CHINESE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PIMO DEMIGOD.
But if the Mu-te (or Te-Mu,) builder or ruler of fortresses in the region of Pimo and the Grand Canyon, was identical with our Pimo Mu-te, he should be referred to as semi-divine, in the Chinese record.
And so he actually is. Even here the evidence does not fail. But conception of the little sun-child did not occur on the well watched or guarded hilltop at Pimo. It was in a green wilderness noted for its hay or grass and butchering of beasts, that a phantasm approached the female—and so on.
Fortunately we can turn away from this particular account of the visit of incubus, seeing that the necessary information is more conveniently furnished elsewhere (n. 88.) The name of a mountain, which may or may not have been far indeed from the Grand Canyon, is furnished, and we are informed that Shao Hao dwelt (ku) there (chi.) In addition he is called a sovereign (ti or te) and a shan.
Now this term, shan, according to Williams (p. 737,) stands for "the gods, the divinities, a god, a supernatural good being; divine; spiritual, as being higher than man; godlike, wonderful, superhuman; to deify.
The Shao Hao (or Mu-ti) is a shan or god.
A god! say the Chinese.
A god! say the Indians.
Taking the account as it stands, it appears that an incarnated god (in the shape of the Shao Hao Mu) was at one time within the Grand Canyon (which still retains his "lute.")
Notice that the "country contiguous to the mighty chasm is called the "Shao Hao's country."
Next observe that the vast chasm (or ta-hoh) is itself called the Great Canyon of the Incarnated God (or Keang Shang.) Shang stands for "Heaven" or supreme;" and Keang signifies "to descend from a higher level, to come from the sky, to fall as rain, to come into the world as Christ did" (Williams.) The contiguous country is named in honor of the Shao Hao, or sun-child, who is called a shan or god. And "Keang Shang's ta-hoh" or great Canyon is also named in honor of this shan or god—this incarnated god.
And here, "in the region beyond the Eastern Sea," the land is ringing with his name. He was Mu or Mo-te and a builder of forts, and above and beyond all this he was an incarnation of the Great Spirit!
"The name, at this moment, is as familiar to every Indian, Apache and Navajoe as that of our Savior or Washington is to us" (n. 89.)
Bancroft says: "Under restrictions, we may fairly regard him as the Melchizedek, the Moses, and the Messiah of the Pueblo desert-wanderers from an Egypt that history is ignorant of, and whose name even tradition whispers not."
A Messiah and Demigod! say the Chinese.
A Messiah and Demigod! say Americans.
Bancroft, says, that according to Indian paintings or traditions, the Messiah or Demigod of Pueblo tradition had red or yellow hair.
Then Mo was a white man and his mother a white woman.
Such a conclusion agrees completely with the teaching of the ancient Chinese book just quoted. We are informed with reference to a certain mountain, that: Ki (the) shan (god or spirit) poh (white) ti (sovereign) Shao hao (little sun-child) ku (dwelt) chi (there).
Next appears a comment stating in the plainest possible terms that Shao Hao of the Kin Tien dynasty was a virtuous or excellent ruler.
The Shao Hao who was at the Ta-hoh or Great Canyon is here called a White King.
Mons. Rosny, in his French translation, declares that the divine or superhuman Shao Hao was "l'empereur Blanc." (note 90.)
One well known writer and archaeologist says with reference to the builders of some structures in the Pimo region, that there is "reason to suppose that they were a light-skinned people. At least one red-haired skull and one with still lighter hair were found. Hair has been but rarely found not over a half dozen times in all. In three cases it was black." (note 91.)
According to aboriginal testimony, 800 years have rolled by since the time of burial, and hair has lingered on but few of the heads it once adorned. But when discovered it is seen to be quite different from the hair of the Indians.
Those interested in the subject of the Cliff-dwellers should study the accurate reports of the Ethnological Bureau and also the writings of Editor Peet the well known "American Antiquarian." These works should be in the libraries of all Americanists.
According to the American Antiquarian, Doctor Birdsall reports that dried bodies have been found in tombs on the Mesa Verde in Arizona and the "hair of the head has been found partly preserved on some mummies. It is said to be of fine texture, not coarse like Indian hair and varying in color from shades of yellowish brown to reddish brown and black" ... The Wetherills exhumed one mummy having a short brownish beard." (note 92.)
