Kitabı oku: «American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent», sayfa 11

[Footnote 16: Clements R. Markham, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1871, p. 291. Pacarina is the present participle of pacarini, to dawn, to begin, to be born.]

[Footnote 17: Informacion, etc., p. 209.]

[Footnote 18: Garcilasso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales, Lib. i, cap. xviii.]

[Footnote 19: "Parece por los cantares de los Indios; * * * afirmaron los Orejones que quedaron de los tiempos de Guascar i de Atahualpa; * * * cuentan los Indios del Cuzco mas viejos, etc.," repeats the historian Herrera, Historia de las Indias Occidentals, Dec. v, Lib. iii, cap. vii, viii.]

[Footnote 20: "Cachini; dar el ser y hazer que sea; cachi chiuachic, el autor y causa de algo." Holguin, Vocabvlario de la Lengva Qquichua, sub voce, cachipuni. The names differ little in Herrera (who, however, omits Uchu), Montesinos, Balboa, Oliva, La Vega and Pachacuti; I have followed the orthography of the two latter, as both were native Qquichuas.]

[Footnote 21: Holguin (ubi suprá,) gives paccarin, the morning, paccarini, to dawn; tampu, venta ó meson.]

[Footnote 22: Tahuantin, all four, from tahua, four; suyu, division, section; kapac, king.]

[Footnote 23: Christoval de Molina, Fables and Rites of the Incas, p. 6.]

[Footnote 24: Relacion de Antiguedades deste Reyno del Piru, por Don Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, passim. Pachacuti relates the story of Tunapa as being distinctly the hero-myth of the Qquichuas. He was also the hero-god of the Aymaras, and about him, says Father Ludovico Bertonio, "they to this day relate many fables and follies." Vocabulario de la Lengua Aymara, s.v. Another name he bore in Aymara was Ecaco, which in that language means, as a common noun, an ingenious, shifty man of many plans (Bertonio, Vocabulario, s.v.). "Thunnupa," as Bertonio spells it, does not lend itself to any obvious etymology in Aymara, which is further evidence that the name was introduced from the Qquichua. This is by no means a singular example of the identity of religious thought and terms between these nations. In comparing the two tongues, M. Alcide D'Orbigny long since observed: "On retrouve même à peu prés un vingtième des mots qui ont evidemment la même origine, surtout ceux qui expriment les idées religieuses." L'Homme Américain, considéré sous ses Rapports Physiologiques et Moraux, Tome i, p. 322 (Paris, 1839). This author endeavors to prove that the Qquichua religion was mainly borrowed from the Aymaras, and of the two he regards the latter as the senior in civilization. But so far as I have been able to study the mythology of the Aymaras, which is but very superficially, on account of the lack of sources, it does not seem to be entitled to this credit.]

[Footnote 25: "Tupa yauri; El cetro real, vara insignia real del Inca." Holguin, Vocabvlario de la Lengva Qquichua o del Inca, s.v.]

[Footnote 26: Don Gavino Pacheco Zegarra derives Huanacauri from huanaya, to rest oneself, and cayri, here; "c'est ici qu'il faut se reposer." Ollantai, Introd., p. xxv. It was distinctly the huzca, or sacred fetish of the Incas, and they were figuratively said to have descended from it. Its worship was very prominent in ancient Peru. See the Information de las Idolatras de los Incas y Indios, 1671, previously quoted.]

[Footnote 27: The identification of Manco Capac with the planet Jupiter is mentioned in the Relacion Anonima, on the authority of Melchior Hernandez.]

[Footnote 28: Garcia, Origen de los Indios, Lib. v, Cap. vii.]

[Footnote 29: Speaking of certain "grandes y muy antiquissimos edificios" on the river Vinaque, Cieza de Leon says: "Preguntando a los Indios comarcanos quien hizo aquella antigualla, responden que otras gentes barbadas y blancas como nosotros: los cuales, muchos tiempos antes que los Ingas reinasen, dicen que vinieron a estas partes y hicieron alli su morada." La Crónica del Peru, cap. lxxxvi.]

