52 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. C)2 



matter which we are treating. 1 shall set forth ingenuously all their 

 accounts. 



Since it has been proven therefore that they are materialists by the 

 arguments given above, not to add others which are also convincing, 

 the great insensibility which they manifest at the hour of death, their 

 little affection for and little inclination toward divine things, their 

 having all their desire set in brutal things, and other congruent argu- 

 ments which I could adduce, show very clearly the little or no percep- 

 tion which they had of the rationality of the soul, and therefore of 

 their immortality. Nevertheless there appears to be validity of argu- 

 ment, in what we have mentioned in chapter ii in connection with 

 their moon running, at which they mentioned in their song that even 

 as tlie moon died and lived again, so also though they zvere to die, they 

 were to live again. But as I said, I have not been able to comprehend 

 how they understood this, if it was that as the moon shows itself the 

 same, they were to resurrect the same, which is what the Catholic faith 

 teaches us, or if they understood transmigration. I think that they did 

 not believe either one way or the other, for what they say is that thus 

 the ancients did, and that they they are doing the same as they learned 

 from their ancestors, without giving further notice or account of what 

 has been given above. 



Let us examine their little anecdotes which deal with the immortality 

 of the soul, which though they all of them are nothing more than mere 

 fables, framed from dreams and deliriums both of men and women, 

 will serve at least in their narration to amuse the reader. 



Some of them narrate that all the Indians when they die go to Heaven to 

 their God Chinigchinix (this Heaven they imagine as a terrestrial paradise), 

 that they have much to eat there, and to wear, that they dance much and 

 play many games, that they do not work, that no one is sad, but that all are 

 happy and glad, and everyone does what he wants to, and they have all the 

 women that they please. Let the reader compare this paragraph with 

 [their belief as regards] the immortality of the soul. This account 

 has been invented by Christians, for the old people have no such idea, 

 and in confirmation of this I shall recount a little tale which was 

 related to me by a woman. 



At the Mission of N. [marginal annotation ; San Juan Capistrano] 

 in the year of 1817 a woman who was convalescing from a burning 

 fever related to me the following : When she was in the most violent 

 part of the fever she had a great ])aroxysm, and she told me that she 

 had died and that certain Indian relatives of hers had taken her to the 

 God Chinigchinix. Before entering the rancheria (which was very 

 large and beautiful, and we are to note that the houses were not of the 



