mussel-fish. So confused are the doctrines of the Samoans.[1]
Perhaps the cosmogonic myths of the less cultivated races have now been stated in sufficient number. As an example of the ideas which prevailed in an American race of higher culture, we may take the Quiche legend a s given in the Popol Vuh, a post-Christian collection of the sacred myths of the nation, written down after the Spanish conquest, and published in French by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg.[2]
The Quiches, like their neighbours the Cakchiquels, were a highly civilised race, possessing well-built towns, roads, and the arts of life, and were great agriculturists. Maize, the staple of food among these advanced Americans, was almost as great a god as soma among the Indo-Aryans. The Quiches were acquainted with a kind of picture-writing, and possessed records in which myth glided into history. The Popol Vuh, or book of the people, gives itself out as a post-Columbian copy of these traditions, and may doubtless contain European ideas. As we see in the Commentarias Reales of the half-blood Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, the conquered peoples were anxious to prove that their beliefs were by no means so irrational and so "devilish" as to Spanish critics they appeared. According to the Popol Vuh, there was in the beginning
- ↑ Turner's Samoa, pp. 1–9.
- ↑ See Popol Vuh in Mr. Max Müller's Chips from a German Workshop, with a discussion of its authenticity. In his Annals of the Cakchiquels, a nation bordering on the Quiches, Dr. Brinton expresses his belief in the genuine character of the text. Compare Bancroft, iii. p. 45. Then ancient and original Popol Vuh, the native book in native characters, disappeared during the Spanish conquest.
