But if we regard it as a corruption of the tradition that man was created out of the earth (“for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” Genesis iii. 19), does not this solve all difficulties? The extension of the knowledge that they were created out of the earth, to the notion that they were created out of this or that particular clay, is not violent. Is it not this same Æschylus[109] who has the allusion “to the earth drinking the blood of the two rival brothers, the one slain by the other.” It will be seen at [p. 175], that the Mexicans believed that the first race of men were created “out of the earth,” and “the third out of a tree,” a reminiscence of the creation, and of the fall, the intermediate event being probably the creation of Eve. In like manner, the Red Indians have a tradition that they were created out of the red clay by the Great Spirit; and to go to another part of the world, the supposed aboriginal tribes of China were called Miautze, or “soil children.”[110]
This testimony must be connected with the phrase so startling in the seventh ode of the fourth book of Horace, “pulvis et umbra sumus,” and with the text in Genesis iii. 19, “for dust thou art.”[111] It may possibly be said that this is merely matter of every day’s experience. But it is precisely at this point that we must ask those who dispute tradition to discard tradition. Do bodies—so far as the exterior senses tell us—return to dust, or to other forms of life? If it is true that we return to dust—Scripture apart—it is tradition and not experience which attests it, and yet so common is the belief, that it might readily pass as the result of common observation.
So general a tradition that man was created, and created out of the ground,[112] is so completely in accordance with the text of Genesis, that one can hardly see what more can be demanded; yet Catlin says[113]—“Though there is not a tribe in America but what has some theory of man’s creation, there is not one amongst them all that bears the slightest resemblance to the Mosaic account.” Catlin instances the traditions of the Mandans, Choctaws, and the Sioux—1st, The Mandans (who have the ceremony commemorative of the Deluge referred to, [ch. xi].), believe that they were created “under the ground.” 2d, The Choctaws assert that they “were created crawfish, living alternately under the ground and above it as they chose; and, creeping out at their little holes in the earth to get the warmth of the sun one sunny day, a portion of the tribe was driven away and could not return; they built the Choctaw village, and the remainder of the tribe are still living under the ground.” The Iroquois, however, believe that they “came out of the ground,” which is identical with the Greek notion of their being “autochthones” (vide Colden, ii. 103), where one of their chiefs speaks thus—“For we must tell you that long before one hundred years our ancestors came out of this very ground.... You came out of the ground in a country that lies beyond the seas.” Now, even if we consent to detach the Iroquois tradition, there is still in both the Mandan and Choctaw tradition, a common idea of their having come from “under the ground,” which seems to me the tradition that they were created out of the ground at one remove. To this it would seem the Choctaws have super-added their recollection of some incident of their tribe, possibly that they were an offshoot of the Esquimaux, or were at one period in their latitude and lived their life, which would be in accordance with the theory of their migrations from Asia by Behring’s Straits. 3d, About the Sioux, the third instance of contrariety adduced by Catlin, it seems to me that there is no room for argument, the Sioux having the tradition referred to above, that the Great Spirit told them that “The red stone was their flesh.” To these three instances Mr Catlin adds—“Other tribes were created under the water, and at least one half of the tribes in America represent that man was created under the ground or in the rocky caverns of the mountains. Why this diversity of theories of the Creation if these people brought their traditions of the Deluge from the land of inspiration?”[114]
Now, just as the tribes who said they were created “under the ground” implied the same tradition as those who said they were created out of the ground, so, too, the tribes who said they were created “under the water” probably held the tradition that the creation of the race preceded the Deluge.
The tradition which connects the creation with “the rocky caverns of the mountains” is more recondite—may it possibly be a recollection of the commencement of civil life after the Deluge, when Noah led them, according to tradition, from the mountains to the plains?
M. L’Abbé Gainet says (i. 176)—“The Lord repeated four times the promise that He would not send another deluge.... The children of Noah were long scared by the recollection of the dreadful calamity.... It is probable that they did not decide upon leaving the ‘plateaux’ of the mountains till quite late. Moreover, caverns have been found in the mountains of the Himalaya, and in many other elevated regions of Asia, which they suppose to have been formed by the first generations of man after the Deluge. The works of the learned M. de Paravey make frequent mention of them.” This tradition is supported by the lines of Virgil referring to Saturn (vide infra, [p. 210]).
“Is genus indocile, ac dispersum montibus altis
Composuit; legesque dedit.”—Æn. viii. 315.
I give these suggestions for what they may be worth.[115] Truly, where some see nothing but harmony, others see nothing but diversity. Only to put it to a fair test, I should like to see Mr Catlin or some one else group these various traditions round any one tradition which they believe to be at variance with the revelation of Genesis, and which, at the same time, they happen to consider to be the true one. It must be conceded that in one way the facts accord with Mr Catlin’s theory—contradicted, however, by other evidence (infra, [ch. xi].)—that the Indians were created on the American continent. But upon any theory that they were not created at all, but existed always in pantheistic transformation, or had progressed from the monkey, or had been developed in evolution from some protoplasm, is not the tradition incongruous and inexplicable?
To take another instance. The Hindoos had a fanciful notion that the world was supported by an elephant, and the elephant by a tortoise. Nothing can be imagined more incongruous and grotesque. Yet Dr Falconer has recently discovered, in his explorations in India, a fossil tortoise adequate to the support of an elephant. The incongruity then of the tradition disappears; its grotesqueness remains. I cannot help thinking, however, that it may have been the embodiment in symbol, or else the systematisation of the confused medley of their tradition of the order, i.e. of the sequence of days of the creation (vide [Appendix] to this chapter).[116]