V.

_American Stories of the Flood._

"It is a very remarkable fact," says M. Alfred Maury, "that we find

in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that

of the Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the

Old World. It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that

certainly took place from Asia into North America by the Kourile and

Aleutian islands, and still does so in our day, should have brought

in these memories, since no trace is found of them among those

Mongol or Siberian populations,[57] which were fused with the

natives of the New World.... No doubt certain American nations, the

Mexicans and Peruvians, had reached a very advanced social condition

at the time of the Spanish conquest, but this civilization had a

special character, and seems to have been developed on the soil

where it flourished. Many very simple inventions, such as the use of

weights, were unknown to these people, and this shows that their

knowledge was not derived from India or Japan. The attempts that

have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia

have not as yet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides,

had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could

not have introduced a myth not found in its own Scriptures.[58] The

cause of these similarities between the diluvian traditions of the

nations of the New World and that of the Bible remains therefore

unexplained."

I have particular pleasure in quoting these words by a man of immense

erudition, because he does not belong to orthodox writers, and will not

therefore be thought biassed by a preconceived opinion. Others also, no

less rationalistic than he, have pointed out this likeness between

American traditions of the Deluge and those of the Bible and the

Chaldeans.

The most important among the former are the Mexican, for they appear to

have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before

any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of

the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli

or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in

a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft, made of cypress

wood (_Cupressus disticha_). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox

have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs,

and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly

in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and in Chaldean

sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife,

his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was

essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god

Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture

from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with which the earth

was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the

humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi,

seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain

of Colhuacan.

The document, however, that gives the most valuable information as to

the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as "Codex Vaticanus," from

the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic

pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual

one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the

conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de los

Rios, a Dominican monk, who in 1566, less than fifty years after the

arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous

traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.

The first age is marked with the cipher 13×400+6, or 5206, which

Alexander von Humboldt understands as giving the number of years of the

period, and Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg as the date of its commencement,

from a proleptic era going back from the period of the execution of the

manuscript. This age is called _Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Earth." It is that

of the giants, or Quinames, the earliest inhabitants of Anahuac, whose

end was destruction by famine.

The number of the second age is 12×400+4, or 4804, and it is called

_Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Fire." It closes with the descent on Earth of

Xiuhteuchli, the god of fire. Mankind are all transformed into birds,

and only thus escape the conflagration. Nevertheless, one human pair

find refuge in a cave, and repeople the world.

As to the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind," its number is

10×400+10, or 4010. Its final catastrophe is a terrible hurricane raised

by Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air." With few exceptions, men are

metamorphosed into monkeys.

Then comes the fourth age, _Atonatiuh_, "Sun of Water," whose number is

10×400+8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable deluge.

All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man and his

wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a cypress-tree.

The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and consort of

Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down towards earth. Coxcox and

Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a

tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is

represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.

All this is most important, as a mind of the order of Humboldt's did not

hesitate to acknowledge. However, M. Girard de Realle wrote quite

recently:

"The myth of the deluge has been met with in several parts of

America, and Christian writers have not failed to see in it a

reminiscence of the Biblical tradition, nay, in connection with the

pyramid of Chobula, they have found traces of the Tower of Babel. We

shall not waste time in pointing out how out of a fish-god, Coxcox,

among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli among the Aztecs, and a goddess of

flowers, Xochiquetzal, it was easy to concoct the Mexican figures of

Noah and his wife by joining on to them the story of the ark and the

dove. It is enough to observe that all these legends have only been

collected and published at a relatively recent period.[59] The first

chroniclers, so cautious already despite their honest simplicity,

such as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, and the Hispano-indigenous

authors, such as the Tezcucan Ixthilxochitl and the Tlascaltec

Camargo, never breathe a word of stories they could not have failed

to bring to light, had they existed in their days. Lastly, we find

in Mr. Bancroft's[60] work a criticism of these legends, due to Don

Jose Fernando Ramirez, keeper of the National Museum, which proves

incontestably that all these stories spring from all too ready and

tendency-fraught interpretations of old Mexican paintings, which

according to him only represent episodes in the migration of Aztecs

around the central lakes of the plateau of Anahuac."

