The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

Fray Simon relates an episode of these same Indians which is enlightening both as to the missionary and as to the aboriginal conception of the powers that be. After the first missionary had laboured among the natives of Tunja and Sogamozo, "the Demon there began to give contrary doctrines; and among other matters he sought to discredit the teaching of the Incarnation, telling them that such a thing had not yet taken place. Nevertheless, it should happen that the Sun, assuming human flesh in the body of a virgin of the pueblo of Guacheta, should cause her to bring forth that which she should conceive from the rays of the sun, although remaining virgin. This was bruited throughout the provinces, and the cacique of the pueblo named, wishing to prove the miracle, took two virgins, and leading them forth from his house every dawn, caused them to dispose themselves upon a neighbouring hill, where the first rays of the sun would shine upon them. Continuing this for some days, it was granted to the Demon by Divine permission (whose judgements are incomprehensible) that the event should issue according to his desire: in such manner that in a few days one of the damsels became pregnant, as she said, by the Sun." At the end of nine months the girl brought forth a hacuata, a large and beautiful emerald, which was treated as an infant, and after being carried for several days, became a living creature—"all by the order of the Demon." The child was called Goranchacha, and when he was grown he became cacique, with the title of "Child of the Sun." It is to be suspected that the story of the virgin-born son of the Sun was older than the first preaching of the Incarnation, and that Spanish ears had too eagerly misheard some tale of rites or myths which must have been analogous to the Inca legends of descent from the Sun and to their consecration of virgins to his worship.

Like the other civilized American nations the Chibcha preserved the tradition of a bearded old man, clothed in long robes who came from the east to instruct them in the arts of life and to raise them from primeval barbarism; and like other churchly writers Fray Pedro Simon regarded this as evidence of the preaching of the Gospel by an apostle. Nempterequeteva, or Nemquetheba, and Xue, or Zuhé, are two of the names of this culture hero, worshipped as the god Bochica. He taught the weaving of cotton, the cultivation of fruits, the building of houses, the adoration of the gods; and then he passed on his mysterious way, leaving as proof of his mission designs of crosses and serpents, and the custom of erecting crosses over the graves of the victims of snake-bite—to Fray Pedro an obvious reminiscence of the brazen serpent raised on a cross by Moses in the Wilderness. One of the epithets of this greybeard was Chiminizagagua, or "Messenger of Chiminigagua," the supreme god; and when the Spaniards appeared they were called Gagua, after the light-giver; but later, when their cruelties had set them in a different context, the aborigines changed the name to Suegagua ("Demon with Light") after their principal devil, Suetiva, "and this they give today to the Spaniards." Piedrahíta says the Spaniards were termed Zuhá, but he identifies the name as belonging to the hero Bochica.

A curious episode follows the departure of the culture hero. Among the people appeared a woman, beautiful and resplendent—"or, better to say, a devil in her figure"—who taught doctrines wholly opposed to the injunctions of Chiminizagagua. Dancing and carousal were the tenets of her evangel; and in displeasure at this, Chiminizagagua transformed the woman (variously known as Chie, Huytaca, or Xubchasgagua) into an owl, condemning her to walk the night. Humboldt says that Bochica changed his wife Chia into the Moon (chia signifies "moon" in the Chibchan tongue, says Acosta de Samper); and it seems altogether likely that in the culture hero, Messenger of Light, and the festal heroine, with their opposite doctrines, we have a myth of sun and moon.

The Chibcha, of course, had their deluge-legend. In the version given by Fray Pedro Simon it is associated with the appearance of the rainbow as the symbol of hope; and since the rainbow cult was important throughout the Andean region, it may everywhere have been associated with some such myth as the friar recounts. Chibchachum, the tutelary of the natives of Bogotá, being offended by the people, who murmured against him and indeed openly offended, sent a flood to punish them, whereupon they, in their peril, appealed to Bochica, who appeared to them upon a rainbow, and, striking the mountains with his staff, opened a conduit for the waters. Chibchachum was punished, as Zeus punished the Titans, by being thrust beneath the earth to take the place of the lignum-vitae-trees which had hitherto upheld it, and his weary restlessness is the cause of earthquakes; while the rainbow, Chuchaviva, was thenceforth honoured as a deity, though not without fear; for Chibchachum, in revenge for his disgrace, announced that when it appeared, many would die. In the version of this tale given by Piedrahíta, Huytaca plays a part, for it is as a result of her artifices that the waters rise; but Bochica is again the deliverer, and the place opened for the issuance of the waters was shown at the cataract of Téquendama—"one of the wonders of the world."

