Chapter XI Diluvian Traditions in Africa and America
Boulanger (1722–59), a freethinker, and the friend and correspondent of Voltaire, was so dominated by his belief in the universal Deluge as a fact, that he made its consequences the foundation of all his theories. Writing in the midst of a scepticism very much resembling that of the present day, he says, “What! you believe in the Deluge?” Such will be the exclamation of a certain school of opinion, and this school a very large one. Nevertheless, this profound writer, by the exigencies of his theory, was irresistibly brought to the recognition of the fact. “We must take,” he continues, “a fact in the traditions of mankind, the truth of which shall be universally recognised. What is it? I do not see any, of which the evidence is more generally attested, than those which have transmitted to us that famous physical revolution which, they tell us, has altered the face of our globe, and which has occasioned a total renovation of human society: in a word, the Deluge appears to me the true starting-point (la veritable epoque) in the history of nations. Not only is the tradition which has transmitted this fact the most ancient of all, but it is moreover clear and intelligible; it presents a fact which can be justified and confirmed.” He proceeds, and the drift and animus of the writer will be sufficiently apparent in the passage—“It is then by the Deluge that the history of the existing nations and societies has commenced. If there have been false and pernicious religions in the world it is to the Deluge that I trace them back as to their source; if doctrines inimical to society have been broached, I see their principles in the consequences of the Deluge; if there have existed vicious legislations and innumerable bad governments, it will be upon the Deluge that I lay the charge.” It is, then, only in attestation of the fact that I adduce this author; and in his proof he has accumulated a large mass of indirect evidence, which a certain school of opinion find it convenient altogether to ignore in reference to this subject. In this class are the various institutions among different nations to preserve the memory of the Deluge, as for instance, the “Hydrophories ou la fête du Deluge à Athenes,” and at Ægina, the feast of the goddess of Syria at Hierapolis, both having strange resemblances with the Jewish feasts of “Nisue ha Mâim, or the effusion of waters,” and the tabernacles, in their traditional aspects, i.e. in their observances not commanded by Moses; the “effusion des eaux a Ithome... et de Siloe” the feast of the Deluge (of Inachus) at Argos; a feast, the effusion of water, in Persia, anterior to its Mahometanism; similar festivals in Pegu, China, and Japan; in the mysteries of Eleusis; in the “peloria,” “anthisteria,” and “Saturnalia;” and finally in the pilgrimages to rivers in India201 and other parts of the world; “of the multitude of traditions preserved in the diluvian festivals and commemorative usages of the gulphs, apertures, and abysses which have at one time or another vomited forth or absorbed waters” (i. 84); again, the pilgrimages to the summits of mountains in India, China, Tartary, the Caucasus,202 Peru, &c. “It is easy to see,” he adds (p. 320), “that this veneration is based upon a corrupted tradition, which has taught these people that their fathers formerly took refuge on the top of this mountain at the time of the Deluge, and subsequently descended from it to inhabit the plains.”
I shall have occasion to refer again more in detail to some of these customs203 when drawing attention to the resemblances which I shall presently point out; but I wish previously to give, more in extenso, his description of the Hydrophoria at Athens:—
“This name denoted the custom which the Athenians had on the day of this feast of carrying water in ewers and vases with great ceremony; in memory of the Deluge, they proceeded each year to pour this water into an opening or gulf, which was found near the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and on this occasion they recalled the sad memory of their ancestors having been submerged. This ceremony is simple and very suitable to its subject; it was well calculated to perpetuate the memory of the catastrophe caused by the waters of the Deluge. Superstition added some other customs.... They threw into the same gulf cakes of corn and honey; it was an offering to appease the infernal deities.... The Greeks placed it in the rank of their unlucky days (also ‘un jour triste et lugubre’); and thus they remarked that Sylla had taken their city of Athens the very day that they had made this commemoration of the Deluge. Superstition observes everything, not to correct itself, but to confirm itself more and more in its errors. It was, according to the fable, by the opening of this gulf that the waters which had covered Attica had disappeared; it was also said that Deucalion had raised near to this place an altar which he had dedicated to Jove the Preserver. ‘Tradition also attributed to Deucalion the temple of Jupiter Olympus,’ in which these mournful ceremonies were performed. ‘This temple was celebrated and respected by the pagan nations as far as we can trace history back.’ It was reconstructed on a scale of magnificence by Pisistratus; every town and prince in Greece contributed to its adornment; it was completed by the Emperor Adrian in 126 of our era. The antiquity of this monument, the respect which all nations have shown it, and the character of the traditions which they have of its origin, ought to establish for the festival of the Hydrophoria a great antiquity. The feasts, in general, are more ancient than the temples.”—Boulanger, i. 38–40.
I will now ask the reader, if he has not read (and seen the illustrations in) Mr Catlin’s “O-kee-pa,”204 to compare the following extract with the preceding:—
“The O-kee-pa, an annual ceremony to the strict observance of which those ignorant and superstitious people attributed not only their enjoyment in life but their very existence; for traditions, their only history, instructed them in the belief that the singular forms of this ceremony produced the buffaloes for their supply of food, and that the omission of this annual ceremony, with its sacrifices to the waters, would bring upon them a repetition of the calamity which their traditions say once befell them, destroying the whole human race excepting one man, who landed from his canoe on a high mountain in the west.205 This tradition, however, was not peculiar to the Mandan tribe, for among one hundred and twenty different tribes that I have visited in North, South, and Central America, not a tribe exists that has not related to me distinct or vague traditions of such a calamity in which one or three or eight persons were saved above the waters on the top of a high mountain. Some of them, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and in the plains of Venezuela and the Pampa del Sacramento in South America, make annual pilgrimages to the fancied summits where the antediluvian species were saved in canoes or otherwise, and under the mysterious regulations of their medicine (mystery) men tender their prayers and sacrifices to the Great Spirit to ensure their exemption from a similar catastrophe.”
—P. 2.
Yet, strange to say, this is no proof to Mr Catlin of the universal Deluge recorded in Scripture. “If,” he says, “it were shown that inspired history of the Deluge and of the Creation restricted those events to one continent alone, then it might be that the American races came from the Eastern continent, bringing these traditions with them, for until that is proved, the American traditions of the Deluge are no evidence whatever of an eastern origin. If it were so, and the aborigines of America brought their traditions of the Deluge from the East, why did they not bring inspired history of the Creation?”206—P. 3. (Vide pp. 134, 135.)
