Primitive Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

In one of the Dog-rib Indian sagas an important part in the creation is played by a great bird, as among several other tribes who loved to trace their origin to a bird, as some would trace theirs to a toad or a rattlesnake. Originally, the saga runs, the world was nothing but a wide, waste sea, without any living thing upon it save a gigantic bird, who with the glance of its fiery eyes produced the lightning, and with the flapping of its wings the thunder. This bird, by diving into the sea, caused the earth to appear above it, and proceeded to call all animals to its surface (except, indeed, the Chippewya Indians, who were descended from a dog). When its work was complete it made a great arrow, which it bade the Indians keep with great care; and when this was lost, owing to the stupidity of the Chippewyas, it was so angry that it left the earth, never afterwards to revisit it; and men now live no longer, as they did in those days, till their throats are worn through with eating and their feet with walking the earth.[5]

Many thousands of miles separate the Tongan Islands from North America, yet there too we find the idea of the earth having come from the waters. In the beginning nothing was to be seen above the waste of waters but the Island of Bolotu, which is as everlasting as the gods who dwell there or as the stars and the sea. One day the god Tangaloa went to fish in the sea, when, feeling something heavy at the end of his line, he drew it in, and there perceived the tops of rocks, which continued to increase in size and number till they formed a large continent, and his line broke, and only the Tongan Islands remained above the surface. These Tangaloa, with the help of the other gods, filled with trees and herbs and animals from Bolotu, only of a smaller size and not immortal. Then he bade his two sons take their wives and go to dwell in Tonga, dividing the land and dwelling apart. The younger brother was steady and industrious, and made many discoveries; but the elder was idle and slept away his time, and envied the works of his brother, till at last his envy grew so strong that one day he murdered him. Then came Tangaloa in wrath from Bolotu, to ask him why he had slain his brother, and he bade him bring his brother’s family to him. They were told to take their boats and sail eastward till they came to a great land to dwell in. ‘Your skin’ (to this effect ran Tangaloa’s blessing) ‘shall be white as your souls, for your souls are pure; you shall be wise, make axes, have all other riches, and great boats. I myself will command the wind to blow from your land to Tonga, but the people of Tonga will not be able with their bad boats to reach you.’ To the others he said: ‘You shall be black, because your souls are black, and you shall remain poor. You shall not be able to prepare useful things, nor to go to the land of your brothers. But your brothers shall come to Tonga and trade with you as they please.’[6]

This Tongan creation-myth is especially striking, not only from its resemblance to the well-known stories of Cain and Abel or of Romulus and Remus, but from the wonderful extension of a similar story over the world. It has been found among the Esquimaux, among the Hervey Islanders, among the Hindoos, among the Iroquois of America. Its origin perhaps lies in early and rude attempts to account for the more obvious dualisms in nature, as those, for instance, between the sun and the moon, or between warm and cold winds. In the Iroquois version the elder brother who killed the younger is said to have been identical with the sun, though his mother, not the brother he killed, was the moon.[7] A curious Indian drawing has been preserved in which the god of the north wind, or of cold weather, contends with the god of the south, or of warmth. The former is figured in a snowstorm, the latter in rain; wolves fight on the side of the one, the crow and plover on that of the other. The conflict is terrible; the southern god is worsted, cold weather prevails, and the earth is frozen up. But in spring he sends forth his crow and plover, who defeat the wolves, and the northern god is drowned in a flood of spray which arises from the melting of the snow and ice. And in this contention for cold and warm weather it is believed they will battle as long as the world shall endure.[8]

The Kamchadal belief is instructive, as showing that by the creation of the world the savage only means that small portion of it which he knows, and that, so far from it being any proof of his intelligence to suppose a cause for the hills or island which limit his energies, it is rather his want of logical thought which impels him to the belief. For seeing, as he does, a spirit in everything, whether it be moving animal, or rushing wind, or standing stone, and accounting, as he does, for everything by a spirit which is at once its cause and controlling principle, it is only natural that he should draw from his unlimited spirit-world one who made and governs all things. Thus the Kamchadals believe that after their supreme deity, of whom they predicate nothing but existence, the greatest god is Kutka. Kutka created the heavens and the earth, making both eternal, like the men and creatures he placed on the earth. But the Kamchadals openly avow that they think themselves much cleverer than Kutka, who in their eyes is so stupid as to be quite undeserving of prayers or gratitude. Had he been cleverer, they say, he would have made the world much better, without so many mountains and inaccessible cliffs, without streams of such rapidity, or such tempests of wind and rain. In winter, if they are climbing a mountain, or in summer, if their canoes come to rapids, they will vent loud curses on Kutka for having made the streams too strong for their canoes, or the mountains so wearisome for their feet.

