Such to the Algonkins was Michabo or Manibozho, to the Iroquois Ioskeha,
Wasi to the Cherokees, Tamoi to the Caribs; so the Mayas had Zamna, the
Toltecs Quetzalcoatl, the Muyscas Nemqueteba; such among the Aymaras was
Viracocha, among the Mandans Numock-muckenah, and among the natives of
the Orinoko Amalivaca; and the catalogue could be extended indefinitely.
It is not always easy to pronounce upon these heroes, whether they
belong to history or mythology, their nation's poetry or its prose. In
arriving at a conclusion we must remember that a fiction built on an
idea is infinitely more tenacious of life than a story founded on fact.
Further, that if a striking similarity in the legends of two such heroes
be discovered under circumstances which forbid the thought that one was
derived from the other, then both are probably mythical. If this is the
case in not two but in half a dozen instances, then the probability
amounts to a certainty, and the only task remaining is to explain such
narratives on consistent mythological principles.
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