Part 1

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THE TUSAYAN RITUAL: A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON ABORIGINAL CULTS.

BY

J. WALTER FEWKES.

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FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1895, PAGES 683-700 (WITH PLATES LXX-LXXIII).

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WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1896.

THE TUSAYAN RITUAL: A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON ABORIGINAL CULTS.[1]

─────── By J. WALTER FEWKES. ───────

Footnote 1:

Saturday lecture in the Assembly Hall of the United States National Museum, May 16, 1896.

The science called ethnology claims as its field of research the study of all racial characteristics of man. It deals not only with his physical features, social grouping, and geographical distribution, but also with the products of his hand and mind, his thoughts and feelings. No race or individual is so low in the scale of being as to be utterly devoid of some idea of the supernatural, and as this is a universal human characteristic it is naturally one of the subjects which presents itself for study by the ethnologist. The study of the evolution of supernatural ideas, like that of all other human characters, ought not to be limited to a few favored races, nor should the term “religion,” in its scientific use, be restricted to any group or race of man. It must be broad enough to embrace the supernatural conceptions of all men, low and high in the scale. No poor or insignificant grouping of men and women should be regarded too wretched to be studied, and the scientific man can not overlook any if he is loyal to scientific methods. A generalization which is built on limited knowledge of the religious characteristics of a few men or those of gifted races will as surely fail as a general law of linguistics based on the language of any one of the great races to the neglect of others. There was a time when naturalists overlooked the lowest animals in their studies of the evolution of organic life, but now it is universally recognized by biologists that we must look to the most inferior animals for a solution of many problems connected with the highest. In studies of the development of the supernatural in the mind of man the same thing is true. The laws of the evolution of religious thought can not be scientifically studied if the culture of primitive man is neglected. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the roots of some of the purest spiritual conceptions reach far down into savage and barbarous stages of culture.

We are accustomed to designate the crude supernatural ideas of savage and barbarous peoples as cults, and every cult will be found on examination to be composed of two complemental parts, known as mythology and ritual. Around the former group themselves the various beliefs regarding the supernatural, and about the latter the processes by which man approaches and influences these supernal conceptions. This bifid strand runs through all supernatural ideas, from those of the savage to the civilized man. As nature has thus united them, they must always be considered together in scientific studies. We have seen in one of the previous lectures of this course how certain arts of man are affected by environment. I shall endeavor to show a connection between ceremonial practices and climatic conditions, which are, I take it, essential factors of environment. For an illustration, I have chosen the influence of an arid climate upon the ritual of one cluster of American Indians.

There are certain common components of all cults which are as widely spread as the races of man and exist independently of surroundings, while there are others which are profoundly affected by environment. Our subject especially deals with the latter, and as the ritual is capable of more exact scientific analysis, I have in mind to discuss the modifications in it which can be traced to purely climatic causes.

To simplify the elements of the problem we must choose not only a primitive form of ritual, but also as far as possible one which has been but slightly modified by the introduction of foreign influences, and hence other environments. We must avoid as much as possible complexity due to composition. It is a very difficult task to determine the aboriginal cults of any primitive people, for modifications resulting from contact with other races are present almost everywhere we turn.

Every cluster or grouping of men known to me is composite in its character. Yet the task is not wholly hopeless or beyond our powers. The work before the American student is facilitated by the fact that we have still living in our country surviving members of the American race who, on account of isolation, have been slightly modified by foreign influences. I wish this afternoon to call your attention to one of these, and to discuss the influences which environment has exerted on their ritual.

The people concerning whom I shall speak are commonly called the Mokis, although they prefer to be known as the Hopi. They live in a region of Arizona, which from its discovery in the middle of the sixteenth century, has been designated Tusayan. The Hopi or Tusayan Indians belong to the so-called village or pueblo people—the peculiar culture of prehistoric Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. While what I shall say especially concerns one group, it may in a general way be applied to the culture of a wide territory called the pueblo area of the southwestern part of the United States. In a natural sequence a discussion of the effect of environment would follow a statement of the distinctive characters of the physical features which characterize surroundings; and in order that you may have an idea of the climatic conditions of Tusayan, let us take a few moments to consider these peculiarities of the environment. In physical features this province is a part of the great arid zone of the Rocky Mountains, to which in former times was given the name of Great American Desert. It lies in the northeastern part of Arizona, about 90 miles from the nearest village of white men on the south and about the same distance east of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. On all sides it is isolated by dry deserts, a dreary extent of mountains, mesas, and arid plains about 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. No permanent streams of water refresh these parched canyons or fields, and the surroundings of this isolated tribe, organic and inorganic, belong to those characteristic of desert environment. The rains are limited in quantity—liable to fail at planting times, although later in the summer pouring down in copious torrents, that fill the depression by which the water is rapidly carried away from the thirsty fields. Springs of permanent water are small and weak, and when abundant, poor and hardly potable. In this unpromising land a few less than 2,000 Indians strive to maintain themselves by agriculture from a barren sandy soil which a white farmer would despise.

