The Tales of the Walrus

Copyright © 2013 by Richard Sharkey.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011918345

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-7915-3

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                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-7916-0

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Contents

CHAPTER I      A BEGINNING TO THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER II      EARTH-MOTHER

CHAPTER III      EVE NÉE LILITH

CHAPTER IV      ADAM

CHAPTER V      DANAIDS

CHAPTER VI      HERMES

CHAPTER VII      HORSES AND UNICORNS

CHAPTER VIII      THE GORGON MEDUSA

CHAPTER IX      THE MINOAN EMPIRE

CHAPTER X      PROMETHEUS

CHAPTER XI      HIBERNIA

CHAPTER XII      BEOWULF

CHAPTER XIII      TARA

CHAPTER XIV      ABRAHAM

CHAPTER XV      THESEUS

CHAPTER XVI      CUCHULAIN

CHAPTER XVII      KU-KUL-KAN

CHAPTER XVIII      AMERICA

CHAPTER XIX      HANNO

CHAPTER XX      PIZARRO

CHAPTER XXI      A UNITED STATES IN AMERICA

NOTES

CHAPTER I

A BEGINNING TO THE HISTORY OF

THE UNITED STATES

A history to the United States begins some 650 thousand years ago, during the epoch geologically recognized as the beginning of the Pleistocene era’s second interglacial recession. The traditional account came from ancestors of the Native Americans and was discovered by a man named Frank Hamilton Cushing, who was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1857. The Cushing family had moved to Western New York State, where the young Frank Hamilton developed an interest in Native American people and their culture. As a young man, Cushing attended New York’s Cornell University. His interest in America’s Indians and their cultures earned him a position in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington DC. At age nineteen, Cushing accompanied a curator named John Wesley Powell to New Mexico. In New Mexico, Cushing took residency among the native Zuni people, where he dressed in tribal attire and acquired a fluency in the Zuni language. The respect he displayed earned him a membership in the Zuni Priesthood of the Bow society. At one of the society meetings, Cushing heard a tribal tradition recited by a sachem in the Zuni’s tribal language. What he had heard recited, he translated into written English, then had the sachem read and verify the accuracy of his translation.

Cushing submitted his translation of this Zuni account to the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology, which read it aloud at one of its meetings and published it. The translation appears on page 379 in the thirteenth annual report of the Smithsonian Institution and is entitled, The Gestation of Men and the Creatures. The account reads as follows:

Anon in the nethermost of the four cave-wombs of the world, the seed of men and the creatures took form and increased; even as within eggs in warm places worms speedily appear, which growing, presently burst their shells and become as may happen, birds, tadpoles, or serpents, so did men and all creatures grow manifoldly and multiply in many kinds. Thus the lowermost womb or cave-world, which was Ánosin téhuli (the womb of sooty depth or of growth-generation, because it was the place of first formation and black as a chimney at night time, foul too, as the internals of the belly), thus did it become overfilled with being. Everywhere were unfinished creatures, crawling like reptiles over one another in filth and black darkness, crowding thickly together and treading each other, one spitting on another or doing other indecency, insomuch that loud became their murmurings and lamentations, until many among them sought to escape, growing wiser and more manlike.

The concept of the "four cave-wombs of the world" coincides exactly with what is recognized scientifically as the Pleistocene era’s four glacial maximums. The Zuni oral tradition says that the family ancestors sought shelter from a prolonged unseasonal cold in caves. Generations of Zuni ancestral families continued to live in the cave’s shelter until a slow return of warmth enabled them to lead a life beneath sun and stars. Then the tradition tells of another sudden unexpected glacial freeze many generations later, during which the ancestral Zuni families were again seeking places of shelter in caves. Keeping inside the caves and gathering around the warmth and light of hearth fires, the traditional stories would have been repeatedly told to stave off boredom.

Priesthood of the Bow society meetings were held every year, and the sachems recited the Zuni tradition in four parts, one part in each of four years. Over the course of eight years, Frank Hamilton Cushing attended the Priesthood of the Bow society meetings and heard the tradition recited twice in four parts. And what Cushing had heard recited in the Zuni language, he translated into written English, then again had the sachem confirm the accuracy of the translation. Cushing then submitted his full translation of the Zuni tradition in English to the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology. The full translated account was published with the title, The Unripeness and Instability of the World When Still Young, and appears on page 12 of the bureau’s second annual report of 1880-1881.

