Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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This iconoclastic and unæsthetical prairie-wolf represents a
barbarian's incapacity to see in the arrangement

{p. 200}

of the stars any such constellations, or, in fact, anything but an
unmeaning jumble of cinders.

And then we learn how the tribes of men separated:

"The old men" (the civilized race, the gods) "prepared two earthen
_tinages_, or water-jars, and having decorated one with bright
colors, filled it with trifles; while the other was left plain on the
outside, but filled within with flocks and herds and riches of all
kinds. These jars being covered, and presented to the Navajos and
Pueblos, the former chose the gaudy but paltry jar; while the Pueblos
received the plain and rich vessel--each nation showing, in its
choice, traits which characterize it to this day."

In the legends of the Lenni-Lenape,--the Delaware Indians,--mankind
was once buried in the earth with a wolf; and they owed their release
to the wolf, who scratched away the soil and dug out a means of
escape for the men and for himself. The Root-Diggers of California
were released in the same way by a coyote."[1]

"The Tonkaways, a wild people of Texas, still celebrate this early
entombment of the race in a most curious fashion. They have a grand
annual dance. One of them, naked as he was born, is _buried in the
earth_; the others, clothed in wolf-skins, walk over him, snuff
around him, howl in lupine style, and finally dig _him up with their
nails_."[2]

Compare this American custom with the religious ceremony of an
ancient Italian tribe:

"Three thousand years ago the Hirpani, or Wolves, an ancient Sabine
tribe of Italy, were wont to collect on Mount Soracte, and there go
through certain rites, in memory of an oracle which predicted their
extinction when they ceased to gain their living as wolves do, by
violence and plunder. Therefore they dressed in wolf-skins,

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 247.

2. Ibid.]

{p. 201}

_ran with barks and howls over burning coals_, and gnawed wolfishly
whatever they could seize."[1]

All the tribes of the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and
Natchez, who, according to tradition, were in remote times banded
into one common confederacy, unanimously located their earliest
ancestry near an artificial eminence in the valley of the Big Black
River, in the Natchez country, whence they pretended to have emerged.
This hill is an elevation of earth about half a mile square and
fifteen or twenty feet high. From its northeast corner a wall of
equal height extends for nearly half a mile to the high land. This
was the _Nunne Chaha_, properly _Nanih waiya_, sloping hill, famous
in Choctaw story, and which Captain Gregg found they had not yet
forgotten in their Western home.

"The legend was, that in its center was a cave, the house of the
Master of Breath. Here he made the first men from the _clay around
him, and, as at that time the waters covered the earth_, he raised
the wall to dry them on. When the soft mud had hardened into elastic
flesh and firm bone, he _banished the waters to their channels and
beds_, and gave the dry land to his creatures."[2]

Here, again, we have the beginnings of the present race of men in a
cave, surrounded by clay and water, which covered the earth, and we
have the water subsiding into its channels and beds, and the dry land
appearing, whereupon the men emerged from the cave.

A parallel to this Southern legend occurs among the Six Nations of
the North. They with one consent looked to a mountain near the falls
of the Oswego River, in the State of New York, as the locality where
their forefathers saw the light of day; and their name, Oneida,
signifies _the people of the stone_.

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 217.

2. Ibid., p. 242.]

{p. 202}

The cave of Pacarin-Tampu, already alluded to, the Lodgings of the
Dawn, or the Place of Birth of the Peruvians, was five leagues
distant from Cuzco, surrounded by a sacred grove, and inclosed with
temples of great antiquity.

"From its hallowed recesses the mythical civilizers, of Peru, tile
first of men, emerged, and in it, during the time of the flood, the
remnants of the race escaped the fury of the waves."[1]

We read in the legends of Oraibi, hereafter quoted more fully, that
the people climbed up a ladder from a lower world to this--that is,
they ascended from the cave in which they had taken refuge. This was
in an age of cold and darkness; there was yet no sun or moon.

The natives in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta, in Northern
California, have a strange legend which refers to the age of Caves
and Ice.

They say the Great Spirit made Mount Shasta first:

"_Boring a hole in the sky_," (the heavens cleft in twain of the
Edda?) "using a _large stone_ as an auger," (the fall of stones and
pebbles?) "he pushed down _snow and ice until they reached the
desired height;_ then he stepped from cloud to cloud down to _the
great icy pile_, and from it to the earth, where he planted the first
trees by merely putting his finger into the soil here and there. _The
sun began to melt the snow; the snow produced water; the water ran
down the sides of the mountains_, refreshed the trees, and made
rivers. The Creator gathered the leaves that fell from the trees,
blew upon them, and they became birds," etc.[2]

This is a representation of the end of the Glacial Age.

