Qat began to make things right away: men and pigs and plants and stones—or whatever he thought up.
He made mankind from the wood of the dracaena tree. He carved the arms and legs and torsos separately, and the heads and ears and eyes, and the fingers and toes, then fitted them all together, slowly and carefully. He made six figures and when they were finished he set about giving them life.
He stood the man-images up in a row and danced before them. After a while they moved a little—weakly, stiffly—but they moved. When Qat saw that, he began to beat upon his drum.
Soon the wonderful rhythmic magic of the drum filled the air. The figures began to move a little more, slowly and carefully at first, in time with each drum beat, then faster and faster, until they too were dancing the life dance of the drum. At last they were able to stand and walk and run by themselves.
Then Qat divided the six figures into men and women: three men and three women, so that each man had a wife, each woman had a husband.
Qat’s brother, Marawa, came along while Qat was doing all this and watched. Marawa was the stupid one; he spoiled everything he tried to do. He thought he would like to create some people too.
So Marawa cut down a tree—another kind of tree, the tavisoviso—and from it carved six figures, as Qat had done. He set them up and danced before them and beat the drum to give the figures life, just as he had seen Qat do. But as soon as he saw them move, he dug a pit and buried them, and went away and left them.
In about a week he remembered them, and went and scraped the earth away. They were rotten. They stank, and Marawa had to leave them buried in the earth. This was the beginning of death in the world.
When Qat first made the pigs he made them to stand upright and walk on two legs. But his brothers all laughed. They pointed and laughed and said they looked just like men! So to save the pigs from ridicule, Qat shortened their forearms and fixed them to walk on all fours, as they do now.
Thus Qat made men and pigs. He made food plants, and canoes, and many other things. But he did not know how to make darkness. It was light in the world all the time, without dimness or dark or rest.
The eleven brothers did not like the world this way.
“Look here, Qat! It’s too light,” they said, or “There’s nothing but light all the time, Qat!”, or “Qat, can’t you do something?”
Qat searched around and one day he heard that there was something called night over at Vava in the Torres Islands. So he tied up a pig and put it in his canoe and set sail across the water for Vava.
There he bought (in exchange for a pig) a piece of night (qong) from Qong, Night, who dwelt in that place. After that there were pigs in the Torres Islands, they say. Another story says Qat never went to the Torres Islands at all, but sailed out over the sea to the far edge of the sky, where Night himself touched him over the eyes and gave him black eyebrows and taught him sleep. Some say this can’t be true because there are pigs in the Torres Islands and none in the sky.
At any rate, Qat returned to Vanna Lava bearing night and bringing also various birds and fowls to make a clamor when it was time for day.
Qat showed the brothers how to construct beds of coca fronds and spread them on the floor and how to lie down for rest.
The brothers looked out and saw the sun moving down the west.
“It is departing,” they cried to Qat. “Will it come back?”
“What is happening is called night,” Qat told them.
Then he let loose the night.
“What is spreading and covering the sky?” cried the brothers.
“This is night,” said Qat. “Lie down and keep quiet.”
The brothers lay down, and in the dark they felt strange and dreamy; their eyes grew heavy and closed.
“Are we dying?” said the brothers.
“This is sleep,” said Qat.
Only the birds knew how long the night should last; so when the night had lasted as long as the night should last, the cock crowed and the birds began to call and answer.
Qat then took a piece of red obsidian for a knife and cut a hole in the night. The first light that showed through was red, and soon all the light the night had covered shone through once again. The brothers opened their eyes and started the work of the day.
This is the way mankind lives now: day—sleep—day.
—Maria Leach. The Beginning. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1956, pp. 178–181.—Rewritten from R. H. Codrington. The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folklore. Oxford: 1891, pp. 156–158.
MARSHALL ISLANDS
Long, Long, Long Ago Spanning the western Pacific from the Marianas Islands some three thousand miles to the Gilberts, Micronesia has suffered greatly for the “strategic” value foreigners place on it. The Chamorro people of Guam, for instance, were decimated by the Jesuits and the Spanish soldiers who accompanied them to convert the people in 1688; twenty years later, only 3,500 of the original population of 100,000 remained.
The thirty-four atolls of the Marshall Islands have fared only somewhat better: a German protectorate from 1885 until 1914 when they were captured by the Japanese, they remained under Japanese control until they fell to the Americans in 1944 and were made a part of the U.S. Trust Territories of the Pacific in 1947. (The United States conducted nuclear bomb tests on some of the atolls in the Marshalls during the next twenty years.)
This creation myth was recounted by James Milne, a Marshallese, in the early 1950s. It depicts a two-part world, heavenly order and earthly chaos, and a great creator god Lowa, who made the islands by commanding them to appear. Four divine figures control the directions and the main powers in life: sun, wind, life, and death. Most interesting is the assignment given to two culture heroes to tattoo everything, thus determining function and rank and uniting the natural and social orders with the will of the gods. Appropriate behavior within these sacred orders is rewarded with eternal life and being; transgressors are weighted down by their crimes and fall into the ocean, the chaos of not-being.
