These animals of the world come in a flood of generations, and the firstborn are gods and are usually called the ancients, or the first ones; the later-born generations are descendants of the gods, but alas, they are degenerate sons.

The theatre of the world is the theatre of necromancy, and the gods are the primeval wonder-workers; the gods still live, but their descendants often die. Death itself is the result of necromancy practiced by bad men or angry gods.

In every Amerindian language there is a term to express this magical power. Among the Iroquoian tribes it is called orenda; among the Siouan tribe some manifestations of it are called wakan or wakanda, but the generic term in this language is hube. Among the Shoshonean tribes it is called pokunt. Let us borrow one of these terms and call it “orenda.” All unexplained phenomena are attributed to orenda. Thus the venom of the serpent is orenda, and this orenda can pass from a serpent to an arrow by another exercise of orenda, and hence the arrow is charmed. The rattlesnake may be stretched beside the arrow, and an invocation may be performed that will convey the orenda from the snake to the arrow, or the serpent may be made into a witch’s stew and the arrow dipped into the brew.

No man has contributed more to our understanding of the doctrine of orenda as believed and practised by the Amerindian tribes than Cushing himself. In other publications he has elaborately discussed this doctrine, and in his lectures he was wont to show how forms and decorations of implements and utensils have orenda for their motive.

When one of the ancients—that is, one of the gods—of the Iroquois was planning the streams of earth by his orenda or magical power, he determined to have them run up one side and down the other; if he had done this men could float up or down at will, by passing from one side to the other of the river, but his wicked brother interfered and made them run down on both sides; so orenda may thwart orenda.

The bird that sings is universally held by tribal men to be exercising its orenda. And when human beings sing they also exercise orenda; hence song is a universal accompaniment of Amerindian worship. All their worship is thus fundamentally terpsichorean, for it is supposed that they can be induced to grant favors by pleasing them.

All diseases and ailments of mankind are attributed by tribal men to orenda, and all mythology is a theory of magic. Yet many of the tribes, perhaps all of them, teach in their tales of some method of introducing death and disease into the world, but it is a method by which supernatural agencies can cause sickness and death.

The prophets, who are also priests, wonder-workers, and medicine-men, are called shamans in scientific literature. In popular literature and in frontier parlance they are usually called medicine-men. Shamans are usually initiated into the guild, and frequently there are elaborate tribal ceremonies for the purpose. Often individuals have revelations and set up to prophesy, to expel diseases, and to teach as priests. If they gain a following they may ultimately exert much influence and be greatly revered, but if they fail they may gradually be looked upon as wizards or witches, and they may be accused of black art, and in extreme cases may be put to death. All Amerindians believe in shamancraft and witchcraft.

The myths of cosmology are usually called creation myths. Sometimes all myths which account for things, even the most trivial, are called creation myths. Every striking phenomenon observed by the Amerind has a myth designed to account for its origin. The horn of the buffalo, the tawny patch on the shoulders of the rabbit, the crest of the blue-jay, the tail of the magpie, the sheen of the chameleon, the rattle of the snake—in fact, everything that challenges attention gives rise to a myth. Thus the folktales of the Amerinds seem to be inexhaustible, for in every language, and there are hundreds of them, a different set of myths is found.

In all of these languages a strange similarity in cosmology is observed, in that it is a cosmology of regions or worlds. About the home world of the tribe there is gathered a group of worlds, one above, another below, and four more: one at every cardinal point; or we may describe it as a central world, an upper world, a lower world, a northern world, a southern world, an eastern world, and a western world. All of the animals of the tribes, be they human animals, tree animals, star animals, water animals (that is, bodies of water), or stone animals (that is, mountains, hills, valleys, and rocks), have an appropriate habitation in the zenith world, the nadir world, or in one of the cardinal worlds, and their dwelling in the center world is accounted for by some myth of travel to this world. All bodies and all attributes of bodies have a home or proper place of habitation; even the colors of the clouds and the rainbow and of all other objects on earth are assigned to the six regions from which they come to the midworld.

