Aboriginal American Authors

by Daniel G. Brinton

A similar collection of Tupi stories was made by the late Prof. Charles F. Hartt, whose early death was a loss to more than one branch of science. It was his intention to edit them with the necessary notes and vocabularies; but, so far as I know, the only specimens which appeared in print were those he laid before the American Philological Association, in 1872.[47] The inquiries I have instituted about his MSS. have not been successful.

Numerous texts of this description have been obtained from the Klamath Indians by Mr. A.S. Gatschet, and from the Omaha by the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, both of which collections are in process of publication by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington. Scattered specimens of stories of this kind have also been obtained by a number of travelers, and they are always a welcome aid to the study both of the psychology and language of a tribe.

Section 4. Didactic Literature.

The more civilized American tribes had made considerable advances in some of the natural sciences, and in none more than in practical astronomy. By close observation of the heavenly bodies they had elaborated a complicated and remarkably exact system of chronology. They had determined the length of the year with greater accuracy than the white invaders; and the different cycles by which they computed time allowed them to assign dates to occurrences many hundreds of years anterior.

Although there are local differences, the calendars in use in Central and Southern Mexico and in Central America were evidently derived from one and the same original. A great deal has been written upon them, but for all that many questions about them remain unanswered. We do not know the Maya method of intercalation; we do not understand the uses of the shorter Mexican year, of 260 days; we are at a loss to explain the purpose of doubling the length of certain months, as prevailed among the Cakchiquels; we are in the dark about the significance of the names of many days and months; we cannot see why the nations chose to begin the count of the year at different seasons; and there are ever so many more knotty problems about this remarkable system and its variations.

What we imperatively need is a supply of authentic aboriginal calendars, accurately reproduced, for purposes of comparison. Boturini collected a number of these, which he describes, and long before his day some specimens had been published by Valades and Gemelli Carreri.[48] They were, in ancient times, usually depicted by circular drawings, called by the Spaniards, Wheels (ruedas). After the Conquest they were written out, more in the form of our almanacs. One such, in the Maya tongue, with a translation, was contributed to Mr. Stephens' Travels in Yucatan, by the eminent Maya scholar, Don Juan Pio Perez.[49] Several others were in his collection, and are accessible. Dr. Berendt succeeded in securing fac similes of Kiche and Cakchiquel calendars, written out in the seventeenth century, and these are now in my possession. I fear we have no perfect examples of the Zapotec calendar, nor of that of the Tarascos of Michoacan, although an anonymous author, most of whose MS. has been preserved, reduced the latter to writing, and it may some day turn up.[50] The Aztec calendars collected by Boturini would, were they published, give us sufficient material, probably, to understand clearly the methods of that tribe.

One momentous purpose which the calendar served was for supplying omens and predictions; another was for the appointment of fasts and festivals, for the religious ritual. The calendar arranged for these objects was called, in the Nahuatl, tonalamatl, "the book of days," and in Maya tzolante, "that by which events are arranged." So intimately were all the acts of individual and national life bound up with these superstitions, that an understanding of them is indispensable to a successful study of the psychology and history of the race.

After the Conquest some of the notions about judicial astrology, then prevalent in Europe, crept into the native understanding, and notably, in the Books of Chilan Balam we find forecastes of lucky and unlucky days, and discussions of planetary influence, evidently borrowed from the Spanish almanacs of the seventeenth century.

Most of the Aborigines of the Continent possessed a keen sense of locality, and often a certain rude skill in cartography. The relative position of spots and proportionate distances were approximately represented by rough drawings. They knew the boundaries of their lands, the courses of streams, the trend of shores, and could display them intelligently. These maps, as they are called, present a very different appearance from ours. Those of the Aztecs are rather pictured diagrams, something like those we find in fifteenth century books of travel. A fair specimen, though of date later than the Conquest, was published not long since, in Madrid.[51]

The Maya maps are even more conventional. A central point is taken, usually a town, around which is drawn either a circle or a square, on the four sides of which are placed the figures of the four cardinal points, and within the figures are the various symbols which denote the villages, wells, ponds, and other objects which are to be designated. Specimens of some of these, all after the Conquest, however, have been published by Mr. Stephens and Canon Carrillo,[52] and others are found in the various Books of Chilan Balam.