE ANTILLES

33

descriptions it is obvious that they were rites of the typical
American kind, dramatic dances or mysteries performed in
the great crises of national and personal life, or in the changes
and climaxes of that course of the seasons, which is the life of
Nature. As in the case of myths, so in the case of rites, it is
chiefly those of Haiti which are described for us; but there is
little reason to doubt that these are typical of all the Greater
Antilles.

Birth, marriage, death, going to war, curing the sick, ini-
tiation, and puberty rites all seem to have had their appro-
priate ceremonies. Songs played an important part in these
ceremonies; indeed, the word areito is frequently restricted to
funeral chants, or elegies in praise of heroes. But the chief rite
known to us, and, we may feel assured, the chief rite of the
whole Ta'ino culture, was the ceremony in honour of the
Earth Goddess. This ceremony, as celebrated by the Haitians,
is described by both Benzoni and Gomara with some detail.
Gomara’s account is as follows:13

“When the cacique celebrated the festival in honour of his
principal idol, all the people attended the function. They
decorated the idol very elaborately; the priests arranged them-
selves like a choir about the king, and the cacique sat at the
entrance of the temple with a drum at his side. The men came
painted black, red, blue, and other colours or covered with
branches and garlands of flowers, or feathers and shells, wear-
ing shell bracelets and little shells on their arms and rattles
on their feet. The women also came with similar rattles, but
naked, if they were maids, and not painted; if married, wear-
ing only breechcloths. They approached dancing, and sing-
ing to the sound of the shells, and as they approached the
cacique he saluted them with a drum. Having entered the
temple, they vomited, putting a small stick into their throat,
in order to show the idol that they had nothing evil in their
stomach. They seated themselves like tailors and prayed with
a low voice. Then there approached many women bearing
 34

over, the outer unities of mode of life are reflected by inner
communities of thought; for there are unmistakable kinships
of idea, not only throughout the civilized group, but also in
the whole range of the regions affected by its arts; while
underlying these and outcropping at the poles, there is a
definable stratum of virtually identical primitive thought.
Nevertheless, these unities are cut across by differences,
partly environmental and partly historical in origin, which
give, as said above, distinctive character to the parallel groups
of the two continents. One might, indeed, say that the cul-
tural division is twinned, north and south, — with a certain
primacy, as of elder birth and clear superiority in the northern
groups; for, on the whole, the Maya is superior to the Inca,
just as the Iroquois and Sioux are superior to Carib and
Araucanian, and the Eskimo to the Fuegian.

Such, in loose form, is the native configuration of American
culture and hence of native American thought, and without
question a desirable mode of treating the latter would be to
follow this natural chart. Nevertheless, there are reasons which
fully justify, in the study of native ideas, the bringing together
in a single treatment of all the materials relating to the peoples
of Latin America. The most obvious of these reasons is the
unity of the descriptive literature, in its earlier and primary
works almost wholly Spanish. It is not merely that such writers
as Las Casas, Acosta, Herrera, and Gomara pass ubiquitously
from region to region of the Spanish conquests, now north,
now south, in the course of their narratives; it is rather that
a certain colouristic harmony is derived from what might be
termed the linguistic prejudices of their tongue, which, there-
fore, they share with those Spanish chroniclers whose field of
description is limited to some one region. The mere fact that
the ideas of an Indian nation are first described by a sixteenth
century Spaniard — friar, bishop, or cavalier — gives to them
the flavour of their translation and context, and thus estab-
lishes a sort of community between all groups of ideas so de-
 4

INTRODUCTION

scribed. Nor need this be matter for regret: primitive thought,
with its burning concreteness and its lack of relational expres-
sion, is as truly untranslatable into analytical languages as
poetry is untranslatable; and it is, on the whole, good fortune
to have, as it were, but one linguistic colour cast upon so large
a body of aboriginal ideas.

Further — what may not be to the liking of the ethnologist,
but is certainly of high zest to the lover of romance — the
Spanish colour is quite as much in the nature of imagination
as in the hue of expression. No book on Latin American
mythology could be complete without description of those
truly Latinian fables which the discoverers brought with them
to the New World, and there, wedding them to native tradi-
tions (ill-heard and fabulously repeated), soon created such a
realm of gorgeous marvel as glamoured the age with fantasy
and set the coolest heads to mad adventure. In such names as
Antilles, Brazil, the Amazon, Old World myths are fixed in
New World geography; and beyond these there is the whole
series of fantastic tales with which the Spaniard, in a sort of
imaginative munificence, has enriched the literature and the
romantic resources of this world of ours. The Fountain of
Eternal Youth, the Seven Cities of Cibola, the Island of the
Amazons and the marvellous virtues of the Amazon Stone, El
Dorado (“the Gilded Man”), the treasure cities of Manoa
and Omagua, the lost empire of the Gran Moxo and the Gran
Paytiti, Patagonian giants, and “men whose heads do grow
between their shoulders,” and finally, most wide-spread of all,
the miracles of the robed and bearded white man who, long
ago, had come to teach the Indian a new way of life and a
purer worship and had left the cross to be his sign, in whom no
pious mind could see other than the blessed Saint Thomas:
all these were in part a freight of the caravels, and they re-
present collectively a chapter second to none in mythopoesy.
There is no match for this cargo of imported fantasy in the
parts of America colonized by the English and the French.
 INTRODUCTION

5

This, however, need not be accredited merely to cooler blood
and calmer race: the North American colonies belong to the
seventeenth century, a good hundred years after the Spaniards
had completed their most golden conquests, and for the Span-
iard, no less than for the others, the hour of intoxication and
extravagance had by then gone by — leaving its flamboyant
tones to warm the colours of succeeding times. Thus it is that
Latin American myth is in no faint degree truly Latinian.

