A Brief Guide to Native American Myths and Legends (39 page)

In concluding this survey of representative myths of the Red Race of North America, the reader will probably be chiefly impressed with the circumstance that although many of these tales exhibit a striking resemblance to the myths of European and Asiatic peoples they have yet an atmosphere of their own which strongly differentiates them from the folk-tales of all other races. It is a truism in mythology that although the tales and mythological systems of peoples dwelling widely apart may show much likeness to one another, such a resemblance cannot be advanced as a proof that the divergent races at some distant period possessed a common mythology. Certain tribes in Borneo live in huts built on piles driven into lake-beds and use blow-pipes; so do some Indians of Guiana and contiguous countries; yet no scientist of experience would be so rash as to advance the theory that these races possessed a common origin. It is the same with mythological processes, which may have been evolved separately at great distances, but yet exhibit a marked likeness. These resemblances arise from the circumstance that the mind of man, whether he be situated in China or Peru, works on surprisingly similar lines. But, as has been indicated, the best proof that the myths of North America have not been sophisticated by those of Europe and Asia is the circumstance that the aboriginal atmosphere they contain is so marked that even the most superficial observer could not fail to observe its presence. In the tales contained in this volume
the facts of Indian life, peculiar and unique, enter into every description and are inalienably interwoven with the matter of the story.

In closing, the author desires to make a strong appeal for a reasoned and charitable consideration of the Indian character on the part of his readers. This noble, manly, and dignified race has in the past been grossly maligned, chiefly by persons themselves ignorant and inspired by hereditary dislike. The Red Man is neither a monster of inhumanity nor a marvel of cunning, but a being with like feelings and aspirations to our own. Because his customs and habits of thought differ from ours he has been charged with all manner of crimes and offences with which he has, in general, nothing to do. We do not deny that he was, till very recent times, a savage, with the habits and outlook of a savage. But that he ever was a demon in human shape must be strenuously denied. In the march of progress Indian men and women are today taking places of honour and emolument side by side with their white fellow-citizens, and many gifted and cultured persons of Indian blood have done good work for the race. Let us hope that the ancient virtues of courage and endurance which have stood the Indian people in such good stead of old will assist their descendants in the even more strenuous tasks of civilization to which they are now called.

* * *

The most obvious omission in Spence’s survey of the Indians of the North are the Eskimo (or, as they call themselves, ‘Inuit’, ‘the people’). The name Eskimo, meaning ‘eaters of raw flesh’, was donated them by the Algonquian-speaking tribes to the south. The Eskimo did indeed masticate uncooked flesh, principally of caribou, moose, and the mammals of the sea, whales and seals. Of the linguistic group Eskimo–Aleut, the Eskimo themselves were the last of the tribes to wander over the Bering land bridge, in about 3,000 BC, and retain the distinctive eye fold of the Mongols.

During the dark days of the Arctic winter, Eskimo life was inward and village-based, with entire families living in one-room houses (made of earth, or earth and stone and whalebone, or ice), rarely venturing outside for days on end. Not surprisingly, shamanic religion, story-telling, and the crafting of religious objects was well developed among the tribe with home-bound days to fill.

Their religious ideas were not formalized, their festivals and ceremonies few in number. The main religious gathering was an impromptu ecstatic séance held by the shaman (angakok), who while beating a drum would fall into a trance in which he could communicate with the spirit world. Usually the angakok’s prophecies were trivial and domestic, but on occasion assumed tribal importance, relating messages from the spirits which told of the movement of shoals of fish or the advance of bad weather. Aspirants for the role of shaman were required, on reaching puberty, to wander a deserted region alone, where in his anxiety and hunger the
tornaq
, or spirit, would appear. The frightened candidate would be promised visions, and on returning to his family would serve an apprenticeship to an experienced magician.

