But this is not all. The Mandans were evidently of the race of Atlantis.
They have another singular legend, which we find in the account of Lewis and Clarke:
“Their belief in a future state is connected with this theory of their origin: The whole nation resided in one large village, underground, near a subterranean lake. A grape-vine extended its roots down to their habitation, and gave them a view of the light. Some of the most adventurous climbed up the vine, and were delighted with the sight of the earth, which they found covered with buffalo, and rich with every kind of fruit. Returning with the grapes they had gathered, their countrymen were so pleased with the taste of them that the whole nation resolved to leave their dull residence for the charms of the upper region. Men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine, but, when about half the nation had reached the surface of the earth, a corpulent woman, who was clambering up the vine, broke it with her weight, and closed upon herself and the rest of the nation the light of the sun.”
This curious tradition means that the present nation dwelt in a large settlement underground, that is, beyond the land, in the sea; the sea being represented by “the subterranean lake.” At one time the people had free intercourse between this “large village” and the American continent, and they founded extensive colonies on this continent; whereupon some mishap cut them off from the mother country. This explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the legends of the Iowa Indians, who were a branch of the Dakotas, or Sioux Indians, and relatives of the Mandans (according to Major James W. Lynd), “all the tribes of Indians were formerly one, and all dwelt together on an island, or at least across a large water toward the east or sunrise.
They crossed this water in skin canoes, or by swimming; but they know not how long they were in crossing, or whether the water was salt or fresh.” While the Dakotas, according to Major Lynd, who lived among them for nine years, possessed legends of “huge skiffs, in which the Dakotas of old floated for weeks, finally gaining dry land”—a reminiscence of ships and long sea-voyages.
The Mandans celebrated their great religious festival above described in the season when the willow is first in leaf, and a dove is mixed up in the ceremonies; and they further relate a legend that “the world was once a great tortoise, borne on the waters, and covered with earth, and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men, who had made holes in the earth to a great depth digging for badgers, at length pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in its beak.”
The holes dug to find badgers were a savage’s recollection of mining operations; and when the great disaster came, and the island sunk in the sea amid volcanic convulsions, doubtless men said it was due to the deep mines, which had opened the way to the central fires. But the recurrence of “white men” as the miners, and of a white man as “the last and only man,” and the presence of white blood in the veins of the people, all point to the same conclusion—that the Mandans were colonists from Atlantis.
And here I might add that Catlin found the following singular resemblances between the Mandan tongue and the Welsh:
--------------+------------+-------------+
| English. | Mandan. | Welsh. | Pronounced. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | I | Me. | Mi. | Me. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | You. | Ne. | Chwi. | Chwe. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | He. | E. | A. | A. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | She. | Ea. | E. | A. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | It. | Ount. | Hwynt. | Hooynt. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | We. | Noo. | Ni. | Ne. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | They. | Eonah. | Hona, fem. | Hona. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | No; or there is not. | Megosh. | Nagoes. | Nagosh. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | No. | | Na. | |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | Head. | Pan. | Pen. | Pan. |
--------------+------------+-------------+ | The Great Spirit. | Maho Peneta. | Mawr | Mosoor | | | | Penaethir. | Panaether. |
--------------+------------+-------------+
Major Lynd found the following resemblances between the Dakota tongue and the languages of the Old World:
COMPARISON OF DAKOTA, OR SIOUX, WITH OTHER LANGUAGES.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Latin.
English.
Saxon
Sanscrit.
German.
Danish.
Sioux.
Other
Primary
Languages.
Signification.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
See,
Seon
Sehen
Sigt
Sin
Appearing,
seen
visible.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Pinso
Pound
Punian
Pau
W.,
Beating
Pwynian
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Vado
Went
Wendan
Winta
Passage.
Wend
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Town
Tun
Zaun
Tun
Tonwe
Gaelic,
Dun
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Qui
Who
Hwa
Kwas
Wir
Tuwe
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Weapon
Wepn
Wapen
Vaapen
Wipe
Sioux dimin.
Wipena
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Ego
I
Ic
Agam
Ich
Jeg
Mish
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Cor
Core
Co
Gr., Kear
Centre, heart
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Eight
Achta
Aute
Acht
Otte
Shaktogan
Gr., Okto
Canna
Cane
Can
Heb., Can
Reed, weed,
W., Cawn
wood.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Pock
Pock
Poc
Pocke
Pukkel
Poka
Dutch,
Swelling.
Poca
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
With
With
Wider
Wita
Goth.,
Gewithan.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Doughty
Dohtig
Taugen
Digtig
Dita
Hot, brave,
Ditaya
daring.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Tight
Tian
Dicht
Digt
Titan
Strain.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Tango
Touch
Taecan
Ticken
Tekkan
Tan
Touch, take.
Tactus
Take
Htaka
Child
Cild
Kind
Kuld
Cin
Progeny.
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Work
Wercan
Woccas
Dutch,
Labor, motion.
Hecon
Werk
Span.,
Hecho
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Shackle
Seoacul
Shka
Ar.,
to bind (a
Schakala,
link).
Dutch,
Schakel
Teton,
Shakalan
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Query
Kuiva
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
Shabby
Schabig
Schabbig
Shabya
----------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+-----------+------------+----------------+
According to Major Lynd, the Dakotas, or Sioux, belonged to the same race as the Mandans; hence the interest which attaches to these verbal similarities.
“Among the Iroquois there is a tradition that the sea and waters infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed. The Chickasaws assert that the world was once destroyed by water, but that one family was saved, and two animals of every kind. The Sioux say there was a time when there was no dry land, and all men had disappeared from existence.” (See Lynd’s “MS. History of the Dakotas,” Library of Historical Society of Minnesota.)
