Ancient Faiths And Modern. Thomas Inman
Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, London, Longman, 1860), vol. I., p. 353—"From Florida to Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the American soil is strewn with gigantic ruins of temples, tumuli, entrenched camps, fortifications, towers, villages, towers of observation, gardens, wells, artificial meadows, and high roads of the most remote antiquity."
Without entering closely into the nature of the antiquities discovered, we may state that they comprise pyramids, cones, obelisks, hills surrounded by a deep vallum, like that adjoining Salisbury, and earthen constructions analogous to that at Avebury. There is evidence that the artificial erections, which were so built as to be visible from an enormous distance, were designed, possibly, as cairns, or memorials of the dead, but also as spots for sacrificial offerings, resembling those called high places in Ancient Palestine, the tumulus over Patroclus, and the Scythian mounds in the Crimea. The altars which have been discovered are made of baked clay or stone, and have the shape of large basins, varying in length from nineteen inches to seventeen yards, but generally about two yards and a-half. Under and around the altars calcined human bones were found, and sometimes a whole skeleton was met with in the tumulus, as if a sacrifice of men attended the funeral rites, as we learn from Homer that it did, before Troy, when Achilles directed the obsequies of his friend Patroclus. Cremation, as well as sepulture, was adopted, and with the dead, ornaments, arms, and other objects, which belonged in life to the departed, were buried; amongst these are to be reckoned trinkets of silver and of brass, as well as of stone and bone. As a proof of the advanced knowledge of the people referred to, I may here quote, from memory, a note from Stevens' Central America, to the effect that the bronze tools found in Yucatan, &c., amongst the quarries whence the stone for the ancient temples was procured, are nearly as hard as steel, and that a similar bronze is only known to have existed in some of the ancient tombs and quarries of Egypt, an observation which receives additional value from Domenech's remark, vol. I., p. 364—"These works of art (arms, idols, and medals, found in New Granada tombs) are acknowledged, by the archaeologists of Panama, to possess the characteristics of both Chinese and Egyptian art." Here, again, I would call my readers' attention to the facts, that in very modern times Chinese have migrated to California, Australia, Singapore, and other distant localities, and that Fortune found Egyptian curiosities in virtù, shops in China, whilst Egyptologists have discovered Chinese manufactures in Egyptian tombs. The subject of the extent of travel in ancient times does not enter into my present plan; but as I am desirous to make the mind of my readers expansive enough to receive everything which bears upon the history of man upon the earth, I may be allowed to sow seed by the way-side, some of which may blossom as "a garden flower grown wild." Domenech, in p. 408, vol. I., figures a remarkable stone, by many persons supposed to be a hoax or forgery, which was found at the base of one of the largest mounds in North America, situated in Western Virginia. It lay in a sepulchral chamber, thirty-five feet from the surface, was elliptic in shape, two inches and a-half long, two wide, and about half an inch thick, and the material was of a dark colour, and very hard. The following is a copy from Domenech's work, and, without dwelling upon it, we may call attention to the similarity of some of the letters with those known to, or used by the Phoenicians, Ancient Greco-Italians, and Carthaginians. Like the Newton Stone, in Scotland, and some Gnostic gems, it may be said to be learned "gibberish," which "the spirits" can read but no one else.
There is, indeed, much more evidence than is generally supposed to connect the ancient mound-builders in America with the inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere, particularly in their modes of burial, the nature of their earthworks, and the style of such ornaments and figures as have been found. For example, there is one enclosure described, in the centre of which is erected a mound and pillar, precisely resembling the linga yoni of the East. In addition to these, carved stones have been found, which unite together such Oriental emblems as the sun and moon, the Tau, T and the egg, O which together make the well-known Egyptian symbol A. Again, Domenech figures some male and female human effigies, of whom American savans write that they represent idols of sexual design, similar to those exposed in the Mysteries of Eleusis, one of them being a badly finished image of Priapus. Domenech still farther states, on the authority of Cortez, that a form of worship, recalling the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, was established in America.
Respecting the nature of the religion of the mound builders the Abbé writes—"The government of these nations appears to have been theocratic or sacerdotal, like that of the Jews, and the religious administrative and military power was, probably, vested in one and the same person. This is clearly evinced by the taboo, or sacred monuments, being combined with those of a purely military character," p. 366. Without straining doubtful points too far, we may content ourselves with affirming that the researches of Davis and Squire, of Stephens, and of Domenech, show that the mound builders of America raised high places for sacrificial fires; that they built huge piles of earth over dead warriors; and, that during the funeral rites which were observed at the obsequies, they immolated certain human victims.
Let us now pause for a moment and consider how much is involved in the practice of making a sacrifice by fire, or otherwise, at the burial of any deceased chieftain or honoured man. With what idea could the living wife join her husband on the funeral pyre in India, or the ancient Tartars have slain the horse, slaves, wives, and chief officers of a defunct king, burying them all in a vast grave, unless they entertained the belief that there was a life beyond the grave? The faith may have been of the crudest form, yet the practice evidenced the belief that those who died, and were buried together, would arise and live at the same time and place, and in the same relative positions which they had during life. If this be granted, it demonstrates that the early dwellers in America had a higher conception of immortality than had the ancient Jews, even although the latter assumed, and pertinaciously persisted in the assertion, that they, and they only of all the nations of the world, were taught of God—a boast to which a vast number of thoughtless Christians give a profound reverence, and most implicit belief.
Without speculating upon the probable connexion between the mound-builders and the inhabitants of ancient Mexico, we will endeavour, with the aid of Prescott, and other writers, to ascertain something of the faith professed by Montezuma and his subjects. Derived from two sources, there were two distinct elements in the Mexican religion; one of these was gentle and mild as the teaching of Christ, and the other, ferocious and cruel, like the practice of such of his followers as the sensual Crusaders, the persecuting Popes of Italy, and the brutal, money-grubbing Spaniards. The former gradually dried up, like primitive Christianity, and the harmlessness of the dove was replaced by the ferocity of the wolf. It is in strict accordance with human nature, that virtues are harder to maintain than vices, hence malignancy swelled itself up and became dominant. The priests of the sanguinary class contrived as burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in Judea, Greece, Spain, or Modern Rome, and they surrounded their deities with conceptions as grotesque as those which are clustered round the Hindoo gods of to-day, the divinities of the Greeks and Romans, and the innumerable virgins, saints, and martys of mediaeval and modern papal Christianity. The power and the inclination to make fetish is certainly not confined to African negroes. The Mexicans recognized a supreme Creator as the God by whom we live, one who was, for them, omnipresent and omniscient—the giver of all good things, "without whom man is as nothing." He was said to be "invisible, incorporeal, a being of absolute perfection and perfect purity," "under whose wings men may find repose and a sure defence." But this deity, though single, was subdivided by the Mexican theologians, much in the same way as Jehovah became separated into an innumerable host of angels, archangels, and devils, and as Zeus was split up into an equally numerous army of gods, goddesses, and demigods. The Mexicans had thirteen major, and about two hundred minor, divinities, to one or other of whom each day was devoted, much in the same way as certain modern Christians believe in one Creator, four persons, three of whom are male and the other female, seven archangels, and some hundreds of saints, virgins, or martyrs, to each of whom one day of the year is consecrated. There are more gods and goddesses in the Papal calendar than in that of Ancient Mexico, Greece, or even Rome.
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