The Isthmus of Panama (and northward perhaps as far as the confines of Nicaragua) was aboriginally an outpost of the great Chibchan stock. Tribes of other stocks, some certainly northern in origin, dwelt within the region, but the predominant group was akin to the peoples of the neighbouring southern continent; although whether they were immigrants from the south or were parents of the southern stem can scarcely be known. So far as traditions tell, the uniform account given by the Bolivian tribes is of a northerly origin. The tales seem to point to the Venezuelan coast, and perhaps remotely to the Antilles, rather than to the Isthmus, and it is certain that there are broad similarities in culture—especially in the forms and use of ceremonial objects—pointing to the remote unity of the whole region from Haiti to Ecuador, and from Venezuela to Nicaragua. It is entirely possible that within this region the drift of influence has been southerly; though it is more likely that counter-streams, northward and southward, must give the full explanation of the civilization.
On the linguistic side it is agreed that the Guetare of Costa Rica represent a branch of the Chibchan stock, while neighbouring tribes of the same stock are either now extinct or little known. The Spanish conquests in the Isthmian region were as ruthlessly complete as anywhere in America, and for the greater part our knowledge of the aborigines is the fruit of archaeology. In the writings of Oviedo and Cieza de León some facts may be gleaned—enough, indeed, to picture the general character of the rituals of the Indian tribes—but there is no competent contemporary relation of the native religion and beliefs.
PLATE XXVI.
Jade pendant representing a Vampire. After Hartman, Archaeological Researches on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, Plate XLIV. For reference to the significance of the bat, as a deity, see page [177] and Note [102].
Oviedo's description[113] of the tribes about the Gulf of Nicoya, where the civilizations of the two Americas meet, indicates a religion in which the great rites were human sacrifices of the Mexican type and feasts of intoxication. Archaeological researches in the same region have brought to light amulets and ornaments, some anthropomorphic in character, but many representing animal forms, usually highly conventionalized—alligators, jaguars and pumas, frogs, parrots, vampires, denizens of earth, air, and sea, all indicative of a populous pantheon of talismanic powers; while cruciform, swastika, and other symbolic ornamentation implies a development in the direction of abstraction sustained by Oviedo's mention of "folded books of deerskin parchment," which are probably the southern extension of the art of writing as known in the northern civilization. The archaeology of the Guetare region, in central, and of the Chiriqui region, in southern Costa Rica, disclose the same fantasy of grotesque and conventionalized animals—saurians, armadilloes, the cat-tribe, composites—indicative of a similarly zoomorphic pantheon. Benzoni, speaking of the tribes of this region, states that they worshipped idols in the forms of animals, which they kept hidden in caves; while Andagoya declares that the priests of the Cuna or Cueva (dwelling at the juncture of the Isthmus and the southern continent) communed with the devil and that Chipiripa, a rain-god, was one of their most important deities; they are said, too, to have known of the deluge. Of the neighbouring Indians, about Uraba, Cieza de León gives us to know that "they certainly talk with the devil and do him all the honour they can.... He appears to them (as I have been told by one of themselves) in frightful and terrible visions, which cause them much alarm." Furthermore, "the devil gives them to understand that, in the place to which they go [after death], they will come to life in another kingdom which he has prepared for them, and that it is necessary to take food with them for the journey. As if hell was so very far off!"
