Part 74 (2/2)
This myth has received on the Pacific coast, or more correctly on parts of it, a different treatment from that given it east of the Rocky Mountains. There the benefactor is a female, a daughter of the earth. Nothing is said as to who her father was. It is significant that she dances all day, that she is called the quivering porcupine and the food-producing woman.
In Indian myths from New York to California the porcupine is ever connected with light; in some cases it is the sun himself. In ”Tulchuherris” of this volume, Sas (the sun) carries a porcupine quiver, and is advised never to lay it aside, for as long as he keeps it on his shoulder he is safe from his children the grizzlies (the clouds) who wish to kill him.
In California Norwan, daughter of the earth, occupies in part the place of the Algonkin hero, the child of the sun and the earth. Her usual life is of the housekeeping order; she has great supplies of food in her hlut, or residence, and she goes on dancing each day until evening. The great and characteristic event of her life, her departure from the dance with her partner, is of the same scope and meaning as the last journey of Hiawatha when he sails to the west and vanishes in the regions of sunset. The hero of the Algonkin myth must go, he cannot stay; he must vanish in the ruddy glow of evening because he is the warm dancing air of the daytime. He must go whether he will or not. Before he goes, however, he cheers all whom he leaves behind by telling them that another will come from the east to take his place and comfort them. Next morning, of course, the comforter comes, for the life career of the Algonkin hero is included in the compa.s.s of a single day, and a successor is bound to come as surely as he himself is bound to go.
Norwan dances, and then goes away with her partner, to the desperate vexation of Norbis Kiemila, her would-be husband, who wishes to have her to himself exclusively. She dances, as she says, without knowing it and goes away unconsciously. She dances with this partner because she cannot help it, and departs imperceptibly to herself.
Who are the rivals for her person?
Norbis means ”living in the south;” he lives in the southeast, the land of greatest productiveness, in the region of Hlihli Piu Hlut Ton, that most beautiful of houses on earth, and second only to the divine mansion in the ”Central Blue.” He is descended from one of the white oaks in the heavenly house.
The person who was metamorphosed afterward into the red wiu bird (Tede Wiu) is his rival, the person with whom Norwan left the dance, thus causing the first war in the world. Was this person the red of evening which became Tede Wiu afterward? If we acknowledge that he was, and if we are willing to admit Norbis as the representative of all people living east of the west, we have at once the two parties to an irreconcilable rivalry in the most vital of questions, the possession of warm sunlight, and that most vital of questions is embodied in the person of a woman. That was the cause of the first war in the world and of fell strife. A story substantially the same as this was, we may think, the ultimate basis of the Iliad. The mythic origin of the particular tale from which Homer constructed his epic had been forgotten, that may be granted, but there is little doubt that in rustic Greece men might have found a similar tale which was mythologic beyond peradventure; and the Helen of that tale, or her equivalent, was a person like Norwan. With the materials at our command even now, we have enough to indicate this, for was not Helen the daughter of Leda and the divine swan, a person to be fought for with all available energy in the world at that period, and to be fought for in a war which surpa.s.sed in importance all that have ever succeeded it?
Helen of Troy, the daughter of Leda and of Zeus, the overarching heaven, with all its light; Norwan, daughter of the earth, with La.s.sen's b.u.t.te, California, for her residence; and the Algonkin hero whose place is taken by Hiawatha, are all different representatives of the same person, different expressions for the same phenomenon; and that person or phenomenon is the warm air which dances above the earth in fine weather. This air, in one case noted here, is conceived as the greatest benefactor of man, that being who gives the choicest and most necessary gifts to all, and, in the other two cases, as a priceless treasure, in the form of a woman who is to be fought for with all the valor that can possibly be summoned, and in a manner that in Helen's case inspired the n.o.blest epic known to the world thus far.
These three cases show clearly the methods of mythology, and prove the absolute need of knowing that we must deal (to borrow mathematical language) with constants and variables taken together,--knowing clearly, meanwhile, which are constants,--and not with variables only, supposing them to be constants, or with constants and variables mixed together without being able to distinguish which belong to one cla.s.s and which to the other. Were some writer to deal with the prehensile capacity in animated creatures, and describe how it is exercised, he would find a variety in the organs used for grasping things which would represent very well the variety of methods employed by primitive man in mythology to represent the same phenomenon or force in nature.
