The lion used to live in a nest up a tree till Heitsi Eibib cursed him and bade him walk on the ground. He also cursed the hare, "and the hare ran away, and is still running". The name of the first man is given as Eichaknanabiseb (with a multitude of "clicks"), and he is said to have met all the animals on a flat rock, and played a game with them for copper beads. The rainbow was made by Gaunab, who is generally a malevolent being, of whom more hereafter.
Fables of Yncas (Hakluyt Society), p. 127.
Tsuni Goam, pp. 66, 67.
Leaving these African races, which, whatever their relative degrees of culture, are physically somewhat contemptible, we reach their northern neighbours, the Zulus. They are among the finest, and certainly among the least religious, of the undeveloped peoples.
Their faith is mainly in magic and ghosts, but there are traces of a fading and loftier belief.
The social and political condition of the Zulu is well understood.
They are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large kraals or towns. They practise agriculture, and they had, till quite recently, a centralised government and a large army, somewhat on the German system. They appear to have no regular class of priests, and supernatural power is owned by the chiefs and the king, and by diviners and sorcerers, who conduct the sacrifices.
Their myths are the more interesting because, whether from their natural scepticism, which confuted Bishop Colenso in his orthodox days, or from acquaintance with European ideas, they have begun to doubt the truth of their own traditions. The Zulu theory of the origin of man and of the world commences with the feats of Unkulunkulu, "the old, old one," who, in some legends, was the first man, "and broke off in the beginning". Like Manabozho among the Indians of North America, and like Wainamoinen among the Finns, Unkulunkulu imparted to men a knowledge of the arts, of marriage, and so forth. His exploits in this direction, however, must be considered in another part of this work. Men in general "came out of a bed of reeds". But there is much confusion about this bed of reeds, named "Uthlanga". The younger people ask where the bed of reeds was; the old men do not know, and neither did their fathers know. But they stick to it that "that bed of reeds still exists". Educated Zulus appear somewhat inclined to take the expression in an allegorical sense, and to understand the reeds either as a kind of protoplasm or as a creator who was mortal. "He exists no longer. As my grandfather no longer exists, he too no longer exists; he died." Chiefs who wish to claim high descent trace their pedigree to Uthlanga, as the Homeric kings traced theirs to Zeus. The myths given by Dr. Callaway are very contradictory.
These legends have been carefully collected and published by Bishop Callaway (Trubner & Co., 1868).
Callaway, p. 9.
In addition to the legend that men came out of a bed of reeds, other and perhaps even more puerile stories are current. "Some men say that they were belched up by a cow;" others "that Unkulunkulu split them out of a stone," which recalls the legend of Pyrrha and Deucalion. The myth about the cow is still applied to great chiefs. "He was not born; he was belched up by a cow." The myth of the stone origin corresponds to the Homeric saying about men "born from the stone or the oak of the old tale".
Without anticipating a later chapter, the resemblances of these to Greek myths, as arrayed by M. Bouche Leclercq (De Origine Generis Humani), is very striking.
Odyssey, xix. 103.
In addition to the theory of the natal bed of reeds, the Zulus, like the Navajoes of New Mexico, and the Bushmen, believe in the subterranean origin of man. There was a succession of emigrations from below of different tribes of men, each having its own Unkulunkulu. All accounts agree that Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, and he does not seem to be identified with "the lord who plays in heaven"--a kind of fading Zeus--when there is thunder.
Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, though ancestral spirits are worshipped, because he lived so long ago that no one can now trace his pedigree to the being who is at once the first man and the creator. His "honour-giving name is lost in the lapse of years, and the family rites have become obsolete."
See Zulu religion in The Making of Religion, pp. 225-229, where it is argued that ghost worship has superseded a higher faith, of which traces are discernible.
The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine myths) occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial condition in which some of the Digger Indians at present exist, living on insects and unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to the civilisation which the Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs.
The original facts about religion in America are much disputed, and will be more appropriately treated later. It is now very usual for anthropologists to say, like Mr. Dorman, "no approach to monotheismn had been made before the discovery of America by Europeans, and the Great Spirit mentioned in these (their) books is an introduction by Christianity". "This view will not bear examination," says Mr. Tylor, and we shall later demonstrate the accuracy of his remark. But at present we are concerned, not with what Indian religion had to say about her Gods, but with what Indian myth had to tell about the beginnings of things.
Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 15.
Primitive Culture, 1873, ii. p. 340.