Jesse Walter Fewkes

“ The study of the evolution of supernatural ideas, like that of all other human characters, ought not to be limited to a few favored races, nor should the term “religion,” in its scientific use, be restricted to any group or race of man. It must be broad enough to embrace the supernatural conceptions of all men, low and high in the scale. No poor or insignificant grouping of men and women should be regarded too wretched to be studied, and the scientific man can not overlook any if he is loyal to scientific methods. ”

“ Below all ceremonials among all men, savage or barbarous, may be traced aspirations akin to our own since they spring from our common nature. Until some philosopher shall arise who can so analyze environment as to demonstrate that the great religious teachers of man, who, suddenly appearing, have stimulated the race to great bounds in progress, were solely the products of surroundings, we may believe that there is another most potent influence behind environment controlling the development of culture. ”

“ Maize is painted on the masks of sacred dancers and represented by effigies on altars. It gives names to several supernatural beings. Every babe, when 20 days old, is dedicated to the sun and receives an ear of corn as its symbolic mother. The badges or palladia of religious societies are ears of corn wrapped in buckskin—symbolic, no doubt, of the time when seed corn was the most precious heritage and preserved by the chiefs. The foremost supernatural being in the Tusayan Olympus is the Corn Maid, who is figured on food bowls, baskets, and elsewhere. ”

“ In other parts of America among warriors he is appealed to to destroy enemies. Among those people whose environment necessitates rain he is regarded as all powerful for that purpose. Like ancient Aryans, the Tusayan Indians pray to the rising sun for blessings, but the meaning of the word “blessing” is always rain, that the farms may be watered and the crops grow to maturity. The worship of the sun, therefore, is of great importance; it pervades all the ritual, but it is always with one intent—the over-powering need of the agriculturist for rain in a desert environment. ”

“ This figurine bears on her head the symbol of the ear of maize. No field of corn may be harvested without the protection of the warrior in a country harassed by enemies, and the fourth effigy represents the god of war, whose effigy naturally has a place on this altar. The white meal which is sprinkled on the heads of all the idols represents the prayers of the faithful, for as each priest approaches the altar she breathes her prayer on sacred meal and scatters it on the heads of the effigies. ”

“ Among a people where gods are so numerous, every hostile one must be appeased, no beneficent personage forgotten. From one end of the year to another there is almost a constant round of ceremonials, to describe which in detail would tax your patience.
Fortunately, however, these ceremonials admit of a classification. In one way we may say that the ritual of a people is the sum of all ceremonials which recur with precision in successive cycles. The time commonly adopted by primitive people is a natural epoch, the year determined by the course of the seasons. ”

“ As far as I know, no race has wholly outgrown this condition, and the lower we descend in the scale of humanity, either historically in our own race, or ethnographically among savages, the relative predominance of fetishism increases. There is no more constant element, none following the same law of increase; the present forms of monotheism have the least, the lowest savage the most. While at present there survives no people so degraded that fetishism is the only cult, those nearest that stage are the lowest in mental, moral, and social attainments. ”

“ Theories among civilized men, like things among savages, may become fetishes. It would be lamentable if environment should become a word to conjure with, or if we should use it to cover ignorance of that which we can not explain. I have tried to show that one highly complicated ritual is so plastic that it responds to climatic conditions, but there are elements in it due to some other unknown cause. Because climatic conditions explain certain modifications in human culture the tendency would be to strive to make it do duty in explaining all. ”

“ Isolated phratries living in groups like the prehistoric pueblos recognized no supreme political chief; their system was feudal; they were too low for monotheism. I believe there is no good evidence to prove that they ever advanced higher in the evolution of mythology than a form of totemism, in which powers of nature under anthropomorphic or animal disguises were worshiped.
I have said that the ritual of man can not be separated from his beliefs; it is incomprehensible alone. Let us, therefore, glance at the mythology of the Tusayan Indians. ”

“ I need not remind you that at that early stage a fetish was not an idol, it may or may not have had a regular form; a stone, a root, an amulet may serve as a fetish. In this stage of development every individual came to believe that he had a certain protective charm. We can hardly believe he had a system of gods or that he recognized such. Later in its evolution fetishism became incorporated with other higher elements, especially symbolism, but in its archaic conception this was impossible. ”

“ The ceremony for growth of the crops, which is practically for the harvest of maize, is directly the outgrowth of those climatic conditions which have made the Tusayan people agriculturists. A failure of this crop means starvation, and maize is far from a spontaneous growth in those desert sands. Hence the elaborate nature of the appeals to the supernatural beings which control this function. This great ceremony is naturally of special concern to women, the providers. The corn is the mother, the corn goddess the patron deity of women ”

“ The highest supernatural beings were deified forces of nature endowed with human or animal forms. Among these were sky gods, earth gods, and their offspring in the early times when the race of man was young. The pueblos deified the sun and called him father of all, and so important is the place that he plays in their beliefs that they are ordinarily called sun worshipers. They endow him with human form, speaking of the disk as his mask. Each day he is thought to rise from his home in the under world and at night sinks into a western house. The pueblo Indians live in houses. ”

“ Totemism and animism are sometimes limited to animal worship, from the fact that zoomorphic totems naturally were chosen by hunters, but especially among agricultural people totems of corn, rain, and the like replaced zoomorphic forms. The forces of nature thus became totems—sun, moon, earth—some with animal, others with human personalities. A totem of a family became a tutelary god, and groups of tutelary gods with a regal head became a council of gods as among the old Greeks. ”

