CHAPTER II.

HODDENTIN, THE POLLEN OF THE TULE, THE SACRIFICIAL POWDER OF THE APACHE; WITH REMARKS UPON SACRED POWDERS AND BREAD OFFERINGS IN GENERAL.

"Trifles not infrequently lead to important results. In every walk of science a trifle disregarded by incurious thousands has repaid the inquisitiveness of a single observer with unhoped-for knowledge."[247]

The taciturnity of the Apache in regard to all that concerns their religious ideas is a very marked feature of their character; probably no tribe with which our people have come in contact has succeeded more thoroughly in preserving from profane inquiry a complete knowledge of matters relating to their beliefs and ceremonials. How much of this ignorance is to be attributed to interpreters upon whom reliance has necessarily been placed, and how much to the indisposition of the Apache to reveal anything concerning himself, it would be fruitless to inquire, but, in my own experience, when I first went among them in New Mexico and Arizona twenty-three years ago, I was foolish enough to depend greatly upon the Mexican captives who had lived among the Apache since boyhood, and who might be supposed to know exactly what explanation to give of every ceremony in which the Apache might engage. Nearly every one of these captives, or escaped captives, had married among the Apache, and had raised families of half-breed children, and several of them had become more Apache than the Apache themselves. Yet I was time and again assured by several of these interpreters that the Apache had no religion, and even after I had made some progress in my investigations, at every turn I was met by the most contradictory statements, due to the interpreter's desire to inject his own views and not to give a frank exposition of those submitted by the Apache. Thus, an Apache god would be transmuted into either a "santo" or a "diablo," according to the personal bias of the Mexican who happened to be assisting me. "Assanutlije" assumed the disguise of "Maria Santissima," while ceremonies especially sacred and beneficent in the eyes of the savages were stigmatized as "brujeria" and "hechiceria" (witchcraft) in open defiance of the fact that the Apache have as much horror and dread of witches as the more enlightened of their brethren who in past ages suffered from their machinations in Europe and America. The interpreters had no intention to deceive; they were simply unable to disengage themselves from their own prejudices and their own ignorance; they could not, and they would not, credit the existence of any such thing as religion, save and excepting that taught them at their mothers' knees in the petty hamlets of Sonora and of which they still preserved hazy and distorted recollections. One of the first things to be noticed among the Apache, in this connection, was the very general appearance of little bags of buckskin, sometimes ornamented, sometimes plain, which were ordinarily attached to the belts of the warriors, and of which they seemed to be especially careful.[248]

What follows in this chapter was not learned in an hour or a day, but after a long course of examination and a comparison of statements extracted from different authorities.

The bags spoken of revealed when opened a quantity of yellow colored flour or powder, resembling cornmeal, to which the Apache gave the name of "hoddentin," or "hadntin," the meaning of which word is "the powder or pollen of the tule," a variety of the cat-tail rush, growing in all the little ponds and cienegas of the Southwest.

I made it the touchstone of friendship that every scout or other Apache who wished for a favor at my hands should relate something concerning his religious belief. I did not care much what topic he selected; it might be myths, clan laws, war customs, medicine--anything he pleased, but it had to be something and it had to be accurate. Hoddentin having first attracted my attention, I very naturally made many of my first inquiries about it, and, while neglecting no opportunity for independent observation, drew about me the most responsible men and women, heard what each had to say, carefully compared and contrasted it with the statements of the others, and now give the result.

I noticed that in the dances for the benefit of the sick the medicine-men in the intervals between chants applied this yellow powder to the forehead of the patient, then in form of a cross upon his breast, then in a circle around his couch, then upon the heads of the chanters and of sympathizing friends, and lastly upon their own heads and into their own mouths. There is a considerable difference in method, as medicine-men allow themselves great latitude, or a large "personal equation," in all their dealings with the supernatural. No Apache would, if it could be avoided, go on the warpath without a bag of this precious powder somewhere upon his person, generally, as I have said, attached to his ammunition belt. Whenever one was wounded, hurt, or taken sick while on a scout, the medicine-man of the party would walk in front of the horse or mule ridden by the patient and scatter at intervals little pinches of hoddentin, that his path might be made easier. As was said to me: "When we Apache go on the warpath, hunt, or plant, we always throw a pinch of hoddentin to the sun, saying 'with the favor of the sun, or permission of the sun, I am going out to fight, hunt, or plant,' as the case may be, 'and I want the sun to help me.'"

I have noticed that the Apache, when worn out with marching, put a pinch of hoddentin on their tongues as a restorative.

"Hoddentin is eaten by sick people as a remedy."[249]

"Before starting out on the warpath, they take a pinch of hoddentin, throw it to the sun, and also put a pinch on their tongues and one on the crown of the head.... When they return, they hold a dance, and on the morning of that day throw pinches of hoddentin to the rising sun, and then to the east, south, west, and north, to the four winds."[250]

I am unable to assert that hoddentin is used in any way at the birth of a child; but I know that as late as 1886 there was not a babe upon the San Carlos reservation, no matter how tender its age, that did not have a small bag of hoddentin attached to its neck or dangling from its cradle. Neither can I assert anything about its use at time of marriage, because, among the Apache, marriage is by purchase, and attended with little, if any, ceremony. But when an Apache girl attains the age of puberty, among other ceremonies performed upon her, they throw hoddentin to the sun and strew it about her and drop on her head flour of the piñon, which flour is called by the Chiricahua Apache "nostchi," and by the Sierra Blanca Apache "opé."[251]

"Upon attaining the age of puberty, girls fast one whole day, pray, and throw hoddentin to the sun."[252] When an Apache dies, if a medicine-man be near, hoddentin is sprinkled upon the corpse. The Apache buried in the clefts of rocks, but the Apache-Mohave cremated. "Before lighting the fire the medicine-men of the Apache-Mohave put hoddentin on the dead person's breast in the form of a cross, on the forehead, shoulders, and scattered a little about."[253]

The very first thing an Apache does in the morning is to blow a little pinch of hoddentin to the dawn. The Apache worship both dawn and darkness, as well as the sun, moon, and several of the planets.

"When the sun rises we cast a pinch of hoddentin toward him, and we do the same thing to the moon, but not to the stars, saying 'Gun-ju-le, chigo-na-ay, si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale,' meaning 'Be good, O Sun, be good.' 'Dawn, long time let me live'; or, 'Don't let me die for a long time,' and at night, 'Gun-ju-le, chil-jilt, si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale,' meaning 'Be good, O Night; Twilight, be good; do not let me die.'" "In going on a hunt an Apache throws hoddentin and says 'Gun-ju-le, chigo-na-ay, cha-ut-si, ping, kladitza,' meaning 'Be good, O Sun, make me succeed deer to kill.'"[254]

The name of the full moon in the Apache language is "klego-na-ay," but the crescent moon is called "tzontzose" and hoddentin is always offered to it.[255]

"Hoddentin is thrown to the sun, moon (at times), the morning star, and occasionally to the wagon."[256] "The Apache offer much hoddentin to 'Na-u-kuzze,' the Great Bear."[257] "Our custom is to throw a very small pinch of hoddentin at dawn to the rising sun."[258] "The women of the Chiricahua throw no hoddentin to the moon, but pray to it, saying: 'Gun-ju-le, klego-na-ay,' (be good, O Moon)."[259]

When the Apache plant corn the medicine-men bury eagle-plume sticks in the fields, scatter hoddentin, and sing. When the corn is partially grown they scatter pinches of hoddentin over it.[260]

The "eagle-plume sticks" mentioned in the preceding paragraph suggests the "ke-thawn" mentioned by Matthews in "The Mountain Chant."[261]

"When a person is very sick the Apache make a great fire, place the patient near it, and dance in a circle around him and the fire, at the same time singing and sprinkling him with hoddentin in the form of a cross on head, breast, arms, and legs."[262]

In November, 1885, while at the San Carlos agency, I had an interview with Nantadotash, an old blind medicine-man of the Akañe or Willow gens, who had with him a very valuable medicine-hat which he refused to sell, and only with great reluctance permitted me to touch. Taking advantage of his infirmity, I soon had a picture drawn in my notebook, and the text added giving the symbolism of all the ornamentation attached. Upon discovering this, the old man became much excited, and insisted upon putting a pinch of hoddentin upon the drawing, and then recited a prayer, which I afterwards succeeded in getting verbatim. After the prayer was finished, the old man arose and marked with hoddentin the breast of his wife, of Moses, of Antonio, of other Apache present, and then of myself, putting a large pinch over my heart and upon each shoulder, and then placed the rest upon his own tongue. He explained that I had taken the "life" out of his medicine hat, and, notwithstanding the powers of his medicine, returned in less than a month with a demand for $30 as damages. His hat never was the same after I drew it. My suggestion that the application of a little soap might wash away the clots of grease, soot, and earth adhering to the hat, and restore its pristine efficacy were received with the scorn due to the sneers of the scoffer.

"In time of much lightning, the Apache throw hoddentin and say: 'Gun-ju-le, ittindi,' be good, Lightning."[263]

Tzit-jizinde, "the Man who likes Everybody," who said he belonged to the Inoschujochin--Manzanita or Bearberry clan--showed me how to pray with hoddentin in time of lightning or storm or danger of any kind. Taking a small pinch in his fingers, he held it out at arm's length, standing up, and repeated his prayer, and then blew his breath hard. I was once with a party of Apache while a comet was visible. I called their attention to it, but they did not seem to care. On the other hand, Antonio told me that the "biggest dance" the Apache ever had was during the time that "the stars all fell out of the sky" (1833).

"The only act of a religious character which I observed ... was shortly after crossing the river they [i.e., the American officers] were met by a small party of the Indians, one of whom chalked a cross on the breast of each, with a yellow earth, which he carried in a satchel at his belt. Previous to doing so he muttered some words very solemnly with his hands uplifted and eyes thrown upwards. Again, on arriving at the camp of the people, the chief and others in greeting them took a similar vow, touching thereafter the yellow chalked cross. Sonora may have furnished them with some of their notions of a Deity."[264]

"The yellow earth," seen by Dr. Smart was, undoubtedly, hoddentin, carried in a medicine bag at the belt of a medicine-man. Some years ago I went out with Al. Seiber and a small party of Apache to examine three of their "sacred caves" in the Sierra Pinal and Sierra Ancha. No better opportunity could have been presented for noting what they did. The very last thing at night they intoned a "medicine" song, and at early dawn they were up to throw a pinch of hoddentin to the east.

Moses and John, two of the Apache mentioned above, requested permission to go off in the mountains after deer and bear, supposed to be plentiful in the higher altitudes. Before leaving camp, Moses blew a pinch of hoddentin toward the sun, repeating his prayer for success, and ending it with a sharp, snappy "ek," as if to call attention. In one of the sacred caves visited on this trip, the Apache medicine-men assembled for the purpose of holding their snake dance. This I have never seen among the Apache, but that they celebrate it and that it is fully the equal of the repulsive rite which I have witnessed and noted among the Tusayan[265] I am fully assured. I may make reference to some of its features in the chapter upon animal worship and ophic rites.

From a multiplicity of statements, the following are taken: Concepcion had seen the snake dance over on the Carrizo, near Camp Apache; the medicine-men threw hoddentin upon the snakes. He said: "After getting through with the snake, the medicine-man suffered it to glide off, covered with the hoddentin, thrown by admiring devotees."

Mike Burns had no remembrance of seeing hoddentin thrown to the sun. He had seen it thrown to the snake, "in a kind of worship."

Nott and Antonio stated that "when they find that a snake has wriggled across the trail, especially the trail to be followed by a war party, they throw hoddentin upon the trail." Nott took a pinch of hoddentin, showed how to throw it upon the snake, and repeated the prayer, which I recorded.

Corbusier instances a remedy in use among the Tonto Apache. This consisted in applying a rattlesnake to the head or other part suffering from pain. He continues: "After a time the medicine-man rested the snake on the ground again, and, still retaining his hold of it with his right hand, put a pinch of yellow pollen into its mouth with his left, and rubbed some along its belly."[266]

"He then held his hand out to a man, who took a pinch of the powder and rubbed it on the crown of a boy's head. Yellow pollen treated in this manner is a common remedy for headache, and may frequently be seen on the crowns of the heads of men and boys."[267]

Hoddentin is used in the same manner as a remedy for headache among the San Carlos Apache, but the medicine-men apply a snake to the person of a patient only when their "diagnosis" has satisfied them that he has been guilty of some unkindness to a snake, such as stepping upon it, in which case they pretend that they can cure the man by applying to the part affected the portion of the reptile's body upon which he trampled.

The Apache state that when their medicine-men go out to catch snakes for their snake dance, they recite a prayer and lay their left hand, in which is some hoddentin, at the opening of the snake's den, through which the reptile must crawl, and, after a short time the snake will come out and allow himself to be handled.

Hoddentin is also offered to other animals, especially the bear, of which the Apache, like their congeners the Navajo, stand in great awe and reverence. When a bear is killed, the dance which is held becomes frenzied; the skin is donned by all the men, and much hoddentin is thrown, if it can be obtained. One of these dances which I saw in the Sierra Madre, Mexico, in 1883, lasted all night, without a moment's cessation in the singing and prancing of the participants.

A great deal of hoddentin is offered to the "ka-chu" (great or jack rabbit).[268]

The Apache medicine-man, Nakay-do-klunni, called by the whites "Bobbydoklinny," exercised great influence over his people at Camp Apache, in 1881. He boasted of his power to raise the dead, and predicted that the whites should soon be driven from the land. He also drilled the savages in a peculiar dance, the like of which had never been seen among them. The participants, men and women, arranged themselves in files, facing a common center, like the spokes of a wheel, and while thus dancing hoddentin was thrown upon them in profusion. This prophet or "doctor" was killed in the engagement in the Cibicu canyon, August 30, 1881.

In a description of the "altars" made by the medicine-men of the Apache-Yuma at or near Camp Verde, Arizona, it is shown that this sacred powder is freely used. Figures were drawn upon the ground to represent the deities of the tribe, and the medicine-men dropped on all, except three of them, a pinch of yellow powder (hoddentin) which was taken from a small buckskin bag. This powder was put upon the head, chest, or other part of the body of the patient.

Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army,[269] says that the ceremony just described was "a most sacred one and entered into for the purpose of averting the diseases with which the Apache at Camp Verde had been afflicted the summer previous."

I am not sure that the Apache-Yuma have not borrowed the use of hoddentin from the Apache. My reason for expressing this opinion is that I have never seen an Apache without a little bag of hoddentin when it was possible for him to get it, whereas I have never seen an Apache-Yuma with it except when he was about to start out on the warpath. The "altars" referred to by Corbusier are made also by the Apache, Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan. Those of the Apache, as might be inferred from their nomadic state, were the crudest; those of the Navajo, Zuñi, and Tusayan display a wonderful degree of artistic excellence. The altars of the Navajo have been described and illustrated by Dr. Washington Matthews,[270] and those of the Tusayan by myself.[271]

Moses Henderson, wishing me to have a profitable interview with his father, who was a great snake doctor among the Apache, told me that when he brought him to see me I should draw two lines across each other on his right foot, and at their junction place a bead of the chalchihuitl, the cross to be drawn with hoddentin. The old man would then tell me all he knew.

The Apache, I learned, at times offer hoddentin to fire, an example of pyrodulia for which I had been on the lookout, knowing that the Navajo have fire dances, the Zuñi the Feast of the Little God of Fire, and the Apache themselves are not ignorant of the fire dance.

Hoddentin seems to be used to strengthen all solemn compacts and to bind faith. I had great trouble with a very bright medicine-man named Na-a-cha, who obstinately refused to let me look at the contents of a phylactery which he constantly wore until I let him know that I, too, was a medicine-man of eminence. The room in which we had our conversation was the quarters of the post surgeon, at that time absent on scout. The chimney piece was loaded with bottles containing all kinds of drugs and medicines. I remarked carelessly to Na-a-cha that if he doubted my powers I would gladly burn a hole through his tongue with a drop of fluid from the vial marked "Acid, nitric," but he concluded that my word was sufficient, and after the door was locked to secure us from intrusion he consented to let me open and examine the phylactery and make a sketch of its contents. To guard against all possible trouble, he put a pinch of hoddentin on each of my shoulders, on the crown of my head, and on my chest and back. The same performance was gone through with in his own case. He explained that hoddentin was good for men to eat, that it was good medicine for the bear, and that the bear liked to eat it. I thought that herein might be one clew to the reason why the Apache used it as a medicine. The bear loves the tule swamp, from which, in days primeval, he sallied out to attack the squaws and children gathering the tule powder or tule bulb. Poorly armed, as they then were, the Apache must have had great trouble in resisting him; hence they hope to appease him by offering a sacrifice acceptable to his palate. If acceptable to the chief animal god, as the bear seems to have been, as he certainly was the most dangerous, then it would have been also acceptable to the minor deities like the puma, snake, eagle, etc., and, by an easy transition, to the sun, moon, and other celestial powers. This opinion did not last long, as will be shown. From its constant association with all sacrifices and all acts of worship, hoddentin would naturally become itself sanctified and an object of worship, just as rattles, drums, standards, holy grails, etc., in different parts of the world have become fetichistic. I was not in the least surprised when I heard Moses Henderson reciting a prayer, part of which ran thus: "Hoddentin eshkin, bi hoddentin ashi" ("Hoddentin child, you hoddentin I offer"), and to learn that it was a personification of hoddentin.

