§ 3 Religion
It is usual to consider the religion and mythology of a nation of weighty import in determining its origin; but to him, who regards these as the spontaneous growth of the human mind, brought into existence by the powers of nature, nourished by the mental constitution of man, and shaped by external circumstances, all of which are “everywhere different yet everywhere the same,” general similarities of creed and of rite appear but deceptive bases for ethnological theories. The same great natural forces are eternally at work, above, around and beneath us, producing similar results in matter, educing like conceptions in mind. He who attentively compares any two mythologies whatever, will find so many points of identity and resemblance that he will readily appreciate the capital error of those who deduce original unity of race from natural conformity of rite. Such is the fallacy of those who would derive the ancient population of the American continent from a fragment of an insignificant Semitic tribe in Syria; and of the Catholic missionaries, who imputed variously to St. Thomas and to Satan the many religious ceremonies and legends, closely allied to those of their own faith, found among the Aztecs and Guatemalans.
In investigations of this nature, therefore, we must critically distinguish between the local and the universal elements of religions. Do we aim by analysis to arrive at the primal theistic notions of the human mind and their earliest outward expression? The latter alone can lead us. Or is it our object to use mythology only as a handmaid to history, an index of migrations, and a record of external influence? The impressions of local circumstances are our only guides.
The tribes of the New World, like other early and uncivilized nations, chose the sun as the object of their adoration; either holding it to be itself the Deity, as did most of the indwellers of the warm zones, or, as the natives of colder climes, only the most august object of His creation, a noble emblem of Himself. Intimately connected with both, ever recurring in some one of its Protean forms, is the worship of the reciprocal principle.
The Floridian Indians belonged to the first of these classes. They worshipped the sun and moon, and in their honor held such simple festivals as are common in the earlier stages of religious development. Among these the following are worthy of specification.
After a successful foray they elevated the scalps of their enemies on poles decked with garlands, and for three days and three nights danced and sang around them.222 The wreaths here probably had the same symbolical significance as those which adorned the Athenian Hermes,223 or which the Maypures of the Orinoco used at their weddings, or those with which the northern tribes ornamented rough blocks of stone.
Their principal festival was at the first corn-planting, about the beginning of March. At this ceremony a deer was sacrificed to the sun, and its body, or according to others its skin stuffed with fruits and grain, was elevated on a tall pole or tree stripped of its branches, an object of religious veneration, and around which were danced and sung the sacred choruses;224 a custom also found by Loskiel among the Delawares,225 and which, recognizing the deer or stag as a solar emblem, surmounting the phallic symbol, the upright stake, has its parallel in Peruvian heliolatry and classical mythology.
The feast of Toya, though seen by the French north of the peninsula and perhaps peculiar to the tribes there situate, presents some remarkable peculiarities. It occurred about the end of May, probably when the green corn became eatable. Those who desired to take part in it, having apparelled themselves in various attire, assembled on the appointed day in the council house. Here three priests took charge of them, and led them to the great square, which they danced around thrice, yelling and beating drums. Suddenly at a given signal from the priests they broke away “like unbridled horses” (comme chevaux débridez), plunging into the thickest forests. Here they remained three days without touching food or drink, engaged in the performance of mysterious duties. Meanwhile the women of the tribe, weeping and groaning, bewailed them as if dead, tearing their hair and cutting themselves and their daughters with sharp stones; as the blood flowed from these frightful gashes, they caught it on their fingers, and, crying out loudly three times he Toya, threw it into the air. At the expiration of the third day the men returned; all was joy again; they embraced their friends as though back from a long journey; a dance was held on the public square; and all did famous justice to a bounteous repast spread in readiness.226 The analogy that these rites bear to the Διονυσια and similar observances of the ancients is very striking, and doubtless they had a like significance. The singular predominance of the number three, which we shall also find repeated in other connections, cannot escape the most cursory reader. Nor is this a rare or exceptional instance where it occurs in American religions; it is bound up in the most sacred myths and holiest observances all over the continent.227 Obscure though the reason may be, certain it is that the numbers three, four, and seven, are hallowed by their intimate connection with the most occult rites and profoundest mysteries of every religion of the globe, and not less so in America than in the older continent.