Peter Martyr devotes the greater part of a book (the tenth of the Seventh Decade)[114] to a description of the rites and beliefs of the Indians of the region where the Isthmus joins the continent. Dabaiba, he says, was the name both of a river and of a divinity whose sanctuary was about forty leagues from Darien; and thither at certain seasons the caciques, even of the most distant countries, sent slaves to be strangled and burnt before the idol. "When the Spaniards asked them to what divinity they addressed their prayers, they responded that it is to the god who created the heavens, the sun, the moon, and all existing things; and from whom every good thing proceeds. They believe that Dabaiba, the divinity universally venerated in the country, is the mother of this creator." Their traditions told of a great drought which, making the rivers dry, caused the greater part of mankind to perish of thirst, while the survivors emigrated from the mountains to the sea-coast; for this reason they maintained priests and addressed prayers to their divinity, who would seem to be a rain-goddess. Another legend recorded by Peter Martyr tells of a frightful tempest which brought with it two great birds, "similar to the harpies of the Strophades," having "the face, chin, mouth, nose, teeth, eyes, brows, and physiognomy of a virgin." One of these seized the people and carried them off to the mountains to devour them, wherefore, to slay the man-eating bird, certain heroes carved a human figure on the end of a log, which they set in the ground so that the figure alone was visible. The hunters concealed themselves near by, and when the monster, mistaking the image for prey, sunk its talons into the wood, falling upon it, they slew it before it could release itself. "Those who killed the monster were honoured as gods." Interesting, too, is Martyr's account of the reason given for the sinfulness of incest: the dark spots on the moon represent a man cast into that damp and freezing planet to suffer perpetual cold in expiation of incest committed with his sister—the very myth that is told in North Greenland; and the belief that "only nobles have immortal souls" (or, more likely, that they alone enjoy a paradise) is cited to explain why numbers of servants gladly throw themselves into the graves of their masters, since thus they gain the right to accompany their lords into the afterworld of pleasure; all others, apparently, go down to a gloomy hades, though there may be truth in Martyr's statement that it is pollution which brings this fate.
The account of the religion of the Isthmian tribes in later times, by W. M. Gabb and Pittier de Fábrega,[115] probably represents faithfully their earlier beliefs. There are deities who are the protectors of game-animals, suggesting the Elders of the Kinds so characteristic of North American lore; though they appear to men in human form, taking vengeance on those who only wound in the chase: "When thou shootest, do it to kill, so that the poor beast doth not fall a prey to the worms," is the command of the King of the Tapirs to the unlucky hunter who is punished for his faulty work by being stricken with dumbness during the period in which a cane grows from a sprout to its full height. The Isthmian peoples recognize (as do most other Americans) a fainéant supreme being, Sibú, in the world above, with a host of lesser, but dangerous, powers in the realm of environing nature; and there is a paradise, at least for the noble dead, situated at the zenith, though the way thither is beset by perils, monsters, and precipices. Las Casas also mentions the belief in a supreme deity, Chicuna, Lord of All Things, as extending from Darien to Nicaragua; and he says that along with this god the Sun, the Moon, and the Morning Star were worshipped, as well as divinities of wood and stone which presided over the elements and the sowings (sementeras).
The allusion to deities of the sementeras is interesting in connexion with the Bribri and Brunka (or Boruca) myths, published by Pittier de Fábrega. According to these tribes of Indians, men and animal kinds were originally born of seeds kept in baskets which Sibú entrusted to the lesser gods; but the evil powers were constantly hunting for these seeds, endeavouring to destroy them. One tale relates that after Surá, the good deity to whom the seed had been committed, had gone to his field of maize, Jáburu, the evil divinity, stole and ate the seed; and when Surá returned, killed and buried him, a cacao-tree and a calabash-tree growing from the grave. Sibú, the almighty one, resolving to punish Jáburu and demanding of him a drink of chocolate, the wives of the wicked deity roasted the cacao, and made a drinking-vessel of the calabash. "Then Sibú, the almighty god, willed—and whatever he wills has to be: 'May the first cup come to me!' and as it so came to pass, he said, 'My uncle, I present this cup to thee, so that thou drink!' Jáburu swallowed the chocolate at once, with such delight that his throat resounded, tshaaa! And he said, 'My uncle! I have drunk Surá's first fruit!' But just at this moment he began to swell, and he swelled and swelled until he blew up. Then Sibú, the almighty god, picked up again the seed of our kin, which was in Jáburu's body, and willed, 'Let Surá wake up again!' And as it so happened he gave him back the basket with the seed of our kin to keep." In another tale a duel between Sibú and Jáburu, in which each should throw two cacao-pods at the other, and he should lose in whose hand a pod first broke, was the preliminary for the creation of men, which Sibú desired and Jáburu opposed. The almighty god chose green pods, the evil one ripe pods; and at the third throw the pod broke in Jáburu's hand, mankind being then born from the seed. A third legend, of a man-stealing eagle who devoured his prey in company with a jaguar (who is no true jaguar, but a bad spirit, having the form of a stone until his prey approaches), is evidently a version of the story of the bird-monster told by Peter Martyr.