Topic: Latin American Mythology (new ocr old one too many errors)

[Prometheus]

All this is plain euhemerism, for Itzamna was a deity of rain
and fertility; Yucatan, it is said, was without moisture when
he came to it; he rose from the sea; and his temples and his
tomb were by the seaside. His festival, according to Landa,
fell in Mac (March), when he was worshipped in company
with the gods of abundance. He caused the dead to rise and
cured the sick; while in his honour a temple was built with
four doors leading to the four extremities of the country, as far
as Guatemala, Tabasco, and Chiapas, this shrine being called
Kab-ul, or “the Potent Hand,” — a striking image of the sky-
deity reaching down from heaven, of which there are analogues
in Egypt and Peru. Both Landa and Lizana state that he was
the son of Hunab-Ku (“the Holy One”), “the one living and
true God, who, they said, is the greatest of the gods, and who
cannot be figured or represented because he is incorporeal. . . .
From him everything proceeds, . . . and he has a son whom
they name Hun Ytzamna.” All this indicates a deity of the
descending rains and dews, son of Father Heaven, and, through
his association with the East, giver of life, light, and knowledge.
Students of the codices believe that he is represented by “God
D ” — the aged divinity with the Roman nose and toothless
mouth, associated (as is Tlaloc) with the double-headed ser-
pent, which is clearly a sky-symbol. Perhaps, as Seler suggests,
he is the “Grandfather Above,” the Lord of life, analogous to
the Mexican Tonacatecutli.12

As has been indicated, the worship of Kukulcan,13 to whom
tradition ascribed the latest appearance of the three culture
heroes, was especially associated with Chichen Itza and
Mayapan, and perhaps with Nahua immigrations. His name,
like that of the Quiche demiurge Gucumatz, means “Plumed
Serpent” and is a precise equivalent of “Quetzalcoad” — the
first element referring directly to the long and iridescent plumes
of the quetzal. The frequency of bird-serpent symbols in Maya
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art, regarded as emblematic of this deity, as well as images,
both in the codices and on the monuments, of the long-nosed
god himself, indicate a deep-seated and fervent worship, so
that it may indeed be an open question as to whether Kukulcan
is the pattern or the copy of Quetzalcoatl, with the probabilities
favoring the Maya source. Certainly it is significant that, as
Tozzer tells us, his name still survives among the Yucatec
Maya, while to the Lacandones he is a many-headed snake
which dwells with the great father, Nohochakyum: “ this snake
is killed and eaten only at the time of great national peril, as
during an eclipse of the moon and especially that of the sun.”
The importance of Kukulcan in the peninsula is indicated by
Landa’s description of his festival, which occurred on the
sixteenth day of Xul (October 24). Upon Kukulcan’s depart-
ure, says Landa (who clearly regarded the god as an historical
personage), there were some Indians who believed that he had
ascended into heaven, and regarding him as a god, they built
temples in his honour. After the destruction of Mayapan,
however, his feasts were kept only in the province of Mani,
“but the other districts, turn by turn, in recognition of what
was due to Kukulcan, presented each year at Mani sometimes
four, sometimes five, magnificent feather banners with which
they celebrated the fete” This festival was observed in the
following manner: After fasts and abstinences, the lords and
priests of Mani assembled before the multitude; and on the
evening of the festal day, together with a great number of mum-
mers, they issued from the palace of the prince, proceeding
slowly to the temple of Kukulcan, which had been properly
adorned. When they had reached it and had prayed, they
erected their banners, setting forth their idols on a carpet of
leafage; and having lighted a new fire, they burned incense
in many places, making oblations of meat cooked without
seasoning and of drink made from beans and the seeds of
gourds. The lords and all who had observed the fast remained
there five days and five nights, praying, burning copal, and
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136

performing sacred dances, during which period the mummers
went from the house of one noble to that of another, performing
their acts and receiving the gifts offered them. At the end
of five days they carried their donations to the temple, where
they shared all with the lords, the singers, the priests, and the
dancers; and after this the banners and idols (doubtless house-
hold gods) were taken again to the palace of the prince, whence
each returned to his own house. “They say and hold for certain
that Kukulcan descended from the sky the last day of the feast
and personally received the sacrifices, the penitences, and the
offerings made in his honour.”

III.   YUCATEC DEITIES

For the names of the Maya gods we are mainly indebted to
sparse notices in the works of Landa and Lizana, who, in ob-
literating native writings, destroyed far more than they pre-
served. Landa14 gives a general picture of the aboriginal
religion, indicating a ritual not less elaborate than the Mexican,
though with far less human bloodshed. “They had,” he says,
“a great number of idols and of sumptuous temples. Besides
the ordinary shrines, princes, priests, and chief men had ora-
tories with household idols, where they made special prayers
and offerings. They had as much devotion for Cozumel and
the wells of the Chichen Itza as we for pilgrimages to Rome and
Jerusalem; and they went to visit them and make offerings
as we go to holy places. . . . They had such a number of idols
that their gods did not suffice them; for there was not an animal
nor a reptile of which they did not make images, and they
formed them also in the likeness of their gods and goddesses.
They had some idols of stone, but in small number, and others,
of lesser size, of wood, though not so many as of earthenware.
The idols in wood were esteemed to such a degree as to be
counted for inheritances, and in them they had the greatest
confidence. They were not at all ignorant that their idols were
 M
 PLATE XX

W

Tablet of the Foliated Cross, Palenque. This
cross, like that shown in Plate XX (B), rests upon a
monstrous head, doubtless representing the Under-
world, and is surmounted by the quetzal, the symbol
of rain and vegetation. It is possible that the
greater of the two human figures represents a deity,
the lesser a priest, or that both are divinities as in
the analogous figures of the codices (cf. Plate IX,
upper figure). After drawing in Maudsley [c],
Vol. IV.

(B)

Tablet of the Cross, Palenque. The cross was
encountered as an object of worship on the Island
of Cozumel by the first-coming Spaniards. Cruci-
form figures of several types are of frequent occur-
rence as cosmic symbols in Mexican and Mayan
art. With this plate and with Plate XX (A) should
be compared Plates VI and IX. After drawing in
Maudsley [c], Vol. IV.

(O

Tablet of the Sun, Palenque. The two cary-
atid-like figures beneath the solar symbol doubtless
represent the upbearers of the heavens (cf. Plate
IX, lower figure). After drawing in Maudsley [c],
Vol. IV.
 
 I
 
 (
 
 
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137

only the work of their own hands, dead things and without
divinity, but they venerated them for the sake of what they
represented and because of the rites with which they had
consecrated them.”

Among the deities mentioned by Landa are the Chacs, or
“gods of abundance,” whose feasts were held in the spring of
the year in connexion with the four Bacab, or deities of the
Quarters; and again in association with Itzamna at the great
March festival designed to obtain water for the crops, when the
hearts of every kind of wild animal and reptile were offered in
sacrifice. The Chacs were evidently rain-gods, like the Mexi-
can Tlaloque, with a ruler, Chac, corresponding to Tlaloc. The
name was likewise applied to four old men annually chosen to
assist the priests in the festivals, and from Landa’s descrip-
tions of the parts played by them it is clear that they repre-
sented the genii of the Quarters.

Other divinities who are named include Ekchuah (also men-
tioned by Cogolludo and Las Casas), to whom travellers prayed
and burned copal: “At night, wherever they rested, they
erected three small stones, depositing upon each of these some
grains of their incense, while before them they placed three
other flat stones on which they put more incense, entreating
the god which they name Ekchuah that he would deign to
bring them safely home.” There were, again, medicine-gods,
Cit-Bolon-Tum and Ahau-Chamahez, names which Brasseur de
Bourbourg15 interprets as meaning respectively “Boar-with-
the-Nine-Tusks” and “ Lord-of-the-Magic-Tooth.” There
were gods of the chase; gods of fisher folk; gods of maize, as
Yum Kaax (“Lord of Harvests”), of cocoa; and no doubt of
all other food plants. Of the annual feasts, the most signifi-
cant appear to have been the New Year’s consecration of the
idols in the month Pop (July); the great medicine festival, with
devotion to hunters’ and fishermen’s gods, in Zip (September);
the festival of Kukulcan in Xul (October); the fabrication of
new idols in Mol (December); the Ocna, or renovation of the
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138

temple in honour of the gods of the fields, in Yax (January);
the interesting expiation for bloodshed — “for they regarded
as abominable all shedding of blood apart from sacrifice” — in
Zac (February); the rain-prayer to Itzamna and the Chacs,
in March (mentioned above); and the Pax (May) festival in
which the Nacon, or war-chief, was honoured, and at which
the Holkan-Okot, or “Dance of the Warriors,” was probably
the notable feature. The war-god is represented in the codices
with a black line upon his face, supposed to represent war-
paint, and is often shown as presiding over the body of a sacri-
ficial victim; while with him is associated not only the death-
god, Ahpuch, but another grim deity, the “Black Captain,”
Ek Ahau.

Celestial divinities were probably numerous in the Maya
pantheon, as was almost inevitable in view of the extraordi-
nary development of astronomical observation. Xaman Ek
was the North Star, while Venus was Noh Ek, the Great Star.
The Sun, according to Lizana,16 was worshipped at Izamal as
Kinich-Kakmo, the “Fiery-Visaged Sun”; and the macaw was
his symbol, for, they said, “the Sun descends at midday to
consume the sacrifice as the macaw descends in plumage of
many colours.” In view of all the fire thus came at noon upon
the altars, after which the priest prophesied what should come
to pass, especially by way of pestilence, famine, and death.
“The Yucatec have an excessive fear of death,” says Landa,
“ as may be seen in all their rites with which they honour their
gods, which have no other end than to obtain health and life
and their daily bread”; and he continues with a description of
the abode of blessed souls, a land of food, drink, and sweet
savours, where “there is a tree which they call Yaxche, of an
admirable freshness under the shady branches of which they
will enjoy eternal pleasure. . . . The pains of a wicked-life
consist in a descent to a place still lower which they call Mit-
nal, there to be tormented by demons and to suffer the tortures
of hunger, cold, famine, and sorrow.” The lord of this hell is
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Hanhau; and the future life, good or bad, is eternal, for the
life of souls has no end. “They hold it as certain that the souls
of those who hang themselves go to paradise, there to be re-
ceived by Ixtab, goddess of the hanged”; and many ended
their lives in this manner for but light reason such as a disap-
pointment or an illness.

The image of Ixtab, with body limp and head in a loop, as if
hanged, is one of those recognized in the codices; for in default
of mythic tales, few of which are preserved concerning the
Yucatec gods, these codex drawings and the monumental
images furnish our main clues to the Maya pantheon. Follow-
ing the suggestion of Schellhas,17 it is customary to designate
the codical deities (nameless, or uncertainly named) by letters.
Thus, God A is represented with visible vertebrae and skull
head, and is therefore identified as the death-god, named
Hanhau in Landa’s account, Ahpuch by Hernandez, and Yum
Cimil (“Lord of Death”) by the Yucatec of today. Death is
occasionally shown as an owl-headed deity, and is also asso-
ciated with the moan-bird (a kind of screech-owl), with the god
of war, and with a being that is dubiously identified as a
divinity of frost and of sin. God B, whose image occurs most
frequently of all in the codices, and who is represented with
protruding teeth, a pendulous nose, and lolling tongue, is
closely connected with the serpent and with symbols of the
meteorological elements and of the cardinal points; and is re-
garded as representing Kukulcan. God C, the “god with the
ornamented face,” is a sky-deity, tentatively identified with
the North Star, or perhaps with the constellation of the Little
Bear. God D, the old divinity with the Roman nose and the
toothless jaws, is regarded by Schellhas as a god of the moon
or of the night, although in him other scholars see Itzamna, re-
garded as a sun-deity. God E is the maize-god, probably Yum
Kaax, or “Lord of Harvests”; God F is the deity of war; and
with him is sometimes associated God M, the “black god
with the red lips,” perhaps Ekchuah, the divinity of merchants
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

and travellers, for war and commerce are connected in the New
World as in the Old.

These seven deities are those of most frequent occurrence
in the codices, though the full list, which surely gives a general
picture of the Maya pantheon, includes also God G, the sun-god
God H, the Chicchan-god (or serpent-deity); God I, a water-
goddess; God K, the “god with the ornamented nose”; God L,
the “old black god,” perhaps related to M; God N, the “god
of the end of the year”; God O, a goddess with the face of an
old woman; and God P, a frog-god. Others are animal deities,
— the dog, jaguar, vulture, tortoise, and, in differing shapes
of representation, the panther, deer, peccary, bat, and many
forms of birds and animals.

Not a few of these ancient deities hold among the Maya of
today something of their ancient dignity: they are slightly
degraded, not utterly overthrown by the intervention of
Catholic Christianity. At least this is the picture given by
Tozzer as result of his researches among the Yucatac villagers.
According to them, he says,18 there are seven heavens above
the earth, each pierced by a hole at its center. A giant ceiba,
growing in the exact center of the earth, rears its branches
through the holes of the heavens until it reaches the seventh,
where lives El Gran Dios of the Spaniards; and it is by means
of this tree that the spirits of the dead ascend from heaven to
heaven. Below this topmost Christianized heaven, dwell the
spirits, under the rule of El Gran Dios, which are none other than
the ancient Maya gods. In the sixth heaven are the bearded
old men, the Nukuchyumchakob, or Yumchakob, white-haired
and very fond of smoking, who are the lords of rain and the
protectors of human beings — apparently the Chacs of the
earlier chroniclers, though the description of them would seem
to imply that Kukulcan is of their number; perhaps originally
he was their lord; now they receive their orders from El Gran
Dios.

In the fifth heaven above dwell the protecting spirits of the
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141

fields and the forests; in the fourth the protectors of animals;
in the third the spirits ill-disposed toward men; in the second
the lords of the four winds; while in the first above the earth
reside the Yumbalamob, for the special protection of Christians.
These latter are invisible during the day, but at night they sit
beside the crosses reared at the entrances of the pueblos, one
for each of the cardinal points, protecting the villagers from
the dangers of the forest. With obsidian knives they cut
through the wind, and make sounds by which they signal to
their comrades stationed at other entrances to the town.
Truly, this description answers astonishingly to the Aztec
lord of the crossroads, Tezcatlipoca.

Below the earth is Kisin, the earthquake, the evil one, who
resents the chill rains sent down by the Yumchakob, and raises
a wind to clear the sky. The spirits of suicides dwell here also,
and all souls excepting those of war-slain men and women dead
of child-birth (which go directly to heaven) are doomed for a
time to this underworld realm.

Other diminished deities are Ahkinshok, the owner of the
days; the guardians of the bees; the spirit of newfire; Ahkushtal,
of birth; Ahmakiq, who locks up the crop-destroying winds;
patrons of medicine; and a crowd of workers of ill to men,
among them the Shtabai, serpentiform demons who issue from
their cavernous abodes and in female form snare men to ruin.
Paqok, on the other hand, wanders abroad at night and attacks
women. The Yoyolche are also night-walkers; their step is
half a league, and they shake the house as they pass.

Tozzer makes the interesting observation that in many cases,
where among the Maya is found a class of spirits, the purely
heathen Lacandones recognize a single god. Thus, to the
Nukuchyumchakob of the Maya corresponds the Lacandone
Nohochakyum, who is the Great Father and chief god of their
religion, having as his servants the spirits of the east, the con-
stellations, and the thunder. At the end of the world he will
wear around his body the serpent Hapikem, who will draw
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

people to him by his breath and slay them. Nohochakyum is
one of four brothers, apparently lords of the four quarters. As
is usual in such groups, he of the east is pre-eminent. Usukun,
one of the brothers, is a cave-dweller, having the earthquake for
his servant; he is regarded with dread, and his image is set
apart from the other gods. There are a number of other gods
and goddesses of the Lacandones, several of which are clearly
identifiable as the same as the Maya deities described by Landa
and other early writers. As a whole, the pantheon is a humane
one; it lacks that quality of terror which makes hideous the
congregation of the Aztec deities. Most of the gods, Maya and
Lacandone, are kindly-disposed toward men, and doubtless it
was this kindliness reflected back which kept the Maya altars
relatively free of human blood.

IV.   RITES AND SYMBOLS

No region in America appears to have furnished so many or
such striking analogies to Christian ritual and symbolism as
did the Mayan. It was here, on the island of Cozumel, that
the cross was an object of veneration even at the first coming
of the Spaniard; and when the rites of the natives were studied
by the missionaries, they were found to include many that
seemed to be Christian in inspiration. Bishop Landa 19 de-
scribes at length the Yucatec baptism, which was designated
by a name equivalent, he says, to renascor—“for in the Yucatec
tongue zihil means to be reborn” — and which was celebrated
in a complex festival, godfather and all. The name of the rite
was Em-Ku, or “Descent of God”; and, he adds, “They be-
lieve that they receive therefrom a disposition inclined to good
conduct and that it guarantees them from all temptations of
the devil with respect to temporal things, while by means of
this rite and a good life they hope to secure salvation.” Sacra-
ments of various sorts, confession of sins, penitence, penance,
and pilgrimages to holy shrines were other ritual similarities
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[Prometheus]

H3

with Catholic Christianity which could not fail to be impressive
and which actually furthered the change of religion with a
minimum of friction.

Along with these analogies of ritual there were likenesses of
belief: traditions of a deluge, a confusion of tongues, and a dis-
persion of peoples, as well as reminiscences of legendary teachers
of the arts of life and of the truths of religion in which it was
not difficult for the eye of faith to discern the missionary labours
of Saint Thomas. Las Casas,20 quoting a certain cleric, Padre
Francisco Hernandez, tells of a Yucatec trinity: one of their
old men, when asked as to their ancient religion, said that “ they
recognized and believed in God who dwells in heaven, and that
this God was Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and that the
Father was called Igona, who had created men and all things,
that the Son was named Bacab, and that he was bom of a
virgin called Chibirias, who is in heaven with God; the Holy
Spirit they termed Echuac.” The son, Bacab, it is added, being
scourged and crowned with thorns by one Eopuco, was tied
upon a cross with extended arms, where he died; but after
three days he arose and ascended into heaven to be with his
father. The name Echuac signifies “merchant”; “and good
merchandise the Holy Spirit bore to this world, for He filled
the earth with gifts and graces so divine and so abundant.”

The honesty of this account is no less evident than its dis-
tortion, which may have been due as much to the confused
reminiscences of the old Indian as to the imaginative expectancy
of the Spanish recorder. Bacab and Ekchuah are mentioned
by Landa and others, and Las Casas also states that the mother
of Chibirias was named Hischen (que nosotros decimos haber
sido Sand Ana), who must surely be the goddess Ixchel, goddess
of fecundity, invoked at child-birth. The association of the
Bacabs (for there are four of them) with the cross and with
heaven is also intelligible, since the Bacabs are genii of the
Quarters, where they upheld the skies and guarded the waters,
which were symbolized in rites by water-jars with animal or
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

human heads. They are, no doubt, in the Maya region as in
Mexico, represented by caryatid and cruciform figures, of
which, we may suppose, the celebrated Tablet of the Cross
and Tablet of the Foliate Cross at Palenque are examples.

The character of the Bacab is best indicated by Landa’s 21
description of the New Year festival celebrated for them; and
he calls them “four brothers whom God, when creating the
world, had placed at its four corners in order to uphold the
heaven . . . though some say that these Bacabs were among
those who were saved when the earth was destroyed in the
Deluge.” In all the Yucatec cities there were, Landa states,
four entrances toward the four points, each marked by two
huge stones opposite one another; and each of the four suc-
cessive years designated by a different New Year’s sign was
introduced by rites performed at the stones marking the en-
trance appropriate to the year. Thus Kan years were devoted
to the south. The omen of this year was called Hobnil, and
the festival began with the fabrication of a statue of Kan-u-
Uayeyab which was placed with the stones of the south, while
a second idol, called Bolon-Zacab, was erected at the principal
entrance of the chief’s house. When the populace had assembled
they proceeded, along a path well-swept and adorned with
greenery, to the gate of the south, where priests and nobles,
burning incense mingled with maize, sacrificed a fowl. This
done, they placed the statue upon a litter of yellow wood,
“and upon its shoulders an angel — horribly fashioned and
painted — as a sign of an abundance of water and of a good
year to come.” Dancing, they conveyed the litter to the pres-
ence of the statue of Bolon-Zacab at the chief’s house, where
further offerings were made and a banquet was shared by such
strangers as might be within the gates. “Others drawing
blood and scarifying their ears, anointed a stone which was
there, an idol named Kanal-Acantun; and they moulded also
a heart of bread-dough and another of gourd-seeds which they
presented to the idol Kan-u-Uayeyab. Thus they guarded this
 I
 PLATE XXI

Stone Lintel from Menche, Chiapas, representing
a Maya priest asperging a penitent who is drawing
a barbed cord through his tongue. After photo-
graph in the Peabody Museum.
 
 
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145

statue and the other during the unlucky days, smoking them
with incense and with incense mingled with ground maize for
they believed that if they neglected these rites, they would be
subject to the ills pertaining to this year. When the unlucky
days were past, they carried the image of Bolon-Zacab to the
temple, and the idol of the other to the eastern gate of the
town, that there they might begin the New Year; and leaving
it in this place, they returned home, each occupying himself
with the duties of the New Year.” This was regarded as a year
of good augury; and similar rites were performed in connexion
with each of the other year-signs. Under Muluc the omen was
called Canzienal and was also regarded as good. It was the
year of the east, and the gate was marked by an idol named
Chac-u-Uayeyab, while the deity presiding at the chief’s house
was termed Kinich-Ahau, the meaning of which must be “Lord
of the Solar Eye” if Brasseur’s interpretation be correct. War-
dances were a feature of the celebration, doubtless to Sol In-
victus; and offerings made in the form of yolks of eggs further
suggest solar symbolism; while it was believed that eye-disease
or injury would be the lot of anyone who neglected the rites.
Ix years were devoted to the north, with an omen called
Zac-Ciui and regarded as evil. The god of the quarter was
named Zac-u-Uayeyab, and he of the centre Yzamna, to whom
were offered turkeys’ heads, quails’ feet, etc. Cotton was the
sole crop in which abundance was to be expected, while ills of
all sorts threatened. Darker still were the prognostics of
Hozanek, the omen of Cauac years, sacred to the west. An
image of Ek-u-Mayeyab was carried to the portals of the west,
while Uac-Mitun-Ahau presided in the central place; and on a
green and black litter the god of the gate was carried to the
centre, having on his shoulders a calabash and a dead man,
with an ash-coloured bird of prey above. “This they conveyed
in a manner showing devotion mingled with distress, per-
forming dances which they called Xibalba-Okot, which signi-
fies ‘ dance of the demon.’ ” Pests of ants and devouring birds
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146

were among the plagues expected; and among the rites by
which they sought to exorcise these evils was a night of bon-
fires, through the hot coals of which they raced with bare feet,
hoping thus to expiate the threatened ills, all ending in an
intoxication “demanded both by custom and by the heat of
the fire.”

V.   THE MAYA CYCLES22

It is probable that the Mexican calendar is remotely of
Mayan origin, especially as the fundamental features of the
calendric system are the same in the two regions; viz., first,
the combination of the Tonalamatl of two hundred and sixty
days with the year of three hundred and sixty-five days in a
“round” or “bundle,” of fifty-two such years; and second, the
co-ordination of cyclic returns of calendric symbols with the
synodic periods of the planets, serving, along with purely
numerical counts, to distinguish and characterize the major
cycles. It is in this second feature that the Maya calendar
is vastly superior to the Mexican; forming, indeed, by far the
most impressive achievement of aboriginal America in the way
of scientific conception.

The Mayan name for the period known to the Aztec as
Xiuhmolpilli, or “Bundle of the Years,” is unknown; it is cus-
tomarily designated as the Calendar Round. In construction it
is essentially the same as the Mexican: the day, kin (literally,
“sun”), is combined in the twenty-day period, or uinal (prob-
ably related to uinic, “man,” referring to the foundation of
the vigesimal system in the full count of fingers and toes); and
thirteen of these periods are united in the Tonalamatl (the Maya
name is unknown), which Goodman designates the “Burner
Period,” believing it to be ceremonially related to incense
burning. As the combination of thirteen numerals with the
twenty day-signs causes the completion of their possible com-
binations in this period, the series, as with the Mexicans, begins
anew at the end of the Tonalamatl; and is so continued, repeat-
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147

ing indefinitely. The names of the Maya days, corresponding
to the twenty signs, are: Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi,
Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, lx, Men, Cib,
Caban, Eznab, Cauac, and Ahau. Each of these day-signs
(and probably each of the thirteen numbers accompanying
them) had its divinatory significance; and it is quite certain,
from Landa’s references alone, that divination formed a promi-
nent use of calendric codices.

The year, or haab, of the Maya, again like the Mexican, con-
sisted of eighteen uinals — Pop, Uo, Zip, Zotz, Tzec, Xul,
Yaxkin, Mol, Chen, Yax, Zac, Ceh, Mac, Kankin, Muan, Pax,
Kayab, and Cumhu, — plus five “nameless days,” or Uayeb.
This year of three hundred and sixty-five days is, of course, a
quarter of a day less than the true year, and such astronomers
as the Maya must have been could not have failed to discover
this fact. Bishop Landa states explicitly that they were quite
aware of it; but they did not, in all probability, resort to any
intercalation to correct the defect, for the whole genius of the
Mayan calendar consists in their unswerving maintenance of
the count of days. On the other hand, it is probable that the
priests who made the solar observations adjusted the seasonal
feasts to the changing dates as in the precisely similar custom
of ancient Egypt, where each ascending Pharaoh swore to pre-
serve the civil year of three hundred and sixty-five days with-
out intercalation: the immense power and prestige given to the
priesthood by this custom is a sufficient reason for its perpe-
tuity. The fact that 20 (uinal) and 365 (haab) factor with 5
gives, again, the division of the uinal days into groups of five,
each headed by one of the four — Ik, Manik, Eb. and Caban —
which alone could be New Year’s days.

The names of the “month,” or divisions of the year, like the
names of the uinal days, were symbolized by hieroglyphs, and
the days of the month were numbered o to 19, since in their
reckoning of time the Maya always counted that which had
elapsed. Thus every day had a double designation: its position
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

in the Tonalamatl, determined by day-sign and day-number
(1 . . . 13), and its position in the haab, determined by
“month’’-sign (uinal or Uayeb) and day-number (o . . . 19),
as, for example, the date-name of the Maya Era, “4 Ahau 8
Cumhu.” The possible combinations of these elements is ex-
hausted only in a cycle of 18,980 days, equal to 73 Tonala-
matls and to 52 haabs. This is the Calendar Round, or cycle
of date-names, which, like the other elements in the Maya
calendar, is endlessly repeated. It is probable that the Aztec
had no such precision in their dating system even within the
Year-Bundle, evidence for the employment of month-signs in
computation of the day-series being uncertain.

In yet another important respect the Maya were far in ad-
vance of the Mexicans, for the latter had no adequate means of
distinguishing dates of the same name belonging to separate
Year-Bundles, in consequence of which their historic records
are full of confusion; whereas the Maya developed an elaborate
method — still, curiously enough, a day-count — parallel with
the Calendar Round series, by which they were able to record
historic dates for immense periods. The system was essentially
mathematical and was based on their vigesimal notation, its
elements being as follows:

Kin.............................................. 1   day

Uinal........................................... 20   days

Tun (18 Uinals)................................ 360   days

Katun (20 Tuns) ............................. 7,200   days

Cycle (20 Katuns).......................... 144,000   days

Great Cycle, either 13 Cycles.............1,872,000   days

or 20 Cycles............................2,880,000   days

In this series, it will be observed, the third day-group does not
rise from the second by vigesimal multiplication; and it is as-
sumed that it has been, as it were, psychologically deflected
from the regular ascending series by the attraction of the 18
uinals of the natural year in order to bring the tun into some
kind of conformity with the haab. Beyond the katun, the na-
 YUCATAN

149

tive names for the cycles are unknown, though their symbols
have been determined.

The series of units of time thus composed is that employed
by the Maya of Yucatan, as recovered from the early Spanish
records and the codices. In this region the katun was the
historical unit of prime significance, for both Landa and Cogol-
ludo note the fact that at the end of every katun a graven stone
was erected or laid in the walls of an edifice to record the event.
Study of the sculptured stelae of the capitals and cities of the
Old Empire of the south has convinced archaeologists that
these stelae are similarly, in great part, monuments erected
not primarily to honor men or commemorate events but to
mark the passage of time. The units, however, as recorded
from readings of the dates, are not primarily katuns (of 7200
days), but halves and quarters of the katun. Morley,23 to whom
belongs credit of the demonstration of the system, gives to
these lesser periods the names hotun (“five tuns” or 1800 days)
and lahuntun (“ten tuns” or 3600 days). The amazing monu-
mental wealth, therefore, of the old Maya cities turns out to
be chiefly due to the importance which the Maya peoples at-
tached to the idea of time itself and to the recording of its
passage.

Such an idea could only have reference to religious or
mythico-religious beliefs, of the nature of which something is
to be inferred from the monumental and codical indications of
the cycles and the Great Cycle which entered into Maya com-
putations. The cycle is clearly a conception induced by the
necessities of vigesimal notation, with, no doubt, mythic
associations suggested by its pictographic notation; it is a
period of twenty katuns, just as the katun is twenty tuns. But
the duration of the Great Cycle is matter of dispute. Bowditch
and Goodman, basing their judgment on the fact that the
cycles in the inscriptions are numbered 1 ... 13, and again
upon the fact that the two known starting-points, or eras, of
Maya monumental chronology are just thirteen cycles apart,
 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

ISO

regard the Great Cycle as composed of thirteen cycles; Morley,
chiefly from evidence in the codices, believes that it was com-
posed of twenty cycles. It is possible, of course, that the con-
ception of the Great Cycle changed from the time of the Old
Empire to that of the New, perhaps influenced by the change
in the period of erecting monumental records; but in any case
the immense numbers of days embraced in the Maya reckonings
excite our wonder. Such calculations could have been made
possible only by the use of a highly developed arithmetical
system, and this the Maya possessed; for they had developed
a positional notation, employing a sign for zero (<S>), a
system of dots (. = I; .. =2; etc.) and bars (— 5; = = 10;
etc.) for the integers 1 ... 19 (== = 19), while the concep-
tion of positive and negative was achieved through the use
of these elements recorded vertically — units above zero,
twenties above the units, tuns in the third position upward,
and so on. The tun ( = 360) is an obvious calendric number,
and this makes clear that the Maya certainly developed the
higher possibilities of their mode of computation in connexion
with the needs of their reckoning of time. The perfection of
their achievement is indicated by the fact that through its
use they were enabled to distinguish any date within the range
of a Great Cycle from any other, thus creating a numbered
time-scheme which in our own system would be measured by
millenia.