We may better understand this habit of thought by considering the folklore of civilization. Here are but three regions: heaven, earth, and hell. All good things come from heaven; and all bad things from hell. It is true that this cosmology is not entertained by scholarly people. An enlightened man thinks of moral good as a state of mind in the individual, an attribute of his soul, and a moral evil as the characteristic of an immoral man; but still it is practically universal for even the most intelligent to affirm by a figure of speech that heaven is the place of good, and hell the place of evil. Now, enlarge this conception so as to assign a place as the proper region for all bodies and attributes, and you will understand the cosmological concepts of the Amerinds.

The primitive religion of every Amerindian tribe is an organized system of inducing the ancients to take part in the affairs of men, and the worship of the gods is a system designed to please the gods, that they may be induced to act for men, particularly the tribe of men who are the worshipers. Time would fail me to tell of the multitude of activities in tribal life designed for this purpose, but a few of them may be mentioned. The first and most important of all are terpsichorean ceremonies and festivals. Singing and dancing are universal, and festivals are given at appointed times and places by every tribe. The long nights of winter are devoted largely to worship, and a succession of festival days are established, to be held at appropriate seasons for the worship of the gods. Thus there are festival days for invoking rain, there are festival days for thanksgiving—for harvest homes. In lands where the grasshopper is an important food there are grasshopper festivals. In lands where corn is an important food there are green-corn festivals; where the buffalo constituted an important part of their aliment there were buffalo dances. So there is a bear dance or festival, and elk dance or festival, and a multitude of other festivals as we go from tribe to tribe, all of which are fixed at times indicated by signs of the zodiac. In the higher tribes elaborate calendars are devised from which we unravel their picture-writings.

The practice of medicine by the shamans is an invocation to the gods to drive out evil spirits from the sick and to frighten them that they may leave. By music and dancing they obtain the help of the ancients, and by a great variety of methods they drive out the evil beings. Resort is often had to scarifying and searing, especially when the sick man has great local pains. All American tribes entertain a profound belief in the doctrine of signatures—similia, similibus curantur—and they use this belief in procuring charms as medicine to drive out the ghostly diseases that plague their sick folk.

Next in importance to terpsichorean worship is altar worship. The altar is a space cleared upon the ground, or a platform raised from the ground or floor of the kiva or assembly-house of the people. Around the altar are gathered the priests and their acolytes, and here they make prayers and perform ceremonies with the aid of altarpieces of various kinds, especially tablets of picture-writings on wood, bone, or the skins of animals. The altarpieces consist of representatives of the thing for which supplication is made: ears of corn or vases of meal, ewers of water, parts of animals designed for food, cakes of grasshoppers, basins of honey, in fine any kind of food; then crystals or fragments of rock to signify that they desire the corn to be hard, or of honeydew that they desire the corn to be sweet, or of corn of different colors that they desire the corn to be of a variety of colors. That which is of great interest to students of ethnology is the system of picture-writing exhibited on the altars. In this a great variety of things which they desire and a great variety of the characteristics of these things are represented in pictographs, or modeled in clay, or carved from wood and bone. The graphic art, as painting and sculpture, has its origin with tribal men in the development of altarpieces. So also the drama is derived from primeval worship, as the modern practice of medicine has been evolved from necromancy.

There is another method of worship found in savagery, but more highly developed in barbarism—the worship of sacrifice. The altarpieces and the dramatic supplications of the lower stage gradually develop into a sacrificial stage in the higher culture. Then the objects are supposed to supply the ancients themselves with food and drink and the pleasures of life. This stage was most highly developed in Mexico, especially by the Nahua or Aztec, where human beings were sacrificed. In general, among the Amerinds, not only are sacrifices made on the altar, but they are also made whenever food or drink is used. Thus the first portions of objects designed for consumption are dedicated to the gods. There are in America many examples of these pagan religions, to a greater or less extent affiliated in doctrine and in worship with the religion of Christian origin.

In the early history of the association of white men with the Seneca of New York and Pennsylvania, there was in the tribe a celebrated shaman named Handsome Lake, as his Indian name is translated into English. Handsome Lake had a nephew who was taken by the Spaniards to Europe and educated as a priest. The nephew, on his return to America, told many Bible stories to his uncle, for he speedily relapsed into paganism. The uncle compounded some of these Bible stories with Seneca folktales, and through his eloquence and great influence as a shaman succeeded in establishing among the Seneca a new cult of doctrine and worship. The Seneca are now divided into two very distinct bodies who live together on the same reservation—the one are “Christians,” the other are “Pagans” who believe and teach the cult of Handsome Lake.