But while there is a certain Old World seasoning in Latin
American myth, native traditions are, of course, the substan-
tial material of the study. This material is striking and various.
It embraces the usual substrata of demoniac beliefs and
animistic credulities, and above these such elaborate forma-
tions as the Aztec and Maya pantheons, with their amazing
astral and calendric interpretations, or the enigmatic and
fervid religion of Peru. Many of the stories are little more
than vocal superstitions; others, such as the conquering of
death in the Popul Vuh, the Brazilian tale of the release of the
imprisoned night, or the superb Surinam legend of Maconaura
and Anuanaitu, will compare, both for dramatic power and
subtle suggestion, with the best that the world can show.
There is, of course, the constant difficulty of deciding where
myth clearly emerges from the misty realm of folk-lore, and,
at the other extreme, where it is succeeded by science and
religion; but this difficulty is more theoretic than practical: in
its central character mythology is present wherever there are
animating gods operant in the body of nature, and myth is pres-
ent wherever spirits or deities are shown as dramatically inter-
acting causes. With a few possible exceptions (the possibility
being probably but the expression of our ignorance), all Ameri-
can Indians are mythopoets, whose mythology is characterized
in characterizing their beliefs.

The practical problem of handling and apportioning the
subject-matter is similar to that presented in the case of
North America, and rather more difficult. In the first place,
 6

INTRODUCTION

it were idle to undertake the mere narration of stories and
superstitions without some delineation of the conditions of
the life and culture of those who make them; frequently, the
whole relevance of the tale is to the manner of life. In the
next place, the feasible mode of apportionment, by regional 'di-
visions, is made difficult not only by the vastness of some of
the regions, but even more so by the unevenness of culture,
and hence of the range of ideas. If the lines were drawn on the
scale of Old World studies, Mexico (Nahua and Maya) and
Peru would each deserve a volume; and the proportionately
slight attention which they receive in the present work is due
partly to the need of giving reasonable space to other regions,
partly to the fact that the myths of these fallen empires are
already represented by an accessible literature. Still a third
problem has to do with the order in which the matters should
be presented. From the point of view of native affinities, the
logical step from the Antilles is to the Orinoco and Guiana
region (that is, from Chapter I to Chapter VIII).3 But since,
in beginning with the Antilles, one is really following the course
of discovery — seeing, as it were, with Spanish eyes — the
natural continuation is on to Mexico and Peru, and thence to
the more slowly uncovered regions of central South America.
This procedure, also, follows a certain bibliographical trend:
the relative importance of Spanish authors is much less for
the latter chapters of the book, and the sources of material,
in general, are of later origin.

Finally, a word might be said with respect to interpretation.
No matter how conscientiously one may aim at straight
narration, the mere need for coherence will compel some in-
terpreting; while every translation is, in its degree, an inter-
pretation (and one literally impossible). Besides and beyond
all this, there are the prepossessions of the recorders to be
taken into account — honest men who interpret according
to their lights. There are the Biblical prepossessions of the
early Padres, for whom the Tower of Babel and the Dispersion
 INTRODUCTION

7

were recent and real events: granting a Noachian Deluge of
the thoroughness which they had in mind, nothing could be
more rational than were their readings of aboriginal legends
of events of a kindred nature, or than their speculations as to
what sons of Shem the Indians might be. There are the tradi-
tionary visions of migratory descendants of the Lost Tribes,
of far-wandering Buddhist monks, of sea-faring Orientals, and
forgotten Atlantideans; and there is the wonderful Euhemerism
of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg (ever the more admirable
in the more reading) — neither the first nor the last of his
tribe, but assuredly the most gifted of them all. There are,
again, the theological biases of missionaries, for whom the
devil is seldom far and God is generally near; and there are
the no less ingrained prejudices of the anthropologists who
serenely Tylorize and fetishize the most recalcitrant materials,
and of the philologists who solarize and astralize because the
model was once set for them. America has proven an abun-
dant field for the illustration of all these methods of reading
the riddle of man’s fancy; and it is scarcely to be desired that
one should report the matters without some reflection of the
colourations. But, in sooth, how could myth be myth apart
from meaning?

Which leads (by no devious routing of reflection) to some
consideration of the meaning of mythology and of our interest
in it. Such interest may be of any of several types. A first,
and still persistent, interest, and one to which we owe, for
America, from Ramon Pane onward, more actual material
than to any other, is the desire of the Christian missionary to
discover in the native mind those points of approach and
elements of community which will best enable him to spread
the faith of Christendom. In many cases, of course, the mis-
sionary is seized with a purely speculative zeal for recording
facts, but it is usually possible in such records to detect
the influence of the impulse which first brought him into the
field, — and which, it may be added, makes of his services a
 8

INTRODUCTION

matter for the gratitude of all who follow him. A second in-
terest, which is often not sharply divorced from the first, as
instanced in Missionary Brett’s poetizing of the myths of the
Guiana Indians,4 is the aesthetic and imaginative. What
classical mythology has done for the art and poetry of Chris-
tian Europe all men know: Dante and Milton, Botticelli and
Michelangelo are only less its debtors than are Homer and
Phidias. Further, the Renaissance curiosity, with its passion
for the antique gems and heathen gods whose forms so stimu-
lated its own expressions, was at its height when America was
discovered and conquered; and it is small wonder that that
interest was transformed, where the marvel of the New World
was in question, into a wave of American exotism which rose
to its crest in the humanitarian enthusiasm of the eighteenth
century.5 In our own day this interest is continuing, more
soberly but not less fruitfully, in a deliberate effort on the part
of artists, of poets, and of musicians to discover the elements
of lasting beauty in the native arts and mythic themes. From
a certain point of view there is a peril in the aesthetic interest:
most investigators consciously or unconsciously possess it, and
most recorders of native myths consciously or unconsciously
dress their materials with the suaver forms of expression
which the cultivated languages of Europe have developed.
There is, in other words, some untruth to aboriginal thought
in the desire to find or inject art where the original motive
was realistic, or, if aesthetic, governed by a taste foreign to
our own. On the other hand, we recognize readily enough
that the real creative gain, in an artistic sense, must come
from an amalgamation, and with such an example of artis-
tic achievement through amalgamation as is afforded by the
Renaissance, we can but hope that the more intimate adoption
of the ideas and motives of American Indian art into our own
aesthetic consciousness may yet result in an American Renais-
sance no less notable.

