Volume 36 — THE DELUGE: (continued 2)

We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted. The monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our subject:—

"Question by Bobadilla. Who has created heaven and earth, the stars and moon, man and all else?

"Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan). Tamagastad and Cippatoval, the one is a man, the other a woman.

"Q. Who created that man and woman?

"A. No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.

"Q. Did they create Christians?

"A. I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and Cippatoval.

"Q. Are there any gods greater than they?

"A. No; we believe them to be the greatest.

"Q. Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?

"A. They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour like us Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what Indians eat.

"Q. Who gave them to eat?

"A. Everything belongs to them.

"Q. Where are they now?

"A. In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.

"Q. How did they ascend thither?

"A. I only know that it is their home. I do not know how they were born, for they have no father nor mother.

"Q. How do they live at present?

"A. They eat what Indians eat, for maize and all food proceeds from the place where dwell the teotes (gods).

"Q. Do you know, or have you heard tell, whether since the teotes created the world it has been destroyed?

"A. Before the present race existed, the world was destroyed by water and all became sea.

"Q. How did that man and woman escape?

"A. They were in heaven, for that was their dwelling, and afterwards they came down to earth and re-made all things as they now are, and we are their issue.

"Q. You say the whole world was destroyed by water. Did not some individuals save themselves in a canoe, or by some other way?

"A. No. All the world was drowned, according to what my ancestors told me."

The great god Tamagastad, of whom mention is made in this dialogue, is evidently the same as Thomagata, the awful-visaged spirit of fire, whose cultus was anterior among a portion of the Muyscas at Tunga and Sogamosa to that of Botchica. This, therefore, brings us back to the religious and cosmogonic traditions of the very advanced civilization in the high table-land of Cundinamarca, and we are led to recognize in the Flood-legend of Botchica a certain echo of the so universally spread tradition of the Deluge of early ages, mingled with the memory of a local event, from which the ancestors of the Muyscas had suffered at the time of their first settlement. Neither must we forget that Botchica and his wicked spouse, who brought about the inundation of Cundinamarca, are no other than personifications of the sun and moon, as were the pair Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello in the empire of the Incas. "The moon of Peru is gentle and beneficent," well observes M. Girard de Realle, "she helps her brother and husband in the work of civilization; on the plateau of Cundinamarca, on the contrary, she is a witch, a veritable deity of night and of evil, worthily represented by the lugubrious owl."

Some have believed themselves to have discovered the Flood-tradition among the Peruvians, but careful criticism disproves this. For it only arises from an unintelligent interpretation of the myth of Viracocha or Con, god of waters, or more precisely, the personification of the element, as shown by the legend which represents him as having no bones, and yet stretching himself out afar, lowering the mountains and filling up the valleys in his course. He was the chief god of the Aymaras, who, according to them, had created the earth; and who, issuing from Lake Titicaca, to manifest himself on earth, had assembled the earliest men at Tiahuanaco. Later, the official cosmogony of the Incas led to his undergoing an euhemeristic transformation diminishing his religious importance; and he is represented as one of the sons of the Sun, come upon earth to dwell among and civilize mankind, a younger brother of Manco-Capac. Now it is under the government of Viracocha that the Deluge is placed by the writers of very recent date, who mention this event, of which the native tradition was unknown to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, to Montesinos, Balboa, Gomara, F. Oliva, and, in short, to all authorities of any weight in Peruvian matters. MacCulloch does indeed quote Acosta and Herrera, but these authors never speak of a Deluge involving all humanity; they only say that Viracocha gave laws to the earliest men at the close of a primordial period anterior to their creation, when the whole surface of the earth had been under water.

Numerous legends of the great inundation of earliest times have been found among the savage tribes of America. But by their very nature these leave room for doubt. They have not been committed to writing by the natives, we only know them by intermediaries who may, in perfectly good faith, have altered them considerably in an unconscious desire to assimilate them to the Bible story. Besides, they have been only collected very lately, when the tribes had been for a long time in contact with Europeans, and had often had living among them more than one adventurer who might well have introduced new elements into their traditions. They are therefore very inferior in importance to those we have found existing in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, previous to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors.

The most remarkable of them, as excluding by its very form the idea of European communication, is that of the Cherokees. It seems a childish version of the Indian tradition, only that it is a dog instead of a fish who plays the part of deliverer to the man who escapes the catastrophe; but this brings us back to a myth special to America—that of the transformation of fish into dogs, as we have seen in the Flood-story of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."

"The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, "never ceased for several days to run up and down the banks of the river, looking fixedly at the water and howling as in distress. His master was annoyed by his ways and roughly ordered him to go home, upon which he began speaking and revealed the impending calamity, ending his prediction by saying that the only way in which his master and his family could escape was by throwing him at once into the water, for he would become their deliverer by swimming to seek a boat, but that there was not a moment to lose, for a terrible rain was at hand which would lead to a general inundation in which everything would perish. The man obeyed his dog, was saved with his family, and they repeopled the earth."

It is said that the Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the Orinoco, have a legend of the man and woman who escaped the flood by reaching the summit of Mount Tapanacu. There they threw cocoa-nuts behind them, from which sprung a new race of men and women. If the report be true, which, however, we cannot affirm, this would be a very singular agreement with one of the distinctive features of the Greek story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.

