Chapter XI: Part II: Mythology and Folk-Lore (3)

The _balam_, as I have said, is esteemed a kindly and protective being; he is affectionately referred to as _yum balam_, Father Balam. He is said to have a human form, that of an old man with a long beard and ample flowing robes. But there are other gigantic spectres of terrible aspect and truculent humor. One of these is so tall that a man cannot reach his knees. He stalks into the towns at midnight, and planting his feet like a huge Colossus, one on each side of the roadway, he seizes some incautious passer-by and breaks his legs with his teeth, or conquers him with a sudden faintness. The name of this terror of late walkers is Giant Grab, _Ua ua pach_.

Another is the _Che Vinic_, the Man of the Woods, called by the Spanish population the Salonge. He is a huge fellow without bones or joints. For that reason if he lies down he cannot rise without extreme difficulty; hence he sleeps leaning against a tree. His feet are reversed, the heels in front, the toes behind. He is larger and stronger than a bull, and his color is red. In his long arms he carries a stick the size of a tree-trunk. He is on the watch for those who stray through the woods, and, if he can, will seize and devour them. But a ready-witted man has always a means of escape. All he has to do is to pluck a green branch from a tree, and waving it before him, begin a lively dance. This invariably throws the Wood Man into convulsions of mirth. He laughs and laughs until he falls to the ground, and once down, having no joints, he cannot rise, and the hunter can proceed leisurely on his journey. It is singular, says Dr. Berendt, how widely distributed is the belief in this strange fancy. It recurs in precisely the same form in Yucatan, in Peten, in Tabasco, around Palenque, etc.

Another ugly customer is the _Culcalkin_. This word means “the priest without a neck,” and the hobgoblin so named is described as a being with head cut off even with the shoulders, who wanders around the villages at night, frightening men and children.

In contrast to the giants are the dwarfs and imps which are ready in their malicious ways to sour the pleasures of life. The most common of these are the _h’lox_, or more fully, _h’loxkatob_, which means “the strong clay images.”[198] They are, indeed, believed to be the actual idols and figures in clay which are found about the old temples and tombs, and hence an Indian breaks these in pieces whenever he finds them, to the great detriment of archæological research. They only appear after sunset, and then in the shape of a child of three or four years, or sometimes not over a span in height, naked except wearing a large hat. They are swift of foot, and can run backwards as fast as forwards. Among other pranks, they throw stones at the dogs and cause them to howl. Their touch produces sickness, especially chills and fever. It is best, therefore, not to attempt to catch them.

Of similar malevolent disposition is the _Chan Pal_, Little Boy, who lurks in the woods and is alleged to bring the small-pox into the villages.

Others are merely teasing in character, and not positively harmful. Thus there is the _X bolon thoroch_ who lives in the house with the family, and repeats at night the various sounds of domestic labor which have been made during the day. The word _thoroch_ is applied to the sound caused by the native spindle revolving in its shaft; _bolon_ is “nine,” a number used to express the superlative degree in certain phrases; while the initial _X_ shows that the imp is of the feminine gender. The name therefore signifies “the female imp who magnifies the sound of the spindle.” Other such household imps are the _Bokol h’otoch_, Stir-the-House, who creeps under the floors and makes a noise like beating a cake to scare the inmates; the _Yancopek_, Pitcher-Imp, who crawls into jars and jugs; and the _Way cot_, Witch-bird, who lurks on or behind walls and drops stones on passers by.

The female sex is further represented in the Maya folk-lore by a personage who has a curious similarity to legendary ladies of the old world, sirens, mermaids, the Lorelei, and others. She is called _X tabai_, the (female) Deceiver. Her home is under shady bowers in the forests, and there the ardent hunter suddenly espies her, clothed, and combing with a large comb (_x ache_) her long and beautiful hair. As he approaches she turns and flees, but not with discouraging haste, rather in such a manner and with such backward glances as to invite pursuit. He soon overtakes her, but just as he clasps her beauteous form in his strong embrace, her body changes into a thorny bush, and her feet become claws like those of a wild fowl. Tom and bleeding he turns sadly homeward, and soon succumbs to an attack of fever with delirium.

Another very similar creature is _X Thoh Chaltun_, Miss Pound-the-Stones. She slily waits around the villages, and when she sees some attractive youth she awakes his attention by tapping on the stones, or in default of these on an empty jar which she carries for the purpose. Does the foolish youth respond to the seductive invitation, she coyly moves to the woods, where the amorous pursuer meets like disappointment and a similar sad fate as the victim of the _X tabai_.

