peaimen of the continent, apparently called boii by the islanders, a name which is surely a variant of the Taïno buhuitihu and doubtless was adopted from the latter; especially as Maboya ("the Great Boye" or "Great Snake") is a name recorded for the tutelary power of these boii, or "snakes." Maboya, or Mapoia, is the god who sends the hurricane; and here we have an interesting point of contact with the mythology of the great isthmus, since Hurakan, the hurricane, is the Mayan storm-god. Du Tertre says that there were many Maboyas; and it may be that the term is the insular equivalent for "Kenaima," by which the mainland Carib designate a member of the class of death-bringing powers.
Good spirits were also recognized. The names Akambou and Yris are found for the highest of all, and the name Chemin—doubtless related to zemi—is applied to the sky-god. It may be that the island Carib possessed a whole pantheon of celestial deities, or perhaps the name for the Great Spirit varied from island to island, as similar names vary among the related tribes of Guiana.
Fragments of the legends of the island Carib are preserved. Louquo, the first man, came down from the sky; other men were born from his body; and after his death he ascended into the heavens. The sky itself is eternal; the earth, at first soft, was hardened by the sun's rays. The First Race of men were nearly exterminated by a deluge, from which a lucky few escaped in a canoe. After death the soul of the valiant Carib ascends to heaven; the stars are Carib souls. All these are beliefs which we need not ascribe to Old World suggestion, for they are found far and wide in America; and equally native must be the Carib notion that each man has three souls—one in his heart, one in his head, and one in his shoulders—though it is only the heart-soul that ascends to paradise at death, while the other two wander abroad as dangerous and evil powers. The islanders possessed also a legend of their origin or migration from among the Galibi, their continental relatives, "Galibi" being, apparently, yet another variant of "Carib." Their ancestor, Kalinago, they said, wearying of life among his own people, embarked for the conquest of new lands, and after a long voyage settled in Santo Domingo with his kin, where his numerous children, conspiring against him, gave him poison. His body died, but his soul found an avatar in a terrible fish, Atraioman; while his slayers, pursued by his vengeance, scattered afar among all the isles. Wherever they went, they destroyed the men, but spared the women; and they placed the heads of their enemies in rocky caves that they might show their sons and their sons' sons these symbols of the valour of their fathers. According to some tales all brave Caribs at death enter a paradise where they forever wage successful war against the Arawak, while cowards are condemned in the future world to be enslaved to Arawak masters.
A more agreeable picture of Carib nature is suggested by their belief in Icheiri—a kind of Lares and Penates—to whom in each cabin was erected an altar of banana leaves or of cane, upon which were placed offerings of cassava flour and of the first fruits of the field, these Icheiri being conceived as kindly and familiar intermediaries between man below and the distant heaven power above. There were also spirits that could enter into a man to lead him to inspired vision—"medicine" spirits, or tutelaries. The god Yris seems to have been of this character, for du Tertre, who received the story from one of the missionaries in Santo Domingo, relates that Yris entered into a certain woman and transported her far above the sun, where she saw lands of a marvellous beauty with verdant mountains from which gushed springs of living water; and the god promised her that after her death she should come thither to dwell with him forever. The savage mystic, too, it would appear, has her visions of a divine spouse, who shall one day welcome her into the heaven above the heavens.
CHAPTER II
MEXICO
I. MIDDLE AMERICA
From the Rio Grande to the southern continent extends the great land bridge connecting North and South America, forming a region which might properly be called Middle America. This region divides naturally into several sections. To the north is the body of Mexico, its coastal lands mounting abruptly on the western side, but rising more gradually on the eastern littoral toward the broad central plateau, the shape of which—roughly triangular, with its apex in the lofty mountains of the south—conforms to that of the whole land north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Next to this is the low-lying peninsular region of Yucatan, ascending into mountains toward the Pacific, and forming a great broadening of the southward tapering land. A second bulge is Central America, lying between the Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Gulf, and terminating in the thin Isthmus forming an arc about the Bay of Panama.
The physiography of the region is an index to its pre-Columbian ethnography.22 The northern portion, including Lower California and, roughly, the mainlands in its latitudes, was a region of wild tribes, the best of them much inferior in culture to the Pueblo Indians on the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and the lowest as destitute of arts as any in America. Yuman and Waicurian tribes in Lower California; Seri on the Island of Tiburon and the neighbouring mainland; Piman in the north central and western mainlands; Apache in the desert-like lands south of the Rio Grande; and Tamaulipecan on the east, coasting the Gulf of Mexico—these are the principal groups of this region, peoples whose ideas and myths differ little from those of their kindred groups of the arid South-west of North America. The Piman group, however, possesses a special interest in that it forms a possible connexion between the Shoshonean to the north and the Nahuatlan nations of the Aztec world. Such peoples as the Papago, Yaqui, Tarahumare, and Tepehuane are the wilder cousins of the Nahua, while the Tepecano, Huichol, and Cora tribes, just to the south, distinctly show Aztec acculturation. In general, the Mexican tribes north of the Tropic of Cancer belong, in habit and thought, with the groups of the South-West of the northern continent; ethnically, Middle America falls south of the Tropic.
Below this line, extending as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is the region dominated by the empire of the Aztec, marked by the civilization which bears their name.23 As a matter of fact, although at the time of the culmination of their power this whole region was politically subordinated to the Aztec (it was not completely conquered by them), it contained several centres of culture, each in degree distinct. To the north, about the Panuco, were the Huastec, a branch of the Maya stock; while immediately south of them, and also on the Gulf Coast, were the Totonac, possibly of Maya kinship. The central highlands, immediately west of these peoples, were occupied by the Otomi, primitive and warlike foes of the Aztec emperors. On their west, in turn, the Otomi had a common frontier with Nahuatlan tribes—Huichol, Cora, and others—forming a transitional group between the wild tribes of the north and the civilized Nahua. Quite surrounded by Nahuatlan and Otomian tribes was the Tarascan stock of Michoacan, a group of peoples whose culture certainly ante-dates that of the Nahua, of whom, indeed, they may have been the teachers. Still to the south—their territories nearly conterminous with the state of Oaxaca—were the Zapotecan peoples, chief among them the Zapotec and Mixtec, whose civilization ranks with those of Nahua and Maya in individual quality, while in native vitality it has proved stronger than either.
The Zoquean tribes (Mixe, Zoque, and others), back from the Gulf of Tehuantepec, form a transition to the next great culture centre, that of the Maya nations. The territories of this most remarkable of all American civilizations included the whole of Yucatan, the greater portions of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and the lands bordering on both sides of the Gulf of Honduras. Thus the Mayan regions dominate the strategy of the Americas, since they not only control the juncture of the continents, but, stretching out toward the Greater Antilles, command the passage between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It is easily conceivable that, had a free maritime commerce grown up, the Maya might have become, not merely the Greeks, but the Romans, of the New World.
Central America,
