Chapter 6 Part 2, The Extension and Influence of the Typical Hero-Myth, Part 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nineteen, Chapter six, Part two of American hero Myths.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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visit LibriVox dot org. American hero Myths, a Study in
the Native religions of the Western Continent by Daniel Garrison Brinton.

(00:24):
Chapter six, Part two, The Extension and Influence of the
typical hero myth, Part one. In the foregoing chapters, I
have passed in review the hero myths of five nations,
widely asunder in location, in culture, and in language. I
have shown the strange similarity in their accounts of their

(00:44):
mysterious early benefactor and teacher, in their still more strange
because true presentiments of the arrival of pale faced conquerors
from the East. I have selected these nations because their
myths have been most fully recD courted, not that they
alone possessed this striking legend. It is, I repeat, the

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fundamental myth in the religious lore of American nations, not
indeed that it can be discovered in all tribes, especially
in the amplitude of incident, which it possesses among some.
But there are comparatively few of the native mythologies that
do not betrace some of its elements, some fragments of it,

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and often enough to justify us in the supposition that
had we the complete body of their sacred stories, we
should find this one in quite as defined a form
as I have given it. The student of American mythology,
unfortunately labors under peculiar disadvantages. When he seeks for his material,

(01:48):
he finds an extraordinary dearth of it. The missionaries usually
refuse to preserve the native myths because they believed them
harmful or at least foolish, while men of science, who
have had such opportunities, rejected all those that seemed the
least like a Biblical story, as they suspected them to

(02:09):
be modern and valueless compositions, and thus lost the very
life of the genuine ancient faiths. A further disadvantage is
the slight attention which has been paid to the Aboriginal
American tongues, and the sad deficiency of material for their study.
It is now recognized on all hands that the key

(02:31):
of a mythology is to be found in the language
of its believers. As a German writer remarks, quote the
Formation of the language and the evolution of the myth
go hand in hand end quote, footnote.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Ind schrage herscht immer undenouitzisch dieds dizinricha anschaum defo yet
thousand in midem groubigen zin famil timutologi enschuf on grad
do sidsam klasten vishra khunschatum mutulubish enriklum daus rucktestenkans on
Globin's einst hunt in hunt keganeny doctor F. L. W.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Schwartz der ursprung Dear mythology on Gresischer und deutscher t Sage,
Page twenty three, Berlin, eighteen sixty and footnote. We must
know the language of a tribe. At least we must
understand the grammatical construction and have facilities to trace out
the meaning and derivation of names before we can obtain

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any accurate notion of the foundation in nature of its
religious beliefs. No convenient generality will help this. I make
these remarks as a sort of apology for the shortcomings
of the present study, and especially for the imperfections of
the fragments I have still to present. They are, however,

(03:52):
sufficiently defined to make it certain that they belonged to
cycles of myths closely akin to those already given. They
will serve to support my thesis that the seemingly confused
and puerile fables of the Native Americans are fully as
worthy the attention of the student of human nature as
the more poetic narratives of the vida or the Ada.

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The Red man felt out after God with like childish
gropings as his white brother in Central Asia. When his
course was interrupted. He was pursuing the same path toward
the discovery of truth, in the words of a thoughtful writer,
in a world wholly separated from that which is customary
to call the old world. The religious evolution of man

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took place precisely in the same manner as in those
surroundings which produced the civilization of Western Europe and quote.
But this religious development of the red man was violently
broken by the forcible imposition of a creed which he
could not understand and which was not suited to his wants,

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and by the heavy yoke of a priesthood totally out
of sympathy with his line of progress. What has been
the result has Christianity? Asks the writer I have just
quoted quote exerted a progressive action on these peoples. Has
it brought them forward? Has it aided their natural evolution?
We are obliged to answer no. End quote. This sad

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reply is repeated by careful observers who have studied dispassionately
the natives in their homes. Footnote. Those who would convince
themselves of this may read the work of Don Francisco
Pimentel Memoria sobre las Causas quan rihinado le Cituacion actual
de la Rasa Indigna de Mexico, Mexico, eighteen sixty four,