[Footnote 30: This incident is also related by Pachacuti and Betanzos. All three locate the scene of the event at Carcha, eighteen leagues from Cuzco, where the Canas tribe lived at the Conquest. Pachacuti states that the cause of the anger of Viracocha was that upon the Sierra there was the statue of a woman to whom human victims were sacrificed. If this was the tradition, it would offer another point of identity with that of Quetzalcoatl, who was also said to have forbidden human sacrifices.]

[Footnote 31: Herrera, Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. v, Lib. iii, cap. vi.]

[Footnote 32: "Donde consta claro no ser nombre compuesto, sino proprio de aquella fantasma que dijó llamarse Viracocha y que era hijo del Sol." Com, Reales, Lib. v, cap. xxi.]

[Footnote 33: Introduction to Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Incas, p. xi.]

[Footnote 34: "Le nom de Viracocha dont la physionomie sanskrite est si frappante," etc. Desjardins, Le Perou avant la Conquéte Espagnole, p. 180 (Paris 1858).]

[Footnote 35: Viracocha "is the Il or Ra of the Babylonian monuments, and thus the Ra of Egypt," etc. Professor John Campbell, Compte-Rendu du Congrés International des Américanistes, Vol. i, p. 362 (1875).]

[Footnote 36: Ollantai, Drame en vers Quechuas, Introd., p. xxxvi (Paris, 1878). There was a class of diviners in Peru who foretold the future by inspecting the fat of animals; they were called Vira-piricuc. Molina, Fables and Rites, p. 13.]

[Footnote 37: Christoval de Molina, ubi supra, p. 29.]

[Footnote 38: Garcilasso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales, Lib. iv, cap. xxi.]

[Footnote 39: Relacion anonima, p. 148.]

[Footnote 40: "La principal de estas Deidades historicas era Viracocha. * * * Dos siglos contaba el culto de Viracocha á la llegada de los Españoles." J. Diego de Tschudi, Antiguedades Peruanas, pp. 159, 160 (Vienna, 1851).]

[Footnote 41: Compare the account in Garcilasso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales, Lib. ii, cap. iv; Lib. iv, cap. xxi, xxiii, with that in Acosta, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Lib. vi, cap. xxi.]

[Footnote 42: Comentarios Reales, Pt. i, Lib. viii, cap. viii.]

[Footnote 43: Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Historia de las Indias, p. 233 (Ed. Paris, 1852).]

[Footnote 44: A whirlwind with rain was paria conchuy (paria, rain), one with clouds of dust, allpa conchuy (allpa, earth, dust); Holguin, Vocabulario Qquichua, s.v. Antay conchuy.]

[Footnote 45: Le Perou et Bolivie, p. 694. (Paris, 1880.)]

[Footnote 46: These remains are carefully described by Charles Wiener, Perou et Bolivie, p. 282, seq; from the notes of M. Angrand, by Desjardins, Le Perou avant la Conquête Espagnole, p. 132; and in a superficial manner by Squier, Peru, p. 555.]

[Footnote 47: Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Lib. v, cap. iii.]

[Footnote 48: Comentarios Reales, Lib. ii, cap. xxviii.]

[Footnote 49: Von Tschudi, who in one part of his work maintains that sun-worship was the prevalent religion of Peru, modifies the assertion considerably in the following passage: "El culto de Pachacamac se hallaba mucho mas extendido de lo que suponen los historiadores; y se puede sin error aventurar la opinion de que era la Deidad popular y acatada por las masas peruanas; mientras que la religion del Sol era la de la corte, culto que, por mas adoptado que fuese entre los Indios, nunca llegó á desarraigar la fe y la devocion al Numen primitivo. En effecto, en todas las relaciones de la vida de los Indios, resalta la profunda veneracion que tributavan á Pachacamac." Antiguedades Peruanas, p. 149. Inasmuch as elsewhere this author takes pains to show that the Incas discarded the worship of the Sun, and instituted in place of it that of Viracocha, the above would seem to diminish the sphere of Sun-worship very much.]