The “O-kee-pa,” Mr Catlin says, “was a strictly religious ceremony,... with the solemnity of religious worship, with abstinence, with sacrifices, with prayer; whilst there were three other distinct and ostensible objects for which it was held,—1. As an annual celebration of the ‘subsiding of the waters’ of the Deluge. 2. For the purpose of dancing what they call the Bull-dance, to the strict performance of which they attributed the coming of buffaloes. 3. For purpose of conducting the young men through an ordeal of privation and bodily torture, which, while it was supposed to harden their muscles and prepare them for extreme endurance, enabled their chiefs... to decide upon their comparative bodily strength, endurance,” &c.—P. 9.
The torture no doubt subserved this subsidiary purpose, but it appears to me that the original intention and idea was torture for the purpose of expiation, as in the ceremonies in ancient Greece.207 Sundry incidents narrated by Catlin seem to establish this. They prepare themselves by fasting (p. 25); after having sunk under the infliction of these horrible tortures (and from every point of view they are truly horrible), “no one was allowed to offer them aid when they lay in this condition. They were here enjoying their inestimable privilege of voluntarily intrusting their lives to the keeping of the Great Spirit, and chose to remain there until the Great Spirit gave them strength to get up and walk away” (p. 28); and when so far recovered, “in each instance” they presented the little finger of the left hand, and some also the forefinger of the same hand and the little finger of the right hand (all tending to make them pro tanto inefficient warriors) “as an offering to the Great Spirit, as a sacrifice for having listened to their prayers, and protected their lives in what they had just gone through” (p. 28).
For the description of the bull-dance,208 and for the subsequent history and final extinction of the Mandans, I must refer my readers to Mr Catlin’s valuable testimony to the truth of Scripture, and important contributions to ethnological science.
I shall now proceed to show analogies in what will be admitted to be most unlikely ground—in the King of Dahome’s celebrated “So-sin customs,” described by Captain Richard Burton.
Before, however, proceeding further, I must point out the following features in the ceremonies or customs as common to Grecian and antique pagan; to the Mandan (Indian of North America), and to the tropical African.209 In the first place they are cyclical; they are all of a mournful character; all are interrupted at intervals by processions, dances, and songs of a traditional character; they all close in scenes of rejoicing or rather in Bacchanalian (yet still traditionally [vide page 247, note Boulanger] Bacchanalian) scenes of riot and debauchery. The duration of the festivals varies from three and four to five days; the days have fantastic names, which, although different, still in their very peculiarity, and also in the drift and meaning of the names so far as it can be gathered, are suggestive of a common origin, e.g. the first day of the Anthesteria, at Athens was called “Πιθοιγια, ἀπο τοῦ πίθους οἴγειν,” “because they tapped their casks.” The fourth day of the King of Dahome’s customs is named “So (horse) nan-wen (will break) kan (rope) ’gbe (to-day).”—Burton, ii. 8. One part of the Mandan ceremony is called “Mee-ne-ro-ka-Ha-sha,” or “the settling down of the waters,” which name again closely corresponds to the ceremonies at Athens and at Hierapolis in Syria (ante), where water was poured into the opening where the waters of the Deluge were supposed to have disappeared. The fifth day of the Dahome customs is named “Minai afunfun khi Uhun-jro men Dadda Gezo”==”we go to the small mat tent under which the king sits.”—Burton, ii. 27. This approximates to the scene described by Catlin (p. 20) at the close of the bull-dance (fourth day), when “the master of ceremonies (corresponding to the king at Dahome) cried out for all the dancers, musicians,” and “the representatives of animals and birds,” “to gather again around him.” He is described as coming out of the mystery lodge and collecting them round “the big canoe.”
But the closest connection is in the nature and order of the ceremonies on the fourth day at Dahome and among the Mandans. Among the latter, interrupting the bull-dance on that day, there is an apparition of “the evil spirit,”210 graphically described by Mr Catlin (p. 22), and at Dahome (Burton, ii. 18), there intervenes between the fourth and fifth days’ ceremonies what is called “the evil night” (there are two “evil nights”) which is the night of the horrible massacre. But on this night also, at the close of the fourth day’s ceremonies among the Mandans, the infliction of tortures (very horrible, but mild in comparison with the African butchery) commence. Now, I have already ventured the opinion that these tortures were originally of an expiatory character, and this gains confirmation by the assurance made to Captain R. Burton that the victims on “the evil night” were only “criminals” and prisoners of war, the people of Dahome, on all occasions (vide infra), preferring a vicarious mode of expiation. Captain R. Burton (ii. 19) says of these massacres:—“The king takes no pleasure in the tortures and death or in the sight of blood, as will presently appear. The 2000 killed in one day, the canoe211 paddled in a pool of gore, and other grisly nursery tales, must be derived from Whydah, where the slave-traders invented them, probably to deter Englishmen from visiting the king. It is useless to go over the ground of human sacrifice from the days of the wild Hindu’s Naramadha to the burnings of the Druids, and to the awful massacres of Peru and Mexico. In Europe the extinction of the custom began from the time of the polite Augustus,” i.e. commenced with the advent of our Lord. [Vide a reference to MS. of Sir J. Acton in Mr Gladstone’s address to the University of Edinburgh, 1865, from which it would appear that the final extinction was not until the triumph of Christianity.]
Without carrying rashness to the excess of disputing the interpretation of Dahoman words with Captain Burton, I may yet demur to accepting his explanation of the term “So-sin” (the “So-sin customs”) absolute et simpliciter. He says (i. 315), “The Sogan (‘So’ = horse, ’gan’ captain) opens the customs by taking all the chargers from their owners and by tying them up, whence the word So-sin. The animals must be redeemed in a few days with a bag of cowries.”212 This is certainly a very likely definition, and although secondary, is no doubt the explanation current among the present generation of Dahomans. All I shall venture to do is to supplement it. But may not the old and primitive idea still lurk in the name? At i. 242, I perceive Captain Burton says “so” and “sin” mean water,213 and the compound word “amma-sin” means “medicine” = “leaf-water,” and again at 244 the same word “Sin” is twice used to signify liquid. If so, in the very name of the feast we find the word water, which links it into connection with “the Mandan custom” and the festivals of ancient Greece.
