Therefore, with great justice, Dr. Jarvis has
explained it to mean "the _oke_ or tutelary deity which each Indian
worships," as the word itself signifies.[61-1]
So in many instances it turns out that what has been reported to be the
evil divinity of a nation, to whom they pray to the neglect of a better
one, is in reality the highest power they recognize. Thus Juripari,
worshipped by certain tribes of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and said to
be their wicked spirit, is in fact the only name in their language for
spiritual existence in general; and Aka-kanet, sometimes mentioned as
the father of evil in the mythology of the Araucanians, is the benign
power appealed to by their priests, who is throned in the Pleiades, who
sends fruits and flowers to the earth, and is addressed as
"grandfather."[61-2] The Cupay of the Peruvians never was, as Prescott
would have us believe, "the shadowy embodiment of evil," but simply and
solely their god of the dead, the Pluto of their pantheon, corresponding
to the Mictla of the Mexicans.
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