We are further informed that mummies have been taken from "a hermetically sealed cave in the Canyon of the Gila River," and two of the bodies were those of women. The females "retain their long, flowing silken hair." The "bodies were covered with highly colored clothes, which crumbled on exposure. Three kinds were saved, and one a deep blue woven in diamond shapes. No implements or utensils were found.... All the consuls and many scientific men inspected the mummies yesterday. Among those present were Henry A. Ward, of Rochester, N. Y., Kate Field, Dr. Harkness, Academy of Sciences." Other Doctors and Professors were present and also "Historian Bancroft." (n. 93.)
In addition to all this, Professor C. L. Webster, the accomplished, painstaking, and trusted scientist of Charles City, Iowa, has unearthed a body whose silent testimony is truly inestimable. In the "Archaeological Bulletin," issued by the International Society of Archaeologists (Madison, Indiana,) for July and September, 1912, we find a photograph of a mummy brought to light by the Professor in a cliff-house on a head stream of the Gila.
The body is that of a child, and its preservation is due to "the chemical elements of the soil," etc.
"The hair on the head of the mummy was of a beautiful dark brown color, and of a soft and silky texture," and "the hair on the head of this mummified child is of the same color and texture (only finer) as that of adults found braided in long plaits in an adjoining room"—Page 78.
The Professor believes that "different races" were here contending for the mastery of the region, and that "one or more of them were driven out (perhaps destroyed) suddenly" (see article 1.)
Another archaeologist says, that "quite recently hieroglyphics were discovered in the Tonto Basin country, depicting the driving out of white people by red men, and local archaeologists have set up a theory that the people who once cultivated these valleys were white. The present Indians have many legends of white men being in their country before the advent of the Spanish conquistodores. Father Marcas Niza, a pious Jesuit, who accompanied Coronado on his march through this section in search of the seven lost cities of Cibola, speaks frequently of allusions made by Indians to white bearded men who were here before" (n. 94.)
[In tracking the missing white race, remember that some of the Toltecs, like the Mayas of Yucatan, compressed the skull in childhood, that they had among them a sprinkling of very large men (quinames,) and that in the wilderness their mode of living would be more like that of Indians than of cultured, civilized people.]
Mons. Charney has argued that the Mexican Toltecs were of a white race, but very foolishly argues (like Baron Humboldt) that the Toltecs marched from Mongolia to Mexico in the 6th century. The illustrious Humboldt has served Archaeology enormously by drawing attention to the absolute and startling identity of the Zodiacal signs of the Manchu Tartars with those of Central America (see Mr. Vining's exceedingly comprehensive and valuable work entitled "An Inglorious Columbus.")
Skilled, scientific archaeologists connected with the Washington Bureau have all along been contending that the cliff or cave dwellings, forts, pueblos, and mounds of North America were constructed by native-born Americans, rather than by Toltecs moving in, say, the 6th century from Tartary to Arizona or Mexico.
Therefore, as the Toltecs (sun-people and architects or builders) were certainly settled in Mexico for some centuries prior to the 11th (when the remnant disappeared,) the ancestors of the pale-faced and cultured people (see Vining's chapter on the "Toltecs") may like ourselves have reached America by crossing the Atlantic. The Greek face, the Celtic face, the Saxon face, and the Jewish or Semitic face are all seen carved on the tottering walls of temples and palaces in Yucatan (see Charney's essays.)
Moving to the Vale of Mexico, the Toltecs tried with more or less success to keep on neighborly terms with the red skinned people. But thoughtless propagation produced more mouths than could be filled—except with human flesh. Open war broke out in the 11th century. The Aztecs or others of the red tribes almost annihilated the Whites; and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the "last" King of the Toltecs fled north from Chapultepec,—the selfsame Chapultepec which in our own day has seen the downfall of Maxmillian and the flight of Diaz.
May not the fair and beautiful Princess at Pimo have belonged to the outcast Mexican royal family? May not her idolized child have inherited titles absurdly out of place among the deserts of Arizona? And may not all the elements in our later Yankee nation have been represented in the pale-faced people that found refuge among the canyons and cliffs of the Colorado? If so, their remote or ancestral fathers and mothers were likewise no less our own.
The curtain of history rises and shows the young Queen of the Builders on a hill top at Pimo. The structures there, according to aboriginal testimony were reared about the year 1100,—the very time when the Toltecs disappeared from the Vale of Mexico. And now the ruins are yielding up forms of the females who once tenanted those cliffs and contrived to get plaster and paint with which to adorn the now desolate and trembling walls. And the yellow, brown, or silky black hair on the heads of those women who sought to make their bleak and dreary homes attractive, shows unfailingly their race. Even an ostrich might see it!