The word, “So” = horse, will therefore still remain, and may perhaps stand in the same relation to the “water” celebration, that the “bull” does to the Mandan celebration of the Deluge. Captain Burton, for instance, tells us (ii. 15), a “So” was brought up to us (on the fourth day of the So-sin custom, and on the fourth day of the Mandan custom “the bull-dance” was performed sixteen times round “the big canoe”); but I will place the two descriptions side by side.
Captain Burton, ii. 15.
“A ‘So’ was brought up to us, a bull-face mask of natural size, painted black, with glaring eyes and peep-holes, the horns were hung with red and white rag strips, and beneath was a dress of bamboo fibre covering the feet, and ruddy at the ends. It danced with head on one side and swayed itself about, to the great amusement of the people.” Vide also p. 93, “Four tall men singularly dressed, and with bullocks’ tails,” &c.
Mr Catlin, p. 16.
“The chief actors in these strange scenes (bull-dance) were eight men, with the entire skins of buffaloes thrown over them, enabling them closely to imitate the appearance and motions of those animals, as the bodies were kept in as horizontal a position, the horns and tails of the animals remaining on the skins, and the skins of the animals’ heads served as masks through the eyes of which the dancers were looking.” The legs of the dancers were painted red and white” (plate 6.)
If we might (on the strength of so many words of primary necessity being in common) connect “So” = horse, with the Saxon “soc” or plough (as in the soc and service tenure), we could then see a way in which the same word might apply indifferently to ox or horse; and we would, moreover, see through the common relation to Noah how the water ceremony came to be associated with the worship of Ceres in the mysteries of Eleusis. Vide Boulanger, i. 70–107.214
The above enumeration does not exhaust the points of resemblance. Compare the following:—
Burton, ii. 23.
“Conspicuous objects on the left of the pavilion were two Ajalela or fetish pots made by the present king (according to the customs.) Vide note 16. Both are lamp black, shaped like amphoræ (amphoræ, for holding wine) about 4 feet high, and planted on tripods. The larger was solid, the smaller callendered with many small holes, and both were decorated with brass and silver crescents, stars, and similar ornaments. The second, when filled with water and medicine allows none to escape, so great is its fetish power; an army guarded by it can never be defeated, and it will lead the way to Absokuta.” Compare Pongol ceremony, p. 275.
Catlin, p. 8.
“In an open area in the centre of the village stands the ark or ‘big canoe,’ around which a great proportion of the ceremonies were performed. This rude symbol, of 8 or 10 feet in height, was constructed of planks and hoops, having somewhat the appearance of a large hogshead standing on its end, and containing some mysterious things, which none but the medicine (mystery) men were allowed to examine.”
This must be considered in connection with the following.
Burton.
In the opening procession of the third day’s customs, Captain Burton tells us (ii. 2), “First came a procession of eighteen Tansi-no or fetish women, who have charge of the last monarch’s grave.... They were preceded by bundles of matting, eight large stools, calabashes, pipes, baskets of water, grog, and meat with segments of gourd above and below, tobacco bags, and other commissariat articles; and they were followed by a band of horns and rattles.”215
In another procession (ii. 47), “The party was brought up by slave girls carrying baskets and calabashes. (Query, of water?) These, preceded by six bellowing horns, stalked in slowly, and with measured gait the eight Tansi-no, who serve and pray for the ghosts of dead kings. (Query, eight dead kings?) In front went their ensign, a copper measuring rod 15 feet long and tapering to a very fine end; behind it were two chauris and seven mysterious pots and calabashes wrapped in white and red checks,” and presently “three brass, four copper, and six iron pots, curiosities on account of their great size.... Eight images, of which three were apparently ship’s figureheads whitewashed, and the rest very hideous efforts of native art.”216
Catlin.
In Captain Burton’s account of the articles paraded in the procession, the pipes (to which great mystery is attached), the horns and rattles (vide pl.), and the baskets of water are common to the Mandan ceremony. May not the eight stools be representative of the eight diluvian survivors. Vide supra, 197, Cabiri? Let us, however, confine our attention to the “baskets of water.” Compare with the following account in Catlin.
“In the medicine (mystery) lodge... there were also four articles of veneration and importance lying on the ground, which were sacks containing each some three or four gallons of water. These seemed to be objects of great superstitious regard, and had been made with much labour and ingenuity, being constructed of the skins of the buffaloes’ neck, and sewed together in the forms of large tortoises lying on their backs (comp. p. 138; also p. 269), each having a sort of tail made of raven’s quills and a stick like a drumstick lying on it, with which, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the ceremony, the musicians beat upon the sacks as instruments of music for their strange dances. By the sides of these sacks, which they called Ech-tee-ka (drums), there were two other articles of equal importance which they called Ech-na-da (rattles) made of undressed skins shaped into the form of gourd shells,” &c. (Note the segments of gourd accompanying the water baskets in the Dahome procession, supra.) Catlin adds—“The sacks of water had the appearance of great antiquity, and the Mandans pretended that the water had been contained in them ever since the Deluge.”—pp. 15, 16.217
Burton, ii. 35.
It must be remembered that at Dahome, royalty as there represented has absorbed and monopolized the most important parts of the ceremonial: it is natural, therefore, to expect that the conspicuous figures in the original (or in the Mandan), which conflicted or would not consort with royalty, would be thrown into the background. Accordingly I am only able to get a glimpse of the conspicuous figures opposite in the following passage:—“The jesters were followed by a dozen pursuivants armed with gong-gongs, who advanced bending towards the throne, and shouted the ‘strong names’ or titles. Conspicuous amongst them was an oldster in a crimson sleeveless tunic and yellow shorts: his head was red with dust, he carried a large bill-hook,218 and he went about attended by four drums and one cymbal.”
It will be remembered (if my readers have read Mr Catlin, p. 11, 12) that the first thing “the aged white man” does on entering the mystery lodge is to call on the chiefs “to furnish him with four men,” and the next is to “receive at the door of every Mandan’s wigwam some edged tool to be given to the water as a sacrifice, as it was with such tools that the “big canoe” was built.219
Catlin, p. 10.
The opening scene in the Mandan customs, effectively described by Mr Catlin, begins with “a solitary human figure descending the prairie hills and approaching the village,” “in appearance a very aged man,” “a centenarian white man,” dressed in a robe of four white wolves’ skins.” He was met by the head chief and the council of chiefs, and addressed by them as “Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah” (the first and only man.) “He then harangued them for a few minutes, reminding them that every human being on the surface of the earth had been destroyed by the water excepting himself, who had landed on a high mountain in the west in his canoe, where he still resided, and from whence he had come to open the medicine (mystery) lodge, that the Mandans might celebrate the subsiding of the waters, and make the proper sacrifices to the water, lest the same calamity should again happen to them.”
