If anything, there seems to be a clearer magical association in rites and games connected with plants than with those that mimic animals. Especially is this true of the manioc, or cassava, which is important not only as a food-giving plant, but as the source of a liquor, and, again, is dangerous for its poison,—which, as Teschauer remarks, must have caused the death of many during the long period in which the use of the plant was developed. Père Tastevin describes men and women gathering about a trough filled with manioc roots, each with a grater, and as they grate rapidly and altogether, a woman strikes up the song: "A spider has bitten me! A spider has bitten me! From under the leaf of the kará a spider has bitten me!" The one opposite answers: "A spider has bitten me! Bring the cure! Quick, make haste! A spider has bitten me!" And all break in with Yandú se suú, by which is understood nothing more than just the rhythmic tom-tom on the grater. Similar is the song of the sudarari—a plant whose root resembles the manioc, which multiplies with wonderful rapidity, and the presence of which in a manioc field is regarded as insuring large manioc roots: "Permit, O patroness, that we sing during this beautiful night!" with the refrain, "Sudarari!" This, says Père Tastevin, is the true symbol of the fertility of fields, shared in a lesser way by certain other roots.
It is small wonder that the spirit or genius of the manioc figures in myth, nor is it surprising to find that the predominant myth is based on the motive of the North American Mondamin story. Whiffen remarks, of the north-western Amazonians:[182] "What I cannot but consider the most important of their stories are the many myths that deal with the essential and now familiar details of everyday life in connexion with the manihot utilissima and other fruits"; and he goes on to tell a typical story: The Good Spirit came to earth, showed the manioc to the Indians, and taught them to extract its evils; but he failed to teach them how the plant might be reproduced. Long afterward a virgin of the tribe, wandering in the woods, was seduced by a beautiful young hunter, who was none other than the manioc metamorphosed. A daughter born of this union led the tribe to a fine plantation of manioc, and taught them how to reproduce it from bits of the stalk. Since then the people have had bread. The more elaborate version of Couto de Magalhães tells how a chief who was about to kill his daughter when he found her to be with child, was warned in a dream by a white man not to do so, for his daughter was truly innocent and a virgin. A beautiful white boy was born to the maiden, and received the name Mani; but at the end of a year, with no apparent sign of ailing, he died. A strange plant grew upon his grave, whose fruit intoxicated the birds; the Indians then opened the grave, and in place of the body of Mani discovered the manioc root, which is thence called Mani-oka, "House of Mani." Teschauer gives another version in which Mani lived many years and taught his people many things, and at the last, when about to die told them that after his death they should find, when a year had passed, the greatest treasure of all, the bread-yielding root.
It is probable that some form of the Mani myth first suggested to pious missionaries the extension of the legendary journeys of Saint Thomas among the wild tribes of the tropics. From Brazil to Peru, says Granada,[183] footprints and seats of Santo Tomás Apóstol, or Santo Tomé, are shown; and he associates these tales with the dissemination and cultivation of the all-useful herb, as probably formed by a Christianizing of the older culture myth. Three gifts are ascribed to the apostle,—the treasure of the faith, the cultivation of the manioc, and relief from epidemics. "Keep this in your houses," quoth the saint, "and the divine mercy will never withhold the good." The three gifts—a faith, a food, and a medicine,—are the almost universal donations of Indian culture heroes, and it is small wonder if minds piously inclined have found here a meeting-ground of religions. An interesting suggestion made by Señor Lafone Quevado would make Tupan, Tupa, Tumpa,—the widespread Brazilian name for god,—if not a derivative, at least a cognate form of Tonapa, the culture hero of the Lake Titicaca region, who was certainly identified as Saint Thomas by missionaries and Christian Indians at a very early date. That the myth itself is aboriginal there can be no manner of doubt,—Bochica and Quetzalcoatl are northern forms of it; nor need we doubt that Tupa or Tonapa is a native high deity—in all probability celestial or solar, as Lafone Quevado believes. The union of native god and Christian apostle is but the pretty marriage of Indian and missionary faiths.
One of the most poetical of Brazilian vegetation myths is told by Koch-Grünberg in connexion with the Yurupari festival,—a mask dance (yurupari means just "mask" according to Père Tastevin, although some have given it the significance of "demon") celebrated in conjunction with the ripening of fruits of certain palms. Women and small boys are excluded from the fête; indeed, it is death for women even to see the flutes and pipes,—as Humboldt said was true of the sacred trumpet of the Orinoco Indians in his day. The legend turns on the music of the pipes, and is truly Orphic in spirit.... Many, many years ago there came from the great Water-House, the home of the Sun, a little boy who sang with such wondrous charm that folk came from far and near to see him and harken. Milómaki, he was called, the Son of Miló. But when the folk had heard him, and were returned home, and ate of fish, they fell down and died. So their kinsfolk seized Milómaki, and built a funeral pyre, and burnt him, because he had brought death amongst them. But the youth went to his death still with song on his lips, and as the flames licked about his body, he sang: "Now I die, my son! now I leave this world!" And as his body began to break with the heat, still he sang in lordly tones: "Now bursts my body! now I am dead!" And his body was destroyed by the flames, but his soul ascended to heaven. From the ashes on the same day sprang a long green blade, which grew and grew, and even in another day had become a high tree, the first paxiuba palm. From its wood the people made great flutes, which gave forth as wonderful melodies as Milómaki had aforetime sung; and to this day the men blow upon them whenever the fruits are ripe. But women and little boys must not look upon the flutes, lest they die. This Milómaki, say the Yahuna, is the Tupana of the Indians, the Spirit Above, whose mask is the sky.
PLATE XLI.
Dance or ceremonial masks of Brazilian Indians, now in the Peabody Museum.
The region about the headwaters of the Rio Negro and the Yapura—the scene of Koch-Grünberg's travels—is the centre of the highest development of the mask dances, which seem to be recent enough with some of the tribes. In the legends of the Kabéua it is Kuai, the mythic hero and fertility spirit of the Arawak tribes, who is regarded as the introducer of the mask dances,—Kuai, who came with his brethren from their stone-houses in the hills to teach the dances to his children, and who now lives and dances in the sky-world. This is a myth which immediately suggests the similar tales of Zuñi and the other Pueblos, and the analogy suggested is more than borne out by what Koch-Grünberg[184] tells of the Katcina-like character of the masks. They all represent spirits or daemones. They are used in ceremonies in honour of the ancestral dead, as well as in rituals addressed to nature powers. Furthermore, the spirit or daemon is temporarily embodied in the mask,—"the mask is for the Indian the daemon"; though, when the mask is destroyed at the end of a ceremonial, the Daemon of the Mask does not perish; rather he becomes máskara-anga, the Soul of the Mask; and, now invisible, though still powerful, he flies away to the Stone-house of the Daemones, whence only the art of the magician may summon him. "All masks are Daemones," said Koch-Grünberg's informant, "and all Daemones are lords of the mask."
III. GODS, GHOSTS, AND BOGEYS
What are the native beliefs of the wild tribes of South America about gods, and what is their natural religion? If an answer to this question may be fairly summarized from the expressions of observers, early and recent, it is this: the Indians generally believe in good powers and in evil powers, superhuman in character. The good powers are fewer and less active than the evil; at their head is the Ancient of Heaven. Little attention is paid to the Ancient of Heaven, or to any of the good powers,—they are good, and do not need attention. The evil powers are numerous and busy; the wise man must be ever on the alert to evade them,—turn them when he can, placate when he must.