Therefore in these myths, which are found over so many thousand square
leagues, we cannot be in error in perceiving a reflex of their
cosmogonical traditions already discussed, in which from the winds and
the waters, represented here under their emblems of the bird and the
dog, all animate life proceeded.
Without this symbolic coloring, a tribe to the south of them, a band of
the Minnetarees, had the crude tradition that their first progenitor
emerged from the waters, bearing in his hand an ear of maize,[230-1]
very much as Viracocha and his companions rose from the sacred waves of
Lake Titicaca, or as the Moxos imagined that they were descended from
the lakes and rivers on whose banks their villages were situated.
These myths, and many others, hint of general conceptions of life and
the world, wide-spread theories of ancient date, such as we are not
accustomed to expect among savage nations, such as may very excusably
excite a doubt as to their native origin, but a doubt infallibly
dispelled by a careful comparison of the best authorities.
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