[Footnote 50: Garcilasso de La Vega, Comentarios Reales, Lib. ix, caps. xiv, xv; Cieza de Leon, Relacion, MS. in Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. i, p. 329. The latter is the second part of Cieza de Leon.]

[Footnote 51: "Dijeron quellos oyeron decir a sus padres y pasados que un Viracocha habia de revolver la tierra, y habia de resucitar esos muertos, y que estos habian de bibir en esta tierra.". Information de las Idolatras de los Incas é Indios, in the Coll. de Docs. ineditos del Archivo de Indias, vol. xxi, p. 152.]

[Footnote 52: E.G. Squier, Travels in Peru, p. 414.]

[Footnote 53: C. Wiener, Perou et Bolivie, p. 717.]

[Footnote 54: L. Angrand, Lettre sur les Antiquités de Tiaguanaco et l'Origine présumable de la plus ancienne civilisation du Haut-Perou. Extrait du 24eme vol. de la Revue Generale d'Architecture, 1866. Von Tschudi, Das Ollantadrama, p. 177-9. The latter says: "Der von dem Plateau von Anahuac ausgewanderte Stamm verpflanzte seine Gesittung und die Hauptzüge seiner Religion durch das westliche Südamerica, etc."]

CHAPTER VI.
THE EXTENSION AND INFLUENCE OF THE TYPICAL HERO-MYTH

THE TYPICAL MYTH FOUND IN MANY PARTS OF THE CONTINENT–DIFFICULTIES IN TRACING IT–RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION IN AMERICA SIMILAR TO THAT IN THE OLD WORLD–FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE RED RACE.

THE CULTURE MYTH OF THE TARASCOS OF MECHOACAN–THAT OF THE RICHES OF GUATEMALA–THE VOTAN MYTH OF THE TZENDALS OF CHIAPAS–A FRAGMENT OF A MIXE MYTH–THE HERO-GOD OF THE MUYSCAS OF NEW GRANADA–OF THE TUPI-GUARANAY STEM OF PARAGUAY AND BRAZIL–MYTHS OF THE DÈNÈ OF BRITISH AMERICA.

SUN WORSHIP IN AMERICA–GERMS OF PROGRESS IN AMERICAN RELIGIONS–RELATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY–THE LIGHT-GOD A MORAL AND BENEFICENT CREATION–HIS WORSHIP WAS ELEVATING–MORAL CONDITION OF NATIVE SOCIETIES BEFORE THE CONQUEST–PROGRESS IN THE DEFINITION OF THE IDEA OF GOD IN PERU, MEXICO, AND YUCATAN–ERRONEOUS STATEMENTS ABOUT THE MORALS OF THE NATIVES–EVOLUTION OF THEIR ETHICAL PRINCIPLES.

In the foregoing chapters I have passed in review the hero-myths of five nations widely asunder in location, in culture and in language. I have shown the strange similarity in their accounts of their mysterious early benefactor and teacher, and their still more strange, because true, presentiments of the arrival of pale-faced conquerors from the East.

I have selected these nations because their myths have been most fully recorded, not that they alone possessed this striking legend. It is, I repeat, the fundamental myth in the religious lore of American nations. Not, indeed, that it can be discovered in all tribes, especially in the amplitude of incident which it possesses among some. But there are comparatively few of the native mythologies that do not betray some of its elements, some fragments of it, and, often enough to justify us in the supposition that had we the complete body of their sacred stories, we should find this one in quite as defined a form as I have given it.

