Part 28
At the end of each particular conflict the victor turned by means of a word the vanquished into that which embodied and expressed his character. The vanquished on his part had a similar compelling word, and changed his opponent into the beast, bird, or other existence which described him; in other terms, he gave his opponent the physical form, the outward personality, which corresponded to the nature of his hidden or at least his unapparent character. Besides these metamorphosed or fallen divinities, there is in the Indian mythologies a group, a small minority, which was not changed, but left this world going out under the sky at the west to live in harmony and delight; and they live in that way to this moment. Sometimes this group, or a part of it, went to live above the sky.
The Indian Creation-myths all relate to the adventures and exploits of the "first people,"--the gods; none relate to human beings, and none touch on anything done since man appeared on earth. They are the accounts of what took place when there was an order different from the present, and explain how the present order rose from the first.
Such, in substance, is the foundation of American religious systems, and the method of all of them, so far as examined. The Wintu is different from many others in its methods and details, but the result is the same in all cases. Olelbis, with few exceptions, disposes of the first people, retains with himself whomsoever he likes, sends to the earth and transforms those whom he thinks more useful below than above, and gives the example of a single ruling divinity which, without being represented as all-powerful or all-wise, manages through the knowledge and services of others to bear rule over all things.
OLELBIS
This myth contains a complete statement concerning the beginnings of Wintu belief. Olelbis occupies the first place in the estimation of Wintus. To understand the Wintu mind, it is indispensable to begin with Olelbis. Other myths illustrate this one, explain parts of the Wintu system, and help to explain the mental life of the people; but this tale of Creation is to Indians of the western half of the Sacramento valley what their sacred books are to historic races.
No Wintu has been converted to Christianity; hence the faith of the nation is undimmed, and its adherence to primitive religion unweakened. I cannot explain their position better than by giving the words of one of the most intelligent Wintus whom I have met. After I had collected all that I could find, and had received needful explanations as far as was possible, I spoke some time with this man. Referring to their religion and ideas, he said: "When I talk of these things, I am afraid, I feel kind of scart" (scared).
That explains their position perfectly. Their faith is of the firmest; they are full of awe; they believe that Olelbis is up there now in the "Central Blue," in his marvellous Panti Hlut, the most beautiful structure in the universe, and from there sees everything that happens. That heavenly house is framed of living oak-trees, which bear acorns continually, the Indian bread of life,--that house which has in and around it all the flowers that have ever bloomed, flowers whose roots can never die.
Winishuyat, mentioned in "Olelbis" and in other tales, is one of the most interesting personages in Wintu mythology. He is described as a little man, about the size of a thumb, and is always placed on the top of the head by the person whom he accompanies and aids. This person never fails to tie his own hair over Winishuyat, and thus conceals him from every stranger. Winis means "he sees;" the literal significance of huyat I have not been able to get at satisfactorily thus far. The essential meaning of the whole word is that he sees in mind the approaching danger before it is evident to the physical eye. Winishuyat means, therefore, the prescience of danger,--seeing danger while it is yet at some distance; not necessarily distance geographically, for the danger may be present, but concealed in the breast of a dissembling enemy, and some time, short or long, may be between it and actual happening.
The peculiar thing in the case is that foresight is separated from the hero, and is made the distinguishing quality of his little thumb-sized attendant, just as if each power had to be connected with a person,--no person having more than one great trait of character.
In the Yana mythology there is no name corresponding to Winishuyat, but the same office is filled by a maternal uncle.
In the tale of "Juiwaiyu," Jupka, the uncle of the hero, makes himself as small as a thumb, and is tied in under the hair of his nephew. In the winning of Paiowa, at the house of Tuina, Igupatopa performs for his sister's son the same kind of service rendered by Winishuyat,--with this difference, that he is more active; he is not merely an adviser, he is a helper, a strengthener; he gives counsel to make his nephew wise, and then enters into his heart to fortify him, to render him brave and strong.
It is curious and instructive to note in European Folk-tales the survival of Winishuyat and his approximate equivalent, the Yana uncle. In Slav tales this person is the mangy, miserable, neglected little colt which, when taken outside the town, shakes itself and becomes a marvellous magic steed, golden-haired, untiring, and wise, faithful to its master as the sun to his course in the sky.
This steed knows what is coming, knows exactly what to do, knows the mistakes that his master is sure to commit, knows how to correct them; and the cumulative effect of these corrections increases immensely the momentum of the final triumph.
The Tom Thumb of nursery tales, the mentor of his big brothers, gives also a striking reminder of Winishuyat.