Burton, ii. 38.
“The ministers... they were conducted by a ‘Lali’ or half-head, with right side of his pericranium clean shaven, and the left in a casing of silver that looked like a cast or a half melon.”
Catlin, p. 30.
Compare with the two athletic young men (vide Plate XIII.) assigned to each of the young men who underwent the torture—“their bodies painted one half red and the other blue, and carrying a bunch of willow-boughs in one hand.”
Burton says (ii. 87), “One of the Dahoman monarch’s peculiarities is that he is double, not merely binonymous, nor dual, like the spiritual Mickado and temporal Tycoon of Japan, but two in one. Gelele, for instance, is king of the city and addo-kpon of the ‘bush’; i.e. of the farmer folk and the country as opposed to the city. This country ruler has his official mother, the Dank-li-ke.... Thus Dahome has two points of interest to the ethnologist—the distinct precedence of women and the double king.”—Vide also p. 80.
Here two or three questions suggest themselves. If this ceremony is primitive, will not dual royalty give a clue to the duality we find so commonly in mythology, assuming the basis of mythology to be historical? 2d, Is there no clue in the name, official name, of Dank-li-ke? What does the reader guess the meaning to be? (p. 58.) Mr Burton tells us it means, “Dank (the rainbow), li (stand), and ke (the world).” Is it a forced paraphrase to construe this to mean—The rainbow is the sign that the world shall stand?
Upon the point of the precedence of woman, to which the Dahoman ceremony testifies, but to which it gives no clue, I shall, as it is so very important in more bearings than one, give at some length the following scene from Catlin:—
“When ’the evil spirit’ enters the camp during the ceremony, he proceeds to make various attacks, which are defeated by the intervention of the master of the ceremonies. In several attempts of this kind the evil spirit was thus defeated, after which he came wandering back amongst the dancers, apparently much fatigued and disappointed.... In this distressing dilemma he was approached by an old matron, who came up slyly behind him, with both hands full of yellow dirt, which (by reaching around him) she suddenly dashed in his face, covering him from head to foot, and changing his colour, as the dirt adhered to the undried bear’s grease on his skin;... at length another snatched his wand from his hand and broke it across her knee... his power was thus gone... bolting through the crowd, he made his way to the prairies.”
—P. 24.
We shall not be surprised to learn, then, that when the “Feast of the Buffaloes” (distinct from the bull-dance) commences (p. 33), several old men perambulated the village in various directions, in the character of criers, with rattles in their hands, proclaiming that “the whole government of the Mandans was then in the hands of one woman—she who had disarmed the evil spirit... that the chiefs that night were old women; that they had nothing to say; that no one was allowed to be out of their wigwams excepting the favoured ones whom ’the governing woman’ had invited,” &c. Will not this give a clue to the precedence in Dahome, probandis probatis, and is not the precedence in Dahome thus interpreted, and the interlude above described evidence of the tradition, that the woman should break the head of the serpent? (Gen. iii. 15). It is of great significance, and, if so many points of comparison had not occurred, ought to have been stated at the outset, that at Dahome “the Sin-kwain (“sin,” water—“kwain,” sprinkling), or water-sprinkling custom follows closely upon the “So-sin or Horse-tie rites.”—Vide Burton, ii. 167.
Now, if the reader will turn to Boulanger, i. 90, 91, he will find this identical custom in Persia, Pegu, China, and Japan. But I relinquish the details, as I fear I shall have exhausted the patience of the few readers I shall have carried with me to this point; and because the King of Dahome has a custom perhaps still more demonstrably cognate to not only the ancient Grecian ceremonies on the shores of the ocean and on the banks of rivers, but with widely diffused tradition. I shall here place four writers in juxtaposition, and with this testimony I shall conclude:—
BOULANGER.
The ancient inhabitants of Italy repaired once a year to the Lake Cutilia, where they made sacrifices and celebrated secret mysteries or ceremonies (Dion. Halicarnassus, i. 2).
The pontiffs in ancient Rome also went annually to the banks of the Tiber, “là ils faisoient des sacrifices expiatoires à Saturne, ce Dieu chronique,” &c. (Dion. Hal. i. 8.)
In the kingdom of Saka in Africa their greatest solemnity was celebrated on the banks of the rivers; the king himself presides at it (Hist. Gener. des Voy., iii. 639).
The same custom has been already (supra, p. 252) noticed on the Indus.
In all these cases human sacrifices were offered, or substitutes.—Boulanger, i. pp. 110–11. Compare supra, p. 243, lines from Dionysius Periegesis.
BURTON.
At Whydat the youngest brother of their triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. [Compare with Assyrian Hoa, supra, p. 194, and Chinese Yu, p. 68.] “The Hu-no, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all.... At times the king sends as an ocean sacrifice from Agborne a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a Caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. The custom for this element is made at Whydat, in a place near the greater market, and called Hu-kpa-man. It is a round hut, with thatch and chalked walls: outside is a heap of bones, whilst skulls, carapaces of the tortoise, and similar materials, cumber the interior. The priest is a fetish woman, who offers water and kola nuts to, and expects rum from, white visitors.—ii. p. 141.
Compare also supra, in Preface, extract from Davies’ “Celtic Researches” on the Celtic god Hu.
CATLIN.
The water ceremonies in Catlin’s account have already been sufficiently adverted to. He thus describes the medicine or mystery lodge in which they took place. Exteriorly, with the exception of the four images, it differed only in dimensions from the other wigwams, which are thus described? “They were covered with earth. They were all of one form; the frames or shells constructed of timbers, and covered with a thatching of willow boughs, and over and on that with a foot or two in thickness of a concrete of tough clay and gravel, which became so hard as to admit the whole group of inmates to recline on their tops. They varied in size from thirty to sixty feet, and were perfectly round.” For extract describing interior, vide supra, p. 257, noting (vide Plate iii. in Catlin) the four human and four ox skulls; “the sacks of water in the form of large tortoises lying on their backs.”
N.B.—With reference to the tortoise, vide ante p. 257.
Compare the “Buddhist Topes” in Major Cunningham’s “Bhilsa Tope,” vide p. 243.
HUNTER.
