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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GI

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924088419829 1 AFRICA AND THE DISCOVERY of AMERICA VOLUME III By LEO WIENER PROFESSOR OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR OF "A COMMENTARY TO THE GERMANIC LAWS AND MEDIAEVAL DOCUMENTS." "CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARD A HISTORY OF ARABICO" GOTHIC CULTURE," "HISTORY OF YIDDISH LITERATURE." "HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN DRAMA," "ANTHOLOGY OP RUSSIAN LITERATURE," "INTERPRETA- TION OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE;" TRANSLATOR OF THE WORKS OF TOLSTOY; CONTRIBUTOR TO GERMAN, RUSSIAN, FRENCH. ENGLISH. AND AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL PERIODICALS. ETC., ETC. INNES & SONS 129-135 N. TWELFTH ST., PHILADELPHIA, PA. MCMXXII \3 Copyright, 1922, by Innes & Sons TABLE OP CONTENTS Page FOREWORD IX-XII SOURCES QUOTED .... XlII-XXI I. THE HISTORY OF COPPER AND IRON 1- 53 II. THE GYPSIES IN EUROPE .54- 77 III. THE GYPSIES IN AFRICA . . 78-115 IV. AFRICAN FETISHISM AND TOTEMISM 116-141 V. THE BORI 142-162 VI. FETISHISM AND SUFISM . . 163-179 VII. THE CARAIBS ... 180-198 VIII. THE AREYTO . . . . 199-212 IX. FEATHERS AND MASKS 213-217 X. THE CARAIB SOCIAL ORDER 218-221 XI. THE BORATIO . 222-227 XII. THE MANDINGO ELEMENTS IN THE MEXI- CAN CIVILIZATION ... 228-322 XIII. THE MEXICAN NEW YEAR . . 323-351 XIV. CONCLUSIONS 352-370 WORD INDEX .... 872-394 SUBJECT INDEX 395-402 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Opp. Page Griots 100 African Dancing, 2 plates : J 208 Tarring and Feathering in Brazil, 2 plates 216 Asante Stool 218 African Almaizar 232 Sudanic Armor 234 Arabic Blazonry, 2 plates 236 Mexican Blazonry 236 Fetish Nama 250 The Long-Nosed God 258 Kuare Ceremonies 264 African Chastisement 264 Dasiri Tree 264 Plate of the Bacabs 266 Arabic 6adwal 268 Mexican 6adwal 268 Sudanic Rock Inscriptions, 2 plates 270 Tuxtla Statuette, 2 plates 270 The Spider in Mound-builder gorgets 272 6adwal Design in Africa, 2 plates 272 Cadwal Design in Mound-builder gorgets, 2 plates 272 6adwal Design in Mexico, 2 plates 272 Mexican Game of PatoUi 278 Nanauatzin, the Mexican God of Syphilis 284 African Three-Pointed Altar, 2 plates 296 The Rain God Tlaloc 306 Conical Hat, 2 plates 320 African Ball Game 335 Arabic Hockey Sticks 34O Mexican Ballground, 2 plates 344 FOREWORD. No archaeologist, no historian, no philologist will be more startled by the data collected in this book than I have been in their discovery. While I to a certain ex- tent foresaw the end toward which the presence of Africans in America before Columbus must ultimately lead in the social and religious orders, I did not allow myself in my first two volumes to be influenced by any such considerations, but confined myself to an analysis of the documentary evidence as to the American origin of cotton, tobacco, the bread roots, and wampum. When it became necessary similarly to subject the spiritual culture of the New World to a comparative study, it turned out that the difficulties in the way were far more serious than when I undertook to brush aside the accumulated misconceptions in regard to the mater- ial civihzation of pre-Columbian times. Not only was the documentary proof scanty for America and fre- quently distorted by the monks and later by those who had theories to defend, but the parallel material for Africa, especially for the Western Sudan, turned out to be in a more fragmentary condition and even more dis- torted by investigators totally unacquainted with the Arabic antecedents of the Sudanic beliefs and customs. With the exception of the more or less objective attitude and cautious work of Delafosse and a very few others, the African material bearing on fetishism and kindred subjects is a mass of extravagances of which it is not possible to avail oneself seriously. In archaeology the Sudan represents almost a blank. Except for the commendable field work of Frobenius and Desplagnes, whose conclusions are unfortunately impossible, as has X AFRICA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA been pointed out by Arabioists, the whole region, in which a dozen powerful states have arisen within the last millennium, might as well be off the map,—it cer- tainly furnishes to the student almost nothing whatso- ever for a proper comprehension of fetishism, totemism, the social structure, the mediaeval trade routes, the organization of the state. The task seemed hopeless. But it soon became clear that the prospect was