To complete its historical value only one element need be
added, the selection of an era from which to reckon dates.
Two such eras are known, one bearing the name 4 Ahau 8
Cumhu, and the other (found in only two inscriptions) that
of 4 Ahau 8 Zotz, this falling thirteen cycles earlier than the
other. The former, from which nearly all the monumental in-
scriptions are reckoned, is some three thousand years anterior
to the period of the inscriptions themselves and probably,
therefore, refers to an event in the third millennium b. c., as-
suming that the monuments belong to the first thousand years
 YUCATAN

I5i

of our era. It is altogether unlikely that a date so remote can
represent any but a mythical event, such, we may suppose, as
the end of a preceding “Sun,” or Age of the World, and the
beginning of that in which we live; for the Maya, like the
Nahua, possessed the myth of ages of this type. Cogolludo
mentions two of these ages as terminated by annihilation of
the human race through epidemic, and a third as ended by
storm and flood; while Landa’s account of the calamities fol-
lowing the destruction of Mayapan seems clearly to be inter-
mingled with a myth of world catastrophes. The Popul Vuh
shows that the character of the Quiche legend was not essen-
tially unlike that of the Aztec, who may, indeed, have received
from the Maya their cosmogony along with their calendric
system, of which it is doubtless in some degree a product.

Astronomical data must have entered into the calculation
of these great epochs. Forstemann and other students have
discovered in the codices, particularly in the Dresden Codex,
evidences of the reckoning of the period not only of Venus
(five hundred and eighty-four days), but also of lunar revolu-
tions, of the period of Mars (seven hundred and eighty days),
and possibly of the cycles Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury as
well. Such periods, for astrological and divinatory purposes,
were recorded in the books of the priests; and, as elsewhere in
the world, the synodic revolutions of the planets, and the re-
currences of their stations with respect to the day-signs, gave
the material for the formation of huge cycles of time which
their mathematical system enabled them to compute. Thus
it is that Forstemann finds near the end of the Dresden Codex
vast numbers — designated as “Serpent Numbers” because
of the occurrence of the serpent-symbol in connexion with
them — which correspond to such cyclic recombinations of
signs and events.

“In the so-called ‘serpent numbers,’” writes Morley,24 “a
grand total of nearly twelve and a half million days (about
thirty-four thousand years) is recorded again and again. In
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

these well-nigh inconceivable periods all the smaller units may
be regarded as coming at last to a more or less exact close.
What matter a few score years one way or the other in this
virtual eternity? Finally, on the last page of the manuscript,
is depicted the Destruction of the World, for which the highest
numbers have paved the way. Here we see the rain serpent,
stretching across the sky, belching forth torrents of water.
Great streams of water gush from the sun and moon. The old
goddess, she of the tiger claws and forbidding aspect, the
malevolent patronness of floods and cloudbursts, overturns
the bowl of the heavenly waters. The crossbones, dread em-
blem of death, decorate her skirt, and a writhing snake crowns
her head. Below with downward-pointed spears, symbolic of
the universal destruction, the black god stalks abroad, a
screeching owl raging on his fearsome head. Here, indeed, is
portrayed with graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm.”

In their sculpture the Maya far surpassed the artistic ex-
pression of all other Americans, attaining not only decorative
power, but such idealization of the human countenance as is
possible only among people whose aesthetic sensibilities have
an intellectual background and guidance. No more con-
vincing evidence of this mental power could be forthcoming
than is shown in their mathematical and astronomical learn-
ing, at once a testimony to the antiquity of their culture and
to the force of .their native genius.

VI.   THE CREATION

Just as the notion of great astronomical cycles shadowed
forth eschatological cataclysms, so it reverted to cyclic aeons
of the past in which the world came to its present form. There
is no such wealth of creation myth preserved from the ancient
Maya as from the Nahua, but enough is recorded to make it
clear that the ideas of the two peoples were essentially one:
indeed, they clearly belong to a group of cosmogonical con-
 
 PLATE XXII

Final page from the Codex Desdensis showing
“Serpent Numbers” and typifying the cataclysms
destroying the world. See pages 151-52 for de-
scription, and compare Plates XII, XIII, XIV.
 
 
 YUCATAN

153

ceptions extending as far to the north as the Pueblos of the
United States, and not without influence beyond, into the
prairie country. Possibly the whole complex conception had
its first telling with the Maya; it is with them, at least, that
the numerical and calendric ideas with which it is logically
associated received the greatest development and give the
most natural raison d’etre to the mythic lore.

Something of the nature of the Maya conception is intimated
by Cogolludo and Landa, as noted in a preceding paragraph.
More is given in Tozzer’s account of Maya religion as it is to-
day.25 According to information obtained from Mayas of
Valladolid, the world is now in the fourth period of its exist-
ence. In the first, there lived the Saiyamkoob, “the Ad-
justers,” the primitive race of Yucatan, who were dwarfs and
built the cities now in ruins. Their work was done in darkness,
when as yet there was no sun. When the sun appeared they
were turned into stone, and their images are to be found to-
day in the ruins. In this period there was a living rope ex-
tending from earth to sky, by which food was brought down to
the builders. Blood was in this rope; but the rope was cut,
the blood flowed out, and earth and sky were parted. Water-
over-the-earth ended this period. It was followed by the age
of the Tsolob, “the Offenders”; and these, too, were de-
stroyed by a flood. The third age was that in which the Maya
reigned, but their day likewise passed amid waters of destruc-
tion, to give place to the present age peopled by a mixture of
all the races that have previously dwelt in Yucatan.

It is easy to align these notions with what we know of
Mexican myth, though it is evident that history rather than
genesis is its present significance. But purely cosmogonic is
the fragment from the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel
published by Martinez Hernandez26 with its suggestion of the
Thirteen Lords of the Day captured by the Nine of the Night
as the first great act:

“During the 11 ahau, Ahmucen-cab come [came] to cover
 iS4

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the faces of Oxlahun-ti-ku (thirteen gods); his names were
unknown except those of his sister and of his children: and they
said that the faces also were equally not visible; then, when the
world was made, they knew not that they would be entirely
cast away; and Oxlahun-ti-ku was captured by Bolon-ti-ku
(nine gods); then he brought down fire; then he brought down
salt; then he brought down the stones and trees and came to
play with the stones and trees; and Oxlahun-ti-ku was caught
and they broke his head and buffeted him, and also carried
him on their backs; and they despoiled him of his dragon and
his tizne [black paint or soot]; and they took fresh shoots of
yaxum and white beans, tuberous roots cut up small, and the
heart of small calabash seeds and of large calabash seeds cut
up small, and of black beans cut up small. This first Bolon-
tsac-cab (nine orders of the world) made a thick covering of
seeds and went away to the thirteenth heaven, and the sur-
face of the earth remained formed, and the peaks of the rocks
of the world.

“And the heart of Oxlahun-ti-ku went away, the hearts of
the tuberous roots refusing to go. And there came women
without-fathers, with those who have hard work, the without-
husbands, who, although living have no heart; and wrapped
in dog’s grass, they were buried in the sea.

“All at once came the water after the dragon was carried
away. The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and
they say that Cantul-ti-ku (four gods), the four Bacab, were
those who destroyed it. Then, when the universal destruc-
tion was past, they placed as dweller Kan-xib-yui, to order it
anew. And the tree, the white ymix, was placed standing in
the north; and he placed the supporting poles of the heaven;
and it was said that this tree was the symbol of the universal
destruction.” Four other trees, each of a different colour, each
symbol of a destruction of the world, were planted at the re-
maining quarters and the centre; and the form of the world
was then complete. “‘The whole world,’ said Ah-uuc-chek-
 YUCATAN

155

nale (he who seven times makes fruitful), ‘proceeded from the
seven bosoms of the earth.’ And he descended to make fruit-
ful Itzam-kab-ain (the female whale with alligator feet), when
he came down from the central angle of the heavenly region.
The four lights, the four regions of the stars, revolved. As
yet there was no light; absolutely there was no sun; absolutely
there was no night; absolutely there was no moon. They
awoke; and from then began the world. At that instant the
world began. Thirteen numeral orders, with seven, is the
period since the beginning of the world.”
 CHAPTER V

CENTRAL AMERICA

I.   QUICHE AND CAKCHIQUEL1

BY some accident of history the most significant literary
records of the Mayan peoples — and, in their way, of any
American stock — are not preserved to us from the builders of
the monumental cities, the Maya themselves, but from two
closely related tribes belonging to the southernmost group of
the Mayan race. The Quiche (frequently, Kiche) and the Cak-
chiquel (or Kakchiquel) dwelt in the mountains of Guatemala
overlooking the Pacific, where, except for the Nahuatlan Pipil,
to the east of them, their neighbours were other Mayan tribes
— the Tzental, the Mame, and their kindred to the west; the
Pokonchi, the Kekchi, and others to the north; and the Chorti
to the east. It is in the lands of these groups, mountain valleys
draining toward the Gulf and the Carribbean, that the ruins of
the monumental cities chiefly lie. At the time of the Conquest
their sites had long been abandoned, though it must not be sup-
posed that the tribes occupying the land were savage. On the
contrary, they lived in well-built, fortified towns, with fine
residences for the chiefs and pyramid temples for the service of
the gods; but the remains of the cities of the Conquest era have
yielded no such wealth of art as has been revealed by the ex-
ploration of the homes of the ancestral Maya, nor do the tradi-
tions of the tribes who inhabited the region at the coming of the
Spaniards throw any light upon the builders of the ancient
cities which, indeed, they seem scarcely to have known. Rather,
when the Quiche and their kindred entered the land, it appears
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157

to have been long deserted: “Only rabbits and birds were here,
they say, when they took possession of the hills and the plains,
they, our fathers and ancestors from Tulan, O my children,” —
so runs the beginning of the Cakchiquel Annals.2 These Annals,
like the Popul Vuh, or “ Sacred Book,” of the kindred Quiche,
profess to give a migration-legend of the ancestors of the tribe
and an account of the historic chiefs, but neither the one record
nor the other runs to a remote period; both point to a com-
paratively recent entrance into an abandoned country, the date
of which Brin ton would set at less than two centuries anterior
to the Conquest; nor is there any certain clue which would
associate the Quiche-Cakchiquel histories with those of the
contemporary Maya.

The relationship of the two centres of Mayan culture, Yucatec
and Guatemalan, is, however, more than merely linguistic and
racial. When the Maya of the later days of the Old Empire
were pushing northward into the peninsula, exploring and es-
tablishing cities, others of their kindred were penetrating the
mountains to the south, and the last town of the south to rise
and fall (as shown by its dated monuments) was at Quen Santo
in the Guatemalan province of Huehuetenango. Whether or
not something of the old culture was transmitted through these
groups or their descendants, whom, indeed, the Quiche and
Cakchiquel may have been, identities of mythic reference make
it certain that all Maya groups had some primitive community of
experience. Moreover, the southern tribes clearly shared with
the northern their literary and artistic bent. The story of the
defeat of the Quiche, in the Cakchiquel Annals,3 tells how the
latter slew “the son of the chief jeweller, the treasurer, the
secretary, and the chief engraver” of the Quiche monarch —
officers whose very character gives the picture of an accom-
plished society; and it may well be assumed that the literary
taste and historic feeling manifest in the Annals and the Popul
Vuh are but evidences, literary rather than graphic in char-
acter, of the genius which marks the whole Mayan race. Bras-
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158

seur de Bourbourg says4 of the Popul Fuh that “it is composed
in a Quiche of great elegance, and its author must have been
one of the princes of the royal family,” while of the Annals
(which he names Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan, and which was
indeed, in greater part written by a noble, Don Francisco Er-
nandez Arana Xahila) he declares that “the style is varied and
picturesque and frequently contains passages of high anima-
tion.” The translations of both documents quite sustain these
opinions of their literary excellence.

Las Casas, who was as familiar as any man with the general
character of native American culture, and especially with that
of Guatemala of which he was bishop, gives a general charac-
terization of native learning in his chapter (Apologetica His-
toria, ccxxxv) on “the books and religious traditions of Guate-
mala.” In the kingdoms and republics of New Spain, he says,
“among other offices and officials, were those who acted as
chroniclers and historians. They possessed knowledge of the
origin of all things relative to religion and to the gods and their
cult, as well as of the founders of their cities, of the beginnings
of their kings and lords and seignories, of the manner of their
election and succession, of how many and what lords and
princes had passed away, of their works and actions and memo-
rable deeds, good and bad, and of whatever they had governed
well or ill; also, of their great men and good, and of strong and
valorous captains, of the wars that they had made, and of how
they had distinguished themselves. Moreover, of the first
customs and the first comers, of how they had since changed
for good or ill, and of all that pertains to history, in order that
they might have understanding and remembrance of past
events.” Furthermore, he adds, these chroniclers kept count
of the days, months, and years, and “although they had no
writing similar to ours, nevertheless they had figures and char-
acters representing all that they needed to designate, and, by
means of these, great books of such clever and ingenious art
that we may say that our letters were of no great advantage to
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159

them.” The office of chronicler, it is added, was hereditary,
or belonged to certain families.

After the Conquest many of the natives who had acquired the
alphabet adapted it to their own tongue and recorded their
histories in the new characters. Numbers of such books were
known to the Spanish writers of the sixteenth century, and it is
from these that the Popul Fuh and the Cakchiquel Annals have
survived.

II.   THE POPUL VUH5

The Popul Fuh is the most striking and instructive of the
myth-records of primitive America. Other legends are as com-
prehensive in scope, as varied in material, and as dramatic in
form; but no other, in anything like the measure of this docu-
ment, combines with these qualities the element of critical
consciousness, giving the flavour of philosophic reflection
which lifts the narrative from the level of mere tale-telling into
that of literature. Something of this character is clearly due
to the fact that it was written down after the introduction of
Christianity by an author, or authors, professing the new faith;
yet it is equally clear to a reader of our day that this is not the
whole cause, that there is in the aboriginal material itself such
an element of deliberate reflection as appears in the Aztec
rituals recorded by Sahagun and in some of the Incaic frag-
ments, though scarcely to be found elsewhere in the New World,
at least in the myths as they have been preserved to us.

The work is divided into four parts, consciously literary in
arrangement. The first recounts the creation of the earth and
of the First Peoples, together with the conflicts of the Hero
Brothers with Titan-like Earth-giants. The second part de-
picts the duel of the upper-world heroes with the nether-world
demonic powers: an elder pair of Hero Brothers are defeated,
later to be avenged by the younger Hero Brothers — the
slayers of the Earth-giants — who overcome Death in his own
lair and by his own wile. This incident of “the harrowing of
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Hell” belongs in mythic chronology to a cycle of events earlier
in part than the gigantomachy, and it is obviously for dramatic
reasons that the longest book of the Popul Vuh is devoted to it.
With the third part the original narrative is resumed, narrating
the creation of the ancestors of the present race of men and the
rise of the Sun which now rules the world; while the fourth and
last part continues the tale, giving myths of cult origins, tribal
wars, and finally records of historic rulers, thus satisfying the
feeling for consecutiveness and completeness.

“Admirable is the account” — so the narrative opens —
“admirable is the account of the time in which it came to pass
that all was formed in heaven and upon earth, the quartering of
their signs, their measure and alignment, and the establishment
of parallels to the skies and upon the earth to the four quarters
thereof, as was spoken by the Creator and Maker, the Mother,
the Father of life and of all existence, that one by whom all
move and breathe, father and sustainer of the peace of peoples,
by whose wisdom was premeditated the excellence of all that
doth exist in the heavens, upon the earth, in lake and sea.

“Lo, all was in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was mo-
tionless, all was quiet, and wide was the immensity of the
skies.

“Lo, the first word and the first discourse. There was not
yet a man, not an animal; there were no birds nor fish nor cray-
fish; there was no wood, no stone, no bog, no ravine, neither
vegetation nor marsh; only the sky existed.

“The face of the earth was not yet to be seen; only the peace-
ful sea and the expanse of the heavens.

“Nothing was yet formed into a body; nothing was joined to
another thing; naught held itself poised; there was not a rustle,
not a sound beneath the sky. There was naught that stood
upright; there were only the quiet waters of the sea, solitary
within its bounds; for as yet naught existed.

“There were only immobility and silence in the darkness and
in the night. Alone was the Creator, the Maker, Tepeu, the
 f
 PLATE XXIII

Ceremonial precinct or plaza, Quirigua. An
altar and three stelae of the Old Empire Maya type
are shown. Other monuments are still in situ on
this site, among them the “Quirigua Dragon,”
Plate I (frontispiece). After photograph by Cornell,
Lincoln.
 
 
 CENTRAL AMERICA

161

Lord, and Gucumatz, the Plumed Serpent, those who engender,
those who give being, alone upon the waters like a growing
light.

“They are enveloped in green and azure, whence is the name
Gucumatz, and their being is great wisdom. Lo, how the sky
existeth, how the Heart of the Sky existeth — for such is the
name of God, as He doth name Himself!

“ It is then that the word came to Tepeu and to Gucumatz,
in the shadows and in the night, and spake with Tepeu and
with Gucumatz. And they spake and consulted and meditated,
and they joined their words and their counsels.

“Then light came while they consulted together; and at the
moment of dawn man appeared while they planned concerning
the production and increase of the groves and of the climbing
vines, there in the shade and in the night, through that one who
is the Heart of the Sky, whose name is Hurakan.

“The Lightning is the first sign of Hurakan; the second is
the Streak of Lightning; the third is the Thunderbolt which
striketh; and these three are the Heart of the Sky.

“Then they came to Tepeu, to Gucumatz, and held counsel
touching civilized life: how seed should be formed, how light
should be produced, how the sustainer and nourisher of all.

“‘Let it be thus done. Let the waters retire and cease to
obstruct, to the end that earth exist here, that it harden itself
and show its surface, to the end that it be sown, and that the
light of day shine in the heavens and upon the earth; for we
shall receive neither glory nor honour from all that we have
created and formed until human beings exist, endowed with
sentience.’ Thus they spake while the earth was formed by
them. It is thus, veritably, that creation took place, and the
earth existed. ‘Earth,’ they said, and immediately it was
formed, i

“Like a fog or a cloud was its formation into the material
state, when, like great lobsters, the mountains appeared upon
the waters, and in an instant there were great mountains. Only

[Prometheus]

 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

162

by marvellous power could have been achieved this their resolu-
tion when the mountains and the valleys instantly appeared
with groves of cypress and pine upon them.

“Then was Gucumatz filled with joy. ‘Thou art welcome, O
Heart of the Sky, 0 Hurakan, O Streak of Lightning, O Thun-
derbolt !’

‘“This that we have created and shaped will have its end,’
they replied.

“And thus first were formed the earth, the mountains, and
the plains; and the course of the waters was divided, the rivulets
running serpentine among the mountains; it is thus that the
waters existed when the great mountains were unveiled.

“Thus was accomplished the creation of the earth when it
was formed by those who are the Heart of the Sky and the
Heart of the Earth; for so those are called who first made fruit-
ful the heaven and the earth while yet they were suspended in
the midst of the waters. Such was its fecundation when they
fecundated it while its fulfilment and its composition were
meditated by them.”

So runs the first chapter of the Quiche Genesis, displaying
at the outset an odd intermingling, which characterizes the
whole work, of the raw actuality of primitive imagination with
the dramatic reflection of the mind of the sage.

The second act of the drama is the creation of denizens, or
rather histrions, for the stage that is set; and the Quiche narra-
tor, with remarkable ease, casts them in puppet mould, a back-
ground of grandiosity serving still further to belittle the dolls
which are the Creator’s experiments. First, the animals are
formed and assigned their dwellings and their habits: “Thou,
Deer, shalt sleep on the borders of brooks and in the ravines;
there shalt thou rest in the brushwood, amid forage; and there
multiply; thou shalt go upon four feet, and upon four feet
shalt thou live.” This is the style in which the creatures of
land and air and water are severally addressed. Nevertheless —
and here is the philosophic touch — the animals could not
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speak, as man does; they had no language; they could only
chatter and cluck and croak, each according to its kind. This
is very far from the most primitive stratum of thought, where
all animals are gifted with language.

“When the Creator and the Maker understood that they
could not speak, they said one to another: ‘They are unable
to utter our name, although we are their makers and formers.
This is not well.’ And they spake to the animals: ‘Our
glory is not perfect in that ye do not invoke us; but there
shall yet be those who can salute us and who will be capable
of obedience. As for you, your flesh shall be broken under
the tooth.’”

Seed-time was approaching, and dawn; and the divine beings
said, “Let us make those who shall be our supporters and
nourishers.” Then they formed men out of moist earth, but
these proved to be without cohesion or consistence or power
of movement; they could not turn their heads; their sight was
veiled; although they had speech, they had no intelligence;
the waters destroyed them helplessly; and their makers saw
that their handiwork was a failure. Now they consulted with
Xpiyacoc and Xmucane (Mayan equivalents of Cipactonal
and Oxomoco, like whom they were addressed as “Twice
Grandmother,” “Twice Grandsire”); while Hurakan of the
Winds and He of the Sun were also called into the council. There
they divined with kernels of maize and with red berries of the
tzite; and when noon came they said: “0 Maize, 0 Tzite, 0 Sun,
0 Creature, unite and join one another! And thou, 0 Heart of
the Sky, redden that the countenance of Tepeu, of Gucumatz,
be not made to lower !” Then they carved manikins of wood
and caused them to live and to multiply and to engender sons
and daughters who were also manikins, carved and wooden.
But these had neither heart nor intelligence nor memory of
their creators; they led a useless and animal existence; they
were only experimental men; they had no blood, no substance,
no flesh; and their faces and their limbs were dry and desic-
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164

cated. They thought not of their Makers, nor did they lift
their heads to them.

The gods, again disappointed, resolved upon the destruction
of the manikin race and caused a heavy, resinous rain to descend
day and night, darkening the face of the earth. Moreover, four
great birds were sent to assail these creatures of wood: Xecot-
covach snatched their eyes from their orbits; Camalotz attacked
their heads, and Cotzbalam their flesh, while Tecumbalam
broke their bones, and animals great and small turned against
them. “Ye have done ill to us,” cried their dogs and their
fowls; “now we shall bite you; in your turn ye shall be tor-
mented.” Even the pots and cooking utensils arose in rebellion.
The metates said: “We were tortured by you; daily, daily,
night and day, always it was holi, koli, huqui, huqui, grinding
our surfaces because of you. This we have suffered from you;
now that ye have ceased to be men, ye shall feel our power;
we shall grind you and reduce your flesh to powder;” and the
bowls and pots followed with similar threats and imprecations.
The victims ran everywhere in desperate efforts to escape:
they ascended to the roofs of their houses, but the houses col-
lapsed; they wished to climb the trees, but the trees drew away
from them; they sought to enter the caverns, but these closed
against them. All were destroyed, and there remained of their
descendants only the little monkeys that live in the trees, which
is token that “of wood alone their flesh was formed by the
Creator and Maker.”

After the destruction of the manikins is narrated, the Popul
Vuh digresses to recount the deeds of the Hero Brothers,
Hunahpu and Xbalanque; and it is only in the third part of
the work that the tale of creation is resumed, the beginnings
of the present “Sun” of the world being its theme.

Once more the demiurgic gods meditated the creation of man,
and once more they gathered for counsel in the cosmic dusk, for
though the dawn was near, the world was not yet illuminated.
It was then that they heard of the white and the yellow maize
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in the Place of the Division of the Waters; and it was decided
that from these should be made the blood and the flesh of man.
“Then they began to grind the white maize and the yellow,
while Xumucane concocted nine broths; and this nourishment
entering in, generated strength and power, giving flesh and
muscles to man. . . . Only yellow maize and white entered
into their flesh, and these were the sole substance of the legs
and arms of man; thus were formed our first fathers, the four
brothers, who were formed of it,” whose names were Balam-
Quitze, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam. “Men they
were; they spake and they reasoned; they saw and they under-
stood; they moved and they had feeling; men perfect and fair,
whose features were human features.”

These beings, however, were too highly endowed; they lifted
up their eyes, and their gaze embraced all; they knew all things;
nothing in heaven or earth was concealed from them. The
Maker asked: “Is not your being good? Do ye not see? Do
ye not understand? Your speech and your movement, are
they not admirable? Look up, are there not mountains and
plains under the sky?” Then the created ones rendered thanks
to their Creator, saying: “Truly, thou gavest us every motion
and accomplishment! We have received existence, we have
received a mouth, a face; we speak, we understand, we think,
we walk; we perceive and we know equally well what is far and
what is near; we see all things, great and small, in heaven and
upon the earth. Thanks be to you who have created us, O
Maker, 0 Former!” But the Makers were not pleased to hear
this. “This is not well! Their nature will not be that of simple
creatures; they will be as gods. . . . Would they perchance
rival us who have made them, whose wisdom extendeth far
and knoweth all things?” Thus spoke Hurakan, and Tepeu,
and Gucumatz, and the divine pair Xpiyacoc and Xmucane.
Then the Heart of the Sky breathed a cloud upon the eyes of
the four men, veiling itself so that it appeared like a mirror
covered with vapour; and their vision was obscured, so that
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

they could clearly see only what was near them. Thus their
knowledge and their wisdom were reduced to mortal propor-
tions; and being caused to slumber, during their sleep four
beautiful women were brought to be their wives, so that when
they awoke, they were filled with joy of their espousals.

The generations of humanity increased, men living together
in joy and peace. They had but a single language and they
prayed neither to wood nor to stone, but only to the Maker
and Former, Heart of the Sky and Heart of the Earth, their
prayer being for children and for light, for the sun had not yet
risen. As time passed and no sun appeared, men became dis-
quieted, so that the four brothers set forth for Tulan-Zuiva,
the Place of Seven Caves and Seven Ravines, where they re-
ceived their gods, a deity for each clan, Tohil being the divinity
of Balam-Quitze, Avilix of Balam-Agab, Hacavitz of Mahu-
cutah, and Nicahtagah of Iqi-Balam. Tohil’s first gift was fire,
and when rains extinguished the first flame, he kindled it anew
by striking upon his foot-gear, whereupon men of other tribes,
their teeth chattering with cold, came to the brothers praying
for a little of their fire. “They were not well received, and
their hearts were filled with sadness,” is the rather brutal
comment; but the motive turns out to be yet more brutal, for
as a price of fire Tohil demanded that these strangers “embrace
me, Tohil, under the armpit and under the girdle,” a euphe-
mism which can refer only to the customary form of human
sacrifice.

Even yet the sun had not appeared, and the race of man was
saddened by the delay. They fasted and performed expiations,
keeping continual watch for the Morning Star, which should
herald the first sunrise. Finally in despair they resumed their
migration: “Alas!” they said, “here we shall never behold the
dawn at the moment when the sun is born to lighten the face
of the earth!” The journey led through many lands until
finally they came to the mountain of Hacavitz, where the
brothers burned incense which they had brought from “the
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167

place of sunrise” and where they watched the Morning Star
ascend with waxing splendour on the dawn of the rising sun.
As the orb appeared, the animals, great and small, were filled
with joy, while all the nations prostrated themselves in adora-
tion. The new sun did not burn with the heat of the sun of
today, but was like a pale reflection of ours; nevertheless it
dried the dank earth and made it habitable. Moreover, the
great beast-gods of the first days — lion, tiger, and noxious
viper — together with the gods Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz,
were changed into stone as the sun appeared — “their arms
cramped like the branches of trees . . . and in all parts they
became stone. Perhaps we should not be in life at this moment
because of the voracity of the lions, the tigers, the vipers, the
qantis, and the White Fire-Maker of the Night; perchance
our glory would not now exist had not the first animals been
petrified by the sun.”

Nevertheless sorrow mingled with joy, for though the ances-
tors of the Quiche had found their mountain home, illumined
by the sun, the moon, and the stars, they remembered their
kindred left behind; and even when they sang the song Ka~
mucu (“We behold”), the anguish in their hearts came also
to expression. “Alas! we were ruined in Tollan; we were
parted from our brethren, who still remain behind! True,
indeed, we have beheld the Sun, but they, where now are they,
when at last the day hath come?” Years afterward, when the
Quiche had become great under the leadership of the four
heroes, the brothers foresaw the day of their death drawing
near; and again, with dolour of soul, they sang the song Ka~
mucu, bidding farewell to their wives and their sons, and say-
ing: “We return to our people; even now the King of the Deer
riseth into the sky. Lo, we make our return; our task is per-
formed; our days are complete.” Thereupon they disappeared,
vanishing without trace, excepting that in their place was left
a sacred bundle which was never to be opened and which was
called “Majesty Enveloped.”
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

III.   THE HERO BROTHERS

The deeds of the Hero Brothers in the Popul Vuh take place
in an epoch of the world previous to the rise of the present Sun.
Apparently they fall in an Age of Giants just succeeding the
destruction of the manikins, for the narrative proceeds from
the tale of the annihilation of these beings to the overthrow,
by the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, of the Earth Titans,
stating that the events occurred in the days of the inundation.
Vukub-Cakix was the first of the Giants, and his sin was the
sin of hybris, for he boasted: “I shall be yet again above all
created beings; I am their sun, I am their dawn, I am their
moon. Great is my splendour; I am he by whom men move.
Of silver are the balls of my eyes, gleaming like precious stones;
and the whiteness of my teeth is like the face of the sky. My
nostrils shine afar like the moon; of silver is my throne, and
the earth liveth when I step forth from it. I am the sun, I am
the moon, the bringer of felicity. So be it, for my gaze reacheth
afar!” This is obviously a hymn to the sun; and it is possible
that it refers to a mythic “Sun of Giants,” although the
narrator clearly takes it in another sense: “ In reality his sight
ended where it fell, and his gaze did not embrace the entire
world.” It was, in fact, because of his riches (metals and
precious stones) that Vukub-Cakix thought to emulate the
sun and the moon.