LONG, LONG, LONG AGO there wasn’t any land at all, only the ocean, but there was a god named Lowa who came down to an island (maybe this island was Ailinglaplap). This god made a command followed by a magical sound, “Mmmmmm,” and all of the islands were created. He went back to heaven and sent down four other men to this island. These four men each went in different directions, one to the east, one to the west, one to the south, and one to the north. [The Marshallese consider east the principal cardinal direction.] The man in the west was called Iroijdrilik; the man in the east, Lokumran, “the man who twists the daybreak”; the man in the south, Lorok, “the man of the south”; the man in the north, Lojibwineamen. Each of these men has duties to perform. Iroijdrilik is the king of all and it is his duty to see that all living things are produced, even plants and birds. The man in the south has the duty of looking after the winds. The man in the north takes care of all death; he kills everything by individual acts.
After these men were in their places, Lowa sent another man (name forgotten) down to arrange the islands. He put all the islands in a basket [not known how, or if they were in the water first] and, starting from the Carolines, put them into their present positions. Then he started placing all the Marshall Islands of the two chains into their proper order. As he came from Ailinglaplap to Jaluit, one island fell out of the basket. This island which fell was Namorik, and that is why it is out of line today. He just let it go and didn’t bother to put Namorik back in order. He placed Jaluit, then Ebon, and then threw away the basket which became Kili (named after Kilok, a kind of strong working-basket plaited by men out of coconut leaflets). This ended the island-forming.
Next Lowa sent two men to Ailinglaplap again to tattoo everything in the world that had been created. All the individuals and animals were really offspring of Lowa. These men were called Lanej and (name forgotten), they were to tattoo everything—the fish, the birds, all creatures, and men—all living things that walked or moved about. This
is how each kind of animal got its characteristic markings, and also it started the rank-signifying tattoos for chiefs, commoners, and women.
Everybody in the world came to Ailinglaplap to be tattooed. From Bikini there came a canoe. There were no sails yet, but in those days there was a special part of each canoe called the “fish.” This part of the canoe pushed it to Wotho, but there was a ghost on Wotho that speared the “fish” and killed it so that from then on they had to paddle the canoe to make it move. On their way paddling to Ailinglaplap, the people got so tired that no one wanted to bail. When they came to the south pass into the lagoon at a place called Buoj, as soon as they reached the edge of the reef, the canoe sank and the people had to swim, the birds had to fly, and all the others swam to shore except the rat who was a poor swimmer and almost drowned. As the rat was struggling, an octopus came up and said “Oh, my friend, I’ll help you.” The octupus put the rat on his head and took him ashore. Just before the rat jumped off he defecated on the octopus’ head. Laughing, the rat called back to the octopus, “Ha, ha, I put something.” The octopus heard him and felt his head and discovered the feces which he couldn’t wipe off. The octopus was enraged, and swam back to shore, but since he could not walk up the beach, he couldn’t catch the rat. From that day to the present, the octopus hates the rat. The rat finally got his tattooing, but he was the very last one and the soot dye was very weak; there was too much water. This is why the rat’s tattoing is very bad and has a grey color, and why the rat always looks dirty. However, everyone else got a good tattoo.
Now everyone in the world had been tattooed, and the names of the fish and animals had been assigned to each. It was now up to Iroijdrilik to see that everything grows, is born and perpetuated. The man in the north, Lojibwineamen, is responsible for calling people to death when he wants to. After he calls them and they die, the people are always buried near the water on either side of the atoll, but more commonly near the lagoon side. After either three or six days, the soul arises out of the grave to go to Nako, an islet at Nadrikdrik, near Mille. Before the soul can enter this island it must cross a channel which is full of big fish. No one can escape this jump; the bad people, heavy with sin, can’t make the leap and fall into the water for the fish to eat. The good jump across easily to the spirit place. (In order to get to the spirit land they must prepare for it; first, respect their mother; second, respect their father; third, be brave in battle; fourth, respect their chief; then there is no trouble in making the leap.) When the spirit island is reached, everlasting spirit food, the fat of the squirrel fish [Myripristis, sp.] is served so that no one will ever get hungry or thirsty, no matter how long he stays there. From the spirit island of Nako the person goes to where Lojibwineamen lives in the north.
—William H. Davenport. “Marshallese Folklore Types.” Journal of American Folklore, 1953, 66, 221–223. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society.
MAIANA ISLAND
Making Things Southeast of the Marshall Islands, Maiana is a part of the Gilbert Islands, a British protectorate since 1892. Although there was considerable Christian missionary activity in these islands (Hiram Bingham even translated the Bible into Gilbertese in 1856), their creation myth is remarkably free of Western influence. In anything, it bears resemblance to Polynesian cosmologies of equal sophistication.
The Maiana myth envisages Na Arean as the source of all being and not-being. Passive in nothingness, he is. Finally he began to create and, in a kind of self-division, made water (chaos, non-being) with his left hand and land (order, being) with his right. Objectifying his creative thought, Na Arean gave birth (“conceived”) to Na Arean the Younger and eventually sent him to inspect the creation. Because it was still chaotic in that it had no point of orientation (described here geographically, but a point equally well taken religiously), Na Arean plucked out a hollow tooth and with it created the navel, the center point of the world. With this absolute orientation, all other ordering could be done; Na Arean the younger then separated the sky and earth and light came through the great axis mundi of god’s sacred tooth.