Mons. Charney declares that the Toltecs expelled from Mexico in the 11th century were scholars, artists, astronomers, and philosophers. And their sisters were certainly no less cultured and refined.
Now, the Shan Hai King states that in "the region beyond the Eastern Sea" there is (or was) a "Country of Refined Gentlemen."
And Charney argues that "a gentle race were the Toltecs, preferring the arts to war."
Refined and Gentle—men, says Charney.
Refined Gentlemen, says the Shan Hai King.
Certain comments collected by Jin Chin Ngan, and unnoticed in Mr. Vining's translation (p. 657), connect the Refined Gentlemen with pyramids (k'iu) and even declare that their dwellings were on mounds (ling).
And Charney says: "Now, the first thing that we find at the houses of Tula is an example of a mode of building entirely new and curious. The prevailing tendency of the Toltec is to place his dwellings and his temples likewise upon eminences and pyramids."
They lived upon Mounds, says Charney.
They lived upon Mounds, says the Shan Hai King.
"They are very gentle, and do not quarrel. They have fragrant plants. They have a flowering-plant which produces blossoms in the morning that die in the evening.
The Chinese account calls this vegetable production the Hwa plant, and as Hwa stands for "glory" (see Williams' Chinese dict.) it is apparent that the "Morning Glory" is referred to.
Botanist Wood says: "This glorious plant is a native of Tropical America and now universally cultivated. It is also nearly naturalized with us." (in the United States.)
"The flowers are ephemeral. Beginning to open soon after midnight, they greet the Sun at his rising, arrayed in all their glory" (Hwa) "and before he reaches the meridian, fold their robes and perish. But their work is done, and their successors, already in bud, will renew the gorgeous display the following morning."—P. 182.
Such a flower might be held to symbolize the fleeting glory of the generations which had lived and died in Central America. It still climbs about the temples of the Sun, saluting its divinity with a smile, and then falling prostrate among the desolate and forsaken altars. It may often be seen twining its arms around the monuments of a buried Past, or pressing its lips to the dust of the vanished race it so speedily follows.
It lives but a day, says the American botanist.
It lives but a day, says the Shan Hai King.
Surely the works in Arizona are worthy of the exiled Toltecs.
One of the ancient stone structures, on a northern feeder of the Gila, is so strong, commodious, and so impregnably planted that by universal consent it is called a Castle. And because the Indian tribes persist in ascribing its construction to Mu or Mo-te it is known as "Montezuma's Castle." The Ethnological Bureau has interested itself in the preservation of this impressive work of the so-called Cliff-dwellers, and our Government has taken charge of it as a "National Monument." And Ari-zona is named in honor of the Ari or "Maiden"—the legendary Queen of the Pimo zona or Pimo valley. The mother referred to in the ancient Chinese record is thus remembered in the title of a Yankee sister State.
Her idolized son is said to have governed Forts, and in the vicinity of the Castle we find a number of forts. Dr. Fewkes says: "The forts were built on the summits, ... and it is an instructive fact in this connection that one rarely loses sight of one of these hill forts before another can be seen." An "approaching foe" could be discerned and "smoke signals" would warn field-workers "to retreat to the forts for protection."—28th Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., p. 207. (Read also connected pages for information relating to the forts and their builders. The same or an allied people erected also houses in natural caves or excavated them in soft rock."—P. 219. The latter—the excavated dwellings are noticed in Asiatic books and will be dealt with in next pamphlet—if such is ever written.)
We have found the "Forts" and also Pimo (or Pima as some pronounce the name) with its Princess and her child. And have we not found the Gulf and Canyon referred to by the departed Ancients. Have we not found everything except perhaps the abandoned imperial Lute? And even it may yet be recovered. Let it be dug for at the Cliff of the Harp. Perhaps it may yet be resurrected—
"A Harp that in darkness and silence forsaken
Has slumbered while ages rolled slowly along,
Once more in its own native land may awaken
And pour from its chords all the raptures of song.
"Unhurt by the dampness that o'er it was stealing,
Its strings in full chorus, resounding sublime,
May 'rouse all the ardor of patriot feeling
And gain a bright wreath from the relics of time."