It was for their pride and arrogance that Vukub-Cakix and
his sons, Zipacna and Cabrakan, were successively overcome
and destroyed by the hero brothers. “Attention, it is I who
am the sun,” cried Vukub-Cakix; “it is I who move the earth,”
said Zipacna; “and it is I that shake the sky and overturn the
the whole earth,” quoth Cabrakan. Indeed, such was their
strength that they could move mountains, great and small,
at will; and since such orgulous Titans could be overcome only
by craft, even with demi-gods for their adversaries, it was by
craft that Hunahpu and Xbalanque conquered them.
 If

If

— m

i
 PLATE XXIV

Image of a youthful deity with elaborate head-
dress seated in the mouth of the “Dragon of Quiri-
gua” (see frontispiece). After a photograph in the
Peabody Museum.   ^
 
 I
 CENTRAL AMERICA   169

Vukub-Cakix possessed a tree the fruit of which was his
food, and the twins, concealing themselves in its branches,
shot the giant in the cheek with a poisoned arrow when he
came for his meal, though they did not escape uninjured, for
he tore away one of Hunahpu’s arms. The monster went home,
roaring with pain, and the two plotters, disguising themselves
as physicians, came offering to cure his malady and saying:
“You suffer from a worm but you can be cured if your jaw is
altered by removing the bad teeth.” “It is by my teeth alone
that I am king; all my beauty comes from my teeth and the
balls of mine eyes.” “We will put others in their place,” they
said; and so they substituted teeth of maize for the emerald
teeth of the giant and flayed the splendour from his eyes. The
splendour faded from him; he ceased to appear like a king;
and soon he died, while Hunahpu recovered his arm, which
Chimalmat, the wife of Vukub-Cakix, was basting on a spit;
and the twins turned away in triumph. Zipacna was the next
victim. First, the brothers conspired with four hundred youths
(doubtless the same as the “Four Hundred Southerners” of
the Huitzilopochtli myth) to lure Zipacna into a pitfall, where
they tried to destroy him by hurling huge trees upon him; and
when all was quiet, the plotters erected a house on the spot,
making merry with drink and celebrating their triumph. But
the giant was only craftily biding his time, and, rising suddenly,
he cast house and revellers high into the heavens, where the
four hundred became stars and constellations. The twins
then decided upon another decoy. Since the food of Zipacna
was sea-food, especially crabs, they modelled a great crab, and
painting it cunningly they put it into a deep ravine. Encoun-
tering the giant on his food search, they pointed out this fine
crab; he leaped after it, and they — wiser by experience —
hurled mountains upon him, thus imprisoning him, though so
desperate were his struggles for freedom that they turned him
into stone to quiet him. The third giant, Cabrakan, was
also made the victim of his own gluttony and pride. The
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brothers challenged him to shift a certain mountain, for he
boasted that he could remove the greatest; but as he was pre-
paring to show his strength, they suggested that he first partake
of food, and shooting a bird, they cooked it for him, taking care
to poison it in the process. The giant devoured the bird the
more greedily in that it was his first taste of cooked meat; but
immediately his strength began to fail, and his eyes to dim;
and while the brothers twittingly urged him to make good his
boasts, he sank to earth dead.

The great adventure of the heroic twins, however, was their
triumph over the Lords of Death, and to this the second part
of the Popul Vuh is devoted. The tale begins with the story of
an earlier pair of Hero Brothers, Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-
Ahpu, sons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucane. Hunhun-Ahpu, in
turn, was father of Hunbatz and Hunchouen, two youths who
seem to be little more than foils for the hero twins later to
be born; although they are described as wise in all the arts,
as players of the flute, singers, blow-gun shooters, painters,
sculptors, jewel-workers, and smiths.

Hunhun-Ahpu and his brother, Vukub-Ahpu, being de-
voted to tlachtli, exercised themselves at this sport every day.
As they played, they journeyed toward Xibalba, the under-
world, whose lords, Hun-Came and Vukub-Came, also were
clever at the ball game. Therefore, thinking to trap the upper-
world champions, they of the nether realm sent them a chal-
lenge — four owls were their messengers — to meet in an
underworld match; and the brothers accepting the challenge,
set out for Xibalba. Passing down a steep descent, they soon
crossed a river in a deep gorge, next a boiling river, and then a
river of blood, after which, beyond a fourth river, they came to
cross-roads, red, black, white, and yellow. The guardian of
the black road said: “ I am the way to the king ”; but it led them
to a place where two wooden images were seated. These the
brothers saluted; and receiving no response except the ribald
laughter of the Xibalbans, the heroes knew that they had
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171

[Prometheus]

been made butts of ridicule. The brothers angrily issued their
challenge, and the Xibalbans invited them to seats on the
throne of honour; but this proved to be a heated stone, and when
they burned themselves, the princes of Xibalba could scarcely
contain their merriment. The brothers were then given torches
and conducted to the House of Gloom, with injunctions to
keep the lights undiminished until the dawn; but the torches
were speedily consumed, and when, next day, they were brought
before Hun-Came and Vukub-Came who demanded the lights,
they could only reply, “They are consumed, Lords.” There-
upon, at the command of the underworld-gods, the brothers
were sacrificed, and their bodies were buried; only, the head of
Hunhun-Ahpu was placed in a fruit-tree, where it was im-
mediately transformed so as to be indistinguishable from the
gourd-like fruits which the tree bore.

The Xibalbans were prohibited from approaching this tree,
but a certain maiden, Xquiq (“Princess Blood”), having heard
of it, said to herself: “Why should I not go to see this tree; in
sooth, its fruits should be sweet, according to what I hear said
of it.” She approached the tree in admiration: “Are such the
fruits of this tree? And should I die were I to pluck one?”
Then the head in the midst said: “Do you indeed desire it?
These round lumps among the branches of the tree are only
death’s-heads!” Nevertheless, Xquiq was insistent, where-
upon Hunhun-Ahpu’s head demanded that she stretch forth her
hand, and, by a violent effort, he spat into it, saying: “This
saliva and foam which I give thee is my posterity. Behold, my
head will cease to speak, for it is only a death’s-head, with no
longer any flesh. So it is also with the head of even the greatest
of princes; for it is the flesh alone that adometh the visage,
whence cometh the horror which besetteth men at the moment
of death.” He then directed the maiden to flee to the upper
world, knowing that she would be pursued by the underworld-
powers; and these, indeed, when they heard that Xquiq was
enceinte, demanded that she be sacrificed, sending Owl-Men
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

to execute their doom. But the princess beguiled the Owls,
inducing them to substitute for her heart the coagulated sap of
the bloodwort, the odour of which they took to be the scent of
blood, while she herself fled to the protection of the mother of
Hunbatz and Hunchouen. The latter demanded proof that
the new comer was indeed her daughter-in-law and sent Xquiq
into the field for maize. There was but one hill in the field,
whereupon the maiden appealed for aid to the gods, by whose
miraculous help she was enabled to gather a full burden
without disturbing the single hill. This miracle satisfied the
mother-in-law; who said: “It is a sign that thou art indeed my
daughter-in-law, and that those whom thou dost carry will
be wise ”; and shortly after this, Xquiq gave birth to the twins,
Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

The new comers were welcomed by all excepting Hunbatz
and Hunchouen, who regarded their half-brothers as rivals
and plotted their death; but Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who
from birth had shown their prowess as magicians, transformed
the two flute-players into monkeys, condemning them to live
in the trees. Hunbatz and Hunchouen, says the chronicler,
“were invoked by musicians and singers aforetime, and also
by painters and sculptors; but they were changed into beasts
and became monkeys because of their pride and their mal-
treatment of their brothers.” It is probable that the two were
monkey-form gods of the arts, though it is also possible that
the transformation is associated with that of the primeval age
which ended with the metamorphosis of men into monkeys.

The next episode in the career of the two youths was the
clearing of a field by means of magic tools which felled trees
and dug the soil while their owners amused themselves at the
chase; but at night the animals restored the vegetation. Ac-
cordingly the brothers concealed themselves to watch for the
undoers of their work; and when by night the lion (puma) and
the tiger (jaguar), the hare and the opossum, the deer, the
coyote, the porcupine, and the peccary, together with the birds,
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173

appeared and called to the felled trees to raise themselves, the
brothers attempted to trap them. They succeeded only in
seizing the tails of the deer and the rabbit (which, of course,
explains the present decurtate state of these animals), but
finally they captured the rat, which, to save its life, revealed
to them the hiding-place of the rings and gloves and rubber
ball with which their fathers had played tlachtli, and which
their grandmother had concealed from them lest they, too,
become lost through the fatal lure of the game. By a ruse
the twins succeeded in getting possession of the apparatus,
and like their fathers became passionately devoted to the
sport.

When the Lords of Xibalba learned of this, they said: “Who,
then, are these that begin again to play above our heads, shak-
ing the earth without fear? Are not Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-
Hunahpu dead, who wished to exalt themselves before us?”
Forthwith they dispatched a challenge to the new champions
which the twins accepted; but before they departed for the
underworld, each planted a reed in the house of their grand-
mother, saying that if any ill befell either of them, his reed
would wither and die. They passed the underworld rivers,
and coming to the four roads (here named black, white, red, and
green), they set out upon the black path, though they took the
precaution to send in advance an animal called Xan, with in-
structions to prick the leg of each lord in the realm below. The
first two throned beings made no response, being manikins of
wood; but the third uttered a cry, and his neighbour said:
“What is it, Hun-Came? What has pricked you ? ” The same
thing happened to Vukub-Came, Xiqiripat, Ahalpuh, Cuchuma-
quiq, Chamiabak, Ahalcana, Chamiaholom, Patan, Quiqxic,
Quiqrixgag, and Quiqre (for such were the names of these
princes): “it is thus that they revealed themselves, calling
one another by name,” each in turn. When the hero twins
came, refusing to salute the wooden men, they addressed the
Lords of Xibalba each by his title, much to the chagrin of
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

these; and, further, they declined a place on the heated stone,
saying, “It is not our seat.”

In succeeding episodes Hunahpu and Xbalanque underwent
the ordeals of the houses of the underworld. The House of
Gloom was first; but the twins substituted red paint for the
fire on the torches given them and thus preserved these un-
diminished. “Whence indeed, are you come?” cried the as-
tonished Xibalbans; “who are you?” “Who can say whence
we are,” they answered; “we ourselves do not know.” So they
refused to reveal themselves and in the game of ball which
followed they altogether defeated the Xibalbans; but since
this only augmented the desire of the latter for the lives of the
pair, the underworld lords demanded of the two heroes that
they bring them four vases of flowers. Accordingly they sent
the youths under guard to the House of Lances; but the
brothers overcame the demons of this abode by promising them
the flesh of all animals, while at the same time they persuaded
the ants to bring the needed flowers from the gardens of Hun-
Came and Vukub-Came. Having failed with this test, the
Xibalbans then dispatched their guests to the House of Cold,
which they survived by kindling pine-knots. The next trial
was the House of Tigers, but its ferocious denizens were diverted
by bones which the brothers cast to them. The House of Fire
was also harmless to them; but in the sixth, the House of Bats,
or House of Camazotz, as its lord was called* they met their
first discomfiture. All night the heroes lay prone, longing for
the dawn; but at last Hunahpu for a moment raised his head,
which was instantly shorn off by the vigilant Camazotz.
Xbalanque, in desperation, summoned the animals to his
assistance; and the turtle, chancing to touch the bleeding neck
of Hunahpu and becoming attached to it, was transformed
into a head with the magic aid of the animals. The real head
the Lords of Xibalba had suspended in the ball court, where
they were reviling it when Xbalanque and Hunahpu, with his
turtle’s head, appeared for the last round at the game; and
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175

with the assistance of the animals Xbalanque succeeded in
winning the victory once more, and recovering Hunahpu’s
head, he restored it in place of the turtle’s.

Having now metthe ordeals set by the Xibalbans, the brothers
undertook to show their own prowess, and, first of all, their
contempt of death. Anticipating the action of the Lords of
Xibalba in condemning them to death, they sought the counsel
of two magicians, Xulu and Pacam, with whom they arranged
for their resurrection; after which, sentenced to be burned,
they mounted the funeral pyre and met their death, whereat
all the Xibalbans were filled with joy, crying, “We have tri-
umphed, indeed; and none too soon!” The bones, ground to
powder at the advice of the two magicians, were cast upon the
underworld waters; wherein on the fifth day two fish-men
were to be seen, while the next day a pair of wretched beggars,
poor and miserable, appeared among the Xibalbans. These
beggars, however, were wonder-workers: they burned houses
and immediately restored them; they even sacrificed and then
resuscitated one another. Their fame soon reached the ears
of Hun-Came and Vukub-Came, and when the mendicant-
magicians were brought before these lords, they were implored
by the Xibalban kings to perform their miracles. Thereupon
the beggars began their “dances”: they killed and revivified
the dog of the underworld princes; they burned and restored
the royal palace; they sacrificed and brought to life a man —
each deed at the command of Hun-Came and Vukub-Came.
Finally, overcome with excitement, the Lords of Xibalba
cried, “Do likewise with us; immolate us also!” “Can death
exist for you ?” asked the beggars ironically. “Nevertheless, it is
your right that we amuse you.” But when they had sacrificed
Hun-Came and Vukub-Came, they restored them no more to
life. “Then fled all the princes of Xibalba, seeing their kings
dead, and their bodies laid open; but in a moment they them-
selves were sacrificed, two by two, a chastisement which was
their due.” A single prince escaped, begging for pity, while the
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host of their vassals prostrated themselves before their con-
querors.

Then the heroes revealed themselves, disclosing their names
and the names of their fathers, saying, “We are the avengers
of the sufferings of our sires; harken, now to your doom, ye
of Xibalba! Since your fame and your power are no more, and
ye merit no clemency, your race shall have little rule, and never
again shall ye play the Game of Ball. Yours it shall be to make
objects of burnt clay, pots and pans, and maize-grinders; and
the animals that live in the brushwood and in solitude shall be
your share. All the happy, all the cultivated, shall cease to be
yours; the bees alone will continue to reproduce before your
eyes. Ye, perverse, cruel, sad, wretched, who have done ill,
now lament it! ” Thus were degraded those who had been of
bad faith, hypocritical, tyrannical; thus their power was
ruined.

Meanwhile, in the upper world, the grandmother of the
twins watching the two reeds, had mourned and rejoiced in
turn, twice seeing them wither and twice revive. “ The Living
Reeds, the Level Earth, the Centre of the House, shall be the
names of this place,” she said. The twins talked with the
heads of their father and uncle, paying them funeral honours
and elevating them to the sky, the one to become the sun, the
other the moon; and they raised up also the four hundred
youths buried by Zipacna, to become stars in heaven, saying:
“Henceforth ye shall be invoked by civilized peoples; ye shall
be adored; and your names shall not perish.”

Such, in its general character, is the mythic portion of the
Popul Vuh. It is built up of elements found far and wide in
North America and it reflects ideas practically universal among
the civilized Nahuatlan and Mayan tribes; but it possesses
one great distinction — that of presenting these concepts with
an imaginative intensity unmatched by any other version, a
quality which in some measure argues that the whole cycle is
original with the Mayan stock. The myth certainly gives a
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177

broad view of the south Mayan pantheons; and most of the
elements in the proper names which can be interpreted are
indicative of the cosmic nature of the personalities. Accord-
ing to Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hun signifies “one,” Vukub is
the word for “seven”; Hunahpu is “One Blowgun-Shooter,”
and it is quite likely that the blowgun was associated with
celestial phenomena, as the game of tlachtli certainly is; Hun-
batz is “One Monkey”; Hun-Came is “One Dead,” and so on.
Vukub-Cakix (“Seven Macaws”), Vukub-Hunahpu (“Seven
One-Blowgun-Shooter”), and Vukub-Came (“Seven Dead”)
are clearly corresponding, or complementary, cosmic powers.
The Abbe believes that Hurakan (from which comes our word
“hurricane”) and Cabrakan (“Earthquake”) are deities im-
ported from the Antilles. Camazotz (“Ruler of Bats,” —
Brasseur; “Death Bat,” — Seler) is clearly the Elder of the
Bats — the bat-god known to have been a dread and potent
deity among the Maya, and, as the vampire, feared and
propitiated far into South America.6 Balam means “tiger”
— that is, the jaguar, which, perhaps because of its spots, is
symbol of the star-studded night and of the west. The four
Quiche ancestors are clearly cosmic deities — Balam-Quitze
(“Smiling Tiger”) perhaps of the east; Balam-Agab (“Night
Tiger”) of the west; Iqi-Balam (“Moon Tiger”); and Mahuca-
tah (“Renowned Name,” an epithet, in the Abbe’s opinion).
The Hero Brothers are, of course, familiar figures everywhere
in American myth.

IV.   THE ANNALS OF THE CAKCHIQUEL7

The Cakchiquel Annals do not, like the Popul Vuh, form a
work of primarily literary or historical intent, but are, both in
form and in content, part of a brief, the purpose of which is to
establish certain territorial rights of members of the family of
Xahila, thus falling into the class of native titulos, written in
Spanish, several of which have been published. From its
nature the composition has not, therefore, the dramatic char-
 i78

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

acter of a mythic narrative; nevertheless its very purpose,
as founding a title to lands anciently held, leads to the effort
to establish this by the right of first occupation, and hence to
stories of the first comers. That such accounts are reproduced
more or less exactly from mythic narratives there can be no
manner of doubt, internal traits showing near affinity with
the tales of the Popul Vuh and kindred cycles.

The narrative begins with a record of “the sayings of our
earliest fathers and ancestors, Gagavitz the name of one,
Zactecauh the name of the other ... as we came from the
other side of the sea, from the land of Tulan, where we were
brought forth and begotten . . .

“These are the very words which Gagavitz and Zactecauh
spake: ‘Four men came from Tulan; one Tulan is at the sunrise,
and one is at Xibalbay, and one is at the sunset; and we came
from this one at the sunset; and one is where is God. There-
fore there are four Tulans, they say, O our sons; from the sun-
set we came; from Tulan from beyond the sea; and it was at
Tulan that, arriving, we were brought forth; coming, we were
produced, as they say, by our fathers and our mothers.

“‘And now the Obsidian Stone is brought forth by the pre-
cious Xibalbay, the glorious Xibalbay; and man is made by
the Maker, the Creator. The Obsidian Stone was his sustainer
when man was made in misery and when man was formed; he
was fed with wood, he was fed with leaves; he wished only the
earth; he could not speak, he could not walk; he had no
blood, he had no flesh; so say our fathers, our ancestors, 0 ye
my sons. Nothing was found to feed him; at length something
was found to feed him. Two brutes knew that there was
food in the place called Paxil, where these creatures were, the
Coyote and the Crow by name. Even in the refuse of maize
it was found when the creature Coyote was killed as he was
separating his maize and was searching for bread to knead,
killed by the creature named Tiuh Tiuh; and from within the
sea, by means of Tiuh Tiuh, was brought the blood of the ser-
 
 PLATE XXV

Monumental stela, Piedras Negras. This superb
relief shows a divinity with quetzal-plume crest to
whom a priest is presenting the group of bound cap-
tives, shown at the base. After photograph in the
Peabody Museum.
 
 
 CENTRAL AMERICA

179

pent and of the tapir with which the maize was to be kneaded;
the flesh of man was formed of it by the Maker, the Creator;
and well did they, the Maker and the Creator, know him who
was born, him who was begotten; they made man as he was
made, they formed man as they made him; so they tell. There
were thirteen men, fourteen women; they, talked, they walked;
they had blood, they had flesh. They married, and one had
two wives. They brought forth daughters, they brought forth
sons, those first men. Thus men were made, and thus the Obsi-
dian Stone was made, for the enclosure of Tulan; thus we came
to where the Zotzils were at the gates of Tulan; arriving, we
were born; coming, we were produced; coming, we gave the
tribute in the darkness, in the night, 0 our sons.’ Thus spake
Gagavitz and Zactecauh, 0 my sons; and what they said hath
not been forgotten. They are our great ancestors; these are
the words with which they encouraged us of old.”

These extracts indicate the style of the Annals, full of rep-
etition and almost without relational expressions, but now
and again lighted with passages of extraordinary vividness.
The Obsidian Stone, Chay Abah, represented an important
civic fetish or oracular talisman, if we may credit the descrip-
tion of Iximche, the Cakchiquel capital, transmitted by Fuentes
y Guzman and quoted by Brinton.8 On the summit of a small
hill overlooking the town — so goes the account — “is a
circular wall, not unlike the curb of a well, about a full fathom
in height. The floor within is paved with cement, as the city
streets. In the centre is placed a socle or pedestal of a glittering
substance, like glass, but of what composition is not known.
This circular structure was the tribunal or consistory of the
Cakchiquel Indians, where not only was public hearing given
to causes, but also the sentences were carried out. Seated
around this wall, the judges heard the pleas and pronounced
the sentences, in both civil and criminal cases. After this
public decision, however, there remained an appeal for its
revocation or confirmation. Three messengers were chosen
 i8o

[Prometheus]

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

as deputies of the judges, and these went forth from the tri-
bunal to a deep ravine, north of the palace, to a small but
neatly fitted-up chapel or temple, where was located the oracle
of the demon. This was a black and semi-transparent stone,
of a finer grade than that called chay (obsidian). In its trans-
parency, the demon revealed to them what should be their
final decision.” This passage is not the only indication of the
employment of divination by crystal gazing in primitive
America; and it is even possible that the translucent green
stones so widely valued were primarily sacred because of
divinatory properties. Not all sacred stones were of the emerald
hue, however; for in the Cakchiquel narrative one of the deeds
of Gagavitz is the ascent of a volcano where, it is said, he con-
quered the fire, bringing it captive in the form of a stone called
Gak Chog, which, the chronicler is at pains to state, is not a
green stone.

The mythic affinities of the Cakchiquel narrative are already
apparent in the passages quoted. The city of Tulan (frequently
“Tullan” in the text) is clearly become a name for certain
cosmic stations, namely the houses of sunrise, sunset, zenith
(“where is God”), and nadir (Tulan of Xibalbay, the under-
world). The successive creations of men, experimental men
first, and finally maize-formed men, is certainly the same myth
as that of the Popul Vuh, which is briefly described also by Las
Casas and which is probably intimately associated with a cult
of the maize-gods. “If one looks closely at these Indians,”
says an early writer quoted by Brinton,9 (manuscript known as
the Cronica Franciscana), “he will find that everything they do
and say has something to do with maize. A little more, and
they would make a god of it. There is so much conjuring and
fussing about their corn fields, that for them they will forget
wives and children and any other pleasure, as if the only end
and aim of life was to secure a crop of com.”

There are numerous mythic incidents in the continuation
of the narrative after the creation. At Tulan the peoples were
 CENTRAL AMERICA

181

divided into seven tribes, and it was from Tulan that, with
idols of wood and of stone, they set out at the oracular com-
mand of the Obsidian Stone. The auguries were mostly evil:
“A bird called ‘the guard of the ravine’ began to complain
within the gate of Tulan, as we were going forth from Tulan.
‘Ye shall die, ye shall be lost, I am your portent,’ the creature
said to us. ‘Do ye not believe me? Truly your state shall be
a sad one.’ ” The owl prophesied similar disaster, and another
bird, the parroquet, “complained in the sky and said, ‘I am
your portent; ye shall die.’ But we said to the creature, ‘Speak
not thus; thou art but the sign of spring. Thou wailest first
when it is spring; when the rain ceaseth, thou wailest.”’ They
arrived at the sea-coast, and there a great number perished while
they awaited a means of crossing, which finally came when “a
red tree, our staff, which we had taken in passing from the gate
of Tulan,” was thrust into the sands, whereupon the waters
divided, and all passed over. Then it was that Gagavitz and
Zactecauh were elected leaders; and next they fought with
the people of Nonoualcat and Zuyva, but though at first suc-
cessful in the fight, they were eventually defeated: “Truly, it
was fearful there among the houses; truly, the noise was great,
the dust was oppressive; fighting was going on in the houses,
fighting with the dogs, the wasps, fighting with all. One attack,
two attacks we made, and we ourselves were routed; as truly
as they were in the air, they were in the earth; they ascended
and they descended, everywhere against us; and thus they
showed their magic and their sorcery.” After this defeat, the
various tribes received the gods which were to be their pro-
tectors. “When we asked each other where our salvation was,
it was said to us by the Quiche men: ‘As it thundered and re-
sounded in the sky, truly the sky must be our salvation’; so
they said, and therefore the name Tohohil was given them.”
The Zotzil received Cakix, the macaw, as their deity; and the
Cakchiquel said: “‘Truly, in the middle of the valley lieth our
salvation, entering there into the earth.’ Therefore the name
 182

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Chitagah was given. Another, who said salvation was in the
water, was called Gucumatz”; and so on, down the roll. The
tribes then set forth and encounter “the spirit of the forest,
the fire called Zakiqoxol,” who kills many men. “Who are
these boys whom we see ? ” says the spirit (who, it seems, is a
giant); and Gagavitz and Zactecauh replied: “Let us see what
kind of a hideous mole thou art? Who art thou? We shall kill
thee. Why is it that thou guardest the road here?” “Do not
kill me; I, who am here, I am the heart of the forest,” and he
asked for clothing. “They shall give to thee wherewith to
clothe thyself,” they answered; and “then they gave him
wherewith to clothe himself, a change of garment, his blood-red
cuirass, his blood-red shoes, the dying raiment of Zakiqoxol.”
The narrative continues with episodes that may be historical.
There are encounters, friendly and militant, with various
tribes; Zactecauh is killed by falling down a ravine; the wan-
derers are delayed a year by the volcano which Gagavitz con-
quers; a certain being named Tolgom, son of “the Mud that
Quivers,” is captured and offered by the arrow sacrifice, this
being the beginning of an annual festival at which children
were similarly slain; and afterward the people come to the
place where their dawn is to be and there they behold the sun-
rise. The warriors took wives from neighbouring tribes and
“then also they began to adore the Demon. ... It is said that
the worship of the Demon increased with the face of our
prosperity.” To Gagavitz were bom two sons, Caynoh and
Caybatz, who were to be his successors; and “at that time
King Gagavitz died, the same who came from Tulan; his
children, our ancestors, Caynoh and Caybatz, were still very
young when their father died. They buried him in the same
place where their dawn appeared, in Paroxene.”

Here the mythical part of the Annals ends. Caynoh and
Caybatz may be a pair of heroes like Hunahpu and Xbalanque,
as some authorities deem; but the situation in which they are
presented, subjects of a Quiche King, Tepeuh, indicates an
 CENTRAL AMERICA

183

historical situation, finally reversed, as the narrative later
shows, in sanguinary wars in which the Cakchiquel threw off the
Quiche yoke. And here, as elsewhere in the New World, the
coming Spaniard was enabled to profit by local dissensions;
for Alvarado, whose entrance into Iximche is described as by an
eyewitness, first allied himself with the Cakchiquel for the
destruction of their neighbours and then destroyed his allies
for the sake of their gold. So out of this broken past speaks the
Xahila narrative — the one native voice from a lost civili-
zation.

V.   HONDURAS AND NICARAGUA10

South of the Mayan peoples, in the territories formed by the
projection of Central America between the Gulf of Honduras
and Lake Nicaragua, the aboriginal inhabitants were repre-
sented by some ten linguistic stocks. On the western coast were
several groups of Nahuatlan tribes who had come from far in
the north, probably in recent times; on the other hand, the
large Ulvan stock, back from the Mosquito Coast, are regarded
as probably of Chibchan kinship, and their territories were
contiguous with the Chibchans of Costa Rica, who brought
the influence of the southern continent as far northward as
the southern shores of the lake; the remaining tribal groups —
Lencan, Subtiaban, Payan, Mosquitoan, Chiapanecan, etc. —
have no certain linguistic affinity with any other peoples.
Culturally, the whole region was aboriginally marked by an
obvious inferiority both to the Mayan peoples to the north and
the Chibchan to the south; though at the same time it reflected
something of the civilization of each of these regions. As a
whole, however, it possessed no single level, but ranged from
the primitive savagery of the Mosquito Coast to something
approaching a native culture in the western highlands.

The mythic lore of these peoples (not extensively reported)
is in no way remarkable. The Nahuatlan tribes—Pipil and
Niquiran — worshipped gods whose kinship with those of the
 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

184

Aztec is apparent. Of the Pipil, Brasseur says 11: “They adored
the rising sun, as also statues of Quetzalcohuatl and Itz-
cueye, to whom they offered almost all their sacrifices,” Itzcueye
being a form of the earth goddess. Similarly the Niquiran
deities mentioned by Oviedo, especially the creator pair,
Tamagostad and Cipattonal, are identified with Oxomoco and
Cipactonal of the Mexicans; while the calendar of the same
tribe is Mexican in type. The chief centre of worship of the
Pipil was named Mictlan, but the myth which Brasseur nar-
rates in connexion with the establishment of this shrine is
curiously analogous to certain Chibcha tales. The sacred city
was on a promontory in Lake Huixa, and “it was there that
one day a venerable old man was beheld to advance, followed
by a girl of unequalled beauty, both clad in long blue robes,
while the man was crowned with a pontifical mitre. They
arose together from the lake, but they did not delay to sep-
arate ; and the old man seated himself upon a stone on the sum-
mit of a high hill, where, by his order, was reared a beauti-
ful temple called Mictlan.” Similar cults of lake-spirits are
indicated on the island of Zapatero, in Lake Nicaragua, where
Squier discovered a whole series of remarkable idols, pillars
surmounted by crudely carved crouching or seated figures,
while statues of a similar type were found on another island,
Pensacola. In several of these the human figure is hooded by
an animal’s head or jaw, or appears within the mouth of the
monster — a motive which probably comes from the Mayan
north.

The Chiapanecan people north of the Niquirian Nahua con-
sulted an oracular Old Woman, who appears, as Oviedo relates
the story,12 to have been the spirit of the volcano Masaya.
The caciques went in secret to consult her before undertaking
any enterprise and sacrificed to her human victims, who, says
Oviedo, offered themselves voluntarily. When Oviedo asked
how the Old Woman looked, they replied that “she was old
and wrinkled, with pendant breasts, thin, dishevelled hair,
 CENTRAL AMERICA

185

long teeth like those of a dog, a skin darker than that of the
Indians, and glowing eyes,” a description which scarcely makes
the voluntary sacrifice plausible. With the coming of the
Christians her appearances were more and more rare.

