Tradition of the Tower of Babel
On the way between Vera Cruz and the capital not far from the modern city of Puebla, stands the venerable relic, with which the reader has become familiar in the course of this narrative—called the temple of Cholulua. It is, as he will remember, a pyramidal mound, built, or rather cased, with unburnt brick, rising to the height of nearly one hundred and eighty feet. The popular tradition of the natives is that it was erected by a family of giants, who had escaped the great inundation, and designed to raise the building to the clouds; but the gods, offended with their presumption, sent fires from heaven on the pyramid, and compelled them to abandon the attempt. The partial coincidence of this legend with the Hebrew account of the Tower of Babel, received also by other nations of the east, cannot be denied.[[6]]
Prescott also has a footnote on this passage, from which I make the following quotation:
A tradition, very similar to the Hebrew one, existed among the Chaldeans and the Hindoos. (Asiatic Researches, vol. III, mem. 16.) The natives of Chiapa, also, according to the bishop Nuez de la Vega, had a story, cited as genuine by Humboldt (Vues des Cordilleres, p. 148), which not only agrees with the scripture account of the manner in which Babel was built, but with that of the subsequent dispersion, and the confusion of tongues.[[7]]
Ixtlilxochitl the Christian descendant of the ancient rulers of Anahuac, relates that after the dispersion of the human race which succeeded the attempt at building the Tower of Babel (which he had learned from his Catholic instructors)[[8]] seven Toltecs reached America and became the parents of a numerous race. The Quiches speak of white men who came from the land of the sun. The people of Yucatan believe that their ancestors had come from the east, across a great body of water that God had dried up to let them pass over. [[9]]
The Mexicans round Cholula had a special legend, connecting the escape of a remnant from the great deluge with the often mentioned story of the origin of the people of Anahuac from Chicomoztoc, or the Seven Caves. At the time of the cataclysm, [i. e. the flood] the country, according to Pedro de los Rios, was inhabited by giants. Some of these perished utterly; others were changed into fishes; while seven brothers of them found safety by closing themselves into certain caves in a mountain called Tlaloc. When the waters were assuaged, one of the giants, Xelhua, surnamed the architect, went to Cholula and began to build an artificial mountain, as a monument and a memorial of the Tlaloc that had sheltered him and his when the angry waters swept through all the land. The bricks were made in Tlamanalco, at the foot of the Sierra de Cocotl, and passed to Chulua from hand to hand along a file of men—whence these came is not said—stretching between the two places. Then were the jealousy and the anger of the gods aroused, as the huge pyramid arose slowly up, threatening to reach the clouds and the great heaven itself; and the gods launched their fire upon the builders and slew many, so that the work was stopped. But the half-finished structure, afterwards dedicated by the Cholultecs to Quetzalcoatl, still remains to show how well Xelhua, the giant, deserved his surname of the Architect.[[10]]
"The Tower of Babel is," indeed, clearly remembered by several aboriginal nations of our continent," says P. DeRoo, "especially of Central America," and then he adds:
Ixtlilxochitl relates the tradition of the Toltecs, according to which the few men who escaped the deluge, after multiplying again, built a "zacuali" or tower of great height, in which to take refuge when the world should be destroyed a second time. After this their tongues became confused and, not understanding one another any longer, they went to different parts of the world. The Toltecs, seven in number, and their wives, who understood one another's speech, after crossing great lands and seas and undergoing many hardships, finally arrived in America, which they found to be a good land and fit for habitation. When Coxcox and his wife Xochiquetzal had landed on the peak of Calhuacan they increased and multiplied, and children began to gather about them; but these were all born dumb. A dove came, however, and gave them tongues, innumerable languages. On an ancient hieroglyphical map, first published by Carreri, who was vindicated from suspicion as to his integrity by Boturini, Clavigero, and von Humboldt, there is also depicted a dove with the hieroglyphic emblem of languages, which it is distributing to the children of Coxcox. Only fifteen of the descendants of Coxcox could not all understand one another, and these were the ancestors of the Nahua nations. Thus runs the Mexican tradition, which the learned Von Humboldt further relates when he says, "Wodan, one of the fifteen ancestors of the American nations, was a grandson of the venerable old man, who with his family escaped the fury of the flood, and was one of those who, according to the Chiapan legend, had helped in building the monument that was to reach heaven but remained unfinished through the anger of the gods. After each family had received a different language, Teotl ordered Wodan to go and settle Anahuac"[[11]]—(the Mexican table land).