The fact that the myths of the Apache relate that Assanut-li-je spilled hoddentin over the surface of the sky to make the Milky Way may be looked upon as an inchoate form of a calendar, just as the Aztecs transferred to their calendar the reed, rabbit, etc.

So constant is the appearance of hoddentin in ceremonies of a religious nature among the Apache that the expression "hoddentin schlawn" (plenty of hoddentin) has come to mean that a particular performance or place is sacred. Yet, strange to say, this sacred pollen of the tule is gathered without any special ceremony; at least, I noticed none when I saw it gathered, although I should not fail to record that at the time of which I speak the Apache and the Apache-Yuma were returning from an arduous campaign, in which blood had been shed, and everything they did--the bathing in the sweat lodges and the singing of the Apache and the plastering of mud upon their heads by the Apache-Yuma--had a reference to the lustration or purgation necessary under such circumstances. Not only men but women may gather the pollen. When the tule is not within reach our cat-tail rush is used. Thus, the Chiricahua, confined at Fort Pickens, Florida, gathered the pollen of the cat-tail rush, some of which was given me by one of the women who gathered it.

Before making an examination into the meaning to be attached to the use of hoddentin, it is well to determine whether or not such a powder or anything analogous to it is to be found among the tribes adjacent.

THE "KUNQUE" OF THE ZUÑI AND OTHERS.

The term "kunque" as it appears in this chapter is one of convenience only. Each pueblo, or rather each set of pueblos, has its own name in its own language, as, for example, the people of Laguna and Acoma, who employ it in all their ceremonies as freely as do the Zuñi, call it in their tongue "hinawa." In every pueblo which I visited--and I visited them all, from Oraibi of Tusayan, on the extreme west, to Picuris, on the extreme east; from Taos, in the far north, to Isleta del Sur, in Texas--I came upon this kunque, and generally in such quantities and so openly exposed and so freely used that I was both astonished and gratified; astonished that after centuries of contact with the Caucasian the natives should still adhere with such tenacity to the ideas of a religion supposed to have been extirpated, and gratified to discover a lever which I could employ in prying into the meaning of other usages and ceremonials.

Behind the main door in the houses at Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Picuris, Laguna, Acoma, San Felipe, Jemez, and other towns, there is a niche containing a bowl or saucer filled with this sacred meal, of which the good housewife is careful to throw a pinch to the sun at early dawn and to the twilight at eventide. In every ceremony among the Pueblos naturally enough, more particularly among those who have been living farthest from the Mexicans, the lavish scattering of sacred meal is the marked feature of the occasion. At the snake dance of the Tusayan, in 1881, the altars were surrounded with baskets of pottery and with flat plaques of reeds, which were heaped high with kunque. When the procession moved out from under the arcade and began to make the round of the sacred stone the air was white with meal, and in my imagination I could see that it was a procession of Druids circling about a "sacred stone" in Ireland previous to the coming of St. Patrick. When the priests threw the snakes down upon the ground it was within a circle traced with kunque, and soon the snakes were covered with the same meal flung upon them by the squaws. There was only one scalp left among the Tusayan in 1881, but there were several among the Zuñi, and one or two each at Acoma and Laguna. In every one of these towns kunque was offered to the scalps.

At the feast of the Little God of Fire among the Zuñi, in 1881, my personal notes relate that "the moment the head of the procession touched the knoll upon which the pueblo is built the mass of people began throwing kunque upon the Little God and those with him as well as on the ground in front of, beside, and behind them. This kunque was contained in sacred basket-shaped bowls of earthenware. The spectators kept the air fairly misty with clouds of the sacred kunque. This procession passed around the boundaries of the pueblo of Zuñi, stopping at eight holes in the ground for the purpose of enacting a ceremonial of consecration suggestive of the 'terminalia' of the Romans. They visited each of the holes, which were 18 inches deep and 12 inches square, with a sandstone slab to serve as a cover. Each hole was filled with kunque and sacrificial plumes. * * * 'Every morning of the year, when the sky is clear, at the rising of Lucero [the morning star], at the crowing of the cock, we throw corn flour [kunque] to the sun. I am never without my bag of kunque; here it is [drawing it from his belt]. Every Zuñi has one. We offer it to the sun for good rain and good crops.'"[272]

Subsequently Pedro went on to describe in detail a phallic dance and ceremony, in which there was a sort of divination. The young maiden who made the lucky guess was richly rewarded, while her less fortunate companions were presented with a handful of kunque, which they kept during the ensuing year. This dance is called "ky'áklu," and is independent of the great phallic dance occurring in the month of December. Pedro also stated that until very recently the Zuñi were in the habit of celebrating a fire dance at Noche Buena (Christmas). There were four piles of wood gathered for the occasion, and upon each the medicine-men threw kunque in profusion. This dance, as Pedro described it, closely resembled one mentioned by Landa in his Cosas de Yucatan. High up on the vertical face of the precipice of Tâaiyalana there is a phallic shrine of the Zuñi to which I climbed with Mr. Frank Cushing. We found that the place had been visited by young brides who were desirous of becoming mothers. The offerings in every case included kunque.

In the account given in the National Tribune, Washington, District of Columbia, May 20, 1886, of the mode of life of the Zuñi woman Wehwa while in the national capital, and while engaged in the kirmes, we read:

She also strewed sacred corn meal along on her way to the theater to bring good luck to her and the other dancers. * * * She has gone from her comfortable room to pray in the street at daylight every morning, whatever the weather has been. * * * At such times she strews corn meal all around her until the front-door steps and the sidewalk are much daubed with dough. But this is not the corn meal in common use in the United States, but is sacred meal ground in Zuñi with sacred stones.[273]

So long a time has elapsed since any of the Pueblos have been on the warpath that no man can describe their actual war customs except from the dramatic ceremonial of their dances or from the stories told him by the "old men." The following from an eyewitness will therefore be of interest: "Before the Pueblos reached the heights they were ordered to scale they halted on the way to receive from their chiefs some medicine from the medicine bags which each of them carried about his person. This they rubbed upon their heart, as they said, to make it big and brave, and they also rubbed it upon other parts of their bodies and upon their rifles for the same purpose."[274]

The constant use of kunque by the different Pueblo tribes has been noticed from the first days of European contact. In the relation of Don Antonio de Espejo (1583) we are told that upon the approach of the Spaniards to the town of Zaguato, lying 28 leagues west of Zuñi, "a great multitude of Indians came forth to meete them, and among the rest their Caçiques, with so great demonstration of joy and gladnes, that they cast much meale of Maiz upon the ground for the horses to tread upon."[275]

I am under the impression that the ruins of this village are those near the ranch of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, at Keam's Canyon, Arizona, called by the Navajo "Talla-hogandi," meaning "singing house," in reference to the Spanish mission which formerly existed there. This village is, as I have hitherto shown, the ruin of the early pueblo of Awátubi.

In his poem descriptive of the conquest of New Mexico, entitled "Nueva Mejico," Alcala de Henares, 1610, Villagrá uses the following language:[276]

Passando à Mohoçe, Zibola, y Zuni, Por cuias nobles tierras descubrimos, Una gran tropa de Indios que venia, Con cantidad harina que esparcian, Sobre la gente toda muy apriessa, Y entrando assi en los pueblos las mugeres Dieron en arrojarnos tantá della, Que dimos en tomarles los costales, De donde resultò tener con ellas, Unas carnestolendas bien reñidas.

It is gratifying to observe that the Spanish writer in the remote wilds of America struck upon an important fact in ethnology: that the throwing of "harina" or flour by the people of Tusayan (Mohoçe or Moqui), Cibola, and Zuñi (observe the odd separation of "Zibola" from either Moqui or Zuñi) was identical with the "carnestolendas" of Spain, in which, on Shrove Tuesday, the women and girls cover all the men they meet with flour. The men are not at all backward in returning the compliment, and the streets are at times filled with the farinaceous dust.

"Harina de maiz azul" is used by Mexicans in their religious ceremonies, especially those connected with the water deities.[277] The Peruvians, when they bathed and sacrificed to cure themselves of sickness, "untandose primero con Harina de Maiz, i con otras cosas, con muchas, i diversas ceremonias, i lo mismo hacen en los Baños."[278] The kunque of the Peruvians very closely resembled that of the Zuñi. We read that it was a compound of different-colored maize ground up with sea shells.[279] The Peruvians had a Priapic idol called Hua-can-qui, of which we read: "On offre à cette idole une corbeille ornée de plumes de diverses couleurs et remplie d'herbes odoriférantes; on y met aussi de _la farine de maïs_ que l'on renouvelle tous les mois, et les femmes se lavent la figure avec celle que l'on ôte, en accompagnant cette ablution de plusieurs cérémonies superstitieuses."[280]

The tribes seen on the Rio Colorado in 1540 by Alarcon "carry also certaine little long bagges about an hand broade tyed to their left arme, which serve them also instead of brasers for their bowes, full of the powder of a certaine herbe, whereof they make a certaine beverage."[281] We are at a loss to know what this powder was, unless hoddentin. The Indians came down to receive the son of the sun, as Alarcon led them to believe him to be, in full gala attire, and no doubt neglected nothing that would add to their safety.

"Ils mirent dans leur bouche du maïs et d'autres semences, et les lancèrent vers moi en disant que c'était la manière dont ils faisaient les sacrifices au soleil."[282]

Kohl speaks of seeing inside the medicine wigwam, during the great medicine ceremonies of the Ojibwa, "a snow-white powder."[283] In an address delivered by Dr. W. J. Hoffman before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., May 2, 1888, upon the symbolism of the Midēᐟ, Jesᐟsakkid, and Wâbeno of the Ojibwa of Minnesota, he stated in reply to a question from me that he had not been able to find any of the "snow-white powder" alluded to by Kohl in Kitchi-gami.[284]

In Yucatan, when children were baptized, one of the ceremonies was that the chac, or priest in charge, should give the youngster a pinch of corn meal, which the boy threw in the fire. These chacs were priests of the god who presided over baptism and over hunting.[285]

At the coronation of their kings the Aztecs had a sacred unction, and a holy water, drawn from a sacred spring, and "about his neck is tied a small gourd, containing a certain powder, which is esteemed a strong preservative against disease, sorcery, and treason."[286]

"At the entrance to one of the narrow defiles of the Cordilleras ... a large mass of rock with small cavities upon its surface, into which the Indians, when about to enter the pass, generally deposit a few glass beads, a handful of meal, or some other propitiatory offering to the 'genius' supposed to preside over the spot and rule the storm."

Again, "on receiving a plate of broth, an Indian, before eating, spills a little upon the ground; he scatters broadcast a few pinches of the meal that is given him, and pours out a libation before raising the wine cup to his lips, as acts of thanksgiving for the blessings he receives."[287]

When Capt. John Smith was captured by the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia in 1607 he was taken to "a long house," where, on the morning following "a great grim fellow" came skipping in, "all painted over with coale, mingled with oyle. With most strange gestures and passions he began his invocation, and environed the fire with a circle of meale." This priest was followed by six others, who "with their rattles began a song, which ended, the chiefe priest layd downe five wheat cornes." This ceremony was apparently continued during the day and repeated on the following two days.[288] Capt. Smith's reception by the medicine-men of the Virginians is described by Picart.[289] These medicine-men are called "prêtres," and we are informed that they sang "des chants magiques." The grains of wheat ("grains de blé") were "rangez cinq à cinq."

Gomara tells us that in the religious festivals of Nicaragua there were used certain "taleguillas con polvos," but he does not tell what these "polvos" were; he only says that when the priests sacrifice themselves they cured the wounds, "curan las heridas con polvo de herbas ó carbon."[290]

While the Baron de Graffenreid was a prisoner in the hands of the Tuscarora, on the Neuse River, in 1711, the conjurer or high priest ("the priests are generally magicians and even conjure up the devil") "made two white rounds, whether of flour or white sand, I do not know, just in front of us."[291]

Lafitau says of one of the medicine-women of America: "Elle commença d'abord par préparer un espace de terrain qu'elle nétoya bien & qu'elle couvrit de farine, ou de cendre très-bien bluttée (je ne me souviens pas exactement laquelle des deux)."[292]

In a description of the ceremonial connected with the first appearance of the catamenia in a Navajo squaw, there is no reference to a use of anything like hoddentin, unless it may be the corn which was ground into meal for a grand feast, presided over by a medicine-man.[293]

When a woman is grinding corn or cooking, and frequently when any of the Navajo, male or female, are eating, a handful of corn meal is put in the fire as an offering (to the sun).[294]

The Pueblos of New Mexico are described as offering sacrifices of food to their idols. "Los Indios del Norte tienan multitud de Idolos, en pequeños Adoratorios, donde los ponen de comer."[295]

Maj. Backus, U. S. Army, describes certain ceremonies which he saw performed by the Navajo at a sacred spring near Fort Defiance, Arizona, which seems to have once been a geyser:

I once visited it with three other persons and an Indian doctor, who carried with him five small bags, each containing some vegetable or mineral substance, all differing in color. At the spring each bag was opened and a small quantity of its contents was put into the right hand of each person present. Each visitor, in succession, was then required to kneel down by the spring side, to place his closed hand in the water up to his elbow, and after a brief interval to open his hand and let fall its contents into the spring. The hand was then slowly withdrawn and each one was then permitted to drink and retire.[296]

Columbus in his fourth voyage touched the mainland, going down near Brazil. He says:

In Cariay and the neighboring country there are great enchanters of a very fearful character. They would have given the world to prevent my remaining there an hour. When I arrived they sent me immediately two girls very showily dressed; the eldest could not be more than eleven years of age and the other seven, and both exhibited so much immodesty that more could not be expected from public women. They carried concealed about them a magic powder.[297]

The expedition of La Salle noticed, among the Indians on the Mississippi, the Natchez, and others, "todos los dias, que se detuvieren en aquel Pueblo, ponia la Cacica, encima de la Sepultura de Marle [i.e., a Frenchman who had been drowned], una Cestilla llena de Espigas de Maíz, tostado."[298]

"He showed me, as a special favor, that which give him his power--a bag with some reddish powder in it. He allowed me to handle it and smell this mysterious stuff, and pointed out two little dolls or images, which, he said, gave him authority over the souls of others; it was for their support that flour and water were placed in small birch-rind saucers in front."[299]

On page 286, narrative of the Jeannette Arctic expedition, Dr. Newcomb says: "One day, soon after New Year's, I was out walking with one of the Indians. Noticing the new moon, he stopped, faced it, and, blowing out his breath, he spoke to it, invoking success in hunting. The moon, he said, was 'Tyunne,' or ruler of deers, bears, seals, and walrus." The ceremony herein described I have no doubt was analogous in every respect to hoddentin-throwing. As the Indians mentioned were undoubtedly Tinneh, my surmise seems all the more reasonable.[300]

Tanner relates that among the Ojibwa the two best hunters of the band had "each a little leather sack of medicine, consisting of certain roots pounded fine and mixed with red paint, to be applied to the little images or figures of the animals we wish to kill."[301]

"In the parish of Walsingham, in Surrey, there is or was a custom which seems to refer to the rites performed in honor of Pomona. Early in the spring the boys go round to the several orchards in the parish and whip the apple trees.... The good woman gives them some meal."[302]

Among the rustics of Great Britain down to a very recent period there were in use certain "love powders," the composition of which is not known, a small quantity of which had to be sprinkled upon the food of the one beloved.[303]

Attached to the necklace of human fingers before described, captured from one of the chief medicine-men of the Cheyenne Indians, is a bag containing a powder very closely resembling hoddentin, if not hoddentin itself.

It is said that the Asinai made sacrifice to the scalps of their enemies, as did the Zuñi as late as 1881. "Ofrecen á las calaveras pinole molido y de otras cosas comestibles."[304]

Perrot says the Indians of Canada had large medicine bags, which he calls "pindikossan," which, among other things, contained "des racines ou des poudres pour leur servir de médecines."[305]

In an article on the myth of Manibozho, by Squier, in American Historical Magazine Review, 1848, may be found an account of the adventures of two young heroes, one of whom is transferred to the list of gods. He commissioned his comrade to bring him offerings of a white wolf, a polecat, some pounded maize, and eagles' tails.

Laplanders sprinkle cow and calf with flour.[306]

Cameron met an old chief on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, of whom he says: "His forehead and hair were daubed with vermilion, yellow, and white powder, the pollen of flowers."[307]

In the incantations made by the medicine-men of Africa, near the head of the Congo, to preserve his expedition from fire, Cameron saw the sacrifice of a goat and a hen, and among other features a use of powdered bark closely resembling hoddentin: "Scraping the bark off the roots and sticks, they placed it in the wooden bowl and reduced it to powder." The head medicine-man soon after "took up a handful of the powdered bark and blew some toward the sun and the remainder in the opposite direction."[308]

The magic powder, called "uganga," used as the great weapon of divination of the mganga, or medicine-men of some of the African tribes, as mentioned by Speke,[309] must be identical with the powder spoken of by Cameron.

Near the village of Kapéka, Cameron was traveling with a caravan in which the principal man was a half-breed Portuguese named Alvez. "On Alvez making his entry he was mobbed by women, who shrieked and yelled in honor of the event and pelted him with flour." This was Alvez's own home and all this was a sign of welcome.[310]

Speke describes a young chief wearing on his forehead "antelope horns, stuffed with magic powder to keep off the evil eye."[311]

After describing an idol, in the form of a man, in a small temple on the Lower Congo, Stanley says: "The people appear to have considerable faith in a whitewash of cassava meal, with which they had sprinkled the fences, posts, and lintels of doors."[312]

"According to Consul Hutchinson (in his interesting work 'Impressions of Western Africa'), the Botikaimon [a medicine-man], previous to the ceremony of coronation, retires into a deep cavern, and there, through the intermediary of a 'rukaruka' (snake demon), consults the demon Maon. He brings back to the king the message he receives, sprinkles him with a yellow powder called 'tsheoka,' and puts upon his head the hat his father wore."[313] In a note, it is stated that: "Tsheoka is a vegetable product, obtained, according to Hutchinson, by collecting a creamy coat that is found on the waters at the mouth of some small rivers, evaporating the water, and forming a chalky mass of the residue."[314] Schultze says[315] that the Congo negroes "appease the hurricane" by "casting meal into the air."

The voudoo ceremonies of the negroes of New Orleans, which would seem to have been transplanted from Africa, include a sprinkling of the congregation with a meal which has been blessed by the head medicine-man or conjurer.

At the feast of Huli, at the vernal equinox (our April fool's day), the Hindu throw a purple powder (abir) upon each other with much sportive pleasantry. A writer in "Asiatick Researches"[316] says they have the idea of representing the return of spring, which the Romans called "purple."

During the month of Phalgoonu, there is a festival in honor of Krishna, when the "Hindus spend the night in singing and dancing and wandering about the streets besmeared with the dolu (a red) powder, in the daytime carrying a quantity of the same powder about with them, which, with much noise and rejoicing, they throw over the different passengers they may meet in their rambles. Music, dancing, fireworks, singing, and many obscenities take place on this occasion."[317]

On pages 434-435 of my work, "Scatalogic Rites of all Nations," are to be found extracts from various authorities in regard to the Hindu feast of Holi or Hulica, in which this statement occurs: "Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the streets, carrying sacks full of bright-red vegetable powder. With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling color."

"Red powder (gulál) is a sign of a bad design of an adulterous character. During the Holi holidays, the Maháráj throws gulál on the breasts of female and male devotees."[318]

"In India, the devotees throw red powder on one another at the festival of the Huli, or vernal equinox. This red powder, the Hindoos say, is the imitation of the pollen of plants, the principle of fructification, the flower of the plant."[319]

The women of the East Indies (Brahmins), on the 18th of January, celebrate a feast in honor of the goddess Parvati: "Leur but est d'obtenir une longue vie pour leurs maris, & qu'elles ne deviennent jamais veuves. Elles font une Image de Parvati avec de la farine de riz & du grain rouge qu'elles y mêlent; elles l'ornent d'habits & de fleurs & après l'avoir ainsi servie pendant neuf jours, elles la portent le dixiéme dans un Palenquin hors de la Ville. Une foule de femmes mariées la suivent, on la jette ensuite dans un des étangs sacrez, où on la laisse, & chacune s'en retourne chez elle."[320]

Speaking of the methods in use among the Lamas for curing disease, Rev. James Gilmour says: "Throwing about small pinches of millet seed is a usual part of such a service."[321]

Dr. W. W. Rockhill described to me a Tibetan festival, which includes a procession of the God of Mercy, in which procession there are masked priests, holding blacksnake whips in their hands, and carrying bags of flour which they throw upon the people.

The use of these sacred powders during so many different religious festivals and ceremonies would seem to resemble closely that made by the Apache of hoddentin and the employment of kunque by the Zuñi and others; and from Asia it would seem that practices very similar in character found their way into Europe. Of the Spanish witches it is related:

When they entered people's houses they threw a powder on the faces of the inmates, who were thrown thereby into so deep a slumber that nothing could wake them, until the witches were gone.... Sometimes they threw these powders on the fruits of the field and produced hail which destroyed them. On these occasions the demon accompanied them in the form of a husbandman, and when they threw the powders they said:

"Polvos, polvos, Pierda se tado, Queden los nuestros, Y abrasense otros."[322]

Higgins says: "The flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχᾰριστία."[323]

What relation these powders have had to the "carnestolendas" of the Spanish and Portuguese, already alluded to, and the throwing of "confetti" by the Italians, which is a modification, it would be hard to say. Some relation would appear to be suggested.

USE OF POLLEN BY THE ISRAELITES AND EGYPTIANS.

There are some suggestions of a former use of pollen among the Israelites and Egyptians.

Manna, which we are assured was at one time a source of food to the Hebrews, was afterward retained as an offering in the temples. Forlong, however, denies that it ever could have entered into general consumption. He says:

Manna, as food, is an absurdity, but we have the well-known produce of the desert oak or ash--Fraxinus.... An omer of this was precious, and in this quantity, at the spring season, not difficult to get; it was a specially fit tribute to be "laid up" before any Phallic Jah, as it was the pollen of the tree of Jove and of Life, and in this sense the tribe lived spiritually on such "spiritual manna" as this god supplied or was supplied with.[324]

The detestation in which the bean was held by the high-caste people of Egypt does not demonstrate that the bean was not an article of food to a large part of the population, any more than the equal detestation of the occupation of swineherd would prove that none of the poor made use of swine's flesh. The priesthood of Egypt were evidently exerting themselves to stamp out the use of a food once very common among their people, and to supersede it with wheat or some other cereal. They held a man accursed who in passing through a field planted with beans had his clothing soiled with their pollen. Speke must have encountered a survival of this idea when he observed in equatorial Africa, near the sources of the Nile, and among people whose features proclaimed their Abyssinian origin, the very same aversion. He was unable to buy food, simply because he and some of his followers had eaten "the bean called maharagŭé." Such a man, the natives believed, "if he tasted the products of their cows, would destroy their cattle."[325]

One other point should be dwelt upon in describing the kunque of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos. It is placed upon one of the sacred flat baskets and packed down in such a manner that it takes the form of one of the old-fashioned elongated cylindro-conical cheeses. It should be noted also that by something more than a coincidence this form was adhered to by the peoples farther to the south when they arranged their sacred meal upon baskets.

At the festival of the god Teutleco the Aztecs made "de harina de maiz un montecillo muy tupido de la forma de un queso."[326] This closely resembles the corn meal heaps seen at the snake dance of the Tusayan.

The Zuñi, in preparing kunque or sacred meal for their religious festivals, invariably made it in the form of a pyramid resting upon one of their flat baskets. It then bore a striking resemblance to the pyramids or phalli which the Egyptians offered to their deities, and which Forlong thinks must have been "just such Lingham-like sweet-bread as we still see in Indian Sivaic temples."[327] Again, "the orthodox Hislop, in his Two Babylons, tells us that 'bouns,' buns, or bread offered to the gods from the most ancient times were similar to our 'hotcross' buns of Good Friday, that ... the buns known by that identical name were used in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarti) as early as the days of Kekrops, the founder of Athens, 1500 years B. C."[328]

Forlong[329] quotes Capt. Wilford in Asiatick Researches, vol. 8, p. 365, as follows:

When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to goddesses, they offered cakes called _mulloi_, shaped like the female organ; and Dulare tells us that the male organ was similarly symbolised in pyramidal cakes at Easter by the pious Christians of Saintogne, near Rochelle, and handed about from house to house; that even in his day the festival of Palm Sunday was called _La Fête des Pinnes_, showing that this fête was held to be on account of both organs, although, of course, principally because the day was sacred to the palm, the ancient tree Phallus.... We may believe that the Jewish cakes and show bread were also emblematic.

Mr. Frank H. Cushing informs me that there is an annual feast among the Zuñi in which are to be seen cakes answering essentially to the preceding description.

HODDENTIN A PREHISTORIC FOOD.

The peculiar manner in which the medicine-men of the Apache use the hoddentin (that is, by putting a pinch upon their own tongues); the fact that men and women make use of it in the same way, as a restorative when exhausted; its appearance in myth in connection with Assanutlije, the goddess who supplied the Apache and Navajo with so many material benefits, all combine to awaken the suspicion that in hoddentin we have stumbled upon a prehistoric food now reserved for sacrificial purposes only. That the underlying idea of sacrifice is a food offered to some god is a proposition in which Herbert Spencer and W. Robertson Smith concur. In my opinion, this definition is incomplete; a perfect sacrifice is that in which a _prehistoric_ food is offered to a god, and, although in the family oblations of everyday life we meet with the food of the present generation, it would not be difficult to show that where the whole community unites in a function of exceptional importance the propitiation of the deities will be effected by foods whose use has long since faded away from the memory of the laity.

The sacred feast of stewed puppy and wild turnips forms a prominent part of the sun dance of the Sioux, and had its parallel in a collation of boiled puppy (catullus), of which the highest civic and ecclesiastical dignitaries of pagan Rome partook at stated intervals.

The reversion of the Apache to the food of his ancestors--the hoddentin--as a religious offering has its analogue in the unleavened bread and other obsolete farinaceous products which the ceremonial of more enlightened races has preserved from oblivion. Careful consideration of the narrative of Cabeza de Vaca sustains this conclusion. In the western portion of his wanderings we learn that for from thirty to forty days he and his comrades passed through tribes which for one-third of the year had to live on "the powder of straw" (on the powder of bledos), and that afterwards the Spaniards came among people who raised corn. At that time, Vaca, whether we believe that he ascended the Rio Concho or kept on up the Rio Grande, was in a region where he would certainly have encountered the ancestors of our Apache tribe and their brothers the Navajo. The following is Herrera's account of that part of Vaca's wanderings: "Padeciendo mucha hambre en treinta i quatro Jornadas, pasando por una Gente que la tercera parte del Año comen polvos de paja, i los huvieron de comer, por haver llegado en tal ocasion."[330]

This powder (polvo) of paja or grass might at first sight seem to be grass seeds; but why not say "flour," as on other occasions? The phrase is an obscure one, but not more obscure than the description of the whole journey. In the earlier writings of the Spaniards there is ambiguity because the new arrivals endeavored to apply the names of their own plants and animals to all that they saw in the western continent. Neither Castañeda nor Cabeza de Vaca makes mention of hoddentin, but Vaca does say that when he had almost ended his journey: "La côte ne possède pas de maïs; on n'y mange que de la poudre de paille de blette." "Blette" is the same as the Spanish "bledos."[331] "Nous parvînmes chez une peuplade qui, pendant le tiers de l'année, ne vit que de poudre de paille." "We met with a people, who the third part of the yeere eate no other thing save the powder of straw."[332]

Davis, who seems to have followed Herrera, says: "These Indians lived one-third of the year on the powder of a certain straw.... After leaving this people they again arrived in a country of permanent habitations, where they found an abundance of maize.... The inhabitants gave them maize both in grain and flour."[333]

The Tusayan Indians were formerly in the habit of adding a trifle of chopped straw to their bread, but more as our own bakers would use bran than as a regular article of diet.

Barcia[334] makes no allusion to anything resembling hoddentin or "polvos de bledos" in his brief account of Vaca's journey. But Buckingham Smith, in his excellent translation of Vaca's narrative, renders "polvos de paja" thus: "It was probably the seed of grass which they ate. I am told by a distinguished explorer that the Indians to the west collect it of different kinds and from the powder make bread, some of which is quite palatable." And for "polvos de bledos": "The only explanation I can offer for these words is little satisfactory. It was the practice of the Indians of both New Spain and New Mexico to beat the ear of young maize, while in the milk, to a thin paste, hang it in festoons in the sun, and, being thus dried, was preserved for winter use."

This explanation is very unsatisfactory. Would not Vaca have known it was corn and have said so? On the contrary, he remarks in that very line in Smith's own translation: "There is no maize on the coast."

The appearance of all kinds of grass seeds in the food of nearly all the aborigines of our southwestern territory is a fact well known, but what is to be demonstrated is the extensive use of the "powder" of the tule or cat-tail rush. Down to our day, the Apache have used not only the seeds of various grasses, but the bulb of the wild hyacinth and the bulb of the tule. The former can be eaten either raw or cooked, but the tule bulb is always roasted between hot stones. The taste of the hyacinth bulb is somewhat like that of raw chestnuts. That of the roasted tule bulb is sweet and not at all disagreeable.[335]

Father Jacob Baegert[336] enumerates among the foods of the Indians of southern California "the roots of the common reed" (i.e., of the tule).

Father Alegre, speaking of the tribes living near the Laguna San Pedro,[337] in latitude 28° north--two hundred leagues north of the City of Mexico--says that they make their bread of the root, which is very frequent in their lakes, and which is like the plant called the "anea" or rush in Spain. "Forman el pan de una raiz muy frecuente en sus lagunas, semejante á las que llaman aneas en España."[338]

The Indians of the Atlantic Slope made bread of the bulb of a plant which Capt. John Smith[339] says "grew like a flag in marshes." It was roasted and made into loaves called "tuckahoe."[340]

Kalm, in his Travels in North America,[341] says of the tuckahoe:

It grows in several swamps and marshes and is commonly plentiful. The hogs greedily dig up its roots with their noses in such places, and the Indians of Carolina likewise gather it in their rambles in the woods, dry it in the sun, grind, and make bread of it. Whilst the root is fresh it is harsh and acrid, but, being dried, it loses the greater part of its acrimony. To judge by these qualities, the tuckahoe may very likely be the Arum virginianum.

The Shoshoni and Bannock of Idaho and Montana eat the tule bulb.[342]

Something analogous to hoddentin is mentioned by the chronicler of Drake's voyage along the California coast about A. D. 1540. Speaking of the decorations of the chiefs of the Indians seen near where San Francisco now stands, he says another mark of distinction was "a certain downe, which groweth up in the countrey upon an herbe much like our lectuce, which exceeds any other downe in the world for finenesse and beeing layed upon their cawles, by no winds can be removed. Of such estimation is this herbe amongst them that the downe thereof is not lawfull to be worne, but of such persons as are about the king, ... and the seeds are not used but onely in sacrifice to their gods."[343]

Mr. Cushing informs me that hoddentin is mentioned as a food in the myths of the Zuñi under the name of oneya, from oellu, "food."

In Kamtchatka the people dig and cook the bulbs of the Kamtchatka lily, which seems to be some sort of a tuber very similar to that of the tule.

"Bread is now made of rye, which the Kamtchadals raise and grind for themselves; but previous to the settlement of the country by the Russians the only native substitute for bread was a sort of baked paste, consisting chiefly of the grated tubers of the purple Kamtchatkan lily."[344]

HODDENTIN THE YIAUHTLI OF THE AZTECS.

There would seem to be the best of reason for an identification of hoddentin with the "yiauhtli" which Sahagun and Torquemada tell us was thrown by the Aztecs in the faces of victims preparatory to sacrificing them to the God of Fire, but the explanation given by those authors is not at all satisfactory. The Aztecs did not care much whether the victim suffered or not; he was sprinkled with this sacred powder because he had assumed a sacred character.

Padre Sahagun[345] says that the Aztecs, when about to offer human sacrifice, threw "a powder named 'yiauhtli' on the faces of those whom they were about to sacrifice, that they might become deprived of sensation and not suffer much pain in dying."