The myth of Chibchachum, shaking the world which he supports, has its analogue not only in the tale of Atlas but also in the Tlingit legend of the Old Woman Below who jars the post that upholds the world. It would seem, however, not impossible that the story is an etymological myth, for Fray Pedro Simon says that Chibchachum means "Staff of the Chibcha," a name which might easily lend itself to the mythopoesy of the deluge-tale; nor is it unreasonable from the point of view of cultural advancement, for the Chibcha were beyond the stage in which it is profitable to refer all deifications to natural phenomena. Chibchachum, says the friar, was god of commerce and industries—a complex divinity, not a mere hero of myth—and Bochica, the most universally venerated of Chibchan deities, was revered as a law-giver, divinity of caciques and captains; served with sacrifices of gold and tobacco, he was worshipped with fasts and hymns, and his image was that of a man with the golden staff of authority. There was a fox-god and a bear-god, but Nemcatacoa, the bear-god, was patron of weavers and dyers, and, oddly, of drunkards; in his bear's form he was supposed to sing and dance with his followers. Chukem, deity of boundaries and foot-races, must have been an American Hermes, and Bachue, goddess of agriculture and of the springs of life, was, no doubt, a personification of the earth itself, a Ge or Demeter. Chuchaviva, the Rainbow, aided women in child-birth and those sick with a fever—and we think of the images of the rainbow goddess on the sweat lodges of the Navaho far to the north, and of the rainbow insignia of the royal Incas in the imperial south. Certain it is that here we have to do with a pantheon that reflects the complexity of a life developed beyond the primitive needs of those whom we call nature-folk.

V. THE MEN FROM THE SEA

The most picturesque account of the landing of gigantic strangers on the desert-like Pacific coast, just south of the equator, is that given by Cieza de León.[120] "I will relate what I have been told, without paying attention to the various versions of the story current among the vulgar, who always exaggerate everything." With this proclamation of modesty, he proceeds with the tale which the natives, he says, have received from their ancestors of a remote time.

"There arrived on the coast, in boats made of reeds, as big as large ships, a party of men of such size that, from the knee downwards, their height was as great as the entire height of an ordinary man, though he might be of good stature. Their limbs were all in proportion to the deformed size of their bodies, and it was a monstrous thing to see their heads, with hair reaching to the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates. They had no beards and were dressed in the skins of animals, others only in the dress which nature gave them, and they had no women with them. When they arrived at this point [Santa Elena], they made a sort of village, and even now the sites of their houses are pointed out. But as they found no water, in order to remedy the want they made some very deep wells, works which are truly worthy of remembrance, for such is their magnitude that they certainly must have been executed by very strong men. They dug these wells in the living rock until they met with water, and then they lined them with masonry from top to bottom in such sort that they will endure for many ages. The water in these wells is very good and wholesome, and always so cold that it is very pleasant to drink it. Having built their village and made their wells or cisterns where they could drink, these great men, or giants, consumed all the provisions they could lay their hands upon in the surrounding country, insomuch that one of them ate more meat than fifty of the natives of the country could. As all the food they could find was not sufficient to sustain them, they killed many fish with nets and other gear. They were detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed them, and the men also in another way; but the Indians were not sufficiently numerous to destroy this new people who had come to occupy their lands.... All the natives declare that God, our Lord, brought upon them a punishment in proportion to the enormity of their offence.... A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which, at one blow, they were all killed, and the fire consumed them. There only remained a few bones and skulls, which God allowed to remain without being consumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment."

Cieza de León's story is only one among a number of accounts of this race of giants, come from the sea and destroyed long ago by flame from heaven for the sin of sodomy. To these legends recent investigations have added a new interest; for during excavations in the coast region to the north of Cape Santa Elena the members of the George G. Heye Expeditions (1906-08) discovered the remains of a unique aboriginal civilization in this region, among its monuments being stone-faced wells corresponding to those mentioned by the early narration. Another and peculiarly interesting type of monument, found here in abundance, is the stone seat, whether throne or altar, carved with human or animal figures to support it, and reminiscent of the duhos of the Antilles and of carved metates and seats found northward in the continent and beyond the Isthmus. It is the opinion of the excavators that these seats were thrones for deities; possibly also for human dignitaries, especially as clay figures represent men sitting upon such seats—images, perhaps, of household gods; while the figures of men, pumas, serpents, birds, monkeys, and other figures crouching caryatid-like are, no doubt, depictions of supporting powers, divine auxiliaries or gods themselves. Monstrous forms, composite animals, and grotesquely frog-like images of a female goddess in bas-relief on stele-like slabs—mute emblems of a forgotten pantheon—add curious interest to the vanished race, remembered only in distorted legend when the first-coming Spaniards received the tale from the aborigines.