I much fear that the _tendency_ here is not on the side of writers who

are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian; which,

indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few among them. And

this tendency, when resolved at any cost to attack the Bible, is as

anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical argument in its

defence. No doubt the identical character of Xochiquetzal or

Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain and of

vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicue or Mallalcueye, is a

well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of

Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a

very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of

unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves.

There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two

divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two

survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to the

theory of Don Jose Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have been

interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious

and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M. Girard

de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it only

removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally forced

by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as for

instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still the

existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be shaken,

for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming in a

striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex

Vaticanus."

The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled

by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called _Codex

Chimalpopoca_ by Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis and

partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des

Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history

of the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from

the way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the

age of jaguars, who devour the primordial giants;[61] the second, the

age of wind; at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by

the hurricane, and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods,

everything was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose

sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual

appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point

to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close,

mankind is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape

under the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water,

which immediately precedes our present epoch, and closes with the

Deluge.

Here is the narrative according to Abbe Brasseur's version, held correct

by Americanists:--

"This is the sun called _Nahui-atl_, '4 water.'[62] Now the water

was tranquil for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the

third and fourth times. When the sun _Nahui-atl_ came there had

passed away four hundred years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six

years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and found themselves

changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a single day

all was lost and the day _Nahui-xochitl_ '4 flower,' destroyed all

our flesh.

"And that year was that of _ce-calli_, '1 house,'[63] and the day

_Nahui-atl_ all was lost. Even the mountains sank into the water,

and the water remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.

"Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and

his spouse Nena, saying: 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to

hollow out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the

month Tozontli the water approaches the sky.'

"Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door he said:

'Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize and thy wife one also.'

"But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water

remained calm, for the wood no longer moved, and on opening it they

began to see fish.

"Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they

roasted fish.

"The gods Citlallinicue and Citlalatonac instantly looking down

said: 'Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there. Why do

they thus smoke the sky?' At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca

descended. He began to chide, saying, 'Who has made this fire here?'

And seizing hold of the fish he shaped their loins and heads, and

they were transformed into dogs (_chichime_)."

This last touch is a satire on the Chichimecs, or "barbarians of the

North," founders of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It proves the decidedly

indigenous character of the story, and removes any such suspicion of a

Biblical imitation, as the date might have led to.

The manuscript, written in Spanish by Motolina, who belonged to the

generation of the "conquistadores," has hitherto only been known by

extracts given from it by Abbe Brasseur in his "Recherches sur les

Ruines de Palenque," a work containing many useful documents, though

already pervaded by the delusions which towards the end of his career so

strangely misled this learned pioneer of Mexican antiquarianism. Here,

too, we find the theory of the four suns, or four ages, given in the

same order as by the author of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."

The first is called "age of Tezcatlipoca," because that god had then

added on a half to the sun, which was only half luminous, or had "made

himself sun in its place." This was the age of the Quinames, or giants,

who were almost all exterminated by famine. After this, Quetzlcoatl, the

god of the air, having armed himself with a great stick, struck

Tezcatlipoca with it, threw him into the water, and "and made himself

sun in his place." The fallen god, transforming himself into a jaguar,

devoured such of the Quinames as had escaped from the famine. The

statements of the "Codex Vaticanus" and the "Codex Chimalpopoca" as to

the final catastrophe of the world's first age, are thus reconciled by

this last narrative.

Motolina calls the two next ages those of wind and fire; they are closed

in the way we have seen.

The fourth is the age of the "Sun of Water," placed under the patronage

of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue. The Deluge terminates it, and after

this last cataclysm, we enter upon our present era.

We come next to the "History of the Chichimecs," by Don Fernando d'Alva

Ixtlilxochitl, descendant of the old pagan kings of Tezcuco, whose

pretended silence on the subject we have seen appealed to as disproving

the authenticity of these Mexican diluvian traditions. In the first

chapter of his first book, Ixtlilxochitl relates the story of the cosmic

ages according to the traditions of his native city. He only gives four

in all, including the actual period. The first is the _Atonatiuh_, or

"Sun of Waters," which begins with the creation, and ends with a

universal deluge. Then comes the _Thlachitonatiuh_, or "Sun of Earth,"

when the giants called Quinametziu-Tzocuilhioxime lived, descendants of

the survivors of the first epoch. A frightful earthquake, overthrowing

the mountains, and destroying the greater part of the dwellers on earth,

closes this age. It is in the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind,"

that Olmecs and Xicalanques came from the east to settle in the south of

Mexico. At first they were conquered by the remnant of the Quinames, but

ended by massacring these. Quetzalcoatl next appears as a religious

reformer, but is not listened to by men, whose indocility is punished by

the appalling hurricane during which such as escaped became monkeys.