Of such character were the ideas of the more advanced tribes
of the western coast. The Sumo (of the Ulvan stock) tell a tale
of their origin, reported by Lehmann 13: “ Between the Rio
Patuca and the Rio Coco is a hill named Kaun’apa, where is a
rock with the sign of a human umbilical cord. There in olden
time the Indians were born; there is the source of the people.
A great Father, Maisahana, and a great Mother, Ituana, like-
wise existed, the latter being the same as Itoki, whom the
Mosquito know as Mother Scorpion. First, the Mosquito were
born and instructed in all things; but they were disobedient to
their elders (as they still are) and departed toward the coast.
Thereafter the Tuachca were born, and then the Yusco who live
on Rio Prinzapolca and Bambana; but since the Yusco were bad
and lewd, the rest of the Sumo fought against them and killed
all but a few, who live somewhere around the source of Rio
Coco, near the Spaniards. Last the Ulua were born, who are
indeed the youngest; and they were instructed in all things,
especially medicine and song, wherefore they are known as
‘Singers.’”

'The Mother Scorpion of this myth is regarded by the Mos-
quito as dwelling at the end of the Milky Way, where she re-
ceives the souls of the dead; and from her, represented as a
mother with many breasts, at which children take suck, come
the souls of the new-born — a belief which points to a notion
of reincarnation. The Mosquito 14 possess also a migration-
myth, with stories of a culture hero-named Wakna, and an
ancient prophecy that they shall never be driven back from the
coasts to which he led them. Along with this are reminiscences
of the coming of cannibals — doubtless Carib — from overseas;
and the usual quota of superstitions as to monsters of forest
and waters. They are said, moreover, to have vague notions
 186   LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

of a supreme or superior god — which is altogether likely — and,
in general, these Central American religions are, doubtless, as
the early writers describe them, formed of an ill-defined belief
in a Heaven Father, with deities of sun and stars as objects of
worship, and spirits of earth and forest as objects of dread.
 CHAPTER VI

THE ANDEAN NORTH

I.   THE CULTURED PEOPLES OF THE ANDES1

FROM the Isthmus of Panama the western coast of South
America is marked by one of the loftiest and most abrupt
mountain ranges of the world, culminating in the great vol-
canoes of Ecuador and the high peaks of western Argentina.
A narrow coastal strip, dry and torrid in tropical latitudes;
deep and narrow valleys; occasional plateaux or intramon-
tane plains, especially the great plateau of central Bolivia—
these are the primary diversifications from the high ranges
which, rising precipitously on the Pacific side, decline more
gradually toward the east into the vast forested regions of the
central part of the continent and into the plains and pam-
pas of the south.

Throughout this mountain region, from the plateau of
Bogota in the north to the neighbourhood of latitude 30° south,
was continued in pre-Columbian times the succession of groups
of civilized or semi-civilized peoples of which the most northerly
were the Nahua of Mexico, or perhaps the Pueblo tribes of New
Mexico. The ethnic boundary of the southern continent is to
be drawn in Central America. The Guetare of Costa Rica, and
perhaps the Sumo of Nicaragua, constitute northerly outposts
of the territorially; great Chibchan culture, the centre of which
is to be found in the plateau of Bogota, while its southerly ex-
tension leads to the Barbacoa of northern Ecuador. South of
the Chibcha, in the Andean region lying between the Equator
and the Tropic of Capricorn, is the aboriginal home of the
Quechua-Aymara peoples, nearly the whole of which, at the
 i88

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

time of the Conquest was embraced in the Empire of the Incas.
This empire had even reached into the confines of the third
culture area of the southern continent; for the Calchaqui of the
mountains of northern Argentina, who were the most repre-
sentative and probably the most advanced nation of the
Diaguite group, had even then passed under Inca subjection.
Other tribes of this most southerly of the civilized peoples of
America had never been conquered; but bounded, as they were,
by the aggressive empire of the north, by the warlike Arau-
canians to the south, and by the savages of the Gran Chaco
to the east, their opportunities for independent development
were slight; indeed, it is not improbable that the peoples of
this group represent the last stand of a race that had once ex-
tended far to the north and had played an important part in
the pre-Inca cultures of the central Andes. Beyond the Dia-
guite lay the domains of savagery, although the Araucanians
of the Chilean-Argentine region were not uninfluenced by the
northward civilizations and in most respects were superior
to the wild tribes that inhabited the great body of the South
American continent; but the indomitable love of liberty, which
has kept them unconquered through many wars, gave to their
territory a boundary-line marked no less by a sharp descent in
culture than by its untouched independence.

In Columbian times these three Andean groups — the
Chibchan tribes, the Quechua-Aymara, and the Diaguite-
Calchaqui — possessed a civilization marked by considerable
advancement in the arts of metallurgy (gold, silver, copper),
pottery, and weaving, by agriculture (fundamentally, culti-
vation of maize), and by domestication of the llama and al-
paca. In the art of building, in stone-work, and, generally,
in that plastic and pictorial expression which is a sign of in-
tellectual advancement, the central group far excelled its
neighbours. Nor was this due to the fact that it alone, under
Inca domination, had reached the stage of stable and diversi-
fied social organization; for the archaeology of Peru and
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189

Bolivia shows that the Empire of the Incas was only the last in
a series of central Andean civilizations which it excelled, if at
all, in political power rather than in the arts, industrial or
aesthetic.

Our knowledge of the religious and mythic ideas of these
various groups reflects their relative importance at the time
of the Spanish conquests more than their natural diversity.
Of the Chibchan groups, only the ideas of a few tribes have
been described, and these fragmentarily; of the mythology of
the Calchaqui, who had yielded to Inca rule, even less has
come down to us; while what is known of the religious concep-
tions of the pre-Inca peoples of the central region is mainly in
the form of gleanings from the works of art left by these peoples,
or from such of their cults as survived under the Inca state or
in Inca tradition. Inevitably the central body of Andean myth,
as transmitted to us, is that of the Incas, who, having reached
the position of a great imperial clan, naturally glorified both
their own gods and their own legendary history.

II.   THE ISTHMIANS2

The Isthmus of Panama (and northward perhaps as far as
the confines of Nicaragua) was aboriginally an outpost of the
great Chibchan stock. Tribes of other stocks, some certainly
northern in origin, dwelt within the region, but the predominant
group was akin to the peoples of the neighbouring southern con-
tinent; although whether they were immigrants from the south
or were parents of the southern stem can scarcely be known.
So far as traditions tell, the uniform account given by the
Bolivian tribes is of a northerly origin. The tales seem to
point to the Venezuelan coast, and perhaps remotely to the
Antilles, rather than to the Isthmus, and it is certain that there
are broad similarities in culture — especially in the forms and
use of ceremonial objects — pointing to the remote unity of
the whole region from Haiti to Ecuador, and from Venezuela to
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Nicaragua. It is entirely possible that within this region the
drift of influence has been southerly; though it is more likely
that counter-streams, northward and southward, must give
the full explanation of the civilization.

On the linguistic side it is agreed that the Guetare of Costa
Rica represent a branch of the Chibchan stock, while neigh-
bouring tribes of the same stock are either now extinct or little
known. The Spanish conquests in the Isthmian region were
as ruthlessly complete as anywhere in America, and for the
greater part our knowledge of the aborigines is the fruit of
archaeology. In the writings of Oviedo and Cieza de Leon
some facts may be gleaned — enough, indeed, to picture the
general character of the rituals of the Indian tribes — but there
is no competent contemporary relation of the native religion
and beliefs.

[Prometheus]

Oviedo’s description 3 of the tribes about the Gulf of Nicoya,
where the civilizations of the two Americas meet, indicates a
religion in which the great rites were human sacrifices of the
Mexican type and feasts of intoxication. Archaeological re-
searches in the same region have brought to light amulets and
ornaments, some anthropomorphic in character, but many
representing animal forms, usually highly conventionalized —
alligators, jaguars and pumas, frogs, parrots, vampires, denizens
of earth, air, and sea, all indicative of a populous pantheon of
talismanic powers; while cruciform, swastika, and other sym-
bolic ornamentation implies a development in the direction of
abstraction sustained by Oviedo’s mention of “folded books of
deerskin parchment,” which are probably the southern exten-
sion of the art of writing as known in the northern civilization.
The archaeology of the Guetare region, in central, and of the
Chiriqui region, in southern Costa Rica, disclose the same
fantasy of grotesque and conventionalized animals — saurians,
armadilloes, the cat-tribe, composites — indicative of a simi-
larly zoomorphic pantheon. Benzoni, speaking of the tribes
of this region, states that they worshipped idols in the forms
 
 PLATE XXVI

Jade pendant representing a Vampire. After
Hartman, Archaeological Researches on the Pacific
Coast of Costa Rica, Plate XLIV. For reference to
the significance of the bat, as a deity, see page 177
and page 364, note 6.
 
 
 THE ANDEAN NORTH

191

of animals, which they kept hidden in caves; while Andagoya
declares that the priests of the Cuna or Cueva (dwelling at the
juncture of the Isthmus and the southern continent) communed
with the devil and that Chipiripa, a rain-god, was one of their
most important deities; they are said, too, to have known of
the deluge. Of the neighbouring Indians, about Uraba, Cieza
de Leon gives us to know that “they certainly talk with the
devil and do him all the honour they can. . . . He appears
to them (as I have been told by one of themselves) in frightful
and terrible visions, which cause them much alarm.” Further-
more, “the devil gives them to understand that, in the place
to which they go [after death], they will come to life in another
kingdom which he has prepared for them, and that it is neces-
sary to take food with them for the journey. As if hell was so
very far off!”

Peter Martyr devotes the greater part of a book (the tenth of
the Seventh Decade)4 to a description of the rites and beliefs of
the Indians of the region where the Isthmus joins the continent.
Dabaiba, he says, was the name both of a river and of a divinity
whose sanctuary was about forty leagues from Darien; and
thither at certain seasons the caciques, even of the most dis-
tant countries, sent slaves to be strangled and burnt before the
idol. “When the Spaniards asked them to what divinity they
addressed their prayers, they responded that it is to the god
who created the heavens, the sun, the moon, and all existing
things; and from whom every good thing proceeds. They be-
lieve that Dabaiba, the divinity universally venerated in the
country, is the mother of this creator.” Their traditions told
of a great drought which, making the rivers dry, caused the
greater part of mankind to perish of thirst, while the survivors
emigrated from the mountains to the sea-coast; for this reason
they maintained priests and addressed prayers to their divinity,
who would seem to be a rain-goddess. Another legend recorded
by Peter Martyr tells of a frightful tempest which brought with
it two great birds, “similar to the harpies of the Strophades,”
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

having “the face, chin, month, nose, teeth, eyes, brows, and
physiognomy of a virgin.” One of these seized the people
and carried them off to the mountains to devour them, where-
fore, to slay the man-eating bird, certain heroes carved a human
figure on the end of a log, which they set in the ground so that
the figure alone was visible. The hunters concealed themselves
near by, and when the monster, mistaking the image for prey,
sunk its talons into the wood, falling upon it, they slew it
before it could release itself. “Those who killed the monster
were honoured as gods.” Interesting, too, is Martyr’s account
of the reason given for the sinfulness of incest: the dark spots
on the moon represent a man cast into that damp and freezing
planet to suffer perpetual cold in expiation of incest committed
with his sister — the very myth that is told in North Green-
land; and the belief that “only nobles have immortal souls” (or,
more likely, that they alone enjoy a paradise) is cited to explain
why numbers of servants gladly throw themselves into the
graves of their masters, since thus they gain the right to accom-
pany their lords into the afterworld of pleasure; all others,
apparently, go down to a gloomy hades, though there may be
truth in Martyr’s statement that it is pollution which brings
this fate.

The account of the religion of the Isthmian tribes in later
times, by W. M. Gabb andPittier de Fabrega,5 probably repre-
sents faithfully their earlier beliefs. There are deities who are
the protectors of game-animals, suggesting the Elders of the
Kinds so characteristic of North American lore; though they
appear to men in human form, taking vengeance on those who
only wound in the chase: “When thou shootest, do it to kill,
so that the poor beast doth not fall a prey to the worms,”
is the command of the King of the Tapirs to the unlucky hunter
who is punished for his faulty work by being stricken with
dumbness during the period in which a cane grows from a
sprout to its full height. The Isthmian peoples recognize (as do
most other Americans) a faineant supreme being, Sibu, in the
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193

world above, with a host of lesser, but dangerous, powers in
the realm of environing nature; and there is a paradise, at
least for the noble dead, situated at the zenith, though the way
thither is beset by perils, monsters, and precipices. Las Casas
also mentions the belief in a supreme deity, Chicuna, Lord of
All Things, as extending from Darien to Nicaragua; and he
says that along with this god the Sun, the Moon, and the
Morning Star were worshipped, as well as divinities of wood
and stone which presided over the elements and the sowings
{sementeras).

The allusion to deities of the sementeras is interesting in
connexion with the Bribri and Brunka (or Boruca) myths,
published byPittier de Fabrega. According to these tribes of
Indians, men and animal kinds were originally born of seeds
kept in baskets which Sibu entrusted to the lesser gods; but
the evil powers were constantly hunting for these seeds, en-
deavouring to destroy them. One tale relates that after Sura,
the good deity to whom the seed had been committed, had
gone to his field of maize, Jaburu, the evil divinity, stole and
ate the seed; and when Sura returned, killed and buried him,
a cacao-tree and a calabash-tree growing from the grave.
Sibu, the almighty one, resolving to punish Jaburu and de-
manding of him a drink of chocolate, the wives of the
wicked deity roasted the cacao, and made a drinking-vessel of
the calabash. “Then Sibu, the almighty god, willed — and
whatever he wills has to be: ‘May the first cup come to me!’
and as it so came to pass, he said, ‘My uncle, I present this
cup to thee, so that thou drink!’ Jaburu swallowed the
chocolate at once, with such delight that his throat resounded,
tshaaa! And he said, ‘My uncle! I have drunk Sura’s first
fruit!’ But just at this moment he began to swell, and he
swelled and swelled until he blew up. Then Sibu, the almighty
god, picked up again the seed of our kin, which was in Jaburu’s
body, and willed, ‘Let Sura wake up again!’ And as it so
happened he gave him back the basket with the seed of our kin
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

to keep.” In another tale a duel between Sibu and Jaburu, in
which each should throw two cacao-pods at the other, and
he should lose in whose hand a pod first broke, was the pre-
liminary for the creation of men, which Sibu desired and Jaburu
opposed. The almighty god chose green pods, the evil one ripe
pods; and at the third throw the pod broke in Jaburu’s hand,
mankind being then born from the seed. A third legend, of a
man-stealing eagle who devoured his prey in company with a
jaguar (who is no true jaguar, but a bad spirit, having the form
of a stone until his prey approaches), is evidently a version of
the story of the bird-monster told by Peter Martyr.

III. EL DORADO

Not the quest of the Golden Fleece itself and the adventures
of the Argonauts with clashing rocks and Amazonian women
are so filled with extravagance and peril as is the search for El
Dorado.6 The legend of the Gilded Man and of his treasure
city sprang from the soil of the New World in the very dawn of
its discovery — whether wholly in the imaginations of con-
quistadores dazzled with dreams of gold, or partly from some
custom, tale, or myth of the American Indians it is now im-
possible to say. In its earlier form it told of a priest, or king,
or priest-king, who once a year smeared his. body with oil,
powdered himself with gold dust, and in gilded splendour, ac-
companied by nobles, floated to the centre of a lake, where, as
the onlookers from the shore sang and danced, he first made
offering of treasure to the waters .and then himself leaped in to
wash the gold from his body. Later, fostered by the readiness
of the aborigines to rid themselves of the plague of white men
by means of tales of treasure cities farther on, the story grew
into pictures of the golden empire of Omagua, or Manoa,
or Paytiti, or Enim, on the shores of a distant lake. Expedi-
tion after expedition journeyed in quest of the fabled capital.
As early as 1530, Ambros von Alfinger, a German knight, set
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195

out from the coast of Venezuela in search of a golden city,
chaining his enslaved native carriers to one another by means
of neck-rings and cutting off the heads of those who succumbed
to fatigue to save the trouble of unlinking them; Alfinger him-
self was wounded in the neck by an arrow and died of the
wound. In 1531 Diego de Ordaz conducted an expedition guided
by a lieutenant who claimed to have been entertained in the
city of Omoa by El Dorado himself; in 1536-38 George of
Spires, afterward governor of Venezuela, made a journey of
fifteen hundred miles into the interior; and another German, the
red-bearded Nicholas Federman, departed upon the same quest.
On the plains of Bogota in 1539 they met Quesada and Belal-
cazar, who, coming from the north and from the south respec-
tively, had subdued the Chibcha realm. Hernan Perez de
Quesada, brother of the conqueror, led an unlucky expedi-
tion, behaving with such cruelty that his death from lightning
was regarded as a divine retribution; while the expeditions of
the chivalrous Philip von Hutten (1540-41) and of Orellana
down the Amazon (1540-41) were followed by others, down to
the time of Sir Walter Raleigh’s quest in 1595, — all enlarging
the geographical knowledge of South America and accumulating
fables of cities of gold and nations of warlike women. Of all
these adventures, however, the most amazing was the “ jornada
de Omagua y Dorado” which set out from Peru in 1559 under
the leadership of Don Pedro de Ursua, a knight of Navarre.
Ursua was a gentleman, worthy of his knighthood, but his
company was crowded with cut-throats, of whom he himself
was an early victim. Hernando de Guzman made himself
master of the mutineers, and renouncing allegiance to the
King of Castile, proclaimed himself Prince and King of all
Tierra Firme; but he, in turn fell before his tyrant successor,
Lope de Aguirre, whose fantastic and blood-thirsty insanity
caused half the continent to shudder at his name, which
is still remembered in Venezuelan folk-lore, where the phos-
phorescence of the swamp is called fuego de Aguirre in the
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196

belief that under such form the tortured soul of the tyrant
wanders abroad.

The true provenance of the story of the Gilded Man (if not
of the treasure city) seems certainly to be the region about Bo-
gota in the realm of the Chibcha. Possibly the myth may refer
to the practices of one of the nations conquered by the Muyscan
Zipas before the coming of the Spaniards, and legendary even
at that time; for as the tale is told, it seems to describe a cere-
mony in honour of such a water-spirit as we are everywhere
told the Colombian nations venerated; and it may actually
be that the Gilded Man was himself a sacrifice to or a persona-
tion of the deity. Whatever the origin, the legends of El Dorado
have their node in the lands of the Chibcha — a circumstance
not without its own poetic warrant, for from no other American
people have jewelleries of cunningly wrought gold come in
more abundance.

The Zipa of Bogota, at the period of the conquest, was the
most considerable of the native rulers in what is now Colombia,
having an empire only less in extent than those of the Peruvian
Incas and of the Aztec Kings. He also was a recent lord, en-
gaged at the very time of the coming of the whites in extend-
ing his power over neighbouring rulers; it is probable that
Guatavita, east of Bogota had fallen to the Zipa’ not many
decades before the conquest and this Guatavita is supposed
to have been the scene of the rite of El Dorado; in any case
it had remained a famous shrine. Tunja was another power
to the east of Bogota declining before the rising power of
the Zipas, its Zaque (as the Tunjan caciques were called)
being saved from the Zipa’s forces by the arrival of the
Spaniards.

Besides these—the Chibcha proper7—there were in Colom-
bia in the sixteenth century other civilized peoples, akin in
culture and language, whose chief centres were in the elongated
Cauca valley paralleling the Pacific coast. Farthest north were
the tribes in the neighbourhood of Antioquia—the Tamahi and
 
 PLATE XXVII

(A)

Colombian gold work. Ornaments in the forms
of human and monstrous beings, doubtless mytho-
logical subjects. The originals are in the American
Museum of Natural History.

m

Colombian gold work. The human figure ap-
parently holds a staff or wand and may represent
Bochica or similar personage. The originals are in
the American Museum of Natural History.
 
 
 
 
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197

Nutabi; south of these, about Cartago, were the most famous
of gold-workers, the Quimbaya; while near the borders of what
is now Ecuador dwelt the Coconuco and their kindred. All
these peoples possessed skill in pottery, metal-working, and
weaving; and the inhabitants of the Cauca valley were the
most advanced of the Colombians in these arts. Indeed, the
case of Peru seems to be in a measure repeated; for the Chibcha
surpassed their neighbours in the strength of their military
and political organization rather than in their knowledge of
the arts. It is even possible that the Chibcha had been driven
eastward by the western tribes, for the inhabitants of the
Cauca valley possessed traditions of a northern origin, claim-
ing to be immigrants; while the Chibcha still regarded certain
spots in the territories of their western enemies, the Muzo, as
sacred. Little is known of the mythic systems of any of these
peoples save the Chibcha. The Antioquians preserved a deluge-
myth (as doubtless did all the other Colombians); and they
recognized a creator-god, Abira, a spirit of evil, Canicuba,
and a goddess, Dabeciba, who was the same as Dabaiba, the
Darien Mother of the Creator. Cieza de Leon says 8 that the
Antioquians “carve the likeness of a devil, very fierce and in
human form, with other images and figures of cats which they
worship; when they require water or sunshine for their crops,
they seek aid from these idols.” Of the Quimbaya Cieza tells
how there appeared to a group of women making salt beside
a spring the apparition of a disembowelled man who prophesied
a pestilence that soon came. “Many women and boys affirmed
that they saw the dead with their own eyes walking again.
These people well understand that there is something in man
besides the mortal body, though they do not hold that it is a
soul, but rather some kind of transfiguration.” The Sun, the
Moon, and the Rainbow were important divinities with all
these tribes, and they made offerings of gold and jewels and
children to water-spirits in rivers and in springs. Human
sacrifice was probably universal, and too many of the Indians,
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198

as Cieza puts it, “not content with natural food, turned their
bellies into tombs of their neighbours.”

IV. MYTHS OF THE CHIBCHA9

Fray Pedro Simon wrote his Noticias Historiales in 1623,
some four score years from the conquest, giving in his fourth
Noticia an account of the myths and rites of the Chibcha which
is our primary source for the beliefs of these tribes. Like other
American peoples the Chibcha recognized a Creator, apparently
the Heaven Father, but like most others their active cults
centred about lesser powers: the Sun (to whom human sacri-
fices were made), the Moon, the Rainbow, spirits of lakes and
other genii locorum, culture deities, male and female, and the
manes of ancestors. Idols of gold and copper, of wood and clay
and cotton, represented gods and fetishes, and to them offer-
ings were made, especially of emeralds and golden ornaments.
Fray Pedro says that thePijaos aborigines and some of those of
Tunja had in their sanctuaries images having three heads or
three faces on a single body which, the natives said, represented
three persons with one heart; and he also records their use of
crosses to mark the graves of those dead of snake-bite, as well
as their belief that the souls of the dead fared to the centre of
the earth, crossing the Stygian river on balsas made of spiders’
webs, for which reason spiders were never killed. Like the
Aztec they held that the lot of men slain in battle and of women
dying in child-birth was especially delectable in the other
world.

The worship of mountains, serpents, and lakes was implied in
many of the Chibcha rites. Slaves were sacrificed, and their
bodies were buried on hill-tops; children, who were the par-
ticular offering to the Sun, were sometimes taken to mountain-
tops to be slain, their bodies being supposed to be consumed by
the Sun; and an interesting case of the surrogate for human
victims was the practice of sacrificing parrots which had been
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199

taught to speak. In masked dances, addressed to the Sun,
tears were represented on the masks as a supplication for pity;
and another curious rite, apparently solar, was performed at
Tunja, where twelve men in red, presumably typifying the
moons of the year, danced about a blue man, who was doubtless
the sky-god. The ceremony of El Dorado is only one of many
rites in which the divinities of the sacred lakes were propitiated;
and it is probable that these water-spirits were conceived in the
form of snakes, as when, at Lake Guatavita, a huge serpent
was supposed to issue from the depths to secure offerings left
upon the bank.

[Prometheus]

The same concept of serpentiform water-deities appears in
the curious and novel creation-myth of the Chibcha, briefly
told by Fray Simon. In the beginning all was darkness, for
light was imprisoned in a great house in charge of a being called
Chiminigagua, whom the friar names as the Supreme God,
omnipotent, ever good, and lord of all things. After creating
huge black birds, to whom he gave the light, commanding
them to carry it in their beaks until all the world was illu-
mined and resplendent, Chiminigagua formed the Sun, the
Moon (to be the Sun’s wife and companion), and the rest of the
universe. The human race was of another origin, for shortly
after the creation of light, from Lake Iguaque, not far from
Tunja, emerged a woman named Bachue or Turachogue (“the
Good Woman”), bearing with her a boy just out of infancy.
When he was grown, Bachue married him; and their prolific
offspring — she brought forth four or six children at a birth —
peopled the earth; but finally the two returned beneath the
waters, Bachue enjoining upon the people to keep the peace,
to obey the laws which she had given them, and in particular to
preserve the cult of the gods; while the pair assumed the form
of serpents, in which they were supposed sometimes to reappear
to their worshippers.

The belief that the ancestors of men issued from a lake or
spring was common to many Andean tribes, being found far
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

to the south, where the Indians of Cuzco pointed to Lake
Titicaca as the place whence they had come. The myth is easy
to explain for the obvious reason that lakesides are desirable
abodes and that migrating tribes would hark back to aban-
doned lakeside homes as their primal sites; however, another
suggestion is. made plausible by various fragments of origin-
myths which have been preserved, namely, that the Andean
legends belong to the great cycle of American tales which make
men immigrants to the upper world from an under-earth realm
whence they have been driven by the malevolence of the water-
monster, a serpent or a dragon. There are many striking paral-
lels between the Colombian tales and those of the Pueblo
tribes of North America — the great underworld-goddess, the
serpent and the spider as subaqueous and subterranean powers,
the return of the dead to the realm below, the importance of
birds in cosmogony, the cult of the rainbow; and along
with these there are tales of a culture hero and of a pair of
divine brothers such as are common to nearly all American
peoples.

Other Colombian legends of the origin of men include the
Pijaos belief, recorded by Fray Simon, that their ancestors
had issued from a mountain, and the tradition of the Muzo —
western neighbours of the Chibcha — that a shadow, Are,
formed faces from sand, which became men and women when
he sprinkled them with water. A true creation-story (as dis-
tinguished from tales of origin through generation) was told
also by the people of Tunja. In the beginning all was darkness
and fog, wherein dwelt the caciques of Ramiriqui and of
Sogamozo, nephew and uncle. From yellow clay they fashioned
men, and from an herb they created women; but since the
world was still unillumined, after enjoining worship upon their
creatures, they ascended to the sky, the uncle to become the
Sun, the nephew the Moon. It was at Sogamozo that the dance
of the twelve red men — each garlanded and carrying a cross,
and each with a young bird borne as a crest above his head —
 1
 PLATE XXVIII

1.   Ceremonial dish of black ware with monster
or animal forms found near Anoire, Antioquia.
The original is in the Museum of the University of
Nebraska.

2.   Image of mother and child, red earthenware,
from the coastal regions of Colombia. The original
is in the Museum of the University of Nebraska.
 
 3
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201

was danced about the blue sky-man, while all sang how human
beings are mortal and must change their bodies into dust with-
out knowing what shall be the fate of their souls.

Fray Simon relates an episode of these same Indians
which is enlightening both as to the missionary and as to
the aboriginal conception of the powers that be. After the
first missionary had laboured among the natives of Tunja and
Sogamozo, “the Demon there began to give contrary doctrines;
and among other matters he sought to discredit the teaching
of the Incarnation, telling them that such a thing had not yet
taken place. Nevertheless, it should happen that the Sun, as-
suming human flesh in the body of a virgin of the pueblo of
Guacheta, should cause her to bring forth that which she
should conceive from the rays of the sun, although remaining
virgin. This was bruited throughout the provinces, and the
cacique of the pueblo named, wishing to prove the miracle, took
two virgins, and leading them forth from his house every dawn,
caused them to dispose themselves upon a neighbouring hill,
where the first rays of the sun would shine upon them. Con-
tinuing this for some days, it was granted to the Demon by
Divine permission (whose judgements are incomprehensible)
that the event should issue according to his desire: in such
manner that in a few days one of the damsels became pregnant,
as she said, by the Sun.” At the end of nine months the girl
brought forth a hacuata, a large and beautiful emerald, which
was treated as an infant, and after being carried for several
days, became a living creature — “all by the order of the
Demon.” The child was called Goranchacha, and when he was
grown he became cacique, with the title of “ Child of the Sun.”
It is to be suspected that the story of the virgin-bom son of the
Sun was older than the first preaching of the Incarnation, and
that Spanish ears had too eagerly misheard some tale of rites
or myths which must have been analogous to the Inca legends of
descent from the Sun and to their consecration of virgins to
his worship.
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Like the other civilized American nations the Chibcha pre-
served the tradition of a bearded old man, clothed in long
robes who came from the east to instruct them in the arts of
life and to raise them from primeval barbarism; and like other
churchly writers Fray Pedro Simon regarded this as evidence
of the preaching of the Gospel by an apostle. Nemptereque-
teva, or Nemquetheba, and Xue, or Zuhe, are two of the
names of this culture hero, worshipped as the god Bochica. He
taught the weaving of cotton, the cultivation of fruits, the
building of houses, the adoration of the gods; and then he
passed on his mysterious way, leaving as proof of his mission
designs of crosses and serpents, and the custom of erecting
crosses over the graves of the victims of snake-bite — to
Fray Pedro an obvious reminiscence of the brazen serpent
raised on a cross by Moses in the Wilderness. One of the
epithets of this greybeard was Chiminizagagua, or “Messenger
of Chiminigagua,” the supreme god; and when the Spaniards
appeared they were called Gagua, after the light-giver; but
later, when their cruelties had set them in a different context,
the aborigines changed the name to Suegagua (“Demon with
Light”) after their principal devil, Suetiva, “and this they
give today to the Spaniards.” Piedrahfta says the Spaniards
were termed Zuhd, but he identifies the name as belonging to
the hero Bochica.

A curious episode follows the departure of the culture hero.
Among the people appeared a woman, beautiful and resplen-
dent — “or, better to say, a devil in her figure” — who taught
doctrines wholly opposed to the injunctions of Chiminizagagua.
Dancing and carousal were the tenets of her evangel; and in
displeasure at this, Chiminizagagua transformed the woman
(variously known as Chie, Huytaca, or Xubchasgagua) into
an owl, condemning her to walk the night. Humboldt says
that Bochica changed his wife Chia into the Moon (chia
signifies “moon” in the Chibchan tongue, says Acosta de
Samper); and it seems altogether likely that in the culture
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203

hero, Messenger of Light, and the festal heroine, with their
opposite doctrines, we have a myth of sun and moon.