A third interest in American mythology is that of the an-
 INTRODUCTION

9

thropologists, by whom the domain is today most cultivated.
Here the foundation is scientific curiosity and the modes are
those of the natural and historical sciences. This type of in-
terest, of course, determines its own problems and methods.
For example, to it we owe most of the exact recording and
minute analysis of materials: the preservation of texts in the
native tongues, and the careful application of ethnological
and archaeological observations to their interpretation. Nat-
urally, the key-problem here is of the origin and distribution
of the American Indian peoples, and the reconstruction of
their history, both physical and ideational, — wherein recent
advances have been veritably in the nature of strides. Along
with this problem of distribution and genesis there has co-
existed the complementary question of the influence of nature
(human and environmental) upon the forms of expression —
a question to which one might ascribe three facets, the philo-
logical, the sociological, and the more strictly bionomic, with
its strong Darwinian leanings. Ultimately the two comple-
mental problems resolve into an effort to read human nature,
as human nature is reflected in its express reactions to the
complex world by which it is modified even while it offers a
conserving resistance, born of the strength of its traditions
and of racial solidarity. This means, at the bottom, an interest
in human psychology.

It is here that the anthropological interest in mythology
passes over into the philosophical. Philosophy strives to
achieve, as it were, a generalized autobiography of the human
mind. It starts, inevitably, with psychology, and with those
elemental unities of experience which our senses (inner and
outer) determine for us; it goes on to try to discover the range
and fullness of meaning of all the variations of human ex-
perience. Philosophers are interested in mythology, therefore,
primarily from a psychological standpoint: they are interested
in reading the mind’s complexion, as mythopoesy reflects it;
in analyzing out the images of sense in human thought, the
 IO

INTRODUCTION

images of instinct, of kind and kin, of speech and number;
and again in reviewing the natural reactions of the human
spirit to the visible and sensible world, with its seasons and
cycles and evident metamorphoses, — reactions which start,
apparently, with a dreamy consciousness of the fluid and in-
coherent character of an outer, man-environing world, and
culminate in a sense of the allegory and drama of things
physical, and the discovery of a thinking self, still hazy as to
its powers and its limitations. The biographic tale is a long
one; it begins in savagery and continues on into the highest
civilization; it is today unfinished, and so long as man lives
and thinks must continue unfinished; but it is not without
form, and its continuities become the more obvious with the
extension of our knowledge of men.

It should be added that each of the interests which have
been named shares in or leads to that final interest which is
most appropriate to all, namely, a common concern for human
welfare. The missionary interest is obviously actuated by
this from the very beginning, and, as applied to America, it
has produced (in Las Casas and his many notable successors)
a truly wonderful series of apostolic figures — in themselves
a moving revelation of the possibilities of human nature.
Hardly less striking is the humanitarianism which has accom-
panied the aesthetic interest — one need but mention Mon-
taigne’s sympathetic curiosity, Rousseau, fantastic in his
eighteenth century credulity, Chateaubriand, with his “epic
of the man of nature,” or Fenimore Cooper’s idealization of
the savage chivalrous,—while the curiosity of the anthropolo-
gist and the philosopher, as must all honest curiosity about
things human, leads at the last to understanding and sym-
pathy, and ultimately to an active desire to preserve the mani-
fest good which enlightens every chapter in the narrative of
human progress.

Finally, it is perhaps worth observing that America affords
a field of truly unique profit for all of these interests. The
 INTRODUCTION

ii

long isolation of its inhabitants from the balance of mankind,
the variety of the forms and levels of their native achievement,
the intrinsic value to humanity at large of what they did
achieve, both in material and ideal modes, all unite to give
to the races of the New Hemisphere an almost other-world
distinction from the Old World peoples from whose midst (in
some remote day) they doubtless sprang. It is true that the
resemblances between the modes of life and the bent of thought
in the two Worlds are as striking and numerous as their diver-
gences; but this fact is in itself of the highest significance in
that it emphasizes that fundamental unity, spiritual as well as
physical, which is of the whole human brotherhood.

It is surely apparent that one book cannot satisfy all the
interests which have been here defined. It is possible, how-
ever, that a description which should show what, in the main,
are the materials to be found and how they are distributed
with reference to accessible sources of study might well con-
tribute to all. Nothing more ambitious than this is in the
plan of the present work.
 
 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
 :,3
 LATIN-AMERICAN

MYTHOLOGY

CHAPTER I
THE ANTILLES

I.   THE ISLANDERS1

A GLANCE at a map of the Western Hemisphere reveals
two great continents, North and South America, some-
what tenuously united by the Isthmus and the Antilles. The
Isthmus is solid, mountainous land, forming a part of that
backbone of the hemisphere which extends along its western
border, continuous from Alaska to the Land of Fire. The An-
tilles are an archipelago, or rather a group of archipelagoes,
extending without gap from the tip of Florida to Trinidad and
the mouths of the Orinoco. Both connexions have a certain
weight, or leaning, toward North America. The Isthmus nar-
rows southward almost to the point of its attachment to
South America, while to the north it broadens out into Central
America, the peninsula of Yucatan, and the plateau of Mexico.
Similarly, the southern division of the archipelago, the Lesser
Antilles, forms an arc of islets, mere stepping-stones, as it were,
from the southern continent to the large islands of the Greater
Antilles — Porto Rico, Hispaniola or Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba —
which are natural outliers of the continent to the north. Cuba,
indeed, almost unites Yucatan and Florida; while breasting
Cuba and Florida, toward the open sea, is a third island
group, the Bahamas, still further emphasizing the northern
predominance.
 i6

PLATE XV

DiRKE Bound to the Bull

The artists of this group (popularly known as the
Farnese Bull) have followed the text of the myth in
laying the scene of the episode on Mount Kithairon,
which they have not merely indicated by the depiction
of rocks and crags, but also personified in the small
human figure in the right foreground. Amphion
(identified by his lyre) is striving with all his strength
to subdue a powerful bull so that his brother Zethos
can pass a rope, attached to the struggling creature's
horns, around the body of Dirke. Their mother,
Antiope, a complacent spectator, sunds lance in hand
in the right background. From a Greco-Roman
marble group by ApoUonios and Tauriskos (end of
second century B.C.), in Naples (Brunn-Bruckmann,
DenkmaUr griechischer und romischer Sculptur^ No.
367). See pp. 43-44.



 



 




 



 



 



 



MYTHS OF THE NORTHERN MAINLAND 43

as some allege, after the cow (ySofc) which Kadmos followed to
the site of Thebes. With certain allowances, the latter deriva-
tion is probably nearer the truth than the other.

