Georg Müller Frauenstein

“ By the Hurons the Moon is called the creator of the earth and grandmother of the Sun; in the myths of the Ottawas it is an old woman with a pleasant white face—the sister of the Day-Star. The Chiquitos call the Moon their mother, and the Navajos make it a rider on a mule. Where the planets are worshiped, preference in honors is generally accorded to the brighter and more conspicuous star of day. But the Botocudos of Brazil give the higher place to the Moon, and derive most of the phenomena of nature from it; and in Central America and Hayti are also people who hold the Moon in no less honor. ”

“ THE idea of representing the surface of the earth, or even a part of it, by a map, implies a considerable advance in knowledge. Every map, even the crudest one, is in a certain sense a concentrated representation, a kind of distillation of physical and politico-geographical knowledge. ”

“ A variety of sagas of another kind discover living beings, not in the whole moon, but only in the dark points of its surface. The Hindoos fancy a hare in it, or a deer; the Japanese, a rabbit. According to one of the Namaqua legends, the hare has scratched the moon, and the marks remain, but the animal itself has broken away, and is now continually fleeing before the planet. Who, in the face of such stories, can be oblivious of the general connection between the moon and the hunting goddess, and its personification in identity with her, which figure in the fables of classical antiquity? ”

“ According to the Mintiras of Malacca, the Sun and Moon are two women, of whom the former eats her children, while the Moon hides hers, although she is pledged to eat them too. Enraged at this breach of faith, the Sun chases the Moon around, swallowing her own star at each dawn, while the Moon brings hers out as soon as her pursuer is far enough away. ”

“ A most remarkable fact is the agreement of peoples who have never had anything to do with one another—of South African tribes and the Northern Europeans, the Samoa-Islanders and the ancient Peruvians—in the belief that the spots in the moon represent a creature of our own species. The story of the man in the moon, which may be traced in Europe for some hundred years back, and appears in the old Norse myths, and which still charms our children, prevails in many different versions. ”

“ The conceptions that are formed of the regions of the earth lying outside of vision are equally diversified. In classical antiquity, the earth was imagined to be surrounded by the sea, Oceanus; or the heavenly vault to rest upon mountain-ranges or isolated peaks. The Caroline-Islanders represent the region beyond the Marianne Archipelago, and north of their home, as one in which the sky gradually approaches the earth, and finally rests upon it, but not so closely but what a space is left that a man can creep through. ”

“ Curious are the forms under which many people have figured the sun and moon. The simplest are the disk-forms, with or without rays, which are of frequent occurrence. On a temple of Palenque, while the sun has this form, the moon is represented as a shell-shaped vase or a spiral shell filled with water, out of which a hare is creeping. ”

“ Among the American tribes are some who believe that eclipses are a warning of the approaching disappearance of the sun and the fall of the moon at the end of the world. The Pottawattamies tell of a demon in the shape of an old woman, sitting in the moon weaving a basket, on the completion of which the world will be destroyed. A dog contends with the woman, tearing the basket to pieces every once in a while, and then an eclipse of the moon takes place; others imagine that the Moon is hungry, sick, or dying at these times ”

“ In passing over to the numerous myths in which the sun is regarded as a living being, we meet the belief of the Navajos that it is newly set in the sky every morning by a woman. Kext, we come to a great number of stories that personify the sun, although they may not make a god of it, and represent its setting as a process of being swallowed by some monster. ”

“ At times, the enemies approach so nearly that the Sun can strike the Moon, and then there is an eclipse. The Hos of India have the same story, with the variation that the Moon, in punishment, is cut in two by the Sun, and has to grow together again. Notwithstanding the frequent recurrence of eclipses, with nothing particularly bad happening after them, most primitive peoples aasociate with them an omen of some great danger to the earth or the moon. ”

“ The Tonga-Islanders say that a god they call Maui carries the earth on his back, and whenever he moves, to turn the other side, or falls asleep, there is an earthquake; and the people were accustomed to beat the ground, with a great cry, to make Maui be quiet. The Khasias, in Assam, say that everything would be destroyed by earthquakes if God did not hold the earth in his hands. ”

“ The Polynesians say that the god Maui holds the sun and regulates his course by means of a rope. In the beginning he hurt the star in catching it and deprived it of half its light, and since then the days have been longer and cooler, and men have been able to work in peace. The Japanese myths fable eight hundred thousand gods holding the sun with a rope, while it is all the time trying to get back into the cave out of which they have drawn it by means of a trick. The Society-Islanders have a story that the sun goes into the sea at night ”

“ Another extremely materialistic explanation is found in some Greenland stories to the effect that the Moon pursues his sister the Sun in love. When he has become exhausted and thin, he goes seal-hunting, and disappears from the sky. In time he reappears, well fed, fat, and shining, as the full moon.
Purely fanciful and obscure are the myths in which animals are found in confidential relations with the moon. The Dakota Indians have a fiction of mice that periodically attack the moon to satisfy their hunger, and eat of its substance. ”