The Chibcha, of course, had their deluge-legend. In the
version given by Fray Pedro Simon it is associated with the
appearance of the rainbow as the symbol of hope; and since
the rainbow cult was important throughout the Andean region,
it may everywhere have been associated with some such myth
as the friar recounts. Chibchachum, the tutelary of the natives
of Bogota, being offended by the people, who murmured
against him and indeed openly offended, sent a flood to punish
them, whereupon they, in their peril, appealed to Bochica,
who appeared to them upon a rainbow, and, striking the
mountains with his staff, opened a conduit for the waters.
Chibchachum was punished, as Zeus punished the Titans, by
being thrust beneath the earth to take the place of the lignum-
vitae-trees which had hitherto upheld it, and his weary rest-
lessness is the cause of earthquakes; while the rainbow, Chucha-
viva, was thenceforth honoured as a deity, though not
without fear; for Chibchachum, in revenge for his disgrace,
announced that when it appeared, many would die. In the
version of this tale given by Piedrahita, Huytaca plays a part,
for it is as a result of her artifices that the waters rise; but
Bochica is again the deliverer, and the place opened for the
issuance of the waters was shown at the cataract of Tequen-
dama — “one of the wonders of the world.”

The myth of Chibchachum, shaking the world which he
supports, has its analogue not only in the tale of Atlas but
also in the Tlingit legend of the Old Woman Below who jars
the post that upholds the world. It would seem, however, not
impossible that the story is an etymological myth, for Fray
Pedro Simon says that Chibchachum means “Staff of the
Chibcha,” a name which might easily lend itself to the mytho-
poesy of the deluge-tale; nor is it unreasonable from the point
of view of cultural advancement, for the Chibcha were beyond
the stage in which it is profitable to refer all deifications to
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

natural phenomena. Chibchachum, says the friar, was god of
commerce and industries — a complex divinity, not a mere
hero of myth — and Bochica, the most universally venerated of
Chibchan deities, was revered as a law-giver, divinity of
caciques and captains; served with sacrifices of gold and
tobacco, he was worshipped with fasts and hymns, and his
image was that of a man with the golden staff of authority.
There was a fox-god and a bear-god, but Nemcatacoa, the
bear-god, was patron of weavers and dyers, and, oddly, of
drunkards; in his bear’s form he was supposed to sing and
dance with his followers. Chukem, deity of boundaries and
foot-races, must have been an American Hermes, and Bachue,
goddess of agriculture and of the springs of life, was, no doubt,
a personification of the earth itself, a Ge or Demeter. Chucha-
viva, the Rainbow, aided women in child-birth and those sick
with a fever — and we think of the images of the rainbow
goddess on the sweat lodges of the Navaho far to the north,
and of the rainbow insignia of the royal Incas in the imperial
south. Certain it is that here we have to do with a pantheon
that reflects the complexity of a life developed beyond the
primitive needs of those whom we call nature-folk.

V.   THE MEN FROM THE SEA

The most picturesque account of the landing of gigantic
strangers on the desert-like Pacific coast, just south of the
equator, is that given by Cieza de Leon.10 “I will relate what
I have been told, without paying attention to the various
versions of the story current among the vulgar, who always
exaggerate everything.” With this proclamation of modesty,
he proceeds with the tale which the natives, he says, have
received from their ancestors of a remote time.

“There arrived on the coast, in boats made of reeds, as big
as large ships, a party of men of such size that, from the knee
downwards, their height was as great as the entire height of an
 THE ANDEAN NORTH

205

ordinary man, though he might be of good stature.' Their
limbs were all in proportion to the deformed size of their bodies,
and it was a monstrous thing to see their heads, with hair reach-
ing to the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates.
They had no beards and were dressed in the skins of animals,
others only in the dress which nature gave them, and they had
no women with them. When they arrived at this point [Santa
Elena], they made a sort of village, and even now the sites of
their houses are pointed out. But as they found no water, in
order to remedy the want they made some very deep wells,
works which are truly worthy of remembrance, for such is their
magnitude that they certainly must have been executed
by very strong men. They dug these wells in the living
rock until they met with water, and then they lined them
with masonry from top to bottom in such sort that they will
endure for many ages. The water in these wells is very good and
wholesome, and always so cold that it is very pleasant to
drink it. Having built their village and made their wells or
cisterns where they could drink, these great men, or giants,
consumed all the provisions they could lay their hands upon
in the surrounding country, insomuch that one of them
ate more meat than fifty of the natives of the country could.
As all the food they could find was not sufficient to sustain
them, they killed many fish with nets and other gear. They
were detested by the natives, because in using their women
they killed them, and the men also in another way; but the
Indians were not sufficiently numerous to destroy this new
people who had come to occupy their lands. . . . All the
natives declare that God, our Lord, brought upon them a
punishment in proportion to the enormity of their offence.
... A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven
with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued
a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which, at one
blow, they were all killed, and the fire consumed them. There
only remained a few bones and skulls, which God allowed to
 206

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

remain without being consumed by the fire, as a memorial
of this punishment.”

Cieza de Leon’s story is only one among a number of accounts
of this race of giants, come from the sea and destroyed long
ago by flame from heaven for the sin of sodomy. To these
legends recent investigations have added a new interest; for
during excavations in the coast region to the north of Cape
Santa Elena the members of the George G. Heye Expeditions
(1906-08) discovered the remains of a unique aboriginal civili-
zation in this region, among its monuments being stone-faced
wells corresponding to those mentioned by the early narration.
Another and peculiarly interesting type of monument, found
here in abundance, is the stone seat, whether throne or altar,
carved with human or animal figures to support it, and remi-
niscent of the duhos of the Antilles and of carved metates and
seats found northward in the continent and beyond the Isth-
mus. It is the opinion of the excavators that these seats were
thrones for deities; possibly also for human dignitaries, espe-
cially as clay figures represent men sitting upon such seats
— images, perhaps, of household gods; while the figures of men,
pumas, serpents, birds, monkeys, and other figures crouching
caryatid-like are, no doubt, depictions of supporting powers,
divine auxiliaries or gods themselves. Monstrous forms, com-
posite animals, and grotesquely frog-like images of a female
goddess in bas-relief on stele-like slabs — mute emblems of a
forgotten pantheon — add curious interest to the vanished
race, remembered only in distorted legend when the first-
coming Spaniards received the tale from the aborigines.

Juan de Velasco,11 in the beginning of his history of Quito,
places the coming of the giants about the time of the Christian
era; and six or seven centuries later, he declares, another in-
cursion of men from the sea appeared on this coast, destined
to leave a more permanent trace, for the present city of Ca-
raques not only marks the site of their first power, but bears
the name of the Cara. These invaders are said to have come
 
 PLATE XXIX

Scene from a vase, Truxillo, showing balsa. The
drawing is in the Chimu style. After Joyce, South
American Archaeology, page 126.
 
 I

&
 THE ANDEAN NORTH

207

on balsas—the strange boats of this coast, formed of logs bound
together, the longest at the centre, into the form of a hull, on
which a platform was built, while masts bore cloth sails; and
it is stated that the Spaniards encountered such craft capable
of carrying forty or fifty men. The Cara were an adventurous
people, and after dwelling for a time upon the coast, they
advanced into the interior until, about 980 A. D., according to
Velasco, they eventually established their power in the neigh-
bourhood of Quito, where the Scyri (as the Cara king was
called) became a powerful overlord. From that time until
Quito was subdued by the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna
Capac in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the Scyris
reigned over the northern empire, constantly extending their
territories by war; but their power was finally broken when
the Inca added the emerald of the Scyris to the red fringe of
Cuzco to complete his imperial crown.

The followers of the Scyris, Velasco says, were mere idola-
ters, having at the head of their pantheon the Sun and the
Moon who had guided them on their journeys; and he describes
the temples built to these deities on two opposite hills at
Quito, that to the Sun having before the door two pillars
which served to measure the solar year, while twelve lesser
columns indicated the beginning of each month. Elsewhere in
their empire were the usual local cults, — worship of animals
and elements, with tales of descent from serpentiform water-
spirits and with adoration of fish and of food animals —
while on the coast the Sea was a great divinity, and the islands
of Puna and La Plata were the seats of famous sanctuaries,
at the former shrine prisoners being sacrificed to Tumbal, the
war-god, by having their hearts torn out. The neighbouring
coast was the seat of the veneration of the great emerald
(mentioned by Cieza de Leon and Garcilasso de la Vega)
which was famous as a god of healing; and it is altogether
probable that the Scyris brought their regard for the emerald
from this region in which the gem abounded, though this
 208

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

may well have been merely a local intensification of that
belief in the magic of green and blue gems which is broadcast
in the two Americas.

[Prometheus]

Besides the stories of the giants and the Cara, there is a
third legend of an ancient descent of seamen upon the equa-
torial coast. Balboa12 is the narrator of the tale of the coming
of Naymlap and his people to Lambeyeque, a few degrees
south of Cape Santa Elena, and the story which he tells is given
with a minuteness as to name and description that leaves
no doubt of its native origin. At a very remote period there
arrived from the north a great fleet of balsas, commanded by
a brave and renowned chieftain, Naymlap. His wife was
called Ceterni, and a list of court officers is given—Pitazofi,
the trumpeter; Ninacolla, warden of the chiefs litter and
throne; Ninagentue, the cup-bearer; Fongasigde, spreader of
shell-dust before the royal feet (a function which leads us to
suspect that the royal feet, for magic reasons, were never to
touch the earth); Ochocalo, chief of the cuisine; Xam, master
of face-paints; and Llapchilulli, charged with the care of
vestments and plumes. From this account of the entourage,
one readily infers that the chieftain is more than man, him-
self a divinity; and, indeed, Balboa goes on to say that im-
mediately after the new comers had landed, they built a
temple, named Chot, wherein they placed an idol which they
had brought and which, carved of green stone in the image
of the chief, was called Llampallec, or “figure of Naymlap.”
After a long reign Naymlap disappeared, leaving the report
that, given wings by his power, he had ascended to the skies;
and his followers, in their affliction, went everywhere in search
of their lord, while their children inhabited the territories which
had been acquired. Cium, the successor of Naymlap, at the
end of his reign, immured himself in a subterranean cham-
ber, where he perished of hunger in order that he might leave
the reputation of being immortal; and after Cium were nine
other kings, succeeded by Tempellec, who undertook to move
 THE ANDEAN NORTH

209

the statue of Naymlap. But when a demon, in the form of a
beautiful woman, had seduced him, it began to rain — a thing
hitherto unknown on that dry coast — and continued for
thirty days, this being followed by a year of famine, whereupon
the priests, binding Tempellec hand and foot, cast him into
the sea, after which the kindgom was changed into a republic.

This tale bears all the marks of authentic tradition. We may
well suppose that Naymlap and his successors were magic
kings, reigning during the period of their vigorous years and
then sacrificed to make way for a successor who should anew
incarnate the sacred life of Llampallec. Such rulers, as corn-
spirits and embodiments of the communal soul of their people,
have been made familiar by Sir James G. Frazer’s monu-
mental Golden Bough; and in this case it would appear that
the sacred king was regarded as a marine divinity, probably
as the son of Mother Sea. Certainly this would not merely
explain the shell-dust spread beneath his feet, but it might
also account for the punishment of Tempellec, who had brought
the cataclysm of water to the land and so was cast back to his
own element; while it is even possible that the worship of the
emerald, which all writers mention in connexion with this
coast, may have here received its especial impetus from the
colour and translucency of the stone, suggesting the green
waters of the ocean.
 CHAPTER VII

THE ANDEAN SOUTH

I.   THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS1

IN this land of Peru,” wrote Cieza de Leon,2 “ are three desert
ranges where men can in no wise exist. One of these com-
prises the montana (forests) of the Andes, full of dense wilder-
nesses where men cannot live, nor ever have lived. The second
is the mountainous region, extending the whole length of the
Cordillera of the Andes, which is intensely cold, and its sum-
mits are covered with eternal snow, so that in no way can
people live in this region owing to the snow and the cold, and
also because there are no provisions, all things being destroyed
by the snow and the wind, which never ceases to blow. The
third range comprises the sandy deserts from Tumbez to the
other side of Tarapaca, in which there is nothing to be seen
but sand-hills and the fierce sun which dries them up, without
water, nor herb, nor tree, nor created thing, except birds which,
by the gift of their wings, wander wherever they list. This
kingdom, being so vast, has great deserts for the reasons I
have now given.

“The inhabited region is after this fashion. In parts of the
mountains of the Andes are ravines and dales, which open out
into deep valleys of such width as often to form great plains be-
tween the mountains; and although the snow falls, it all re-
mains on the higher part. As these valleys are closed in, they
are not molested by the winds, nor does the snow reach them,
and the land is so fruitful that all things which are sown yield
abundantly; and there are trees and many birds and animals.
The land being so fertile, is well peopled by the natives. They
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

211

make their villages with rows of stones roofed with straw, and
live healthily and in comfort. Thus the mountains of the Andes
form these dales and ravines in which there are populous vil-
lages, and rivers of excellent water flow near them, some of the
rivers send their waters to the South Sea, entering by the sandy
deserts which I have mentioned, and the humidity of their
water gives rise to very beautiful valleys with great rows of
trees. The valleys are two or three leagues broad, and great
quantities of algoroba trees [Prosopis horrida] grow in them,
which flourish even at great distances from any water.
Wherever there are groves of trees the land is free from
sand and very fertile and abundant. In ancient times these
valleys were very populous, and still there are Indians in them,
though not so many as in former days. As it never rains in
these sandy deserts and valleys of Peru, they do not roof their
houses as they do in the mountains, but build large houses of
adobes [sun-dried bricks] with pleasant terraced roofs of matting
to shade them from the sun, nor do the Spaniards use any other
roofing than these reed mats. To prepare their fields for sowing,
they lead channels from the rivers to irrigate the valleys, and
the channels are made so well and with so much regularity
that all the land is irrigated without any waste. This system
of irrigation makes the valleys very green and cheerful, and
they are full of fruit-trees both of Spain and of this country.
At all times they raise good harvests of maize and wheat, and
of everything that they sow. Thus, although I have described
Peru as being formed of three desert ridges, yet from them,
by the will of God, descend these valleys and rivers, without
which no man could live. This is the cause why the natives
were so easily conquered, for if they rebelled they would all
perish of cold and hunger. Except the land which they inhabit,
the whole country is full of snowy mountains, enormous and
very terrible.”

Cieza de Leon’s description brings vividly before the imagina-
tion the physical surroundings which made possible the evolu-
 212

.LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

tion and the long history of the greatest of native American
empires. Divided from one another by towering mountains
and inhospitable deserts, the tribes and clans that filtered into
this region at some remote period were compelled to develop in
relative isolation; while, further, the conditions of existence
were such that the inhabitants could not be nomadic huntsmen,
nor even fishermen. Along the shores are vestiges of ancient
shell-heaps, indicative of utterly primitive fisher-folk, and the
sea always remained an important source of food for the coastal
peoples; yet even here, as Cieza de Leon indicates, the growth
of population was dependent upon an intensive cultivation of
the narrow river-valleys rather than upon the conquest of new
territories. Thus, the whole environment of life in Peru, mon-
tane and littoral, is framed by the fact of more or less con-
stricted and protected valley centres, immensely productive in
response to toil, but yielding no idyllic fruits to unlaborious
ease. If the peoples who inhabited these valleys were not agri-
culturists when they entered them, they were compelled to
become such in order that they might live and increase; and
while the stupendous thrift of the aborigines, as evidenced by
their stone-terraced gardens, their elaborate aqueducts, and
their wonderful roads, still excites the astonishment of be-
holders, it is none the less intelligible as the inevitable conse-
quence of prolonged human habitation. It is certain that the
Peruvian peoples were the most accomplished of all Americans
in the working of the soil; and it is possible that they were the
originators of agriculture in America, for it was from Peru,
apparently, that the growing of maize spread throughout wide
regions of South America, Peru that developed the potato as a
food-crop, and in Peru that the cultivation of cotton and various
fruits and vegetables added greatest variety to the native farm-
ing. Peru, likewise, was the only American centre in which there
was a domestic animal more important than the dog; and the
antiquity of the taming of the llama and alpaca — useful not
only for food and wool, but also as beasts of burden — is shown
 
 PLATE XXX

Machu Picchu, in the valley of the Urubamba,
north of Cuzco. These ruins of an ancient Inca
city were discovered by Hiram Bingham, of the
Yale University and National Geographical Society
expedition, in 1911, and are by him identified with
the “Tampu-Tocco” of Inca tradition (see pages
216-18, and Plate XXXVIII). From photograph,
courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale
Peruvian Expedition.
 
 I

i

i

0
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

213

by the fact that these animals show marked differentiation
from the wild guanaco from which they are derived. The de-
velopment of domestic species of this animal and, even more,
the development of maize from its ancestral grasses (if indeed
this were Peruvian) 3 imply many centuries of settled and in-
dustrious life, a consideration which adds strongly to the ar-
chaeological and legendary indications of a civilization that
must be reckoned in millennia.

The conditions which thus fostered local and intensive cul-
tural evolutions were scarcely less favourable — once the local
valleys had reached a certain complexity — to the formation
of extensive empires. As Cieza de Leon remarks, conquest was
easy where refuge was difficult; and the Inca conquerors them-
selves found that the most effective weapon they could employ
against the coastal cities was mastery of their aqueducts. The
town which lost control of its water, drawn from the hills,
could only surrender; and thus, the segregated valleys fell
an easy prey to a powerful and aggressive people, gifted with
engineering skill, such as the Inca race; while the empire won
was not difficult to hold. At the time of the Spanish conquest
that empire was truly immense. Tahuantinsuyu (“the Four
Quarters”) was the native name, and “the Quartered City”
(Cuzco), its capital, was regarded as the Navel of the World.
The four quarters, or provinces, were oriented from Cuzco:
the southerly was Collasuyu, stretching from the neighbour-
hood of Lake Titicaca southward; the eastern province was
Antisuyu, extending down the slopes of the Andes into the
regions of savagery; to the west lay Cuntisuyu, reaching to
the coast and to the lands of the Yunca peoples; while to the
north was Chinchasuyu, following the Andean valleys. Shortly
before the Conquest the Inca dominion had been imposed
upon the realm of the Scyris of Quito, so that the northern
boundary lay beyond the equator; while the extreme southerly
border had recently been extended over the Calchaqui tribes
and down the coast to the edges of Araucania in the neigh-
 214

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

bourhood of latitude 350 south. The imperial territories were
naturally narrowed to the Andean region, for the tropical
forests to the east offered no allurements to the mountain-
loving race which, indeed, could endure only temporarily the
heat of the western coast, so that Inca campaigners in this
direction resorted to frequent reliefs lest their men be de-
bilitated. On the other hand, the immense expanse north and
south, notwithstanding the perfection of the roads and for-
tresses built by astute rulers to facilitate communication,
caused a natural tension of the parts and a tendency to break
at the appearance of even the least weakness at the centre.
Such appears to have been the fatal defect underlying the
conflict of Huascar, at Cuzco, with Atahualpa, whose initial
strength lay in his possession of Quito, and whose career was
brought to an untimely end by the advent of Pizarro. Despite
the fact that Inca power had been clearly crescent within the
generation, it is by no means certain that the political con-
ditions which the Spaniards used to advantage might not,
if left to themselves, have disrupted the great empire.

There is reason to think that such a rupture had occurred
at least once before in the history of Andean civilization.
The list of more than a hundred Peruvian kings given by the
Licentiate Fernando Montesinos (writing about 1650)4 was
formerly viewed with much distrust, chiefly for the reason that
the kings of the pre-Inca dynasties recorded by Montesinos
are almost without exception unnamed by earlier and prime
authorities on Peruvian history (including Garcilasso de la
Vega and Cieza de Leon). Recent discoveries, however, both
scholarly and archaeological, have brought a new plausibility
to Montesinos’s lists, and it appears probable that he derived
them from the lost works of Bias Valera, one of the earliest
men in the field, known to have had exceptional opportuni-
ties for a study of native lore; while at the same time the
archaeological investigations of Max Uhle and the brilliant
achievements of the expeditions headed by Hiram Bingham
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH   215

have given a new definiteness to knowledge of pre-Inca
conditions.5

It has long been known that Inca civilization was only the
last in a series of Peruvian culture periods. Back of it, in the
highlands, lay the Megalithic Age, so called from the great
size of the stone blocks in its cyclopean masonry, the earliest
centre of this culture being supposed to have been about
Lake Titicaca, and especially Tiahuanaco, at the south of the
lake — a site remarkable not only for the most extraordinary
of all ancient American monuments, the monolithic gate and
the surrounding precincts, but also for the importance ascribed
to it in legend as a place of origin of nations. Other highland
centres, however, hark back to the same period, and Cuzco
itself, in old cyclopean walls, shows evidence of an age of
Megalithic greatness upon which the later Inca civilization
had supervened. Again, in the coastal region from lea to
Truxillo — the realms of the Yunca, according to the older
chroniclers — there were several successive culture periods;
and though it is possible that traditions such as that of Naym-
lap (see Chapter VI, Section V) indicate a foreign origin for
the Yunca peoples, in any case their differing environment
would account for much. The peoples of the littoral could
have no herds of llamas, since the animal was unable to live
in that region; and hence they looked mainly to cotton for
their fabrics, while the sea gave them fair compensation in
the matter of food. In the lesser arts, especially in that of
the potter, they surpassed the highlanders and, indeed, all
other Americans; but their building material was adobe, and
they have left no magnificent monuments, as have the stone-
workers of the hills. Nevertheless at some remote, pre-Inca
period the ideas of the coast and those of the highlands met
and interchanged: the art of Tiahuanaco is reflected in motive
at Truxillo, while the vases of Nasca repeat the bizarre decora-
tion of the monolith of Chavin de Huantar. The hoary sanctity
of the great temple of Pachacamac was such that its Inca
 216

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

conqueror adopted the god into his own pantheon; and it was
just here, at the Yunca shrine of Pachacamac, that Uhle
found evidence of a series of culture periods leading to a con-
siderable antiquity. The indigenous coastal art had already
passed its climax of expressive skill when the influence of
Tiahuanaco appeared; but this influence lasted long enough
to leave an enduring impress on the interregnum-like period
which followed, awaiting, as it were, the return of the hills’
influence, which came with the advent of the Inca. Such, in
brief, is the restoration, and it seems to fit remarkably with
Bingham’s discoveries and with Montesinos’s lists.

Of the one hundred and two kings in these lists, the last
ten form the Inca dynasty (a group with respect to which
Montesinos is in essential agreement with other chroniclers),
whose beginning is placed 1100-1200 a. d.; back of these are
the twenty-eight lords of Tampu-Tocco; and still earlier the
sixty-four rulers of the ancient empire, forty-six of them
forming the amauta (or priest-king) dynasty which followed
after the primal line of eighteen Sons of the Gods. Were this
scheme of regal succession followed out in extenso the begin-
nings of the Megalithic Empire of the highlands should fall
near the beginning of the first millenium before Christ, and that
of the Tampu Tocco dynasty in the early years of our Era.
Archaeological and other considerations lead, however, to esti-
mates somewhat more conservative, placing the culmination
of the early empire in the first centuries of the Christian era,
and the sojourn at Tampu Tocco from about 600-1100 a. d.6

The Inca dynasty, established at Cuzco toward 1200 a. d.,
was the creator of the great empire which the Spaniards found,
and its record is the traditional history of Peru, recounted by
Garcilasso and Cieza. According to the legend, the Inca tribes
had come to Cuzco from a place called Tampu-Tocco, a city
of refuge in an inaccessible valley, where for centuries their
ancestors had lived in seclusion, the cause of the retirement
being as follows: in past generations, it was said, the Amauta
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

217

[Prometheus]

dynasty held sway over a great highland realm, extending
from Tucuman in the south to Huanuco in the north, the
empire having been formed perhaps by the earlier royal house,
which was called Pirua, after the name of its first King. In
the reign of the forty-sixth Amauta, there came an invasion of
hordes from the south and east, preceded by comets, earth-
quakes, and dire divinations. The King Titu Yupanqui, borne
on a golden litter, led his soldiers out to battle; he was slain by
an arrow, and his discouraged followers retreated with his body.
Cuzco fell, and after war came pestilence, leaving city and
country uninhabitable, while the remnants of the Amauta
people fled away to Tampu-Tocco, where they established
themselves, leaving at Cuzco only a few priests who refused
to abandon the shrine of the Sun. It was said that the art of
writing was lost in this debacle, and that the later art of reckon-
ing by quipus, or knotted and coloured cords, was invented at
Tampu-Tocco. Here, in a city free from pests and unmoved
by earthquakes, the Kings of Tampu-Tocco reigned in peace,
going occasionally to Cuzco to worship at the ancient shrine,
over which, with its neighborhood, some shadowy authority
was preserved. Finally a woman, Siyu-Yacu, of noble birth
and high ambition, caused the report to be spread that her
son, Rocca, had been carried off to be instructed by the Sun
himself, and a few days later the youth, appearing in a garment
glittering with gold, told the people that corruption of the
ancient religion had caused their fall, but that their lost glories
should be restored to them under his leadership. Thus Rocca
became the first of the Incas, Cuzco was restored as capital,
and the new empire started on a career which was to exceed
the old in grandeur.

With the removal to Cuzco, Tampu-Tocco became no more
than a monumental shrine where priests and vestals preserved
the rites of the old religion and watched over the caves made
sacred by the bones of former monarchs. The native writer
Salcamayhua, who, like Garcilasso, makes Manco Capac the
 2l8

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

founder of the Incas (Montesinos regards Manco Capac I as
the first native-born king of the Pirua dynasty), tells how
“at the place of his birth he ordered works to be executed,
consisting of a masonry wall with three windows, which were
emblems of the house of his fathers, whence he descended”;
and the name Tampu-Tocco actually means “Tavern of the
Windows,” windows being an unusual feature of Peruvian
architecture. As the event proves, the commemorative wall
is still standing.

In 1911, Hiram Bingham, the leader of the expedition sent
out by Yale University and the National Geographical Society,
discovered in the wild valley of the Urubamba, north of Cuzco,
the ruins of a mountain-seated city, one of the most wonder-
ful, and (in its natural context) beautiful ruins in the world.
Machu Picchu the place is called, and its discoverer identifies
it with the Tampu-Tocco of Inca tradition. One of its most
striking features is a wall with three great windows; it con-
tains cave-made graves and temples; bones of the more recent
dead indicate that those who last dwelt in it were priestesses
and priests; and it gives evidence of long occupation. The
more ancient stonework is the more beautiful in execution,
seeming to hark back to the masterpieces of Megalithic civili-
zation; the later portion is in Inca style. Especially interest-
ing is the discovery of record stones, associated with the older
period, indicating that an earlier method of chronology had
been replaced in later times, for it is to the reign of the thir-
teenth King of Tampu-Tocco that the invention of quipus is
ascribed. Ideally placed as a city of refuge in a remote canon,
so that its very existence was unknown to the Spanish con-
querors; seated on a granite hill unmoved by earthquakes;
with its elaborate structures and complicated terraces indi-
cating generations of residence, Machu Picchu represents the
connecting link between the old and the new empires in Peru
and gives a suddenly vivid plausibility to the traditions
recorded by Montesinos.
 
 PLATE XXXI

Sculptured monolith from Chavin de Huantar,
now in the Museum of Lima. The design appears
to be a deity armed with thunderbolts or elaborate
wands, with a monster head surmounted by an
elaborate head-dress. If the figure be viewed re-
versed the head-dress will be seen to consist of a
series of masks each pendent from the protruding
tongue of the mask above, a motive frequent in Nasca
pottery (cf. Plate XXXII). The figure strongly
suggests the central image of the Tiahuanaco mono-
lithic gateway, but it is to be observed that serpent
heads, from the girdle, the rays of the head-dress,
and in the caduceus-like termination of the head-
dress, take the place of the puma, fish and condor
accessories of the Tiahuanaco monument. The re-
lationship of this deity to those represented on
Plates XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, and
XXXVII, is scarcely to be doubted. Markham,
Incas of Peru, page 34.
 
 
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

219

Thus, in shadowy fashion, the cycles of Andean civilization
are restored. There are two great regions, the highland and
the littoral, Inca and Yunca, each with a long history. The
primitive fisher-families of the coast gave way to a civili-
zation which, may have received its impetus, as traditions
indicate, from tribes sailing southward in great balsas', at
any rate it had developed, doubtless before the Christian era,
important and characteristic culture centres — Truxillo in the
north, Nasca to the south — and great shrines, Pachacamac
and Rimac, venerable to the Incas; while long after its own
acme, and long before the Inca conquest, the coastal civiliza-
tion had had important commerce with the ancient culture
of the highlands. The origin of the pre-Inca empire from the
Megalithic culture of Tiahuanaco leads back toward the
middle of the first millenium b. c., perhaps to dimly remote
centuries. It passed its floruit, marked by the rise of Cuzco
as a great capital, and then followed barbarian migrations
and wars; the retirement of a defeated handful to Tampu-
Tocco; a long period of decline; and finally, about the begin-
ning of the thirteenth century, a renaissance of culture, marked
by a religious reform amounting to a new dispensation and
stamping the revived power as essentially ecclesiastical in
its claims, — for all Inca conquests were undertaken with a
Crusader’s plea for the expansion of the faith in the benefi-
cent Sun and for the spread of knowledge of the Way of Life
revealed through his children, the Inca.

It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance be-
tween the development of this civilization and that of Europe
during the same period. Cuzco and Rome rise to empire
simultaneously; the ancient civilizations of Tiahuanaco, Nasca,
and Truxillo, excelling the new power in art, but inferior in
power of organization and engineering works, are the American
equivalents of Greece and the Orient. Almost synchronously,
Rome and Cuzco fall before barbarian invasions; and in each
case centuries follow which can only be known as dark, during
 220

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

which the empire breaks in chaos. Finally, both civilizations
rise, again during the same period, as leaders in a new move-
ment in religion, animated by a crusading zeal and basing
their authority upon divine will. It is true that Rome does
not attain the material power that was restored to Cuzco,
but Christendom, at least, does attain this power. Such is
the picture, — though it must be added that in the present
state of knowledge it is plausible restoration only, not proven
truth.