The student of American mythology, unfortunately, labors under peculiar disadvantages. When he seeks for his material, he finds an extraordinary dearth of it. The missionaries usually refused to preserve the native myths, because they believed them harmful, or at least foolish; while men of science, who have had such opportunities, rejected all those that seemed the least like a Biblical story, as they suspected them to be modern and valueless compositions, and thus lost the very life of the genuine ancient faiths.

A further disadvantage is the slight attention which has been paid to the aboriginal American tongues, and the sad deficiency of material for their study. It is now recognized on all hands that the key of a mythology is to be found in the language of its believers. As a German writer remarks, "the formation of the language and the evolution of the myth go hand in hand."[1] We must know the language of a tribe, at least we must understand the grammatical construction and have facilities to trace out the meaning and derivation of names, before we can obtain any accurate notion of the foundation in nature of its religious beliefs. No convenient generality will help us.

I make these remarks as a sort of apology for the shortcomings of the present study, and especially for the imperfections of the fragments I have still to present. They are, however, sufficiently defined to make it certain that they belonged to cycles of myths closely akin to those already given. They will serve to support my thesis that the seemingly confused and puerile fables of the native Americans are fully as worthy the attention of the student of human nature as the more poetic narratives of the Veda or the Edda. The red man felt out after God with like childish gropings as his white brother in Central Asia. When his course was interrupted, he was pursuing the same path toward the discovery of truth. In the words of a thoughtful writer: "In a world wholly separated from that which it is customary to call the Old World, the religious evolution of man took place precisely in the same manner as in those surroundings which produced the civilization of western Europe."[2]

But this religious development of the red man was violently broken by the forcible imposition of a creed which he could not understand, and which was not suited to his wants, and by the heavy yoke of a priesthood totally out of sympathy with his line of progress. What has been the result? "Has Christianity," asks the writer I have just quoted, "exerted a progressive action on these peoples? Has it brought them forward, has it aided their natural evolution? We are obliged to answer, No."[3] This sad reply is repeated by careful observers who have studied dispassionately the natives in their homes.[4] The only difference in the results of the two great divisions of the Christian world seems to be that on Catholic missions has followed the debasement, on Protestant missions the destruction of the race.

It may be objected to this that it was not Christianity, but its accompaniments, the greedy horde of adventurers, the profligate traders, the selfish priests, and the unscrupulous officials, that wrought the degradation of the native race. Be it so. Then I merely modify my assertion, by saying that Christianity has shown itself incapable of controlling its inevitable adjuncts, and that it would have been better, morally and socially, for the American race never to have known Christianity at all, than to have received it on the only terms on which it has been possible to offer it.

With the more earnestness, therefore, in view of this acknowledged failure of Christian effort, do I turn to the native beliefs, and desire to vindicate for them a dignified position among the faiths which have helped to raise man above the level of the brute, and inspired him with hope and ambition for betterment.

For this purpose I shall offer some additional evidence of the extension of the myth I have set forth, and then proceed to discuss its influence on the minds of its believers.

The Tarascos were an interesting nation who lived in the province of Michoacan, due west of the valley of Mexico. They were a polished race, speaking a sonorous, vocalic language, so bold in war that their boast was that they had never been defeated, and yet their religious rites were almost bloodless, and their preference was for peace. The hardy Aztecs had been driven back at every attempt they made to conquer Michoacan, but its ruler submitted himself without a murmur to Cortes, recognizing in him an opponent of the common enemy, and a warrior of more than human powers.

Among these Tarascos we find the same legend of a hero-god who brought them out of barbarism, gave them laws, arranged their calendar, which, in principles, was the same as that of the Aztecs and Mayas, and decided on the form of their government. His name was Surites or Curicaberis, words which, from my limited resources in that tongue, I am not able to analyze. He dwelt in the town Cromuscuaro, which name means the Watch-tower or Look-out, and the hour in which he gave his instructions was always at sunrise, just as the orb of light appeared on the eastern horizon. One of the feasts which he appointed to be celebrated in his honor was called Zitacuarencuaro, which melodious word is said by the Spanish missionaries to mean "the resurrection from death." When to this it is added that he distinctly predicted that a white race of men should arrive in the country, and that he himself should return,[5] his identity with the light-gods of similar American myths is too manifest to require argument.