Nor is the unremunerative soil the only hostile environment with which this industrious race of aboriginal farmers has had to contend. Incoming marauders, in the form of nomadic enemies, have from prehistoric times harassed them, preyed on their farms, and forced them to adopt inaccessible mesa tops, high above their fields, for protection. Perched on these rocky eminences they have erected seven stone villages in so clever a way that they seem to be a part of the cliffs. Animals in desert surroundings as a protective device have taken on the color of the soil, but these men have built their towns in the cliffs so deftly that they seem to be parts of the mesas themselves. They have succeeded well in this protective device, due to environment, for at a distance the pueblos are indistinguishable from the cliffs on which they stand.

I need not dwell on the forbidding aspect of the mesa tops on which these villages are built. Not a sprig of verdure, drop of water, or fragment of fuel is to be found upon them. If there is one physical feature which may be said to characterize Tusayan, it is the paucity of water, or rather its unequal distribution in different seasons of the year.

The character of animal life is also significant, for it is of such a nature as to exert a profound influence. A race dependent on animal food alone would have starved for game. The great ruminants, as the bison, which more than any other animal influenced the culture of the Indians of the great plains of the Mississippi, never visited this region. No domesticated animals made pastoral culture possible. There were small rodents, many rabbits and hares, and a scanty supply of antelope in distant mountains. Unpromising as was the soil for agriculture, the resources of the hunter were much less, and in this region man was forced to become an agriculturist.

It is, therefore, clear that the sedentary agricultural life of the Tusayan Indian is the direct result of organic and inorganic surroundings. Forced from some reason unknown to me to live in a land where animals were so few that he could not subsist from the products of the chase, he found a possible food supply in plant life, and he accepted the inevitable. He adopted the life which environment dictated,[2] and accepting things as they were, worked out his culture on the only possible lines of development. He raised crops of maize, melons, and beans, cultivated and harvested various grains, but at times when other things failed found food in cacti and the meal of piñon nuts. Accepting the inevitable, man’s ritual became a mirror of that part of his environment which most intimately affected his necessities. The irregularity of the rains, and the possibility that the corn may not grow, developed the ritual in the direction indicated. As long as the processes of nature go on without change, no special rain or growth ceremonials would develop. In a bountiful soil which never fails the farmer, where the seed dropped in the ground is sure to germinate, and the rains are constant, no ritual would originate to bring about what was sure to come. But let natural processes be capricious, awake in a primitive mind the fear that these processes may not recur, let him become conscious that the rains may not come, and he evolves a ritual to prevent its failure. He is absolutely driven to devise ceremonials by which to affect those supernatural beings whom he believes cause the rain and the growth of his crops. The cults of a primitive people are products of their necessities, and they become complicated as the probability of their needs not being met are uncertain. The two needs which sorely pressed the Hopi farmer were rain to water his crops and the growth and maturity of his corn. My problem, therefore, is to show by illustrations that the two components, rain making and growth ceremonials, characterize the Tusayan ritual, as aridity is the epitome of the distinctive climatic features of the region in which it has been developed.

Footnote 2:

For a discussion of the relations between highest stages of culture in aboriginal America and arid climate, see my article on Summer Ceremonials at Zuñi and Moqui Pueblos, Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol. XXII, Nos. 7, 8, 9. Salem, Mass.

There are, as before stated, certain elemental components of all cults which are as widespread as man, and apparently exist independently of climatic conditions. These elements are psychical, subjective, and occur wherever man lives in deserts, islands, forests, plains, under every degree of latitude and temperature. A more profound philosophical analysis than I can make may resolve even these into effects of environment, but their universality would seem to show that they are not due to the special climatic condition of aridity characteristic of Tusayan. I do not regard it pertinent to my discussion to attempt to explain their origin, but we can better appreciate the Tusayan ritual.