The Tamanaks of the Orinoco manifested a not much higher conception of a creator than the Kamchadals. For they ascribed the creation of the world to Amalivacca, who in the course of his work discussed long with his brother about the Orinoco, having the kind wish so to make it that ships might as easily go up its stream as down, but being compelled to abandon a task which so far transcended his powers. The Tamanaks recently showed a cave where Amalivacca dwelt when he lived among them, before he took a boat and sailed to the other side of the sea.[9]

Not only, however, is the idea of a creation of things quite common among untutored savages, but there is often a belief closely connected therewith that in the beginning death and sickness were unknown in the world, but came into it in consequence of some fault committed by its hitherto immortal occupants. Such a belief, reported as it is from places so widely sundered as Ceylon, North America, and the Tongan Islands, seems effectually to discountenance the suspicion which might otherwise attach to it of collusion or mistake on the part of our informants. It is the fancy of the Cingalese cosmogony that, in the fifth period of creative energy, the immortal beings who then inhabited the earth ate of certain plants, and thereby involved themselves in darkness and mortality. ‘It was then that they were formed male and female, and lost the power of returning to the heavenly mansions.’ Liable as they had theretofore been to mental passions, such as envy, covetousness, and ambition, they were thenceforward subjected to corporeal passions as well, and the race now inhabiting the earth became subject to all the evils that afflict them.[10] According to the saga of the Dog-rib Indians the first man who lived upon the earth, when food and other good things abounded, was Chapewee, who afterwards, giving his children two kinds of food, black and white, forbade them to eat of the former. When he went away for a long journey to bring the sun into the world, his children were obedient and ate only of the white fruit, but ate it all. But when he went away a second time to bring the moon into the world, in their hunger his children forgot his prohibition and ate of the black fruit. So when Chapewee returned he was very wroth, and declared that thenceforth the earth should only produce bad fruit and that men should be subject to sickness and death. Afterwards, indeed, when his family lamented that men should have been made mortal for eating the black fruit, Chapewee granted that those who dreamt certain dreams should have the power of curing sickness and so of prolonging human life; but that was the extent to which Chapewee relented.[11] The Caribs, Waraues, and Arawaks are said to believe in two distinct creators of men and women; the creator of the former being superior and doing neither good nor harm. After he had created men he came on the earth to see what they were doing; but finding them so bad that they even attempted his own life, he took from them their immortality and gave it to skin-casting creatures instead. The Aleutian Islanders believe that the god who made their islands completed his work by making men to inhabit them; but these men were immortal beings, for when age came over them they had but to climb a lofty mountain and plunge from thence into a lake, in order to come forth young again and vigorous. Then it happened that a mortal woman, who had the misfortune to draw upon herself celestial love, remonstrated one day with her lover for having, in his creation of the Aleutian Islands, made so many mountains and forgotten to supply the land with forests. This imprudent criticism caused her brother to be slain by the angry god, and all men after him to be subject to death. A similar idea is contained in one of the Tongan traditions of creation; for when the islands were made, but before they were inhabited by reasonable beings, some two hundred of the lower gods, male and female alike, took a great boat to go to see the new land fished up by Tangaloa. So delighted were they with it that they immediately broke up their big boat, intending to make some smaller ones out of it. But after a few days some of them died; and one of them, inspired by God, told them that since they had come to Tonga, and breathed its air and eaten its fruits, they should be mortal and fill the world with mortals. Then were they sorry that they had broken their big boat, and they set to work to make another, and went to sea, hoping again to reach Bolotu, the heaven they had left; but being unable to find it, they returned regretfully to Tonga.

