Among the early Greeks Pan was the ancient god; his wife was Maia. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg calls attention to the fact that Pan was adored in all parts of Mexico and Central America; and at Panuco, or Panca, literally Panopolis, the Spaniards found, upon their entrance into Mexico, superb temples and images of Pan. (Brasseur’s Introduction in Landa’s “Relacion.”) The names of both Pan and Maya enter extensively into the Maya vocabulary, Maia being the same as Maya, the principal name of the peninsula; and pan, added to Maya, makes the name of the ancient capital Mayapan. In the Nahua language pan, or pani, signifies “equality to that which is above,” and Pentecatl was the progenitor of all beings. (“North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 467.) The ancient Mexicans believed that the sun-god would destroy the world in the last night of the fifty-second year, and that he would never come back. They offered sacrifices to him at that time to propitiate him; they extinguished all the fires in the kingdom; they broke all their household furniture; they bung black masks before their faces; they prayed and fasted; and on the evening of the last night they formed a great procession to a neighboring mountain. A human being was sacrificed exactly at midnight; a block of wood was laid at once on the body, and fire was then produced by rapidly revolving another piece of wood upon it; a spark was carried to a funeral pile, whose rising flame proclaimed to the anxious people the promise of the god not to destroy the world for another fifty-two years. Precisely the same custom obtained among the nations of Asia Minor and other parts of the continent of Asia, wherever sun-worship prevailed, at the periodical reproduction of the sacred fire, but not with the same bloody rites as in Mexico.
(Valentini, “Maya Archaeology,” p. 21.) To this day the Brahman of India “churns” his sacred fire out of a board by boring into it with a stick; the Romans renewed their sacred fire in the same way; and in Sweden even now a “need-fire is kindled in this manner when cholera or other pestilence is about.” (Tylor’s “Anthropology,” p. 262.)
A belief in ghosts is found on both continents. The American Indians think that the spirits of the dead retain the form and features which they wore while living; that there is a hell and a heaven; that hell is below the earth, and heaven above the clouds; that the souls of the wicked sometimes wander the face of the earth, appearing occasionally to mortals. The story of Tantalus is found among the Chippewayans, who believed that bad souls stand up to their chins in water in sight of the spirit-land, which they can never enter. The dead passed to heaven across a stream of water by means of a narrow and slippery bridge, from which many were lost. The Zunis set apart a day in each year which they spent among the graves of their dead, communing with their spirits, and bringing them presents—a kind of All-souls-day. (Dorman, “Prim.
Superst.,” p. 35.) The Stygian flood, and Scylla and Charybdis, are found among the legends of the Caribs. (Ibid., p. 37.) Even the boat of Charon reappears in the traditions of the Chippewayans.
The Oriental belief in the transmigration of souls is found in every American tribe. The souls of men passed into animals or other men.
(Schoolcraft, vol. i., p. 33.) The souls of the wicked passed into toads and wild beasts. (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 50.) Among both the Germans and the American Indians lycanthropy, or the metamorphosis of men into wolves, was believed in. In British Columbia the men-wolves have often been seen seated around a fire, with their wolf-hides hung upon sticks to dry! The Irish legend of hunters pursuing an animal which suddenly disappears, whereupon a human being appears in its place is found among all the American tribes.
That timid and harmless animal, the hare, was, singularly enough, an object of superstitious reverence and fear in Europe, Asia, and America.
The ancient Irish killed all the hares they found on May-day among their cattle, believing them to be witches. Caesar gives an account of the horror in which this animal was held by the Britons. The Calmucks regarded the rabbit with fear and reverence. Divine honors were paid to the hare in Mexico. Wabasso was changed into a white rabbit, and canonized in that form.
The white bull, Apis, of the Egyptians, reappears in the Sacred white buffalo of the Dakotas, which was supposed to possess supernatural power, and after death became a god. The white doe of European legend had its representative in the white deer of the Housatonic Valley, whose death brought misery to the tribe. The transmission of spirits by the laying on of hands, and the exorcism of demons, were part of the religion of the American tribes.
The witches of Scandinavia, who produced tempests by their incantations, are duplicated in America. A Cree sorcerer sold three days of fair weather for one pound of tobacco! The Indian sorcerers around Freshwater Bay kept the winds in leather bags, and disposed of them as they pleased.
Among the American Indians it is believed that those who are insane or epileptic are “possessed of devils.” (Tylor, “Prim. Cult.,” vol. ii., pp. 123-126.) Sickness is caused by evil spirits entering into the sick person. (Eastman’s “Sioux.”) The spirits of animals are much feared, and their departure out of the body of the invalid is a cause of thanksgiving. Thus an Omaha, after an eructation, says, “Thank you, animal.” (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 55.) The confession of their sins was with a view to satisfy the evil spirit and induce him to leave them.
(Ibid., p. 57.)
In both continents burnt-offerings were sacrificed to the gods. In both continents the priests divined the future from the condition of the internal organs of the man or animal sacrificed. (Ibid., pp. 214, 226.) In both continents the future was revealed by the flight of birds and by dreams. In Peru and Mexico there were colleges of augurs, as in Rome, who practised divination by watching the movements and songs of birds.
(Ibid., p. 261.)
Animals were worshipped in Central America and on the banks of the Nile.
(Ibid., p. 259.)
The Ojibbeways believed that the barking of a fox was ominous of ill.
(Ibid., p. 225). The peasantry of Western Europe have the same belief as to the howling of a dog.
The belief in satyrs, and other creatures half man and half animal, survived in America. The Kickapoos are Darwinians. “They think their ancestors had tails, and when they lost them the impudent fox sent every morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at the joke.” (Ibid., p. 232.) Among the natives of Brazil the father cut a stick at the wedding of his daughter; “this was done to cut off the tails of any future grandchildren.” (Tylor, vol. i., p. 384.) Jove, with the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows.
“He rode upon a tornado, and scattered the lightnings.” (Dorman, “Prim.
Superst.,” p. 98.)
Dionysus, or Bacchus, is represented by the Mexican god Texcatzoncatl, the god of wine. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 418.) Atlas reappears in Chibchacum, the deity of the Chibchas; he bears the world on his shoulders, and when be shifts the burden from one shoulder to another severe earthquakes are produced. (Bollaert, pp. 12, 13.) Deucalion repeopling the world is repeated in Xololt, who, after the destruction of the world, descended to Mictlan, the realm of the dead, and brought thence a bone of the perished race. This, sprinkled with blood, grew into a youth, the father of the present race. The Quiche hero-gods, Hunaphu and Xblanque, died; their bodies were burnt, their bones ground to powder and thrown into the waters, whereupon they changed into handsome youths, with the same features as before. (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 193.)
Witches and warlocks, mermaids and mermen, are part of the mythology of the American tribes, as they were of the European races. (Ibid., p. 79.) The mermaid of the Ottawas was “woman to the waist and fair;” thence fish-like. (Ibid., p. 278.)