Then begins the present age, _Tlatonatiuh_, or "Sun of Fire," thus

called because it is to end by a rain of fire. We see, therefore, that

Ixtlilxochitl was perfectly acquainted with the diluvian tradition, and

if he does not enter into its details, he assigns it an important place

in his series of ages.

Therefore we must needs acknowledge the diluvian tradition to be really

indigenous in Mexico and not an invention of missionaries. We may doubt

as to some particulars in some of the versions, though this arises

chiefly from a preconceived idea, because they too much resemble the

story in Genesis; but as to the fundamental tradition it is

unassailable, and intimately connected with a conception not drawn from

the Bible--and universally admitted to have existed--that, namely, of

the four ages of the world. Between this conception, and that of the

four ages or Yugas of India, and of the _manvantaras_ where the

destruction of the world and the renewals of humanity alternate, there

is an analogy which appeared very significant to Humboldt, MacCulloch,

and M. Maury. It is one that justifies us in asking whether the Mexicans

devised it independently or borrowed it more or less directly from

India. The system of the four ages, inseparable in Mexico from that of

the diluvian tradition, confronts us with the problem--ever recurring

with regard to American civilization--of how far these are spontaneous

and how far derived from Asia through Buddhist or other missionaries. In

the present state of our knowledge we can as little solve this problem

negatively as affirmatively, and all attempts made to come to a positive

conclusion are premature and unproductive. Before discovering whence

American civilizations came, we must thoroughly know what they were, nor

attempt the arduous and obscure question of their origin till we frame a

real American archaeology on the same scientific basis and by the same

methods as other archaeologies. And in this respect Messrs. T. G. Muller

and Herbert Bancroft appear to me greatly in advance of their precursors

in this field of inquiry.

For the present, all that can be done is, as I have attempted with Flood

stories, to determine facts without pretending to draw inferences. Hence

I should no longer boldly write, as I did eight years ago: "The Flood

stories of Mexico positively prove the tradition of the Deluge to be one

of the oldest held by humanity--a tradition so primitive as to be

anterior to the dispersion of human families and the final developments

of material civilization; which the Red race peopling America brought

from the common cradle of our species into their new home, at the same

time that the Semites, Chaldeans, and Aryans respectively carried it

into theirs."[64] The fact is that among American peoples this tradition

may not be primitive. We may indeed affirm that it was not borrowed from

the Bible after the arrival of the Spaniards, but we cannot be equally

confident that it was not the result of some previous foreign

importation, the precise date of which we have no means of fixing.

Be that as it may, the doctrines of successive ages, and of the

destruction of the men of the first age by a Deluge, is also found in

the curious book of _Popol-vuh_ that collection of the mythological

traditions of Guatemala, written after the conquest in the native

tongue, by a secret adept of the old religion; discovered, copied, and

translated into Spanish in the beginning of the last century by the

Dominican Francisco Ximenez, cure of St. Thomas of Chiula. His Spanish

version has been published by M. Schelzer, the original text with a

French translation by Abbe Brasseur. Here we read that the gods, seeing

that animals were neither capable of speaking nor of adoring them,

determined to make men in their own image. They fashioned them at first

in clay. But those men had no consistency, could not turn their heads;

spoke, indeed, but understood nothing. The gods then destroyed their

imperfect work by a Deluge. Setting about it for the second time, they

made a man of wood and a woman of resin. These creatures were far

superior to the former; they moved and lived, but only like other

animals; they spoke, but unintelligibly; and gave no thought to the

gods. Then Hurakan, "the heart of heaven," the god of storm, caused a

rain of burning resin to fall, while the ground was shaken by a fearful

earthquake. All the descendants of the wood-and-resin pair perished,

with a few exceptions, who became monkeys of the forest. Finally, out of

white and yellow maize, the gods produced four perfect men:

Balam-Quitze, "the smiling jaguar;" Balam-agab, "the jaguar of the

night;" Mahuentah, "the distinguished name;" and Igi-Balam, "the jaguar

of the moon." They were tall and strong; saw and knew everything, and

rendered thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at this their

final success, and feared for their supremacy: accordingly, they threw a

light veil, like a mist, over the vision of the four men, which became

like that of the men of to-day. While they slept the gods created for

them four wives of great beauty, and from three of these pairs the

Quiches were born--Igi-Balam and his wife Cakixaha having no children.

This series of awkward attempts at creation is sufficiently removed from

the Biblical narrative to do away with any suspicion of Christian

missionary influence over this indigenous quadrennial legend, where, as

usual, we find the belief in the destruction of primal mankind by a

great flood.

We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias

Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the

Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those

Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great

numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted. The

monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted

several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years

after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our

subject:--

"_Question by Bobadilla._ Who has created heaven and earth, the

stars and moon, man and all else?

"_Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan)._ Tamagastad and Cippatoval,

the one is a man, the other a woman.

"_Q._ Who created that man and woman?

"_A._ No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.

"_Q._ Did they create Christians?

"_A._ I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and

Cippatoval.

"_Q._ Are there any gods greater than they?

"_A._ No; we believe them to be the greatest.

* * * * *

"_Q._ Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?

"_A._ They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour

like us Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what

Indians eat.

"_Q._ Who gave them to eat?

"_A._ Everything belongs to them.

"_Q._ Where are they now?

"_A._ In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.

"_Q._ How did they ascend thither?

"_A._ I only know that it is their home. I do not know how they were

born, for they have no father nor mother.

"_Q._ How do they live at present?

"_A._ They eat what Indians eat, for maize and all food proceeds

from the place where dwell the _teotes_ (gods).

"_Q._ Do you know, or have you heard tell, whether since the

_teotes_ created the world it has been destroyed?

"_A._ Before the present race existed, the world was destroyed by

water and all became sea.

"_Q._ How did that man and woman escape?

"_A._ They were in heaven, for that was their dwelling, and

afterwards they came down to earth and re-made all things as they

now are, and we are their issue.

"_Q._ You say the whole world was destroyed by water. Did not some

individuals save themselves in a canoe, or by some other way?

"_A._ No. All the world was drowned, according to what my ancestors

told me."

The great god Tamagastad, of whom mention is made in this dialogue, is

evidently the same as Thomagata, the awful-visaged spirit of fire, whose

cultus was anterior among a portion of the Muyscas at Tunga and Sogamosa

to that of Botchica. This, therefore, brings us back to the religious

and cosmogonic traditions of the very advanced civilization in the high

table-land of Cundinamarca, and we are led to recognize in the

Flood-legend of Botchica a certain echo of the so universally spread

tradition of the Deluge of early ages, mingled with the memory of a

local event, from which the ancestors of the Muyscas had suffered at the

time of their first settlement. Neither must we forget that Botchica and

his wicked spouse, who brought about the inundation of Cundinamarca, are

no other than personifications of the sun and moon, as were the pair

Manco-Capac and Mama-Oello in the empire of the Incas. "The moon of Peru

is gentle and beneficent," well observes M. Girard de Realle, "she helps

her brother and husband in the work of civilization; on the plateau of

Cundinamarca, on the contrary, she is a witch, a veritable deity of

night and of evil, worthily represented by the lugubrious owl."

Some have believed themselves to have discovered the Flood-tradition

among the Peruvians, but careful criticism disproves this. For it only

arises from an unintelligent interpretation of the myth of Viracocha or

Con, god of waters, or more precisely, the personification of the

element, as shown by the legend which represents him as having no bones,

and yet stretching himself out afar, lowering the mountains and filling

up the valleys in his course. He was the chief god of the Aymaras, who,

according to them, had created the earth; and who, issuing from Lake

Titicaca, to manifest himself on earth, had assembled the earliest men

at Tiahuanaco. Later, the official cosmogony of the Incas led to his

undergoing an euhemeristic transformation diminishing his religious

importance; and he is represented as one of the sons of the Sun, come

upon earth to dwell among and civilize mankind, a younger brother of

Manco-Capac. Now it is under the government of Viracocha that the Deluge

is placed by the writers of very recent date, who mention this event, of

which the native tradition was unknown to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,