The genus _Homo_, emerging from genera of animals, most of which were timorous and bodily weak, inherited from them a wonder and fear at anything unusual or uncanny. This dawning intelligence, influenced by such sentiments as wonder, fear, hope, and love, reached that mental condition when, as pointed out by King, it ascribed all happenings about itself to luck.[3] His heritage was a mind unable to separate the normal from the abnormal, and everything to such a mind is mysterious, and all nature is regarded as living, but we can hardly suppose that in that condition it deified or saw gods in everything. Man understood the causes of few of the mysteries about him, and felt himself at the caprice of chance. He was a consistent fatalist, overlooking good, for that was normal, but associating the bad with chance. In this early condition a stage of supernaturalism called fetishism, or the use of charms, spells, amulets, mascots of various kinds to control chance, arose. As far as I know, no race has wholly outgrown this condition, and the lower we descend in the scale of humanity, either historically in our own race, or ethnographically among savages, the relative predominance of fetishism increases. There is no more constant element, none following the same law of increase; the present forms of monotheism have the least, the lowest savage the most. While at present there survives no people so degraded that fetishism is the only cult, those nearest that stage are the lowest in mental, moral, and social attainments. I need not remind you that at that early stage a fetish was not an idol, it may or may not have had a regular form; a stone, a root, an amulet may serve as a fetish. In this stage of development every individual came to believe that he had a certain protective charm. We can hardly believe he had a system of gods or that he recognized such. Later in its evolution fetishism became incorporated with other higher elements, especially symbolism, but in its archaic conception this was impossible.

Footnote 3:

I find myself in accord with Mr. J. H. King, who has discussed this subject at length in his work, The Supernatural; its Origin, Nature, and Evolution. While there are several points in his discussion where I can not see my way clear to accept his interpretations, I have in others found my views almost coinciding with his. He has discussed the subject in so scholarly a manner that the small space I can give to this great subject might have been better occupied with quotations from his volumes. His work should be thoughtfully studied by everyone interested in this subject.

The highest outgrowth of pure fetishism was the shaman or medicine man. It was recognized that certain men were gifted with occult powers beyond their fellows, and were more potent to control happenings. But this medicine man made use of impersonal amulets, not personal spirits.

The second stage in the growth of the supernatural was a belief in a spirit[4] or double of man, the concept of animism. When through dreams and other psychical phenomena man recognized his soul, he immediately extended his concept to animals, plants, stones, all things, and thus everything was thought to have an intangible double, soul. Man sought to ally himself with some one of these souls; if a hunter, some animal spirit, for instance, as an aid. This became his totem, and everything came to be a totem of power depending on needs of man. As fetishism was the archaic condition in the groping of the human mind, totemism was the following, and both evolved together, mutually reacting on each other and interdigitating in their development.

Footnote 4:

The recognition of spirit was of very early date, and is regarded by Sir J. Lubbock, Dr. Tylor, and Herbert Spencer as characteristic of all supernaturalism. Mr. King, however, seems to me to have advanced strong reasons to show that fetishism may have antedated animism. Although I have adopted his view, I am sure there is much to be said on the other side.

As the inevitable outgrowth of animism and its twin brother totemism came ancestor worship. Totemism and animism are sometimes limited to animal worship, from the fact that zoomorphic totems naturally were chosen by hunters, but especially among agricultural people totems of corn, rain, and the like replaced zoomorphic forms. The forces of nature thus became totems—sun, moon, earth—some with animal, others with human personalities. A totem of a family became a tutelary god, and groups of tutelary gods with a regal head became a council of gods as among the old Greeks.

Political and religious conceptions kept pace, a patriarchal head of the family was reflected in the mythology. A king suggested a monotheism. Isolated phratries living in groups like the prehistoric pueblos recognized no supreme political chief; their system was feudal; they were too low for monotheism. I believe there is no good evidence to prove that they ever advanced higher in the evolution of mythology than a form of totemism, in which powers of nature under anthropomorphic or animal disguises were worshiped.