In the worship of the moon, which in all mythologies represents the female principle, their rites were curious and instructive. Of those celebrated at full moon by the tribes on the eastern coast, Dickinson, an eyewitness, has left us the following description:—“The moon being up, an Indian who performeth their ceremonies, stood out, looking full at the moon, making a hideous noise and crying out, acting like a mad-man for the space of half an hour, all the Indians being silent till he had done; after which they all made a fearful noise, some like the barking of a dogg or wolf, and other strange sounds; after this one gets a logg and setts himself down; holding the stick or logg upright on the ground, and several others getting about him, made a hideous noise, singing to our amazement.” This they kept up till midnight, the women taking part.228
On the day of new moon they placed upright in the ground “a staff almost eight foot long having a broad arrow on the end thereof, and thence half-way painted red and white, like unto a barber’s-pole; in the middle of the staff is fixed a piece of wood, like unto the thigh, legg, and foot of a man, and the lower part thereof is painted black.” At its base was placed a basket containing six rattles; each taking one and making a violent noise, the six chief men of the village including the priest danced and sang around the pole till they were fatigued, when others, painted in various devices, took their place; and so on in turn. These festivities continued three days, the day being devoted to rest and feasting, the night to the dance and fasting; during which time no woman must look upon them.229 How distinctly we recognize in this the worship of the reciprocal principle!—that ever novel mystery of reproduction shadowed forth by a thousand ingenious emblems, by a myriad strange devices, all replete with a deep significance to him who is versed in the subtleties of symbolism. Even among these wretched savages we find the colors black, white, and red, retain that solemn import so usual in oriental mythi.
The representation of a leg used in this observance must not be considered a sign of idolatry, for, though the assertion, advanced, by both Adair230 and Klemm,231 that no idols whatever were worshipped by the hunting tribes, is unquestionably erroneous and can be disproved by numerous examples, in the peninsula of Florida they seem to have been totally unknown. The image of a bird, made of wood, seen at the village where De Soto first landed, cannot be regarded as such, but was a symbol common among several of the southern tribes, and does not appear to have had any special religious meaning.
Human sacrifice, so rare among the Algic nations, was not unknown, though carried to by no means such an appalling extent as among the native accolents of the Mississippi. The chief of the Caloosas immolated every year one person, usually a Christian, to the principle of evil (al Demonio)232, as a propitiary offering; hence on one old map, that of De L’Isle, they are marked “Les Carlos Antropophages.” Likewise around the St. Johns they were accustomed to sacrifice the firstborn son, killing him by blows on the head;233 but it is probable this only obtained to a limited observance. In all other cases their offerings consisted of grains and fruits.
The veneration of the serpent, which forms such an integral part of all nature religions, and relics of which are retained in the most perfected, is reported to have prevailed among these tribes. When a soldier of De Gourgues had killed one, the natives cut off its head and carried it away with great care and respect (avec vu grand soin et diligence).234 The same superstitious fear of injuring these reptiles was retained in later days by the Seminoles.235
The priests constituted an important class in the community. Their generic appellation, javas, jauas, jaruars, jaovas, jaonas, jaiias, javiinas,—for all these and more orthographies are given—has been properly derived by Adair from the meaningless exclamation yah-wah, used as name, interjection, and invocation by the southern Indians. It is not, however, an etymon borrowed from the Hebrew as he and Boudinot argue, but consists of two slightly varied enunciations of the first and simplest vowel sound; as such, it constitutes the natural utterance of the infant in its earliest wail, and, as the easiest cry of relief of the frantic devotee all over the world, is the principal constituent of the proper name of the deity in many languages. Like the medas of the Algonquins and the medicine men of other tribes, they united in themselves the priest, the physician, and the sorcerer. In sickness they were always ready with their bag of herbs and simples, and so much above contempt was their skill in the healing art that not unfrequently they worked cures of a certain troublesome disease sadly prevalent among the Indians and said by some to have originated from them. Magicians were they of such admirable subtlety as to restore what was lost, command the unwilling rain from heaven in time of drought, and foretell the position of an enemy or the result of a battle. As priests, they led and ordered festivals, took part in grave deliberations, and did their therapeutic art fail to cure, were ready with spiritual power to console, in the emergencies of pain and death.
Their sepulchral rites were various. Along the St. Johns, when a chief died they interred the corpse with appropriate honors, raised a mound two or three feet high above the grave, surrounded it with arrows fixed in the ground, and on its summit deposited the conch, le hanap, from which he was accustomed to drink. The tribe fasted and mourned three days and three nights, and for six moons women were employed to bewail his death, lamenting loudly thrice each day at sunrise, at mid-day, and at sunset.236 All his possessions were placed in his dwelling, and the whole burnt; a custom arising from a superstitious fear of misfortune consequent on using the chattels of the dead, a sentiment natural to the unphilosophic mind. It might not be extravagant to suppose that the shell had the same significance as the urn so frequent in the tombs of Egypt and the sepulchres of Magna Græcia, “an emblem of the hope that should cheer the dwellings of the dead.”237 The burial of the priests was like that of the chiefs, except that the spot chosen was in their own houses, and the whole burnt over them, resembling in this a practice universal among the Caribs, and reappearing among the Natchez, Cherokees and Arkansas, (Taencas).
Among the Caloosas and probably various other tribes, the corpses were placed in the open air, apparently for the purpose of obtaining the bones when the flesh had sufficiently decomposed, which, like the more northern tribes, they interred in common sepulchres, heaping dirt over them so as to form mounds. It was as a guard to watch over these exposed bodies, and to prevent their desecration by wild beasts, that Juan Ortiz, the Spaniard of Seville, liberated by De Soto, had been employed while a prisoner among the nations of the Gulf Coast.