“ We are not only taught this by the history of the peoples with which we have had the most to do, that is, of the civilized nations, but it is obvious to any one who is acquainted with the lower races. The same practical reasons which urged Europeans to the pictorial representation of geographical facts have also made their influence felt in the prairies of America and the islands of Australasia; and I have seen maps prepared by Polynesian or Indian hands that would compare favorably with mediæval representations of the same kind. ”

“ Most of the astronomical conceptions of our Polynesian, African, and American brothers are childishly simple and crude enough, but at the same time curious. A very odd belief is that of the Namaqua Hottentots that the sun is a piece of bright bacon, which the people who go in ships draw up in the evening by enchantment, and let down again after they have cut a piece off from it. ”

“ What holds the visible world together, and what supports the earth in it, are also questions that have occurred to primitive men; and their attempts to solve these questions also carry with them efforts to account for particular phenomena of the earth's surface, and such convulsions as earthquakes. Some have tried to compare the earth with an egg in a vessel of water, or with the yolk in the egg; and cosmologies involving this idea are widely spread in Southern Asia, Polynesia, and Melanesia. ”

“ Curiously, these people find their counterparts among tribes of Western, Southern, and Central Africa, who rejoice with dancing and feasts at each appearance of the new moon, and expect an improvement of their condition from its beneficent influence; and they are not so far removed from the superstitious women of civilized Europe and America who wait for the increase of the moon to change their dwelling, to cut their hair, to be married, and to baptize their children. ”

“ A branch of the Yuma Indians in Colorado are in dread of an evil spirit that is sleeping on Mount Avicome, and causes a slight earthquake when he moves uneasily, and a dangerous one when he turns clear over. The Caribs were accustomed to say, when there was an earthquake, that Mother Earth was dancing. The Iroquois, according to the testimony of many travelers, conceived the earth as an island in the sea, resting on the back of a huge tortoise. ”

“ The Greenlanders have a personal apprehension in the matter, and believe that the Moon rummages their houses for skins or victuals, and destroys those persons who have not observed due sobriety. The South American Chiquitos try to help the darkened star against a dog that has worried it till its light has been colored red, and extinguished by its streaming blood; and they shoot arrows into the sky to drive away the dog. ”

“ From this we may pass to a wider view, which attempts to form an idea of the back side of the earth. The Kamchatkadales conceive that the earth is flat, and that its under side forms a lower world, under which is another land; or as, according to Steller, they expressed it, the earth is the reverse of a sky under which is still another world; so that they consider the world as a vessel of three stories. The conception of the earth as a flat surface lies at the foundation of most of these myths ”

“ The Siberian hunting races perceive in the bones of the mammoth, so often found in their country, evidences of the real existence of underground monsters, whose movements may give rise to earthquakes. According to Livingstone, the natives of Magomoro relate that once when an earthquake occurred, by which rocks were thrown down from the mountains, the wise men of the country got together, and concluded that a star had fallen into the sea, and the consequent swelling of the waves had caused commotions over the whole earth. ”

“ Every European seaman must admire the skill of the Caroline-Islanders, who succeed in traveling with such sureness over the length and breadth of their group, through spaces in which one of the islands may be more than eight hundred miles from its neighbor. ”

“ The more intelligent ones divide the roads which they would represent into days' journeys, and designate mountains and islands with little piles of sand, and towns and fishing-stations with sticks. Kotzebue, Chamisso, and Beechey tell stories of the same kind of peoples of the great ocean. The inhabitants of Tahiti and the Marshall Islands give, by means of stones arranged on the beach-sand, a clear view of whole groups of islands, between which they point out the navigable channels. ”

“ There are numbers, not of theoretical geographers, but of practical sailors, who are acquainted with the islands, and have observed the achievements of the natives, who will bear me out in this. There are now in existence a few maps made by Polynesians with European writing materials that afford a permanent testimony of the clearness of mind with which these "wild" people control their sea-voyages. ”

“ These superstitions are not so remote as they may seem at first sight from the impressions which the heavenly phenomena make upon many persons who consider themselves civilized. Circles may be found in nearly every nation upon whom the appearance of anything unusual in the sky carries an apprehension that something dreadful is about to happen; and by whom even the most ordinary phenomena are invested with occult influence upon things that we know have no connection with them ”

“ Travelers of widely different periods, whether speaking of the German coasts or of the shores of America and Asia, have made the same observation, that the coast people, in order to give a more distinct answer to any question about the roads and paths, have spontaneously made drawings in the sand of the stretch of country they were talking of. ”

“ As a rule, cartography begins with road-maps. Peoples whose territory is a terminating point or is traversed by important trade-routes, and who perform a carrier-service, are accustomed as a matter of course to learn to depend upon drafted representations of their roads. Appolonius Rhodius says that such maps were used by the ancient Colchians of the Southwestern Caucasus and Northern Armenia, through whose territory ran the great caravan routes from the Black Sea to the East and South. ”