As may be supposed, many superstitions cling around the animal world. Each species of brute has its king, who rules and protects it. Even the timid native hare may thus assert its rights. An Indian told Dr. Berendt that once upon a time a hunter with two dogs followed a hare into a cave. There he found a large hole, leading under the earth. He descended, and came to the town of the hares. They seized him and his dogs, and brought him before the king, and it was no easy matter for him to get off by dint of protests and promises.

There are also tales of the Straw Bird or Phantom Bird. The hunter unexpectedly sees a handsome bird on a branch before him. He fires and misses. He repeats his shot in vain. After a while it falls of itself, and proves to be nothing but a colored feather. Then he knows that he has been fooled by the _Zohol chich_.

An object of much dread is the Black Tail, _Ekoneil_, an imaginary snake with a black, broad, and forked tail. He glides into houses at night where a nursing mother is asleep; and, covering her nostrils with his tail, sucks the milk from her breasts.

These are probably but a small portion of the superstitions of the modern Mayas. They are too reticent to speak of these subjects other than by accident to the white man. He is quite certain either to ridicule or to reprove such confidences. But what is above collected is a moderately complete, and certainly, as far as it goes, an accurate notion of their folk-lore.

FOLK-LORE OF THE MODERN LENAPE.[199]

In August 1886, and September 1887, I had many conversations with the Rev. Albert Seqaqknind Anthony, an educated Delaware Indian, then assistant missionary to the Six Nations, in Ontario, Canada. Our immediate business was the revision of the “Lenâpé-English Dictionary,” which has since been published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; but in the intervals of that rather arduous and dry labor, we sought recreation in broader subjects of thought, and our discourse often fell on the ancient traditions, folk-lore, and customs of the Lenâpé, now fast disappearing.

Mr. Anthony was on his father’s side a Delaware, or Lenâpé, of the Minsi tribe, while his grandmother was a Shawnee. He himself was born on the Ontario Reservation, and up to his thirteenth year spoke nothing but pure Lenâpé. His memory carries him back to the fourth decade of this century.

One of his earliest reminiscences was of the last surviving emigrant from the native home of his ancestors in Eastern Pennsylvania—a venerable squaw (_ochquèu_, woman, hen), supposed to be a hundred years old. At the time her parents left the mountains between the Lehigh and Susquehanna rivers, she was “old enough to carry a pack”—twelve years, probably. This must have been about 1760, as after the French War (1755) the natives rapidly deserted that region.

I was surprised to find how correctly the old men of the tribe had preserved and handed down reminiscences of their former homes along the Delaware River. The flat marshy “Neck,” south of Philadelphia, between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, was pointed out to me by Mr. Anthony (who had never seen it before) as the spot where the tribe preferred to gather the rushes with which they manufactured rugs and mats. He recognized various trees, not seen in Canada, by the descriptions he had heard of them.

Such narratives formed the themes of many a long tale by the winter fire in the olden time. Like most Indians, the Lenâpé are, or rather were—for, alas! the good old customs are nearly all gone—inexhaustible _raconteurs_. They had not only semi-historic traditions, but numberless fanciful tales of spirits and sprites, giants and dwarfs, with their kith and kin. Such tales were called _tomoacan_, which means “tales for leisure hours.” They relate the deeds of potent necromancers, and their power over the _machtanha_, “those who are bewitched.”

It greatly interested me to learn that several of these tales referred distinctly to the culture-hero of the tribe, that ancient man who taught them the arts of life, and on his disappearance—these heroes do not die—promised to return at some future day, and restore his favorite people to power and happiness. This Messianic hope was often the central idea in American native religions, as witness the worship of Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, of Kukulcan in Yucatan, of Viracocha in Peru. Mr. Anthony assured me that it was perfectly familiar to the old Delawares, and added that in his opinion their very name, _Lenâpé_, conveys an esoteric meaning, to wit, “the man comes,” with reference to the second advent of their culture-hero.[200] This is singular confirmation of the fragmentary myths collected by the Swedish engineer Lindstrom in 1650, and by the Moravian Bishop Ettwein about a century later. These I have collected in “The Lenâpé and their Legends” (Philadelphia, 1885), and have discussed the general subject at such length in my “American Hero-Myths” (Philadelphia, 1882) that the reader will probably be satisfied to escape further expansion of it here.