The Eskimo had no gods as such, with the partial exception of the Old Woman Who Lived Under the Sea, known as Sedna, and also called Arnakuagsak, Nerrivik, and Nuliajoq. Unlike most peoples, where the Great Goddess was an Earth deity, to the Inuit, whose life and survival depend on the sea, Sedna was a water spirit. She was born to two giants, and she grew rapidly, having an insatiable appetite for flesh. One night she started to eat the limbs of her sleeping parents. On awaking, the horrified parents put Sedna in their
umiak
(skin-covered canoe) and paddled far out to sea, where they threw her overboard. She clung desperately to the side of the canoe, whereupon Sedna’s parents cut off her fingers, which turned into fish, seals and other creatures as they fell into the water. Sedna herself slipped beneath the surface, to become the demonic ruler of the ocean depths. It was Sedna who caused the storms of the sea, it was Sedna who controlled the migration of the sea’s animals.

When Inuit hunters were unable to find food, the angakok would
send his spirit down into the sea to plead with the goddess. To reach Sedna’s underwater realm of Adlivon the spirit of the angakok first had to survive an icy whirlpool, then get past a cauldron of boiling seals, evade a snarling guard dog, and cross over an abyss on the thinnest of arches, before arriving at Sedna’s tented palace on the seabed. There, the spirit would sing a hymn of pleading and contort itself to amuse the sulky dark lady. Eventually, she would be induced into helping, telling the spirit that either the Inuit must move to another location or where she would send them prey to catch.

With so few gods, the Eskimo relied on spirits to guide them. There was no concept of a supreme spirit (as, for instance, the Sioux had with Watanka Tanka and the Iroquois with Manitou); befitting a clan-centred culture, the Eskimo considered that each family had an ancestral spirit to guard them. Some Eskimo cultures believed that the ancestral spirits had an overlord, rather like the Europeans of the medieval era believed in a king of the fairies. The ancestral spirits would provide information in dreams about good hunting, and sometimes allow humans to understand the speech of animals and birds. This was sensible practice by the ancestral spirits, for the dead lived in an unhappy harsh underworld, rather like this world, only darker. The spirits of the dead needed a share of the catch of their descendants, given as offerings, to stave off hunger. But animals and birds were not mere sources of food; they too had spirits and souls, they too were worthy of respect, and were to be charmed into the traps of man.

Unlike the Inuit, the fishermen and hunter-gatherers of the Northwest – principally the Haida, Kwakiutl, Tlingit and Tsimshian – had a high degree of social organization, living in large permanent villages in which families were divided into groups dedicated to a totem, usually an animal, with which an ancestor had had a special relationship. Thus there were Salmon people, Beaver people, Killer Whale people and so forth. The totem – a sort of family crest – was carved on a pole placed to the front of the lodge.

Totem creatures figured large in the region’s mythology, but were neither fully human nor fully animal nor fully spirit. In the mythology of the Northwest Coast a bear, for instance, could act like a human
but change into Bear at will, meaning it had spirit character. The fisher tribes had a vague conception of a pre-eminent spirit power, the Chief of the Sky People (called by Spence, ‘Sky-god’), who, along with Sun, Moon, the Old Woman Under The Sea, and the trickster Raven, were full deities. But none were formally worshipped. There were no temples, no regular ceremonies in the region. Heroes tended to have supernatural powers, for example Stoneribs, the boy who kills the sea monster Qagwaii (a killer whale) by jumping inside him and killing him from within with a bow and arrow.

The Raven is a reminder that many primitive societies of North America have conceived of creation as an act of trickery. According to the Haida, the Raven (also known as Yetl or Hoya) stole the sun from his grandfather Nasshahkeeyalhl and made the moon and stars from it. The Raven then divided night and day, made lakes and rivers, filled them with salmon, planted trees on land and placed animals in them. In a giant clamshell he found some timid creatures, which he released onto the beach, singing all the while. These were the first men. Quickly becoming bored with his discovery, Raven scoured the world for their female counterparts, finally finding some women caught in a chiton (a seashell). He put the women with the men and was much entertained by their interactions.