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and that of the licentiate Apollo Nargacia Igacia Estoria de
la Gera de Costas de Yucatan, Prologo Marrida, eighteen sixty five,
that the Indians of the Union United States have directly
and positively degenerated in a moral sense as a race
since the introduction of Christianity was also very decidedly the

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opinion of the late Professor Theodore Waits, a most competent
ethnologist c. D. Indiana, nord America's Inine Studie von Theodore Vates,
page thirty nine et cetera, Leipzig, eighteen sixty five. This
opinion was also that of the visiting Committee of the
Society of Friends, who reported on the Indian tribes in

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eighteen forty two. See the Report of a Visit to
some of the tribes of Indians west of the Mississippi
River by John D. Lange and Samuel Taylor, Junior, New York,
eighteen forty three. The language of this report is calm
yet positive as to the increased moral degradation of the
tribes as the direct result of contact with the whites

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and footnote. The only difference in the results of the
two great divisions of the Christian world seems to be
that on Catholic missions has followed the debasement on Protestant
missions the destruction of the race. It may be objected
to this that it was not Christianity but its accompaniments,

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the greedy horde of adventurers, the profligate traders, the selfish priests,
and the unscrupulous officials that wrought the degradation of the
native race. Be it so, then I merely modify my
assertion by saying that Christianity has shown itself incapable of
controlling its inevitable adjuncts, and that it would have been

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better morally and socially for the American race never to
have known Christianity at all, than to have received it
on the only terms on which it has been possible
to offer it with the more earnestness. Therefore, in view
of this acknowledged failure of Christian effort, do I turn
to the native beliefs, and desired to vindicate for them

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a dignified position among the faith which have helped to
raise men above the level of the brute, and inspired
him with hope and ambition for better men. For this purpose,
I shall offer some additional evidence of the extension of
the myth I have set forth, and then proceed to
discuss its influence on the minds of its believers. The

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Tarascos were an interesting nation who lived in the province
of Mishwa Khan, due west of the Valley of Mexico.
They were a polished race, speaking a sonorous vocalic language,
so bold in war that there boast was that they
had never been defeated, and yet their religious rights were
almost bloodless, and their preference was for peace. The hardy

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Aztecs had been driven back at every attempt they made
to conquer Mishwa Khan, but its rulers submitted himself without
a murmur to Cortes, recognizing in him an opponent of
the common enemy and a warrior of more than human powers.
Among these Tarrascoes we find the same legend of a
hero God, who brought them out of barbarism, gave them laws,

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arranged their calendar, which in principles was the same as
that of the Aztecs and Mayas, and decided on the
form of their government. His name was Surtes or couricaberis,
words which from my limited resources in that tongue, I
am not able to analyze. He dwelt in the town

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of Cramuscaro, which name means the watch tower or look out,
and the hour in which he gave his instructions was
always at sunrise, just as the orb of light appeared
on the eastern horizon. One of the feasts which he
appointed to be celebrated in his honor was called Sita
quaren quaro, which melodious word is said by the Spanish

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missionaries to mean the resurrection from death. When to this
it is added that he distinctly predicted that a white
race of men should arrive in the country and that
he himself should return his identity with the light gods.
Of similar American myths is too manifest to require argument.

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The king of the Tarrascos was considered merely the vice
regent of the absent hero God, and ready to lay
down the scepter when Couricaberis should return to earth. We
do not know whether the myth of the four brothers
prevailed among the Tarrascos, but there is hardly a nation
on the continent among whom the number four was more

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distinctly sacred. The kingdom was divided into four parts, as
also being the zas Quechwas and numerous other tribes, the
four rulers, which constituted with the king the sacred Council
of five. In imitation, I can hardly doubt of the
hero god and the four deities of the winds, the

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goddess of water and the rains. The female counterpart of
Kareka Bearus was the goddess Querava Peri. She is named,
says the authority I quote quote in all their fables
and speeches. They say that she is the mother of
all the gods of the earth, and that it is
she who bestows the harvests and the germination of seeds