Hunter (“Annals of Rural Bengal,” p. 153) says of the Santals: “The only stream of any consequence in their present country—the Damouda—is regarded with a veneration altogether disproportionate to its size. Thither the superstitious Santal repairs to consult the prophets and diviners, and once a year the tribes make a pilgrimage to its banks in commemoration of their forefathers.... However remote the jungle in which the Santal may die, his nearest kinsman carries a little relic of the deceased to the river, and places it in the current to be conveyed to the far-off eastern land from which his ancestors came.”
In connection with the above, it must be remembered (vide Appendix G, p. 480, “Santal Traditions”) that they have, although confused with the Creation, an unmistakable tradition of the Deluge, the intoxication of Noah, and the dispersion.
If, then, I have shown that the custom, for the preservation of which from oblivion, so far as the Mandans (now extinct) are concerned, we are indebted to Mr Catlin, and which so plainly tells its own tale, is common to Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as America, I shall have established it as a tradition, not of a local American, but of an universal Deluge; and if the tradition of the universal Deluge is proved, then, according to Mr Catlin’s narrative itself, there is tradition of the Creation also (vide pp. 7, 13, 42).220
I have replied more fully, in chap. vii., to Mr Catlin’s objection—that though they have a tradition of a deluge, it is not the tradition of the Deluge, because they have not also the tradition of the Creation.
Mr Catlin argues upon the view that the American race “were created upon the ground on which they were found” (“Last Rambles,” p. 321, 1868); and (p. 319) adds, “I can find nothing in history, sacred or profane, against this.”
He takes his stand (in “O-kee-pa”) upon this—that there is nothing in the Mandan tradition which can be brought in proof of their migration from another continent. In reply I shall adduce their very name.
The American continent may have been peopled by way of Behring’s Straits, or from Europe in the East by way of Greenland, or by the connection of the Pacific Islands from the opposite coasts of Japan, China, and the Corea, or from the Polynesian groups in the south. The population may have poured in by all these routes. It is said (Prescott, “Conquest of Mexico,” ii. 473)221 that MSS. exist at Copenhagen proving that the American coast was visited by the Northmen in the eleventh century. The Polynesian route we may leave out of consideration, as it will not probably have been the one by which the Mandans came. As to the route by Behring’s Straits, Mr Catlin admits “it is a possibility, and therefore they say it is probable” (p. 217, “Last Rambles”). But if, as there appears to me reason to think, they came from the opposite coast of the Corea, it might as reasonably be conjectured that the migration took the route of Behring’s Straits, or by way of the Sandwich Islands. The possibility of the former is conceded. I will confine my attention, therefore, to the latter, which Mr Catlin pronounces absolutely impossible. In the first place, the distance between the Sandwich Islands and America is not greater than between Otaheite and New Zealand.222 Now it is admitted that New Zealand was peopled from Otaheite. Moreover (vide Sir J. Lubbock, “Pre-historic Times,” p. 390), the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, at two thousand miles distance, belong to the same race as those of Tahiti (Otaheite) and New Zealand, and resemble them “in religion, languages, canoes, houses, weapons, food, habits, &c.”223 The canoes of the Pacific islanders generally (vide Captain Cook passim) were of considerable size, and of very perfect workmanship. But also Prescott (“Conquest of Mexico,” ii. 473, quoting Beechey’s “Voyage to Pacific,” 1831, p. 2 Appendix, Humboldt’s “Examen. Critique de l’Hist. de la Geog.” and Nuov. Cont. ii. 55) says, “It would be easy for the inhabitant of Eastern Tartary or Japan to steer his canoe from islet to islet quite across to the American shore, without ever being on the ocean more than two days at a time.”224
We may agree, then, that the Mandans might have come by this route. Is there anything which makes it probable that they came? Well, yes; in the first place their name. Mr Catlin tells us (“O-kee-pa,” p. 5), “The Mandans (Nu-mak-ká-kee, pheasants, as they call themselves) have been known from the time of the first visits made to them, to the day of their destruction, as one of the most friendly and hospitable tribes on the United States frontier.” It transpires, therefore, that they are called pheasants. Is the pheasant a native of America?—on the other hand, is it not common on the opposite Asiatic continent, and on the islands adjacent to it from New Guinea to the Corea? I have never heard of the pheasant in the American continent;225 but in reading the accounts of the missionaries of the Corea (the only foreigners who have penetrated into the country), I read, “that clouds of pheasants and birds of all kinds perch at night in the branches of the trees” (“Life of Henri Dorie,” translated by Lady Herbert; Burns & Oates, p. 77); and if the reader will turn to p. 79 in the same Life, and will compare the description of the Coreans, which he will find there, with the description and portraits of the Mandans in Mr Catlin’s “O-kee-pa,” pp. 4, 5, he will, I think, recognise a sufficient resemblance to warrant and sustain the presumption created by their name.226
To the peculiarity of name, and resemblance of feature, I shall now proceed to add the evidence of some traces of their peculiar customs, or at least of some trace of the tradition out of which they arose.
I am not at present in possession of evidence to show this in the Corea itself (almost totally unknown and unexplored), but in the island of Formosa the same mode of burial is observed, only that among the Formosans other customs are added, which remind one of the commemorative customs of the Mandans.
Catlin, p. 8.
“Their (Mandan) dead, partially embalmed, are tightly wrapped in buffalo hides softened with glue and water, and placed on slight scaffolds, above the reach of animals or human hands, each body having its separate scaffold.”
The Mandan dance was round “the big canoe,” and a part of their ceremony on the roof of their wigwams.
Among the Opischeschaht Indians (vide Field, Oct. 2, 1869) there was a dance which they called “the roof dance.” “While the dance and song were going on below, leaped up and down between the roof-board, pushed aside for that purpose, making a noise like thunder.... After the dance was finished an old Seshaaht came forward, and remarked, that as it was a dance peculiar to his tribe it could not be omitted,” though “very injurious to the roof.”
Ogilby’s Japan, p. 52.
“The manner of disposing of their (Formosans’) dead and funeral obsequies is thus: When any one dies, the corpse being laid out, after twenty-four hours they elevate it upon a convenient scaffold or stage, four feet high, matted with reeds and rushes, near which they make a fire, so that the corpse may dry by degrees.... They drink intoxicating liquors. One beats on a drum made like a chest, but longer and broader, and turning the bottom upwards; the women get up, and two by two, back to back, move their legs and arms in a dancing time and measure, which pace, or taboring tread, sends a kind of murmuring or doleful sound from the hollow tree.”