In sacrificing slaves to the God of Fire, the Aztec priests "tomaban ciertos polvos de una semilla, llamada Yauhtli, y polvoreaban las caras con ellas, para que perdiesen el sentido, y no sintiesen tanto la muerte cruel, que las daban."[346]

Guautli, generally spelled "yuautli," one of the foods paid to Montezuma as tribute, may have been tule pollen. Gallatin says: "I can not discover what is meant by the guautli. It is interpreted as being _semilla de Bledo_; but I am not aware of any other native grain than maize having been, before the introduction of European cereales, an article of food of such general use, as the quantity mentioned seems to indicate."[347]

Among the articles which the king of Atzapotzalco compelled the Aztecs to raise for tribute is mentioned "ahuauhtli (que es como bledos)."[348]

"BLEDOS" OF ANCIENT WRITERS--ITS MEANING.

Lafitau[349] gives a description of the Iroquois mode of preparing for the warpath. He says that the Iroquois and Huron called war "n'ondoutagette" and "gaskenragette." "Le terme _Ondouta_ signifie le duvet qu'on tire de l'épy des Roseaux de Marais & signifie aussi la plante toute entiere, dont ils se servent pour faire les nattes sur quoi ils couchent, de sorte qu'il y a apparence qu'ils avoient affecté ce terme pour la Guerre, parce que chaque Guerrier portoit avec soy sa natte dans ces sortes d'expeditions."

This does not seem to be the correct explanation. Rather, it was because they undoubtedly made some sacrificial meal of this "duvet," or pollen, and used it as much as the Apache do hoddentin, their sacred meal made of the pollen of the tule, which is surely a species of "roseaux de marais."

The great scarcity of corn among the people passed while en route to Cibola is commented upon in an account of Coronado's expedition to Cibola, in Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas de América y Oceanía.[350]

We are also informed[351] that the people of Cibola offered to their idols "polbos amarillos de flores."

Castañeda speaks of the people beyond Chichilticale making a bread of the mesquite which kept good for a whole year. He seems to have been well informed regarding the vegetable foods of the tribes passed through by Coronado's expedition.[352]

That the "blettes" or "bledos" did not mean the same as grass is a certainty after we have examined the old writers, who each and all show that the bledos meant a definite kind of plant, although exactly what this plant was they fail to inform us. It can not be intended for the sunflower, which is mentioned distinctly by a number of writers as an article of diet among the Indians of the Southwest.[353]

TZOALLI.

An examination of the Spanish writers who most carefully transmitted their observations upon the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs and other nations in Mexico and South America brings out two most interesting features in this connection. The first is that there were commemorative feasts of prehistoric foods, and the second that one or more of these foods has played an important part in the religion of tribes farther north. The first of these foods is the "tzoalli," which was the same as "bledos," which latter would seem beyond question to have been hoddentin or yiauhtli. Brasseur de Bourbourg's definition simply states that the tzoalli was a compound of leguminous grains peculiar to Mexico and eaten in different ways: "Le Tzohualli était un composé de graines légumineuses particulières au Mexique, qu'on mangeait de diverses manières."[354]

In the month called Tepeilhuitl the Aztecs made snakes of twigs and covered them with dough of bledos (a kind of grain or hay seed). Upon these they placed figures, representing mountains, but shaped like young children.[355] This month was the thirteenth on the Mexican calendar, which began on our February 1. This would put it October 1, or thereabout.

Squier cites Torquemada's description of the sacrifices called Ecatotontin, offered to the mountains by the Mexicans. In these they made figures of serpents and children and covered them with "dough," named by them tzoalli, composed of the seeds of bledos.[356]

A dramatic representation strongly resembling those described in the two preceding paragraphs was noted among the Tusayan of Arizona by Mr. Taylor, a missionary, in 1881, and has been mentioned at length in The Snake Dance of the Moquis. Clavigero relates that the Mexican priests "all eat a certain kind of gruel which they call _Etzalli_."[357]

Torquemada relates that the Mexicans once each year made an idol or statue of Huitzlipotchli of many grains and the seeds of bledos and other vegetables which they kneaded with the blood of boys who were sacrificed for the purpose. "Juntaban muchos granos y semilla de Bledos, y otras legumbres, y molianlas con mucha devocion, y recato, y de ellas amasaban, y formaban la dicha Estatua, del tamaño y estatura de un Hombre. El licor, con que se resolbian y desleian aquellas harinas era sangre de Niños, que para este fin se sacrificaban."[358]

It is remarkable the word "maiz" does not occur in this paragraph. Huitzlipotchli being the God of War, it was natural that the ritual devoted to his service should conserve some, if not all, of the foods, grains, and seeds used by the Mexicans when on the warpath in the earliest days of their history; and that this food should be made into a dough with the blood of children sacrificed as a preliminary to success is also perfectly in accordance with all that we know of the mode of reasoning of this and other primitive peoples. Torquemada goes on to say that this statue was carried in solemn procession to the temple and idol of Huitzlipotchli and there adorned with precious jewels (chalchihuitl), embedded in the soft mass. Afterward it was carried to the temple of the god Paynalton, preceded by a priest carrying a snake in the manner that the priests in Spain carried the cross in the processions of the church. "Con una Culebra mui grande, y gruesa en las manos, tortuosa, y con muchas bueltas, que iba delante, levantada en alto, á manera de Cruz, en nuestras Procesiones."[359] This dough idol, he says, was afterwards broken into "migajas" (crumbs) and distributed among the males only, boys as well as men, and by them eaten after the manner of communion; "este era su manera de comunion."[360] Herrera, speaking of this same idol of Vitzliputzli, as he calls him, says it was made by the young women of the temple, of the flour of bledos and of toasted maize, with honey, and that the eyes were of green, white, or blue beads, and the teeth of grains of corn. After the feast was over, the idol was broken up and distributed to the faithful, "á manera de comunion." "Las Doncellas recogidas en el templo, dos Dias antes de la Fiesta, amasaban harina de Bledos, i de Maiz tostado, con miel, y de la masa hacian un Idolo grande, con los ojos de cuentas grandes, verdes, açules, ò blancas; i por dientes granos de maiz."[361]

H. H. Bancroft speaks of the festival in honor of Huitzilopochtli, "the festival of the wafer or cake." He says: "They made a cake of the meal of bledos, which is called tzoalli," which was afterward divided in a sort of communion.[362] Diego Duran remarks that at this feast the chief priest carried an idol of dough called "tzoally," which is made of the seeds of bledos and corn made into a mass with honey.[363] "Un ydolo de masa, de una masa que llaman tzoally, la cual se hace de semilla de bledos y maiz amasado con miel." This shows that "bledos" and "maiz" were different things.[364] A few lines farther on Duran tells us that this cake, or bread, was made by the nuns of the temple, "las mozas del recogimiento de este templo," and that they ground up a great quantity of the seed of bledos, which they call huauhtly, together with toasted maize. "Molian mucha cantidad de semilla de bledos que ellos llaman huauhtly juntamente con maiz tostado."[365] He then shows that the "honey" (miel) spoken of by the other writers was the thick juice of the maguey. "Despues de molido, amasabanlo con miel negra de los magueis."

Acosta describes a Mexican feast, held in our month of May, in which appeared an idol called Huitzlipotchli, made of "mays rosty," "semence de blettes," and "amassoient avec du miel."[366]

In the above citations it will be seen that huauhtly or yuauhtli and tzoally were one and the same. We also find some of the earliest if not the very earliest references to the American popped corn.

That the Mexicans should have had such festivals or feasts in honor of their god of battles is no more extraordinary than that in our own country all military reunions make it a point to revert to the "hard tack" issued during the campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Many other references to the constant use as a food, or at least as a sacrificial food, of the bledos might be supplied if needed. Thus Diego Duran devotes the twelfth chapter of his third book to an obscure account of a festival among the Tepanecs, in which appeared animal gods made of "masa de semilla de bledos," which were afterwards broken and eaten.

Torquemada speaks of such idols employed in the worship of snakes and mountains.[367] In still another place this authority tells us that similar figures were made and eaten by bride and groom at the Aztec marriage ceremony.[368]

The ceremonial manner in which these seeds were ground recalls the fact that the Zuñi regard the stones used for grinding kunque as sacred and will not employ them for any other purpose.

Idols made of dough much after the fashion of the Aztecs are to be found among the Mongols. Meignan speaks of seeing "an idol, quite open to the sky and to the desert, representing the deity of travelers. It was made of compressed bread, covered over with some bituminous substance, and perched on a horse of the same material, and held in its hand a lance in Don Quixote attitude. Its horrible features were surmounted with a shaggy tuft of natural hair. A great number of offerings of all kinds were scattered on the ground all around. Five or six images, formed also of bread, were bending in an attitude of prayer before the deity."[369]

Dr. Edwin James, the editor of Tanner's Narrative,[370] cites the "Calica Puran" to show that medicinal images are employed by the people of the East Indies when revenge is sought upon an enemy; "water must be sprinkled on the meal or earthen victim which represents the sacrificer's enemy."

In those parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished, a substitutive ceremony was practiced "by forming a human figure of flour-paste, or clay, which they carry into the temples, and there cut off its head or mutilate it, in various ways, in presence of the idols."[371]

Gomara describes the festival in honor of the Mexican God of Fire, called "Xocothuecl," when an idol was used made of every kind of seed and was then enwrapped in sacred blankets to keep it from breaking. "Hacian aquella noche un ídolo de toda suerte de semillas, envolvíanlo en mantas benditas, y liábanlo, porque no se deshiciese."[372]

These blessed blankets are also to be seen at the Zuñi feast of the Little God of Fire, which occurs in the month of December. It is a curious thing that the blessed blankets of the Zuñi are decorated with the butterfly, which appeared upon the royal robes of Montezuma.

What other seeds were used in the fabrication of these idols is not very essential to our purpose, but it may be pointed out that one of them was the seed of the "agenjo," which was the "chenopodium" or "artemisia," known to us as the "sagebrush."

Of the Mexicans we learn from a trustworthy author: "Tambien usaban alguna manera de comunion ó recepcion del sacramento, y es que hacian unos idolitos chiquitos de semilla de bledos ó cenizos, ó de otras yerbas, y ellos mismos se los recibian, como cuerpo ó memoria de sus dioses."[373]

Mendieta wrote his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana in 1596, "al tiempo que esto escribo (que es por Abril del año de noventa y seis)"[374] and again,[375] "al tiempo que yo esto escribo."

The Mexicans, in the month of November, had a festival in honor of Tezcatlipuca. "Hacian unos bollos de masa de maíz y semejante de agenjos, aunque son de otra suerte que los de acá, y echábanlos á cocer en ollas con agua sola. Entre tanto que hervian y se cocian los bollos, tañian los muchachos un atabal ... y después comíanselos con gran devocion."[376]

Gomara's statement, that while these cakes of maize and wormwood seed were cooking the young men were beating on drums, would find its parallel in any account that might be written of the behavior of the Zuñi, while preparing for their sacred feasts. The squaws grind the meal to be used on these occasions to the accompaniment of singing by the medicine-men and much drumming by a band of assistants selected from among the young men and boys.

Mr. Francis La Flèche, a nearly full-blood Omaha Indian, read before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., in 1888, a paper descriptive of the funeral customs of his people, in which he related that when an Indian was supposed to be threatened with death the medicine-men would go in a lodge sweat-bath with him and sing, and at the same time "pronouncing certain incantations and sprinkling the body of the client with the powder of the artemisia, supposed to be the food of the ghosts."[377]

To say that a certain powder is the food of the ghosts of a tribe is to say indirectly that the same powder was once the food of the tribe's ancestors.

The Peruvians seem to have made use of the same kind of sacrificial cakes kneaded with the blood of the human victim. We are told that in the month of January no strangers were allowed to enter the city of Cuzco, and that there was then a distribution of corn cakes made with the blood of the victim, which were to be eaten as a mark of alliance with the Inca. "Les daban unos Bollos de Maíz, con sangre de el sacrificio, que comian, en señal de confederacion con el Inga."[378]

Balboa says that the Peruvians had a festival intended to signalize the arrival of their young men at manhood, in which occurred a sort of communion consisting of bread kneaded by the young virgins of the sun with the blood of victims. This same kind of communion was also noted at another festival occurring in our month of September of each year. ("Un festin composé de pain pétri par les jeunes vierges du Soleil avec le sang des victimes."[379]) There were other ceremonial usages among the Aztecs, in which the tule rush itself, "espadaña," was employed, as at childbirth, marriage, the festivals in honor of Tlaloc, and in the rough games played by boys. It is possible that from being a prehistoric food the pollen of the tule, or the plant which furnished it, became associated with the idea of sustenance, fertility, reproduction, and therefore very properly formed part of the ritual necessary in weddings or connected with the earliest hours of a child's life, much as rice has been used so freely in other parts of the world.[380]

Among the Aztecs the newly born babe was laid upon fresh green tule rushes, with great ceremony, while its name was given to it.[380]

Gomara says that the mats used in the marriage ceremonies of the Aztecs were made of tules. "Esteras verdes de espadañas."[381]

"They both sat down upon a new and curiously wrought mat, which was spread in the middle of the chamber close to the fire." The marriage bed was made "of mats of rushes, covered with small sheets, with certain feathers, and a gem of chalchihuitl in the middle of them."[382]

The third festival of Tlaloc was celebrated in the sixth month, which would about correspond to our 6th of June.[383] But there was another festival in honor of the Tlaloc, which seems very hard to understand. A full description is given by Bancroft.[384] To celebrate this it was incumbent upon the priests to cut and carry to the temples bundles of the tule, which were woven into a sacred mat, after which there was a ceremonial procession to a tule swamp in which all bathed.

The Aztecs, like the Apache, had myths showing that they sprang originally from a reed swamp. There was an Aztec god, Napatecutli, who was the god of the tule and of the mat-makers.[385] This rush was also strewn as part of several of their religious ceremonies.

Fosbrooke[386] has this to say about certain ceremonies in connection with the churches in Europe: "At certain seasons the Choir was strewed with hay, at others with sand. On Easter sabbath with ivy-leaves; at other times with rushes." He shows that hay was used at Christmas and the vigil of All Saints, at Pentecost, Athelwold's Day, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and Ascension, etc.

The Mexican populace played a game closely resembling our "blind man's buff" in their seventeenth month, which was called Tititl and corresponded to the winter solstice. In this game, called "nechichiquavilo," men and boys ran through the streets hitting every one whom they met with small bags or nets ("taleguillas ó redecillas") filled with tule powder or fine paper ("llenas de flor de las espadañas ó de algunos papeles rotos").[387]

The same thing is narrated by other early Spanish writers upon Mexico.

In the myths of Guatemala it is related that there were several distinct generations of men. The first were made of wood, without heart or brains, with worm-eaten feet and hands. The second generation was an improvement upon this, and the women are represented as made of tule. "Las mugeres fueron hechas de corazon de espadaña."[388]

Picart, enumerating the tree gods of the Romans, says that they had deified "les Roseaux pour les Rivieres."[389]

GENERAL USE OF THE POWDER AMONG INDIANS.

This very general dissemination among the Indians of the American continent of the sacred use of the powder of the tule, of images, idols, or sacrificial cakes made of such prehistoric foods, certainly suggests that the Apache and the Aztecs, among whom they seem to have been most freely used on ceremonial occasions, were invaders in the country they respectively occupied, comparatively recent in their arrival among the contiguous tribes like the Zuñi and Tusayan who on corresponding occasions offered to their gods a cultivated food like corn. The Tlascaltec were known in Mexico as the "bread people," possibly because they had been acquainted with the cultivation of the cereals long before the Aztecs. Similarly, there was a differentiation of the Apache from the sedentary Pueblos. The Apache were known to all the villages of the Pueblos as a "corn-buying tribe," as will presently be shown. It is true that in isolated cases and in widely separated sections the Apache have for nearly two centuries been a corn-planting people, because we find accounts in the Spanish chronicles of the discovery and destruction by their military expeditions of "trojes" or magazines of Apache corn near the San Francisco (or Verde) River, in the present Territory of Arizona, as early as the middle of the last century. But the general practice of the tribe was to purchase its bread or meal from the Pueblos at such times as hostilities were not an obstacle to free trade. There was this difference to be noted between the Apache and the Aztecs: The latter had been long enough in the valley of Anahuac to learn and adopt many new foods, as we learn from Duran, who relates that at their festivals in honor of Tezcatlipoca, or those made in pursuance of some vow, the women cooked an astonishing variety of bread, just as, at the festivals of the Zuñi, Tusayan, and other Pueblos in our own time, thirty different kinds of preparations of corn may be found.[390] I was personally informed by old Indians in the pueblos along the Rio Grande that they had been in the habit of trading with the Apache and Comanche of the Staked Plains of Texas until within very recent years; in fact, I remember seeing such a party of Pueblos on its return from Texas in 1869, as it reached Fort Craig, New Mexico, where I was then stationed. I bought a buffalo robe from them. The principal article of sale on the side of the Pueblos was cornmeal. The Zuñi also carried on this mixed trade and hunting, as I was informed by the old chief Pedro Pino and others. The Tusayan denied that they had ever traded with the Apache so far to the east as the buffalo country, but asserted that the Comanche had once sent a large body of their people over to Walpi to trade with the Tusayan, among whom they remained for two years. There was one buffalo robe among the Tusayan at their snake dance in 1881, possibly obtained from the Ute to the north of them.

