The Lenâpé and their Legends. Rafinesque Constantine Samuel

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СКАЧАТЬ action toward the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania indicates a sense of honor and a respect for pledges which we might not expect. They had learned and well understood that the Friends were non-combatants, and as such they never forgot to spare them, even in the bloody scenes of border warfare.

      "Amidst all the devastating incursions of the Indians in North America, it is a remarkable fact that no Friend who stood faithful to his principles in the disuse of all weapons of war, the cause of which was generally well understood by the Indians, ever suffered personal molestation from them."[125]

      The fact that for more than forty years after the founding of Penn's colony there was not a single murder committed on a settler by an Indian, itself speaks volumes for their self-control and moral character. So far from seeking quarrels with the whites they extended them friendly aid and comfort.[126]

      Even after they had become embittered and corrupted by the gross knavery of the whites (for example, the notorious "long walk,") and the debasing influence of alcohol, such an authority as Gen. Wm. H. Harrison could write these words about the Delawares: "A long and intimate knowledge of them, in peace and war, as enemies and friends, has left upon my mind the most favorable impression of their character for bravery, generosity and fidelity to their engagements."[127] More than this, and from a higher source, could scarcely be asked.

      That intellectually they were by no means deficient is acknowledged by Brainerd himself. "The children," he writes, "learn with surprising readiness; their master tells me he never had an English school that learned, in general, so fast."[128]

Religious Beliefs

      With the hints given us in various authors, it is not difficult to reconstruct the primitive religious notions of the Delawares. They resembled closely those of the other Algonkin nations, and were founded on those general mythical principles which, in my "Myths of the New World," I have shown existed widely throughout America. These are, the worship of Light, especially in its concrete manifestations of fire and the sun; of the Four Winds, as typical of the cardinal points, and as the rain bringers; and of the Totemic Animal.

      As the embodiment of Light, some spoke of the sun as a deity,[129] while their fifth and greatest festival was held in honor of Fire, which they personified, and called the Grandfather of all Indian nations. They assigned to it twelve divine assistants, who were represented by so many actors in the ceremony, with evident reference to the twelve moons or months of the year, the fire being a type of the heavenly blaze, the sun.[130]

      But both Sun and Fire were only material emblems of the mystery of Light. This was the "body or fountain of deity," which Brainerd said they described to him in terms that he could not clearly understand; something "all light;" a being "in whom the earth, and all things in it, may be seen;" a "great man, clothed with the day, yea, with the brightest day, a day of many years, yea, a day of everlasting continuance." From him proceeded, in him were, to him returned, all things and the souls of all things.

      Such was the extraordinary doctrine which a converted priest of the native religion informed Brainerd was the teaching of the medicine men.[131]

      The familiar Algonkin myth of the "Great Hare," which I have elsewhere shown to be distinctively a myth of Light,[132] was also well known to the Delawares, and they applied to this animal, also, the appellation of the "Grandfather of the Indians."[133] Like the fire, the hare was considered their ancestor, and in both instances the Light was meant, fire being its symbol, and the word for hare being identical with that of brightness and light.

      As in Mexico and elsewhere, this light or bright ancestor was the culture hero of their mythology, their pristine instructor in the arts, and figured in some of their legends as a white man, who, in some remote time, visited them from the east, and brought them their civilization.[134]

      I desire to lay especial stress on these proofs of Light worship among the Delawares, for it has an immediate bearing on several points in the Walam Olum. There are no compounds more frequent in that document than those with the root signifying "light," "brightness," etc., and this is one of the evidences of its authenticity.

      Next in order, or rather, parallel with and a part of the worship of Light, was that of the Four Cardinal Points, always identified with the Four Winds, the bringers of rain and sunshine, the rulers of the weather.

      "After the strictest inquiry respecting their notions of the Deity," says David Brainerd, "I find that in ancient times, before the coming of the white people, some supposed there were four invisible powers, who presided over the four corners of the earth."[135]

      The Montauk Indians of Long Island, a branch of the Mohegans, also worshiped these four deities, as we are informed by the Rev Sampson Occum;[136] and Captain Argoll found them again in 1616 among the accolents of the Potomac, close relatives of the Delawares. Their chief told him: "We have five gods in all, our chief god appears often unto us in the form of a mighty great hare, the other four have no visible shape, but are indeed the four winds, which keep the four corners of the earth."[137]

      These are the fundamental doctrines, the universal credo, of not only all the Algonkin faiths, but of all or nearly all primitive American religions.

      This is very far from the popular conception of Indian religion, with its "Good Spirit" and "Bad Spirit." Such ideas were not familiar to the native mind. Heckewelder, Brainerd and Loskiel all assure us in positive terms that the notion of a bad spirit, a "Devil," was wholly unknown to the aborigines, and entirely borrowed from the whites. Nor was the Divinity of Light looked upon as a beneficent father, or anything of that kind. The Indian did not appeal to him for assistance, as to his totemic and personal gods.

      These were conceived to be in the form of animals, and various acts of propitiation to them were performed. Such acts were not a worship of the animals themselves. Brainerd explains this very correctly when he says: "They do not suppose a divine power essential to or inhering in these creatures, but that some invisible beings, not distinguished from each other by certain names, but only notionally, communicate to these animals a great power, and so make these creatures the immediate authors of good to certain persons. Hence such a creature becomes sacred to the person to whom he is supposed to be the immediate author of good, and through him they must worship the invisible powers, though to others he is no more than another creature."[138]

      They rarely attempted to set forth the divinity in image. The rude representation of a human head, cut in wood, small enough to be carried on the person, or life size on a post, was their only idol. This was called wsinkhoalican. They also drew and perhaps carved emblems of their totemic guardian. Mr. Beatty describes the head chief's home as a long building of wood: "Over the door a turtle is drawn, which is the ensign of this particular tribe. On each door post was cut the face of a grave old man."[139]

      Occasionally, rude representations of the human head, chipped out of stone, are exhumed in those parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey once inhabited by the Lenape.[140] These are doubtless the wsinkhoalican above mentioned.

Doctrine of the Soul

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