But the legends of these Indians of Mount Shasta go still further.
After narrating, as above, the fall of a

[1. Balboa, "Histoire du Pérou," p. 4.

2. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 90.]

{p. 203}

stone from heaven, and the formation of immense masses of ice, which
subsequently melted and formed rivers, and after the Creator had made
trees, birds,. and animals, especially the grizzly bear, then we have
a legend which reminds us of the cave-life which accompanied the
great catastrophe:

"Indeed, this animal" (the grizzly bear) "was then so large, strong,
and cunning, that the Creator somewhat feared him, and hollowed out
Mount Shasta as a wigwam for himself, where he might reside while on
earth in the most perfect security and comfort. So the smoke was soon
to be seen curling up from the mountain where the Great Spirit and
his family lived, and still live, though their hearth-fire is alive
no longer, now that the white-man is in the land."

Here the superior race seeks shelter in a cave on Mount Shasta, and
their camp-fire is associated with the smoke which once went forth
out of the volcano; while an inferior race, a Neanderthal race, dwell
in the plains at the foot of the mountain.

"This was thousands of snows ago, and there came after this a late
and severe spring-time, in which a memorable storm blew up from the
sea, shaking the huge lodge" (Mount Shasta) "to its base."

(Another recollection of the Ice Age.)

"The Great Spirit commanded his daughter, little more than an infant,
to go up and bid the wind to be still, cautioning her, at the same
time, in his fatherly way, not to put her head out into the blast,
but only to thrust out her little red arm and make a sign, before she
delivered her message."[1]

Here we seem to have a reminiscence of the cave-dwellers, looking out
at the terrible tempest from their places of shelter.

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 91.]

{p. 204}

The child of the Great Spirit exposes herself too much, is caught by
the wind and blown down the mountain-side, where she is found,
shivering on the snow, by a family of grizzly bears. These grizzly
bears evidently possessed some humane as well as human traits: "They
walked then on their hind-legs like men, and talked, and carried
clubs, using the fore-limbs as men use their arms." They represent in
their bear-skins the rude, fur-clad race that were developed during
the intense cold of the Glacial Age.

The child of the Great Spirit, the superior race, intermarries with
one of the grizzly bears, and _from this union came the race of men_,
to wit, the Indians.

"But the Great Spirit punished the grizzly bears by depriving them of
the power of speech, and of standing erect--in short, by making true
bears of them. But no Indian will, to this day, kill a grizzly bear,
recognizing as he does the tie of blood."

Again, we are told:

"The inhabitants of central Europe and the Teutonic races who came
late to England place their mythical heroes under ground in caves, in
vaults beneath enchanted castles, or _in mounds_ which rise up and
open, and show their buried inhabitants alive and busy about the
avocations of earthly men. . . . In Morayshire the buried race are
_supposed to be under the sandhills_, as they are in some parts of
Brittany."[1]

Associated with these legends we find many that refer to the time of
great cold, and snow, and ice. I give one or two specimens:

In the story of the Iroquois, (see p. 173, _ante_,) we are told that
the White One, [the Light One, the Sun,] after he had destroyed the
monster who covered the earth with

[1. "Frost and Fire," vol. ii, p. 190.]

{p. 205}

blood and stones, then destroyed the gigantic frog. The frog, a
cold-blooded, moist reptile, was always the emblem of water and cold;
it represented the great ice-fields that squatted, frog-like, on the
face of the earth. It had "swallowed all the waters," says the
Iroquois legend; that is, "the waters were congealed in it; and when
it was killed great and destructive torrents broke forth and
devastated the land, and Manibozho, the White One, the beneficent
Sun, guided these waters into smooth streams and lakes." The Aztecs
adored the goddess of water under the figure of a great green frog
carved from a single emerald.[1]

In the Omaha we have the fable of "How the Rabbit killed the Winter,"
told in the Indian manner. The Rabbit was probably a reminiscence of
the Great Hare, Manabozho; and he, probably, as we shall see, a
recollection of a great race, whose totem was the Hare.