Only in traditions does the “Stone Age” survive among the Delawares. In Mr. Anthony’s youth, the bow-and-arrow was still occasionally in use for hunting; but he had never seen employed arrow-points of stone. They were either of deer’s horns or of sharpened bones. The name for the compound instrument “bow-and-arrow” is _manhtaht_, the first _a_ being nasal; and from this word, Mr. Anthony states, is derived the name _Manhattan_, properly _manahah tank_, “the place where they gather the wood to make bows.” The bow-string is _tschipan_: the arrow, _allunth_. The generic name for stone weapon is still familiar, _achsinhican_, and the word from which we derive “tomahawk,” _t’mahican_, is strictly applied to a stone hatchet. War-clubs were of several varieties, called _apech'lit_ and _mehitíqueth_, which were different from an ordinary stick or cane, _alauwan_. Though the war-whoop is heard no more, its name remains, _kowa'mo_, and tradition still recalls their ancient contests with the Iroquois, their cruel and hated enemies, to whom they applied the opprobrious epithet _mengwe_ (that is, _glans penis_).

Hunting is scarcely worth the name any longer on the Canadian reservations. The debated question as to whether the Lenâpé knew the buffalo attracted me. Mr. Anthony assured me that they did. It was called _sisiliti_, which he explained as “the animal that drops its excrement when in motion,” walking or running; though he added that another possible derivation is from _siselamen_, to butt against, from which comes _sisejahen_, to break in pieces by butting.

In former times a favorite method of hunting in the autumn was for a large number of hunters to form a line and drive the game before them. This was called _p’mochlapen_. This answered well for deer, but now little is left save the muskrat, _chuaskquis_, the ground-hog, _monachgen_, the white rabbit, _wapachtques_, the weasel, _mani'tohumisch_, and the little chipmunk, _pochqwapiith_ (literally, “he sits upright on something”). For such small game, it is scarcely worth while running the risk of the bite of the blow-adder, _pethbotalwe_, and the much-feared “bloody-mouthed lizard,” _mokdomus_; though I suspect both are more terrible in tale than in fact.

In fishing, they appear to have known not only the brush-net and the spear, but the hook-and-line as well. The line, _wendamakan_, was twisted from the strands of the wild hemp, _achhallap_, or of the milk-weed, _pichtokenna_; and the hook was armed with a bait, _awauchkon_, which might be _wecheeso_, the ground-worm, literally, “he who extends and retracts himself,” or the _waukchelachees_, grasshopper, literally, “one that hops.” This corresponds with what the old Swedish traveler, Peter Kalm, relates in the first half of the last century. He describes the native hooks as made of bone or of the spur of a fowl.

They still gather for food the _ptukquim_, walnut, literally, “round nut;” the _quinokquim_, butternut, literally, “oblong nut;” and various berries, as the _lechlochhilleth_, the red raspberry, literally, “the berry that falls to pieces.”

Among utensils of ancient date and aboriginal invention seem to have been wooden dishes or bowls, _wollakanes_, made from the elm-tree, _wollakanahungi_; wooden mortars, in which corn was pounded, _taquachhakan_; and _peyind_, cups with handles. The art of pottery, which they once possessed, has been entirely lost.

Although now resident inland, they remember the manufacture and use of canoes, _amochol_. Some were of birch bark, _wiqua_, and were called _wiqua-amochol_; others were dugouts, for which they preferred the American sycamore, distinctively named canoe-wood, _amochol-he_.

The ordinary word for house is still _wikwam_, wigwam, while a brush-hut is called _pimoakan_. I was particular to inquire if, as far as now known, the Lenâpé ever occupied communal houses, as did the Iroquois. Mr. Anthony assured me that this was never the custom of his nation, so far as any recollection or tradition goes. Every family had its own lodge. I called his attention to the discovery in ancient village sites in New Jersey of two or three fire-places in a row, and too close to belong to different lodges. This has been adduced by Dr. C. C. Abbott as evidence of communal dwellings. He replied that these were the sites of the village council-houses; he himself could remember some with two or three fires; but their only permanent occupants were the head chief with his wives and children.