Amphion and Zethos. — The story of Amphion and Zethos,
though woven into that of Kadmos, is in origin independent of
it and is therefore better told separately. Antiope, the mother
of these heroes, was reputed to be the daughter of Asopos, the
river-god, or of Nykteus (" Night '0- Charmed by the atten-
tions of Zeus, she yielded herself to him, but when her father
became aware of her condition she fled to Sikyon, where she
became the wife of a certain Epopeus. Nykteus, overwhelmed
with the disgrace which his daughter had brought upon him,
took his own life after first requesting his brother Lykos
("Light") to punish Antiope and her husband. When some
time had elapsed Lykos proceeded to Sikyon, slew Epopeus,
and brought his niece a captive to Thebes. On the homeward
journey, however, she gave birth to twin sons, whom she ex-
posed on the mountain-side where they were afterward found
by a shepherd who reared them to manhood, one of them,
Zethos, becoming a herdsman and hunter, and the other,
Amphion, a skilled player on the lyre. In the meantime Lykos
and his wife Dirke cruelly maltreated Antiope, but by a des-
perate effort she succeeded in escaping from Thebes and
made her way to the fastnesses of Mount Kithairon, where
she was hospitably received by her own sons, who, of course,
failed to recognize her. By chance Dirke, coming to the moun-
tain to perform some rites to Dionysos, discovered Antiope
and in vindictive fury commanded the shepherds to tie her to
a mad bull which, when loosed, would carry her to a horrible
death. Just in time Amphion and Zethos learned that the
unhappy woman was their mother. Catching the bull, they re-
leased Antiope and bound Dirke by the hair in her place, after-
ward picking up the mangled body and casting it into a spring
which has borne Dirke's name ever since. The young men
then went to Thebes, killed Lykos, took the chief authority,



 



 



44 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

and built the walls of the city, Amphion charming the stones
into their places by means of the sweet strains of his lyre, the
gift of the Muses.

According to one account, Zethos married Thebe, from whom
the city got its name; but according to another, his wife was
Aedon, who bore him a son Itylos, whom, by a mere chance,
she killed. Overcome by grief, Zethos pined away and died,
while Aedon was given the form of the nightingale and endowed
with those plaintive notes with which she may yet be heard
mourning for her son's untimely death. Amphion became the
husband of Niobe, the daughter of Tantalos, and a family of
many sons and daughters blessed their union. In her maternal
pride Niobe boasted that she, a mortal, had brought into the
world more children than Leto, and this so incensed Leto's
children, Apollo and Artemis, that Apollo slew the sons of
Niobe as they were hunting on Kithairon, while Artemis killed
the daughters beneath their mother's roof. Niobe fled from
Thebes to her father in Asia Minor, and there

"... for her sons* death wept out life and breath
And, dry with grief, was turned into a stone." ^

What is said to be her form is still to be seen on the cliffs of
Mount Sipylos.

Kadmos. — Agenor, a great-grandson of lo, established him-
self in Phoinikia, where he had a daughter named Europe, whom
Zeus one day carried away to Crete by force. On her disap-
pearance Agenor sent his wife and sons throughout the neigh-
bouring lands in quest of her and ordered them not to return
without her, but all failed in their errand, and, fearful of
Agenor's anger, they resolved never to go back home, Phoinix
settling in a district of Phoinikia, Kiliz in Kilikia, and Thasos,
Kadmos, and their mother Telephassa in Thrace. After the
death of Telephassa, Kadmos felt free to continue his search
for Europe, and going to Delphoi he inquired of the oracle
concerning her. The god commanded him to cease worrying



 



 



MYTHS OF THE NORTHERN MAINLAND 45

over his sister and to turn his thoughts into another channel,
bidding him to follow a heifer which he would find outside the
shrine and to establish a city on the spot where she would first
lie down to rest. In obedience to the divine command Kadmos
journeyed after the animal across Phokis until at length she
sought repose beside a hill in the heart of Boiotia, and there
he founded Thebes.

Desiring to sacrifice the cow to Athene, Kadmos dispatched
a number of his men to draw water for the rites from the spring
Areia, but most of them were killed by the dragon, the issue of
Ares, which guarded the water, whereupon Kadmos himself
slew the beast and at the suggestion of Athene scattered the
teeth broadcast over the earth as a farmer strews his grain.
From the teeth sprang a host of armed men who were called
Spartoi (" Scattered '0 ivom the strange manner of their birth.
At the sight of these warriors suddenly gathering about him,
Kadmos was stricken with fear and began to hurl stones at
them; and they, thinking that the missiles were thrown by
their fellows, murderously set upon one another until only
five of them were left alive. For his part in this tragedy Kad-
mos was bound in servitude to Ares for eight years, but at the
end of this period Athene bestowed the kingship upon him and
with the surviving Spartoi he began to build up the city of
Thebes. Zeus gave him in marriage Harmonia, the daughter
of Ares and Aphrodite, and all the gods came down from
Olympos to attend the nuptials and brought with them rare
and costly gifts, Kadmos's own presents to his bride being a
robe and the necklace, wrought originally by Hephaistos, which
Zeus had formerly given to Europe. To Kadmos and Harmonia
were bom a son, Poiydoros, and four daughters, Semele, Ino,
Agave, and Autonoe.

The Daughters of Kadmos; Semele. — Having won the favour
and love of Zeus, Semele secured from him a promise that he
would grant her whatever she might ask, and prompted by
Hera who appeared before her in the guise of her nurse, she



 



 



46 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH0LCX5Y

requested that her lover would show himself to her in the form
in which he had paid court to Hera. Bound by his promise,
the Olympian entered her chamber in a chariot amid the
flashing of lightning and the roaring of thunder, but, being a
mortal, Semele could not endure this terrible wooing and died.
From her body Zeus took their unborn child and sewed it in
his thigh, where it remained for three months, at the end of
which time he loosed the stitches and brought it forth to the
light. The child, who was none other than the god Dionysos,
was entrusted to Ino and her husband Athamas, a son of Aiolos,
to be reared. For their care of him the vindictive Hera visited
on them a plague of madness, but Zeus saved Dionysos by
changing him into a kid and secretly conveying him to the
nymphs of Mount Nysa in Asia, who in after years were re-
warded with a place among the constellations under the name
of the Hyades.