The king of the Tarascos was considered merely the vicegerent of the absent hero-god, and ready to lay down the sceptre when Curicaberis should return to earth.

We do not know whether the myth of the Four Brothers prevailed among the Tarascos; but there is hardly a nation on the continent among whom the number Four was more distinctly sacred. The kingdom was divided into four parts (as also among the Itzas, Qquichuas and numerous other tribes), the four rulers of which constituted, with the king, the sacred council of five, in imitation, I can hardly doubt, of the hero-god, and the four deities of the winds.

The goddess of water and the rains, the female counterpart of Curicaberis, was the goddess Cueravaperi. "She is named," says the authority I quote, "in all their fables and speeches. They say that she is the mother of all the gods of the earth, and that it is she who bestows the harvests and the germination of seeds." With her ever went four attendant goddesses, the personifications of the rains from the four cardinal points. At the sacred dances, which were also dramatizations of her supposed action, these attendants were represented by four priests clad respectively in white, yellow, red and black, to represent the four colors of the clouds.[6] In other words, she doubtless bore the same relation to Curicaberis that Ixchel did to Itzamna in the mythology of the Mayas, or the rainbow goddess to Arama in the religious legends of the Moxos.[7] She was the divinity that presided over the rains, and hence over fertility and the harvests, standing in intimate relation to the god of the sun's rays and the four winds.

The Kiches of Guatemala were not distant relatives of the Mayas of Yucatan, and their mythology has been preserved to us in a rescript of their national book, the Popol Vuh. Evidently they had borrowed something from Aztec sources, and a flavor of Christian teaching is occasionally noticeable in this record; but for all that it is one of the most valuable we possess on the subject.

It begins by connecting the creation of men and things with the appearance of light. In other words, as in so many mythologies, the history of the world is that of the day; each begins with a dawn. Thus the Popol Vuh reads:–

"This is how the heaven exists, how the Heart of Heaven exists, he, the god, whose name is Qabauil."

"His word came in the darkness to the Lord, to Gucumatz, and it spoke with the Lord, with Gucumatz."

"They spoke together; they consulted and planned; they understood; they united in words and plans."

"As they consulted, the day appeared, the white light came forth, mankind was produced, while thus they held counsel about the growth of trees and vines, about life and mankind, in the darkness, in the night (the creation was brought about), by the Heart of Heaven, whose name is Hurakan."[8]

But the national culture-hero of the Kiches seems to have been Xbalanque, a name which has the literal meaning, "Little Tiger Deer," and is a symbolical appellation referring to days in their calendar. Although many of his deeds are recounted in the Popol Vuh, that work does not furnish us his complete mythical history. From it and other sources we learn that he was one of the twins supposed to have been born of a virgin mother in Utatlan, the central province of the Kiches, to have been the guide and protector of their nation, and in its interest to have made a journey to the Underworld, in order to revenge himself on his powerful enemies, its rulers. He was successful, and having overcome them, he set free the Sun, which they had seized, and restored to life four hundred youths whom they had slain, and who, in fact, were the stars of heaven. On his return, he emerged from the bowels of the earth and the place of darkness, at a point far to the east of Utatlan, at some place located by the Kiches near Coban, in Vera Paz, and came again to his people, looking to be received with fitting honors. But like Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, and others of these worthies, the story goes that they treated him with scant courtesy, and in anger at their ingratitude, he left them forever, in order to seek a nobler people.