The tradition, as Cushing narrated it, begins by describing a sudden unseasonal cold that compelled ancestral families to take shelter in an Earth-mother’s lowermost womb or cave-world. The place of first formation is described as the womb of sooty depth or of growth generation. The account then describes a slow and eventual return to a seasonal warmth. Families began spending longer daylight hours outside the caves, then were able to sleep outside the caves beneath a starlit sky. And then there came another sudden onslaught of unseasonal cold. Ancestral Zuni families again sought the shelter of caves, during what geologically was a third Pleistocene glacial maximum. Generations of Zuni ancestors stayed close to the shelter of caves. There was a very slow return to interglacial warmth, but Zuni ancestors traditionally described two previous sudden onsets of prolonged freezing conditions followed by periods of more time spent outside the caves. Eventually, the Zuni ancestors decided to move south to a warmer climate, traveling under sun and stars, to what is described in the tradition as the Earth-mother’s navel. Through the Earth-mother’s bulging belly, there ran a river valley between elevated heights [which] drained into a broad watery space beyond. The next chapter will describe this more fully; suffice it to say that the place where the Zuni ancestors settled corresponds to what is now France, in Europe.

Zuni ancestors crossed the river through the Earth-mother’s navel, onto what was yet to become an Africa. Travel southward eventually brought Zuni tribal ancestors to what the tradition refers to as Áwisho tehuli—the Earth-mother’s vaginal womb or the place of sex-generation or gestation. The Earth-mother’s navel was a river that broadened and drained into a large watery space beyond in a tropic latitude; this was the Earth-mother’s genitalia, vaginal womb, and place of sex-generation or gestation. Where the river narrowed, the tribal peoples managed to cross to a land beyond. That was sometime before a geological fourth glacial maximum had ended around 25,000 BC, when generations of nations were led successively into the next and last world-cave, Tépahaian tehuli, the ultimate-uncoverable or Womb of Parturition.

That was at a time before a world continent had become separated and when nations and tribes of men and the creatures thus waxed numerous as before and multiplied apart and in kind from one another. And here, too, the Americas became overfilled, about which the Zuni tradition then tells:

The Forthcoming from Earth of the Foremost of Men

Then come among men and the beings, it is said, the wisest of wise men and the foremost, the all-sacred master, Póshaiyaŋk’ya, he who appeared in the waters below, even as did the Sun-father in the wastes above, and who arose from the nethermost sea, and pitying men still, won upward, gaining by virtue of his (innate) wisdom-knowledge issuance from that first world-womb through ways so dark and narrow that those who, seeing somewhat, crowded after…

As it was with men and the creatures, so with the world; it was young and unripe (k’yaíyuna). Unstable its surface was, like that of a marsh; dank, even the high places, like the floor of a cavern, so that seeds dropped on it sprang forth, and even the substance of offal became growing things. Earthquakes shook the world and rent it. Beings of sorcery, demons and monsters of the under-world fled forth. Creatures turned fierce, becoming beasts of prey, wherefore others turned timid, becoming their quarry; wretchedness and hunger abounded, black magic, war, and contention entered when fear did into the hearts of men and the creatures. Yea, fear was everywhere among them, wherefore, everywhere the people, hugging in dread their precious possessions, became wanderers they, living on the seeds of grasses, eaters of the dead and slain things! Yet still, they were guided by the Two Beloved, ever into the direction of the east, told and taught that they must seek, in the light and under the pathway of the Sun, the middle of the world, ever which alone they could find the earth stable, or rest and hide them in peace. Alone, then, he fared upward from one womb (cave) to another out into the great breadth of daylight. There, the earth lay, like a vast island in the midst of great waters, wet and unstable. And alone fared he forth dayward, seeking the Sun-father and supplicating him to deliver mankind and the creatures there below.

The Americas, as part of a world continent, were not yet divided into a north and a south. Nations of man, seeking a less tropical environment, traveled northward through the middle of the world jungle habitat to seek and find the earth stable.

Here it was light like the dawning, and men began to perceive and to learn variously according to their natures, wherefore the Twain taught them to seek first of all our Sun-father, who would, they said, reveal to them the wisdom and knowledge of the ways of life—wherein also they were instructing them as we do little children. Yet like the other cave-worlds, this too became, after a long time, filled with progeny; and finally, at periods, the Two led forth the nations of man and the kinds of being, into this great upper world, which is called Ték’ohaian úlahnane, or the World of Disseminated Light and Knowledge or Seeing.