“ I have elsewhere pointed out the small part which the Great Plumed Serpent plays in this ceremony, and the absence of fetishes or idols of this personage in the secret portions of the ceremony. The only symbol of the plumed snake which is found is on the kilts of the snake priest. As nearly as I can judge of its place in the components of primitive supernatural concepts, it seems to be an example of animal totemism and ancestor worship in which special powers to bring the rains are believed to belong to the reptiles, descendants, like the living participants, of a snake mother. ”

“ He raised crops of maize, melons, and beans, cultivated and harvested various grains, but at times when other things failed found food in cacti and the meal of piñon nuts. Accepting the inevitable, man’s ritual became a mirror of that part of his environment which most intimately affected his necessities. The irregularity of the rains, and the possibility that the corn may not grow, developed the ritual in the direction indicated. As long as the processes of nature go on without change, no special rain or growth ceremonials would develop. ”

“ A generalization which is built on limited knowledge of the religious characteristics of a few men or those of gifted races will as surely fail as a general law of linguistics based on the language of any one of the great races to the neglect of others. There was a time when naturalists overlooked the lowest animals in their studies of the evolution of organic life, but now it is universally recognized by biologists that we must look to the most inferior animals for a solution of many problems connected with the highest. ”

“ In studies of the development of the supernatural in the mind of man the same thing is true. The laws of the evolution of religious thought can not be scientifically studied if the culture of primitive man is neglected. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the roots of some of the purest spiritual conceptions reach far down into savage and barbarous stages of culture.
We are accustomed to designate the crude supernatural ideas of savage and barbarous peoples as cults, and every cult will be found on examination to be composed of two complemental parts, known as 684mythology and ritual. ”

“ Man sought to ally himself with some one of these souls; if a hunter, some animal spirit, for instance, as an aid. This became his totem, and everything came to be a totem of power depending on needs of man. As fetishism was the archaic condition in the groping of the human mind, totemism was the following, and both evolved together, mutually reacting on each other and interdigitating in their development. ”

“ The simple act of breathing a prayer on a pinch of meal is all sufficient in an individual’s use of prayer meal, but in the complicated paho this simple act is insufficient in their belief. The prayer bearer intrusted with the prayers of a community of priests must be laid on an altar, smoked upon, prayed over, and consecrated by song before it is deemed efficacious. The production of this altar, the fetishes which stand upon it, the formal rites attending the ceremonial smoke, and the character of the songs thus develop each its own complex series of rites. ”

“ In Tusayan the Great Plumed Serpent is a powerful deity to bring the rain, and is associated with lightning, his symbol. By simple observation the untutored mind recognizes that rain follows lightning, and what more natural than that it should be looked upon as the effect. He therefore worships lightning because of this power. The course of the lightning in the sky is zigzag as that of the snake, both kill when they strike. ”

“ The one to the right is the goddess of growth. She carries in her belt prayer offerings for abundant harvests. At her feet is an effigy of the corn mountain, colored with different colored corn, since all kinds of corn are under her control. In her left hand she has a small jar of holy water, since corn can not grow without moisture. The figure at her left is the patron goddess of the society who celebrate growth ceremonials, the ancestral deified totem of the fraternity. At her left is the corn goddess, since corn is the one cereal whose growth is desired. ”

“ To simplify the elements of the problem we must choose not only a primitive form of ritual, but also as far as possible one which has been but slightly modified by the introduction of foreign influences, and hence other environments. We must avoid as much as possible complexity due to composition. It is a very difficult task to determine the aboriginal cults of any primitive people, for modifications resulting from contact with other races are present almost everywhere we turn. ”

“ It can hardly be necessary for me to adduce more facts in support of the hypothesis that these two elements of the Tusayan ritual which reflect the climatic surroundings are ceremonials for rain and those for the germination, maturation, and abundance of agricultural products. The necessities of life have driven man into the agricultural condition, and the aridity of the climate has forced him to devise all possible means at his control to so influence his gods as to force them to send the rains to aid him. ”

“ Every cluster or grouping of men known to me is composite in its character. Yet the task is not wholly hopeless or beyond our powers. The work before the American student is facilitated by the fact that we have still living in our country surviving members of the American race who, on account of isolation, have been slightly modified by foreign influences. I wish this afternoon to call your attention to one of these, and to discuss the influences which environment has exerted on their ritual. ”

“ The lightning comes from the sky, the abode of the sun and rain god, and the simple reasoning of the Tusayan Indian supposes some connection between the lightning, snake, and rain. The sustenance of the primitive agriculturist comes from the earth, and if the soil is nonproductive the sun and rain are of no avail. ”

“ The cults of a primitive people are products of their necessities, and they become complicated as the probability of their needs not being met are uncertain. The two needs which sorely pressed the Hopi farmer were rain to water his crops and the growth and maturity of his corn. My problem, therefore, is to show by illustrations that the two components, rain making and growth ceremonials, characterize the Tusayan ritual, as aridity is the epitome of the distinctive climatic features of the region in which it has been developed. ”

“ The theory that differences of species of animals and plants were due to climatic influences may have satisfied the early students of evolution before Charles Darwin pointed out the law of natural selection. Environment is a factor which profoundly affects animals, but a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive is a law of evolution.
700So environment is a potent influence on the culture of man, but there are laws, as yet not clearly made out, back of it which control the evolution of man. ”