Raven might be creator and provider, but he is always unable to resist lechery and mischief. He never truly creates; he steals, discovers and fiddles things about. Raven, as Spence notes, is not the only trickster of the Northwest. Mink and Blue Jay also take the role. Tricksters were feared, respected and admired. Some animal spirits of the region, though, such as the bird-spirit known as Crooked Beak of Heaven were only to be dreaded, and kept at bay by the rituals of the Shamans’ Society. Any animal-spirit, however, was capable of retribution if maltreated. If people, for example, tortured a salmon or threw away excess fish, retribution from the spirits would ensue. The British Museum ethnographer Cottie Burland (1905–1983) recorded a story from Nass River, British Columbia, which illustrates the dire consequences of a lack of regard for nature:

It tells how, in a canyon near the head of the river, there was a wonderful place that the tribes people could always visit to find salmon and wild berries. The villagers who lived nearby were wealthy enough to trade with others and much respected. As time went on, the younger people forgot the old traditions; sometimes they killed small animals and left the carcasses for the crows and eagles to eat. Their elders warned them that the Chief in the Sky would be angered by such foolish behaviour, but nobody heeded them. In one case, when the salmon season was at its height and the fish were swimming up river in their myriads, some of the young men of the Wolf Clan thought it amusing to catch salmon, make slits in the fish’s backs, put in pieces of burning pitch pine, and put them back in the water so that they swam about like living torches in the river. It was spectacular and exciting, and they did not think about the cruelty to the salmon, or the waste of a good food. The elders as usual protested and as usual the young people took no notice. At the end of the salmon run season the tribe made ready for the winter ceremonies. But as they prepared they heard a strange noise in the distance, something like the beating of a medicine drum, and grew worried. As there was nothing very threatening about it, the young people said, ‘Aha, the ghosts wake up, they are going to have a feast too.’ The old people guessed that the young men’s thoughtlessness in ill-treating the salmon had brought trouble on the tribe. After a while the noises died down, but within a week or two the beating of drums became louder and louder. Even the young warriors became very careful about what they did, because they were frightened. The old people noted the young men’s fear, and said it would be their fault if the tribe perished. Eventually a noise like thunder was heard, the mountains broke open, and fire gushed forth until it seemed that all the rivers were afire. The people tried to escape, but as the fire came down the river, the forest caught fire and only a few of them got away. The cause of the conflagration was said by the shamans to be entirely due to the anger of the spirit world at the torture of the salmon.

Perhaps the most famous ceremony of the Pacific Coast tribes was the potlatch. At the ritual, the host gained increased status by giving away symbols of his wealth, or by showing contempt for it – notably, by clubbing female slaves to death. Although the potlatch
was manifestly a means of demonstrating personal power (and by extension, the power of the host’s tribe) the ceremony had a definite religious aspect, frequently to do with mourning the dead. For the Tlingit the potlatch, which might last over a week, could help the spirit of a dead chief move from his ‘Earth Walk’ into the spirit land.

In describing the Californian tribes to the south of the Pacific Northwest as speaking ‘a variety of languages’, Spence understated the actuality: the Native Americans within what is currently cartographic California spoke between 75 and 100 tongues. His source, Bancroft, was wrong in claiming the tribes to be ‘pretty uniform’ in the main features of their theogenic beliefs. While the tribes of the north and central area held a belief in a creator, the tribes of the south were noteworthy for being among those Native Americans with no cosmology. The world is not born, because it has always existed. Consequently, the bulk of the southern Californian origin myths consists of a history of mankind, at first as a single tribe, then many tribes.

The tribes of California provided the last tragic footnote in the story of the independent Native American. In 1911 a Yahi man stumbled out of the Sierra, following the deaths of his relatives. He had had no previous contact with whites. Billed as ‘The last wild Indian’, the Yahi man was taken to the University of California, Berkeley, where he was studied closely by the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. Forbidden by tribal custom to give his name to strangers, the Yahi was named Ishi. He died five years later of tuberculosis. At least he was the ward of someone who knew about and respected Californian Indians; Kroeber was the author of the monumental
Religion of the Indians of California
, 1917.

‘The great Athapascan family’ of the subarctic referred to by Spence is linguistically related to the tribes of the Northwest. Today the Athapascan language family is usually known as ‘Na-Dene’, ‘na’ meaning ‘people’ in Tlingit and ‘dene’ meaning people in numerous Athapascan languages.