Ino. — When the madness came upon Athamas he imagined
that his elder son Learchos was a deer and killed him, while
Ino, with their younger son Melikertes in her arms, leaped
from the Molourian rocks into the waters of the Gulf of Megara.
The body of the child was washed ashore at the Isthmus, and
the Isthmian games were instituted in his honour by Sisyphos.
After their death both mother and son used to give aid to those
endangered by storms at sea, and sailors knew the one as
Leukothea, the "White Sea-Spirit," and the other as Palaimon,
the "Storm-Lord."

Autonoi. — Autonoe was married to Aristaios and bore him
a son Aktaion ("Gleaming One") who, under the training of
Cheiron, the Centaur, became an ardent huntsman. One day
when engaged in the chase on Kithairon he chanced to see the
goddess Artemis bathing in the spring Parthenios ("Maiden-
hood"), but as soon as the goddess discovered his presence
she changed him into a stag and instilling madness into his
fifty hounds sent them in hot pursuit of him. They caught him
and rent him in pieces. Then, not knowing what they had done,



 



 



MYTHS OF THE NORTHERN MAINLAND 47

they wandered over hill and dale searching for their master
and found satisfaction only when they saw his portrait before
the cave of Cheiron.

Agaoe. — The remaining daughter of Kadmos, Agave, be-
came the wife of Echion, one of the Spartoi, and bore to him a
son Pentheus, who in the course of time received the kingship
of Thebes. During his reign Dionysos returned to Thebes after
a long period of wandering in many lands of the east whither
he had been driven by a frenzy which Hera had inflicted on him
for his discovery of the vine, and so great a power over the
women of Thebes did the god come to possess that they all
left their homes and betook themselves to Kithairon to cele-
brate his rites. Pentheus treated this "barbarous dissonance
of Bacchus and his revellers" with the utmost contempt, until,
rashly approaching the women votaries, he got a glimpse of
his mother performing some secret ceremony, whereupon, with
vision distorted by a sort of divine frenzy, she mistook him
for a deer, and, rushing upon him, tore him asunder.

Sorrowing over the evils which had befallen their family,
Kadmos and Harmonia abdicated the throne and withdrew to
the land of the lUyrians. By force of arms they ruled among
these people for a time and were then sent by 2feus to live for-
ever in the Elysian Fields, while their son Polydoros remained
at Thebes wielding his father's sceptre.

The chief import of the legend of Amphion and Zethos is
that it affords evidence of the great antiquity of Thebes.
Even at the remotely early time of the legend's creation men
had utterly forgotten the circumstances of the building of the
city's defences, else this would never have been explained by
the miraculous power of a lyre. That the story of Kadmos con-
tains anything of genuine historical value is far from receiving
general assent. Some read in it the substantially true account
of the actual settlement of Thebes by Phoinikians who came
thither direct from Phoinikia. Others maintain that, on the
contrary, no sea-faring folk would have founded a city situated



 



 



48 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

as far inland as was Thebes; moreover, they point out that the
Phoinikian theory was unknown in Greek literature before the
fifth century bx. Those who occupy a middle ground are
probably closer to the actual facts; they believe that at some
very early date Thebes had extensive connexions with Phoi-
nikians, but they cannot accept them as primitive.* The
legend of Melikertes seems to have grown up about the cult
of the drowned, but the interpretation of others of this group
of myths will be more appropriately discussed elsewhere.*

The Sorrows of the House of Labdakos; Oidipous. — When
Polydoros died, he left a son Labdakos who was killed shortly
after he became king, some people believing him to have been
slain by a god for much the same kind of sin as that of which
Pentheus had been guilty. His son Laios was banished from
the realm by Amphion, but on Amphion's death he returned to
assume his inherited rights. Dreadful calamities awaited him
and his descendants, for he was under a curse — and to the
ancients curses were as inevitable as the decrees of Fate.
During his exile he had carried oflF Chrysippos, the son of Pelops,
and Pelops had solemnly cursed him with childlessness, or,
should he have a child, with death at the child's hand. As
ruler of Thebes he married lokaste (Epikaste), the daughter of
Menoikeus, who brought him a son, thus foiling the first al-
ternative of Pelops's curse. In order to avert the second the
parents pierced the babe's ankles and gave him to a herdsman
to be exposed in the wilds of Kithairon, but it happened that
he was found by a shepherd of King Polybos of Corinth who
took him to the queen, Periboia.

The child, who was called Oidipous ("Swollen Foot") from
the swollen condition of his ankles, grew to manhood in the
court of Corinth, where he was the strongest and most ath-
letic of the youths of his circle and aroused the envy of many,
who thus found occasion to taunt him with his uncertain birth.
The innuendoes perplexed him, and being unable to induce
Periboia to throw any light on the matter of his parentage,



 



 



 



 



PLATE XVI

The Death of Pentheus

The artist has been true to the Theban myth in
making the rocky summit of Kithairon the theatre of
this tragedy. Pentheus, nude and defenceless, is being
beaten to the ground by the onslaught of three wild
votaries of Dionysos, evidently the surviving daughters
of Kadmos — Agave, Ino, and Autonoe. The fiercest
of the three who attacks Pentheus with a ihyrsos and
tears out his hair, is probably Agave, his unnatural
mother, but the other two cannot be definitely dis-
tinguished by name. In the upper comers of the
background are two Maenads brandishing whips and
torches. From a wall-painting in the House of the
Vettii, Pompeii (Hermann-Bruckmann, DenkmaUr der
Malerei des AlUrtumSy No. 42). See p. 47.



 



 




 



 



 



 



MYTHS OF THE NORTHERN MAINLAND 49

he repaired to Delphoi and made inquiry of the oracle, which
warned him never to enter his native country, else he would
kill his father and marry his mother. Instead, therefore, of
returning to Corinth and to his supposed parents, Oidipous
harnessed his car and drove eastward through Phokis. On a
narrow road he met Laios, his real father, to whom the royal
herald bade him yield place. For his refusal one of his horses
was cut down, and in retaliation Oidipous killed Laios and the
herald, after which he proceeded on his way to Thebes.