Mr. Cushing has introduced a hybrid tale into his collection, entitled “The Cock and the Mouse.” Such tales are found again and again among the Amerinds. In a large majority of cases Bible stories are compounded with native stories, so that unwary people have been led to believe that the Amerinds are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.

J. W. Powell.

Washington City,
November, 1901.

Zuni Folktales

The Trial of Lovers

Or, The Maiden of Mátsaki and the Red Feather

(Told the First Night)

In the days of the ancients, when Mátsaki was the home of the children of men, there lived, in that town, which is called “Salt City,” because the Goddess of Salt made a white lake there in the days of the New, a beautiful maiden. She was passing beautiful, and the daughter of the priest-chief, who owned more buckskins and blankets than he could hang on his poles, and whose portholes were covered with turquoises and precious shells from the ocean—so many were the sacrifices he made to the gods. His house was the largest in Mátsaki, and his ladder-poles were tall and decorated with slabs of carved wood—which you know was a great thing, for our grandfathers cut with the tímush or flint knife, and even tilled their cornfields with wooden hoes sharpened with stone and weighted with granite. That’s the reason why all the young men in the towns round about were in love with the beautiful maiden of Salt City.

Now, there was one very fine young man who lived across the western plains, in the Pueblo of the Winds. He was so filled with thoughts of the maiden of Mátsaki that he labored long to gather presents for her, and looked not with favor on any girl of his own pueblo.

One morning he said to his fathers: “I have seen the maiden of Mátsaki; what think ye?”

“Be it well,” said the old ones. So toward night the young man made a bundle of mantles and necklaces, which he rolled up in the best and whitest buckskin he had. When the sun was setting he started toward Mátsaki, and just as the old man’s children had gathered in to smoke and talk he reached the house of the maiden’s father and climbed the ladder. He lifted the corner of the mat door and shouted to the people below—“Shé!”

“Hai!” answered more than a pair of voices from below.

“Pull me down,” cried the young man, at the same time showing his bundle through the sky-hole.

The maiden’s mother rose and helped the young man down the ladder, and as he entered the firelight he laid the bundle down.

“My fathers and mothers, my sisters and friends, how be ye these many days?” said he, very carefully, as though he were speaking to a council.

“Happy! Happy!” they all responded, and they said also: “Sit down; sit down on this stool,” which they placed for him in the firelight.

“My daughter,” remarked the old man, who was smoking his cigarette by the opposite side of the hearth-place, “when a stranger enters the house of a stranger, the girl should place before him food and cooked things.” So the girl brought from the great vessel in the corner fresh rolls of héwe, or bread of cornflour, thin as papers, and placed them in a tray before the young man, where the light would fall on them.

“Eat!” said she, and he replied, “It is well.” Whereupon he sat up very straight, and placing his left hand across his breast, very slowly took a roll of the wafer bread with his right hand and ate ever so little; for you know it is not well or polite to eat much when you go to see a strange girl, especially if you want to ask her if she will let you live in the same house with her. So the young man ate ever so little, and said, “Thank you.”

“Eat more,” said the old ones; but when he replied that he was “past the naming of want,” they said, “Have eaten,” and the girl carried the tray away and swept away the crumbs.

“Well,” said the old man, after a short time, “when a stranger enters the house of a stranger, it is not thinking of nothing that he enters.”

“Why, that is quite true,” said the youth, and then he waited.

“Then what may it be that thou hast come thinking of?” added the old man.

“I have heard,” said the young man, “of your daughter, and have seen her, and it was with thoughts of her that I came.”

Just then the grown-up sons of the old man, who had come to smoke and chat, rose and said to one another: “Is it not about time we should be going home? The stars must be all out.” Thus saying, they bade the old ones to “wait happily until the morning,” and shook hands with the young man who had come, and went to the homes of their wives’ mothers.

“Listen, my child!” said the old man after they had gone away, turning toward his daughter, who was sitting near the wall and looking down at the beads on her belt fringe. “Listen! You have heard what the young man has said. What think you?”