The trade carried on by the "buffalo" Indians with the Pueblos was noticed by Don Juan de Oñate as early as 1599. He describes them as "dressed in skins, which they also carried into the settled provinces to sell, and brought back in return cornmeal."[391]

Gregg[392] speaks of the "Comancheros" or Mexicans and Pueblos who ventured out on the plains to trade with the Comanche, the principal article of traffic being bread. Whipple[393] refers to this trade as carried on with all the nomadic tribes of the Llano Estacado, one of which we know to have been the eastern division of the Apache. The principal article bartered with the wild tribes was flour, i.e., cornmeal.

In another place he tells us of "Pueblo Indians from Santo Domingo, with flour and bread to barter with the Kái-ò-wàs and Comanches for buffalo robes and horses."[394] Again, Mexicans were seen with flour, bread, and tobacco, "bound for Comanche land to trade. We had no previous idea of the extent of this Indian trade."[395] Only one other reference to this intertribal commerce will be introduced.

Vetancurt[396] mentions that the Franciscan friars, between 1630 and 1680, had erected a magnificent "temple" to "Our Lady of the Angels of Porciúncula," and that the walls were so thick that offices were established in their concavities. On each side of this temple, which was erected in the pueblo of Pecos (situated at or near the head of the Pecos River, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fé, New Mexico, on the eastern rim of the Llano Estacado), were three towers. At the foot of the hill was a plain about one league in circumference, to which the Apache resorted for trade. These were the Apache living on the plains of Texas. They brought with them buffalo robes, deer skins and other things to exchange for corn. They came with their dog-trains loaded, and there were more than five hundred traders arriving each year.

Observe that here we have the first and only reference to the use of dog trains by the Apache who in every other case make their women carry all plunder in baskets on their backs. In this same extract from Vetancurt there is a valuable remark about Quivira: "Este es el paso para los reinos de la Quivira."

ANALOGUES OF HODDENTIN.

In the citation from the Spanish poet Villagrá, already given, the suggestion occurs that some relationship existed between the powder scattered so freely during the Spanish "carnestolendas" and the "kunque" thrown by the people of Tusayan upon the Spaniards and their horses when the Spaniards first entered that country. This analogy is a very striking one, even though the Spaniards have long since lost all idea of the meaning of the practice which they still follow. It is to be noted, however, that one of the occasions when this flour is most freely used is the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en), when the ghosts or ancestors of the community were to be the recipients of every attention.[397]

In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the "gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli, which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox.

There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to cure and rejuvenate.

In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C. 200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth, wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."[398]

There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the plant.

No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews[399] has referred to it under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially the pollen of corn."

This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish.

The Apache, we have shown, offer up in sacrifice their traditional food, the pollen of the tule. The Zuñi, as we have also shown, offer up their traditional food, the meal of corn, to which there have since been added sea shells and other components with a symbolical significance. The Navajo, the progeny of both, naturally seek to effect a combination or compromise of the two systems and make use of the pollen of the corn. Kohl narrates an Ojibwa legend to the effect that their god Menaboju, returning from the warpath, painted his face with "pleasant yellow stripes ... of the yellow foam that covers the water in spring," and he adds that this is "probably the yellow pollen that falls from the pine." He quotes[400] another legend of the magic red powder for curing diseases once given by the snake spirit of the waters to an Ojibwa.

Godfrey Higgins[401] has this to say of the use of pollen by the ancients which he recognizes as connected with the principle of fertility:

Αρωμα, the sweet smell, means also a flower, that is Pushpa or Pushto. This was the language of the followers of the Phasah or the Lamb--it was the language of the Flower, of the Natzir, of the Flos-floris of Flora, of the Arouma, and of the flour of Ceres, or the Eucharistia. It was the language of the pollen, the pollen of plants, the principle of generation, of the Pole or Phallus.

Again he says:

Buddha was a flower, because as flour or pollen he was the principle of fructification or generation. He was flour because flour was the fine or valuable part of the plant of Ceres, or wheat, the pollen which, I am told, in this plant, and in this plant alone, renews itself when destroyed. When the flour, pollen, is killed, it grows again several times. This is a very beautiful type or symbol of the resurrection. On this account the flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχαριστια. In this pollen we have the name of pall or pallium and of Pallas, in the first language meaning _wisdom_.... When the devotee ate the bread he ate the pollen, and thus ate the body of the God of generation; hence might come transubstantiation.

Lupton,[402] in 1660, describes a "powder of the flowers [pollen?] of elder, gathered on a midsummer day," which was taken to restore lost youth. Brand, it may be as well to say, traces back the custom of throwing flour into the faces of women and others on the streets at Shrovetide, in Minorca and elsewhere, to the time of the Romans.[403]

In writing the description of the Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, I ventured to advance the surmise that the corn flour with which the sacred snakes were covered, and with which the air was whitened, would be found upon investigation to be closely related to the crithomancy or divination by grains of the cereals, as practiced among the ancient Greeks. Crithomancy, strictly speaking, meant a divination by grains of corn. The expression which I should have employed was alphitomancy, a divination "by meal, flower, or branne."[404] But both methods of divination have been noticed among the aborigines of America.

In Peru the medicine-men were divided into classes, as were those of ancient Egypt. These medicine-men "made the various means of divination specialities." Some of them predicted by "the shapes of grains of maize taken at random."[405] In Guatemala grains of corn or of chile were used indiscriminately, and in Guazacualco the medicine-women used grains of frijoles or black beans. In Guatemala they had what they called "ahquij." "Este modo de adivinar se llama ahquij, malol-tzitè, malol-ixim, esto es: el que adivina por el sol, ó por granos de maiz ó chile."[406]

In Guazacualco the medicine-women "hechaban suertes con granos de Frisoles, a manera de Dados, i hacian sus invocaciones, porque eran Hechiceros: i si el Dado decia bien, proseguian en la cura, diciendo que sanaria: i si mal, no bolvian al enfermo."[407]

Herrera in the preceding paragraph recognizes the close similarity between this sacred ceremony of casting lots or divining, and the more orthodox method of gambling, pure and simple, which has in every case been derived from a sacred origin.

"Les Hachus [one class of Peruvian priests] consultaient l'avenir au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux."[408]

The Mexicans "para saber si los enfermos habian de morir, ó sanar de la enfermedad que tenian, echaban un puñado de maiz lo mas grueso que podian haber, y lanzábanlo siete ó ocho veces, como lanzan los dados los que los juegan, y si algun grano quedaba enhiesto, decian que era señal de muerte."[409]

Father Brebœuf relates that at the Huron feast of the dead, which occurred every 8 or 10 years and which he saw at Ossossane, "a few grains of Indian corn were thrown by the women upon the sacred relics."[410]

THE DOWN OF BIRDS IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES.

No exhaustive and accurate examination of the subject of hoddentin could be made without bringing the investigator face to face with the curious analogue of "down" throwing and sprinkling which seemingly obtains with tribes which at some period of their history have been compelled to rely upon birds as a main component of their diet. Examples of this are to be met with on both sides of the Pacific as well as in remote Australia, and were the matter more fully examined there is no doubt that some other identifications might be made in very unexpected quarters. The down used by the Tchuktchi on occasions of ceremony had a suggestion of religion about it.[411] "On leaving the shore, they sung and danced. One who stood at the head of the boat was employed in plucking out the feathers of a bird's skin and blowing them in the air."

In Langsdorff's Travels[412] we learn that some of the dancers of the Koluschan of Sitka have their heads powdered with the small down feathers of the white-headed eagle and ornamented with ermine; also, that the hair and bodies of the Indians at the mission of Saint Joseph, New California, were powdered with down feathers.[413]

The Indians from the North Pacific coast seen visiting the mission of San Francisco, by Kotzebue in 1816, "had their long disordered hair covered with down."[414]

Bancroft says of the Nootka of the northwest coast of British America: "the hair is powdered plentifully with white feathers, which are regarded as the crowning ornament for manly dignity in all these regions."[415]

The bird's down used by the Haida of British North America in their dances seems very closely related to hoddentin. They not only put it upon their own persons, but "delight to communicate it to their partners in bowing," and also "blow it into the air at regular intervals through a painted tube." They also scattered down as a sign of welcome to the first European navigators.[416]

In all these dances, ceremonial visits, and receptions of strangers the religious element can be discerned more or less plainly. The Indians west of the Mississippi with whom Father Hennepin was a prisoner in 1680, and who appear to have been a branch of the Sioux (Issati or Santee and Nadouessan), had a grand dance to signalize the killing of a bear. On this occasion, which was participated in by the "principaux chefs et guerriers," we learn that there was this to be noted in their dress: "ayant même leurs cheveux frottez d'huile d'ours & parsemez de plumes, rouges & blanches & les têtes chargées de duvet d'oiseaux."[417]

"Swan's and bustard's down" was used by the Accancess [i.e., the Arkansas of the Siouan stock] in their religious ceremonies.[418]

Of the war dress of the members of the Five Nations we learn from an early writer: "Their heads [previously denuded of all hair except that of the crown] are painted red down to the eye-brows and sprinkled over with white down."[419]

The Indians of Virginia at their war dances painted themselves to make them more terrible: "Pour se rendre plus terriblee, ils sément des plumes, du duvet, ou du poil de quelque bête sur la peinture toute fraiche."[420] Down was also used by the medicine-men of the Carib.[421] The down of birds was used in much the same way by the tribes of Cumaná, a district of South America not far from the mouth of the Orinoco, in the present territory of Venezuela;[422] by the Tupinambis, of Brazil, who covered the bodies of their victims with it;[423] by the Chiribchi, of South America,[424] and by the tribes of the Isthmus of Darien.[425] This down has also been used by some of the Australians in their sacred dances.[426] "The hair, or rather the wool upon their heads, was very abundantly powdered with white powder.... They powder not only their heads, but their beards too."[427]

In China "there is a widespread superstition that the feathers of birds, after undergoing certain incantations, are thrown up into the air, and being carried away by the wind work blight and destruction wherever they alight."

The down of birds seems not to have been unknown in Europe. To this day it is poured upon the heads of the bride and groom in weddings among the Russian peasantry.[428]

This leads up to the inquiry whether or not the application of tar and feathers to the person may not at an early period have been an act of religious significance, perverted into a ridiculous and infamous punishment by a conquering and unrelenting hostile sect. The subject certainly seems to have awakened the curiosity of the learned Buckle, whose remarks may as well be given.

Richard, during his stay in Normandy (1189), made some singular laws for regulating the conduct of the pilgrims in their passage by sea. "A robber, convicted of theft, shall be shaved in the manner of a champion; and boiling pitch poured upon his head, and the feathers of a pillow shaken over his head to distinguish him; and be landed at the first port where the ships shall stop."[429]

The circumstances mentioned in the text respecting tarring and feathering is a fine subject for comment by the searchers into popular antiquities.[430]

HAIR POWDER.

Speaking of the "duvet" or down, with which many American savage tribes deck themselves, Picart observes very justly: "Cet ornement est bizare, mais dans le fond l'est il beaucoup plus que cette poudre d'or dont les Anciens, se poudroient la tête, ou que cette poudre composée d'amidon avec laquelle nos petits maitres modernes affectent de blanchir leurs cheveux ou leurs perruques?"[431]

Picart does not say, and perhaps it would not be wise for us to surmise, that these modes of powdering had a religious origin.

The custom of powdering the hair seems to be a savage "survival;" at least, it is still to be found among the Friendly Islanders, among whom it was observed by Forster.[432] These islanders used a white lime powder, also one of blue and another of orange made of turmeric.

The Sandwich Islanders plastered their hair over "with a kind of lime made from burnt shells,"[433] and Dillon speaks of the Friendly Islanders using lime, as Forster has already informed us.[434] The Hottentots made a lavish use of the medicinal powder of the buchu, which they plastered on their heads, threw to their sacred animals, and used liberally at their funerals.[435] Kolben dispels all doubt by saying: "These powderings are religious formalities." He also alludes to the use, in much the same manner, of ashes by the same people.[436]

The use of ashes also occurs among the Zuñi, the Apache (at times), and the Abipone of Paraguay. Ashes are also "thrown in the way of a whirlwind to appease it."[437]

In the Witches' Sabbath, in Germany, "it was said that the witches burned a he goat, and divided its ashes among themselves."[438]

In all the above cases, as well as in that of the use of ashes in the Christian churches, it is possible that the origin of the custom might be traced back either to a desire to share in the burnt offering or else in that of preserving some of the incinerated dust of the dead friend or relative for whom the tribe or clan was in mourning. Ashes in the Christian church were not confined to Lent alone; they "were worn four times a year, as in the beginning of Lent."[439]

Tuphramancy or divination by ashes was one of the methods of forecast in use among the priests of pagan Rome.[440]

In Northumberland the custom prevailed of making bonfires on the hills on St. Peter's day. "They made encroachments, on these occasions, upon the bonfires of the neighbouring towns, of which they took away some of the ashes by force: This they called 'carrying off the flower (probably the flour) of the wake.'[441] Moresin thinks this a vestige of the ancient Cerealia."

The mourning at Iddah, in Guinea, consists in smearing the forehead "with wood ashes and clay water, which is allowed to dry on. They likewise powder their hair with wood ashes."[442]

DUST FROM CHURCHES--ITS USE.

The last ceremonial powder to be described is dust from the ground, as among some of the Australians who smear their heads with pipe-clay as a sign of mourning.[443]

The French writers mention among the ceremonies of the Natchez one in which the Great Sun "gathered dust, which he threw back over his head, and turned successively to the four quarters of the world in repeating the same act of throwing dust."[444]

Mention is made of "an old woman who acted as beadle" of a church, who "once brought to the bedside of a dying person some of the sweepings from the floor of the altar, to ease and shorten a very lingering death."[445]

Altar dust was a very ancient remedy for disease. Frommann says that, of the four tablets found in a temple of Esculapius, one bore this inscription: "Lucio affecto lateris dolore; veniret et ex ara tollerit cinerem et una cum vino comisceret et poneret supra latus; et convaluit," etc.[446]

It seems then that the mediæval use of altar dust traces back to the Roman use of altar ashes.

So hard is it to eradicate from the minds of savages ideas which have become ingrafted upon their nature that we need not be surprised to read in the Jesuit relations of affairs in Canada (1696-1702) that, at the Mission of Saint Francis, where the Indians venerated the memory of a saintly woman of their own race, Catheraine Tagikoo-ita, "pour guérir les malades que les rémèdes ordinaires ne soulagent point, on avale dans l'eau ou dans un bouillon un peu de la poussière de son tombeau."

A few persons are to be found who endeavor to collect the dust from the feet of one hundred thousand Brahmins. One way of collecting this dust is by spreading a cloth before the door of a house where a great multitude of Brahmins are assembled at a feast, and, as each Brahmin comes out, he shakes the dust from his feet as he treads upon this cloth. Many miraculous cures are declared to have been performed upon persons using this dust.[447]

A widow among the Armenian devil-worshipers is required "to strew dust on her head and to smear her face with clay."[448]

CLAY-EATING.

The eating of clay would appear to have once prevailed all over the world. In places the custom has degenerated into ceremonial or is to be found only in myths. The Aztec devotee picked up a pinch of clay in the temple of Tezcatlipoca and ate it with the greatest reverence.[449]

Sahagun is quoted by Squier[450] as saying that the Mexicans swore by the sun and "by our sovereign mother, the Earth," and ate a piece of earth.

But the use of clay by the Mexicans was not merely a matter of ceremony; clay seems to have been an edible in quite common use.

Edible earth was sold openly in the markets of Mexico; "yaun tierra," says Gomara in the list of foods given by him.[451]

The eating of clay was forbidden to Mexican women during pregnancy.