I have said that the ritual of man can not be separated from his beliefs; it is incomprehensible alone. Let us, therefore, glance at the mythology of the Tusayan Indians. These people had never, when unmodified by European influences, advanced higher than the worship of anthropomorphic powers of nature, although all lower forms of worship, as of animals, ancestors, and fetishism, were prevalent. As far as I have studied the beliefs of the Tusayan Indians, I find no evidence that they recognized monotheism or the existence of a Great Spirit, creator of all things. With them as elsewhere among American Indians whenever we find a knowledge of a Great Spirit we see, as pointed out by Mr. R. Dorman,[5] “Nothing more than a figure of European origin reflected and transformed almost beyond recognition in the mirror of the Indian mind.” It is suggestive that the Indian knows only the name, he has no stories pertaining to him, but when you inquire about creation you elicit myths of the works of a spider woman or the birth of men from the caverns of the earth. A conception of a Great Spirit, wherever reported from savage people of North America, is the work of missionaries, soldiers, or traders.[6]

Footnote 5:

Anthropological Institute, Journal, Vol. XI, page 361.

Footnote 6:

Considerable evidence has been adduced, mainly from documentary sources, that the more civilized people of Central America attained in Precolombian times the monotheistic stage of supernatural concepts, and if that evidence is unimpeachable it would not be improbable that traces of the same should be found among pueblos. Unfortunately, however, the evidences on this point are none too strong, the probabilities that the writers and the documents did not eliminate their own interpretation too great. The pueblos at present have an idea of a supreme spirit, but there is every reason to believe it is of exotic derivation in the time since Coronado. However honest may be the modern priest who may say that he learned from his grandfather certain current beliefs, the crucial test of their prehistoric character must come from proof that the grandfather’s testimony is correct. The sources of error in stories passed down by word of mouth through many generations are too many to permit us to pin much faith to traditions reputed to be of great age.

All cosmogony begins with a created earth and that earth is mother of gods and men. From the under world, a cavern in the earth, men crawled to the surface through an opening called the sipapû. Races, like individuals, grew or were born; there is no hint as to how mother earth was created.

The highest supernatural beings were deified forces of nature endowed with human or animal forms. Among these were sky gods, earth gods, and their offspring in the early times when the race of man was young. The pueblos deified the sun and called him father of all, and so important is the place that he plays in their beliefs that they are ordinarily called sun worshipers. They endow him with human form, speaking of the disk as his mask. Each day he is thought to rise from his home in the under world and at night sinks into a western house. The pueblo Indians live in houses. Their chief supernatural has a house, as indicated by their use of this word for his place of rising and setting. The sun is a beneficent being all powerful to bring the rains. In other parts of America among warriors he is appealed to to destroy enemies. Among those people whose environment necessitates rain he is regarded as all powerful for that purpose. Like ancient Aryans, the Tusayan Indians pray to the rising sun for blessings, but the meaning of the word “blessing” is always rain, that the farms may be watered and the crops grow to maturity. The worship of the sun, therefore, is of great importance; it pervades all the ritual, but it is always with one intent—the over-powering need of the agriculturist for rain in a desert environment.

As I have used the word “prayer,” it may be well for me to point out the signification of this word among these people. We are dealing with a race in that stage of culture where the symbolism is all-important. Their word for prayer is, “scatter,” that is, to scatter sacred meal. When a Tusayan priest addresses a supernatural being of his mythology he believes he must do so through the medium of some object as a prayer bearer; he breathes his wish on meal and throws this meal to the god. The prayer bearer is thought to have a spiritual double or breath body which carries his wishes. It is an old idea with him, reaching back to fetishism, for his breath with the talismanic words is the spell which brings the desired results. It must be mentioned, however, that oftentimes ethical ideas are associated with Tusayan prayers for rain, and I have frequently heard the priests at the close of their songs for rain exclaim, “Whose heart is bad, whose thoughts are leaving the straight path,” and as they bewailed that the rains were delayed, sorrowfully resumed their songs and incantations.

An individual intrusts his prayer to sacred meal, but a society of priests has a more powerful charm. In the formal worship by a society of priests this prayer bearer becomes more complicated by appendages. It is furnished with accessories, all of which are symbolic. The meal is placed in a corn-husk packet surrounded with symbolic charms, feathers of birds which love water, herbs which grow in damp places. Such a prayer bearer with symbolic attachments is called a paho, and as if to betray its meaning in its name, the exact translation of this word is the water-wood, the wood which brings the water. These prayer sticks have many different forms, but are always called by the generic name, water-sticks. As their form becomes complicated by reason of symbolic accessories, their manufacture is an act which takes time, and as the prescribed symbols are known only to the initiated, their construction gives rise to a complex series of secret rites. The paho itself is a sacred object, consequently whittlings from it, fragments of string, corn husks, or feathers, used in its construction, are also sacred and must not be profaned. They are, therefore, carefully gathered up and deposited with a prayer in some sacred place.