The Hardening of the World, and the First Settlement of Men

When the tremblings grew still for a time, the people were bidden to gather and pause at the First of Sitting-Places, which was named K’éyatiwankwi (place of upturning or elevation). Yet still poor and defenseless and unskilled were the children of men, still moist and ever-anon unstable the world they abode in. Still also, great demons and monsters of prey fled violently forth in times of earthquakes and menaced all wanderers and timid creatures. Therefore the Beloved Twain (Earth and Moon), took council one with the other and with the Sun-father, and instructed by him, the elder said to the younger, "Brother, behold!

That the earth shall be made safer for men, and more stable,

Let us shelter the land where our children be resting.

Yea! the depths and the valleys beyond shall be sheltered

By the shade of our cloud-shield! Let us lay to its circle

Our firebolts of thunder, aimed at all the four regions,

Then smite with our arrows of lightning from under.

Lo! fire shall belch outward and burn the world over.

And floods of hot water shall seethe swift before it!

Lo! smoke of earth-stenches shall blacken the daylight

And deaden the senses of them else escaping

And lessen the number of fierce preying monsters!

That the earth be made safer, and more stable."

The Beloved Twain, earth and moon, in council with one another and with the Sun-father, then said:

It were well, said the younger, ever eager, and forthwith they made ready as they had between themselves devised. Then said the elder to the younger,

Wilt thou stand to the right, or shall I, younger brother?

I will stand to the right! said the younger, and stood there.

To the left stood the elder and when all was ready,

Hluáa they let fly at the firebolts, their arrows!

Deep bellowed the earth, heaving upward and downward.

It is done, said the elder. It is well, said the younger.

Dread was the din and the stir. The heights staggered and the mountains reeled, the plains boomed and crackled under the floods and the fires, and the high hollow places, hugged of men and the creatures, were bleak and awful, so that these grew crazed with panic and strove alike to escape or hide more deeply. But ere-while they grew deafened and deadened, forgetful and asleep! A tree lighted of lightning burns not long! Presently thick rains fell, quenching the fires; and waters washed the face of the world, cutting deep trails from the heights downward, and scattering abroad the wrecks and corpses of stricken things and beings, or burying them deeply. Lo! they are seen in the mountains to this day; and in the trails of those fierce waters cool rivers now run, and where monsters perished lime of their bones (áluwe—calcareous nodules in malpais or volcanic tuff) we find, and use in food stuff! Gigantic were they, for their forms little and great were often burned or shriveled and contorted into stone. Seen were these, also, along the depths of the world. Where they huddled together and were blasted thus, their blood gushed forth and flowed deeply, here in rivers, there in floods; but it was charred and blistered and blackened by fires, into the black rocks of the lower mesas (ápkwina, lava or malpais). There were vast plains of dust, ashes, cinders, reddened as the mud of the hearth-place. There were great banks of clay and soil burned to hardness—as clay is when baked in the kiln-mound—blackened, bleached or stained yellow, gray, red, or white, streaked and banded, bended or twisted. Worn and broken by the heavings of the under-world and by the waters and breaths of the ages, they are the mountain-terraces of the Earth-mother, dividing country from country! [Emphasis added]

Such was the ancestral Zuni eyewitness survivor’s account of the separation of America, north and south together, as part of a world continent. The separation and upheavals that began to form the world’s continents appear to have occurred sometime around the years 18,000 BC.

CHAPTER II

EARTH-MOTHER

Zuni tradition, which describes the cataclysmic change that was dividing country from country, suggests something akin to the force of gravity. Gravity had drawn matter together from across the universe, the molten matter forming a body that is our sun. Matter ejected outward from this star was drawn together as molten globules spaced apart at varying distances. Each of these molten masses was drawn together by gravity, forming a globule with varying weight and mass. The denser matter was drawn inward within each globule, sending lighter matter spiraling outward, and leading to an axial spin. The third molten globule, our Earth, cooled, and its surface contracted. The shrinking outer surface formed a crust, which developed a different rate of axial rotation. The different rotation rate caused the hard outer crust to separate and to be ejected from the molten interior. The matter ejected in this way was drawn by its own gravity to form another globular body—the moon—which orbited through space with the same side always facing its Earth-parent.

Planet Earth, as an axial globular rotating body, was never a perfect sphere. Eventually, the surface partially developed a hard crust, but the axial spin produced a geocentripetal force pushing matter