I condense the Indian story:

"The Rabbit in the past time moving came where the Winter was. The
Winter said: 'You have not been here lately; sit down.' The Rabbit
said he came because his grandmother had altogether _beaten the life
out of him_" (the fallen _débris_?). "The Winter went hunting. It was
_very cold: there was a snow-storm_. The Rabbit seared up a deer.
'Shoot him,' said the Rabbit. 'No; I do not hunt such things as
that,' said the Winter. They came upon some men. That was the
Winter's game. He killed the men and _boiled them for supper_,"
(cave-cannibalism). "The Rabbit refused to eat the human flesh. The
Winter went hunting again. The Rabbit found out from the Winter's
wife that the thing the Winter dreaded most of all the world was the
head of a Rocky Mountain sheep. The Rabbit procured one. _It was
dark_. He threw it suddenly at the Winter, saying, 'Uncle, that
_round thing_ by you is the head of a Rocky Mountain

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 185.]

{p. 206}

sheep.' The Winter became altogether dead. Only the woman remained.
_Therefore from that time it has not been very cold_."

Of course, any attempt to interpret such a crude myth must be
guess-work. It shows, however, that the Indians believed that there
was a time when the winter was much more severe than it is now; it
was very cold and dark. Associated with it is the destruction of men
and cannibalism. At last the Rabbit brings a round object, (the
Sun?), the head of a Rocky Mountain sheep, and the Winter looks on
it, and perishes.

Even tropical Peru has its legend of the Age of Ice.

Garcilaso de la Vega, a descendant of the Incas, has preserved an
ancient indigenous poem of his nation, which seems to allude to a
great event, the breaking to fragments of some large object,
associated with ice and snow. Dr. Brinton translates it from the
Quichua, as follows

"Beauteous princess,
Lo, thy brother
_Breaks thy vessel
Now in fragments_.
From the blow come
Thunder, lightning,
Strokes of lightning
And thou, princess,
Tak'st the water,
With it raineth,
And _the hail_, or
_Snow dispenseth_.
Viracocha,
World-constructor,
World-enlivener,
To this office
Thee appointed,
Thee created."[1]

[1. "Myths of the New World," p. 167.]

{p. 207}

But it may be asked, How in such a period of terror and calamity--as
we must conceive the comet to have caused-would men think of finding
refuge in caves?

The answer is plain: either they or their ancestors had lived in
caves.

Caves were the first shelters of uncivilized men. It was not
necessary to fly to the caves through the rain of falling _débris_;
many were doubtless already in them when the great world-storm broke,
and others naturally sought their usual dwelling-places.

"The cavern," says Brinton, "dimly lingered in the memories of
nations."

Man is born of the earth; he is made of the clay like Adam, created--

"Of good red clay,
Haply from Mount Aornus, beyond sweep
Of the black eagle's wing."

The cave-temples of India-the oldest temples, probably, on earth--are
a reminiscence of this cave-life.

We shall see hereafter that Lot and his daughters "dwelt in a cave";
and we shall find Job bidden away in the "narrow-mouthed bottomless"
pit or cave.

[1. "Myths of the New World," p. 244.]

{p. 208}

CHAPTER VIII.

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF DARKNESS.

ALL the cosmogonies begin with an Age of Darkness; a damp, cold,
rainy, dismal time.

Hesiod tells us, speaking of the beginning of things

"In truth, then, _foremost sprung Chaos_. . . . But from Chaos were
born _Erebus and black Night;_ and from Night again sprang forth
Æther and Day, whom she bare after having conceived by _union with
Erebus_."

Aristophanes, in his "Aves," says:[1]

"_Chaos and Night and black Erebus_ and wide Tartarus _first
existed_."[2]

Orpheus says:

"_From the beginning the gloomy night enveloped and obscured all
things_ that were under the ether" (the clouds). "The earth was
invisible on account of the darkness, but the light _broke through
the ether_" (the clouds), "and illuminated the earth."

By this power were produced the sun, moon, and stars.[3]

It is from Sanchoniathon that we derive most of the little we know of
that ancient and mysterious people, the Phœnicians. He lived
before the Trojan war; and of his writings but fragments
survive--quotations in the writings of others.

[1. "The Theogony."

2. Faber's "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," vol. i, p. 255.

3. Cory's "Fragments," p. 298.]

{p. 209}

He tells us that--

"The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze
of _thick_ air, and a _chaos turbid and black as Erebus_.

"Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus," (_mud,_)
"but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this
sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the
universe. . . . And, when the air began to send forth light, winds
were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and _torrents of
the heavenly waters_."

Was this "thick air" the air thick with comet-dust, which afterward
became the mud? Is this the meaning of the "_turbid_ chaos"?

We turn to the Babylonian legends. Berosus wrote from records
preserved in the temple of Belus at Babylon. He says:

"There was a time in which there _existed nothing but darkness_ and
an _abyss of waters_, wherein resided _most hideous beings_, which
were produced of a twofold principle."

Were these "hideous beings" the comets?

From the "Laws of Menu," of the Hindoos, we learn that the universe
existed at first in darkness.

We copy the following text from the Vedas:

"The Supreme Being alone existed; _afterward there was universal
darkness;_ next the watery ocean was produced by the diffusion of
virtue."

We turn to the legends of the Chinese, and we find the same story:

Their annals begin with "Pwan-ku, or the Reign of Chaos."[1]

[1. "The Ancient Dynasties of Berosus and China," Rev. T. P.
Crawford, D. D., p. 4.]

{p. 210}

And we are told by the Chinese historians that--

"P'an-ku came forth in the midst of the _great chaotic void_, and we
know not his origin; that he knew the rationale of heaven and earth,
and _comprehended the changes of the Darkness and the Light_."[1]

He "existed _before the shining of the Light_."[2] He was "the Prince
of Chaos."

"After the chaos _cleared away_, heaven appeared first in order, then
earth, then after they existed, _and the atmosphere had changed its
character, man came forth_."[3]

That is to say, P'an-ku lived through the Age of Darkness, during a
chaotic period, and while the atmosphere was pestilential with the
gases of the comet. Where did he live? The Chinese annals tell us:

"In the age after the chaos, when heaven and earth had _just
separated_."

That is, when the great mass of cloud had just lifted from the earth:

"Records had not yet been established or inscriptions invented. At
first even the rulers _dwelt in caves_ and desert places, eating raw
flesh and drinking blood. At this fortunate juncture Pan-ku-sze _came
forth_, and from that time heaven and earth began to be heaven and
earth, men and things to be men and things, and so the chaotic state
passed away."[1]

This is the rejuvenation of the world told of in so many legends.

And these annals tell us further of the "Ten Stems," being the stages
of the earth's primeval history.

"At _Wu_--the Sixth Stem--the Darkness and the Light unite _with
injurious effects_--all things become _solid_," (frozen?), "_and the
Darkness destroys the growth of all things_.

[1. Compendium of Wong-shi-Shing 1526-1590," Crawford, p. 3.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 2.

4. Ibid., p. 3.]

{p. 211}

"At _Kung_--the Seventh Stem--_the Darkness nips all things_."

But the Darkness is passing away:

"At _Jin_--the Ninth Stem--the Light _begins to nourish all things in
the recesses below_.

"Lastly, at _Tsze_, all things _begin to germinate_."[1]

The same story is told in the "Twelve Branches."

"1. _K'wun-tun_ stands for the period of _chaos, the cold midnight
darkness_. It is said that with it all things began to germinate in
the hidden recesses of the under-world."

In the 2d--_Ch'i-fun-yoh_--"light and heat become active, and all
things begin to rise in obedience to its nature." In the
3d--_Sheh-ti-kuh_--the stars and sun probably appear, as from this
point the calendar begins. In the 5th--_Chi-shii_--all things in a
torpid state begin to come forth. In the 8th--_Hëen-hia_--all things
harmonize, and the present order of things is established; that is to
say, the effects of the catastrophe have largely passed away.[2]

The kings who governed before the Drift were called the Rulers of
heaven and earth; those who came after were the Rulers of man.

"_Cheu Ching-huen_ says: 'The Rulers of man succeeded to the Rulers
of heaven and the Rulers of earth in the government; that then _the
atmosphere gradually cleared away_, and all things sprang up
together; that the order of time was gradually settled, and the
usages of society gradually became correct and respectful."[3]

And then we read that "the day and night had not yet been divided,"
but, after a time, "day and night were distinguished from each
other."[4]

Here we have the history of some event which changed

[1. "Compendium of Wong-shi-Shing 1526-1590," Crawford, pp. 4, 5.

2. Ibid., p. 8.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., p. 7.]

{p. 212}

the dynasties of the world: the heavenly kingdom was succeeded by a
merely human one; there were chaos, cold, and darkness, and death to
vegetation; then the light increases, and vegetation begins once more
to germinate; the atmosphere is thick; the heavens rest on the earth;
day and night can not be distinguished from one another, and mankind
dwell in caves, and live on raw meat and blood.

