Dinosaurs in the Attic (33 page)

No one really knows exactly how many anthropological artifacts are in the American Museum of Natural History. The official number given to the press is about 8 million, but many curators will privately admit that this is mostly a guess. Whatever the number, they fill well over fifty storage rooms, and the Museum has been spending millions of dollars to renovate, conserve, and computerize this extraordinary collection. Yet these are merely the physical collections. There is another collection that is, in a sense, invisible. It has no catalog numbers and is not cross-referenced or indexed in a computer system. It cannot be displayed, photographed, or insured.

This collection is the vast body of myths, songs, dreams, sacred texts, and visions gathered by Museum curators from hundreds of living and extinct cultures, from New Guinea to Manhattan Island. Both in published works and in reams of unpublished notes stored in a fifth-floor vault, one can find hundreds of creation stories, descriptions of afterworlds both heavenly and hellish, epic tales of gods and demons, magical formulae, chants and songs, dreams of the past and future, visions of prophets and shamans, recipes for potions to heal the body and mind, and much more.

The collection contains such things as the creation myth of the Hackensack Indians (who once lived on Staten Island), accounts of the dream cults of the Oglala Sioux, and shaman chants of the Tsimshian Indians of the Northwest Coast. Here too one can read the epic tales of the San Carlos Apaches, the love poetry and death songs of the Ojibwa Indians, songs recorded on old wax cylinders of the Yukaghir people of Siberia, and dozens of myths of a Great Flood and an arcadian age when animals spoke like people.

No one really has any idea of just how much—or exactly what—mythological material might be stored in the Museum. Most of the myths were gathered before 1930. Today, with several notable exceptions, the Museum's anthropologists are less interested in mythology, partially because many of them are working in literate societies where myths have already been written down. One of the exceptions is Robert Carneiro, a curator specializing in the cultures of Amazonia. In a visit to South America in 1975, he collected a dozen myths from the Kuikuru, a Carib-speaking people who live in a single village in the upper Xingu basin of central Brazil.

By far the most complete body of myths in the Museum comes from the Indian cultures of North America. Between 1880 and 1930, myth collectors from New York traveled west with pen and paper to capture the Indian myth cycles before they became hopelessly garbled by Christian influences or were lost entirely. While Franz Boas was busy recording the entire myth cycle of the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Coast (a staggering body of myths, as voluminous as the Bible), his contemporary, Robert H. Lowie, was tramping across the West from Alberta to Arizona, collecting hundreds of myths (as well as artifacts) from the Hopi, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cree, Shoshone, and Ojibwa cultures. Pliny Earl Goddard, another Museum curator, spent twenty years studying the dancing societies of the Sarsi and the many dialects of the Athabascan family of tribes, of which the Apache are most prominent. Clark Wissler, also a myth collector and chairman of the Department of Anthropology, built the Museum's collection of Plains Indian material into one of the greatest in the world, and in addition edited several numbers' of the
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History,
in which many of the myths were published.

The myths that are now bound into silent volumes in the Museum still retain their freshness and vitality. Some are mysterious and obscure, some sacred, some obscene, some humorous, and some historically straightforward. Many explain how the earth was created and why things are the way they are. In rummaging around among dozens of old volumes in the library, I carne across the following passage, collected by Robert Lowie in 1907. It is the story of Genesis according to the Assiniboine, a culture of the northern plains:

    Long ago there was water everywhere. Sitconski was traveling in a moose-skin boat. He saw the muskrat coming towards him, holding something in its paws. "What are you holding there?"

"Nothing."

"Let me see, and I'll take you into my boat."

The muskrat showed him the mud it was holding in its paws. Sitconski took it, saying, "I am going to make the earth out of this." He rubbed the mud between his palms, breathed on it, and thus made the earth....

Inktonmi was wearing a wolf-skin robe. He said, "There shall be as many months as there are hairs on this robe before it shall be summer."

Frog said, "If the winter lasts as long as that, no creature will be able to live. Seven months of winter will be enough." He kept on repeating this, until Inktonmi got angry, and killed him. Still Frog stuck out seven of his toes. Finally, Inktonmi consented, and said there should be seven winter months.

Inktonmi then created men and horses out of dirt. Some of the Assiniboine and other northern tribes had no horses. Inktonmi told the Assiniboine that they were always to steal horses from other tribes.

Many of the tales that Lowie and other anthropologists recorded involved things that would be considered highly obscene in European culture. Bowdlerizing the tales would be contrary to scientific principles, but they certainly couldn't be printed as they were, with passages describing in precise detail such things as coprophagy, incest, and bestiality. The anthropologists solved the problem by translating the sensitive passages into (often execrable) Latin; presumably, only the most dedicated scholar would take the time to translate them, and thus the morals of society would be protected. The following passage illustrating this practice has been taken verbatim out of another Assiniboine myth, just as it was published in the Museum's
Anthropological Papers.
It again involves Inktonmi, who discovers an unknown village inhabited only by women who have never seen men. Inktonmi enters the chief-tainesses' lodge and sits down:

    "Are there any men here?" [Inktonmi asks.]

"No, we don't know what men are."

Inktonmi thought, "I am going to show them something." Sublata veste mentulam erectam eis demonstravit. The rabbit's mother [one of the chieftainesses] first noticed it, and stooped down to look at it more closely. The other chieftainess also looked down. "Istud quid est, cui bono?"

"Ad copulandum."

"Qua in parte corporis coire oportet?"

"Prope accedite, et vobis demonstrabo." Sublatis vestibus, earum cunnos indicavit. "In hunc locum si penam inseram, vobis dulce erit."