When the news of the death of Laios came to the city,
Kreon, the brother of lokaste, was appointed king. During his
reign a great disaster came upon Thebes, for Hera sent the
Sphinx, another of the horrible issue of Typhon and Echidna,
to destroy the citizens. This monster had the face of a woman,
the body and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird;
and her strange weapon of destruction was a riddle which she
would put to passers-by, devouring those who failed to give
the right answer. The riddle was this: "What is it which, hav-
ing but one voice, is first four-footed, then two-footed, and is
at the last three-footed?" After many had perished in their
unfortunate attempts to solve the riddle, Kreon proclaimed that
the wife and the kingdom of Laios would be given to the one
who should succeed. To the question of the Sphinx Oidipous
replied: "The creature is man, for in infancy he crawls on all
fours, in mature years he walks upright on two feet, and in
old age goes as it were on three by the aid of a cane." When
she heard these words, the Sphinx cast herself down from the
cliflFs, and Oidipous received the promised rewards. At last he
had fulfilled the two conditions of the oracle.

For many years the life and reign of Oidipous were happy,
and through his marriage with lokaste he had two sons, Poly-
neikes and Et6okles, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene.
At length, however, pestilence and famine wasted both land
and people, and when the oracles were consulted, their answers
revealed his blood relationship to his queen. Though their sin



 



 



50 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

had been committed in ignorance, lokaste hanged herself, in
the anguish of remorse, and Oidipous put out his own eyes.
The Thebans banished him from their city, and as he departed
his sons made no efFort either to help him or to defend him.
For this base ingratitude he called down bitter curses on their
heads from which they were thenceforward to suffer; for the
curses of parents on children were the direst of all. With the
faithful Antigone he went to Kolonos in Attike, where he be-
came a suppliant at the shrine of the Eumenides, the avenging
spirits of the dead. Theseus of Athens welcomed him and af-
forded him a home in which to end his days in peace. After a
number of days Ismene joined the two exiles. When Oidipous
knew that his end was near, he called his daughters to his side
to perform for him the last rites for the dying, and, taking them
tenderly in his arms, he said:

"My children, on this day ye cease to have
A father. All my days are spent and gone,
And ye no more shall lead your wretched life,
Caring for me. Hard was it, that I know.
My children! Yet one word is strong to loose,
Although alone, the burden of these toils.
For love in larger store ye could not have
From any than from him who standcth here,
Of whom bereaved ye now shall live your life." *

After uttering these words he passed away, another victim of
the far-reaching curse of Pelops.

The friends of Oidipous desired to bury his body in Thebes,
but the Thebans, remembering the sufferings, brought upon
them by the much-cursed dynasty of Laios, forbade them to
do so. They interred it, however, in another place in Boiotia,
but when this, too, became afflicted with calamities, its citi-
zens ordered the removal of the corpse. Taking it to Eteonos,
the friends ignorantly laid it in a shrine of Demeter. When
the people of the locality discovered this, they inquired of the
goddess what they should do, and received the reply: "Remove
not the suppliant of the god." So they left the bones of Oidi-



 



 

26 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

wife of Menelaos of Argos. Her later adventures belong to
the story of the great Trojan War.

Helen's twin brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes, were known
jointly as the Dioskouroi, "sons of Zeus," although it was
popularly believed that only Polydeukes was in fact the son
of the god, Tyndareos being the father of the other. These
brothers were conspicuous figures in Spartan cult and myth,
and were regarded by the ancient Greeks in general as the
outstanding exponents of heroic virtue and valour. So faithful
and deep was their affection for one another that their two per-
sonalities were blended as into one, and thus they stood as the
divine guardians of friendship. They excelled in athletic sports
and feats of arms, Kastor being the type of expert horseman
and Polydeukes that of the skilful boxer, while to the accom-
paniment of Athene's flute they are said to have invented the
Spartan military dance. Their altar stood at the entrance to
the hippodrome at Olympia, and they appeared frequently on
the heroic stage. They participated in the voyage of the Ar-
gonauts and in the great hunt at Kalydon, and at Sparta they
fought against Enarsphoros, the son of Hippokoon, but their
chief military exploit was their sanguinary encounter with
their cousins Idas and Lynkeus, the sons of Aphareus.

This story is told in two distinct forms. In one, the two pairs
of brothers were making raids on the cattle of Arkadia. Idas
and Lynkeus were driving a captured herd into Messenia when
they almost fell into an ambuscade laid for them by Kastor
and Polydeukes. These latter had hidden themselves in a
hollow oak, but they could not elude the keen eyes of Lyn-
keus, who was able to see through the hearts of trees and
beneath the surface of the earth. Lynkeus attacked Kastor
and killed him, but Polydeukes swiftly pursued his brother's
slayer and struck him down as he was about to roll upon him
the image of Hades which stood on Aphareus's tomb. Sud-
denly Zeus intervened and smote Idas with a thunderbolt
which consumed the bodies of the slain brothers together,



 



 



MYTHS OF THE PELOPONNESOS 27

whereupon Polydeukes prayed Zeus to be reunited with Kas-
tor, obtaining an answer in the divine permission ever after-
ward to live with him alternately on Olympos and in the
underworld.

In its other form the story depicts the brothers of each family
as rivals for the hands of their two cousins, the daughters
of Leukippos. The sons of Tyndareos seized the maidens
and carried them off, pursued by the sons of Aphareus who
kept taunting them with having violated the custom of the
country by withholding marriage presents from the brides'
parents. In reprisal Kastor and Polydeukes appropriated their
pursuers* cattle and gave them to Leukippos, the consequence
being a double duel in which Kastor killed Lynkeus, and then
Idas slew Kastor for his insults to the dead, and lastly Poly-
deukes killed Idas. After this the sons of Tyndareos were
vouchsafed immortality, as in the first version of the myth.
Their significance in cult, together with that of Helen, will be
explained in our consideration of the divinities of light. Idas
and Lynkeus are to be regarded as the Messenian doubles of
the Dioskouroi.

Idas and Marpessa. — Evenos, the uncle of Leda, had a
daughter Marpessa. Both Apollo and Idas, enamoured of her
beauty, became her suitors, and the latter in his passionate
love seized her and bore her away in a winged chariot, the gift
of Poseidon. Eluding the pursuit of Evenos, he brought her to
Messene, where Apollo attempted to wrest her from him and
would have worked his will had not Zeus interrupted the quar-
rel and bidden the maiden choose between the rivals. Marpessa,
fearing that the fickleness of Apollo in the past was a poor
promise of fidelity in the future, chose the mortal suitor Idas.

