I shall have occasion to refer again more in detail to some of these customs[203] when drawing attention to the resemblances which I shall presently point out; but I wish previously to give, more in extenso, his description of the Hydrophoria at Athens:—
“This name denoted the custom which the Athenians had on the day of this feast of carrying water in ewers and vases with great ceremony; in memory of the Deluge, they proceeded each year to pour this water into an opening or gulf, which was found near the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and on this occasion they recalled the sad memory of their ancestors having been submerged. This ceremony is simple and very suitable to its subject; it was well calculated to perpetuate the memory of the catastrophe caused by the waters of the Deluge. Superstition added some other customs.... They threw into the same gulf cakes of corn and honey; it was an offering to appease the infernal deities.... The Greeks placed it in the rank of their unlucky days (also ‘un jour triste et lugubre’); and thus they remarked that Sylla had taken their city of Athens the very day that they had made this commemoration of the Deluge. Superstition observes everything, not to correct itself, but to confirm itself more and more in its errors. It was, according to the fable, by the opening of this gulf that the waters which had covered Attica had disappeared; it was also said that Deucalion had raised near to this place an altar which he had dedicated to Jove the Preserver. ‘Tradition also attributed to Deucalion the temple of Jupiter Olympus,’ in which these mournful ceremonies were performed. ‘This temple was celebrated and respected by the pagan nations as far as we can trace history back.’ It was reconstructed on a scale of magnificence by Pisistratus; every town and prince in Greece contributed to its adornment; it was completed by the Emperor Adrian in 126 of our era. The antiquity of this monument, the respect which all nations have shown it, and the character of the traditions which they have of its origin, ought to establish for the festival of the Hydrophoria a great antiquity. The feasts, in general, are more ancient than the temples.”—Boulanger, i. 38–40.
I will now ask the reader, if he has not read (and seen the illustrations in) Mr Catlin’s “O-kee-pa,”[204] to compare the following extract with the preceding:—
“The O-kee-pa, an annual ceremony to the strict observance of which those ignorant and superstitious people attributed not only their enjoyment in life but their very existence; for traditions, their only history, instructed them in the belief that the singular forms of this ceremony produced the buffaloes for their supply of food, and that the omission of this annual ceremony, with its sacrifices to the waters, would bring upon them a repetition of the calamity which their traditions say once befell them, destroying the whole human race excepting one man, who landed from his canoe on a high mountain in the west.[205] This tradition, however, was not peculiar to the Mandan tribe, for among one hundred and twenty different tribes that I have visited in North, South, and Central America, not a tribe exists that has not related to me distinct or vague traditions of such a calamity in which one or three or eight persons were saved above the waters on the top of a high mountain. Some of them, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and in the plains of Venezuela and the Pampa del Sacramento in South America, make annual pilgrimages to the fancied summits where the antediluvian species were saved in canoes or otherwise, and under the mysterious regulations of their medicine (mystery) men tender their prayers and sacrifices to the Great Spirit to ensure their exemption from a similar catastrophe.”—P. 2.
Yet, strange to say, this is no proof to Mr Catlin of the universal Deluge recorded in Scripture. “If,” he says, “it were shown that inspired history of the Deluge and of the Creation restricted those events to one continent alone, then it might be that the American races came from the Eastern continent, bringing these traditions with them, for until that is proved, the American traditions of the Deluge are no evidence whatever of an eastern origin. If it were so, and the aborigines of America brought their traditions of the Deluge from the East, why did they not bring inspired history of the Creation?”[206]—P. 3. (Vide pp. [134], [135].)
The “O-kee-pa,” Mr Catlin says, “was a strictly religious ceremony, ... with the solemnity of religious worship, with abstinence, with sacrifices, with prayer; whilst there were three other distinct and ostensible objects for which it was held,—1. As an annual celebration of the ‘subsiding of the waters’ of the Deluge. 2. For the purpose of dancing what they call the Bull-dance, to the strict performance of which they attributed the coming of buffaloes. 3. For purpose of conducting the young men through an ordeal of privation and bodily torture, which, while it was supposed to harden their muscles and prepare them for extreme endurance, enabled their chiefs ... to decide upon their comparative bodily strength, endurance,” &c.—P. 9.
The torture no doubt subserved this subsidiary purpose, but it appears to me that the original intention and idea was torture for the purpose of expiation, as in the ceremonies in ancient Greece.[207] Sundry incidents narrated by Catlin seem to establish this. They prepare themselves by fasting (p. 25); after having sunk under the infliction of these horrible tortures (and from every point of view they are truly horrible), “no one was allowed to offer them aid when they lay in this condition. They were here enjoying their inestimable privilege of voluntarily intrusting their lives to the keeping of the Great Spirit, and chose to remain there until the Great Spirit gave them strength to get up and walk away” (p. 28); and when so far recovered, “in each instance” they presented the little finger of the left hand, and some also the forefinger of the same hand and the little finger of the right hand (all tending to make them pro tanto inefficient warriors) “as an offering to the Great Spirit, as a sacrifice for having listened to their prayers, and protected their lives in what they had just gone through” (p. 28).
For the description of the bull-dance,[208] and for the subsequent history and final extinction of the Mandans, I must refer my readers to Mr Catlin’s valuable testimony to the truth of Scripture, and important contributions to ethnological science.
I shall now proceed to show analogies in what will be admitted to be most unlikely ground—in the King of Dahome’s celebrated “So-sin customs,” described by Captain Richard Burton.
Before, however, proceeding further, I must point out the following features in the ceremonies or customs as common to Grecian and antique pagan; to the Mandan (Indian of North America), and to the tropical African.[209] In the first place they are cyclical; they are all of a mournful character; all are interrupted at intervals by processions, dances, and songs of a traditional character; they all close in scenes of rejoicing or rather in Bacchanalian (yet still traditionally [vide page 247, [note Boulanger]] Bacchanalian) scenes of riot and debauchery. The duration of the festivals varies from three and four to five days; the days have fantastic names, which, although different, still in their very peculiarity, and also in the drift and meaning of the names so far as it can be gathered, are suggestive of a common origin, e.g. the first day of the Anthesteria, at Athens was called “Πιθοιγια, ἀπο τοῦ πίθους οἴγειν,” “because they tapped their casks.” The fourth day of the King of Dahome’s customs is named “So (horse) nan-wen (will break) kan (rope) ’gbe (to-day).”—Burton, ii. 8. One part of the Mandan ceremony is called “Mee-ne-ro-ka-Ha-sha,” or “the settling down of the waters,” which name again closely corresponds to the ceremonies at Athens and at Hierapolis in Syria (ante), where water was poured into the opening where the waters of the Deluge were supposed to have disappeared. The fifth day of the Dahome customs is named “Minai afunfun khi Uhun-jro men Dadda Gezo"=="we go to the small mat tent under which the king sits.”—Burton, ii. 27. This approximates to the scene described by Catlin (p. 20) at the close of the bull-dance (fourth day), when “the master of ceremonies (corresponding to the king at Dahome) cried out for all the dancers, musicians,” and “the representatives of animals and birds,” “to gather again around him.” He is described as coming out of the mystery lodge and collecting them round “the big canoe.”