to Montesinos, Balboa, Gomara, F. Oliva, and, in short, to all

authorities of any weight in Peruvian matters. MacCulloch does indeed

quote Acosta and Herrera, but these authors never speak of a Deluge

involving all humanity; they only say that Viracocha gave laws to the

earliest men at the close of a primordial period anterior to their

creation, when the whole surface of the earth had been under water.

Numerous legends of the great inundation of earliest times have been

found among the savage tribes of America. But by their very nature these

leave room for doubt. They have not been committed to writing by the

natives, we only know them by intermediaries who may, in perfectly good

faith, have altered them considerably in an unconscious desire to

assimilate them to the Bible story. Besides, they have been only

collected very lately, when the tribes had been for a long time in

contact with Europeans, and had often had living among them more than

one adventurer who might well have introduced new elements into their

traditions. They are therefore very inferior in importance to those we

have found existing in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, previous to the

arrival of the Spanish conquerors.

The most remarkable of them, as excluding by its very form the idea of

European communication, is that of the Cherokees. It seems a childish

version of the Indian tradition, only that it is a dog instead of a fish

who plays the part of deliverer to the man who escapes the catastrophe;

but this brings us back to a myth special to America--that of the

transformation of fish into dogs, as we have seen in the Flood-story of

the "Codex Chimalpopoca."

"The dog," says the legend of the Cherokees, "never ceased for

several days to run up and down the banks of the river, looking

fixedly at the water and howling as in distress. His master was

annoyed by his ways and roughly ordered him to go home, upon which

he began speaking and revealed the impending calamity, ending his

prediction by saying that the only way in which his master and his

family could escape was by throwing him at once into the water, for

he would become their deliverer by swimming to seek a boat, but that

there was not a moment to lose, for a terrible rain was at hand

which would lead to a general inundation in which everything would

perish. The man obeyed his dog, was saved with his family, and they

repeopled the earth."

It is said that the Tamanakis, a Carib tribe on the banks of the

Orinoco, have a legend of the man and woman who escaped the flood by

reaching the summit of Mount Tapanacu. There they threw cocoa-nuts

behind them, from which sprung a new race of men and women. If the

report be true, which, however, we cannot affirm, this would be a very

singular agreement with one of the distinctive features of the Greek

story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.

Russian explorers have reported a childlike narrative of the flood in

the Aleutian Islands, forming the geographical link between Asia and

North America, and at the extremity of the north-east of America among

the Kolosks. Henry the traveller gives the following tradition as

current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:--

"In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt towards the

rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming

upon the earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself with his

family and all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The

animals, who at that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured

against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which he landed with

all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech as a

punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer."

According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of

the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was

destroyed by a flood, and that the good spirit, to repeople the earth,

had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our

acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways--full of grotesque and

perplexing touches--in which the man saved from the deluge is called

Menaboshu.[65] To know if the earth be drying he sends a bird, the

diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and

the founder of existing society. Catlin relates a story, current among

the Mandans, of the earth being a great tortoise borne on the waters,

and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men 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. Here we have Noah's dove, as in the story of

Tezpi and Menaboshu we have other birds substituted for it. But the

native originality of this detail, as of the whole diluvian tradition

among the Mandans, may well be doubted when we remember that the

physical peculiarities of this curious tribe on the banks of the

Missouri led Catlin to consider it of mixed blood, and partly white

origin.

In the songs of the inhabitants of New California allusion was made to a

very remote period when the sea left its bed and covered the earth. The

whole race of men and animals perished in this deluge, sent by the

supreme god Chinigchinig, with the exception of a few who had taken

refuge on a high mountain which the water failed to reach. The

Commissioners of the United States who explored New Mexico before its

annexation, tell of the existence of a similar tradition among the

different native tribes of that vast territory. Other travellers give us

kindred narratives, more or less strikingly resembling the Bible record.

But for the most part they are too vaguely reported to be entirely

trusted.