Thus it would seem that wherever men have so far advanced in power of thought as to realise the conception of antiquity, the troubles of their actual lot have always tempted them to idealise the past, and the glories of the age of gold have been sung by the poets of no particular land nor literature. The Shawnee Indians believed there was a time when they could walk on the ocean or restore life to the dead, till they lost these privileges when the nation by its carelessness became divided into two.[12] The Ashantees trace all their calamities to the folly of their ancestors, for when the first created black men were given their choice between a large box and a piece of sealed-up paper they elected to take the box, but found therein only some gold, iron, and other metals, whilst the white men on opening the paper found all that was needful to make them wise, and have ever since treated the blacks as their slaves.[13] It is remarkable that a similar fancy is ascribed to the Navajoes of New Mexico. For their ancestors, after creating the sun and moon, made two water-jars, both covered at the top, but one gorgeously painted, containing only rubbish, the other of plain earthenware, unpainted, but containing flocks and herds and other valuables. The Navajoes, allowed to choose before the Pueblos, took the beautiful but worthless jar; whereupon the old men said: ‘Thus it will always be with the two nations. You, Navajoes, will be a poor and wandering race; destitute of the comforts of life and ever greedy for things on account of their outward show rather than their intrinsic value; while the Pueblos will enjoy an abundance of the good things of life, will occupy houses, and have plenty of flocks and herds.’[14] According to the legend in the Zend-Avesta, when Ormuzd created Meschia and Meschiana, the first man and woman, he appointed heaven as their dwelling, under the sole condition of humility and obedience to the law of pure thought, pure speech, and pure action. For some time they were a blessing to one another and lived happily, saying that it was from Ormuzd that all things came—the water and earth, trees and animals, sun, moon, and stars, and all good roots and fruits on the earth. But at last Ahriman became master over their thoughts, and they ascribed the creation of all things to him. So they lost their happiness and their virtue, and their souls were condemned to remain in Duzakh until the resurrection of their bodies, when Sosiosch should restore life to the dead.[15]

Among the myths, however, most widely spread over the world and common to races in all stages of culture, from the most barbarous to the most civilized, a prominent place is due to the legend of an all-destructive deluge, a legend which, arising as it probably did in many different places from exaggerated memories of purely local floods, must, in spite of its seeming universality, remain a merely local myth, entirely destitute of all bearing on the question of the unity of the human race, or of any connection with the story told in Genesis. A local flood like that which on the occasion of an earthquake in 1819 was caused by the sea flowing in at the eastern mouth of the Indus and converting in the space of a few hours a district of 2,000 square miles into a vast lagoon, would naturally be an event which would remain for ever in the oral traditions of the district and tend to become magnified when the event itself was forgotten. In Australia, which is subject at certain epochs and in certain localities to great inundations, and which bears evidence of former floods in what are now waterless deserts, flood stories are said to be ‘exceedingly common’ among all the tribes, one tribe having a tradition that when they returned to their old hunting-grounds on the banks of a river, after a great flood, they found the sea flowing where had stood the other bank, nor any trace left of its former inhabitants.[16]

Or, again, it is possible that alterations in the level of the sea and land or the subsidence of a large continent, such as that of which on geological as well as ethnological grounds it has been supposed that the Polynesian islands are the remains, may have originated the tradition. Thus, the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined the submersion of a large country in the Atlantic to account for the deluge-myths of the Central American nations.[17] Dr. Brinton, indeed, suggests, that not physics, but metaphysics is the exciting cause of beliefs in periodical convulsions of the globe, maintaining that ‘by nothing short of a miracle’ could savages preserve the remembrance of even the most terrible catastrophe beyond a few generations. But it is at least as likely that such remembrance should be possible as that savages, starting, as he supposes, with an idea of creation as a reconstruction of existing elements, should have added thereto the myth of a universal catastrophe, ‘to avoid the dilemma of a creation from nothing on the one hand and the eternity of matter on the other.’[18] Perhaps, however, all such legends are best regarded as pure nature-myths, to which we may possibly find the key in the belief of the Esquimaux, that the souls of the dead are encamped round a large lake in the sky, which when it overflows causes rain upon earth and would cause a universal deluge if at any time its floodgates were burst. The belief in a contingency is never far from the assertion of its actuality, nor are the steps of thought always visible which separate the possible from the real.

Although many of the deluge-myths of the world have doubtless owed their origin to the zeal with which they have been sought for in the cause of orthodox theories, it is improbable that all of them have been produced in this way. Dr. Brinton, who has examined the evidence with care, asserts that there are twenty-eight American nations among whom a distinct and well-authenticated myth of the deluge was found.[19]