MEM LOIMIS
This beautiful myth, in which wind and water are the moving characters, needs little if any explanation, save in one point, that relating to the Hlahi, commonly called doctor by white men. The word Shaman used in Siberia describes his position accurately. He is not the master of spirits exactly, but he is the favorite and friend of one or of more spirits; that is, of such spirits as promised him their co-operation at the time when he became a Hlahi. If this person observes the rules of life that are always imposed on him who enjoys the friendship of this or that spirit (these rules refer mainly to food agreeable to the spirit), and does what is needful when the spirit is invoked (the needful, in this case, includes smoking and dancing), together with chanting the song of this spirit (every spirit has its own song), the spirit will come at his call.
Sanihas Yupchi smokes and dances; the Tsudi girls sing or chant. The name Sanihas Yupchi means the archer of Sanihas; Sanihas means daylight or the entire light of day from dawn till darkness,--in other words, all the light that Sas the sun gives between one night and another,--though Sanihas, daylight, is always represented as a person, and not the product of Sas's activity. This Sanihas Yupchi, the archer of daylight, the usher of the dawn, is no other than Tsaroki Sakahl, who has a white stripe on his back, the messenger who was sent by Torihas to invite Katkatchila to the hunt which caused the burning of the world in "Olelbis." He appears also as the envoy who ran in darkness on the gleaming sand trail to invite Hawt to Waida Dikit's green and red house, where the world concert was held, at which Hawt proved to be the greatest musician in existence.
In the note to "Kol Tibichi" will be found an account of how the Hlahi receives the aid and co-operation of spirits.
Most interesting beliefs are connected with Wokwuk, the son of Olelbis and Mem Loimis. The Wintus believe Wokwuk to be the greatest source of power and wealth.
According to "Olelbis," different bits of Wokwuk came down to the earth and were turned into elk and various valuable creatures; the tip of Wokwuk's little finger became the earthly Wokwuk.
Wintus told me that if a man were to see the earthly Wokwuk, who was made from the tip of Wokwuk's little finger, he would grow immensely rich from the good luck which the sight would bring him. The last Wokwuk seen appeared a little over a hundred years ago. The story of its appearance is as follows:--
One day an old woman at a village called Tsarken, about twenty miles north of Redding, went for wood. Soon she ran home almost breathless, leaving her basket behind.
"Oh, my grandson," cried she to the chief, "I am frightened. My grandfather and grandmother used to say to me when I was a girl, 'You will see a wonderful thing some day.' I have just seen something wonderful on the hill. I believe it is a Wokwuk. Old people told me that if a Wokwuk is seen he will stay in one place a long time. I think this Wokwuk will stay, and wants us to see him."
The chief made a beautiful shed of small fir-trees, covered it with fir branches, and placed sweetly smelling herbs in it; he sent for neighboring chiefs, and next day all went in their best array to the Wokwuk, bearing water in the finest basket of the village, and carrying a large oak slab and a rope. They found the Wokwuk facing north, and went near him. The chief lighted his pipe, blew the smoke toward every side, and said to the Wokwuk,--
"You have come to see us; we have come to salute you. You have come to show yourself. You are a great person, and all the Wintus in the country will hear of you; all the chiefs in every place will speak of you. I am glad that you are here. I am glad that you have come to my country."
He talked more to the Wokwuk; spoke very nicely. Next he took water in his mouth and blew it around in every direction. After that the chief smoked a fragrant root instead of tobacco, blowing the smoke toward the Wokwuk, speaking to him with great respect.
"Now we will take you home with us," said the chief. They carried the oak slab to the Wokwuk; he did not stir. They pushed him onto the slab, tied one leg to it, then took him home, placed the slab in the shed, and untied the Wokwuk. He remained two months there, never ate anything, never tried to escape.
Every morning they talked to the Wokwuk. During two months no one went to hunt, no one ate venison or sucker fish. Finally, all the Wintus were invited and all the Yanas,--a great assembly. They saluted the Wokwuk, each chief addressed him; last of all came a chief from Wini Mem, named Tópitot, leading a black bear. This bear walked erect like a man. He had bands of porcupine quills around his fore and hind legs, and a buckskin band covered with the red scalps of woodpeckers around his head. The bear bowed down to the Wokwuk, and the chief addressed him. When other chiefs spoke to the Wokwuk during the two previous months, he never raised his head or gave a sign of answer; but when Tópitot had finished, he raised his head and gave out a sound which was loud and long.
Next morning the chief of the village wished good luck to all, then he brought a rope, hung Wokwuk to a tree, and took his life. He plucked him, gave the quills to the chiefs, including himself, cut off the head, kept it; the body he carried to an ant-hill; when the ants had taken all the flesh, the bones were separated from each other and given to each chief.
When the chiefs went home, they spoke to the quills and bones as if praying, at first every morning, then once a week, then once a month, and continued this for a long time. After that each put away his bone or his quill in a triple covering. The bone or feather was wrapped first in a cover of the red scalps of woodpeckers sewed together; outside that were two mats made of reeds.