N.B.—Their boats were constructed by hollowing out a tree (vide Catlin’s “Last Rambles,” p. 99).227
Now, compare with the above, and also with the extracts from Burton and Catlin, at p. 254, remembering the prominence of the ox or bull (the ox and bull dance) in the Mandan customs, and the connection of the bull with Nin or Ninip, p. 200, 203, and other mythological figures of which I believe Noah to have been the antitype. The following description of the most curious traditional representation in Japan (Ogilby, p. 279):—
“Moreover, besides the ox temple in Meaco, there is also to be seen the stately chapel dedicated to the Creator of all things (the ox in the above-mentioned temple is represented as breaking the mundane egg, vide supra, p. 257), who is represented in a very strange manner. In the middle of the temple is a great pot full of water surrounded with a wall, seven feet high from the ground, in the middle of which appears an exceeding great tortoise, whose shell, feet, and head stands in the water; out of its back rises the body of a great tree, on the top of which sits a strange and horrible figure”... [then follows a good deal which has its explanation, but must be curtailed]... “the image hath four arms”... in one “the hand grasps a cruse, from whence water issues continually; the other hand holds a sceptre.... The tree whereon he sits is of brass,... about the middle of this tree an exceeding great serpent hath wreathed itself twice, whose head and body is on the right side held fast by two horrible shapes, the remaining part thereof to the tail, two kings and one of Japan sages stretch forth” [evidently representing the contending influences (as in Mandan dance), one of the kings having the duplicated Janus head, supra, p. 220.]228
At pp. 477–78 there is perhaps a still more definite tradition of the Deluge (confused as usual with traditions of the Creation) in connection with the idol Topan. “Not far from Mettogamma (said the interpreter) lies an exceeding high mountain... the top of which stand several temples which may be seen a great distance off at sea. In these temples the Bonzies worshipped that great God which formerly created the sun, moon, and stars, but also fifteen lesser deities which some ages since conversed upon the earth (compare pp. 63, 97.) Then follows their account of the Creation. “Mankind not only increased in number but also in wickedness, differing more and more from their heavenly extract, growing still worse and worse, mocking at thunder, rainbows, and fire; nay, they blasphemed the great God himself (whom when the interpreter named, he bowed his head to the ground), whereupon He called His inferior deities about Him, telling them that He resolved to destroy and ruin all things... and make a round globe, in which the four elements should be all resolved into their former mass; and chiefly He commanded the idol Topan to make thunder balls to shoot through the air and fire all the kingdoms with lightning... so that none were saved except one man and his family, that had entertained and duly worshipped the gods.” Of the god Topan it had been previously said “that some years since he saw the temple of the idol Topan, whose image stood on a copper altar, cast like clouds, himself armed as a warrior, a coronet helmet on his head, his hand grasping a mighty club, and seeming to fly through the sky and moving his club to occasion thunder. When it thundered, a Bonzi, whose head was adorned with consecrated leaves [Query, the olive or willow?] which no thunder could harm,” offered several fishes.” (Comp. 197, 203.) Vide also p. 94, representation of the fish-god in the person of their “god Canon” [where we read of their “gods Canon and Camis or Chamis;” if we were to substitute Canaan and Cham, quid vetat?]229
To complete the circle of evidence, as regards the general tradition, I must add the following extracts from Captain Cook’s voyages, i. 110 (London, 1846):—“In the island of Huahieine, thirty-one leagues from Otaheite N.-W.,” Captain Cook came upon an erection, of which he says—“The general resemblance between this repository and the ark of the Lord among the Jews is remarkable; but it is still more remarkable that upon inquiring of a boy what it was called, he said ‘Ewharre no Eatua,’ it is the house of God. He could, however, give no account of its signification or use.” At p. 111, “Saw (at Uliatea) several Ewharre-no-Eatua or houses of God, to which carriage poles were attached as at Huahieine.... From thence we went to a long house not far distant, where among rolls of cloth and several other things we saw the model of a canoe, about three feet long, to which were tied eight human jawbones” [eight the number saved in the ark. Compare p. 197 with Kabiri. Compare with Ogilby (Japan, 177), where the god Canon (Canaan) is represented with seven heads on his breast, eight with himself, he having been substituted for Noah as the head of the race.] Captain Cook adds, however, “We had already learnt that these, like scalps among the Indians of North America, were trophies of war,” and suggests that the canoe “may be a symbol of invasion.” That I must leave to the reader to decide, but the heads might be “trophies of conquest,” and at the same time memorial heads,—the memorial heads having necessarily been replaced many times since the custom was first instituted.230
This leads me to the final question, When was this custom instituted? Up to this I have not considered whether the custom was good or bad, demoniac or only corrupted; and as to the time of its institution I have merely assumed from the fact of its universality that it was primeval.
Before expressing my opinion, I must fortify myself with an extract from the Rev. W. Smith’s very able work on the Pentateuch.231
“Strange, too, though it may appear, there is much in the outward ceremonial of the Levitical worship that indicates an Egyptian type. The fact need startle no one. For it is derogatory neither to the holiness of the Almighty nor to the inspiration of his delegate, that Moses should have borrowed from others rites which were good in themselves, and which became idolatrous only then, when employed in the worship of false gods. The most of external forms are in themselves indifferent and receive their determinate value from the feeling that prompts them, and the object to which they are directed: when given to God they are divine worship—when given to idols, they are idolatry. Nor is inspiration jeopardised because the material details may have come from a human source. Care and study and observation are not dispensed with in the mind that receives the divine communications; and Moses was instructed in all the wisdom and learning of the Egyptians for the very purpose of enabling him to use it to the best advantage... as the Church consecrated to a higher purpose the temples and the rites and festivals found among the pagan populations at their conversion. We need not then be scandalised if we find the ark of Jehovah to be the counterpart of the shrine of Amun. The resemblance strikes us at once on a glance at the woodcut token from Lepsius’ Denkmäler, Ab. iii., Bl. 109.”
Let the reader refer to the engravings in Rev. W. Smith’s Pentateuch, 291, 292. Dr Smith does not discuss the point further, only he says (p. 294), “In Egypt it is the canopied boat in which the Deity is steered on the heavenly ocean; in Israel it is the covered chest, the form best adapted for holding the stone tables of the law.”