II.   THE YUNCA PANTHEONS

It is not possible to reconstruct in any detail the religions
and mythologies of the pre-Inca civilizations of the central
Andes, but of the four culture centres which have been most
studied some traits are decipherable. Two of these centres
are montane, two coastal. Of the former, the Megalithic
highland civilization, whose first home is supposed to have
been the region of Lake Titicaca, is assuredly ancient; the
civilization of the Calchaqui, to the south of this, was a late
conquest of the Incas and was doubtless a contemporary of
Inca culture. On the coast, the Yunca developed in two
branches, both, apparently, as ancient as the Megalithic cul-
ture, and both, again, late conquests of the Incas. To the
north, extending from Tumbez to Paramunca, with Chimu
(Truxillo) as its capital, was the realm of the Grand Chimu
— a veritable empire, for it comprised some twenty coastal
valleys — while the twelve adjoining southern valleys, from
Chancay to Nasca, were the seat of the Chincha Confederacy,
a loose political organization with a characteristic culture of
its own, though clearly akin to that of the Chimu region. All
these centres having fallen under the sway of conquerors with
a creed to impose (the Incas even erected a shrine to the Sun
on the terraces of oracular Pachacamac), their religious tradi-
tions were waning in importance in the time of the conquis-
tadores, who, unhappily, secured little of the lore that might
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

221

have been salved in their own da7. There are fragments for
the Chimu region in Balboa and Calancha, for the Chincha
in Arriaga and Avila; but in the main it is upon the monu-
ments — vases, burials, ruins of temples — that, in any effort
to define the beliefs of these departed peoples, we must depend
for a supplementation of the meagre notices recorded in Inca
tradition or preserved by the early chroniclers.7

Fortunately these monuments permit of some interesting
guesses which, surely, are no unjustified indulgence of human
curiosity when the mute expression of dead souls is their
matter; and in particular the wonderful drawings of the
Truxillo and Nasca vases and the woven figures of their fabrics
suggest analogical interpretation. Despite their family like-
ness, the styles of the two regions are distinct; and, as the
investigations of Uhle show, they have undergone long and
changing developments, with apogees well in the past. The
zenith of Chimu art was marked by a variety and naturalism
of design rivaled, if at all in America, only by the best Maya
achievements; while Chincha expression realized its acme in
polychrome designs truly marvellous in complexity of con-
vention. That the art of both regions is profoundly mytho-
logical is obvious from the portrayals.

Striking features of this Yunca art are the monster-forms8
— man-bird, man-beast, man-fish, man-reptile — and, again,
the multiplication of faces or masks, both of men and of
animals. The repetition of the human countenance is especially
frequent in the art of Nasca, where series of masks are often
enchained in complex designs, one most grotesque form of
this concatenation representing a series of masks issuing, as
it were, from the successive mouths, and joined by the pro-
truding tongues. Again, there are dragon-like or serpentine
monsters having a head at each extremity, recalling not only
the two-headed serpent of Aztec and Maya art, but also the
Sisiutl of the North-West Coast of North America — a region
whose art, also, furnishes an impressive analogue, in complexity
 222

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

of convention, to that of the Yunca. Frequently, in Nasca
art, the fundamental design is a man-headed bird, or fish, or
serpent, whose body and accoutrements are complexly adorned
with representations of the heads or forms of other animals
— the puma, for example, or even the mouse. Oftentimes
heads, apparently decapitations, are borne in the hands of the
central figure; and on one Truxillo vase there is a depiction9
of what is surely a ceremonial dance in which the participants
are masked and disguised as birds and animals; the remark-
able Nasca robes in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (see
Plates XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV) also suggest
masked forms, the representations of the same personage vary-
ing in colour and in the arrangement of facial design.

The heads which are held in the hands and which adorn the
costumes of these figures are regarded by some authorities as
trophy heads, remotely related, perhaps, to those which are
prepared as tokens of prowess by some of the Brazilian tribes;
and, in fact, the discovery of the decapitated mummies of
women and girls, buried in the guano deposits of the sacred
islands of Guanape and Macabi, points to a remote period
when human sacrifices were made, perhaps to a marine power,
and certainly connected with some superstition as to the
head. Another suggestion, however, will account for a greater
variety of the forms. The dances with animal masks irre-
sistibly recall the ancestral and totemic masked dances of
such peoples as the Pueblo Indians of North America and
of the tribes of the North-West Coast; the figures of bird-
men, fish-men, and snake-men, with their bodies ornamented
with other animal figures, are again reminiscent of the totemic
emblems of the far North-West; and surely no image is better
adapted to suggest the descent of a series of generations from
an ancestral hero than the sequence of tongue-joined masks
figured on the Nasca vases, each generation receiving its
name, as it were, from the mouth of the preceding. The
recurrence of certain constant designs, both on vases and in
 
 PLATE XXXII

Polychrome vase from the Nasca valley, showing
the multi-headed deity represented also by Plate
XXXI. The succession of masks connected by
protruded tongues is a striking form of Nasca
design. Examples are found elsewhere, even into
Calchaqui territory. The vase here pictured is in.
the American Museum of Natural History.
 
 
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

223

fabrics, is at least analogous to the use of totemic signs on
garments and utensils in the region of the North-West Coast.

It is certain that ancestor-worship was an important feature
of Yunca religion, for Arriaga, speaking of the Chincha peoples,
says that for festivals they gathered in ayllus (tribes or clans),
each with mummies of its kinsfolk to which were offered
vases, clothes, plumes, and the like. They had household gods
(called Conopa or Huasi-camayoc), as distinguished from the
communal deities, which were of several classes; more than
three thousand of these Conopas it is said, were destroyed
by the Spaniards. Garcilasso informs us that each coastal
province worshipped a special kind of fish, “telling a pleasant
tale to the effect that the First of all the Fish dwells in the
sky” — a statement which is certainly in tone with a totemic
interpretation.

In addition to the special idols of each province, says Garci-
lasso,10 all the peoples of the littoral from Truxillo to Tarapaca
adored the ocean in the form of a fish, out of gratitude for
the food that it yielded, naming it Mama Cocha (“Mother
Sea ”); and it is indeed plausible that the Food-Giver of the
Sea was a great deity in this region, although some of the
Truxillo vases seem to indicate that the ocean was also re-
garded as the abode of dread and inimical monsters, since
they portray the conflicts of men or heroes with crustacean
and piscine monsters of the deep. Antonio de la Calancha,
who was prior of the Augustines at Truxillo in 1619, gives a
brief account of the Chimu pantheon.11 The Ocean (Ni) and
the earth (Vis) were worshipped, prayers being offered to the
one for fish and to the other for good harvests. The great
deity, however, was the Moon (Si), to which sacrifices of
children were sometimes made; and this heavenly body, re-
garded as ruler of the elements and bringer of tempests, was
held to be more powerful than the Sun. Possibly the crescent-
or knife-shaped symbol which appears on the head-gear of
vase representations of chieftains, in Truxillo ware, is a token of
 224

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

this cult, which finds a parallel among the Araucanians of the
far south, among whom, too, the Moon, not the Sun, is the
lofty deity.

The language of the subjects of the Grand Chimu was
Mochica, which was unrelated to any other in Peru; but
though they regarded the Quichua-speaking Chincha as
hereditary enemies, the religious conceptions of the two
groups were not very different. In Arriaga’s account,12 the
Chincha worshipped the Earth (Mama Pacha) as well as
Mama Cocha (the Sea); and they also venerated the “Mamas,”
or Mothers, of maize and cacao. There were likewise tutelary
deities for their several villages —just as each family had its
Penates — and Garcilasso states that the god Chincha Camac
was adored as the creator and guardian of all the Chincha.
The worship of stones in fields and stones in irrigating channels
is also mentioned (both for Chimu and for Chincha), and
these may well have been in the nature of herms in valleys
where fields were narrowly limited; while in addition there
were innumerable huacas — sacred places, fetishes, oracles,
idols, and, in short, anything marvellous, for Garcilasso, in
explaining the meaning of the word, says that it was applied
to everything exciting wonder, from the great gods and the
peaks of the Andes to the birth of twins and the occurrence
of hare-lip. It is in this connexion that he speaks of “sepul-
chres made in the fields or at the corners of their houses,
where the devil spoke to them familiarly,” a description sug-
gestive of ancestral shrines; and it is quite possible that the
word huaca is most properly applied in that sense in which
it has survived, to tombs.

In Chincha territory were located the two great shrines of
Rimac and Pachacamac, whose oracles even the Incas courted.
Rimac, says Garcilasso, signifies “He who Speaks”; he adds
that the valley was called Rimac from “an idol there, in the
shape of a man, which spoke and gave answers to questions,
like the oracle of the Delphic Apollo”; and Lima, which is in
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

225

the valley of Rimac, receives its appellation from a corruption
of this name. A greater shrine, however, and an older oracle
was Pachacamac. According to Garcilasso, the word means
“Maker and Sustainer of the Universe” (pacha, “earth,”
camac, “maker”); and he is of opinion that the worship of
this divinity originated with the Incas, who, nevertheless,
regarded the god as invisible and hence built him no temples
and offered him no sacrifices, but “adored him inwardly with
the greatest veneration.” Markham (not very convincingly)
identifies Pachacamac with the great fish-deity of the coast,
considering him as a supplanter of the older and purer deity,
Viracocha.

[Prometheus]

One of the most interesting of coastal myths, quoted by Uhle,
tells how Pachacamac, having created a man and a woman,
failed to provide them with food; but when the man died, the
woman was aided by the Sun, who gave her a son and taught
the pair to live upon wild fruits. Angered at this interference,
Pachacamac killed the youth, from whose buried body sprang
maize and other cultivated plants; the Sun gave the woman
another son, Wichama, whereupon Pachacamac slew the
mother; while Wichama, in revenge, pursued Pachacamac,
driving him into the sea, and thereafter burning up the lands
in passion, transformed men into stones. This legend has
been interpreted as a symbol of the seasons, but it is evident
that its elements belong to wide-spread American cycles, for
the mother and son suggest the Chibcha goddess, Bachue,
while the formation of cultivated plants from the body of the
slain youth is a familiar element in myths of the tropical
forests and, indeed, in both Americas. From the story it is
clear that Pachacamac is a creator god, antagonistic (if not
superior) to the Sun, who seems to supplant him in power;
but surely it is anomalous that the Earth-Maker should find
his end by being driven into the sea unless, indeed, Pachaca-
mac, spouse of Mother Sea, be the embodied Father Heaven,
descending in fog and damp and driven seaward by the dis-
 226 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

pelling Sun. Such an interpretation would make Pachacamac
simply a local form of Viracocha; and this, certainly, is sug-
gested in the descriptions, by Garcilasso and others, of the
reverence paid to this divinity.

From Francisco de Avila’s account13 of the myths of the
Huarochiri, in the valley of the Rimac, we may infer that
Viracocha was known to the Chincha tribes, at one period
probably as a supreme god. An idol called Coniraya (mean-
ing according to Markham, “Pertaining to Heat”) they ad-
dressed as “Coniraya Viracocha,” saying, “Thou art Lord of
all; thine are the crops, and thine are all the people”; and in
every toil and difficulty they invoked this deity for aid.

One of the decorative designs that occurs and recurs on the
vases of both the Chimu and Chincha regions — in the char-
acteristic style of each — is the plumed serpent. What is
apparently a modification of this is the man-headed serpent,
or the warrior with a serpent’s or dragon’s tail, a further
modification representing the man or deity as holding the
serpent in one hand, while frequently, in the other hand, is a
symbolic staff or weapon that in certain forms is startlingly
like the classical thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. Another
step shows only the serpent’s head held in the one hand, while
the staff, or thunderbolt, is made prominent; and, finally, in
the style known as that of Tiahuanaco, from its resemblance
to the ancient art of the highlands, a squat deity, holding a
winged or snake-headed wand in each hand gives the counterfeit
presentment of the central figure on the Tiahuanaco arch and
the monolith of Chavin. In Central and North America the
plumed serpent is a sky-symbol, associated with rainbow,
lightning, rain, and weather; and it is not too much to follow
the guesses hitherto ventured that this cycle of images, ap-
pearing in various forms in the different periods of Yunca art,
is intimately associated with the ancient and nearly universal
Jovis Pater of America — Father Sky. As in the old world, the
eagle, so in South America the condor and the falcon are the
 
 PLATE XXXIII

Embroidered ‘figure from a Nasca robe in the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Nasca fabrics repre-
sent the highest achievement in textile art of aborig-
inal America. Figures of the type here shown are
repeated with minor variations, each, no doubt, of
symbolic significance, in a chequered or “all-over”
design. The deity represented may be totemic,
but obviously belongs to the same group as those
shown in such pottery paintings as are represented
in Plates XXXII and XXXIV.
 
 a

I
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

227

especial ministers of this deity; as also are the most powerful
of the beasts of prey known in the region — the puma, or moun-
tain lion; and, again, a fish, which we may suppose to typify
lordship over the waters, as the condor and lion symbolize
dominion over air and earth. Thus, as it were, through their
grotesque masks and gorgeous fantasies, the pots and jars of
the Yunca peoples mutely attest the universal reverence of
mankind for the great powers of Nature.

III. THE MYTHS OF THE CHINCHA

What were the tales which the Yunca peoples told of their
gods? The little that we know is almost wholly due to the
unfinished manuscript of Francisco de Avila,14 composed in
1608; but brief and fragmentary though this treatise be, ending
abruptly with the heading of a Chapter VIII, which was
never written, it throws a curiously suggestive light upon the
archaeological discoveries of our own day, with their revela-
tion of successive civilizations and successive cults in the
coastal valleys.

Avila’s narrative tells of a series of ages of the gods, each
marked by its new ruler, which he confesses he did not well
comprehend because of the contradictoriness of the legends.
At all events, however, in the most ancient period there were
“certain huacas, or idols, . . . supposed to have walked in the
form of men. These huacas were called Yananamca Intanamca;
and in a certain encounter they had with another huaca, called
Huallallo Caruincho, they were conquered and destroyed by the
said Huallallo, who remained as Lord and God of the land.
He ordered that no woman should bring forth more than two
children, of which one was to be sacrificed for him to eat,
and the other, — whichever of the two the parents chose, —
might be brought up. It was also a tradition that, in those
days, all who died were brought to life again on the fifth day;
and that what was sown in that land also sprouted, grew, and
 228

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

ripened on the fifth day; and that all these three provinces
[Huarochiri, Mama, Chaclla] were then a very hot country,
which the Indians call Yunca or Ande.” The last allusion
probably refers to some recollection of a migration from the
coast, for the Huarochiri region is in the highlands drained
by the Rimac and Lurin rivers.

The story goes on to record the overthrow of Huallallo by
another hero-god, Pariacaca; but before narrating this event,
Avila turns aside to tell the tale of Coniraya Viracocha, whom
he regards as certainly a great deity at one time, though
whether before or after the rise of Pariacaca is not evident.

In ancient times Coniraya appeared as a poor Indian,
clothed in rags and reviled by all. Nevertheless, he was the
creator of all things, at whose command terraces arose to
support the fields and channels were formed to irrigate them
— feats which he accomplished by merely hurling his hollow
cane. He was also all-wise with respect to gods and oracles,
and the thoughts of others were open to him. This Coniraya
fell in love with a certain virgin, Cavillaca; and as she sat
weaving beneath a lucma-tree, he dropped near her a ripe
fruit, containing his own generative seed. Eating the fruit
unsuspectingly, she became with child; and when the babe
was old enough to crawl, she assembled all “the huacas and
principal idols of the land,” determined to discover the child’s
father; but as, to her amazement and disgust, the infant
crawled to the beggar-like Coniraya, she snatched it up and
fled away toward the sea. “But Coniraya Viracocha desired
the friendship and favour of the goddess; so, when he saw
her take flight, he put on magnificent golden robes, and
leaving the astonished assembly of the gods, he ran after her,
crying out: ‘O my lady Cavillaca, turn your eyes and see how
handsome and gallant am I,’ with other loving and courteous
words; and they say that his splendour illuminated the whole
country.” But Cavillaca only increased her speed, and plun-
ging into the sea, mother and child were transformed into
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

229

two rocks, still to be seen. Coniraya, distanced, kept on his
quest. He met a condor, and the condor having promised
him success in his pursuit, he gave the condor the promise of
long life, power to traverse wildernesses and valleys, and the
right to prey; and upon those who should slay the condor he set
the curse of death. Next he met a fox, but the fox told him his
quest was vain; so he cursed the fox, telling it that it must hunt
at night and be slain by men. The lion next promised him well,
and he gave the lion power over prey and honour among men.
The falcon was similarly blessed for fair promises, and parrots
cursed for their ill omen. Arrived at the seaside, Coniraya
discovered the vanity of his pursuit, but he was easily con-
soled; for on the beach he met two daughters of Pachacamac.
In the absence of their mother, who was visiting Cavillaca
in the sea, they were guarded by a great serpent, but
Coniraya quieted the serpent by his wisdom. One of the
maidens flew away in the form of a dove, — whence their
mother was called Urpihuachac, “Mother of Doves”; but the
other was more complaisant. “In those days it is said that
there were no fishes in the sea, but that this Urpihuachac
reared a few in a small pond. Coniraya was enraged that
Urpihuachac should be absent in the sea, visiting Cavillaca;
so he emptied the fishes out of her pond into the sea, and
thence all the fishes now in the sea have been propagated.”
That Coniraya is a deity of sun or sky appears evident from
this tale; and he is, clearly, at the same time a demiurgic
transformer, with not a little of the mere trickster about him.
The condor, falcon, and lion are his servants and beneficiaries;
foxes and parrots are his antipathies; he has something to do
with the provision of fish, and he conquers the serpent of the
sea-goddess. Avila says that the tradition is rooted in the
customs of the province: the people venerate the condor,
which they never kill, as also the lion; they have a horror of
the fox, slaying it where they can; “as to the falcon, there is
scarcely a festival in which one does not appear on the heads
 230

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

of the dancers and singers; and we all know that they detest
the parrots, which is not wonderful considering the mischief
they do, though their chief reason is to comply with the tradi-
tion.”

Cataclysmic events which apparently followed the deeds of
the Demiurge were a five-day deluge, in which all men were
destroyed save one who was led by a speaking llama to a
mountain height where he was safe; and a five-day darkness,
during which stones knocked together, while both the stones
with which they ground grain and the animals of their herds
arose against their masters. It was after these cataclysms, in
the days when there were as yet no kings, that five eggs ap-
peared on a certain mountain, called Condor-coto: round them
a wind blew, for until that time there had been no wind. These
eggs were the birth-place of Pariacaca and his four brothers;
but before the hero had come forth from his egg, one of his
brothers, a great and rich lord, built his house on Anchicocha,
adorning it with the red and yellow feathers of certain birds.
This lord had llamas whose natural wool was of brilliant
colours — some red, some blue, some yellow — so that it was
unnecessary to dye it for weaving; but notwithstanding he
was very wise, and even pretended to be God, the Creator,
misfortune befell him in the form of a disgusting disease of
which he was unable to cure himself, though he sought aid
in every direction. Now at this time there was a poor and ill-
clad Indian named Huathiacuri, “who, they say, was a son of
Pariacaca and who learned many arts from his father,” whom,
in his egg, he visited in search of advice. This youth, having
fallen in love with a daughter of the rich man, one day over-
heard foxes conversing about the great lord’s illness. “The
real cause,” said a fox, “is that, when his wife was toasting a
little maize, one grain fell on her skirt, as happens every day.
She gave it to a man who ate it, and afterward she committed
adultery with him. This is the reason that the rich man is sick,
and a serpent is now hovering over his beautiful house to eat
 
 PLATE XXXIV

Vase from Nasca representing a deity with
serpentiform body. The commonest motive in
Nasca designs is the multiplication, in grotesque
forms, of human masks. The deity here represented
is commonly shown with a mask head-dress, masks
upon either cheek, with a girdle of masks or trophy
heads, and with masks elsewhere; while either the
body is shown as serpentiform or serpent-like wands
are wielded by the hands. It is probable that a
sky-god is represented, possibly a local form of
Viracocha. Compare Plates XXXI, XXXVI,
XXXVII. The vase pictured is in the American
Museum of Natural History.
 
 
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

231

it, while a toad with two heads is waiting under his grinding-
stone with the same object.” When Huathiacuri learned this,
he told the girl that he knew the cure for her parent’s malady;
and though she did not believe him, she informed her father,
who had the young man brought before him. Promised the
price he demanded — the maiden’s hand — the youth re-
vealed her mother’s iniquity and gave orders to kill two ser-
pents, which were found in the roof, as well as a two-headed
toad, which hopped forth when the grinding-stone was lifted.
After this the rich man became well, and Huathiacuri received
his bride. The sister of this girl, however, was married to a
man who, resenting so beggarly a person in the family as
Huathiacuri, challenged the latter to a series of contests —
first, to a drinking-bout; next, to a match in splendour of
costume, at which the youth appeared in a dress of snow;
then to a dance, in lions’ skins, wherein he won because of a
rainbow that appeared round the head of the magic lion’s
skin which he wore; and, finally, to a contest in house-build-
ing, wherein all the animals aided him at night. Thus having
vanquished his brother-in-law, Huathiacuri in turn issued a
challenge to a dance, ending it in a wild race during which he
transformed the brother-in-law into a deer and his wife into
rock. The deer lived for some time by devouring people, but
finally deer began to be eaten by men, not men by deer.
Subsequent to all this, Pariacaca and his brothers issued from
the eggs, causing a great tempest in which the rich man and
his house were swept into the sea. Pariacaca is also said to
have destroyed by a torrent a village of revellers who refused
him drink when he appeared among them as a thirsty beggar,
all but one girl who took pity upon him; and there is a story
of his love for Choque Suso, a maiden whom he found in tears
beside her withering maize-fields and for whom he opened
an irrigation-channel, converting the girl herself into a stone
which still guards the headwaters. After this, in Avila’s nar-
rative, comes a heading: “How the Indians of the Ayllu of
 232 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Copara still worship Choque Suso and this channel, a fact
which I know not only from their stories, but also from judi-
cial depositions which I have taken on the subject” — and
there the manuscript abruptly ends.

Nevertheless, this fragment has given us enough to see, if
not the system, at least the character of Chincha mythology.
There are the generations of the elder gods, with transforma-
tions and cataclysms. There are the cosmic eggs — perhaps
earth’s centre and the four winds symbolized in the five of
them. There is the toad-symbol of the underworld, and the
serpent-symbol of the sky-world. The Rich Man, in his house
of red and yellow feathers, is surely a sky-being — perhaps
a sun-god, perhaps a lunar divinity whose ceaseless crescence
and senescence, to and from its glory, may be imaged in his
cureless disease. Pariacaca is clearly a deity of waters, prob-
ably a divine mountain, giving rain and irrigating streams,
and clothing his son in the snow and the rainbow; while the
women — Cavillaca, and the Mother of Doves, and Choque
Suso, the Nymph of the Channel — who were turned into
rocks speak again the hoary sanctity of these images of per-
durability.

IV. VIRACOCHA AND TONAPA

The Yunca peoples, both Chimu and Chincha, recalled a
time when their ancestors entered the coastal valleys to make
them their own, “destroying the former inhabitants, ... a
vile and feeble race,” as Chincha tradition has it. In the
uplands the followers of the Scyris of Quito were remembered
as coming from the littoral; but for the rest, highland legends
point almost uniformly to a southerly or south-easterly origin
— where, indeed, the tale is not of an autochthonous begin-
ning — and with general agreement it is to the plains about
Titicaca that the stories lead, as to the most ancient seat of
mankind. These traditions, coupled with the immemorial
and wonderful ruins of the sacred place at Tiahuanaco —
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233

whether the precinct of a city or of a temple — give a special
fascination to this region as being plausibly the key to the
solution of the problem of central Andean civilization.

Certainly no more puzzling key was ever given for the un-
locking of a mystery, since the basin of Lake Titicaca is a
plateau, some thirteen to fourteen thousand feet above sea-
level, where cereals will not ripen, so that only potatoes and a
few other roots, along with droves of hardy llamas and alpacas,
form the reliance for subsistence of a population which at
best is sparse. Yet in the midst of this plateau are ruins
characterized by the use of enormous stones — only less than
the great monoliths of Egypt — and by a skill in stone-working
which implies an extraordinary development of the mason’s
art. It is the judgement of archaeologists who have visited
the scene that nothing less than the huge endeavour of a
dense population could have created the visible works; and
there is a tradition, derived from an Indian quifu-reader
and recorded by Oliva, that the real Tiahuanaco is a sub-
terranean city, in vastness far exceeding the one above the
ground. The apparent discrepancy between the capacity of
the region for the support of population and the effort re-
quired to produce the megalithic works has led Sir Clements
Markham to suggest that these structures may date from a
period when the plateau was several thousand feet lower
than at present (for the elevation of the Andes is geologically
recent); it would seem, however, in view of the huge tasks
which Inca engineers accomplished, and of the fact that
sacred cities in remote sites were venerated by the Andeans,
more reasonable to assume that the ruins of Tiahuanaco and
the islands represent, in part at least, the devotion of distant
princes, who here maintained another Delphi or Lhassa.

The speaking monument of this ancient shrine (and there is
no more remarkable monolith in the world) is the carved mon-
olithic gate, now broken. Above the portal (see Plate XXXV)
is the decoration, a broad band in low relief; while a central
 234

[Prometheus]

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

figure, elevated above the others, is a divine image — the god
with rayed head and with wands or bolts in each hand, whose
likeness is met in the Yunca region and on the Chavin stele.
On either side, in three ranks of eight each, are forty-eight
obeisant figures — kings, some have called them, but others
see in them totemic symbols of clan ancestors, although it is
not impossible that they are genii of earth and air and water:
all are winged, all bear wands, and those of the middle tier
are condor-headed, while the wand and crest and garb of each
is adorned with heads of condor and puma and fish. In case
of the central figure the two wands are adorned with condors’
heads, and some of the rays of the head-dress terminate in
pumas’ heads, while on his dress are not only heads of condors,
pumas, and human beings, but centrally, on the breast, is a
crescent design most resembling a fish. Another curious feature,
alike of the forty-eight and of the central god, are circles under
the eyes, seemingly tears, which recall the wide-spread trope
that rain is heaven’s tears, and the fact that tears were some-
times painted on ceremonial masks used in supplications for
rain. Beneath the design just described is a meander, perhaps
the symbol of earth,16 adorned with the same condor-heads
and framing plaque-like representations of what are surely
celestial divinities (still with tearful eyes); and it is not beyond
reason to suppose that the tiny trumpeter who appears above
one of these rayed masks may be the Morning Star, herald of
the day.

There is little ground to doubt that this monument is
cosmical in meaning (it may also be totemic, for at least the
ruling Andeans became “Children of the Sun”), and that the
central figure is a heaven-god or a sun-god. The most curious
of its emblems, taking into account the nature of the region,
is the fish; for while there are fish in Lake Titicaca, the natives
(at least today) are little given to taking them. It is possible,
as suggested by the crescent on the breast of the god, that the
fish is here a symbol of the moon, which may have been mis-
 ©
 ' PLATE XXXV

Monolithic Gateway, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. This
is regarded by many as the most remarkable pre-
historic monument in America. It is approximately
ten by twelve and a half feet in front dimension,
and is estimated to weigh nine to twelve tons. The
decoration consists of a central figure, above the
doorway, which is certainly a sky-god and probably
Viracocha, and a banded frieze showing groups of
mythic beings. For description see pages 233-34.
After a photograph in the Peabody Museum.
 
 
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

235

tress of the waves; and this would lead us, analogically, to
the capital of the Grand Chimu and the temple of Si An,
where were the great deities, the Moon above and the Sea be-
low. Certainly, if an animal form were sought to symbolize
the crescent of the skies, none could be found more perfect
than that of the fish; or, by extension, the bark by which man
conquers the piscine realm might be conceived and imaged
as symbol of the lunar ship.

Such an hypothesis implies a relation of Tiahuanaco to
the coastal regions as well as to the mountain valleys; and
this relationship, in a period long past, is demonstrated, repre-
sentations of the deity of Tiahuanaco being found, drawn in
Tiahuanaco style, on the Yunca vases. But what of its exten-
sion in the highlands? The Chavin stone (see Plate XXXI)
from the region of the headwaters of Rio Maraiion far to the
north of Cuzco is, as monumental evidence of the ancient
cult, second in importance only to the Tiahuanaco arch. The
figure on this monument is in Nasca rather than in Tiahuanaco
style, having as its head-dress an elaborate structure which,
when viewed reversed, is found to be formed of that series of
masks, each depending from the lolling tongue of its prede-
cessor, which is so common on Nasca vases; while snakes’
heads replace the condor-puma-fish adornments of the southern
monument, and it is interesting to note that the whole structure
terminates in a caduceus-like twist of serpents. The main
figure, however, with its elaborate wands, ending exactly in
the form of Jove’s bolt, certainly follows the style of the cen-
tral figure of Tiahuanaco, so that we are justified in assuming
that it represents a similar conception — a celestial deity,
from which proceed the serpentine rays, sunlight or lightning.
To the far south, in the Calchaqui-Diaguite region, potsherds
have been discovered implying the same central conception —
the deity with mask and bolt, the dragon with head at each
extremity, and a series of dragons’ heads united by protruding
tongues (a design whose far extension leads into the country
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236

of the unconquered Araucanians in the Chilean Andes).10
More remarkable are the ceremonial and votive objects dis-
covered in this region, among them certain plaques which in-
clude a masterpiece (Plate XXXVI) bearing many traits that
identify it with the monumental images: the rayed head, the
tears beneath the eyes, the crescent-shaped breast-ornament,
and, on either side of the central image, crested dragons which
appear to take the place of the wands in the type figures.

The names of this heaven-god, ancient in origin and wide in
the range of his cult, have doubtless been many in the course
of history; but though several of them have survived in the
traditions which have been recorded, paramount among them
all is that by which the divinity was known to the Inca —
Viracocha (or Uiracocha). Montesinos’s list of kings com-
mences, says Markham,17 “with the names of the deity, Ilia
Tici Uiracocha. We are told that the first word, Ilia, means
‘light.’ Tici means ‘foundation or beginning of things.’ The
word Uira is said to be a corruption of Pirua, meaning the
‘depository or store-house of creation.’ . . . The ordinary
meaning of Cocha is a lake, but here it is said to signify an
abyss — profundity. The whole meaning of the words would
be, ‘The splendour, the foundation, the creator, the infinite
God.’ The word Yachachic was occasionally added — ‘the
Teacher.’”

