“At a very early hour on the fourth day, to close the ceremony, a young horse, an ox, and two sheep, given by the richest men amongst them, are sacrificed to their god. The head turned towards the east, and the heart still palpitating is hung upon a lance and inclined towards the rising sun.”
“The second festival takes place in the autumn; it is celebrated in honour of Houacouvou (director of the evil spirits). The object of it is to conjure him to preserve them from all enchantment. As in the first festival, the Indians dress themselves in their best, and assemble by tribes only, headed by their cacique. An assemblage of all the cattle takes place en masse. The men form a double circle around, galloping unceasingly in opposite directions, so that none of these unruly animals may escape. They invoke Houacouvou aloud, throwing down, drop by drop, fermented milk out of bull’s horns, handed to them by their wives, while they are riding round the cattle. After repeating this ceremony three or four times, they sprinkle the horses and oxen with whatever remains of the milk, with the view, they say, of preserving them from all maladies; this done, each man separates his own cattle, and drives it to some distance, then returns for the purpose of assembling round the cacique, who, in a long and fervid address, advises them never to forget Houacouvou in their prayers, and to lose no time in preparing themselves to please him, by carrying desolation amongst the Christians, and increasing the number of their own flocks and herds.”
This festival, therefore, in its original conception would not appear to be a worship of the evil spirit, but of him who curbs him; the same idea of the subordination of the evil spirit will be seen in Catlin’s account of the Mandans.
There is nothing certainly in this account which directly connects these Patagonian ceremonies with the diluvian commemorations, unless, perhaps, the sacred drum; but there is much in common with the Pongol and the Mandan which we have seen to have been commemorative.
The prominence of sun worship will not have escaped observation; but this discovery cannot militate against my position, for I have already shown ([p. 160]) that such admixture was probable, and also indicated how it was likely to have come about. Any hostile argument which would seek to deprive those ceremonies of their significance must be directed to the extrusion of the diluvian symbols.
Further trace of these diluvian ceremonies might be traced in the Buddhist systems; but it would open out too large a question for discussion here.
CHAPTER XII
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON TRADITION.
De Maistre’s View.[234]
“We have little knowledge of the times which preceded the Deluge.... A single consideration interests us, and it must never be lost sight of, and that is, that chastisements are ever proportioned to crimes, and crimes always proportioned to the knowledge of the criminal; in such sort that the Deluge supposes unheard-of crimes, and that these crimes suppose a knowledge infinitely transcending that which we possess.... This knowledge, freed from the evil which had rendered it so noxious, survived in the first family the destruction of the human race. We are blinded as to the nature and advance of science by a gross sophism which has fascinated every eye; it is to judge of times when men saw effects in their causes by those in which men painfully ascend from effects to causes, in which they are only concerned with effects, in which they say it is useless to occupy themselves with causes, and in which they do not know what constitutes a cause. They never cease repeating—‘Think of the time that has been required to know such and such a thing.’ What inconceivable blindness! A moment only was required. If man would know the cause of a single phenomenon of nature, he would probably comprehend all the rest. We are unwilling to see that truths, the most difficult to discover, are very easy to understand.... ‘These things,’ as Plato says, ‘are perfectly and easily learned if any one teaches them, ει διδὰσκοι τις; but,’ he adds, ‘no one will teach them us, unless, indeed, God shows him the road, άλλ’ οὐδ ἄν διδαξειεν ει μὴ Θεος υφηγοῖτο.’ ‘I doubt not,’ said Hippocrates, ‘that the arts were in the first instance favours (θεων χαριτας) granted to men by the gods.’... Listen to sage antiquity in its account of the first men: it will tell you that they were marvellous men, and that beings of a superior order deigned to favour them with the most precious communications. On this point there is no disagreement, ... reason, revelation, all human tradition make up a demonstration which the mouth only can contradict. Not only, then, did mankind commence with science, but with a science different from ours, and superior to ours.... No one knows to what epoch remounts, I do not say the early commencements of society, but the great institutions, the profound knowledge, and the most magnificent monuments of human industry and human power.... Asia, having been the theatre of the greatest marvels, it is not astonishing that its people should have preserved a leaning to the marvellous stronger than what is natural to man in general, and than each one recognises in himself individually. Hence it comes that they have always shown so little taste and talent for our science of conclusions. One would say rather that they recalled something of primitive science and of the era of intuition. Would the enchained eagle ask for a balloon to raise himself into the air? No, he would demand only that his fetters should be broken. And who knows if these people are not destined yet to contemplate sights which will be refused to the cavilling genius of Europe? However this may be, observe, I pray you, that it is impossible to think of modern art without seeing it constantly environed with all the contrivances of the intellect and all the methods of art.... On the contrary. So far as it is possible to discover the science of primitive times at such an enormous distance, we see it always free and isolated, flying rather than marching, and presenting in all its characteristics something of the ærial and supernatural.[235]... But then comes the corollary.... If all men descend from the three couples who repeopled the universe, and if the human race commenced with knowledge, the savage cannot be more, as I have said to you, than a branch detached from the social tree.... Now, what matter does it make at what epoch such and such a branch was separated from the tree? It suffices that it is detached: no doubt as to its degradation; and I venture to say no doubt as to the cause of degradation, which can only have been some crime. A chief of a nation having altered the principle of morality in his household by one of those prevarications which, so far as we can judge, are no longer possible in the actual state of things, because happily our knowledge is no longer such as to allow us to become culpable in this degree; this chief of a nation, I say, transmits the curse to his posterity; and every constant force being accelerating in its nature, this degradation, weighing incessantly upon his descendants, has ended in making them what we call savages. Two causes extremely different have thrown a deceptive cloud over the lamentable state of savages: the one of ancient date, the other belonging to our century.... One cannot for an instant regard the savage without reading the curse written, I do not say only in his soul, but even in the exterior form of his body. He is an infant, robust, yet deformed and ferocious, in whom the flame of intelligence no longer throws more than a lurid and intermittent glare.... I cannot abandon this subject without suggesting an important observation: The barbarian who is intermediate between the civilised man and the savage, has been and may be again civilised by some sort of religion; but the savage, properly so called, has never been so except by Christianity. It is a prodigy of the first order, a species of redemption, exclusively reserved to the true priesthood.[236]... For the rest, we must not confound the savage with the barbarian.