But if “the canopied boat” should have corresponded among the Egyptians to “the big canoe” among the Mandans, and the other similar memorials we have come upon, what more appropriate symbol could Moses have incorporated? Was not the ark of the covenant, in which the law was preserved in the widespread inundation of corruption, the counterpart of the ark in which mankind, in the persons of Noah and his family, were saved? and in carrying on and embodying the tradition, we may see a motive why there may have been an intentional alteration of the symbol—viz. in order to wean his people from the corruption into which the whole Egyptian ceremonial had sunk?232 And why should it not have been so? Is there not a probability and fitness in the conjecture of some such commemorative sacrifices and memorials among mankind when they lived together before the dispersion in the times immediately following the Deluge?
Appendix to Chapter XI. — The Pongol Festival
“The Pongol Festival in Southern India,” by Charles E. Govat. “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,” new series, vol. v., part i. (1870.)
“I had seen the Pongol, the touching domestic festival it is now my chief object to describe. It had proved by its simple pathos that the Hindus were akin to the noblest nations of the world, and that in their antiquity they were worthy of the honour that has come to them of being the best and the least altered representatives of the ‘Juventus Mundi,’ which all nations count to have been the golden age.” He contrasts it with the worship in the great temple at Siringham near Trichinopoly, in which there “was ample justification for every epithet employed by Ward, Dubois, or Wilberforce.” “Yet the Pongol declared with equal force in favour of domestic love and chastity, of simple thanksgiving and rural contentment.... There is much reason to suppose that the Pongol is one of the most complete and interesting of these remnants of primitive life. That it is primitive is shown by the fact that the old Vedic deities are alone worshipped. Indra is the presiding deity. Agni is the main object of worship. A further proof of this point is given by the efforts that have constantly been made by the Brahmans to corrupt the ritual, and introduce Pauranic deities. Krishna is always declared by the Brahmans to be the Pongol god, but the tradition itself bears witness that the feast is older than the god. The tale is that when the great wave of Krishna worship passed over the Peninsula, the people were so enamoured of him that they ceased to perform the Pongol rites to Indra. This made the latter deity so angry that he poured down a flood upon the earth. The affrighted people ran to Krishna, who seized the great mountain Govardhanas, wrenched it from its place, and held it aloft on the tip of his little finger, like some huge umbrella. The people then ran beneath with their flocks and were saved.... The occasion of the festival is also primitive, for the Pongol is another feast of ingathering, the centre of Hebrew festivals, as this is of those of Southern India.... The Pongol is remarkable, as will be seen, for the strange combination of pastoral, hunting, and agricultural life. There are ‘harvest homes’ in almost every nation, but I do not know of any other example of the combination. The great days of the feast are two—one of these devoted to the new crops, the other to the cattle alone... while the feast winds up with a grand hunt, first of the cattle themselves and next of a hare.” Compare ch. vii.; compare Patagonian.
“Long before the commencement of the feast an unwonted activity pervades native society. The Pongol is the social festival of the year, and must be celebrated with due honour, else an ineffaceable stain will rest on the family name. It is the Christmas and Whitsuntide of England made into one.... So soon as the rains have finished, and this may be expected by about the first week in December, the carpenter, the builder, and the artists are in full work repairing the houses.... The sides of the road in the bazaar are heaped with ‘chatties’ of all sizes and shapes. Presents are bought for children. Distant relatives have no fields of their own from which to get their rice, so a sack of the new grain from the ancestral acres goes off to each. To this is added a pot of ghee, a set of brass pots, or perhaps a jewel; that the Pongol may not lack wherewith to make it joyful.” Creditors and debtors are often brought then to a compromise, or the process is postponed “till after Pongol.”
“All must be ready by the early part of January, when, according to the Hindu astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn. The feast hangs upon this, and it will be seen that the most interesting event of the celebration must exactly coincide with the passage of the sun. The festival commences on the previous day, and lasts for seven days, of which the second marks the sun’s passage, and is called Mahâ (or great) Pongol,... the next day is Bhôgi Pongol, or Pongol of rejoicing, equally well known by the name of Indra,... bonfires and torches are illuminated (compare Boulanger, lib. i. ch. ii.) The feast is now begun, and all turn from the fire, as it is extinguished by the rising sun, to the bath, with which every religious rite must commence. No image is used during the whole course of the celebration, except that of Ganesa.... Indra is represented on ordinary occasions as a white man sitting on an elephant. In his left hand is a bow (compare ch. xv., and in his right a thunderbolt, while his body is studded with a thousand eyes. [Query, a reference to the peacock? Compare ch. xv.] Agni has also his special image, that of a stout man, red and hairy as Esau, riding on a goat [compare Bacchus, p. 214]. Sûrya is also a red man, sitting on a water lily. He has four arms and three eyes. But none of these (deities) are known at Pongol any more than they were at the time when the hymns of the Rig Veda were composed.... The gifts are laid out on trays,—a vase of sugar, or perhaps an idol, peacock or elephant, round which will be grouped smaller works in sugar for the children.... One thing may not be forgotten, that is a lime [compare ‘gourd,’ p. 256]. This must be as large as money can buy, and then be carefully encased in gold leaf till it looks like one of the golden apples of antiquity. The next day is Mahâ (or great) Pongol. It is often called Sûrya Pongol. At noon the sun will cross the equator, and bring the culminating glory of the feast. So great a day must commence with appropriate ceremonial, and in this instance it is bathing. In country places the women run early in the morning to the nearest tank and plunge bodily in without undressing.” [This is alluded to by Mr Gover as “an innovation so uncomfortable and possibly dangerous;” but no evidence is adduced of its being an innovation, and its being the custom of the “country parts” would incline us to the contrary belief.] The men also bathe very carefully, as if the occasion were very solemn. Reference is made to the Rig Veda, i. 23, 15–24 (Wilson, i. 57); but in these verses occur the words, “waters take away whatever sin has been found in me.”
