Every trace of the circumstances that give rise to a tradition is soon lost, although the tradition itself in curiously modified forms is long preserved. Natural convulsions, like floods and earthquakes, famines, wars, tribal migrations, naturally leave an impression on the savage mind which is not easily effaced, but the fable in which the record is embodied may have assumed a form so changed and childish that we pass over it today as having no historical value, seeking information only in an apparently more consistent tale, which may have originated at a recent date from some very trivial circumstances. * * * * * But the traditions of savages, valueless by themselves for a time more remote than one or two generations, begin to assume importance when the events narrated have been otherwise ascertained by the records of some contemporary nation, throwing indirectly much light on history which they were powerless to reveal.[[1]]
Accepting as reasonable these reflections, I wish to add that having in part the written records of the people among whom the events happened of which the traditions treat, we are in possession of that which makes these traditions assume the importance to which our author alludes. And while the record referred to—the Book of Mormon—gives the necessary importance to the traditions, the traditions bear testimony to the truth of the record at many points.
It should be remembered, however, that such were the conditions existing among the Lamanites after their triumph at Cumorah, that everything is confused and distorted into most fantastic shapes and relations by the idle speculations and vain imaginings of half, and sometimes wholly, barbarous minds, often bent on concealing or supplanting the truth by their fabulous inventions.
The limits of this work will not permit anything like an extended investigation of the field proposed. I shall merely take up the most important facts and historical events of the Book of Mormon, and seek confirmation of them in American traditions and myths.
I.
The Creation.
I begin with the creation; and select upon that subject a passage from the book of the Quiches[[2]] of Guatemala called Popol Vuh, which, I believe, exhibits the fact that the ancient Americans held in their traditions conceptions of creation found in the Jewish scriptures. A word upon the Popol Vuh will be necessary. This is one of the most important of the native American books translated into modern languages. It was found by Dr. Scherzer, in 1854, among the manuscripts of Francisco Ximenez, "a Dominican father of great repute for his learning and his love of truth," who, while fulfilling the duties of his office of curate, in a small Indian town in the highlands of Guatemala, translated this native book into the Spanish language. It was written by one or more Quiches in the Quiche language, but in Roman letters, some time after the Spaniards had occupied Gautemala. The meaning of Popol Vuh is "National Book," or "Book of the People," but the real original "National Book" had been lost, and this was written to replace it. The title of the book, however, is that given to it by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, who translated it into French; and by Ximenez, who translated it into Spanish. This name, Max Muller says, "is not claimed for it by its author. He [the native author] says that the wrote when the Popol Vuh [that is, the real original National Book of the Quiches, and which this book in question was written to replace] was no longer to be seen. Now, Popol Vuh means the Book of the People, and referred to the traditional literature in which all that was known about the early history of the nation, their religion and ceremonies, was handed down from age to age."[[3]] Nadaillac, however, says that Popol Vuh may be translated "Collection of Leaves."[[4]] In the conclusion of a long note on the subject Bancroft says, "We seem justified, then, in taking this document for what Ximenez and its own evidence declare it to be, viz., a reproduction of an older work or body of Quiche traditional history, written because the older work had been lost and was likely to be forgotten; and written by a Quiche not long after the Spanish conquest."[[5]]
As the passage I quote is from Bancroft's abridgment of the Popol Vuh, I give also his brief explanation of the book:
Of all American peoples the Quiches, of Guatemala, have left us the richest mythological legacy. Their description of the creation as given in the Popol Vuh, which may be called the national book of the Quiches, is in its rude, strange eloquence and poetic originality, one of the rarest relics of aboriginal thought. Although obliged in reproducing it to condense somewhat, I have endeavored to give not only the substance, but also, as far as possible, the peculiar style and phraseology of the original. It is with this primeval picture, whose simple, silent sublimity is that of the inscrutable past, that we begin:[[6]]
And now the passage on the creation: