From Copan To The Region Of Mystery

( Originally Published 1905 )

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,

Who believe that in all ages

Every human heart is human,

That in even savage bosoms, there are longings, yearnings, strivings

For the good they comprehend not,

Listen to this simple story.

—Hiawatha.

COPAN was partially inhabited when Hernandez de Chaves conquered Honduras. When in 1700, Diego Fuentes visited the forest-shrouded city, the great circus or open-air theatre still remained intact, and Copan " was a deserted city, which filled me with astonishment."

Honduras, Nicaragua, Yucatan and Guatemala have all the marks of a hoary antiquity, bristling with unsolved problems that are baffling antiquarian research and archaeological wisdom. The tidal remains of an ancient civilization strew the land; we gaze upon them, examine them, shake our heads and look wise.

In my wanderings in out-of-the-way places, in the bypaths and byways outside the line of travel, and during my many sojourns with half-savage tribes, I have come face to face with habits, customs, and practices whose universality chronicles the unity of the human race, and the perpetuity of which among all pagan peoples—continuing in some form even among Christians—is, to say the least, curious if not startling. Among the great problems in the mystery of past human history the monoliths and mounds which are found on our habitable earth still tax the ingenuity of antiquarians. Beginning with the mysterious pyramids of Egypt and Cholula, Mexico, or perhaps Nagkon Wat of Farther India, these strange monuments, some of gigantic proportions, elaborately wrought—others rude, with hardly any sculpture—are scattered everywhere. To us the best known are the cromlechs like those of Stonehenge, England. But these mystic remains are found in Northern Africa, Madagascar, and all over Asia, from Mount Sinai and the Caucasus to India. The traveller passes them in Siberia, in Japan, in Western France, in Denmark, Sweden, and in Northern Germany as far as the Oder River. They are standing often alone and isolated in South and Central America, and where stone was not to be found they were built of baked and puddled earth, as in the Scioto and Mississippi valleys. And now those who have visited the Easter Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, tell us that some • of the most wonderful and even terrifying monuments, rudely sculptured, are found here and there in these mysterious islands. In many localities where these weird and solitary memorials of the remote past are found, there are no quarries or huge stones, yet many of the blocks in the foundations of these structures weigh from forty to fifty tons. Scientists and archaeologists have puzzled their heads over the import of these monuments, but to me the greatest problem is how a primitive people, without a knowledge of engineering or modern machinery, and in many instances without draught animals could have moved and swung into position these immense rocks.

Again, how account for the origin and universality of serpent worship ? Everywhere, everywhere before the appearance of our divine Lord upon the earth the serpent was adored. All over Asia, Africa, and America, temples were built in his honour, and even the enlightened races of Europe, such as the Roman and the Grecian, were tainted with this vile idolatry.

The serpent is the central figure in African Vaudaux worship, and among some of the negroes of Hayti and other West India Islands even to-day he is housed and venerated. If my memory is true Father Lalemant in his letter, published in the " Jesuit Relations," says that one of the Huron Indians of the priest's escort accidentally stepped upon a snake, then filled his pipe, and returning, blew tobacco smoke upon it as a peace offering. Some years ago there. was a popular song called, "Never Take the Horseshoe from the Door," but neither the writer of the song nor any one of the thousands who sang and whistled it probably knew that the superstition of the horseshoe was a survival of the times when the worship of the snake was forbidden in Rome by an imperial edict.

There is no continuous problem in the melancholy annals of our race so hard to solve as the problem of serpent worship; there is no chapter in all our history so filled with mystery and pathos as the chapter dealing with the serpent. From the hour that God accomplished His will in making man to His image and likeness, the serpent enters into the life of the newly-created being, stays with him and becomes perpetuated in his offspring. From that fateful hour, among all nations unillumined by the " orient light from the Son of Justice," among all civilized and uncivilized pagan races, the serpent has survived and come down to us coiled around the pillars of the Temple of Time demanding and receiving the adoration of immortal man, exacting sacrifices from soul and body, and carrying terror and awe to the hearts of the bravest and most intelligent of God's creatures.

But let us pass on. My own church, the Church of England, that of the Jews, Greeks, Russians and German Lutherans, enforce or recommend fasting as a very beneficial and salutary spiritual mortification. It was so held by the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the ancient Jews, and antedates the deluge. In times past it was universal, especially among the Semitic and Hamitic races. The Ninevites, to avert the destruction of their city, imposed a fast even upon the domestic animals, and the royal prophet David, pleading for mercy reminds God that "I humbled my soul with fasting."

Now, how did this propitiatory practice find its way into the North and South American tribes ? This is not the place to cite authorities, but all reputable historians and travellers who have studied the customs of the aboriginal nations, tell us that the practice of fasting, particularly when calamity threatened the people, was universal. I know for a fact that among the Arrawaks, the Macoushi and Carib Indians of British Guiana no youth is promoted to warrior rank, or warrior to chieftainship, till he has purified himself by a vigorous fast. Everywhere in the Old and New Testaments, among the prophets, the apostles, the Pharisees and Saducees, the thread of the fast runs as plainly as a silver warp through black velvet. Is this practice of propitiation a natural emanation of ourselves, or is it an inheritance from the dawn of our race? Now, let us come to another extraordinary fact. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers, eighteenth verse, it is ordered that the Nazarites, of whom were Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist, "when they shall separate themselves unto the Lord . . . . shall shave their heads at the door of the tabernacle." This was done by the command of God Himself. St. Paul after his conversion to Christianity, "shaved his head in Cenchrea, for he had a vow." To-day, and from the establishment of the monastic orders, even among the Cenobites and Ancorites in the second and third centuries, the renunciation of the world and incorporation into the spiritual order was and is begun by shaving the head. The novice, when graduated into any of our religious orders for women, surrenders her hair, and the tonsure of the priests in Latin America, Quebec and Latin Europe is but a survival of this very ancient and Biblical practice. On the side of the woman, parting with her hair is indeed an act of self-sacrifice, for " if a woman has long hair, it is a glory unto her," writes St. Paul to the Corinthians.

The cutting of the hair must, therefore, have a deeper meaning than that implied in an act of self-denial. Now, how did this practice find its way into the forests of South and Central America ? All early historians, Landas, Ximenes, Las Casas, Brasseur de Bourbourg, who passed thirteen years with the people and translated their sacred book, the "Popul-Vuh," mention, without attempting to explain the custom, the cutting of the hair as an act of sacrifice and preparation for certain religious ceremonies or introduction to a particular order. In Nicaragua the Nacon, or war chief, elected every three years, shaved his head on taking office, and in Yucatan, the Tapaligui, holder of the most honourable office of the state, not only shaved his head, but was obliged to live a life of continence, and abstain from meat and wine. I reluctantly abstain from giving my views on this subject, for I am dealing with facts only, leaving reasons and motives to be explained by others. Among the unconverted tribes of this strange land there is a superstitious dread of some mysterious being which, like the Leprehauns of Ireland, the Jinns of Asia, the goblins, gnomes and sprites of England and western Europe and the jumbies of Africa and the West Indies, takes a demoniacal delight in haunting and waylaying travellers.

Here he is called the Yama and assumes various forms, though he prefers to take the shape of a small old man whose body is covered with hair. The folklore of the Indian is saturated with his extraordinary performances. Now how did this mythically strange man originate, and by what singular law of perpetuation did he survive the migration of our race and find his way into foreign lands, even into America ? I pass over other practices and ceremonies such as circumcision, perpetual fire, propitiation of demons, vestal virginity, suttee or wife sacrifice and the laceration of the flesh for penitential reasons, common to these Indians as to the ancient Jews, East Indians, Mohammedans and other Asiatics. The universality of these practices, to my mind, makes for the unity and origin of man in some cradle-land in India, Central Asia or perhaps in Lemuria or Atlantis, the lost continents.