"*If I live with Idas, then we two
On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand
In odours of the open field, and live
In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch
The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.



 



 



28 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite.
But clambering limbs and little hearts that err.'

When she had spoken, Idas with one cry
Held her, and there was silence; while the god
In anger disappeared. Then slowly they,
He looking downward, and she gazing up.
Into the evening green wandered away." *



III. ARGOS

The land of Argolis was so situated in relation to the main
highways of navigation in the Mediterranean as to invite a
great variety of foreign connexions. In this one may find an
explanation of the motley fabric of Argive myth, and a careful
study of its composition makes it possible to state with some
degree of assurance the sources of its sundry elements. Natur-
ally, it is outside the scope of this work to tag each constituent
tale of the narrative with its national origin. Suffice it to say
that we find a nucleus of native Argive myth overlaid in an
irregular fashion with legends of Cretan, Euboian, Boiotian,
Milesian, Corinthian, Megarian, and Aitolian provenance,*
which, regardless of the question of their origin, are nearly all
fraught with interest for the student of comparative religion
and custom.

InachoSj lo. — The first figure in the purely Argive part of
the complex of myths is that of Inachos, the principal river and
river-god of the Argolid. In the developed genealogy he is the
offspring of Okeanos and Tethys, and by a marriage with an
Okeanid he begat two sons, Phoroneus and Aigialeus, the first
of whom, also said to be an autochthon, we have already seen
as one of the pioneers of human culture, Aigialeus, especially
prominent among the people of Sikyon, was the personification
of the southern shores of the Gulf of Corinth. Phoroneus had
two children — Apis, after whom the Peloponnesos was called



 



 



 



 



PLATE XII

lo AND ArGOS

lo, who can be identified by the mere point of a
horn protruding from her hair, is seated on a stone
and looks appealingly at her guardian. Argos stands
with one foot on a stone and rests his right hand on a
crag in the background, as he gazes straight in front
of him with wide staring eyes. It is easily seen that
the painter has entirely forgotten or ignored the orig-
inal religious meaning of the myth. From a Pompeian
wall-painting (Hermann-Bruckmann, Denkm'Aler der
Malerei des Jltertums^ No. 53). See pp. 28-30.



 



 




 



 



 



 



MYTHS OF THE PELOPONNESOS 29

Apia; and Niobe, by whom Zeus became the father of Pelasgos
and Arg08. One of the descendants of Argos of the third or
fourth generation was Argos Panoptes ("All-Seeing"), a monster
whose body was covered with eyes. He slew the bull which
was ravaging Arkadia, flayed it, and used its skin as a garment,
and he is also said to have killed Satyros as he was raiding the
herds of the Arkadians, and to have trapped Echidna, the
hideous issue of Tartaros and Gaia.

lo, the chief personage in this group of myths, was counted
either as the daughter of Inachos (or of Peiren, perhaps a double
of Inachos), or as a comparatively late descendant. An exact
genealogy is not essential to her story. She was the priestess
of the temple of Hera, the divine patroness of Argos, and her
charms drew upon her the attentions of Zeus, who corrupted
her, but who denied the deed when charged with it by his
wife. Like a coward he changed into a white heifer the maiden
whom he had wronged and surrendered her to Hera, who put her
in care of the vigilant Argos Panoptes. By him she was teth-
ered to an olive-tree in the grove of Mykenai, but at the com-
mand of Zeus, Hermes slew Argos, thereby earning for himself
the title of Argeiphontes (" Argos-Slayer" •), and set lo free,
whereupon, animated by a merciless spite, Hera sent a gad-fly
to pursue her from land to land. She was driven first of all
to the gulf whose name, Ionian, even today commemorates
her visit, and thence across lUyrikon and Thrace, whence she
made her way to Asia over the straits which from that day
were called the Bosporos ("Ox-Ford"^). Through Caucasus,
Skythia, and Kimmeria (Crimea), even across the Euxine, she
was goaded by the fly until at length she reached Egypt, where
she was given rest and restored by Zeus to her human form.
On the banks of the Nile she bore a son Epaphos ("Touch")
to the god, but the presence of the babe was offensive to the
jealous spirit of Hera, and through her machinations Epaphos
was taken from his mother and hidden in a far land. Again
the distressed lo was compelled to wander on the face of the



 



 



30 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

earth, until, after a long search, she found her son in Syria
and brought him back to Egypt, where he became the fore-
father of several great peoples.

The suggestions put forth to account for the myth of lo are
many and varied. Most of them try to identify both her and
Argos with celestial phenomena. For instance, lo is the moon
with its horned crescent wandering across the sky, and her guar-
dian, Argos, is the starry heavens. Such suggestions as these,
however, fail to satisfy the profounder student of folk-lore,
since they do not even attempt to give a reason for the senti-
ment, almost akin to reverence, with which the Argives regarded
the person of lo. The Heraion, the temple of Hera near Argos,
was doubtless the source of the earliest form of the myth, and
probably lo was none other than Hera herself, who elsewhere is
said to have assumed the form of a cow. At all events, the cow
was sacred in the cult of Hera. The tale of lo's wanderings is
apparently a late addition brought in from outside when the
original theme assumed new forms among the alien tribes and
cities which had dealings with Argos.

The Families of Danaos and Aigyptos. — Belos, a grandson
of Epaphos, ruled over Egypt, and by a daughter of the Nile
had four sons, in only two of whom, Danaos and Aigyptos, we
are interested at present. The latter was appointed king of
Arabia by his father, but by conquest he added to his realm
the country of the Melampodes ("Black Feet") which he
named Aigyptos* ("Egypt") after himself. He had a family of
fifty sons, and his brother Danaos, the sovereign of Libya, the
same number of daughters. The two brothers became involved
in a political quarrel, and Danaos with his daughters fled
by ship to Argos, whose king, Gelanor, yielded the crown to
him, thus restoring it to the line of lo. As it happened, the
land had been without sufiicient water since the time when
Poseidon had dried up the springs and streams to punish
Inachos for his award of the divine supremacy of Argos to
Hera, but one of Danaos's daughters, Amymone, gained the



 



 