Diego Duran describes the ceremonial eating of clay in the temples of Mexico; "Llegó el dedo al suelo, y cogiendo tierra en él lo metió en la boca; á la cual ceremonia llamaban comer tierra santa."[452] And again he says that in their sacrifices the Mexican nobles ate earth from the feet of the idols. "Comian tierra de la que estaba á los pies del Ydolo."[453] But the Mexicans did not limit themselves to a ceremonial clay-eating alone. Thomas Gage relates that "they ate a kind of earth, for at one season in the yeer they had nets of mayle, with the which they raked up a certaine dust that is bred upon the water of the Lake of Mexico, and that is kneaded together like unto oas of the sea."[454]

Diego Duran[455] mentions the ceremonial clay-eating at the feast of Tezcatlipoca agreeing with the note already taken from Kingsborough.

There is reference to clay-eating in one of the myths given in the Popol-Vuh. The Quiche deities Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, desiring to overcome the god Cabrakan, fed him upon roasted birds, but they took care to rub one of the birds with "tizate" and to put white powder around it. The circle of white powder was, no doubt, a circle of hoddentin or something analogous thereto, intended to prevent any baleful influence being exercised by Cabrakan. "Mais ils frottèrent l'un des oiseaux avec du _tizate_ et lui mirent de la poussière blanche à l'entour."[456]

In a footnote the word "tizate" is explained to be a very friable whitish earth, used in polishing metals, making cement, etc.: "Terre blanchâtre fort friable, et dont ils se servent pour polir les métaux, faire du ciment, etc."

Cabeza de Vaca says that the Indians of Florida ate clay--"de la terre."[457] He says also[458] that the natives offered him many mesquite beans, which they ate mixed with earth--"mele avec de la terre."[459]

The Jaguaces of Florida ate earth (tierra).[460]

At the trial of Vasco Pocallo de Figueroa, in Santiago de Cuba, in 1522, "for cruelty to the natives," he sought to make it appear that the Indians ate clay as a means of suicide: "el abuso de los Indios en comer tierra ... seguian matandose de intento comiendo tierra."[461]

The Muiscas had in their language the word "jipetera," a "disease from eating dirt."[462] Whether the word "dirt" as here employed means filth, or earth and clay, is not plain; it probably means clay and earth.

Venegas asserts that the Indians of California ate earth. The traditions of the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, California, and vicinity show that "they had fed upon a kind of clay," which they "often used upon their heads by way of ornament."[463]

The Tátu Indians of California mix "red earth into their acorn bread ... to make the bread sweet and make it go further."[464]

Long[465] relates that when the young warrior of the Oto or Omaha tribes goes out on his first fast he "rubs his person over with a whitish clay," but he does not state that he ate it.

Sir John Franklin[466] relates that the banks of the Mackenzie River in British North America contain layers of a kind of unctuous mud, probably similar to that found near the Orinoco, which the Tinneh Indians "use occasionally as food during seasons of famine, and even at other times chew as an amusement.... It has a milky taste and the flavour is not disagreeable."

Father de Smet[467] says of the Athapascan: "Many wandering families of the Carrier tribe ... have their teeth worn to the gums by the earth and sand they swallow with their nourishment." This does not seem to have been intentionally eaten.

"Some of the Siberian tribes, when they travel, carry a small bag of their native earth, the taste of which they suppose will preserve them from, all the evils of a foreign sky."[468]

We are informed that the Tunguses of Siberia eat a clay called "rock marrow," which they mix with marrow. "Near the Ural Mountains, powdered gypsum, commonly called 'rock meal,' is sometimes mixed with bread, but its effects are pernicious."[469]

"The Jukabiri of northeastern Siberia have an earth of sweetish and rather astringent taste," to which they "ascribe a variety of sanatory properties."[470]

There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger, but Grey mentions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the _Mene_ (a species of Hæmadorum), is eaten by the natives of West Australia.[471]

The Apache and Navajo branches of the Athapascan family are not unacquainted with the use of clay as a comestible, although among the former it is now scarcely ever used and among the latter used only as a condiment to relieve the bitterness of the taste of the wild potato; in the same manner it is known to both the Zuñi and Tusayan.

Wallace says that eating dirt was "a very common and destructive habit among Indians and half-breeds in the houses of the whites."[472]

"Los apassionados à comer tierra son los Indios Otomacos."[473]

"The earth which is eaten by the Ottomacs [of the Rio Orinoco] is fat and unctuous."[474]

Waitz[475] cites Heusinger as saying that the Ottomacs of the Rio Orinoco eat large quantities of a fatty clay.

Clay was eaten by the Brazilians generally.[476]

The Romans had a dish called "alica" or "frumenta," made of the grain zea mixed with chalk from the hills at Puteoli, near Naples.[477]

According to the myths of the Cingalese, their Brahmins once "fed on it [earth] for the space of 60,000 years."[478]

PREHISTORIC FOODS USED IN COVENANTS.

It has been shown that the Apache, on several occasions, as when going out to meet strangers, entering into solemn agreements, etc., made use of the hoddentin. A similar use of food, generally prehistoric, can be noted in other regions of the world.

It was a kind of superstitious trial used among the Saxons to purge themselves of any accusation by taking a piece of barley bread and eating it with solemn oaths and execrations that it might prove poisonous or their last morsel if what they asserted or denied was not true.[479] Those pieces of bread were first execrated by the priest, from which he infers that at a still earlier day sacramental bread may have been used for the same purpose.

At Rome, in the time of Cicero and Horace, a master who suspected that his slaves had robbed him conducted them before a priest. They were each obliged to eat a cake over which the priest had "pronounced some magical words (_carmine infectum_)."[480]

The people living on the coast of Coramandel have an ordeal consisting in the chewing of unboiled rice. No harm will attach to him who tells the truth, but the perjurer is threatened with condign punishment in this world and in that to come.[481] Bread is bitten when the Ostaaks of Siberia take a solemn oath, such as one of fealty to the Czar.[482]

SACRED BREADS AND CAKES.

Since the employment of hoddentin, or tule pollen, as a sacred commemorative food would seem to have been fairly demonstrated, before closing this section I wish to add a few paragraphs upon the very general existence of ritualistic farinaceous foods in all parts of the world. They can be detected most frequently in the ceremonial reversion to a grain or seed which has passed or is passing out of everyday use in some particular form given to the cake or bread or some circumstance of time, place, and mode of manufacture and consumption which stamps it as a "survival." So deeply impressed was Grimm[483] with the wide horizon spreading around the consideration of this topic that he observed: "Our knowledge of heathen antiquities will gain both by the study of these drinking usages which have lasted into later times and also of the shapes given to _baked meats_, which either retained the actual forms of ancient idols or were accompanied by sacrificial observances. A history of German cakes and bread rolls might contain some unexpected disclosures.... Even the shape of cakes is a reminiscence of the sacrifices of heathenism."

The first bread or cake to be mentioned in this part of the subject is the pancake, still so frequently used on the evening of Shrove Tuesday. In antiquity it can be traced back before the Reformation, before the Crusades were dreamed of, before the Barbarians had subverted Rome, before Rome itself had fairly taken shape.

There seems to have been a very decided religious significance in the preparation of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. In Leicestershire, "On Shrove Tuesday a bell rings at noon, which is meant as a signal for the people to begin frying their pancakes."[484]

"The Norman _Crispellæ_ (Du Cange) are evidently taken from the _Fornacalia_, on the 18th of February, in memory of the method of making bread, before the Goddess _Fornax_ invented ovens."[485]

Under "Crispellæ," Du Cange says: "Rustici apud Normannos vocant Crespes, ova pauca mixta cum farina, et in sartagine frixa," and says that they are "ex herba, farina et oleo."[486] These same Crispellæ are to be seen on the Rio Grande during Christmas week.

In the Greek Church and throughout Russia there is to the present time a "pancake feast" at Shrovetide.[487]

At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend's house to another, masked, and committing every conceivable prank. "Then the people feasted on blinnies--a pancake similar to the English crumpet."[488]

In the pancake we have most probably the earliest form of farinaceous food known to the nations which derived their civilization from the basin of the Mediterranean. Among these nations wheat has been in use from a time far beyond the remotest historical period, and to account for its introduction myth has been invoked; but this wheat was cooked without leaven, or was fried in a pan, after the style of the tortilla still used in Spanish-speaking countries, or of the pancake common among ourselves. Pliny[489] says that there were no bakers known in Rome until nearly six hundred years after the foundation of the city, in the days of the war with Persia; but he perhaps meant the public bakers authorized by law. The use of wheat and the art of baking bread, as we understand it to-day, were practically unknown to the nations of northern Europe until within the recent historical period.[490]

Nothing would be more in consonance with the mode of reasoning of a primitive people than that, at certain designated festivals, there should be a recurrence to the earlier forms of food, a reversion to an earlier mode of life, as a sort of propitiation of the gods or goddesses who had cared for the nation in its infancy and to secure the continuance of their beneficent offices. Primitive man was never so certain of the power of the gods of the era of his own greatest development that he could rely upon it implicitly and exclusively and ignore the deities who had helped him to stand upon his feet. Hence, the recurrence to pancakes, to unleavened breads of all kinds, among various peoples. This view of the subject was made plain to me while among the Zuñi Indians. Mr. Frank H. Cushing showed me that the women, when baking the "loaves" of bread, were always careful to place in the adobe ovens a tortilla with each batch of the newer kind, and no doubt for the reason just given.

UNLEAVENED BREAD.

The unleavened bread of the earliest period of Jewish history has come down to our own times in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, still observed by the Hebrews in all parts of the world, in the bread used in the eucharistic sacrifice by so large a portion of the Christian world, and apparently in some of the usages connected with the half-understood fast known as the "Ember Days." Brand quotes from an old work in regard to the Ember Days: "They were so called 'because that our elder fathers wolde on these days ete no brede but cakes made under ashes.'"[491]

The sacred cake or "draona" of the Parsi "is a small round pancake or wafer of unleavened bread, about the size of the palm of the hand. It is made of wheaten flour and water, with a little clarified butter, and is flexible."[492] A variety of the "draona," called a "frasast," is marked with the finger nail and set aside for the guardian spirits of the departed.[493]

Cakes and salt were used in religious rites by the ancients. The Jews probably adopted their appropriation from the Egyptians.[494] "During all the Passover week--14th to 21st Nisan, i.e., during this week's moon--Shemites fast, only eating unleavened bread, and most diligently--not without reason--cleansing their houses." "And especially had all leavened matter to be removed, for the new leavener had now arisen, and prayers with curses were offered up against any portions which might have escaped observation. The law of their fierce Jahveh was that, whoever during all this festival tasted leavened bread, 'that soul should be cut off,' which Godwyn mollifies by urging that this only meant the offender should die without children; which was still a pretty considerable punishment for eating a piece of bread!"[495]

"The great day of Pentecost is the 6th of Sivan, or, say, the 22d of May, 1874. From the first barley _two loaves_ were then made, 'the offering of which was the distinguishing rite of the day of Pentecost.'"[496]

On St. Bridget's Eve every farmer's wife in Ireland makes a cake, called _bairinbreac_; the neighbors are invited, the madder of ale and the pipe go round, and the evening concludes with mirth and festivity.[497] Vallencey identifies this as the same kind of offering that was made to Ceres, and to "the queen of heaven, to whom the Jewish women burnt incense, poured out drink offerings, and made cakes for her with their own hands."[498]

THE HOT CROSS BUNS OF GOOD FRIDAY.

The belief prevailed that these would not mold like ordinary bread.[499]

"In several counties [in England] a small loaf of bread is annually baked on the morning of Good Friday and then put by till the same anniversary in the ensuing year. This bread is not intended to be eaten, but to be used as a medicine, and the mode of administering it is by grating a small portion of it into water and forming a sort of panada. It is believed to be good for many disorders, but particularly for a diarrhœa, for which it is considered a sovereign remedy. Some years ago a cottager lamented that her poor neighbour must certainly die of this complaint, because she had already given her two doses of Good Friday bread without any benefit. No information could be obtained from the doctress respecting her nostrum, but that she had heard old folks say that it was a good thing and that she always made it."[500]

Brand quotes a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine who shows that they were "formerly, at least, unleavened," p. 156. They "are constantly marked with the form of the cross." "It is an old belief that the observance of the custom of eating buns on Good Friday protects the house from fire, and several other virtues are attributed to these buns," p. 156. "Hutchinson, in his History of Northumberland, following Bryant's Analysis, derives the Good Friday bun from the sacred cakes which were offered at the Arkite Temples, styled Boun, and presented every seventh day," p. 155. A very interesting dissertation upon these sacred cakes as used by the Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews in the time of their idolatry, is to be found in Brand's work, pp. 155-156.[501]

Practices analogous to those referred to are to be noted among the Pueblo Indians. They offer not only the kunque, but bread also in their sacrifices.

In the sacred rabbit hunt of the Zuñi, which occurs four times a year and is carried on for the purpose of procuring meat for the sacred eagles confined in cages, a great fire was made on the crest of a hill, into which were thrown piles of bread crusts and in the smoke of which the boomerangs or rabbit sticks were held while the hunter recited in an audible tone and with downcast head the prayers prescribed for the occasion. One of the early Spanish writers informs us that the women of the pueblo of Santo Domingo, on the Rio Grande, offered bread on bended knees to their idols and then preserved it for the remainder of the year, and the house which did not have a supply of such blessed bread was regarded as unfortunate and exposed to danger.[502]

A prehistoric farinaceous food of the Romans survives in our bridecake or wedding cake. It is well understood that among the Romans there were three kinds of marriage: that called "coemptio," that called "concubitu" or "usu," and the highest form of all, known as "confarratio," from the fact that bride and groom ate together of a kind of cake or bread made of the prehistoric flour, the "far." We have preserved the custom of having bridecake, which is still served with many superstitious ceremonies: "it must be cut by the bride herself; it must be broken in pieces (formerly these pieces were cast over the heads of the bridesmaids), and, after being passed through a wedding ring a certain number of times, it must be placed under the pillow of the anxious maiden to serve as a basis for her dreams."[503]

Exactly what this prehistoric food was it is now an impossibility to determine with exactness. Torquemada shows that long after the Romans had obtained the use of wheat they persisted in the sacrificial use of the "nola isla," "farro," and "escanda," forms of wild grain once roasted and ground and made into bread by their forefathers.[504] A similar usage prevailed among the Greeks. Pliny speaks of "the bearded red wheat, named in Latin 'far,'" and tells us that rye was called "secale" or "farrago."[505] The radical "far" is still to be found all over Europe in the word for flour, "farina," "farine," or "harina," while it is also possible that it may be detected in the ever-to-be-honored name of Farragut.[506]

In the eight marriage rites described by Baudhâyana, the initiatory oblation in the fourth (that in which the father gives his daughter away) consists of "parched grain." This rite is one of the four which are lawful for a Brahman. The parched grain to be used would seem to be either sesamum or barley, although this is not clear. Vasish_th_a says, chapter 27, concerning secret penances: "He who ... uses barley (for his food) becomes pure."[507]

The pages of Brand[508] are filled with references to various forms of cake which seem properly to be included under this chapter. In England there formerly prevailed the custom of preparing "soul cakes" for distribution among visitors to the family on that day and to bands of waifs or singers, who expected them as a dole for praying and singing in the interests of the souls of the dead friends and relatives of the family. On the island of St. Kilda the soul cake was "a large cake in the form of a triangle, furrowed round, and which was to be all eaten that night."[509] In Lancashire and Hertfordshire the cake was made of oatmeal, but in many other parts it was a "seed cake"[510] and in Warwickshire, "at the end of barley and bean seed time, there is a custom there to give the plowmen _froise_, a species of thick pancake."[511] "All-soul cakes" were distributed at time of All Souls' Day.

In England and Scotland the old custom[512] was to have a funeral feast, which all friends and relations were expected to attend. Wine, currant cake, meat, and other refreshments, varying according to the fortune of the family, were served liberally. The bread given out was called "arvil-bread." There is no special reason for believing that this could be called a hoddentin custom, except that the writer himself calls attention to the fact that in the earlier times the bread was in the form of "wafers."[513]

The Romans had a college of priests called the "Fratres Arvales," nine, or, as some say, twelve in number, to whose care were committed the sacrifices in honor of Ceres at the old limits of the city, to propitiate that goddess and induce her to bestow fertility upon the fields. These ceremonies, which are believed by the editor of Bohn's Strabo to survive in the Rogation Day processions of the Roman Catholic Church, recall the notes already taken upon the subject of the Arval bread of the Scotch.[514] The sacrifices themselves were designated "Ambarva" and "Ambarvalia."