As the story continues, Inktonmi gives the women a demonstration, using two chieftainesses and several other women as subjects, and goes on to explain sexual matters to them. When he has more than gratified his desires and wishes to leave, the "uninitiated" women capture him and hold him back. Finally he makes good his escape, with the women frantically pursuing him. When he reaches his friend, who has been waiting for him in a canoe, he says, "Well, brother, let us go on, I found nothing there but rocks."

As European culture began to disrupt the Indian way of life, many myths became altered, and new tales sprang up involving the white men and their ways. One Menomini tale recounts the Indians' discovery of a particularly insidious white man's vice, transforming it to the Indian point of view:

Very long ago, in the early days, the Menomini Indians saw the white people drinking and making intoxicating liquors. The Indians seeing the white men in delirium because of the liquor thought it great and sunnised it caused a good feeling during the time of its effects. The young men, anxious to experiment, said, "Let us first try it on our old grandfathers; let them drink first, and if it poisons them there will not be much loss for the old fellows have reached the limit of their lives. If the fire water works well on them and they do not die from it, then we will use some of it ourselves."

... The old fellows drank and were overcome by a strange feeling. They talked on and on and could not stop and tears flowed from the eyes of some of them. Soon all of them were paralyzed drunk, motionless, and only breathing. The young men's eyes opened to see their old people die from the poison and they said, "Alas, they are dead," and were frightened. However, to the young men's surprise, after some hours the old fellows revived. They said, "How is it? How did you feel when you were dead?"

"Oh no," said the old men in laughter, "It is very nice and good. There are funny feelings and a merry go of the brain and you can know more than you ever knew."

The young men thought it to be so and commenced to use liquor and have continued up to now, knowing the consequence, but they do not believe it, until the end comes. Liquor acts as a go-between between mankind and all powers of good and bad, above and below. The closer a shaman is to the powers, the more he needs liquor to get them to guide and tell him what he cannot know in his soberness. This is the way of all Indian medicine doctors of different sorts and descriptions, as the powers accept this method of coming to them.

Of course, the myths came not just from American Indians, but from all over the world. Waldemar Jochelson collected hundreds of myths in Siberia during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of 1901 through 1903, mentioned in Chapter Three.

Jochelson, like Boas and other museum anthropologists, was shocked at the rate with which primitive cultures were being destroyed, even in the remotest areas of Siberia. In one of his ethnographies, Jochelson frequently consulted census documents to find statistics on baptisms, deaths from white diseases, and other benchmarks of the creeping influence of European ways. When he was among the Koryak in northeastern Siberia he noted with alarm that an 1897 census of northeastern Siberia showed that 45 percent of the Koryak had been baptized as Christians. "The new ideas represented in the mode of life of the Russians," Jochelson wrote, "are destroying the Koryak beliefs at an ever accelerating rate. . . . Their religious myths are changing into meaningless tales and fables, or are being forgotten entirely."

Jochelson transcribed hundreds of Koryak myths, along with Yukaghir and other tribal mythologies. Some of these he captured on wax-cylinder recordings, while others he transcribed and/or translated. He also asked questions about every aspect of their lives, and even had one Koryak informant name the stars for him and draw a star map showing the major Koryak constellations.
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Many Koryak myths—like myths of other cultures around the world—involve what are known as "trickster cycles" or "trickster tales." These tales usually include a physically weak but wily and clever character who outwits much more powerful opponents. A familiar example would be the B'rer Rabbit tales, essentially a black American trickster cycle that many feel has African roots; others include the trickster Monkey of Chinese mythology and, indeed, many European and Scandinavian folk myths. The Koryak trickster tales usually include two characters, the Creator and Miti, his wife, who is usually the trickster. In one tale, "How Miti Played Tricks on Her Husband," Miti is cast out of their house in a quarrel, and she takes revenge by rearranging her body and putting her breasts on her back, her buttocks in front, and her vagina behind. When she returns and her husband sleeps with her, he is astounded: "Is it possible that you have your breasts on your back?" he asks. Miti puts him in his place with a scornful reply: "Don't you know that they are [supposed to be] on my back?"

These were not just tales and amusing stories. Many of the myths collected were prayers and chants that held great power for the worshiper. They were as important as, for instance, the Bible was to medieval Europeans. Though a great number of these prayers and chants are obscure unless placed within their proper ceremonial context, some are quite beautiful as poetry. Here, for example, are several excerpts from a long and hauntingly beautiful prayer gathered by Washington Matthews among the Navajo in the 1880s. It forms part of the Navajo Night Chant:

In the house made of the dawn,

In the house made of the evening twilight,

In the house made of the dark cloud,

In the house made of the he-rain,

In the house made of the dark mist,

In the house made of the she-rain,

In the house made of pollen,

In the house made of grasshoppers,

Where the dark mist curtains the doorway,

The path to which is on the rainbow,

Where the zigzag lightning stands on high,

Oh, male divinity!

With your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us ...

With the far darkness made of the dark mist on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring,

With the far darkness made of the she-rain over your head, come to us soaring,

With the zigzag lightning flung out on high over your head, come to us soaring,

With the rainbow hanging high over your head, come to us soaring ...

With the darkness on the earth, come to us.

With these I wish the foam floating on the flowing water over the roots of the great corn....

Happily abundant dark clouds I desire.

Happily abundant dark mists I desire.

Happily abundant passing showers I desire....

Happily may fair blue corn, to the ends of the earth, come with you.

The Museum's collection of myths may turn out to be at least as valuable and irreplaceable as the physical collections. Artifacts can survive the extinction of a culture; pots, house foundations, knives; carvings, and burials can last thousands of years. But when a nonliterate people comes in contact with Western culture, the shock often destroys its religion and mythology first. Myths are a culture's most delicate artifacts, and among its most important and revealing.