von Humboldt, _Vues des
Cordilleres_, p. 246). The Nahuas of Mexico much more frequently spoke of
themselves as descendants of four or eight original families than of
seven (Humboldt, _ibid._, p. 317, and others in Waitz, _Anthropologie_,
iv. pp. 36, 37). The Sacs or Sauks of the Upper Mississippi supposed that
two men and two women were first created, and from these four sprang all
men (Morse, _Rep. on Ind. Affairs_, App. p. 138). The Ottoes, Pawnees,
"and other Indians," had a tradition that from eight ancestors all
nations and races were descended (Id., p. 249). This duplication of the
number probably arose from assigning the first four men four women as
wives. The division into clans or totems which prevails in most northern
tribes rests theoretically on descent from different ancestors. The
Shawnees and Natchez were divided into four such clans, the Choctaws,
Navajos, and Iroquois into eight, thus proving that in those tribes also
the myth I have been discussing was recognized.
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