Surely all this accords wonderfully with our theory.

And here we have the same story in another form:

"The philosopher of Oraibi tells us that when the people ascended by
means of the magical tree, which constituted the ladder from the
lower world to this, they found the firmament, _the ceiling of this
world, low down upon the earth_--the floor of this world."

That is to say, when the people climbed up, from the cave in which
they were bidden, to the surface of the earth, the dense clouds
rested on the face of the earth.

"Machito, one of their gods, raised the firmament on his shoulders to
where it is now seen. _Still the world was dark, as there was no sun,
no moon, and no stars_. So the people murmured because of the
darkness and the cold. Machito said, 'Bring me seven maidens'; and
they brought him seven maidens; and he said, 'Bring me seven baskets
of cotton-bolls'; and they brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls;
and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the
cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the
breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of
an eye it was transformed into a beautiful and full-orbed moon; and
the same breeze caught the remnants of flocculent cotton, which the
maidens had scattered during their work, and carried them aloft, and
they were transformed into bright stars. But _still it was cold;_ and
the people murmured again, and Machito said, 'Bring me seven
buffalo-robes'; and they brought him seven buffalo-robes, and from
the densely matted hair of the robes he wove another wonderful
fabric, which the storm carried

{p. 213}

away into the sky, and it was transformed into the full-orbed sun.
Then Machito appointed times and seasons, and ways for the heavenly
bodies; and the gods of the firmament have obeyed the injunctions of
Machito from the day of their creation to the present." *

Among the Thlinkeets of British Columbia there is a legend that the
Great Crow or Raven, Yehl, was the creator of most things:

"_Very dark, damp, and chaotic_ was the world in the beginning;
nothing with breath or body moved there except Yehl; in the likeness
of _a raven he brooded over the mist; his black winds beat down the
vast confusion; the waters went back before him and the dry land
appeared_. The Thlinkeets were placed on the earth--though how or
when does not exactly appear--while the world was _still in darkness,
and without sun, moon, or stars_."[2]

The legend proceeds at considerable length to tell the doings of
Yehl. His uncle tried to slay him, and, when he failed, "he
imprecated with a potent curse a deluge upon all the earth. . . . The
flood came, the waters rose and rose; but Yehl clothed himself in his
bird-skin, and soared up to the heavens, where he stuck his beak into
a cloud, and remained until the waters were assuaged."[3]

This tradition reminds us of the legend of the Thessalian Cerambos,
"who escaped the flood by rising into the air on wings, given him by
the nymphs."

I turn now to the traditions of the Miztecs, who dwelt on the
outskirts of the Mexican Empire; this legend was taken by Fray
Gregoria Garcia[4] from a book found in a convent in Cuilapa, a
little Indian town, about a league and a half south of Oajaca; the
book had been compiled by the vicar of the convent, "just as they

[1. "Popular Science Monthly," October, 1879, p. 800.

2. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 98.

3. Ibid., p. 99.

4. "Origen de los Ind.," pp. 327-329.]

{p. 214}

themselves were accustomed to depict and to interpret it in their
primitive scrolls":

"In the year and in _the day of obscurity and darkness_," (the days
of the dense clouds?), "yea, even before the days or the years were,"
(before the visible revolution of the sun marked the days, and the
universal darkness and cold prevented the changes of the seasons?),
"when the world was in _great darkness and chaos_, when the earth was
covered with water, and there was nothing but _mud and slime on all
the face of the earth_--behold a god became visible, and his name was
the Deer, and his surname was the Lion-snake. There appeared also a
very beautiful goddess called the Deer, and surnamed the Tiger-snake.
These two gods were the origin and beginning of all the gods."

This lion-snake was probably one of the comets; the tiger-snake was
doubtless a second comet, called after the tiger, on account of its
variegated, mottled appearance. It will be observed they appeared
_before_ the light had returned,

These gods built a temple on a high place, and laid out a garden, and
waited patiently, offering sacrifices to the higher gods, wounding
themselves with _flint_ knives, and "praying that it might seem good
to them to shape the firmament, and _lighten the darkness_ of the
world, and to establish the foundation of the earth; or, rather, to
gather the waters together so that the earth might appear--as they
had no place to rest in save only one little garden."

Here we have the snakes and the people confounded together. The earth
was afterward made fit for the use of mankind, and at a later date
there came--

"A great deluge, wherein perished many of the sons and daughters that
had been born to the gods; and it is said that, when the deluge was
passed, the human race

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