brighter than it had appeared, when the Sudanic languages were examined for the Arabic element contained in them. This foreign in- trusion, as regards Moslem conceptions, had long been known and studied, but there was a residue of cultural ideas in nearly every intimate relation in life which had not even been suspected. Steinthal, in his study of the Mande languages, pointed out the fact that the "all- devouring" tendency of the Negro languages often completely obliterated the borrowed prototype; but, by including a study of the Arabic influence through the oases and in the Berber languages, especially in Zenaga, in the languages of the Niger Bend, such as Songay and Peul, down to the furthest outposts of the Arabic trader and magician, among the Yoruba, Asante, Dahome tribes, and even further, to the Congo, it was possible to overcome this "all-devouring" tendency and lay the foundation for an African philology and then to trace the religious conceptions of the greatest part of Northern Africa back to Islamic religion and magic. This study cast a new aspect upon the religious ideas of the Negroes, heretofore contemptuously denominated as fetishism, and the delusive totemism, which has led to a prolixity of theories, became simple and intelligible. In fact, the spiritual culture of the Sudan appears not very different from the popular undercurrent of belief and practice among Europeans or Asiatics, while its connection with the Moslem folk religion is still closer. FOREWORD xi The powerful Moslem interpenetration in spiritual matters among tlie pagan Negroes became as clear as it had been in the case of the Moslem Negroes, hence the thought suggested itself that the caste system of the Blacks, with their contempt for the blacksmith, which they share with the Arabs, might itself be of Arabic origin. In the attempt to solve this question the dis- covery was made that the treatment of the blacksmiths was due to the analogous Moslem treatment of the nomad Gypsies, who found their way to the Niger valley possibly as early as the Vll. century. While pursuing the status of the Hindu metal-workers, the history of iron expanded into a longer chapter than was originally intended, but it serves to accentuate the fact that the westward movement through Africa of Asiatic culture, with its cotton and steel, did not take place on any ap- preciable scale before the Arabic occupation. With these necessary preliminary studies, the task of coordinating the American religious, social, and political orders with the Mandingo civilization became simple, although the fragmentary condition of information seemed to preclude any definite deduction. The two civilizations are not merely similar,—they are identical, in concept, in form, in ritualistic observances, in no- menclature, and in the Arabic origin of the terms em- ployed. The matter of chance is mathematically ex- cluded. If chance can play such pranks, then all his- torical, archaeological, and philological conclusions are null and void, and the respective science must be rele- gated to the lumber-room. Only the surface has been scratched. Many more analogies and identities are known to me, but it has seemed best to spurn any data which are capable of further elaborations and need the long patient labor of many men. The Peruvian civilization has barely been ) touched upon, because that of Mexico more easily fur- 1 xii AFRICA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA nished the direct evidence of the Mandingo origin. The archaeologist will be disappointed not to find a nicely worked out chronology, but this is impossible at the present stage of our knowledge. Only this much is certain,—the civilization so far investigated cannot be earlier than of the XII. century, and in all probability is not older than of the XIV. century. It will be asked whether an older civilization for America is denied. It is neither denied nor affirmed, because it is beyond the scope of the present investiga- tion. All that is attempted is the separation of late accretions from what may have existed before. When the top layer has been thoroughly worked over, there will be time to work the archaeological ground with a subsoil plow, without danger of destroying its fertility. The reader will want to know how to account for the stone structures and hieroglyphic writing in America, which do not seem to exist in Africa. To this the an- swer is that we know almost nothing of the archaeology of Africa, that recent excavations have revealed mon- oUths and inscriptions on stone, uploads/Litterature/ africa-and-the-discovery-of-america-iii 1 .pdf