Tradition, Principally with Reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations

by Baron John Francis Arundell Arundell of Wardour

HUNTER.

Hunter (“Annals of Rural Bengal,” p. 153) says of the Santals: “The only stream of any consequence in their present country—the Damouda—is regarded with a veneration altogether disproportionate to its size. Thither the superstitious Santal repairs to consult the prophets and diviners, and once a year the tribes make a pilgrimage to its banks in commemoration of their forefathers.... However remote the jungle in which the Santal may die, his nearest kinsman carries a little relic of the deceased to the river, and places it in the current to be conveyed to the far-off eastern land from which his ancestors came.”

In connection with the above, it must be remembered (vide Appendix G, p. 480, “Santal Traditions”) that they have, although confused with the Creation, an unmistakable tradition of the Deluge, the intoxication of Noah, and the dispersion.

If, then, I have shown that the custom, for the preservation of which from oblivion, so far as the Mandans (now extinct) are concerned, we are indebted to Mr Catlin, and which so plainly tells its own tale, is common to Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as America, I shall have established it as a tradition, not of a local American, but of an universal Deluge; and if the tradition of the universal Deluge is proved, then, according to Mr Catlin’s narrative itself, there is tradition of the Creation also (vide pp. 7, 13, 42).[220]

I have replied more fully, in [chap. vii]., to Mr Catlin’s objection—that though they have a tradition of a deluge, it is not the tradition of the Deluge, because they have not also the tradition of the Creation.

Mr Catlin argues upon the view that the American race “were created upon the ground on which they were found” (“Last Rambles,” p. 321, 1868); and (p. 319) adds, “I can find nothing in history, sacred or profane, against this.”

He takes his stand (in “O-kee-pa”) upon this—that there is nothing in the Mandan tradition which can be brought in proof of their migration from another continent. In reply I shall adduce their very name.

The American continent may have been peopled by way of Behring’s Straits, or from Europe in the East by way of Greenland, or by the connection of the Pacific Islands from the opposite coasts of Japan, China, and the Corea, or from the Polynesian groups in the south. The population may have poured in by all these routes. It is said (Prescott, “Conquest of Mexico,” ii. 473)[221] that MSS. exist at Copenhagen proving that the American coast was visited by the Northmen in the eleventh century. The Polynesian route we may leave out of consideration, as it will not probably have been the one by which the Mandans came. As to the route by Behring’s Straits, Mr Catlin admits “it is a possibility, and therefore they say it is probable” (p. 217, “Last Rambles”). But if, as there appears to me reason to think, they came from the opposite coast of the Corea, it might as reasonably be conjectured that the migration took the route of Behring’s Straits, or by way of the Sandwich Islands. The possibility of the former is conceded. I will confine my attention, therefore, to the latter, which Mr Catlin pronounces absolutely impossible. In the first place, the distance between the Sandwich Islands and America is not greater than between Otaheite and New Zealand.[222] Now it is admitted that New Zealand was peopled from Otaheite. Moreover (vide Sir J. Lubbock, “Pre-historic Times,” p. 390), the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, at two thousand miles distance, belong to the same race as those of Tahiti (Otaheite) and New Zealand, and resemble them “in religion, languages, canoes, houses, weapons, food, habits, &c.”[223] The canoes of the Pacific islanders generally (vide Captain Cook passim) were of considerable size, and of very perfect workmanship. But also Prescott (“Conquest of Mexico,” ii. 473, quoting Beechey’s “Voyage to Pacific,” 1831, p. 2 Appendix, Humboldt’s “Examen. Critique de l’Hist. de la Geog.” and Nuov. Cont. ii. 55) says, “It would be easy for the inhabitant of Eastern Tartary or Japan to steer his canoe from islet to islet quite across to the American shore, without ever being on the ocean more than two days at a time.”[224]

We may agree, then, that the Mandans might have come by this route. Is there anything which makes it probable that they came? Well, yes; in the first place their name. Mr Catlin tells us (“O-kee-pa,” p. 5), “The Mandans (Nu-mak-ká-kee, pheasants, as they call themselves) have been known from the time of the first visits made to them, to the day of their destruction, as one of the most friendly and hospitable tribes on the United States frontier.” It transpires, therefore, that they are called pheasants. Is the pheasant a native of America?—on the other hand, is it not common on the opposite Asiatic continent, and on the islands adjacent to it from New Guinea to the Corea? I have never heard of the pheasant in the American continent;[225] but in reading the accounts of the missionaries of the Corea (the only foreigners who have penetrated into the country), I read, “that clouds of pheasants and birds of all kinds perch at night in the branches of the trees” (“Life of Henri Dorie,” translated by Lady Herbert; Burns & Oates, p. 77); and if the reader will turn to p. 79 in the same Life, and will compare the description of the Coreans, which he will find there, with the description and portraits of the Mandans in Mr Catlin’s “O-kee-pa,” pp. 4, 5, he will, I think, recognise a sufficient resemblance to warrant and sustain the presumption created by their name.[226]

To the peculiarity of name, and resemblance of feature, I shall now proceed to add the evidence of some traces of their peculiar customs, or at least of some trace of the tradition out of which they arose.