I need not enter into a detailed discussion of this myth, many points in which are obscure, the less so as I have treated them at length in a monograph readily accessible to the reader who would push his inquiries further. Enough if I quote the conclusion to which I there arrive. It is as follows:–

"Suffice it to say that the hero-god, whose name is thus compounded of two signs in the calendar, who is one of twins born of a virgin, who performs many surprising feats of prowess on the earth, who descends into the world of darkness and sets free the sun, moon and stars to perform their daily and nightly journeys through the heavens, presents in these and other traits such numerous resemblances to the Divinity of Light, the Day-maker of the northern hunting tribes, reappearing in so many American legends, that I do not hesitate to identify the narrative of Xbalanque and his deeds as but another version of this wide-spread, this well-nigh universal myth."[9]

Few of our hero-myths have given occasion for wilder speculation than that of Votan. He was the culture hero of the Tzendals, a branch of the Maya race, whose home was in Chiapas and Tabasco. Even the usually cautious Humboldt suggested that his name might be a form of Odin or Buddha! As for more imaginative writers, they have made not the least difficulty in discovering that it is identical with the Odon of the Tarascos, the Oton of the Othomis, the Poudan of the East Indian Tamuls, the Vaudoux of the Louisiana negroes, etc. All this has been done without any attempt having been made to ascertain the precise meaning and derivation of the name Votan. Superficial phonetic similarities have been the only guide.

We are not well acquainted with the Votan myth. It appears to have been written down some time in the seventeenth century, by a Christianized native. His manuscript of five or six folios, in the Tzendal tongue, came into the possession of Nuñez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapas, about 1690, and later into the hands of Don Ramon Ondonez y Aguiar, where it was seen by Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera, about 1790. What has become of it is not known.

No complete translation of it was made; and the extracts or abstracts given by the authors just named are most unsatisfactory, and disfigured by ignorance and prejudice. None of them, probably, was familiar with the Tzendal tongue, especially in its ancient form. What they tell us runs as follows:–

At some indefinitely remote epoch, Votan came from the far East. He was sent by God to divide out and assign to the different races of men the earth on which they dwell, and to give to each its own language. The land whence he came was vaguely called ualum uotan, the land of Votan.

His message was especially to the Tzendals. Previous to his arrival they were ignorant, barbarous, and without fixed habitations. He collected them into villages, taught them how to cultivate the maize and cotton, and invented the hieroglyphic signs, which they learned to carve on the walls of their temples. It is even said that he wrote his own history in them.

He instituted civil laws for their government, and imparted to them the proper ceremonials of religious worship. For this reason he was also called "Master of the Sacred Drum," the instrument with which they summoned the votaries to the ritual dances.

They especially remembered him as the inventor of their calendar. His name stood third in the week of twenty days, and was the first Dominical sign, according to which they counted their year, corresponding to the Kan of the Mayas.

As a city-builder, he was spoken of as the founder of Palenque, Nachan, Huehuetlan–in fact, of any ancient place the origin of which had been forgotten. Near the last mentioned locality, Huehuetlan in Soconusco, he was reported to have constructed an underground temple by merely blowing with his breath. In this gloomy mansion he deposited his treasures, and appointed a priestess to guard it, for whose assistance he created the tapirs.

Votan brought with him, according to one statement, or, according to another, was followed from his native land by, certain attendants or subordinates, called in the myth tzequil, petticoated, from the long and flowing robes they wore. These aided him in the work of civilization. On four occasions he returned to his former home, dividing the country, when he was about to leave, into four districts, over which he placed these attendants.