Though most of the national games are no longer known to the rising generation, in my informant’s boyhood they still figured conspicuously by the native firesides, where now “progressive euchre” and the like hold sway. One such was _qua'quallis_. In this a hollow bone is attached by a string to a pointed stick. The stick is held the hand, and the bone is thrown up by a rapid movement, and the game is to catch the bone, while in motion, on the pointed end of the stick. It was a gambling game, often played by adults.

A very popular sport was with a hoop, _tautmusq_, and spear or arrow, _allunth_. The players arranged themselves in two parallel lines, some forty feet apart, each one armed with a reed spear. A hoop was then rolled rapidly at an equal distance between the lines. Each player hurled his spear at it, the object being to stop the hoop by casting the spear within its rim. When stopped, the shaft must lie within the hoop, or the shot did not count.

A third game, occasionally seen, is _maumun'di_. This is played with twelve flat bones, usually those of a deer, and a bowl of wood, constructed for the purpose. One side of each bone is white; the other, colored. They are placed in the bowl, thrown into the air, and caught as they descend. Those with the white side uppermost are the winning pieces. Bets usually accompany this game, and it had, in the old days, a place in the native religious rites; probably as a means of telling fortunes.

The Delawares on the Ontario Reservation have long since been converted to Christianity, and there is little trace left of their former pagan practices. If they remain anywhere, it is in their medical rites. I inquired particularly if there are any remnants of the curious adoration of the sacred twelve stones, described by Zeisberger a century and a quarter ago. I found that the custom of the “sweat-lodge,” a small hut built for taking sweat-baths, still prevails. The steam is generated by pouring water on hot stones. This is done by the “medicine-man,” who is known as _quechksa'pict_. He brings in one stone after another, and pours water upon it until it ceases “to sing;” and invariably he uses precisely _twelve_ stones.

Probably some of the more benighted still seek to insure the success of their crops by offering food to the _m’sink_. This is a false face, or mask, rudely cut from wood to represent the human visage, with a large mouth. The victuals are pushed into the mouth, and the genius is supposed to be thus fed.

Our word _cantico_, applied to a jollification, and by some etymologists, naturally enough, traced to the Latin _cantare_, in reality is derived from the Lenâpé _gentkehn_, to sing and dance at the same time. This was their most usual religious ceremony, and to this day _gendtoma_ means “to begin religious services,” either Christian or heathen; and _gendtowen_ signifies “to be a worshipper.” These dances were often connected with sacred feasts, toward which each participant contributed a portion of food. To express such a communal religious banquet they used the term _w’chindin_, and for inviting to one, _wingindin_; and they were clearly distinguished from an ordinary meal in common, an eating together, _tachquipuin_ or _tachquipoagan_.

My informant fully believes that there is yet much medical knowledge held secretly by the old men and women. He has known persons bitten by the rattlesnake who were promptly and painlessly cured by a specific known to these native practitioners. It is from the vegetable _materia medica_, and is taken internally. They also have some surgical skill. It was interesting to learn that an operation similar to _trephining_ has been practiced among the Lenâpé time out of mind for severe headaches. The scalp on or near the vertex is laid open by a crucial incision, and the bone is scraped. This perhaps explains those trepanned skulls which have been disinterred in Peru and other parts of America.

The national legends have mostly faded out, but the Lenâpé perfectly remember that they are the “grandfather” of all the Algonkin tribes, and the fact is still recognized by the Chipeways and some others, whose orators employ the term _numoh'homus_, “my grandfather,” in their formal addresses to the Lenâpé. The old men still relate with pride that, in the good old times, before any white man had landed on their shores, “the Lenâpé had a string of white wampum beads, _wapakeekq’_, which stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and on this white road their envoys travelled from one great ocean to the other, safe from attack.”

There are still a few among them who pretend to some knowledge of the art of reading the wampum belts. The beads themselves are called _keekq’_; a belt handed forth at a treaty is _nochkunduwoagan_, literally, “an answering;” and after the treaty has been ratified the belt is called _aptunwoagan_, the covenant.

The tribal and totemic divisions are barely remembered, and the ancient prohibitions about endogamous marriage have fallen completely into desuetude. Mr. Anthony’s term for totem, or sub-tribe, is _w’aloch'ke_; as, _tulpenaloch'ke_, the Turtle totem. The name _Minsi_, he believes, is an abbreviation of _minachsinink_, the place of broken stones, referring to the mountains north of the Lehigh river, where his ancestors had their homes. The _Wonalacht'go_ of the early historians he identifies with the Nanticokes, and translates it “people following the waves;” that is, living near the ocean.