Russian explorers have reported a childlike narrative of the flood in the Aleutian Islands, forming the geographical link between Asia and North America, and at the extremity of the north-east of America among the Kolosks. Henry the traveller gives the following tradition as current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:—

"In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt towards the rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming upon the earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself with his family and all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The animals, who at that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which he landed with all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech as a punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer."

According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was destroyed by a flood, and that the good spirit, to repeople the earth, had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways—full of grotesque and perplexing touches—in which the man saved from the deluge is called Menaboshu.[65] To know if the earth be drying he sends a bird, the diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and the founder of existing society. Catlin relates a story, current among the Mandans, of the earth being a great tortoise borne on the waters, and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men, with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in its beak. Here we have Noah's dove, as in the story of Tezpi and Menaboshu we have other birds substituted for it. But the native originality of this detail, as of the whole diluvian tradition among the Mandans, may well be doubted when we remember that the physical peculiarities of this curious tribe on the banks of the Missouri led Catlin to consider it of mixed blood, and partly white origin.

In the songs of the inhabitants of New California allusion was made to a very remote period when the sea left its bed and covered the earth. The whole race of men and animals perished in this deluge, sent by the supreme god Chinigchinig, with the exception of a few who had taken refuge on a high mountain which the water failed to reach. The Commissioners of the United States who explored New Mexico before its annexation, tell of the existence of a similar tradition among the different native tribes of that vast territory. Other travellers give us kindred narratives, more or less strikingly resembling the Bible record. But for the most part they are too vaguely reported to be entirely trusted.

VI.

Polynesian Traditions.—In Oceania even, and not among the Pelagian negroes or Papoos,[66] but the Polynesian, racenatives of the archipelago of Australasia, the diluvian tradition has been traced, mingled with recollections of sudden rises of the sea, which are one of the most frequent scourges of those islands. The most noted is that of Tahiti, which has been specially referred to the primeval tradition. Here it is as given by M. Gaussin,[67] who has published a translation of it, as well as the Tahitian text, written by a native named Maré:—

"Two men had gone out to sea to fish with the line, Roo and Teahoroa by name. They threw their hooks into the sea, which caught in the hair of the god Ruahatu. They exclaimed, 'A fish!' They drew up the line and saw that it was a man they had caught. At sight of the god they bounded to the other end of their bark, and were half dead with fear. Ruahatu asked them, 'What is this?' The two fishermen replied, 'We came to fish, and we did not know that our hooks would catch thee.' The god then said, 'Unfasten my hair;' and they did so. Then Ruahatu asked, 'What are your names?' They replied, 'Roo and Teahoroa.' Ruahatu next said, 'Return to the shore, and tell men that the earth will be covered with water, and all the world will perish. To-morrow morning repair to the islet called Toa-marama; it will be a place of safety for you and your children.'

"Ruahatu caused the sea to cover the lands. All were covered, and all men perished except Roo, Teahoroa, and their families."

This story, like all in this part of the world currently referred to the memory of the Deluge, has assumed the childish character peculiar to Polynesian legends, and moreover, as M. Maury justly observes, it may be naturally explained by the recollection of one of those tidal waves so common in Polynesia. The most essential feature of all traditions properly called diluvian is wanting here. The island, observes M. Maury, has no resemblance to the Ark.[68] It is true that one of the versions of the Tahitian legend states that the two fishermen repaired to Toa-marama, not only with their families, but with a pig, a dog, and a couple of fowls, which recalls the entry of the animals into the Ark. On the other hand, some details of a similar story among the Fijis, especially one in which, for many years after the event, canoes were kept ready in case of its repetition, far better fit a local phenomenon, a tidal wave, than a universal deluge.

However, if all these legends were exclusively related to local catastrophes, it would be strange that they should appear and be almost similar in a certain number of localities at a great distance from each other, and only where the Polynesian race has taken root, or left indubitable traces of its passage;—this race, indigenous in the Malay Archipelago, not having migrated thence till about the fourth century of the Christian era—i.e., at a time when, in consequence of the communication between India and a portion of Malaysia,[69] the Flood-tradition under its Indian form might well have entered in. Without, therefore, deciding the question one way or other, we do not think that that opinion can absolutely be condemned which finds in these Polynesian legends an echo of the tradition of the Deluge, much weakened, much changed, and more inextricably confused than anywhere else with local disasters of recent date.

The result, then, of this long review authorizes us to affirm the story of the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the human race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now a recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races were to spring; for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to admit that at as many different points of the globe as we should have to assume in order to explain the wide spread of these traditions—local phenomena so exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having assumed an identical form, and presenting circumstances that need not necessarily have occurred to the mind in such cases.

Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not primitive but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient times; and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the Bible speaks as being descended from Noah, those of which it gives the ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation, which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and ethnological significance. In another paper I propose to inquire whether, in the conception of the inspired writers, the Deluge really was universal, in the sense customarily supposed.

But as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three races—Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or Kushite—that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity—before the ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia they together inhabited.

François Lenormant.

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