“Dripping wet, the women proceed, without changing their clothes, to prepare the feast,... new chatties, or earthen vessels had been purchased for the occasion; one of them is now taken and is filled with rice, milk, sugar, dholghee or clarified butter, grain, and other substances, calculated to produce a tasty dish.... The ingathering must be celebrated with things that have just been garnered. Usually Hindoos will not eat new rice, as it is indigestible” (refer to Leviticus xxiii. 10–14). Another incident is that—“The head of the house approaches the image (of Ganesa), and performs pûja. Then follows a procession of the young married couples to propitiate their mothers-in-law.... So a present, the best the house can provide, is carefully put together on a tray. It may be fruit, or brass pots, or ghee, or whatever else may be thought most acceptable. Then a small procession is formed. In front go three or four men, beating on tom-toms and blowing pipes. Then follows the gift, held aloft. Over it, if the family be respectable, is held an umbrella, carried by a servant who walks behind the bearer of the gift.... The nearest relative steps forward and asks that the daughter and her husband may come to the ‘boiling,’ to fill up the family circle. Then follows the boiling of the pot; ‘as the milk boils, so will the coming year be.’ The Pongol is one long series of visits, entertainments, and social joys.” (Comp. Mandan Festival, supra.)
“The third day of the feast is Mâttu Pongol, or the Pongol of the cattle. It commences with a general wash. They betake themselves to the nearest sacred tank, driving or dragging with them the whole bovine possessions of the village. They are then driven home, and adornment commences; the horns are carefully painted red, blue, green, or yellow,—if the owner be rich, gold leaf is employed,—heavy garlands of flowers placed on the horns. Meanwhile the women have prepared another new chatty, filling it with water, steeping within saffron, cotton seeds, and mangora leaves. The master of the ceremonial, usually the head of the house, comes for it, and places himself at the head of a procession of all the men—the women may not see the rite we now describe. In solemn silence they march round each animal four times, while the first man sprinkles the bitter water upon it and the ground as often as they pass the four cardinal points of the compass.... This done, the women and children are again admitted. The patient cattle are led out one by one to receive their final adornment.... Then, at a given signal, every rope is untied, every tom-tom, pipe, and guitar is banged or blown to the extreme of its endurance, and in an instant the herd, hitherto so patient, is careering down the street in an extremity of terror.... Any one may possess himself of whatever is carried by the cattle. No little skill and a vast amount of courage are shown by the ‘timid’ Hindoos in this dangerous and exciting pell-mell. The next day is Kanen Pongol, or Pongol of the calves.
“On the evening of this day we find the only token of corruption in the ceremonial.”... Then follows a dance, just as is described by Catlin as closing the Mandan ceremonial, in which very similar scenes occur.
Before adverting to the points of contrast between the Pongol and the Mandan and Dahoman ceremonies, I will give an extract from a book recently published, giving an account of a country hitherto unexplored—viz. Northern Patagonia. Traces I think will be recognised of the same primitive custom, though with evidences of corruption.
“Three Years Slavery among the Patagonians,” by Guinnard (Bentley, 1871), p. 269.233
“At certain periods of the year the Indians keep religious festivals. The first takes place in the summer, and is consecrated to Vita-ouènetrou (the god of goodness) for the purpose of thanking him for all his past favours, and of begging him to continue them in the future. It is generally the grand cacique who fixes the date and duration of the festival.... The preparations are made with all the religious pomp of which they are capable; the Indians grease their hair and paint their faces with greater care than usual.... At the commencement of the ceremony the women move their tents provisionally to the centre of the spot chosen by the cacique. The men do not arrive until these preparations are finished, they ride three times round the place at full gallop, shouting their war cry and shaking their lances. Then, their rides ended, they range themselves in single file, and tilt their lances with such perfect regularity as to make it a striking sight. The women afterwards take the places of their husbands” (compare Catlin, sup., p. ), “who, after dismounting and tying up their horses, form a second rank behind them.”
“The dance then commences without change of place, except from right to left. The women sing in a plaintive tone [laughter being expressly forbidden during the whole continuance of the ceremonies], accompanying themselves by striking a wooden drum.” Compare Catlin, sup., 257. It is also said (Guinnard, p. 198), “The drum is composed of a sort of wooden bowl, more or less large, over which a wild-cat skin is stretched, or a piece of the paunch of a horse. This instrument... is much used by them, especially in their religious festivals and character dances.” The drum is “decorated with colours and designs similar to those on their faces. The men pirouette, limping upon the opposite leg to that of the women.” Compare Catlin, 254, 260. “At a signal given by the cacique presiding over the festival, cries of alarm are raised, the men spring into their saddles, abruptly interrupting the dance to take part in a fantastic cavalcade round the site of the festival, all waving their weapons, and raising the sinister cry they utter in their pillages.”
“In the intervals of these exciting diversions everybody goes visiting in the hope of tasting a little rotted milk kept in a horse-hide.” Compare Pongol Festival, p. 280.
“At a very early hour on the fourth day, to close the ceremony, a young horse, an ox, and two sheep, given by the richest men amongst them, are sacrificed to their god. The head turned towards the east, and the heart still palpitating is hung upon a lance and inclined towards the rising sun.”
“The second festival takes place in the autumn; it is celebrated in honour of Houacouvou (director of the evil spirits). The object of it is to conjure him to preserve them from all enchantment. As in the first festival, the Indians dress themselves in their best, and assemble by tribes only, headed by their cacique. An assemblage of all the cattle takes place en masse. The men form a double circle around, galloping unceasingly in opposite directions, so that none of these unruly animals may escape. They invoke Houacouvou aloud, throwing down, drop by drop, fermented milk out of bull’s horns, handed to them by their wives, while they are riding round the cattle. After repeating this ceremony three or four times, they sprinkle the horses and oxen with whatever remains of the milk, with the view, they say, of preserving them from all maladies; this done, each man separates his own cattle, and drives it to some distance, then returns for the purpose of assembling round the cacique, who, in a long and fervid address, advises them never to forget Houacouvou in their prayers, and to lose no time in preparing themselves to please him, by carrying desolation amongst the Christians, and increasing the number of their own flocks and herds.”
This festival, therefore, in its original conception would not appear to be a worship of the evil spirit, but of him who curbs him; the same idea of the subordination of the evil spirit will be seen in Catlin’s account of the Mandans.
There is nothing certainly in this account which directly connects these Patagonian ceremonies with the diluvian commemorations, unless, perhaps, the sacred drum; but there is much in common with the Pongol and the Mandan which we have seen to have been commemorative.
The prominence of sun worship will not have escaped observation; but this discovery cannot militate against my position, for I have already shown (p. 160) that such admixture was probable, and also indicated how it was likely to have come about. Any hostile argument which would seek to deprive those ceremonies of their significance must be directed to the extrusion of the diluvian symbols.
Further trace of these diluvian ceremonies might be traced in the Buddhist systems; but it would open out too large a question for discussion here.