The chieftaincy of the tribe is still, in theory, hereditary in one family, and in the female line. The ordinary term _sakima_, sachem, is not in use among the Minsi, who call their chief _kikay_, or _kitschikikay_ (_kitschi_, great; _kikay_, old, or old man: the _elderman_, or alderman, of the Saxons).

Some peculiarities of the language deserve to be noted.

The German alphabet, employed by the Moravians to reduce it to writing, answered so well that the Moravian missionary, Rev. Mr. Hartmann, at present in charge of the New Fairfield Reservation, Ontario, who does not understand a word of Delaware, told me he had read the books printed in the native tongue to his congregation, and they understood him perfectly. But I soon detected two or three sounds which had escaped Zeisberger and his followers. There is a soft _th_ which the German ear could not catch, and a _kth_ which was equally difficult, both of frequent occurrence. There is also a slight breathing between the possessives _n’_, my, _k’_, thy, _w’_, his, and the names of the things possessed, which the missionaries sometimes disregarded, and sometimes wrote as a full vowel. But after a little practice I had rarely any difficulty in pronouncing the words in an intelligible manner. This I was obliged to do with the whole dictionary, for although Mr. Anthony speaks his language with perfect ease, he does not read or write it, and has no acquaintance with German or its alphabet.

On one point I cross-examined him carefully. It is well-known to linguists that in Algonkin grammar the verb undergoes a vowel change of a peculiar character, which usually throws the sentence into an indefinite or dubitative form. This is a very marked trait, recognized early by the missionary Eliot and others, and the omission of all reference to it by Zeisberger in his Grammar of the Lenâpé has been commented on as a serious oversight. Well, after all my questions, and after explaining the point fully to Mr. Anthony, he insisted that no such change takes place in Delaware verbs. I read to him the forms in Zeisberger’s Grammar which are supposed to indicate it, but he explained them all by other reasons, mere irregularities or erroneous expressions.

The intricacies of the Lenâpé verb have never yet been solved, and it is now doubtful if they ever will be, for the language is fast changing and disappearing, at least in both reservations in Canada, and also among the representatives of the tribe at their settlement in Kansas. It is not now, and Mr. Anthony assured me that, so far as he knew, it never was, a custom for parents to correct their children in speaking the language. Probably this is true of most uncivilized tribes. The children of such learn their exceedingly complicated languages with a facility and accuracy which is surprising to the cultivated mind. I can say from experience, that no child learns to speak pure English without incessant correction from parents and teachers.

The general result of my conversations with Mr. Anthony on the grammar of his language led me to estimate at a lower value the knowledge of it displayed in the works of Zeisberger, Ettwein, and Heckewelder. The first and last named no doubt spoke it fluently in some fashion; but they had not the power to analyze it, nor to detect its finer shades of meaning, nor to appreciate many refinements in its word-building, nor to catch many of its semi-notes.

To give an example:—

Heckewelder gave Duponceau a compound which has often been quoted as a striking instance of verbal synthesis. It is _kuligatschis_, and is analyzed by Duponceau thus: _k_, possessive pronoun, second person singular; _uli_, abbreviation of _wulit_, pretty; _gat_, last syllable of _wichgat_, foot or paw; _chis_, diminutive termination; in all, “thy pretty little paw.” Now, there is no such word in Lenâpé as _wichgat_. “His foot” is _w’uchsüt_, where the initial _w_ is the possessive, and does not belong in the word for foot. But in all likelihood this was not in the compound heard by Heckewelder. What he heard was _k’wulinachkgis_, from, _k_, possessive; _wulit_, pretty; _nachk_, hand, or paw of an animal; _gis_, diminutive termination. He lost the peculiar whistled _w_ and the nasalized _n_, sounds unknown to Germans. Duponceau’s statement that _gat_ is the last syllable of the word for foot is totally erroneous. I am convinced that much of the excessive synthesis, so called, in the Lenâpé arises from a lack of appreciation on the part of the whites of delicate phonetic elements. If I had heard many more of Mr. Anthony’s analyses of compounds, I believe I should have reached the conclusion that synthesis in Lenâpé means little beyond juxtaposition with euphonic elision.