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end quote. With her, ever, went for attendant goddesses, the
personifications of the rains from the four cardinal points at
the sacred dances, which were also dramatizations of her supposed action.
These attendants were represented by four priests clad respectively in white, yellow, red,

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and black, to represent the four colors of the clouds.
In other words, she doubtless bore the same relation to
Koreka Bearus that Ixgel did to eats Nama in the
mythology of the Mayas, or the rainbow goddess to Arama
in the religious legends of the Moxos. She was the
divinity that presided over the rains and hence over fertility

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and the harvests, standing in intimate relation to the god
of the sun's rays and the four winds. The key
Ches of Guatemala were not distant relatives of the Mayas
of Yucatan, and their mythology has been preserved to us
in a rescript of their national book, the popol Va.

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Evidently they had borrowed something from Aztec sources, and a
flavor of Christian teaching is occasionally noticeable in this record.
But for all that it is one of the most
valuable we possess. On the subject, it begins by connecting
the creation of men and things with the appearance of light.
In other words, as in so many mythologies, the history

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of the world is that of the day. Each begins
with a dawn. Thus the popol Va reads, this is
how the heaven exists, how the heart of heaven exists.
He the god whose name is Kabaweel. His word came
in the darkness to the Lord, to Gukumats, and it
spoke with the Lord with guku Mats. They spoke together.

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They consulted and planned, they understood. They united in words
and plans. As they consulted, the day appeared, the white
light came forth, mankind was produced. While thus they held
counsel about the growth of trees and vines, about life
and mankind in the darkness in the night. The creation

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was brought about by the Heart of Heaven, whose name
was hurakhan End. But the national culture hero of the
Kiches seems to have been Ixpalance, a name which has
the literal meaning little tiger deer and is a symbolical
appellation referring to days in their calendar. Although many of

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the deeds are recounted in the popol Va, that work
does not furnish us his complete mythical history. From it
and other sources, we learned that he was one of
the twins supposed to have been born of a virgin
mother in utat Lan, the central province of the Qui Chase,
to have been the guide and protector of their nation,

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and in its interest, to have made a journey to
the underworld in order to revenge himself on his powerful
enemies its rulers. He was successful, and having overcome them,
he set free the sun which they had seized, and
restored to life four hundred youths whom they had slain,
and who in fact were the stars of heaven. On

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his return, he emerged from the bowels of the earth
and the place of darkness at a point far to
the east of utat Lan, at some place located by
the Kei Chase near Koban in Vera Paz, and came
again to his people, looking to be received with fitting honors. But,
like Viracocha, Ketzlquatol, and others of these worthies, the story

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goes that they treated him with scant courtesy, and in
anger at their ingratitude, he left them forever in order
to seek a nobler people. I need not enter into
a detailed discussion of this myth, many points in which
are obscure, the less so as I have treated them
at length in a monograph readily accessible to the reader

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who would push his inquiries further enough, If I quote
the conclusion to which I there arrive, it is as
follows quote suffice it to say that the hero God,
whose name is thus compounded of two signs in the calendar,
who is one of twins born of a virgin, who
performs many surprising feats of prowess on the earth, who

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descends into the world of darkness and sets free the sun, moon,
and stars to perform their daily and nightly journeys through
the heavens, presents in these and other traits such numerous
resemblances to the Divinity of light, the day Maker of
the northern hunting tribes, reappearing in so many American legends

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that I do not hesitate to identify the narrative of
Ix Balance and his deeds as but another version of
this widespread, this well nigh universal myth. Few of our
hero myths have given occasion for wilder speculation than that
of Votan. He was the culture hero of the Sendals,

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a branch of the Maya race whose home was in
Chiapas and Tabasco. Even the usually cautious Humboldt suggested that
his name might be a form of Odin or Buddha.
As for more imaginative writers, they have made not the
least difficulty in discovering that it is identical with the
Odon of the Tarrascos, the Otone of the Othemese, the

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Paodon of the East day and Tomols, the Voudou of
the Louisiana Negroes, et cetera. All this has been done
without any attempt having been made to ascertain the precise
meaning and derivation of the name Votan. Superficial phonetic similarities
have been the only guide. We are not well acquainted

