In both continents we find tree-worship. In Mexico and Central America cypresses and palms were planted near the temples, generally in groups of threes; they were tended with great care, and received offerings of incense and gifts. The same custom prevailed among the Romans—the cypress was dedicated to Pluto, and the palm to Victory.
Not only infant baptism by water was found both in the old Babylonian religion and among the Mexicans, but an offering of cakes, which is recorded by the prophet Jeremiah as part of the worship of the Babylonian goddess-mother, “the Queen of Heaven,” was also found in the ritual of the Aztecs. (“Builders of Babel,” p. 78.) In Babylonia, China, and Mexico the caste at the bottom of the social scale lived upon floating islands of reeds or rafts, covered with earth, on the lakes and rivers.
In Peru and Babylonia marriages were made but once a year, at a public festival.
Among the Romans, the Chinese, the Abyssinians, and the Indians of Canada the singular custom prevails of lifting the bride over the door-step of her husband’s home. (Sir John Lubbock, “Smith. Rep.,” 1869, p. 352.)
“The bride-cake which so invariably accompanies a wedding among ourselves, and which must always be cut by the bride, may be traced back to the old Roman form of marriage by ‘conferreatio,’ or eating together.
So, also, among the Iroquois the bride and bridegroom used to partake together of a cake of sagamite, which the bride always offered to her husband.” (Ibid.)
Among many American tribes, notably in Brazil, the husband captured the wife by main force, as the men of Benjamin carried off the daughters of Shiloh at the feast, and as the Romans captured the Sabine women.
“Within a few generations the same old habit was kept up in Wales, where the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off the bride; and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride’s people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt, except now and then by accident—as happened when one Lord Hoath lost an eye, which mischance put an end to this curious relic of antiquity.” (Tylor’s “Anthropology,” p. 409.)
Marriage in Mexico was performed by the priest. He exhorted them to maintain peace and harmony, and tied the end of the man’s mantle to the dress of the woman; he perfumed them, and placed on each a shawl on which was painted a skeleton, “as a symbol that only death could now separate them from one another.” (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 379.) The priesthood was thoroughly organized in Mexico and Peru. They were prophets as well as priests. “They brought the newly-born infant into the religious society; they directed their training and education; they determined the entrance of the young men into the service of the state; they consecrated marriage by their blessing; they comforted the sick and assisted the dying.” (Ibid., p. 374.) There were five thousand priests in the temples of Mexico. They confessed and absolved the sinners, arranged the festivals, and managed the choirs in the churches. They lived in conventual discipline, but were allowed to marry; they practised flagellation and fasting, and prayed at regular hours. There were great preachers and exhorters among them. There were also convents into which females were admitted. The novice had her hair cut off and took vows of celibacy; they lived holy and pious lives. (Ibid., pp. 375, 376.) The king was the high-priest of the religious orders. A new king ascended the temple naked, except his girdle; he was sprinkled four times with water which had been blessed; he was then clothed in a mantle, and on his knees took an oath to maintain the ancient religion.
The priests then instructed him in his royal duties. (Ibid., p. 378.) Besides the regular priesthood there were monks who were confined in cloisters. (Ibid., p. 390.) Cortes says the Mexican priests were very strict in the practice of honesty and chastity, and any deviation was punished with death. They wore long white robes and burned incense.
(Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 379.) The first fruits of the earth were devoted to the support of the priesthood. (Ibid., p. 383.) The priests of the Isthmus were sworn to perpetual chastity.
The American doctors practised phlebotomy. They bled the sick man because they believed the evil spirit which afflicted him would come away with the blood. In Europe phlebotomy only continued to a late period, but the original superstition out of which it arose, in this case as in many others, was forgotten.
There is opportunity here for the philosopher to meditate upon the perversity of human nature and the persistence of hereditary error. The superstition of one age becomes the science of another; men were first bled to withdraw the evil spirit, then to cure the disease; and a practice whose origin is lost in the night of ages is continued into the midst of civilization, and only overthrown after it has sent millions of human beings to untimely graves. Dr. Sangrado could have found the explanation of his profession only among the red men of America.
Folk-lore.—Says Max Mueller: “Not only do we find the same words and the same terminations in Sanscrit and Gothic; not only do we find the same name for Zeus in Sanscrit, Latin, and German; not only is the abstract Dame for God the same in India, Greece, and Italy; but these very stories, these ‘Maehrchen’ which nurses still tell, with almost the same words, in the Thuringian forest and in the Norwegian villages, and to which crowds of children listen under the Pippal-trees of India—these stories, too, belonged to the common heirloom of the Indo-European race, and their origin carries us back to the same distant past, when no Greek had set foot in Europe, no Hindoo had bathed in the sacred waters of the Ganges.”
And we find that an identity of origin can be established between the folk-lore or fairy tales of America and those of the Old World, precisely such as exists between the, legends of Norway and India.
Mr. Tylor tells us the story of the two brothers in Central America who, starting on their dangerous journey to the land of Xibalba, where their father had perished, plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother’s house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead. Exactly the same conception occurs in Grimm’s “Maehrchen,” when the two gold-children wish to see the world and to leave their father; and when their father is sad, and asks them how he shall bear news of them, they tell him, “We leave you the two golden lilies; from these you can see how we fare. If they are fresh, we are well; if they fade, we are ill; if they fall, we are dead.” Grimm traces the same idea in Hindoo stories. “Now this,” says Max Mueller, “is strange enough, and its occurrence in India, Germany, and Central America is stranger still.”
Compare the following stories, which we print in parallel columns, one from the Ojibbeway Indians, the other from Ireland:
------------------------------------+
THE
OJIBBEWAY
STORY
.
THE
IRISH
STORY
.
The birds met together one day
The birds all met together one
to try which could fly the
day, and settled among themselves
highest. Some flew up very
that whichever of them could fly
swift, but soon got tired, and
highest was to be the king of
were passed by others of
all. Well, just as they were on
stronger wing. But the eagle
the hinges of being off, what
went up beyond them all, and
does the little rogue of a wren
was ready to claim the victory,
do but hop up and perch himself
when the gray linnet, a very
unbeknown on the eagle’s tail. So
small bird, flew from the
they flew and flew ever so high,
eagle’s back, where it had
till the eagle was miles above