MYTHS OF THE PELOPONNESOS 31

love of Poseidon and through him received knowledge of the
abundant springs of Leme, which thenceforth were a perpetual
blessing to the land and to the people. Presently the fifty
sons of Aigyptos appeared in Argos and demanded their fifty
cousins in marriage. Though distrusting them, Danaos ac-
quiesced in their demand, but secretly he gave to each daughter
a weapon with which she was to slay her husband at the earliest
opportunity, and on their wedding-night all except Hyper-
mnestra stabbed their bridegrooms to death in bed. For her dis-
obedience Danaos imprisoned Hypermnestra, but later, relent-
ing, allowed her to live with her husband, Lynkeus, while her
sisters buried their husbands' heads in the spring of Leme
and interred the bodies before the city. In compliance with the
behest of Zeus, Athene and Hermes cleansed them of the guilt
of bloodshed, after which Danaos held a series of athletic con-
tests, to the winners of which he gave his widowed daughters
in marriage. In an older form of the myth than that which
we have just outlined, Lynkeus inmiediately avenged the mur-
der of his brothers by killing not only the guilty daughters,
but Danaos as well. In Hades these women were condemned
to the endless task of filling a bottomless jar with water drawn
in leaky vessels.

This myth is a strange conglomerate of primitive magic and
cult. It seems to be, in part, of an aetiological character, and
to purport to reveal the origin of the ritual of a rain-charm
which had somehow become associated with the cult of the
dead. In this ritual a bottomless jar would be placed over the
grave of one who had died young or unmarried, and the liquids
poured into the vessel passed forthwith into the ground and
to the souls of the dead, the BavaoC^ "thirsty ones," who
would put an end to the drought as soon as their own thirst
should be satisfied. In all probability Hypermnestra was a
priestess of Hera in her capacity of goddess of wedlock, and
thus constitutes a link binding this myth with those emanating
at an earlier period, and more directly, from the Heraion.*



 



 



32 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

The connexion of Amymone and the springs of Leme with the
myth of the Danaids cannot be original.

Proitos and his Daughters. — On the death of Danaos his
son-in-law Lynkeus became king. He had two grandsons,
Akrisios and Proitos, who were said to have fought with one
another even before birth, so early did a quarrel ov6r the suc-
cession arise between them. When they became men, Akrisios
got the upper hand and exiled his brother who went to Lykia,
in Asia Minor, where he was hospitably received by King lo-
bates and was given the princess Anteia (or Stheneboia) in
marriage. With the aid of a Lykian army he returned to the
Peloponnesos, captured Tiryns in spite of its strong fortifica-
tions, and there established his rule. His wife bore him three
daughters, who in young womanhood were stricken with mad-
ness, either for refusing the rites of Dionysos, or for treating
an image of Hera with contempt. Raving wildly, they roamed
throughout the land until Melampous ("Black Foot," i. c.
Egyptian) of Pylos, a seer skilled in the use of healing drugs,
promised to cure them on condition that Proitos surrender to
him one third of the kingdom. This Proitos refused to do, but
meanwhile the evil grew, for the other women of the country
were becoming infected with the madness. The seer renewed
his promise of healing, this time with the added condition that
a second third of the kingdom go to his brother Bias. At
last Proitos yielded, and his daughters were made whole by
means of Bacchic rites. Bias wedded one of the two younger
maidens, and Melampous the other, by whom he became the
founder of a family of seers.

The instructive feature of this myth is its revelation of two
strata of cults in primitive Argos, the earlier that of Hera, the
later that of Dionysos. The alleged impious acts of the daugh-
ters of Proitos seem to serve as explanation for certain wanton
words and rites in the worship of these two gods in historical
times." With this story we may compare a Boiotian legend
which records the madness of the daughters of Minyas.



 



 



 



 



PLATE XIII

Perseus

Although unaccompanied by an inscription this
figure can be definitely identified as Perseus. In his
right hand he holds the harpi^ or sickle-sword, the gift
of Hermes, on his shoulders hangs the pouch which
he received from the Nymphs, and on his feet are the
winged sandals which bear him swiftly through the
air. His head-gear seems to be not the dog-skin cap
of Hades, but a special form of the pttasos^ or travelling
hat. From a red-figured amphora of about 500 B.C.,
in Munich (Furtwangler-Reichhold, Griechiscbi Vaseti"
malerei^ No. 134). See pp. 32fF.



 



 




 



 



 



 



MYTHS OF THE PELOPONNESOS 33

AkrisioSy Danaij and Perseus. — Akrisios, who continued to
hold sway over Argos, was told by an oracle that his daughter's
son would kill him. To circumvent the prophecy he enclosed
his daughter Danae in a brazen chamber, thinking thereby to
cut her off from all human intercourse; but he failed in his pur-
pose; for, as some say, the maiden was corrupted by her uncle
Proitos, or, as others claim, by Zeus, who won his way to her
in the form of a shower of gold falling through an aperture in
the roof of her prison. When she had given birth to a son whom
she called Perseus, Akrisios put them both in a chest and sent
them adrift on the waters of the Aegean. By wind and wave
the chest was carried to Seriphos, where it was dragged ashore
by Diktys, the brother of Polydektes, the king of the island,
who released Danae and her child and gave them a home.
After a number of years Polydektes made love to Danae but
was rejected. Fearing to take her by force, since Perseus was by
this time quite capable of defending his mother, he devised a
plan to get her son out of the way. To all his friends he sent
invitations to a wedding-feast, and Perseus, with the extrava-
gant asseveration of youth, replied that he would not fail to
be present even if he had to bring the Gorgon's head. When
the guests had assembled and it was discovered that all of them
except Perseus had brought horses as presents, Polydektes dis-
missed him until he should have fulfilled his promise to the
letter, warning him, moreover, that in event of failure his
mother would be wedded by force. Sadly Perseus withdrew to
a lonely spot; but in the midst of his perplexity Hermes and
Athene appeared and led him to the Graiai, the ancient daugh-
ters of Phorkys and Keto. These had been grey from birth
and had amongst them only one eye and one tooth, which
they used in turns. By getting possession of these indispen-
sable members and by threatening to keep them, Perseus com-
pelled the Graiai to tell him the way to the dwelling-place of
the nymphs who guarded the dog-skin cap of Hades, the winged
sandals, and the magic pouch. Following the directions given