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with the Votan myth. It appears to have been written
down some time in the seventeenth century by a Christianized native.
His manuscript of five or six folios in the Sendal
tongue came into the possession of Nunes de la Vega,
Bishop of Chiappas about sixteen ninety and later into the

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hands of Don Ramon ondones E Agillar, where it was
seen by doctor Paul Felix Cabrera about seventeen ninety. What
has become of it is not known. No complete translation
of it was made, and the extracts or abstracts given
by the authors just named are most unsatisfactory and disfigured

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by ignorance and prejudice. None of them probably was familiar
with the Sendal tongue, especially in its ancient form. What
they tell us runs as follows. At some indefinitely remote epoch,
Votan came from the far east. He was sent by
God to divide out and assign to the different races

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of men the earth on which they dwell, and to
give to each its own language. The land whence he
came was vaguely called ualum Uotan, the land of Votan.
His message was especially to the Zendals. Previous to his arrival.
They were ignorant, barbarous, and without fixed habitations. He collected

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them into villages, taught them how to cultivate the maize
and cotton, and invented the hieroglyphic signs, which they learned
to carve on the walls of their temples. It is
even said that he wrote his own history in them.
He instituted civil laws for their government, and imparted to
them the proper ceremonials of religious worship. For this reason,

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he was also called master of the sacred drum, the
instrument with which they summoned the votaries to the ritual dances.
They especially remembered him as the inventor of their calendar.
His name stood third in the week of twenty days,
and was the first dominical sign according to which they
counted their year, corresponding to the Khan of the Mayas.

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As a city builder, he was spoken of as the
founder of polenke Natchan weiwit Lan, in fact, of any
ancient place the origin of which had been forgotten. Near
the last mentioned locality, weiwit Lan in Sokoonusko. He was
reported to have constructed an underground temple by merely blowing

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with his breath in its gloomy mansion. He deposited his
treasures and appointed a priestess to guard it, for whose
assistance he created the tapers Votan brought with him. According
to one statement or according to another, was followed from
his native land by certain attendants or subordinates, called in

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the myth tetsequial petticoated from the long and flowing robes
they wore. These aided him in the work of civilization.
On four occasions he returned to his former home, dividing
the country when he was about to leave into four
districts over which he placed these attendants. When at last

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the time came for his final departure, he did not
pass through the valley of death, as must all mortals,
but he penetrated through a cave into the under earth
and found his way to the root of heaven. With
this mysterious expression, the native myth closes its account of him.
He was worshiped by the Zendals as their principal deity

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and their beneficent patron, but he had a rival in
their religious observances, the feared Yalahow, lord of Blackness or
Lord of the waters. He was represented as a terrible warrior,
cruel to the people, and one of the first of men. Footnote.
Yalahoo is referred to by Bishop Nunies de la Vega

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as venerated in Okchuk and other Zandal towns of chiappas
he translates it Senor de los Negros. The terminal Ahow
is pure Maya, meaning king ruler. Lord Yal is also
Maya and means water. The god of the waters of darkness.

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Night in blackness is often one and the same in mythology,
and probably, had we the myth complete, he would prove
to be Votan's brother and antagonist and footnote. According to
an unpublished work by Fuentes, Votan was one of four brothers,
the common ancestors of the southwestern branches of the Maya family.

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All these traits of this popular hero are too exactly
similar to those of the other representatives of this myth
for them to leave any doubt as to what we
are to make of Votan. Like the rest of them,
he and his long robed attendants are personifications of the
Eastern light and its rays. Though but uncritical epitomes of

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a fragmentary myth about him remain. They are enough to
stamp it as that which meets us so constantly no
matter where we turn in the New World. Footnote. The
title of the Zendhal manuscripts is said by Cabrera to
be proof that I am a Chan. The author writes
in the person of Votan himself and proves his claim

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that he is a Chan quote because he is a
Chivim end quote. Chan has been translated serpent on Chivm.
The commentators have almost given up supposing that the serpent
was a totem of one of the Zendal clans. Then
the effort would be to show that their hero God
was of that totem. But how this is shown by

