Dinosaurs in the Attic

by Douglas Preston

  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.*47

  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 obscu
re 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.

  LITTLE FINGER NAIL

  The word artifact comes from the Latin arte factum, meaning something made with skill. The word hardly conveys the rich associations that are invested in each artifact. Museum collectors did not make aesthetic decisions when collecting artifacts; they were much more interested in what the artifact signified to the people who created it. An ordinary wad of feathers tied in a bundle would not be collected because of its beauty, but because it was considered an object of magic and power. As recently as several years ago, a group of Indian chiefs visited the Museum and conducted ceremonies with some of the magical objects from their tribes that are stored in the sixth-floor vaults, as these were objects of greater power than anything which survived in the tribes today.

  In our own somewhat spiritually barren culture, we do not think of objects as being charged with spiritual power or meaning. Most primitive cultures, however, believe in some form of animism, a class of religions in which a spirit or power dwells in everything, including such "inanimate" things as stones and earth. Thus the so-called artifacts of a culture are not just an inert group of objects to be taken apart and studied by anthropologists. Anthropologists do not normally study artifacts; instead, they try to understand the great invisible body of meaning that lies behind and within an object. The concept of an object being art—that is, a skillfully made object that excites aesthetic pleasure in and of itself—is foreign to most cultures. "Art" is a peculiarly Western idea. Philosophically, this is where the American Museum of Natural History differs from an art museum: Artifacts in the Museum are displayed in their cultural context, so the visitor can understand how they were used and what they meant. An art museum will often display pieces more or less divorced from their historical and cultural context, because the viewer is meant to appreciate them for their aesthetic qualities alone.

  An example of an "artifact" that is highly charged with history and meaning can be found in the Plains Indians Hall at the Museum. It also shows how the histories of many artifacts have become entwined with the history of our own culture—the native culture of the anthropologist. If we look into one of the cases toward the back of the hall, we will find a ledger book of the kind made during the nineteenth century—tall and narrow, with a cloth binding and ruled pages. The book has been pierced by a bullet, and faint marks—bloodstains—are on the cover. Inside the book are drawings by a young Northern Cheyenne Indian named Little Finger Nail, depicting, in scenes of courtship and battle, the last months of his life.

  This ledger was one of two given to the Museum by the estate of Joseph Cuyler Hardie. Hardie's brother Francis was a cavalry officer during the Indian wars, and he had found the bullet-pierced ledger on Little Finger Nail's body following the massacre of the Indian's tribe. He sent the two ledgers to his brother with the following letter, which has been preserved in Museum archives:

  Post of San Antonio, Texas

  September 21, 1889

  Only the canvas covered book has any special history, the book with the bullet hole in it. It was, or rather the pictures were, drawn by a Northern Cheyenne Indian while in confinement at Fort Robinson, Nebraska during the winter of '78, '79. I was then Post Adjutant. I endeavored to get the book but its owner and maker refused to part with it for any price. So I gave the matter up. It purports to depict the deeds of several of the Northern Cheyennes during their famous march from Indian Territory to Wyoming Territory. The outbreak of the Cheyennes is well known, and [as] a consequence of the outbreak, I got the book in this manner. Four troops ... commanded by Captain Wessels, who by the way was severely wounded, surrounded the hostiles and charged upon them killing all the bucks and unfortunately in the melee, some women and children, but previous to the charge I saw an Indian with the book pressed down between his naked skin and a strap around his waist, another strap went between the middle of the book and around his shoulder. I turned to private Laselle of H troop who was near me and said, "I want that book if we come out all right." Several other of the enlisted men heard me also. When the fight was over, and as the dead Indians were being pulled out of the rifle pit, they drew out finally my Indian with the book, apparently dead; the book was injured to the extent of a carbine ball through it and was more or less covered with fresh blood. This fight took place near Bluff Station, Wyoming Territory, January 22, 1879. This fight was the closing one of a series of fights with the Indians, and they perished to a man.

  In haste,

  Frank

  Little Finger Nail was probably born in the late 1850s, and came of age while the Cheyenne and other Native American tribes were engaged in the final struggle to retain what remained of their lands and way of life. The history of the ledger really begins in 1876, during the Indian Wars, when General Ranald Mackenzie surprised the settlement of Northern Cheyennes at their camp on Crazy Woman's Fork of the Powder River. Mackenzie's attack was sudden and swift, and the Cheyenne fled into the fastnesses of the Bighorn Mountains, leaving behind their winter stores, teepees, and other belongings, which Mackenzie burned. The Cheyenne were led by two chiefs, Dull Knife (also called Morning Star), and Little Wolf. That winter the Cheyennes suffered so badly from frostbite and starvation that in April 1877 the tribe voluntarily surrendered at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

  At that time the government had plans to resettle many of the Plains Indian tribes in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), where they were to learn farming, build houses, and generally behave like the white settlers. Thus the government ordered the tribe moved south, claiming that the Cheyenne had agreed to the resettlement in a treaty signed with General Sheridan in 1868. Dull Knife protested, saying that if there was such a clause in the treaty, Sheridan had lied to them about the contents of the document. But the government insisted, and at last pressured Dull Knife into acquiescence by promising him that he and his people could return if they didn't like life in Indian Territory.

  In August 1877 the Cheyenne
arrived at their new home, the Darlington Agency, in present-day Oklahoma. Here they were told to settle down, live in cabins, grow crops, and in general act like the white man. But it was miserable, barren land, and the Indians were unused to this foreign way of life. Almost immediately, two-thirds of the tribe came down with malaria and other diseases. The water was bad and the rations scarce, even inedible. The government, which had promised to support the Indians until they could adjust to their new, forced way of life, couldn't even provide them with enough food to survive. Mackenzie himself—that veteran Indian fighter—protested to Washington about the terrible conditions imposed upon the Indians, and called it "a great wrong." He asserted that the Indians were "starving."