1894-95. J THREE CARRIER MYTHS. 13 



reproduced in the Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology^ 

 explains these mysterious relations. Now the cause assigned to venereal 

 diseases was the serpent, and the serpent was regarded according to the 

 commentary thereon " as that from which their diseases proceeded in 

 their commencement-." 



The culture hero of the i\ztecs, in whom was also worshipped the 

 human reproductive principle, was Quetzalcoatl. According to Dr. D. G. 

 Brinton^, who speaks after Torquemada^, "he was the god on whom 

 depended the fertilization of the womb," and " sterile women made 

 their vows to him, and invoked his aid to be relieved from the shame of 

 barrenness." Now one correct translation of his name is "the beautiful 

 serpent" and one of his surnames is, in the Nahuatl language, synonymous 

 with the virile member. Serpent and phallus — and, by implication^ 

 woman — are here again associated. 



In the volume emanating from the Bureau of Ethnology quoted 

 above is also reproduced what looks as a pictograph which is stated 

 to have been found in Guatemala. It represents two personages, one, 

 a skeleton, probably symbolical of death, and the other, a person with 

 an emaciated face and in a recumbent position, evidently indicative of 

 a state of sickness. The cause of this is clearly shown in the shape of 

 the serpent, which here again has the same suggestive relation to man, 

 since it is made to encircle the loins of the diseased personage^ 



But a still stronger argument can be derived from the prevalence of the 

 serpent myth among the American aborigines. We have already noticed 

 it among two different D^ne tribes. Among the Abenakies the story is 

 that an oft-married woman was followed by her sixth' husband to a wild 

 place among the rocks and finally to a pond. After she had sung a song, a 

 serpent came out of the deep which twined around her and enveloped her 

 limbs and body in its folds *'. Here we have, therefore, adulterous inter- 

 course with death as its consequence, viz., that of her successive husbands. 

 A variation of the same myth recounts the similarly guilty commerce 

 between a married woman and Atosis, a beautiful serpent. 



Among the Zunis, the serpent is said to have gained power over the 

 daughter of a priest-doctor who was wandering near a lake and married 

 her. 



1 Washington, 1893, Plate XLIX. 



^Tentli Annual Report, etc., p. 614. 



' American Hero-Myths, p. 128. Philadelphia, 1882. 



*Monar,/itia huiiaiM, Lib. XI, Cap. XXIV. 



^ Ubi Supiii, p. 730, fig. 1235. 



•American Antiquarian, Vol. XVI, p. 29. 