The owner of a Wokwuk bone or quill does not show it to any one, not even to his wife or children. When he dies he leaves it to a son, or, if he has no son, to a daughter. The possession of Wokwuk relics gives luck, but the owner must never eat venison or sucker; these are offensive to Wokwuk.
Five years after the quills were put away only the stems of them were left; five years later they were as fresh as if just plucked. If the quills were to be exposed before people, the people would all die; if to one person, that person would perish.
The owner of a quill or bone unwraps it occasionally, places water near it, and talks to it, saying: "Give us good luck; make us well. I give you water, you give us strength." If he points the relic and mentions a person's name, saying, "Make him sick," that man will die surely.
If the owner of a Wokwuk relic dies without heirs, the bone or quill is sunk in a sacred spring; if it were buried with the owner, all would get sick and die.
Both feathers and bones grow old in appearance, and later on they are as fresh looking and perfect as ever.
NORWAN
Next to "Olelbis" stands "Norwan," both for value and interest. This remarkable myth recalls forcibly the Helen of Troy tale, both in its general plan and in many particulars.
The great war among the first people is caused by the woman Norwan. Norbis Kiemila, who claims to be her husband, is descended from the heavenly white oak which forms part of Olelpanti Hlut, the divine mansion in the "Central Blue."
Norwan's full name is Pom Norwan en Pitchen, that is, daughter of the land on the southern border. She has another name: Hluyuk Tikimit, which means the dancing porcupine. Her residence, or hlut, was Norwan Buli, Norwan Mountain. The Yana name of this mountain is Wahkanopa, which means the son of Wahkalu. Wahkalu is Mount Shasta, and Wahkanopa Lassen's Butte.
Norwan, or Hluyuk Tikimit, the dancing porcupine, has still a third name, Bastepomas pokte, the food-giving or food-producing woman. In her quality of producer she occupies a position in Wintu mythology similar to that of the divine descendant of the earth and the sun in the Algonkin religious system. This Algonkin myth is one of the most beautiful and significant, not among creation, but among action myths. And here I beg to call attention again to the distinction which I make between the two classes of myths.
Creation myths relate always to what was done among the "first people in the world which preceded this," while creation was going on, or more correctly, perhaps, during the time of those transformations or metamorphoses from which resulted the present world and the order of things contained therein.
Action myths relate to ever-recurrent processes in nature which began as soon as the sun had his course marked out for him and the physical world around us received its present form and fashion; this happened before all the "first people" were metamorphosed. The vast majority had received the physical bodies which they have at present, but a few were left, and they remained in various places till they saw or heard the new race, the Indians. Action myths, therefore, relate to various processes in nature which never cease. For us the most important are those involved in the relations between the sun and the earth.
The great Algonkin sun and earth myth which has many variants and vast wealth of detail, describes those relations more profoundly and broadly than any other Indian myth devoted to the same subject.
The Algonkin myth in its most extended form describes the earth maiden as becoming a mother through being looked at by the sun. She gives birth to a daughter who is called Wakos ikwe, the fox woman; this daughter becomes the mother of a great hero, the highest benefactor of aboriginal man in America. He is the giver of food and of every good gift by which life is supported.
Of this myth there is a shorter version in which the hero is born of the earth directly; he is her son, not her grandson.
This benefactor and food-giver is no other than that warm air which we see dancing and quivering above the earth in fine weather. Descended from the sun and the earth, this warm air supports all things that have vegetable or animal existence.
This myth in its more extended form, the one to which I have referred first, is similar to that which Schoolcraft pieced together and which Longfellow took as the foundation of his beautiful poem "Hiawatha," though not identical with it.
Schoolcraft, with his amazing propensity to make mistakes, with his remarkable genius for missing the truth and confusing everything with which he came in contact, gave the name Hiawatha to his patchwork.
Hiawatha is an Iroquois name connected with Central New York. The Iroquois were mortal enemies of the Algonkins, and the feud between these two stocks was the most inveterate and far reaching of any in America. It was, in fact, the only Indian tribal hatred that rose to historical importance, and it was by the adherence of the Iroquois, the "Five Nations" of New York, that English dominion in North America was established.
The Algonkin force of America was on the French side, but the Iroquois held all water communication between Lake Erie and Ontario, the greatest strategic position on the continent at that period. They cut the Algonkins in two, and prevented France from receiving their undivided assistance.
Had the whole Algonkin power aided the French, they would have had great chances of victory. Had the Iroquois been friends of the Algonkins and acted with them, there could have been no doubt of the triumph of France at that juncture. But the Algonkins and Iroquois were mortal enemies; the Algonkins were friendly to the French, the Iroquois to the English.
