[230] Captain Cook, speaking of their dances (p. 115), says, “Between the dances of the women the men performed a kind of dramatic interlude, in which there was dialogue as well as dancing; but we were not sufficiently acquainted with their language to understand the subject. Some gentlemen saw a much more regular entertainment of the dramatic kind, which was divided into four acts.”
Vide Abbe Gainet, “La Bible sans la Bible,” i. 213, quotes l’Abbe Domenech, who speaks of “the dance of the Deluge among many nations of the north and west of America.” Gainet also says that there were two distinct traditions of the Deluge in the east and west groups of the Society Islands (Otaheite).
L’Abbe Gainet (i. 211) gives an account of the Mandans from “Ceremoníes Religieuses,” i. 7, which it will be interesting to compare with Catlin, as it was written a century previous to his visit. “The Mandans pretend that the Deluge was formerly raised up against them by the white men to destroy their ancestors.... Then the first man, whom they regard as one of their divinities, inspired mankind with the idea of constructing upon an eminence a town and fortress in wood, and promised them that the water should not pass that point. They followed his advice and constructed the ark on the banks of the Heart river. It was of a very large size, so that a part of their nation found safety there whilst the rest perished. In memory of this memorable event they place in each of their villages a small model of this edifice [which may account for the erect position of ‘the big canoe’], this model still exists. The waters abated after that, and to this day they celebrate, in memory of this ark, the fête of the ‘Okippe,’ which lasts four days.”
[231] Longmans, 1868, i. 290.
[232] Cardinal Wiseman in his letters to John Poynder, Esq. (“Essays on Various Subjects,” i. 257), says, “Dr Spencer, a learned divine of the Established Church, published two folio volumes replete with extraordinary erudition, entitled ‘De Legibus Hebræorum ritualibus et eorum ratione,’ which has gone through many editions both here and on the Continent. Now, the entire drift and purport of this work is manifestly twofold—first, to prove that the great design of God, in giving rites and ceremonies to the Jews, was to prevent their falling into idolatry; secondly, to demonstrate that almost every practice, rite, ceremony, and act so given was directly borrowed from the Egyptian heathens; ... that whether we speak of the more solemn and especial injunctions, or of the minutest details of the ceremonial law, of circumcision and of sacrifice in all its varieties, and with all its distinctive ceremonies of purification and lustrations and new moons; of the ark of the covenant and the cherubim; of the temple and its oracles; of the Urim and Thummim, and the emissary goat; of them all Spencer has endeavoured to prove, and that to the satisfaction of many learned men, that they pre-existed among the Egyptians and other neighbouring nations.”
I have not met with Dr Spencer’s work. I may mention, however, the pomegranates in the Levitical robe as an instance. Vide references in this chapter and [appendix].
[233] Much doubt has been expressed as to the veracity of M. Guinnard’s narrative, but the scenes and customs referred to are not likely to have been invented; and on the supposition of a fictitious narrative (although I see nothing incredible) they will probably have been imported from true narratives of other tribes. In either case they supply additional evidence.
[234] I need not remind my reader that these speculations of De Maistre anticipated by many years the analogous, though at the same time independent, conclusions of Archbishop Whately, in his lecture “On the Origin of Civilisation,” published in 1854.
[235] “We ought then to recognise that the state of civilisation and of science is, in a certain sense, the natural and primitive state of man. Thus, all oriental traditions commenced with a state of perfection and light, and, I repeat it, of supernatural light; and Greece—lying Greece, which ‘has dared everything in history’—renders homage to this truth, in placing its Golden Age at the beginning of things. It is no less remarkable that it does not attribute to the following ages, even to the iron age, the state of savagery, so that all that it has told us of those primitive men living on acorns, &c., puts it in contradiction with itself, and can only have reference to particular cases, i.e. to some races degraded, and then reclaimed to a state of nature, which is a state of civilisation.”—De Maistre’s “Soirées de St Petersbourg” i. Deux: Entretien, p. 98.
[236] I consider that this remark has been fully substantiated in Marshall’s “Christian Missions.”