The Cholulan tradition, as told by Duran, differs somewhat from the foregoing version. "I inquired," he says, "about the ancient Mexican legends, from a native of Cholula who was a hundred years old, and well versed in the antiquities of his tribe. 'Take pen and paper,' he answered me, 'because you could not remember all that I am to tell you: At first, there was nothing but a dark world, without any creature in it; but as soon as light was made with the sun rising in the east, gigantic men with ugly features made their appearance and took possession of this earth. Desirous of knowing the rising and the setting of the sun, they divided themselves into two groups, those of one group traveling east on their search, and the others west, until the ocean prevented them from going any further. They returned, therefore, and, unable to get at the sun by his rising or sinking, whilst, however, they were enamoured with his light and beauty, they decided to build a tower tall enough to reach him in his course. They set out gathering materials, found clay and a very sticky bitumen, and they hurried on to erect the tower, and raised it so high that, they say, it seemed to attain to the sky. And the Lord above, annoyed at their work, spoke to the inhabitants of heaven: 'You have noticed how those of the world have built a high and superb tower to climb up higher, after the beauty and light of the sun; come and let us confound them, for it is not right that those of the world living in the flesh, should mix up with us.' The inhabitants of heaven sallied forth at once, like thunderbolts, by the four corners of the earth and demolished the monument. Terrified and trembling, the giants fled in every direction.'"[[12]]
Passages of like description to these might be multiplied, but the foregoing are sufficient for our purpose here.[[13]]
I have already called attention to the fact that authorities upon the subject of traditions and legends of the new world are as much divided and as irreconcilable as they are upon the origin and antiquity of American ruins. A number of writers, especially those of recent date, seek to discount the value of the analogy which is plainly evident between these native American accounts of the creation, the flood, the building of the Tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the dispersion of mankind, and the Bible accounts of the same events; but I fail to find any reason advanced sufficiently strong to discredit the obvious analogy, and the significance there is in such analogy, viz., that the native Americans in ancient times were acquainted with the Bible facts concerning these several things. Those who accept the Book of Mormon know by what means and how the ancient Americans became acquainted with these scriptural truths. Those writers who seek to discredit the native traditions resort in the main to the theory that these so-called creation, flood, and tower legends have not escaped the "renovating touch of the Spanish priests and chroniclers, who, throughout their writings, seem to think it their bounden duty to make the ideas of the history of the new world correspond to those of the old;"[[14]] while others see in them an adaptation by pious fraud of Indian mythologies to Bible statements.[[15]] Such Nadaillac represents the theories of some other writers to be; but he himself, in speaking of a number of traditions which resemble Bible historical incidents, disclaims the necessity of accrediting them to Christian origin:
A general belief * * * * in a deluge or flood is widely spread among the American races, and can hardly be attributed to Christian teachings. * * * * * * It is probable that all these traditions have some foundations in truth. * * * * No dissemination of merely Christian ideas since the conquest is sufficient to account for these myths.[[16]]
With the Book of Mormon in hand, however, one does not need to accept these strained explanations nor this wholesale repudiation of the writings of respectable authorities on the validity of these legends among native Americans, derived—not as some would have us believe, from picture-paintings of the natives alone, but from these, supplemented by the oral traditions of the natives. The source of traditions here referred to is made clear by the Book of Mormon.