Molina, Salcamayhua, Huaman Poma, all give Inca prayers
addressed to Viracocha — prayers which are our best evidence
for the character in which he was regarded. In the group re-
corded by Molina 18 the deity appears as lord of generation of
plants and animals and humankind; and to him are addressed
supplications for increase. But he is very clearly, also, a
supreme creator: “O conquering Viracocha! Ever-present
Viracocha! Thou who art in the ends of the earth without
equal! Thou gavest life and valour to men, saying, ‘Let this
be a man!’ and to women, saying, ‘Let this be a woman!’
Thou madest them and gavest them being! Watch over them
 
 PLATE XXXVI

Plaque probably representing Viracocha. The
head is surmounted by a rayed disk, doubtless the
sun; tears, symbolic of rain, stream from the
eyes; above the hands, on either side, are dragon-
like creatures which are doubtless the equivalent
of the wands or serpents shown in the hands of
similar figures, and which may represent the two
servants of the god, as they appear in legend.
After CA xii, Plate VIII.
 
 
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237

that they may live in health and peace. Thou who art in the
high heavens, and among the clouds of the tempest, grant
this with long life, and accept this sacrifice, O Creator!”
In other prayers Viracocha is represented as creator of the sun,
and hence as supreme over the great national god of the Incas;
and in the rites which Molina describes, Viracocha (the
creator), the Sun, and the Thunder form a triad, addressed in
the order named. The same supremacy of Viracocha is recog-
nized in the elaborate hymn recorded by Salcamayhua and
translated by Markham after the emended text of Dr. Mossi
and the Spanish version of Lafone Quevado:19

“O Uira-cocha! Lord of the universe;

Whether thou art male,

Whether thou art female,

Lord of reproduction,

Whatsoever thou mayest be,

O Lord of divination,

Where art thou ?

Thou mayest be above,

Thou mayest be below,

Or perhaps around

Thy splendid throne and sceptre.

Oh, hear me!

From the sky above,

In which thou mayest be,

From the sea beneath,

In which thou mayest be,

Creator of the world,

Maker of all men;

Lord of all Lords,

My eyes fail me
For longing to see thee;

For the sole desire to know thee.

Might I behold thee,

Might I know thee,

Might I consider thee,

Might I understand thee.

Oh, look down upon me,

For thou knowest me.

The sun — the moon —

The day — the night —
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Spring — winter,

Are not ordained in vain
By thee, O Uira-cocha!

They all travel
To the assigned place;

They all arrive
At their destined ends,
Whithersoever thou pleasest.
Thy royal sceptre
Thou holdest.

Oh hear me!

Oh choose me!

Let it not be
That I should tire,

That I should die.”

It were easy to accept a pantheistic interpretation of a
divinity so addressed; it is plausible to regard that deity as
androgynous, as Lafone Quevado suggests. What is certain is
that here we have a creator-god superior to the world of visible
nature, so that he was represented, according to Salcamay-
hua, by an oval plate of fine gold above the symbols of the
heavenly bodies in the great temple at Cuzco. Salcamayhua,
moreover, connects with Viracocha two other names, Tonapa
and Tarapaca, which, he declares, are appellatives of a servant
(or servants) of Viracocha; and here we have a glimpse into
another cycle of mythic history.

The story, as Salcamayhua tells it,20 begins with the remote
Purunpacha — the time when all the nations were at war with
each other, and there was no rest from tumults. “Then, in
the middle of the night, they heard the Hapi-nunos [harpy-
like daemones] disappearing with mournful complaints, and
crying, — ‘We are conquered, we are conquered, alas that
we should lose our bands!’” This Salcamayhua interprets
as a New-World equivalent of the death-cry of Old-World
paganism, “Great Pan is dead!” — for from their cry, he says,
“it must be understood that the devils were conquered by
Jesus Christ our Lord on the cross on Mount Calvary.”
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239

Some time after the devils departed, there appeared “a bearded
man, of middle height, with long hair, and a rather long shirt.
They say that he was somewhat past his prime, for he already
had grey hairs, and he was lean. He travelled by aid of a staff,
teaching the natives with much love and calling them all his
sons and daughters. As he went through the land, he per-
formed many miracles. The sick were healed by his touch.
He spoke all languages better than the natives.” They called
him, Salcamayhua says, Tonapa or Tarapaca (“ Tarafaca
means an eagle”), associating these names with that of Vira-
cocha; “but was he not the glorious apostle, St. Thomas?”

Many tales are told of the miracles performed by Tonapa,
among others the story, which Avila narrates' of Pariacaca,
of the overwhelming by flood of a village, the inhabitants
of which had abused him; and similar legends in which the
offenders were transformed into stones. “They further say
that this Tonapa, in his wanderings, came to the mountains
of Caravaya, where he erected a very large cross; and he
carried it on his shoulders to the mountain of Carapucu,
where he preached in a loud voice, and shed tears.” In 1897
Bandelier 21 visited the village of Carabuco, on Lake Titicaca,
and there saw the ancient cross, known for more than three
centuries, which tradition associates with pre-Columbian
times. “The meaning of Carapucu,” Salcamayhua continues,
“is when a bird called -pucu-pucu sings four times at early
dawn.” May there not be here a clue to the meaning both of
the myth and of the emblem ? At dawn, when the herald birds
first sing, the four quarters of the world, of which the cross is
symbol, are shaped by the light of day — a token and a rem-
iniscence of the first creation of Earth by shining Heaven.

Molina, Cieza de Leon, Sarmiento, Huaman Poma 22 tell of
the making of sun and moon, and of the generations of men,
associating this creation with the lake of Titicaca, its islands,
and its neighbourhood. Viracocha is almost universally repre-
sented as the creator, and the story follows the main plot of
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

the genesis narratives known to the civilized nations of both
Americas — a succession of world aeons, each ending in cata-
clysm. As told by Huaman Poma, five such ages had pre-
ceded that in which he lived. The first was an age of Viracochas,
an age of gods, of holiness, of life without death, although at
the same time it was devoid of inventions and refinements; the
second was an age of skin-clad giants, the Huari Runa, or
“Indigenes,” worshippers of Viracocha; third came the age
of Puron Runa, or “Common Men,” living without culture;
fourth, that of the Auca Runa, “Warriors,” and fifth that of
the Inca rule, ended by the coming of the Spaniards. As
related by Sarmiento the first age was that of a sunless world
inhabited by a race of giants, who, owing to the sin of diso-
bedience, were cataclysmically destroyed; but two brothers,
surviving on a hill-top, married two women descended from
heaven (in Molina’s version these are bird-women) and re-
peopled a part of the world. Viracocha, however, undertook
a second creation at Lake Titicaca, this time with sun, moon,
and stars; but out of jealousy, since at first the moon was the
brighter orb, the sun threw a handful of ashes over his rival’s
face, thus giving the shaded colour which the moon now pre-
sents. Viracocha, we are told, was assisted by three servants,
one of whom, Taguapaca, rebelled against him; for this he was
bound and set adrift upon the lake (an event which, in a
different form, is given by Salcamayhua as a part of the perse-
cution of Tonapa); and then, taking his two remaining ser-
vitors with him, the deity “went to a place now called Tiahua-
nacu . . . and in this place he sculptured and designed on a
great piece of stone all the nations that he intended to create,”
after which he sent his servants forth to command all tribes
and all nations to multiply. The last act of Viracocha’s career
was his miraculous departure across the western sea, “travelling
over the water as if it were land, without sinking,” and leaving
behind him the prophecy that he would send his messengers
once again to protect and to teach his people.
 I
 PLATE XXXVII

Vase painting of the sky-god, Tiahuanaco style,
from Pachacamac. Compare Plates XXXI, XXXIV,
XXXV, XXXVI. After Baessler, Contributions to
the Archaeology of the Empire of the Incas, Vol. IV,
Plate CIV.
 lift
 I
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

241

The tales are surely explanatory of the monuments; and in
both we see the general outlines of the ancient Peruvian religion.
Supreme in the pantheon was the great creator-god, High
Heaven itself, Ilia Tici Viracocha. Attendant upon this
divinity (perhaps ancient doublets in some cases) was a group
of two or three servants or sons, who were assuredly also
celestial — Sun and Moon, or Sun and Moon and Morning
Star, or Sun and Thunder (for in Peru bidentalia were every-
where). Tonapa (whom Markham regards as properly Conapa,
“Heat-Bearing,” and the same being as Coniraya) is the Pe-
ruvian equivalent of Quetzalcoatl and Bochica 23 — the robed
and bearded white man, bearing a magic staff, who comes
from the east and after teaching men the way of life, departs
over the sea. It is no marvel that the first missionaries and
their converts saw in this being, with his cruciform symbol,
an apostle of their own faith who had journeyed by way of the
Orient to preach the Gospel. Yet certainly it is no mere imagi-
nation to find another interpretation of the story — what better
image could fancy suggest for the daily course of the sun than
that of a bright-faced man, bearded with rays, mantled in
light, transforming the world of darkness into a world of beauty
and the domain of the concealed into a domain of things known,
before his departure across the western waters, promising to
return, or to send again his messengers of light, to renew the
luminous mission? When the Spaniards came, bearded and
white, in shining mail and weaponed with fire, the Indians
beheld the embodied form of the mythic hero, and so they ap-
plied to them the name which is still theirs for a white man —
viracocha. In such devious ways have the faiths and the fancies
of Earth’s two worlds commingled.

What ground there is for the ascription of something ap-
proaching monotheism to the Peruvians centres in the sky-deity
rather than in the Sun, whose cult under the Incas, to some
extent replaced that of the elder supreme god. “No one can
doubt,” says Lafone Quevado,24 “that Pachacamac and Vira-
 242

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

cocha were gods who correspond to our idea of a Supreme
Being and that they were adored in America before the coming
of Columbus; and it is logical to attribute to the same American
soil the idea of such a conception, even when it occurs among
the most savage tribes, since that simply presupposes an ethnic
contact to which are opposed no insuperable difficulties of
geography. The solar cult is farther from fetishism than is the
idea of the Yahveh of the Jews from the solar cult: from this to
the true God is a step, and the most savage nations of America
found themselves surrounded by worshippers of the light of
day.”

V. THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN

The most striking feature of the Inca conquests is their
professed motive — professed, that is, in Inca tradition, es-
pecially as represented by the writings of Garcilasso de la
Vega — for the Incas proclaimed themselves apostles of a new
creed and teachers of a new way of life; they were Children of
the Sun, sent by their divine parent to bring to a darkened and
barbarous world a purer faith and a more enlightened conduct.
Garcilasso tells25 how, when a boy, he inquired of his Inca
uncle the origin of their race. “Know,” said his kinsman,
“that in ancient times all this region which you see was covered
with forests and thickets, and the people lived like brute
beasts without religion nor government, nor towns, nor houses,
without cultivating the land nor covering their bodies, for they
knew how to weave neither cotton nor wool to make garments.
They dwelt two or three together in caves or clefts of the rocks,
or in caverns under ground; they ate the herbs of the field and
roots or fruit like wild beasts, and they also devoured human
flesh; they covered their bodies with leaves and with the bark of
trees, or with the skins of animals; in fine they lived like deer
or other game, and even in their intercourse with women they
were like brutes, for they knew nothing of cohabiting with
separate wives. . . . Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human
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243

[Prometheus]

race in the condition I have described, had compassion upon
them and from heaven he sent down to earth a son and daughter
to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father, the Sun, that
adoring Him, they might adopt Him as their God; and also
to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable
and civilized men, and to teach them to dwell in houses and
towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks,
and to use the fruits of the earth as rational beings, instead of
existing like beasts. With these commands and intentions our
Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the lake of Titicaca,
saying to them that they might go where they pleased and that
at every place where they stopped to eat or sleep they were to
thrust into the ground a sceptre of gold which was half a yard
long and two fingers in thickness, giving them this staff as a
sign and a token that in the place where, by one blow on the
earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the desire
of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and establish
their court. Finally He said to them: ‘When you have reduced
these people to our service, you shall maintain them in habits
of reason and justice by the practice of piety, clemency, and
meekness, assuming in all things the office of a pious father
toward his beloved and tender children; for thus you will form
a likeness and reflection of me. I do good to the whole world,
giving light that men may see and do their business, making
them warm when they are cold, cherishing their pastures and
crops, ripening their fruits and increasing their flocks, water-
ing their lands with dew and bringing fine weather in proper
season. I take care to go around the earth each day that I
may see the necessities that exist in the world and supply them,
as the sustainer and benefactor of the heathen. I desire that
you shall imitate this example as my children, sent to earth
solely for the instruction and benefit of these men who live
like beasts; and from this time I constitute and name you as
kings and lords over all the tribes that you may instruct them
in your rational works and government.’”
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244

Viewed as theology, this utterance is remarkable. Even if
it be taken (as perhaps it should be) rather as an excuse for
conquests made than as their veritable pretext, the story still
reflects an advanced stage of moral thinking, since utterly
barbarous races demand no such justification for seizing from
others what they desire; and in this broader scope the succes-
sors of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo soon interpreted their
liberal commission. The third Inca, Lloque Yupanqui, decided,
Garcilasso says,26 that “all their policy should not be one of
prayer and persuasion, but that arms and power should form a
part, at least with those who were stubborn and pertinaceous.”
Having assembled an army, the Inca crossed the border,
and entering a province called Cana, he sent messengers to
the inhabitants, “requiring them to submit to and obey the
child of the Sun, abandoning their own vain and evil sacrifices,
and bestial customs” — a formula that became thenceforth
the Inca preliminary to a declaration of war. The Cana sub-
mitted, but, the chronicler says, when he passed to the province
of Ayaviri, the natives “were so stubborn and rebellious that
neither promises, nor persuasion, nor the examples of the
other subjugated aborigines were of any avail; they all pre-
ferred to die defending their liberty.” And so fell many a
province, after vainly endeavouring to protect its native gods,
as the realm of the Incas grew, always advancing under the
pretext of religious reform, the mandate of the Sun.

But while the extension of the solar cult was made the excuse
for the creation of an empire, it was more than a political
device; for the Incas called themselves “children of the Sun”
in the belief that they were directly descended from this deity
and under his special care. Molina 27 tells of an adventure
which he ascribes to Inca Yupanqui, meaning, apparently, Pa-
chacuti, the greatest of the Incas. While, as a young man, the
Inca prince was journeying to visit his father, Viracocha Inca,
he passed a spring in which he saw a piece of crystal fall,
wherein appeared the figure of an Indian. From the back of
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

245

his head issued three very brilliant rays, even as those of the
Sun; serpents were twined round his arms, and on his head
there was a llautu [the fringe, symbol of the sun’s rays, worn
on the forehead by the Incas as token of royalty] like that of the
Inca. His ears were bored, and ear-pieces, resembling those
used by the Incas, were inserted; he was also dressed in the
manner of the Inca. The head of a lion came from between his
legs, and on his shoulders there was another lion whose legs
appeared to join over the shoulders of the man; while, further-
more, a sort of serpent was twined about his shoulders. This
apparition said to the youth: “ Come hither, my son, and fear
not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt conquer many
nations; therefore be careful to pay great reverence to me and
remember me in thy sacrifices.” The vision vanished, but the
piece of crystal remained, “and they say that he afterward saw
in it everything he wanted.” The solar imagery and the analogy
of this figure, with its lions and serpents, to the monumental
representations of celestial deities, are at once apparent; and
there is, too, in the tale, with its prophecy and its crystal-
gazing more than a suggestion of the fast in the wilderness by
which the North American Indian youth seeks a revelation of
his personal medicine-helper, or totem. The Incas all had such
personal tutelaries. That of Manco Capac was said to have
been a falcon, called Inti; and the word came to mean the Sun
itself in its character as deity — or, perhaps, as tutelary of the
Inca clan, since the name Inti appears in the epithets applied
to the “brothers” of more than one later Inca. Serpents,
birds, and golden images were forms of these totemic familiars,
each buried with the body of the Inca to whom it had pertained.

Just as individuals had their personal Genii of this character,
so each clan had for ancestor its Genius, or tutelary, which
might be a star, a mountain, a rock, or a spring. The Sun
was such a Genius of the Incas, and it came to be an ever
greater deity as Inca power spread by very reason of the
growing importance of their clan; while its recognition by
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246

members of allied and conquered septs came to be demanded
very much, we may suppose, as the cultic acknowledgement of
the Genius of the Roman Emperor was required in expression
of loyalty to the reigning race.

The Inca pantheon was not narrow.28 Besides the ancestral
deities, there were innumerable huacas — sacred places, ora-
cles, or idols — and whole classes of nature-powers; the genera-
tive Earth (Pacha Mama) and “mamas” of plant and animal
kinds; meteorological potencies, especially the Rainbow and
Thunder and Lightning, conceived as servants of the Sun;
and, in the heaven itself, the Moon and the Constellations, by
which the seasons were computed. Remote over all was the
heaven-god and creator, Viracocha, with respect to whom the
Sun itself was but a servitor. Salcamayhua declares that
Manco Capac had set up a plate of fine gold, oval in shape,
“which signified that there was a Creator of heaven and
earth.” Mayta Capac renewed this image — despising, tradi-
tion said, all created objects, even the highest, such as men and
the sun and moon — and “he caused things to be placed
round the plate, which I have shown that it may be perceived
what these heathen thought.” In illustration Salcamayhua
gives a drawing which many authorities regard as the key to
Peruvian mythology. At the top is a representation of the
Southern Cross, the pole of the austral heavens. Below this
is the oval symbol of the Creator, on one side of which is an
image of the Sun, with the Morning Star beneath, while
opposite is the Moon above the Evening Star. Under these is
a group of twelve signs — a leaping puma, a tree, “Mama
Cocha,” a chart of this mountainous Earth surmounted by a
rainbow and serving as source for a river into which levin
falls, a group of seven circles called “shining eyes,” and other
emblems — the whole representing, so Stansbury Hagar
argues, the Peruvian zodiac. Salcamayhua goes on to say
that Huascar placed an image of the Sun in the place where
the symbol of the Creator had been, and it was as thus
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247

altered that the Spaniards found the great Temple of the Sun
at Cuzco.

It would appear, indeed, that the action of Huascar was
only a final step in the rise of the solar cult to pre-eminence
in Peru. Doubtless the sun had been a principal deity from
an early period, but its close relation to the Inca clan made
it progressively more and more important, so that by the time
of the coming of the Spaniards it had risen, as a national
divinity, to a position analogous to that of Ashur in the later
Assyrian empire. Meantime the older heaven-god, Viracocha,
presumably the tutelary of the pre-Inca empire and of Tia-
huanaco, had faded into obscurity. To be sure, there was a tem-
ple to this god in Cuzco (so Molina and Salcamayhua attest);
but to the Sun there were shrines all over the land, with
priests and priestesses; while Cuzco was the centre of a mag-
nificent imperial cult, the sanctuary honoured by royalty
itself and served not only by the sacerdotal head of all Inca
temple-service, a high priest of blood royal, but also by hun-
dreds of devoted Virgins of the Sun, who, like the Roman
Vestals, kept an undying fire on the altars of the solar god.

Yet Viracocha was not forgotten, even by the Incas who
subordinated him officially to the Sun; and few passages in
American lore are more striking than are the records of Inca
doubt as to the Sun’s divinity and power. Molina says of
that very Inca to whom the vision of the crystal appeared
that “he reflected upon the respect and reverence shown by
his ancestors to the Sun, who worshipped it as a god; he
observed that it never had any rest, and that it daily
journeyed round the earth; and he said to those of his council
that it was not possible that the Sun could be the God who
created all things, for if he was, he would not permit a small
cloud to obscure his splendour; and that if he was creator of all
things, he would sometimes rest, and light up the whole
world from one spot. Thus, it cannot be otherwise but there
is someone who directs him, and this is the Pacha-yachachi,
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248

the Creator.” Garcilasso (quoting Bias Valera) states that
the Inca Tupac Yupanqui likened the Sun rather to a tethered
beast or to a shot arrow than to a free divinity, while Huayna
Capac is credited with a similar judgement. In the prayers
recorded by Molina, Viracocha is supreme, even over the Sun;
and these petitions, it must be supposed, represent the deepest
conviction of Inca religion.

VI.   LEGENDS OF THE INCAS

Stories of Inca origins, as told by the chroniclers, present a
certain confusion of incident that probably goes back to the
native versions. There are obviously historical narratives
mingled with clearly mythic materials and influencing each
other. The islands of Titicaca and the ruins of Tiahuanaco
appear as the source of remote provenance of the Incas; a place
called Paccari-Tampu (“Tavern of the Dawn”), not far from
Cuzco, and the mysterious hill of Tampu-Tocco (“Tavern of
the Windows”) are recorded as sites associated with their
more immediate rise; yet as Manco Capac is associated with
both origins, and as the narratives pertaining to both contain
cosmogonic elements, the tales give the impression of blending
and duplication.

With different degrees of confusion all the chroniclers (Cieza
de Leon, Garcilasso, Molina, Salcamayhua, Betanzos, Mon-
tesinos, Huaman Porno, and others) tell the story of the coming
forth of Manco Capac and his brothers from Tampu-Tocco to
create the empire; but of all the accounts Markham regards
that given by Sarmiento as the most authentic.29 According
to this version, Tampu-Tocco was a house on a hill, provided
with three windows, named Maras, Sutic, and Capac. Through
the first of these came the Maras tribe, through Sutic came the
Tampu tribe, and through Capac, the regal window, came four
Ayars with their four wives — Ayar Manco and Mama Ocllo;
Ayar Auca (the “joyous,” or “fighting,” Ayar) and Mama
 I
 «
 PLATE XXXVIII

“Temple of the three Windows,” Machu Picchu.
Windows are not a frequent feature of Inca archi-
tecture, and when Bingham discovered at Machu
Picchu the temple with three conspicuous windows,
here shown, this discovery seemed to give added
plausibility to the theory that Machu Picchu is
indeed the Tampu-Tocco of the Incas. See pages
248 ff. and compare Plate XXX. From photograph,
courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale
Peruvian Expedition.
 
 
 THE ANDEAN SOUTH

249

Huaco (the “warlike”); Ayar Cachi (the “Salt” Ayar) and
Mama Ipacura (the “Elder Aunt”); Ayar Uchu (the “Pepper”
Ayar) and Mama Raua. The four pairs “knew no father nor
mother, beyond the story they told that they came out of the
said window by order of Ticci Viracocha; and they declared
that Viracocha created them to be lords”; but it was believed
that by the counsel of the fierce Mama Huaco they decided to
go forth and subjugate peoples and lands. Besides the Maras
and Tampu peoples, eight other tribes were associated with
the Ayars, as vassals, when they began their quest, taking with
them their goods and their families. Manco Capac carrying
with him, as a palladium, a falcon, called Indi, or Inti — the
name of the Sun-god — bore also a golden rod which was to
sink into the land at the site where they were to abide; and
Salcamayhua says that, in setting out, the hero was wreathed
in rain-bows, this being regarded as an omen of success.

The journey was leisurely, and in course of it Sinchi Rocca,
who was to be the second Inca, was born to Mama Ocllo and
Manco Capac; but then came a series of magic transformations
by which the three brothers disappeared, leaving the elder with-
out a rival. Ayar Cachi (who, Cieza de Leon says,30 “had such
great power that, with stones hurled from his sling, he split the
hills and hurled them up to the clouds ”) was the first to excite
the envy of his brothers; and on the pretext that certain royal
treasures had been forgotten in a cave of Tampu-Tocco, he was
sent back to secure them, accompanied by a follower who had
secret instructions from the brothers to immure him in the cave,
once he was inside. This was done, and though Ayar Cachi made
the earth shake in his efforts to break through, he could not
do so. Nevertheless (Cieza tells us) he appeared to his brothers,
“coming in the air with great wings of coloured feathers”;
and despite their terror, he commanded them to go on to their
destiny, found Cuzco, and establish the empire. “I shall re-
main in the form and fashion that ye shall see on a hill not
distant from here; and it will be for your descendants a place
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

of sanctity and worship, and its name shall be Guanacaure
[Huanacauri]. And in return for the good things that ye will
have received from me, I pray that ye will always adore me as
god and in that place will set up altars whereat to offer sacri-
fices. If ye do this, ye shall receive help from me in war; and
as a sign that from henceforth ye are to be esteemed, honoured,
and feared, your ears shall be bored in the manner that ye now
behold mine.” It was from this custom of boring and enlarg-
ing the ears that the Spaniards called the ruling caste Orejones
(“Big-Ears”); and it was at the hill of Huanacauri that the
Ayar instructed the Incas in the rites by which they initiated
youths into the warrior caste.

At this mount, which became one of the great Inca shrines,
both the Salt and the Pepper Ayars were reputed to have been
transformed into stones, or idols, and it was here that the rain-
bow sign of promise was given. As they approached the hill —
so the legend states — they saw near the rainbow what ap-
peared to be a man-shaped idol; and “Ayar Uchu offered him-
self to go to it, for they said that he was very like it.” He did
so, sat upon the stone, and himself became stone, crying: “O
Brothers, an evil work ye have wrought for me. It was for
your sakes that I came where I must remain forever, apart from
your company. Go! go! happy brethren, I announce to you
that ye shall be great lords. I therefore pray that, in recogni-
tion of the desire I have always had to please you, ye shall
honour and venerate me in all your festivals and ceremonies,
and that I shall be the first to whom ye make offerings, since
I remain here for your sakes. When ye celebrate the huarochico
(which is the arming of the sons as knights), ye shall adore me
as their father, for I shall remain here forever.”

Finally Manco Capac’s staff sank into the ground — “two
shots of an arquebus from Cuzco” — and from their camp the
hero pointed to a heap of stones on the site of Cuzco. “ Showing
this to his brother, Ayar Auca, he said, ‘Brother! thou remem-
berest how it was arranged between us that thou shouldst go to
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251

take possession of the land where we are to settle. Well! behold
that stone.’ Pointing it out, he continued, ‘Go thither flying,’
for they say that Ayar Auca had developed some wings; ‘and
seating thyself there, take possession of the land seen from
that heap of rocks. We will presently come and settle and re-
side.’ When Ayar Auca heard the words of his brother, opening
his wings, he flew to that place which Manco Capac had pointed
out; and seating himself there, he was presently turned into
stone, being made the stone of possession. In the ancient
language of this valley the heap was called cozco, whence the
site has had the name of Cuzco to this day.”

Markham placed the events commemorated in this myth
at about 1100 a. d., and Bingham’s remarkable discoveries of
Machu Picchu and of the Temple of the Three Windows appear
to prove the truth of tales of a Tampu-Tocco dynasty, pre-
ceding the coming to Cuzco. The tribal divisions (in their
numbers, three and ten, strikingly suggestive of Roman legend)
are surely in part historical, for Sarmiento gives names of mem-
bers of the various ayllus in Cuzco in his own day. Yet it is
clear that the Ayars are mythical beings. Garcilasso says 31 that
the four pairs came forth in the beginning of the world; that
in the various legends about them the three brothers disappear
in allegory, leaving Manco Capac alone; and that the Salt
Ayar signifies “instruction in the rational life,” while the
Pepper Ayar means “delight received in this instruction.”
The association of the two Ayars with initiation ceremonies
and civic destiny points, in fact, to the character of culture
heroes; and their names, Salt and Pepper, again suggest associ-
ation with economic life, perhaps, in some way, as genii of
earth and vegetation, though in the myth of Ayar Cachi the
suggestion of a volcanic power is almost irresistible. Ayar
Auca is clearly the genius loci of Cuzco, while Manco Capac
himself, conceived as an Ayar, is little more than a culture hero.
Perhaps the solution is to be found in Montesinos’s lists, where
Manco Capac is the first ruler of the dynasty of the oldest
 252

[Prometheus]

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

emperors, after the god Viracocha himself, while the first Inca
is Sinchi Rocca. The myth of the Ayars would then hark back
to the Megalithic age and to the cosmogonies associated with
Titicaca, while their connexion with the Incas, after the dynasty
of Tampu-Tocco, would be, as it were, but a natural telescoping
of ancient myth and later history, adding to Inca prestige.

In Inca lore there are other legends — the tale of the prince
who was stolen by his father’s enemies and who wept tears of
blood, by this portent saving his life; the legend of the virgin
of the Sun who loved a pipe-playing shepherd and of their
transformation into rocks; the story of Ollantay, the general,
who loved the Inca’s daughter, preserved in the drama which
Markham has translated; and along with these are many frag-
ments of creation-stories and aetiological myths chronicled
by the early writers. History and poetic fancy combine in
these to give materials into which are woven beliefs and prac-
tices far more ancient than the Inca race, just as Hellenic myth
contains distorted reflections of the pre-Greek age of the Aegean.
By means of such tales the ancient shrines are made to speak
again, as through oracles.
 CHAPTER VIII

THE TROPICAL FORESTS: THE ORINOCO
AND GUIANA

I.   LANDS AND PEOPLES

AMONG earth’s great continental bodies South America
is second only to Australia in isolation. This is true not
only geographically, but also in regard to flora and fauna, and
in respect of its human aborigines and their cultures. To be
sure, within itself the continent shows a diversity as wide,
perhaps, as that of any; and certainly no continent affords a
sharper contrast both of environment and of culture than is
that of the Andes and the civilized Andeans to the tropical
forests with their hordes of unqualified savages. There are,
moreover, streams of influence reaching from the southern
toward the northern America — the one, by way of the
Isthmus, tenuously extending the bond of civilization in the
direction of the cultured nations of Central America and
Mexico; the other carrying northward the savagery of the
tropics by the thin line of the Lesser Antilles; and it is, of
course, possible that this double movement, under way in
Columbian days, was the retroaction of influences that had
at one time moved in the contrary direction. Yet, on the
whole, South America has its own distinct character, whether
of savagery or of civilization, showing little certain evidence
of recent influence from other parts of the globe. Au fond
the cultural traits — implements, social organization, ideas —
are of the types common to mankind at similar levels; but
their special developments have a distinctly South American
character, so that, whether we compare Inca with Aztec, or
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Amazonian with Mississippian, we perceive without hesitancy
the continental idiosyncracy of each. It is certain that South
America has been inhabited from remote times; it is certain,
too, that her aboriginal civilizations are ancient, reckoned
even by the Old World scale. A daring hypothesis would
make this continent an early, and perhaps the first home of
the human species — a theory that would not implausibly
solve certain difficulties, assuming that the differences which
mark aboriginal North from aboriginal South America are
due to the fact that the former continent was the meeting-
place and confluence of two streams — a vastly ancient, but
continuous, northward flow from the south, turned and
coloured by a thinner and later wash of Asiatic source.1

The peoples of South America are grouped by d’Orbigny,2
as result of his ethnic studies of Vhomme americain made dur-
ing the expedition of 1826-33, into three great divisions, or
races: the Ando-Peruvian, comprising all the peoples of the
west coast as far as Tierra del Fuego; the Pampean, including
the tribes of the open countries of the south; and the Brasilio-
Guaranian, composed of the stocks of those tropical forests
which form the great body of the South American continent.
With modifications this threefold grouping of the South Amer-
ican aborigines has been maintained by later ethnologists.
One of the most recent studies in this field (W. Schmidt,
“ Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Siidamerika,” in ZE
xlv [1913]), while still maintaining the triple classification,
nevertheless shows that the different groups have mingled
and intermingled in confusing complexity, following succes-
sive cycles of cultural influence. Schmidt’s division is primarily
on the basis of cultural traits, with reference to which he dis-
' tinguishes three primary groups: (1) Peoples of the “collective
grade,” who live by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of
plants, with the few exceptions of tribes that have learned
some agriculture from neighbours of a higher culture. In this
group are the Gez, or Botocudo, and the Puri-Coroados stocks
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255

of the east and south-east of Brazil; the stocks of the Gran
Chaco, the Pampas, and Tierra del Fuego; while the Arau-
canians and certain tribes of the eastern cordilleras of the
Andes are also placed in this class. (2) Groups of peoples of
the Hackbaustufe, mostly practicing agriculture and marked
by a general advance in the arts, as well as by the presence of
a well-defined patriarchy and evidences of totemism in their
social organization. In this group are' included the great
• South American linguistic stocks — the Cariban, Arawakan,
and Tupi-Guaranian, inhabiting the forests and semi-steppes
of the regions drained by the Orinoco and Amazon and their
tributaries, as well as the tribes of the north-east coast of the
continent. (3) Groups of the cultured peoples of the Andes
— Chibcha, Incaic, and Calchaqui.

The general arrangement of these three divisions follows
the contour of the continent. The narrow mountain ridge
of the west coast is the seat of the civilized peoples; the home
of the lowest culture is the east coast, extending in a broad
band of territory from the highlands of the Brazilian provinces
of Pernambuco and Bahia south-westward to the Chilean
Andes and Patagonia; between these two, occupying the
whole centre of the continent, with a broad base along the
northern coast and narrowing wedge-like to the south, is the
region of the intermediate culture group.

Most of what is known of the mythology of South American
peoples comes from tribes and nations of the second and third
groups — from the Andeans whose myths have been sketched
in preceding chapters, and from the peoples of the tropic
forests. The region inhabited by the latter group is too vast
to be treated as a simple unit; nor is there, in the chaotic
intermixture of tongues and tribes, any clear ethnic demarca-
tion of ideas. In default of other principle, it is appropriate
and expedient, therefore, to follow the natural division of the
territory into the geographical regions broadly determined by
the great river-systems that traverse the continent. These
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256

are three: in the north the Orinoco, with its tributaries, drain-
ing the region bounded on the west by the Colombian plateau
and the Llanos of the Orinoco, and on the south by the Guiana
Highlands; in the centre the Amazon, the world’s greatest
river, the mouth of which is crossed by the Equator, while the
stream itself closely follows the equatorial line straight across
the continent to the Andes, though its great tributaries drain
the central continent, many degrees to the south; and in the
south the Rio de la Plata, formed by the confluence of the
Parana and Uruguay, and receiving the waters of the territories
extending from El Gran Chaco to the Pampas, beyond which
the Patagonian plains and Chilean Andes taper southward
to the Horn. In general, the Orinoco region is the home of the
Carib and Arawak tribes; the Amazonian region is the seat
and centre of the Tupi-Guaranians; while the region extend-
ing from the Rio de la Plata to the Horn is the aboriginal
abode of various peoples, mostly of inferior culture. It should
be borne in mind, however, that the simplicity of this plan is
largely factitious. Linguistically, aboriginal South America
is even more complex than North America (at least above
Mexico); and the whole central region is a melange of verbally
unrelated stocks, of which, for the continent as a whole,
Chamberlain’s incomplete list gives no less than eighty-three.3

II.   SPIRITS AND SHAMANS

“The aborigines of Guiana,” writesBrett,4 “in their naturally
wild and untaught condition, have had a confused idea of the
existence of one good and supreme Being, and of many inferior
spirits, who are supposed to be of various kinds, but generally
of malignant character. The Good Spirit they regard as the
Creator of all, and, as far as we could learn, they believe Him
to be immortal and invisible, omnipotent and omniscient.
But notwithstanding this, we have never discovered any trace
of religious worship or adoration paid to Him by any tribe while
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257

in its natural condition. They consider Him as a Being too high
to notice them; and, not knowing Him as a God that heareth
prayer, they concern themselves but little about Him.” In
another passage the same writer states that the natives of
Guiana “all maintain the Invisibility of the Eternal Father.
In their traditionary legends they never confound Him — the
Creator, — the ‘ Ancient of Heaven ’ — with the mythical per-
sonages of what, for want of a better term, we must call their
heroic age; and though sorcerers claim familiarity with, and
power to control, the inferior (and malignant) spirits, none
would ever pretend to hold intercourse with Him, or that it
were possible for mortal man to behold Him.” A missionary to
the same region, Fray Ruiz Blanco,5 earlier by some two hundred
years, says of the religion of these aborigines that, “The false
rites and diableries with which the multitude are readily duped
are innumerable . . . briefly . . . there is the seated fact that
all are idolaters, and there is the particular fact that all abhor
and greatly fear the devil, whom they call Iboroquiamio.”
Minds of a scientific stamp see the matter somewhat differ-
ently. “The natives of the Orinoco,” Humboldt declares,6
“ know no other worship than that of the powers of nature; like
the ancient Germans they deify the mysterious object which
excites their simple admiration (deorum nominibus appellant
secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident).” From the point
of view of an ethnologist of the school of Tylor, im Thurn de-
scribes the religion of the Indians of Guiana: Having no belief
in a hierarchy of spirits, they can have, he says, “none in any
such beings as in higher religions are called gods. ... It is
true that various words have been found in all, or nearly all,
the languages, not only of Guiana, but also of the whole world,
which have been supposed to be the names of a great spirit,
supreme being, or god”; nevertheless, he concludes, “the con-
ception of a God is not only totally foreign to Indian habits of
thought, but belongs to a much higher stage of intellectual
development than any attained by them.”
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258

It is from such contrary evidences as these that the true
character of aboriginal beliefs must be reconstructed. Im
Thurn says of the native names that they “to some extent
acquired a sense which the missionaries imparted to them”;
and when we meet, in such passages as that quoted from Brett,
the ascription of attributes like omniscience and omnipotence
to primitive divinities, there is indeed cause for humour at the
missionary’s expense. But there are logical idols in more than
one trade; the ethnologists have their full share of them. Im
Thum gives us a list of indigenous appellations of the Great
Spirit of Guiana:

f Tamosi (“the Ancient One”).

True Caribs: j Tamosi kabotano (“the Ancient One
Carib Tribes:   ( in the Sky”).

Ackawoi: Mackonaima (meaning unknown).

Macusi: Kutti (probably only Macusi-Dutch for
“God”).

(Wa murreta kwonci (“our Maker”).

Wa cinaci (“our Father”).

Ifilici wacinaci (“our Great Father”).

...   ttt . f Kononatoo (“our Maker”).

Warrau-Wapiana: i   , N

r t Tommagatoo (meaning unknown).

Of all these names im Thum remarks that in those whose
meanings are known “only three ideas are expressed — (i) One
who lived long ago and is now in sky-land; (2) the maker of
the Indians; and (3) their father. None of these ideas,” he
continues, “ in any way involve the attributes of a god . . . ” 7
Obviously, acceptance of this negation turns upon one’s under-
standing of the meaning of “god.”

The Cariban Makonaima (there are many variants, such as
Makanaima, Makunaima, and the like) is a creator-god and
the hero of a cosmogony. It is possible that his name connects
him with the class of Kenaima (or Kanaima), avengers of
murder and bringers of death, who are often regarded as en-
dowed with magical or mysterious powers; and in this case
the term may be analogous to the Wakanda and Manito of the
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259

northern continent. Schomburgk 8 states that Makunaima
means “one who works in the night”; and if this be true, it is
curious to compare with such a conception the group of Ara-
wakan demiurgic beings whom he describes. According to the
Arawak myths, a being Kururumany was the creator of men,
while Kulimina formed women. Kururumany was the author
of all good, but coming to earth to survey his creation, he dis-
covered that the human race had become wicked and corrupt;
wherefore he deprived them of everlasting life, leaving among
them serpents, lizards, and other vermin. Wurekaddo (“She
Who Works in the Dark”) and Emisiwaddo (“She Who Bores
Through the Earth”) are the wives of Kururumany; and
Emisiwaddo is identified as the cushi-ant, so that we have here
an interesting suggestion of world-building ants, for which
analogues are to be found far north in America, in the Pueblos
and on the North-West Coast. There is, however, a faineant
god high above Kururumany, one Aluberi, pre-eminent over
all, who has no concern for the affairs of men; while other
supreme beings mentioned by Schomburgk are Amalivaca —
who is, however, rather a Trickster-Hero — and the group that,
among the Maipuri, corresponds to the Arawakan family of
divine beings, Purrunaminari (“He Created Men”), Tapari-
marru, his wife, and Sisiri, his son, whom she, without being
touched by him, conceived to him from the mere love he bore
her — a myth in which, as Schomburgk observes, we should
infer European influence.

Humboldt, in describing the religion of the Orinoco aborigines
says 9 of them that “they call the good spirit Cachimana; it is
the Manitou, the Great Spirit, that regulates the seasons and
favours the harvests. Along with Cachimana there is an evil
principle, Iolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in
particular more active.” On the whole, this characterization
represents the consensus of observation of traveller, missionary,
and scientist from Columbian days to the present and for the
wilder tribes of the whole of both South and North America.
 26o

LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

There is a good being, the Great Spirit, more or less remote from
men, often little concerned with human or terrene affairs, but
the ultimate giver of life and light, of harvest food and game
food. There is an evil principle, sometimes personified as a
Lord of Darkness, although more often conceived not as a
person, but as a mischievous power, or horde of powers, mani-
fested in multitudes of annoying forms. Among shamanistic
tribes little attention is paid to the Good Power; it is too remote
to be seriously courted; or, if it is worshipped, solemn festivals,
elaborate mysteries, and priestly rites are the proper agents
for attracting its attention. On the other hand, the Evil Power
in all its innumerable and tricky embodiments, must be warded
off by constant endeavour — by shamanism, “medicine,”
magic. The tribes of the Orinoco region are, ab origine, mainly
in the shamanistic stage. The peaiman is at once priest, doctor,
and magician, whose main duty is to discover the deceptive
concealment of the malicious Kenaima and, by his exorcisms,
to free men from the plague. That the Kenaima is of the nature
of a spirit appears from the fact that the term is applied to
human malevolences, especially when these find magic mani-
festation, as well as to evils emanating from other sources.
Thus, the avenger of a murder is a Kenaima, and he must not
only exact life for life; he must achieve his end by certain
means and with rites insuring himself against the ill will of
his victim’s spirit. Again, the Were-Jaguar is a Kenaima.
“A jaguar which displays unusual audacity,” says Brett,4
“will often unnerve even a brave hunter by the fear that it
may be a Kanaima tiger. ‘This,’ reasons the Indian, ‘if it be
but an ordinary wild beast, I may kill with bullet or arrow;
but what will be my fate if I assail the man-destroyer — the
terrible Kanaima?’”

The Kenaima, the man-killer, whether he be the human
avenger upon whom the law of a primitive society has imposed
the task of exacting retribution, or whether he be the no less
dreaded inflicter of death through disease, or magically induced
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261

accident, or by shifting skins with a man-slaying beast, is only
one type of the spirits of evil. Others are the Yauhahu and
Orehu (Arawak names for beings which are known to the other
tribes by other titles). The Yauhahu are the familiars of
sorcerers, the peaimen, who undergo a long period of proba-
tionary preparation in order to win their favour and who hold
it only by observing the most stringent tabus in the matter of
diet. The Orehu are water-sprites, female like the mermaids,
and they sometimes drag man and canoe down to the depths
of their aquatic haunts; yet they are not altogether evil, for
Brett tells a story, characteristically American Indian, of the
origin of a medicine-mystery. In very ancient times, when
the Yauhahu inflicted continual misery on mankind, an Ara-
wak, walking besides the water and brooding over the sad case
of his people, beheld an Orehu rise from the stream, bearing
in her hand a branch which he planted as she bade him, its
fruit being the calabash, till then unknown. Again she ap-
peared, bringing small white pebbles, which she instructed
him to enclose in the gourd, thus making the magic-working
rattle; and instructing him in its use and in the mysteries of the
Semecihi, this order was established among the tribes. The
“Semecihi” are of course, the medicine-men of the Arawak,
corresponding to the Carib peaimen, though the word itself
would seem to be related to the Taino zemi. Relation to the
Islanders is, indeed, suggested by the whole myth, for the
Orehu is surely only the mainland equivalent for the Haitian
woman-of-the-sea, Guabonito, who taught the medicine-hero,
Guagugiana, the use of amulets of white stones and of gold.

III.   HOW EVILS BEFELL MANKIND

Not many primitive legends are more dramatically vivid than
the Carib story of Maconaura and Anuana'itu,10 and few myths
give a wider insight into the ideas and customs of a people. The
theme of the tale is very clearly the coming of evil as the conse-
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[Prometheus]

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quence of a woman’s deed, although the motive of her action
is not mere curiosity, as in the tale of Pandora, but the more
potent passion of revenge — or, rather, of that vengeful retribu-
tion of the lex talionis which is the primitive image of justice.
In an intimate fashion, too, the story gives us the spirit of
Kenaima at work, while its denouement suggests that the rest-
less Orehu, the Woman of the Waters, may be none other than
the authoress of evil, the liberatress of ills.

In a time long past, so long past that even the grandmothers
of our grandmothers were not yet born, the Caribs of Surinam
say, the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees
were forever in fruit; the animals lived in perfect harmony,
and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the
jaguar; the serpents had no venom; the rivers flowed evenly,
without drought or flood; and even the waters of cascades
glided gently down from the high rocks. No human creature
had as yet come into life, and Adaheli, whom now we invoke as
God, but who then was called the Sun, was troubled. He de-
scended from the skies, and shortly after man was born from
the cayman, born, men and women, in the two sexes. The
females were all of a ravishing beauty, but many of the males
had repellent features; and this was the cause of their dis-
persion, since the men of fair visage, unable to endure dwelling
with their ugly fellows, separated from them, going to the West,
while the hideous men went to the East, each party taking
the wives whom they had chosen.

Now in the tribe of the handsome Indians lived a certain
young man, Maconaura, and his aged mother. The youth was
altogether charming — tall and graceful, with no equal in hunt-
ing and fishing, while all men brought their baskets to him for
the final touch; nor was his old mother less skilled in the mak-
ing of hammocks, preparation of cassava, or brewing of tapana.
They lived in harmony with one another and with all their
tribe, suffering neither from excessive heat nor from foggy
chill, and free from evil beasts, for none existed in that region.
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263

One day, however, Maconaura found his basket-net broken
and his fish devoured, a thing such as had never happened in
the history of the tribe; and so he placed a woodpecker on
guard when next he set his trap; but though he ran with all
haste when he heard the toe! toe! of the signal, he came too
late; again the fish were devoured, and the net was broken.
With cuckoo as .guard he fared better, for when he heard the
pon! pon! which was this bird’s signal, he arrived in time to
send an arrow between the ugly eyes of a cayman, which dis-
appeared beneath the waters with a glou! glou! Maconaura
repaired his basket-net and departed, only to hear again the
signal, pon! pon! Returning, he found a beautiful Indian
maiden in tears. “Who are you?” he asked. “Anuanai'tu,”
she replied. “Whence come you?” “From far, far.” “Who
are your kindred?” “Oh, ask me not that!” and she covered
her face with her hands.

The maiden, who was little more than a child, lived with
Maconaura and his mother; and as she grew, she increased in
beauty, so that Maconaura desired to wed her. At first she re-
fused with tears, but finally she consented, though the union
lacked correctness in that Maconaura had not secured the
consent of her parents, whose name she still refused to divulge.
For a while the married pair lived happily until Anuanai'tu was
seized with a great desire to visit her mother; but when Ma-
conaura would go with her, she, in terror, urged the abandon-
ment of the trip, only to find her husband so determined that
he said, “Then I will go alone to ask you in marriage of your
kin.” “Never, never that!” cried Anuanai'tu; “That would
be to destroy us all, us two and your dear mother!” But Ma-
conaura was not to be dissuaded, for he had consulted a peaiman
who had assured him that he would return safely; and so he
set forth with his bride.

After several weeks their canoe reached an encampment,
and Anuanai'tu said: “We are arrived; I will go in search of my
mother. She will bring to you a gourd filled with blood and
 264 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

raw meat, and another filled with beltiri [a fermented liquor]
and cassava bread. Our lot depends on your choice.” The
young man, when his mother-in-law appeared, unhesitatingly
took the beltiri and bread, whereupon the old woman said,
“You have chosen well; I give my consent to your marriage,
but I fear that my husband will oppose it strongly.” Kai-
koutji (“Jaguar”) was the husband’s name. The two women
went in advance to test his temper toward Maconaura’s suit;
but his rage was great, and it was necessary to hide the youth
in the forest until at last Kaikoutji was mollified to such a
degree that he consented to see the young man, only to have
his anger roused again at the sight, so that he cried, “How
dare you approach me?” Maconaura responded: “True, my
marriage with your daughter is not according to the rites. But
I am come to make reparation. I will make for you whatever
you desire.” “Make me, then,” cried the other contemptuously,
“a halla [sorcerer’s stool] with the head of a jaguar on one
side and my portrait on the other.” By midnight Maconaura
had completed the work, excepting for the portrait; but here
was a difficulty, for Kaikoutji kept his head covered with a
calabash, pierced only with eye-holes; and when Maconaura
asked his wife to describe her parent, she replied: “Impossible!
My father is a peaiman; he knows all; he would kill us both.”
Maconaura concealed himself near the hammock of his father-
in-law, in hopes of seeing his face; and first, a louse, then, a
spider, came to annoy Kaikoutji, who killed them both with-
out showing his visage. Finally, however, an army of ants
attacked him furiously, and the peaiman, rising up in conster-
nation, revealed himself — his whole horrible head. Ma-
conaura appeared with the halla, completed, when morning
came. “That will not suffice,” said Kaikoutji, “in a single
night you must make for me a lodge formed entirely of the
most beautiful feathers.” The young man felt himself lost,
but multitudes of humming-birds and jacamars and others of
brilliant plumage cast their feathers down to him, so that the
 
 PLATE XXXIX

1.   Stone seat from Manabi, Ecuador. See page
206. After Saville, Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador,
Vol. II, Plate XXXVIII.

2.   Painted wooden seat from Guiana — such a
halla as is referred to in the tale of Maconaura and
Anuanai'tu, page 264. After 30 ARBE, Plate V.

3.   Central American carved stone metate in the
collection of Geo. S. Walsh, Lincoln, Neb.
 3
 
 THE ORINOCO AND GUIANA   265

lodge was finished before daybreak, whereupon Maconaura
was received as the recognized husband of Anuanaitu.

The time soon came, however, when he wished again to see
his mother, but as Kaikoutji refused to allow Anuanaitu to
accompany the youth, he set off alone. Happy days were spent
at home, he telling his adventures, the mother recounting the
tales of long ago which had been dimly returning to her troubled
memory; and when Maconaura would return to his wife, the
old mother begged him to stay, while the peaiman warned him
of danger; but he was resolved and departed once more, telling
his mother that he would send her each day a bird to apprise
her of his condition: if the owl came, she would know him
lost. Arrived at the home of Anuanaitu, he was met by his
wife and mother-in-law, in tears, with the warning: “Away!
quickly! Kaikoutji is furious at the news he has received!”
Nevertheless Maconaura went on, and at the threshold of the
lodge was met by Kaikoutji, who felling him with a blow, thrust
an arrow between his eyes. Meantime Maconaura’s mother
had been hearing daily the mournful bouta! bouta! of the oto-
lin; but one day this was succeeded by the dismal popopol of
the owl, and knowing that her son was dead, she, led by the
bird of ill tidings, found first the young man’s canoe and
then his hidden body, with which she returned sadly to her
own people.

The men covered the corpse with a pall of beautiful feathers,
placing about it Maconaura’s arms and utensils; the women
prepared the tapana for the funeral feast; and all assembled to
hear the funeral chant, the last farewell of mother to son.
She recounted the tragic tale of his love and death, and then,
raising the cup of tapana to her lips, she cried: “Who has ex-
tinguished the light of my son? Who has sent him into the
valley of shades ? Woe! woe to him! . . . Alas! you see in me,
O friends and brothers, only a poor, weak old woman. I can
do nothing. Who of you will avenge me?” Forthwith two men
sprang forward, seized the cup, and emptied it; beside the
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

corpse they intoned the Kenaima song, dancing the dance of
vengeance; and into one of them the soul of a boa constrictor
entered, into the other that of a jaguar.

The great feast of tapana was being held at the village of
Kaikoutji, where hundreds of natives were gathered, men,
women, and children. They drank and vomited; drank and
vomited again; till finally all were drunken. Then two men
came, one in the hide of a jaguar, the other in the mottled
scales of a boa constrictor; and in an instant Kaikoutji and all
about him were struck down, some crushed by the jaguar’s
blows, others strangled in snaky folds. Nevertheless fear had
rescued some from their drunkenness; and they seized their
bows, threatening the assailants with hundreds of arrows,
whereupon the two Kenaima ceased their attack, while one of
them cried: “Hold, friends! we are in your hands, but let us
first speak!” Then he recounted the tale of Maconaura, and
when he had ceased, an old peaiman advanced, saying: “Young
men, you have spoken well. We receive you as friends.”

The feast was renewed more heartily than ever, but though
Anuana'itu, in her grief, had remained away, she now advanced,
searching among the corpses. She examined them, one by one,
with dry eyes; but at last she paused beside a body, her eyes
filled with tears, and seating herself, long, long she chanted
plaintively the praises of the dead. Suddenly she leaped up,
with hair bristling and with face of fire, in vibrant voice in-
toning the terrible Kenaima; and as she danced, the soul of a
rattlesnake entered into her.

Meantime, in the other village, the people were celebrating
the tapana, delirious with joy for the vengeance taken, while
the mother of Maconaura, overcome by drink, lay in her ham-
mock, dreaming of her son. Anuana’itu entered, possessed,
but she drew back moved when she heard her name pronounced
by the dreaming woman: “Anuana'itu, my child, you are good,
as was also your mother! But why come you hither? My son,
whom you have lost, is no more . . . O son Maconaura, re-
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267

joice! Thou art happy, now, for thou art avenged in the blood of
thy murderers! Ah, yes, thou art well avenged!” During this
Anuanaitu felt in her soul a dread conflict, the call of love
struggling with the call of duty; but at the words, “avenged
in blood,” she restrained herself no longer, and throwing her-
self upon the old woman, she drew her tongue from her mouth,
striking it with venomous poison; and leaning over her agonized
victim, she spoke: “The cayman which your son killed beside
the basket-net was my brother. Like my father, he had a cay-
man’s head. I would pardon that. My father avenged his
son’s death in inflicting on yours the same doom that he had
dealt — an arrow between the eyes. Your kindred have slain
my father and all mine. I would have pardoned that, too,
had they but spared my mother. Maconaura is the cause that
what is most dear to me in the world is perished; and robbing
him in my turn, I immolate what he held most precious!”

Uttering a terrible cry, she fled into the forest; and at the
sound a change unprecedented occurred throughout all nature.
The winds responded with a tempest which struck down the
trees and uprooted the very oaks; thick clouds veiled the face
of Adaheli, while sinister lightnings and the roar of thunders
filled the tenebrous world; a deluge of rain mingled with the
floods of rivers. The animals, until then peaceable, fell upon
and devoured one another: the serpent struck with his venom,
the cayman made his terrible jaws to crash, the jaguar tore
the flesh of the harmless agouti. Anuanaitu, followed by the
savage hosts of the forest, pursued her insensate course until
she arrived at the summit of an enormous rock, whence gushed
a cascade; and there, on the brink of the precipice, she stretched
forth her arms, leaned forward, and plunged into the depths.
The waters received her and closed over her; nought was to be
seen but a terrifying whirlpool.

If today some stranger pass beside a certain cascade, the
Carib native will warn him not to speak its name. That would
be his infallible death, for at the bottom of these waters Ma-
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

conaura and Anuana'itu dwell together in the marvellous
palace of her who is the Soul of the Waters.

It is not merely the artistic symmetry of this tale — which
may be due as much to the clever rendering by Father van
Coll as to the genius of the savage raconteur — that justifies
giving it at length. It is a wonderfully instructive picture of
savage life, emotions, and customs; and a full commentary
upon it would lead to an exposition of most that we know of
the customs and thought of the Orinoco aborigines — such
practices, for example, as im Thurn describes: the putting of
red pepper in one’s eyes to propitiate the spirits of rapids one
is about to shoot; the method of Kenaima murder by pricking
the tongue with poison; the perpetual vendetta which to the
savage seems to hold not only between tribe and tribe of men,
but also between tribe and tribe of animals; the tapana feasts
in which men become inspired; or again, such mythic and
religious conceptions as the cult of the jaguar and cayman,
extending far throughout South and Central America; the still
more universal notion of a community of First People, part
man, part animal; the ominous birds and animal helpers; the
central story of the visit of the hero-youth to the ogreish father-
in-law, and of the trials to which he is subjected. In these and
in other respects the story is of interest; but its chief attraction
is surely in the fact that here we have an American Job or
(Edipus, presenting, as Job presents, the problem of evil; and,
like Greek tragedy, portraying the harsh conflict between the
inexorable justice of the law of retribution and the loves and
mercies which combat it, in the savage heart perhaps not less
than in the civilized.

IV. CREATION AND CATACLYSM

Both creation and cataclysm appear in the story of Maco-
naura and Anuana'itu, but this legend is only one among sev-
eral tales of the kind gathered from various groups of Orinoco
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269

natives, the fullest collection, “‘old peoples’ stories,’ as the
rising race somewhat contemptuously call them,” being given
by Brett. The creation myths are of the two familiar American
types: true creations out of the void, and migrations of First
Beings into a new land; while transformation-incidents, and
especially the doughty deeds of the Transformer-Hero, a true
demiurge, are characteristic of traditions of each type.

The Ackawoi make their Makonaima the creator, and Sigu,
his son, the hero, in a tale which, says Brett,11 they repeat
“while striving to maintain a very grave aspect, as befitting
the general nature of the subject.” “In the beginning of this
world the birds and beasts were created by Makonaima, —
the great spirit whom no man hath seen. They, at that time,
were all endowed with the gift of speech. Sigu, the son of
Makonaima, was placed to rule over them. All lived in har-
mony together and submitted to his gentle dominion.” Here
we have the usual sequence: the generation of the world, fol-
lowed by the Golden Age, with its vocal animals and universal
peace; while as a surprise to his subject creatures, Makonaima
caused a wonderful tree, bearing all good fruits, to spring from
the earth — the tree which was the origin of all cultivated
plants. The acouri first discovered this tree, selfishly trying
to keep the secret to himself; and the woodpecker, set by Sigu
to trace the acouri, proved a poor spy, since his tapping warned
it of his presence; but when the rat solved the mystery, Sigu
determined to fell the tree and plant its fruits broadcast.
Only the lazy monkey refused to assist, and even mischie-
vously hindered the others, so that Sigu, provoked, put him at
the task of the Danai'des — to fetch water in a basket-sieve.
The stump of the tree proved to be filled with water, stocked
with every kind of fish and from its riches Sigu proposed to
supply all streams; but the waters began of themselves to flow
so copiously that he was compelled hastily to cover the top
with a basket which the mischievous monkey discovered; and
raising it, the deluge poured forth. To save the animals, Sigu
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LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

sealed in a cave those which could not climb; the others he
took with him into a high cocorite tree, where they remained
through a long and uncomfortable night, Sigu dropping cocorite
seeds from time to time to judge by the splash if the waters
were receding, until finally the sound was no longer heard,
and with the return of day the animals descended to repeople
the earth. But they were no longer the same. The arauta still
howls his discomfort from the trees; the trumpeter-bird, too
greedily descending into the food-rich mud, had his legs, till
then respectable, so devoured by ants that they have ever
since been bonily thin; the bush-fowl snapped up the spark of
fire which Sigu laboriously kindled, and got his red wattle for
his greed; while the alligator had his tongue pulled out for
lying (it is a common belief that the cayman is tongueless).
Thus the world became what it is.

A second part of the tale tells how Sigu was persecuted by
two wicked brothers who beat him to death, burned him to
ashes, and buried him. Nevertheless, each time he rose again
to life and finally ascended a high hill which grew upward as he
mounted until he disappeared in the sky.

Probably the most far-known mythic hero of this region is
Amalivaca, a Carib demiurge, concerning whom Humboldt
reports various beliefs of the Tamanac (a Cariban tribe).
According to Humboldt,12 “the name Amalivaca is spread over
a region of more than five thousand square leagues; he is
found designated as c the father of mankind,’or cour great-grand-
father’ as far as the Caribbee nations”; and he likens him to
the Aztec Quetzalcoatl. It is in connexion with the petro-
glyphs of their territory (similar rock-carvings are found far
into the Antilles, the “painted cave” in which the Earth God-
dess was worshipped in Haiti being, no doubt, an example)
that the Tamanac give motive to their tale. Amalivaca, father
of the Tamanac, arrived in a canoe in the time of the deluge,
and he engraved images, still to be seen, of the sun and the
moon and the animals high upon the rocks of Encaramada.
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271