In the face of all this Schoolcraft makes Hiawatha, who is peculiarly Iroquois, the leading personage in his Algonkin conglomerate; Hiawatha being an Iroquois character of Central New York (he is connected more particularly with the region about Schenectady), while the actions to which Schoolcraft relates him pertain to the Algonkin Chippewas near Lake Superior.
It is as if Europeans of some future age were to have placed before them a great epic narrative of French heroic adventure in which Prince Bismarck would appear as the chief and central Gallic figure in the glory and triumph of France. The error and absurdity would be, as the Germans say, _colossál_, but not greater or more towering than in Schoolcraft's Hiawatha. Longfellow, of course, could not free himself from the error contained in his material; but the error, which was not his own and which he had no means of correcting at that time, did not prevent him from giving his work that peculiar charm which is inseparable from everything which he did.
In the original Algonkin myth the hero to which Hiawatha has been accommodated was a child of the sun and the earth. Whatever his names in the numerous versions found in the twenty-eight languages of this richest and most varied Indian stock of North America, he is always the bounteous benefactor of man, the kindest of all divine powers that have ever appeared upon earth. He is always in reality that warm light which dances and quivers before us in fine weather, and through which every man, beast, reptile, insect, fish, bird, and plant lives and flourishes.
This myth has received on the Pacific coast, or more correctly on parts of it, a different treatment from that given it east of the Rocky Mountains. There the benefactor is a female, a daughter of the earth. Nothing is said as to who her father was. It is significant that she dances all day, that she is called the quivering porcupine and the food-producing woman.
In Indian myths from New York to California the porcupine is ever connected with light; in some cases it is the sun himself. In "Tulchuherris" of this volume, Sas (the sun) carries a porcupine quiver, and is advised never to lay it aside, for as long as he keeps it on his shoulder he is safe from his children the grizzlies (the clouds) who wish to kill him.
In California Norwan, daughter of the earth, occupies in part the place of the Algonkin hero, the child of the sun and the earth. Her usual life is of the housekeeping order; she has great supplies of food in her hlut, or residence, and she goes on dancing each day until evening. The great and characteristic event of her life, her departure from the dance with her partner, is of the same scope and meaning as the last journey of Hiawatha when he sails to the west and vanishes in the regions of sunset. The hero of the Algonkin myth must go, he cannot stay; he must vanish in the ruddy glow of evening because he is the warm dancing air of the daytime. He must go whether he will or not. Before he goes, however, he cheers all whom he leaves behind by telling them that another will come from the east to take his place and comfort them. Next morning, of course, the comforter comes, for the life career of the Algonkin hero is included in the compass of a single day, and a successor is bound to come as surely as he himself is bound to go.
Norwan dances, and then goes away with her partner, to the desperate vexation of Norbis Kiemila, her would-be husband, who wishes to have her to himself exclusively. She dances, as she says, without knowing it and goes away unconsciously. She dances with this partner because she cannot help it, and departs imperceptibly to herself.
Who are the rivals for her person?
Norbis means "living in the south;" he lives in the southeast, the land of greatest productiveness, in the region of Hlihli Piu Hlut Ton, that most beautiful of houses on earth, and second only to the divine mansion in the "Central Blue." He is descended from one of the white oaks in the heavenly house.
The person who was metamorphosed afterward into the red wiu bird (Tede Wiu) is his rival, the person with whom Norwan left the dance, thus causing the first war in the world. Was this person the red of evening which became Tede Wiu afterward? If we acknowledge that he was, and if we are willing to admit Norbis as the representative of all people living east of the west, we have at once the two parties to an irreconcilable rivalry in the most vital of questions, the possession of warm sunlight, and that most vital of questions is embodied in the person of a woman. That was the cause of the first war in the world and of fell strife. A story substantially the same as this was, we may think, the ultimate basis of the Iliad. The mythic origin of the particular tale from which Homer constructed his epic had been forgotten, that may be granted, but there is little doubt that in rustic Greece men might have found a similar tale which was mythologic beyond peradventure; and the Helen of that tale, or her equivalent, was a person like Norwan. With the materials at our command even now, we have enough to indicate this, for was not Helen the daughter of Leda and the divine swan, a person to be fought for with all available energy in the world at that period, and to be fought for in a war which surpassed in importance all that have ever succeeded it?
Helen of Troy, the daughter of Leda and of Zeus, the overarching heaven, with all its light; Norwan, daughter of the earth, with Lassen's Butte, California, for her residence; and the Algonkin hero whose place is taken by Hiawatha, are all different representatives of the same person, different expressions for the same phenomenon; and that person or phenomenon is the warm air which dances above the earth in fine weather. This air, in one case noted here, is conceived as the greatest benefactor of man, that being who gives the choicest and most necessary gifts to all, and, in the other two cases, as a priceless treasure, in the form of a woman who is to be fought for with all the valor that can possibly be summoned, and in a manner that in Helen's case inspired the noblest epic known to the world thus far.