In Scotland and England it was customary for bands of singers to go from door to door on New Year's Eve, singing and receiving reward. In the latter country "cheese and oaten cakes, which are called _farls_, are distributed on this occasion among the cryers." In the former country "there was a custom of distributing sweet cakes and a particular kind of sugared bread."[515]

A fine kind of wheat bread called "wassail-bread" formed an important feature of the entertainment on New Year's Day in old England.[516]

Among love divinations may be reckoned the dumb cake, so called because it was to be made without speaking, and afterwards the parties were to go backward up the stairs to bed and put the cake under their pillows, when they were to dream of their lovers.[517]

References to the beal-tine ceremonies of Ireland and Scotland, in which oatmeal gruel figured as a dish, or cakes made of oatmeal and carraway seeds, may be found in Brand, Pop. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 226; in Blount, Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors, London, 1874, p. 131; and in Pennant's Tour in Scotland, in Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. 3, p. 49. In "A Charm for Bewitched Land" we find the mode of making a cake or loaf with holy water.

The mince pie and plum pudding of Christmas are evidently ancient preparations, and it is not unlikely that the shape of the former, which, prior to the Reformation, was that of a child's cradle, had a reminiscence of the sacrifice of babies at the time of the winter solstice. Grimm has taught that where human sacrifice had been abolished the figure of a coffin or a cradle was still used as a symbol.

There is a wide field of information to be gleaned in the investigation of the subject of bean foods at certain periods or festivals of the year, and upon this point I have some notes and memoranda, but, as my present remarks are limited to prehistoric _farinaceous_ foods, I do not wish to add to the bulk of the present chapter.[518]

"Kostia--boiled rice and plums--is the only thing partaken of on Christmas Eve."[519]

GALENA.

At times one may find in the "medicine" of the more prominent and influential of the chiefs and medicine-men of the Apache little sacks which, when opened, are found to contain pounded galena; this they tell me is a "great medicine," fully equal to hoddentin, but more difficult to obtain. It is used precisely as hoddentin is used; that is, both as a face paint and as a powder to be thrown to the sun or other elements to be propitiated. The Apache are reluctant to part with it, and from living Apache I have never obtained more than one small sack of it.

No one seems to understand the reason for its employment. Mr. William M. Beebe has suggested that perhaps the fact that galena always crystallizes in cubes, and that it would thus seem to have a mysterious connection with the cardinal points to which all nomadic peoples pay great attention as being invested with the power of keeping wanderers from going astray, would not be without influence upon the minds of the medicine-men, who are quick to detect and to profit by all false analogies. The conjecture appears to me to be a most plausible one, but I can submit it only as a conjecture, for no explanation of the kind was received from any of the Indians. All that I can say is that whenever procurable it was always used by the Apache on occasions of unusual importance and solemnity and presented as a round disk painted in the center of the forehead.

The significance of all these markings of the face among savage and half-civilized nations is a subject deserving of the most careful research; like the sectarial marks of the Hindus, all, or nearly all, the marks made upon the faces of American Indians have a meaning beyond the ornamental or the grotesque.

Galena was observed in use among the tribes seen by Cabeza de Vaca. "Ils nous donnèrent beaucoup de bourses, contenant des sachets de marcassites et d'antimoine en poudre." ("Taleguillas de margaxita y de alcohol molido.")[520] This word "margaxita" means iron pyrites. The Encyclopædia Britannica says that the Peruvians used it for "amulets;" so also did the Apache. What Vaca took for antimony was pounded galena no doubt. He was by this time in or near the Rocky Mountains.[521]

On the northwest coast of America we read of the natives: "One, however, as he came near, took out from his bosom some iron or lead-colored micaceous earth and drew marks with it across his cheeks in the shape of two pears, stuffed his nostrils with grass, and thrust thin pieces of bone through the cartilage of his nose."[522]

It is more than probable that some of the face-painting with "black earth," "ground charcoal," etc., to which reference is made by the early writers, may have been galena, which substance makes a deep-black mark. The natives would be likely to make use of their most sacred powder upon first meeting with mysterious strangers like Vaca and his companions. So, when the expedition of La Salle reached the mouth of the Ohio, in 1680, the Indians are described as fasting and making superstitious sacrifices; among other things, they marked themselves with "black earth" and with "ground charcoal." "Se daban con Tierra Negra o Carbon molido."[523]

From an expression in Burton, I am led to suspect that the application of kohl or antimony to the eyes of Arabian beauty is not altogether for ornament. "There are many kinds of kohl used in medicine and magic."[524]

Corbusier says of the Apache-Yuma: "Galena and burnt mescal are used on their faces, the former to denote anger or as war paint, being spread all over the face, except the chin and nose, which are painted red."[525]

In Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, London, 1832, page 165, may be found a brief chapter upon the subject of the sectarial marks of the Hindus. With these we may fairly compare the marks which the Apache, on ceremonial occasions, make upon cheeks and forehead. The adherents of the Brahminical sects, before entering a temple, must mark themselves upon the forehead with the tiluk. Among the Vishnuites, this is a longitudinal vermilion line. The Seevites use several parallel lines in saffron.[526] Maurice adds that the Hindus place the tiluk upon their idols in twelve places.[527] "Among the Kaffir the warriors are rendered invulnerable by means of a black cross on their foreheads and black stripes on the cheeks, both painted by the Inyanga, or fetich priest."[528]

A piece of galena weighing 7½ pounds was found in a mound near Naples, Illinois.[529] Occasionally with the bones of the dead are noticed small cubes of galena; and in our collection is a ball of this ore, weighing a pound and two ounces, which was taken from a mound, and which probably did service, enveloped in raw hide, as some form of weapon.[530] Galena was much prized by the former inhabitants of North America. "The frequent occurrence of galena on the altars of the sacrificial mounds proves, at any rate, that the ancient inhabitants attributed a peculiar value to it, deeming it worthy to be offered as a sacrificial gift."[531] See also Squier and Davis.[532]

FOOTNOTES:

[247] Deane, Serpent Worship, London, 1833, p. 410.

[248] The medicine sack or bag of the Apache, containing their "hoddentin," closely resembles the "bullæ" of the Romans--in which "On y mettait des préservatifs contre les maléfices." Musée de Naples, London, 1836, p. 4. Copy shown me by Mr. Spofford, of the Library of Congress.

[249] Information of Tze-go-juni.

[250] Information of Concepcion.

[251] See notes, a few pages farther on, from Kohl; also those from Godfrey Higgins. The word "opé" suggests the name the Tusayan have for themselves, Opi, or Opika, "bread people."

[252] Information of Tze-go-juni.

[253] Information of Mike Burns.

[254] Information of Mickey Free.

[255] Information of Alchise, Mike, and others.

[256] Information of Francesca and other captive Chiricahua squaws.

[257] Information of Moses Henderson.

[258] Information of Chato.

[259] Information of Tze-go-juni.

[260] Information of Moses Henderson and other Apache at San Carlos.

[261] Bureau of Ethnology, Report for 1883-'84.

[262] Information of Francesca and others.

[263] Information of Tze-go-juni.

[264] Smart, in Smithsonian Report for 1867, p. 419.

[265] Snake Dance of Moquis of Arizona, New York, 1884.

[266] In the third volume of Kingsborough, on plate 17 (Aztec picture belonging to M. Pejernavy, Pesth, Hungary), an Aztec, probably a priest, is shown offering food to a snake, which eats it out of his hand.

[267] Corbusier, in American Antiquarian, November, 1886, pp. 336-37.

[268] Information of Moses Henderson.

[269] American Antiquarian, Sept. and Nov., 1886.

[270] Ann. Rep. Bu. Eth., 1883-'84.

[271] Snake Dance of the Moquis.

[272] Interview with Pedro Pino.

[273] Kunque has added to the cornmeal the meal of two varieties of corn, blue and yellow, a small quantity of pulverized sea shells, and some sand, and when possible a fragment of the blue stone called "chalchihuitl." In grinding the meal on the metates the squaws are stimulated by the medicine-men who keep up a constant singing and drumming.

[274] Simpson, Expedition to the Navajo Country, in Senate Doc. 64, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 1849-'50, p. 95.

[275] Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. 3, p. 470. "Echavan mucha harina de maiz por el suelo para que la pisassen los caballos."--Padre Fray Juan Gonzales de Mendoza, De las Cosas de Chino, etc., Madrid, 1586, p. 172. See also the Relacion of Padre Fray Alonso Fernandez, Historia Eclesiastica de Nuestros Tiempos, Toledo, 1611, pp. 15, 16.

[276] P. 162.

[277] Diego Duran, vol. 2, cap. 49, pp. 506, 507.

[278] Herrera, dec. 5., lib. 4, cap. 5, p. 92.

[279] Padre Christoval de Molina, Fables and Rites of the Yncas, translated by Markham in Hakluyt Soc. Trans., vol. 48, p. 63, London, 1873.

[280] Montesinos, pp. 161, 162, in Ternaux-Compans, vol. 17, Mémoires sur l'ancien Pérou.

[281] Relation of the voyage of Don Fernando Alarcon, in Hakluyt Voyages, vol. 3, p. 508.

[282] Alarcon in Ternaux-Compans, Voy., vol. 9, p. 330. See also in Hakluyt Voyages, vol. 3, p. 516.

[283] Kitchi-gami, London, 1860, p. 51.

[284] See also on the subject Acosta, Hist. Naturelle des Indes, lib. 5, cap. 19, p. 241.

[285] Landa, Cosas de Yucatan, Paris, 1864, page 148.

[286] Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 2, p. 145. See also Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico, Philadelphia, 1817, vol. 2, p. 128.

[287] Smith, Araucanians, 1855, pp. 274-275.

[288] Smith, True Travels, Adventures and Observations, Richmond, 1819, vol. 1, p. 161.

[289] Cérémonies et Coûtumes, Amsterdam, 1735, vol. 6, p. 74.

[290] Historia de las Indias, p. 284.

[291] Colonial Records of North Carolina, 1886, vol. 1, p. 930.

[292] Mœurs des Sauvages, Paris, 1724, vol. 1, p. 386.

[293] Personal notes of May 26, 1881; conversation with Chi and Damon at Fort Defiance. Navajo Agency, Arizona.

[294] Ibid.

[295] Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, p. 160.

[296] Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, vol. 4, p. 213.

[297] Columbus Letters, in Hakluyt Soc. Works, London, 1847, vol. 2, p. 192.

[298] Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, p. 279.

[299] The medicine-men of the Swampy Crees, as described in Bishop of Rupert's Land's works, quoted by Henry Youle Hind, Canadian Exploring Expedition, vol. 1, p. 113.

[300] Personal notes, November 22, 1885, at Baker's ranch, summit of the Sierra Ancha, Arizona.

[301] Tanner's Narrative, p. 174.

[302] Blount, Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors, London, 1874, p. 355.

[303] Brand, Popular Antiquities, London, 1882, vol. 3, pp. 307 et seq.

[304] Crónica Seráfica, p. 434.

[305] Nicolas Perrot, Mœurs, Coustumes et Relligion des sauvages de l'Amérique Septentrionale (Ed. of Rev. P. J. Tailhan, S.J.,) Leipzig, 1864. Perrot was a coureur de bois, interpreter, and donné of the Jesuit missions among the Ottawa, Sioux, Iowa, etc., from 1665 to 1701.

[306] Leems', Account of Danish Lapland, in Pinkerton's Voyages, London, 1814, vol. 1, p. 484.

[307] Across Africa, London, 1877, vol. 1, p. 277.

[308] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 118, 120.

[309] Source of the Nile, London, 1863, introd., p. xxi.

[310] Cameron, Across Africa, London, 1877, vol. 2, p. 201.

[311] Source of the Nile, London, 1863, pp. 130, 259.

[312] Dark Continent, vol. 2, p. 260.

[313] Schultze, Fetichism, New York, 1885, p. 53.

[314] Ibid., footnote, page 53.

[315] Ibid., p. 67.

[316] Asiatick Researches, Calcutta, 1805, vol. 8, p. 78.

[317] Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, London, 1832, p. 44.

[318] History of the Sect of the Mahárájahs, quoted by Inman, Ancient Faiths, etc., vol. 1, p. 393.

[319] Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. 1, p. 261.

[320] Picart, Cérémonies et Coûtumes, etc., vol. 6, part 2, p. 119.

[321] Among the Mongols, London, 1883, p. 179.

[322] Wright, Sorcery and Magic, London, 1851, vol. 1, p. 346.

[323] Anacalypsis, vol. 2, p. 244.

[324] Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 161.

[325] Source of the Nile, London, 1863, pp. 205, 208.

[326] Sahagun, vol. 2, in Kingsborough, vol. 6, p. 29.

[327] Forlong, Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 184.

[328] Ibid., pp. 185, 186.

[329] Ibid., p. 186.

[330] Dec. 6, lib. 1, p. 9.

[331] Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, vol. 7, pp. 242, 250.

[332] Relation of Cabeza de Vaca in Purchas, vol. 4, lib. 8, cap. 1, sec. 4, p. 1524.

[333] Conquest of New Mexico, p. 100.

[334] Ensayo Cronologico, pp. 12 et seq.

[335] See also on this point Corbusier, in American Antiquarian, November, 1886.

[336] Rau's translation in Smithsonian Ann. Rep., 1863, p. 364.

[337] Probably the Lake of Parras.

[338] Historia de la Compañía de Jesus en Nueva-España, vol. 1, p. 284.

[339] History of Virginia.

[340] See also article by J. Howard Gore, Smithsonian Report, 1881.

[341] Pinkerton, Voyages, London, 1814, vol. 13, p. 468.

[342] Personal notes, April 5, 1881.

[343] Drake, World Encompassed, pp. 124-126, quoted by H. H. Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 1, pp. 387-388. (This chaplain stated so many things ignorantly that nothing is more probable than that he attempted to describe, without seeing it, the plant from which the Indians told him that hoddentin (or downe) was obtained. The principal chief or "king" would, on such an awe-inspiring occasion as meeting with strange Europeans, naturally want to cover himself and followers with all the hoddentin the country afforded.)

[344] Kennan, Tent Life in Siberia, p. 66.

[345] Quoted by Kingsborough, vol. 6, p. 100.

[346] Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, vol. 2, lib. 10, cap. 22, p. 274.

[347] Gallatin, in Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc., vol. 1, pp. 117-118.

[348] Vetancurt, Teatro Mexicano, vol. 1, p. 271.

[349] Mœurs des Sauvages, vol. 2, pp. 194, 195.

[350] Madrid, 1870, vol. 14, p. 320.

[351] Ibid.

[352] Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, vol. 9, p. 159.

[353] Among others consult Crónica Seráfica y Apostolica of Espinosa, Mexico, 1746, p. 419, speaking of the Asinai of Texas in 1700: "Siembran tambien cantidad de Gyrasoles que se dan muy corpulentos y la flor muy grande que en el centro tienen la semilla como de piñones y de ella mixturada con el maiz hacen un bollo que es de mucho sabor y sustancia."

[354] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nations Civilisées, quoted by Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 3, p. 421.

[355] Sahagun, in book 7, Kingsborough, p. 71.

[356] Squier, Serpent Symbol, p. 193, quoting Torquemada, lib. 7, cap. 8.

[357] History of Mexico, Philadelphia, 1817, vol. 2, p. 79. See the additional note from Clavigero, which would seem to show that this etzalli was related to the espadaña or rush.

[358] Monarchia Indiana, vol. 2, lib. 6, cap. 38, p. 71.

[359] Ibid., p. 72.

[360] Ibid., p. 73.

[361] Dec. 3, lib. 2, pp. 71, 72.

[362] Native Races, vol. 3, p. 323.

[363] Diego Duran, vol. 3, p. 187.

[364] See notes already given from Buckingham Smith's translation of Vaca.

[365] Diego Duran, vol. 3, p. 195.

[366] José Acosta, Hist. des Indes, ed. of Paris, 1600, liv. 5, cap. 24, p. 250.

[367] Monarchia Indiana, lib. 10, cap. 33.

[368] Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 48.

[369] From Paris to Pekin, London, 1885, pp. 312, 313.

[370] New York, 1830, p. 191.

[371] Dubois, People of India, London, 1817, p. 490.

[372] Gomara, Historia de Méjico, p. 445.

[373] Mendieta, Hist. Eclesiástica Ind., p. 108.

[374] Ibid., p. 402.

[375] Ibid., p. 515.

[376] Gomara, Historia de Méjico, p. 446.

[377] From the account of lecture appearing in the Evening Star, Washington, D. C., May 19, 1888.

[378] Herrera, dec. 5, lib. 4, cap. 5, p. 92.

[379] Balboa, Histoire du Pérou, in Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, vol. 15, pp. 124 and 127.