If man be considered as standing on his hind feet, his fore feet (the hands) are his grasping instruments. With the elephant the nose is prehensile; with some monkeys the tail performs this office, in part at least. With tigers and lions, dogs and cats, the mouth and teeth are prehensile instruments of great force and precision. With the bear the forepaws are almost hands. The two feet with their talons, which correspond to the hind feet in quadrupeds, are the graspers with birds of prey, working instruments with domestic fowl, and weapons with some other birds, as, for instance, the ostrich.
Take another case, the teeth, one office of which is to reduce food to fine particles; with all mammals they serve this purpose, and, in many cases, others also. Birds have no teeth, but they have a subst.i.tute in the gizzard, which they line with gravel and other hard particles; and this second stomach, by contraction, grinds to pulp grain and other food already softened in the crop or first stomach. The boa-constrictor has no teeth and no second stomach; it chews by crus.h.i.+ng between its body and a tree the beast which it is to swallow.
The chewing mouth of the boa has for one jaw the tree, for the other its own body; between those two jaws it reduces to a soft ma.s.s the carca.s.s of the creature to be swallowed.
In considering the various personages in mythology, it is all important to discover, first of all, what they are, and, next, what they do. The office filled by a certain personage in a group of myths belonging to a given race or tribe may be filled by an entirely different kind of character in a similar set of myths of another tribe. This results sometimes from different geographic and climatic conditions, and sometimes from looking at the phenomenon or process of nature in another way. There is as much variety in the treatment of one subject by various tribes as there is variety in prehensile members and the use of them among grasping creatures, or as there is difference in the manner of reducing food to fineness among quadrupeds, birds, and boa-constrictors.
TULCHUHERRIS
Tulchuherris resembles certain European tales more than any other in this collection. Apart from other merits, the value of such a tale in comparative mythology is evident.
The old woman, Nomhawena, is an earthworm now; the Indian tale-teller says that there is no doubt on that point. Pom Pokaila, her second name (Pom, earth; Pokaila, old woman) admits of two translations,--old woman of the earth, or old woman Earth. In the first case it would apply to Nomhawena, who digs the earth always, is a woman of the earth; in the second, it would mean the earth itself. The earth is, in fact, Tulchuherris's mother. Nomhawena is his grandmother, in a t.i.tular sense at least. In more countries of the world than one, grandmother is the t.i.tle of a midwife; and the office of midwife was performed by Nomhawena at the birth of Tulchuherris.
We may picture to ourselves the scenes and circ.u.mstances of Tulchuherris's birth. Root Flat is one of those level places where innumerable little piles of fine soil are brought to the surface by the labor of earthworms. Over this valley, as over so many others on the Pacific coast, fog is spread after sunrise,--fog which comes up from the earth dug in every direction by Nomhawena's people. In this fog is Tulchuherris, the mighty son of the earth; in other words, lightning, electricity, that son of the earth who comes to maturity so speedily.
Kulitek Herit, brother of Tulchuherris, for whom Nomhawena mourned so deeply, is now the white feather which appears sometimes in the black tail of the black vulture. Komos Kulit is the Wintu name of this vulture. There were three great feathers among the Wintus, transformations of three great persons among the first people. The first of these is the white feather just mentioned, which is the metamorphosed Kulitek; the second is the longest black tail-feather of the black vulture, which is the present form of Hamam Herit, who fought in the Norwan struggle; the third is the longest wing-feather of the same vulture. This feather is the metamorphosed Tubalus Herit.
The first two feathers are used on great occasions in war; the third feather, only by doctors or Hlahis.
In Indian mythology there is a subtle, but close and firm, connection between the sunflower and the sun, which is ill.u.s.trated strikingly in this story. The old woman, by her magic art, burns great piles of big trees in two or three minutes, while a handful of sunflower roots is beyond her power and keeps the fire alive for years. This ill.u.s.tration, in the material world, of the Indians, reminds one of the still, small voice in the spiritual world of the Hebrews. The sunflower root in this Tulchuherris tale is invincible from its connection with the sun, the one source of light and heat; the still, small voice is considered almighty because of its connection with the whole moral life and light that exists in the universe.
The two obsidian knives in Sas's house are an interesting reminder of the Damocles sword.
In the case of Tichelis, now ground squirrel, and Hawt, the present lamprey eel, we have cases of personal collision resulting in transformation. In the Wintu mythology this is exceptional, and in this instance one-sided, for the vanquished make no attempt to transform Tulchuherris.
SEDIT AND THE TWO BROTHERS HUS
Sedit was in favor of death for men, and gives his reasons. It cannot be said that he brought death into the world, but he stopped the work which would have kept it out.
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