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his being proved at Chivim is not obvious. The term
ualum Chivum, the land of the Chivam, appears to be
that applied in the manuscripts to the country of the Tzendals,
or a part of it. The word chi Unik would
mean men of the shore, and might be a local
name applied to a clan on the coast. But in

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default of the original text we can but surmise as
to the precise meaning of the writer and footnote. It
scarcely seems necessary for me to point out that his
name Voltan is in no way akin to Othomi or
Tarrasco roots, still less to the Norse Wodan or the
Indian Buddha, but is derived from a radical in pure Maya.

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Yet I will do so in order, if possible, to
put a stop to such visionary etymologies, as we are
informed by the Bishop Nunes de la Vega. Uotan in
Sendal means heart. Votan was spoken of as the heart
or soul of his people. This derivation has been questioned

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because the word for the heart in the other Maya
dialects is different, and it has been suggested that this
is but an example of otosis, where a foreign proper
name was turned into a familiar common noun. But these
objections do not hold good in regard to derivation. Uotan

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is from the pure Maya root word tan, which means
primarily the breast or that which is in front or
in the middle of the body. With the possessive prefix,
it becomes utan. In Suendal, this word means both breast
and heart. This is well illustrated by an ancient manuscript

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dating from seventeen o seven in my possession. It is
a guide to priests for administering the Sacraments in Spanish
and Sendal. I quote the passage in point contodo tu
coora soon giriendotte in Los Pechos d conmigo taszio, aotan

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zactigue zini, aotan zik goyok allag gouyoke. Here ah is
the possessive of the second person, and uotan is used
both for heart and breast. Thus the derivation of the
word from the Maya radical is clear. The figure of

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speech by which the chief divinity is called the heart
of the earth the heart of the sky is common
in these dialects and occurs repeatedly in the popol Va,
the sacred legend of the Kiches of Guatemala. I may
here repeat what I have elsewhere written on this figurative expression.
In the Maya languages, the literal or physical sense of

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the word heart is not that which is here intended.
In these dialects, this word has a richer metaphorical meaning
than in our tongue. It stands for all the psychical powers,
the memory, will and reasoning faculties, the life, the spirit,
the soul. It would be more correct to render these
names the spirit or soul of the lake, et cetera,

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than the heart. They indicate a dimly understood sense of
the unity of spirit or energy in all the various
manifestations of organic and inorganic existence and the names of
the gods in the Keeche Myths Central America by Daniel G.
Brinton in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Volume nineteen,

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eighteen eighty one, page six hundred twenty threeot note. Thus
we have popol Va Part one, page two, u kuuks
Choh Heart of the Lakes, and u quik's Pallo Heart
of the Ocean, as names of the highest divinity. Later
we find u kuukx Ka Heart of the Sky, page eight,

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U kuuk's Ulu Heart of the Earth, page twelve fourteen,
et cetera, and footnote. The immediate neighbors of the Zendals
are the Meksees and Sokes, the former resident in the
central mountains of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the latter rather
in the lowlands and toward the eastern coast. The Meekseys

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nowadays number but a few villages, whose inhabitants are reported
as drunken and worthless. But the time was when they
were a powerful and warlike nation. They are in no
eyes akin to the Maya stock, although they are so classed.
In mister H. H. Bancroft's excellent work. They have, however,

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a distinct relationship with the zo Keys, about thirty percent
of the words in the two languages being similar. Footnote
A punte sobre la lengua mihe Poor C. H. Barrand M. D.
Manuscript in my hands. The comparison is made of one
hundred and fifty eight words in the two languages, of

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which forty four have marked affinity. Besides the numerals, eight
out of ten of which are the same. Many of
the remaining words are related to the Sapateec, and there
are very few and faint resemblances to Maya dialects. One
of them may possibly be in this name Votan Wotan Hart. However,

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in Mekse the word for heart is hot. I note
this merely to complete my observations on the Votan myth
and footnote end of Chapter six, Part two.