“The Okanagaus have a god, Skyappe, and also one called Chacha, who appear to be endowed with omniscience; but their principal divinity is their great mythical ruler and heroine, Scomalt. Long ago, when the sun was no bigger than a star, this strong medicine-woman ruled over what appears to have now become a lost island. At last the peace of the island was destroyed by war, and the noise of battle was heard, with which Scomalt was exceeding wroth, whereupon she rose up in her might and drove her rebellious subjects to one end of the island, and broke off the piece of land on which they were huddled and pushed it out to sea, to drift whither it would. This floating island was tossed to and fro and buffeted by the winds till all but two died. A man and woman escaped in a canoe, and arrived on the main-land; and from these the Okanagaus are descended.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 149.) Here we have the Flood legend clearly connected with a lost island.
The Nicaraguans believed “that ages ago the world was destroyed by a flood, in which the most part of mankind perished. Afterward the teotes, or gods, restored the earth as at the beginning.” (Ibid., p. 75.) The wild Apaches, “wild from their natal hour,” have a legend that “the first days of the world were happy and peaceful days;” then came a great flood, from which Montezuma and the coyote alone escaped. Montezuma became then very wicked, and attempted to build a house that would reach to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.
(Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 76.) The Pimas, an Indian tribe allied to the Papagos, have a peculiar flood legend. The son of the Creator was called Szeu-kha (Ze-us?). An eagle prophesied the deluge to the prophet of the people three times in succession, but his warning was despised; “then in the twinkling of an eye there came a peal of thunder and an awful crash, and a green mound of water reared itself over the plain. It seemed to stand upright for a second, then, cut incessantly by the lightning, goaded on like a great beast, it flung itself upon the prophet’s hut. When the morning broke there was nothing to be seen alive but one man—if indeed he were a man; Szeu-kha, the son of the Creator, had saved himself by floating on a ball of gum or resin.” This instantaneous catastrophe reminds one forcibly of the destruction of Atlantis. Szeu-kha killed the eagle, restored its victims to life, and repeopled the earth with them, as Deucalion repeopled the earth with the stones.
CHAPTER VI.
SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE DELUGE LEGENDS.
The Fountains of the Great Deep.—As Atlantis perished in a volcanic convulsion, it must have possessed volcanoes. This is rendered the more probable when we remember that the ridge of land of which it was a part, stretching from north to south, from Iceland to St. Helena, contains even now great volcanoes—as in Iceland, the Azores, the Canaries, etc.—and that the very sea-bed along the line of its original axis is, to this day, as we have shown, the scene of great volcanic disturbances.
If, then, the mountains of Atlantis contained volcanoes, of which the peaks of the Azores are the surviving representatives, it is not improbable that the convulsion which drowned it in the sea was accompanied by great discharges of water. We have seen that such discharges occurred in the island of Java, when four thousand people perished. “Immense columns of hot water and boiling mud were thrown out”
of the volcano of Galung Gung; the water was projected from the mountain “like a water-spout.” When a volcanic island was created near Sicily in 1831, it was accompanied by “a waterspout sixty feet high.”
In the island of Dominica, one of the islands constituting the Leeward group of the West Indies, and nearest to the site of Atlantis, on the 4th of January, 1880, occurred a series of convulsions which reminds us forcibly of the destruction of Plato’s island; and the similarity extends to another particular: Dominica contains, like Atlantis, we are told, numerous hot and sulphur springs. I abridge the account given by the New York Herald of January 28th, 1880: “A little after 11 o’clock A.M., soon after high-mass in the Roman Catholic cathedral, and while divine service was still going on in the Anglican and Wesleyan chapels, all the indications of an approaching thunder-storm suddenly showed themselves; the atmosphere, which just previously had been cool and pleasant—slight showers falling since early morning—became at once nearly stifling hot; the rumbling of distant thunder was heard, and the light-blue and fleecy white of the sky turned into a heavy and lowering black. Soon the thunder-peals came near and loud, the lightning flashes, of a blue and red color, more frequent and vivid; and the rain, first with a few heavy drops, commenced to pour as if the floodgates of heaven were open. In a moment it darkened, as if night had come; a strong, nearly overpowering smell of sulphur announced itself; and people who happened to be out in the streets felt the rain-drops falling on their heads, backs, and shoulders like showers of hailstones. The cause of this was to be noted by looking at the spouts, from which the water was rushing like so many cataracts of molten lead, while the gutters below ran swollen streams of thick gray mud, looking like nothing ever seen in them before. In the mean time the Roseau River had worked itself into a state of mad fury, overflowing its banks, carrying down rocks and large trees, and threatening destruction to the bridges over it and the houses in its neighborh
ood. When the storm ceased—it lasted till twelve, mid-day—the roofs and walls of the buildings in town, the street pavement, the door-steps and back-yards were found covered with a deposit of volcanic debris, holding together like clay, dark-gray in color, and in some places more than an inch thick, with small, shining metallic particles on the surface, which could be easily identified as iron pyrites.
Scraping up some of the stuff, it required only a slight examination to determine its main constituents—sandstone and magnesia, the pyrites being slightly mixed, and silver showing itself in even smaller quantity. This is, in fact, the composition of the volcanic mud thrown up by the soufrieres at Watton Waven and in the Boiling Lake country, and it is found in solution as well in the lake water. The Devil’s Billiard-table, within half a mile of the Boiling Lake, is composed wholly of this substance, which there assumes the character of stone in formation. Inquiries instituted on Monday morning revealed the fact that, except on the south-east, the mud shower had not extended beyond the limits of the town. On the north-west, in the direction of Fond Colo and Morne Daniel, nothing but pure rain-water had fallen, and neither Loubiere nor Pointe Michel had seen any signs of volcanic disturbance. .