NA AREAN is pictured as a being who sat alone in space as “a cloud that floats in nothingness.” He slept not, for there was no sleep; he hungered not, for as yet there was no hunger. So he remained for a great while, until a thought came into his mind. He said to himself, “I will make a thing.” So he made water in his left hand, and dabbled it with his right until it was muddy; then [$$$]e rolled the mud flat and sat upon it. As he said, a great swelling grew in his forehead, until on the third day it burst, and a little man sprang forth. “Thou art my thought,” said Na Arean; “Thou art the picture of my thought (taamnein an iango, ngkoe). Thy name is Na Arean the Younger. Sit thou in my right eye or in my left eye, as thou wilt.” So the little man sat sometimes in his father’s right eye and sometimes in his left, and for a great while it was so. At last Na Arean the First-of-things called aloud, “Na Arean!” His son answered, “O?” He said, “Come forth from my eye. Go down and tread on the thing I have made. Where are the ends of it?” His father said again, “Where is the middle of it?” He answered, “I know not.” So Na Arean the elder plucked a hollow tooth from his jaw and thrust it into the thing he had made, saying, “This is the navel!” Through the hollow tooth, Na Arean the Younger descended and found a Darkness and a Cleaving-together of the elements, which he proceeded to straighten out in the usual manner. When heaven stood on high, it was found that the light of the upper regions streamed through the hollow tooth of Na Arean the elder: thus, the sun came into being.
—A. Grimble. “Myths from the Gilbert Islands.” Folklore, 1922, 33, 106–107.
FOUR MAORI COSMOLOGIES
The Maori, Polynesian natives of New Zealand, were first visited by Europeans in 1642 when the Dutch navigator A. J. Tasman “discovered” the island. Captain Cook came there, too, in 1769, and by 1814 the first Christian missionary Samuel Marsden had arrived. Although the Maori received full possession of their land in exchange for surrender to the British in 1840 under the Treaty of Waitangi, the late 1840s and most of the 1860s were marked by warfare between them and the British.
All of this Western influence had relatively little effect on the basic tenets of Maori cosmology. Among the most profound in terms of the radicality of its questioning and the sophistication of its answers, Maori thought not only encompasses issues of being and not-being but also deals directly with the relation of spirit and matter.
The Maori envision a gradual evolution of Being-Itself, described as pure thought, first into not-being (the void, chaos, darkness) and then into being (sky and earth, order, light). Like the early Vedic thinkers, they argue that gods evolved with the specific forms of being; as personifications of great powers, they are still dependent on not-being. Being-Itself, on the other side of nothingness, is neither deified nor anthropomorphized.
Problems of description at this level of thinking are enormous. Because concepts all presume being and words are descriptive of things, a certain amount of awkwardness inevitably results when they are applied to the nothingness that preceded being and its forms.
A Genealogy In this genealogical chant, the Maori adopt a vegetal metaphor and speak of sky and earth as the flowers of the roots of Being-Itself.
TE PU (The Root)
Te More (The Taproot)
Te Weu (The Rootlet)
Te Aka (The Vine or Creeper)
Te Rea (The Growth)
Te Wao-nui (The Great Forest)
Te Kune (The Development)
Te Whe (The Sound)
Te Kore (The Nothing)
Te Po (The Night)
Rangi (Sky) Papa (Earth)
—A. W. Reed. Treasury of Maori Folklore. Wellington, New Zealand: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1963, pp. 19–20.
Po The Maori are particularly adept at describing degrees and qualities of nothingness, stages in the evolution of not-being. In this chant, Po—the void, passive eons of nonexistence—succeed each other in subtle fashion.
TE PO-TE-KITEA, the unseen Po.
Te Po-te-whaia, the unpossessed Po.
Te Po-te-wheau, the unpassing Po.
Te Po-tangotango, the Po of utter darkness.
Te Po-te-whawha, the untouched and untouchable Po.
—A. W. Reed. Treasury of Maori Folklore. Wellington, New Zealand: A. H. and A. W. Reed. 1963, p. 18.
The Creation One of the grandest Maori chants reveals creation in abstract physical stages, evolving through the three periods of thought, night, and finally light. It is as dramatic and moving as any myth, not only because of its rich language and hypnotic rhythm, but also because its point of view is internal and participatory, not objective and reportorial.
There is no deity here, no fixing of a sacred process into one persona; nature itself is only a dependent part of the whole. Unknowable and inexplicable, Being-Itself evolves “from the conception” through thought, spirit and matter to the great climax, the “blaze of day from the sky.”
FIRST PERIOD
(thought)
From the conception the increase,
From the increase the thought,
From the thought the remembrance,
From the remembrance the consciousness,
From the consciousness the desire.
SECOND PERIOD (night)
The world became fruitful;
It dwelt with the feeble glimmering;
It brought forth night:
The great night, the long night,
The lowest night, the loftiest night,
The thick night, to be felt,
The night to be touched,
The night not to be seen,
The night of death.
THIRD PERIOD (light)
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