When at last the time came for his final departure, he did not pass through the valley of death, as must all mortals, but he penetrated through a cave into the under-earth, and found his way to "the root of heaven." With this mysterious expression, the native myth closes its account of him.[10]

He was worshiped by the Tzendals as their principal deity and their beneficent patron. But he had a rival in their religious observances, the feared Yalahau Lord of Blackness, or Lord of the Waters. He was represented as a terrible warrior, cruel to the people, and one of the first of men.[11]

According to an unpublished work by Fuentes, Votan was one of four brothers, the common ancestors of the southwestern branches of the Maya family.[12]

All these traits of this popular hero are too exactly similar to those of the other representatives of this myth, for them to leave any doubt as to what we are to make of Votan. Like the rest of them, he and his long-robed attendants are personifications of the eastern light and its rays. Though but uncritical epitomes of a fragmentary myth about him remain, they are enough to stamp it as that which meets us so constantly, no matter where we turn in the New World.[13]

It scarcely seems necessary for me to point out that his name Votan is in no way akin to Othomi or Tarasco roots, still less to the Norse Wodan or the Indian Buddha, but is derived from a radical in pure Maya. Yet I will do so, in order, if possible, to put a stop to such visionary etymologies.

As we are informed by Bishop Nuñez de la Vega, uotan in Tzendal means heart. Votan was spoken of as "the heart or soul of his people." This derivation has been questioned, because the word for the heart in the other Maya dialects is different, and it has been suggested that this was but an example of "otosis," where a foreign proper name was turned into a familiar common noun. But these objections do not hold good.

In regard to derivation, uotan is from the pure Maya root-word tan, which means primarily "the breast," or that which is in front or in the middle of the body; with the possessive prefix it becomes utan. In Tzendal this word means both breast and heart. This is well illustrated by an ancient manuscript, dating from 1707, in my possession. It is a guide to priests for administering the sacraments in Spanish and Tzendal. I quote the passage in point[14]:–

"Con todo tu corazón, hiriendote

en los pechos, di, conmigo."

Ta zpizil auotan, xatigh zny

auotan, zghoyoc, alagh ghoyoc.–

Here, a is the possessive of the second person, and uotan is used both for heart and breast. Thus the derivation of the word from the Maya radical is clear.

The figure of speech by which the chief divinity is called "the heart of the earth," "the heart of the sky," is common in these dialects, and occurs repeatedly in the Popol Vuh, the sacred legend of the Kiches of Guatemala.

I may here repeat what I have elsewhere written on this figurative expression in the Maya languages: "The literal or physical sense of the word heart is not that which is here intended. In these dialects this word has a richer metaphorical meaning than in our tongue. It stands for all the psychical powers, the memory, will and reasoning faculties, the life, the spirit, the soul. It would be more correct to render these names the 'Spirit' or 'Soul' of the lake, etc., than the 'Heart.' They indicate a dimly understood sense of the unity of spirit or energy in all the various manifestations of organic and inorganic existence." The Names of the Gods in the Kiche Myths, Central America, by Daniel G. Brinton, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. xix, 1881, p. 623.[15]

The immediate neighbors of the Tzendals were the Mixes and Zoques, the former resident in the central mountains of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the latter rather in the lowlands and toward the eastern coast. The Mixes nowadays number but a few villages, whose inhabitants are reported as drunken and worthless, but the time was when they were a powerful and warlike nation. They are in nowise akin to the Maya stock, although they are so classed in Mr. H.H. Bancroft's excellent work.[16] They have, however, a distinct relationship with the Zoques, about thirty per cent of the words in the two languages being similar.[17] The Zoques, whose mythology we unfortunately know little or nothing about, adjoined the Tzendals, and were in constant intercourse with them.

We have but faint traces of the early mythology of these tribes; but they preserved some legends which show that they also partook of the belief, so general among their neighbors, of a beneficent culture-god.

This myth relates that their first father, who was also their Supreme God, came forth from a cave in a lofty mountain in their country, to govern and direct them. He covered the soil with forests, located the springs and streams, peopled them with fish and the woods with game and birds, and taught the tribe how to catch them. They did not believe that he had died, but that after a certain length of time, he, with his servants and captives, all laden with bright gleaming gold, retired into the cave and closed its mouth, not to remain there, but to reappear at some other part of the world and confer similar favors on other nations.