Among the rude Botocudos of Brazil, the idea of the Sun as the great good deity seems not unknown; the Araucanians are described as bringing offerings to him as highest deity; the Puelches as ascribing to the sun, and praying to him for, all good things they possess or desire; the Diaguitas of Tucuman as having temples dedicated to the Sun, whom they adored, and to whom they consecrated birds' feathers, which they then brought back to their cabins, and sprinkled from time to time with the blood of animals.[1]
Such accounts of Sun-worship appearing in the lower native culture of America, may be taken to represent its first stage. It is on the whole within distinctly higher culture that its second stage appears, where it has attained to full development of ritual and appurtenance, and become in some cases even the central doctrine of national religion and statecraft. Sun-worship had reached this level among the Natchez of Louisiana, with whom various other tribes of this district stood in close relation. Every morning at sunrise the great Sun-chief stood at the house-door facing the east, shouted and prostrated himself thrice, and smoked first toward the sun, and then toward the other three quarters. The Sun-temple was a circular hut some thirty feet across and dome-roofed: here in the midst was kept up the everlasting fire, here prayer was offered thrice daily, and here were kept images and fetishes and the bones of dead chiefs. The Natchez government was a solar hierarchy. At its head stood the great chief, called the Sun or the
- ↑ Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 327 (Botocudos). Waitz, vol. iii. p. 518 (Araucanians). Dobrizhoffer, vol. ii. p. 89 (Puelches). Charlevoix, 'Hist. du Paraguay,' vol. i. p. 331 (Diaguitas). J. G. Müller, p. 255 (Botocudos, Aucas, Diaguitas).
205 (Virginians). J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' p. 117 (Delawares, Sioux, Mingos, &c.). Sproat, 'Ind. of Vancouver's I.' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. v. p. 253. Loskiel, 'Ind. of N. A.' part i. p. 43 (Delawares). Hennepin, 'Voyage dans l'Amérique,' p. 302 (Sioux), &c. Bartram, 'Creek and Cherokee Ind.' in 'Tr. Amer. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. part i. pp. 20, 26; see also Schoolcraft, 'Ind. Tribes,' part ii. p. 127 (Comanches, &c.); Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 164; Gregg, vol. ii. p. 238 (Shawnees); but compare the remarks of Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 141.
