The founders of the early American civilization bear various titles: they are called "The Master of the Mountain," "The Heart of the Lake," "The Master of the Azure Surface," and the like. Even in the native traditions, the questions are often asked: "Whence came these men?" "Under what climate were they born?" One authority answers thus mysteriously: "They have clearly come from the other shore of the sea,—from the place which is called 'Camuhifal,'—The place where is shadow." Why may not this singular expression refer to a Northern country,—a place where is a long shadow, a winter-night?
A singular characteristic of the ancient Indian legends is the mingling of two separate courses of tradition. In their poetic conceptions, and perhaps under the hands of their priests, the old myths of the Creation are constantly confused with the accounts of the first periods of their civilization.
The following is the most ancient legend of the Creation, from the MSS. of Chichicastenango, in the Quiche text: "When all that was necessary to be created in heaven and on earth was finished, the heaven being formed, its angles measured and lined, its limits fixed, the lines and parallels put in their place in heaven and on earth, heaven found itself created, and Heaven it was called by the Creator and Maker, the Father and Mother of Life and Existence, … the Mother of Thought and Wisdom, the excellence of all that is in heaven and on earth, in the lakes or the sea. It is thus that he called himself, when all was tranquil and calm, when all was peaceable and silent, when nothing had movement in the void of the heavens."—Vol. I. p. 48.
In the narrative of the succeeding work of creation, says M. de Bourbourg, there is always a double sense. Creation and life are civilization; the silence and calm of Nature before the existence of animated beings are the calm and tranquillity of Ocean, over which a sail is flying towards an unknown shore; and the first aspect of the shores of America, with its mighty mountains and great rivers, is confounded with the first appearance of the earth from the chaos of waters.
"This is the first word," says the Quiche text. "There were neither men, nor animals, nor birds, nor fishes, nor wood, nor stones, nor valleys, nor herbs, nor forests. There was only the heaven. The image of the earth did not yet show itself. There was only the sea, on all sides surrounded by the heaven … Nothing had motion, and not the least sigh agitated the air … In the midst of this calm and this tranquillity, was only the Father and the Maker, in the obscurity of the night; there were only the Fathers and Generators on the whitening water, and they were clad in azure raiment… And it is on account of them that heaven exists, and exists equally the Heart of Heaven, which is the name of God."—Vol. I. p. 51.2
The legend then pictures a council between these "Fathers" and the Supreme Creator; after which, the word is spoken, and the earth bursts forth from the darkness, with its great mountains and forests and animals and birds, as they might to a voyager approaching the shore. An episode occurs, describing a deluge, but still bearing in it the traces of the double tradition,—the one referring to some primeval catastrophe, and the other to a local inundation, which had perhaps surprised the first legislators in the midst of their efforts. The Mexican tradition (Codex Chimalpopoca) shows more distinctly the united action of the Mediator (Quetzalcohuatl) and the Deity:—"From ashes had God created man and animated him, and they say it is Quetzalcohuatl who hath perfected him who had been made, and hath breathed into him, on the seventh day, the breath of life."
Another legend, after describing the creation of men of wood, and women of cibak, (the marrow of the corn-flag,) tells us that "the fathers and the children, from want of intelligence, did not use the language which they had received to praise the benefaction of their creation, and never thought of raising their eyes to praise Hurakan. Then were they destroyed in an inundation. There descended from heaven a rain of bitumen and resin… And on account of them, the earth was obscured; and it rained night and day. And men went and came, out of themselves, as if struck with madness. They wished to mount upon the roofs, and the houses fell beneath them; when they took refuge in the caves and the grottoes, these closed over them. This was their punishment and destruction."—Vol. I. p. 55.
In the Mexican tradition, instead of the rain we find a violent eruption of the volcanoes, and men are changed into fishes, and again into chicime,—which may designate the barbarian tribes that invaded Central America.
In still another tradition, the Deity and his associates are more plainly men of superior intelligence, laboring to civilize savage races; and finally, when they cannot inspire two essential elements of civilization,—a taste for labor, and the religious idea,—a sudden inundation delivers them from the indocile people. Then—so far as the mysterious language of the legend can be interpreted—they appear to have withdrawn themselves to a more teachable race. But with these the difficulty for the new law-givers is that they find nothing corresponding to the productions of the country from which they had come. Fruits are in abundance, but there is no grain which requires culture, and which would give origin to a continued industry. The legend relates, somewhat naively, the hunger and distress of these elevated beings, until at length they discover the maize, and other nutritious fruits and grains in the county of Paxil and Cayala.
Our author places these latter in the state of Chiapas, and the countries watered by the Usumasinta. The provinces of Mexico and the Atlantic border of Central America he supposes to be those where the first legislators of America landed, and where was the cradle of the first American civilization. In these regions, the great city attributed to Votan,—Palenque,—the ruins of whose magnificent temples and palaces even yet astonish the traveller, was one of the first products of this civilization.
With regard to the much-vexed question of the origin of the Indian races, M. de Bourbourg offers no theory. In his view, the evidence from language establishes no certain connection between the Indian tribes and any other race whatever; though, as he justly remarks, the knowledge of the languages of the Northeast of Asia and of the interior of America is yet very limited, and more complete investigations must be waited for before any very satisfactory conclusions can be attained. The similarity of the Indian languages points without doubt to a common origin, while their variety and immense number are indications of a high antiquity; for who can estimate the succession of years necessary to subdivide a common tongue into so many languages, and to give birth out of a savage or nomadic life to a civilization like that of the Aztecs?
In the passage of man from one hemisphere to another he sees no difficulty; as, without considering Behring's Strait, the voyage, from Mantchooria, or Japan, following the chain of the Koorile and the Aleutian Isles, even to the Peninsula of Alaska, would be an enterprise of no great hazard.
The traditions of the Indian tribes, as well as their monumental inscriptions, point to an Eastern origin. From whatever direction the particular tribe may have emigrated, they always speak of their fathers as having come from the rising of the sun. The Quiche, as well as the Chippeway traditions, allude to the voyages of their fathers from the East, from a cold and icy region, through a cloudy and wintry sea, to countries as cold and gloomy, from which they again turned towards the South.
Without committing himself to a theory, M. de Bourbourg supposes that one race—the Quiche—has passed through the whole North American continent, erecting at different stages of its civilization those gigantic and mysterious pyramids, the tumuli of the Mississippi Valley,—of whose origin the present Northern Indian tribes have preserved no trace, and for whose erection no single American tribe now would have the wealth or the superfluous labor. This race was continually driven towards the South by more savage tribes, and it at length reached its favorite seats and the height of its civilization in Central America.