[380] See the explanatory text to the Codex Mendoza, in Kingsborough, vol. 5, p. 90 et seq.

[381] Historia de Méjico, p. 439.

[382] Clavigero, History of Mexico, Philadelphia, 1817, vol. 2, p. 101.

[383] "They strewed the temple in a curious way with rushes."--Ibid., p. 78.

[384] Native Races, vol. 3, pp. 334-343.

[385] Sahagun, in Kingsborough, vol. 7, p. 16.

[386] British Monachism, London, 1817, p. 289.

[387] Kingsborough, vol. 7, p. 83, from Sahagun.

[388] Ximenez, Guatemala, Translated by Scherzer, p. 13.

[389] Cérémonies et Coûtumes, etc., vol. 1, p. 27.

[390] "Tanta diferencia de manjares y de géneros de pan que era cosa estraña."--Diego Duran, vol. 3, cap. 4, p. 219.

[391] Davis, Conquest of New Mexico, p. 273.

[392] Commerce of the Prairies, vol. 2, p. 54.

[393] Pacific R. R. Report, 1856, vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 34.

[394] Ibid., p. 34.

[395] Ibid., p. 38.

[396] "Los Apaches traian pieles de cibolas, gamuzas y otras cosas, á hacer cambio por maíz." "Venian con sus recuas de perros cargados mas de quinientos mercaderes cada año."--Teatro Mexicano, vol. 3, p. 323.

[397] In burlesque survivals the use of flour prevails not only all over Latin Europe, but all such portions of America as are now or have been under Spanish or Portuguese domination. The breaking of eggshells over the heads of gentlemen upon entering a Mexican ball room is one manifestation of it. Formerly the shell was filled with flour.

[398] Dr. W. Norton Whitney, Notes from the History of Medical Progress in Japan. Yokohama, 1885, p. 248.

[399] The prayer of a Navajo Shaman, in American Anthropologist, vol. 1, No. 2, 1888, p. 169.

[400] Kitchi-gami, pp. 416, 423, 424.

[401] Anacalypsis, London, 1836, vol. 2, pp. 242-244.

[402] Brand, Pop. Antiq., vol. 3, p. 285.

[403] Ibid., vol. 1, p. 69.

[404] Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 329 et seq.

[405] Brinton, Myths of the New World, New York, 1868, pp. 278, 279.

[406] Ximenez, Guatemala, p. 177.

[407] Herrera, dec. 4, lib. 9, cap. 8, p. 188.

[408] Balboa, Hist. du Pérou, in Ternaux-Compans, Voy., vol. 15, p. 29.

[409] Mendieta, Hist. Eclesiástica Ind., p. 110.

[410] Henry Youle Hind, Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exped., vol. 2, pp. 165, 166.

[411] Lisiansky, Voyage Round the World, London, 1814, pp. 158, 221, 223.

[412] London, 1814, pt. 2, pl. III, p. 113.

[413] Ibid., pl. IV, pp. 194, 195.

[414] Voyage, vol. 1, p. 282.

[415] Native Races, vol. 1, p. 179.

[416] Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 170, 171.

[417] Père Louis Hennepin, Voyage, etc., Amsterdam, 1714, pp. 339-240. Ibid., translated by B. F. French, in Historical Collections of Louisiana, pt. 1, 1846.

[418] Joutel's Journal, in Historical Collections of Louisiana, tr. by B. F. French, pp. 181, 1846.

[419] Maj. Rogers, Account of North America, in Knox's Voyages, vol. 2, London, 1767, p. 167.

[420] Picart, Cérémonies et Coûtumes Religieuses, etc., Amsterdam, 1735, vol. 6, p. 77.

[421] Ibid., p. 89.

[422] John De Laet, lib. 18, cap. 4; Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, p. 203; Padre Gumilla, Orinoco, pp. 68, 96.

[423] Hans Staden, in Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, vol. 3, pp. 269, 299.

[424] Peter Martyr, in Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. 5, p. 460.

[425] Bancroft, Nat. Races of the Pacific Slope, vol. 1, p. 750.

[426] Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 1, p. 73; vol. 2, p. 302. See also Carteret's description of the natives of the Queen Charlotte Islands, visited by him in 1767.

[427] Hawkesworth, Voyages, vol. 1, p. 379.

[428] Perry S. Heath, A Hoosier in Russia, New York, 1888, p. 114.

[429] Fosbrooke, British Monachism, p. 442.

[430] See works cited in Buckle's Common place Book, vol. 2, of "Works," London, 1872, p. 47.

[431] Picart, Cérémonies et Coûtumes Religieuses, vol. 6, p. 20.

[432] Voyage Round the World, London, 1777, pp. 462, 463.

[433] Archibald Campbell, Voyage Round the World, N. Y., 1819, p. 136.

[434] Voyage of La Pérouse, London, 1829, vol. 2, p. 275.

[435] Peter Kolben's Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, in Knox's Voyage and Travels, London, 1767, vol. 2, pp. 391, 395, 406, 407.

[436] Ibid., p. 406.

[437] Spencer, Desc. Sociology, art. "Abipones."

[438] Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872, vol. 1, p. 423.

[439] Fosbrooke, British Monachism, p. 83.

[440] Gaule, Mag-astromancers Posed and Puzzel'd, p. 165, quoted in Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 3, pp. 329 et seq.

[441] Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 1, pp. 337, 338.

[442] Laird and Oldfield's Expedition into the Interior of Africa, quoted in Buckle's Common place Book, p. 466.

[443] Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 2, p. 273.

[444] Gayarre, Louisiana, 1851, p. 308.

[445] Notes and Queries, 4th ser., vol. 8, p. 505.

[446] Tractatus de Fascinatione, Nuremberg, 1675, 197.

[447] Southey, quoting Ward, in Buckle's Common place Book, London, 1849, 2d ser., p. 521.

[448] North American, October 27, 1888.

[449] Kingsborough, vol. 5, p. 198.

[450] Serpent Symbols, p. 55.

[451] Hist. de Méjico, p. 348.

[452] Lib. 2, cap. 47, p. 490.

[453] Lib. 1, cap. 18, p. 208.

[454] New Survey of the West Indies, London, 1648, p. 51.

[455] Op. cit., vol. 3, cap. 4.

[456] Popol-Vuh (Brasseur de Bourbourg), p. 65.

[457] Ternaux-Compans, Voy., vol. 7, p. 143.

[458] Ibid., p. 202.

[459] Purchas, vol. 4, lib. 8, cap. 1, p. 1519; also, Davis, Conquest of New Mexico, p. 84.

[460] Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, p. 182.

[461] Buckingham Smith, Coleccion de Varios Documentos para la Historia de Florida, London, 1857, vol. 1, p. 46.

[462] Bollaert, Researches in South America, London, 1860, p. 63.

[463] Boscana, Chinigchinich, pp. 245, 253.

[464] Powers, Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., vol. 3, p. 140.

[465] Long's Expedition, vol. 1, p. 240.

[466] Second Expedition to the Polar Sea, p. 19.

[467] Oregon Missions, p. 192.

[468] Gmelin, quoted by Southey, in Common place Book, 1st ser., London, 1849, p. 239.

[469] Malte-Brun, Univ. Geog., Philadelphia, 1827, vol. 1, lib. 87, p. 483.

[470] Von Wrangel, Polar Expedition, New York, 1842, p. 188.

[471] Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 1, p. xxxiv.

[472] Travels on the Amazon, p. 311.

[473] Gumilla, Orinoco, Madrid, 1741, p. 102; the Guamas, also, ibid., pp. 102 and 108.

[474] Malte-Brun, Univ. Geog., Phila., 1827, vol. 3, lib. 87, p. 323.

[475] Anthropology, vol. 1, p. 116.

[476] Spencer, Desc. Sociology.

[477] Pliny, Nat. History, lib. 18, cap. 29.

[478] Asiatick Researches, Calcutta, 1801, vol. 7, p. 440.

[479] Blount, Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors, London, 1874, p. 2233.

[480] Salverte, Philosophy of Magic, vol. 2, p. 140.

[481] Voyage of Capt. Amasa Delano, Boston, 1847, p. 230. Compare with the ordeal of Scotch conspirators, who ate a fragment of barley bread together.

[482] Gauthier de la Peyronie, Voyages de Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. 4, p. 75.

[483] Teutonic Mythology, vol. 1, p. 63.

[484] Macaulay quoted in Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. 1, p. 85.

[485] Fosbrooke, British Monachism, p. 83.

[486] Du Cange, Glossarium, articles "Crispellæ" and "Crespellæ."

[487] Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. 1, p. 88.

[488] Heath, A Hoosier in Russia, p. 109.

[489] Nat. Hist., lib. 18, cap. 28.

[490] Wheat, which, is now the bread corn of twelve European nations and is fast supplanting maize in America and several inferior grains in India, was no doubt widely grown in the prehistoric world. The Chinese cultivated it 2700 B. C. as a gift direct from Heaven; the Egyptians attributed its origin to Isis and the Greeks to Ceres. A classic account of the distribution of wheat over the primeval world shows that Ceres, having taught her favorite Triptolemus agriculture and the art of bread-making, gave him her chariot, a celestial vehicle which he used in useful travels for the purpose of distributing corn to all nations.

Ancient monuments show that the cultivation of wheat had been established in Egypt before the invasion of the shepherds, and there is evidence that more productive varieties of wheat have taken the place of one, at least, of the ancient sorts. Innumerable varieties exist of common wheat. Colonel Le Couteur, of Jersey, cultivated 150 varieties; Mr. Darwin mentions a French gentleman who had collected 322 varieties, and the great firm of French seed merchants, Vilmorin-Andrieux et C^{ie}, cultivate about twice as many in their trial ground near Paris. In their recent work on Les meilleurs blés M. Henry L. de Vilmorin has described sixty-eight varieties of best wheat, which he has classed into seven groups, though these groups can hardly be called distinct species, since M. Henry L. de Vilmorin has crossbred three of them, _Triticum vulgare_, _Triticum turgidum_ and _Triticum durum_, and has found the offspring fertile.

Three small-grained varieties of common wheat were cultivated by the first lake dwellers of Switzerland (time of Trojan war), as well as by the less ancient lake dwellers of western Switzerland and of Italy, by the people of Hungary in the stone age, and by the Egyptians, on evidence of a brick of a pyramid in which a grain was embedded and to which the date of 3359 B. C. has been assigned.

The existence of names for wheat in the most ancient languages confirms this evidence of the antiquity of its culture in all the more temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but it seems improbable that wheat has ever been found growing persistently in a wild state, although the fact has often been asserted by poets, travelers, and historians. In the Odyssey, for example, we are told that wheat grew in Sicily without the aid of man, but a blind poet could not have seen this himself, and a botanical fact can hardly be accepted from a writer whose own existence has been contested. Diodorus repeats the tradition that Osiris found wheat and barley growing promiscuously in Palestine, but neither this nor other discoveries of persistent wild wheat seem to us to be credible, seeing that wheat does not appear to be endowed with a power of persistency except under culture.--Edinburgh Review.

The origin of baking precedes the period of history and is involved in the obscurity of the early ages of the human race. Excavations made in Switzerland gave evidence that the art of making bread was practiced by our prehistoric ancestors as early as the stone period. From the shape of loaves it is thought that no ovens were used at that time, but the dough was rolled into small round cakes and laid on hot stones, being covered with glowing ashes. Bread is mentioned in the book of Genesis, where Abraham, wishing to entertain three angels, offered to "fetch a morsel of bread." Baking is again referred to where Sarah has instructions to "make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it and make cakes upon the hearth." Lot entertained two angels by giving them unleavened bread. The mere mention of unleavened bread shows that there were two kinds of bread made even at that time.

The art of baking was carried on to a high perfection among the Egyptians, who are said to have baked cakes in many fantastic shapes, using several kinds of flour. The Romans took up the art of baking, and public bakeries were numerous on the streets of Rome. In England the business of the baker was considered to be one so closely affecting the interests of the public that in 1266 an act of Parliament was passed regulating the price to be charged for bread. This regulation continued in operation until 1822 in London and until 1836 in the rest of the country. The art of making bread has not yet reached some countries in Europe and Asia. In the rural parts of Sweden no bread is made, but rye cakes are baked twice a year and are as hard as flint. It is less than a century ago that bread was used in Scotland, the Scotch people of every class living on barley bannocks and oaten cakes.--Chicago News.

[491] Pop. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 96.

[492] Shâyast lâ-Shâyast, par. 32, note 6, pp. 283, 284 (Max Müller's ed., Oxford, 1880).

[493] Ibid., p. 315, note 3.

[494] "And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour" (Levit., II, 4); "With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt" (Ibid., 13)--Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. 2, p. 82.

[495] Forlong, Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 441.

[496] Ibid., p. 447.

[497] Brand, Pop. Antiq., vol. 1, pp. 345, 346, quoting Gen. Vallencey's Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language.

[498] Ibid., p. 345.

[499] Ibid., p. 154.

[500] Ibid., pp. 155, 156.

[501] See also "Buns" in Inman's Ancient Faiths.

[502] "Ofrecian el pan al ídolo, hincados de rodillas. Bendezianlo los sacerdotes, y repartian como pan bendito, con lo qual se acabaua la fiesta. Guardauan aquel pan todo el año, teniendo por desdichada, y sugeta a muchos peligros la casa que sin el estaua."--Padre Fray Alonso Fernandez (Dominican). Historia Eclesiastica de Nuestros Tiempos, Toledo, 1611, p. 16.

[503] Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 2, pp. 100 et seq., quoting Blount, Moffet, and Moresin.

[504] Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, vol. 2, lib. 7, cap. 9, p. 100.

[505] Nat. Hist., lib. xviii, caps 10 et seq. and 39.

[506] "Var (from the Hebrew word _var frumentum_) Grain. It not only means a particular kind of grain, between wheat and barley, less nourishing than the former, but more so than the latter, according to Vossius; but it means bread corn, grain of any kind. Ætius gives this application to any kind of frumentaceous grain, decorticated, cleansed from the husks, and afterwards bruised and dried." London Medical Dictionary, Bartholomew Parr, M. D., Philadelphia, 1820, article "Far".

"_Ador_ or _Athor_ was the most sacred wheat, without beard, offered at adoration of gods. In Latin _Adorea_ was a present of such after a victory, and _Ad-oro_ is 'I adore,' from _oro_, 'I pray to.'"--Forlong, Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 473, footnote, speaking of both Greeks and Romans.

[507] Sacred Books of the East, edition of Max Müller, vol. 14, pp. 131, 205.

[508] Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 1, pp. 391 et seq., article "Allhallow even."

[509] Ibid., p. 391.

[510] Ibid., p. 392.

[511] Ibid., p. 393.

[512] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 237 et seq.

[513] Ibid., p. 244.

[514] Strabo, Geography, Bohn's edition, London, 1854, vol. 1, pp. 341, 342, footnote.

[515] Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 1, p. 460.

[516] Ibid., p. 7.

[517] Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, pp. 3, 180. On the same page: "Dumb cake, a species of dreaming bread prepared by unmarried females with ingredients traditionally suggested in witching doggerel. When baked, it is cut into three divisions; a part of each to be eaten and the remainder put under the pillow. When the clock strikes twelve, each votary must go to bed backwards and keep a profound silence, whatever may appear."

[518] A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1783, inquires: "May not the _minced pye_, a compound of the choicest productions of the East, have in view the offerings made by the wise men who came from afar to worship, bringing _spices_, etc." Quoted in Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. 1, p. 526. The mince pie was before the Reformation made in the form of a crib, to represent the manger in which the holy child lay in the stable. Ibid., p. 178.

[519] Heath, A Hoosier in Russia, p. 109.

[520] Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, in Ternaux-Compans, Voy., vol. 7, p. 220.

[521] See also Davis, Conquest of New Mexico, p. 90.

[522] William Coxe, Russian Discoveries between Asia and America, London, 1803, p. 57, quoting Steller.

[523] Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, Madrid, 1723.

[524] Arabian Nights, Burton's edition, vol. 8, p. 10, footnote.

[525] American Antiquarian, September, 1886, p. 281.

[526] Maurice, Indian Antiquities, London, 1801, vol. 5, pp. 82 and 83.

[527] Ibid., vol. 5, p. 85.

[528] Schultze, Fetichism, N. Y., 1885, p. 32.

[529] Paper by Dr. John G. Henderson on "Aboriginal remains near Naples, Ill.," Smith. Rept., 1882.

[530] J. F. Snyder, "Indian remains in Cass County, Illinois," Smith. Rept., 1881, p. 575.

[531] Rau, in Sm. Rept., 1872, p. 356.

[532] "Ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley," in Smithsonian Contributions, vol. 1, p. 160.