158 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 



other and began to laugh, whereupon God sent them into the worlds 

 Tlie Innuit or Esquimaux of Point Barrow, in Alaska, tell of a time 

 when there was no man in the land, till a spirit named d se lu, 

 who resided at Point Barrow, made a clay man, set liira up on 

 the shore to dry, breathed into him and gave him life^ Other 

 Esquimaux of Alaska relate how the Raven made the first woman 

 out of clay to be a companion to the first man ; he fastened water- 

 grass to the back of the head to be hair, flapped his wings over the 

 clay figure, and it arose, a beautiful young woman ^. The Acagchemem 

 Indians of California said that a powerful being called Chinigchinich 

 created man out of clay which he found on the banks of a lake ; male 

 and female created he them, and the Indians of the present day are 

 their descendants*. A priest of the Natchez Indians in Louisiana 

 told Du Pratz "that God had kneaded some clay, such as that 

 which potters use and had made it into a little man ; and that after 

 examining it, and finding it well formed, he blew up his work, and 

 forthwith that little man had life, grew, acted, walked, and found 

 himself a man perfectly well shaped." As to the mode in which 

 the first woman was created, the priest had no information, but 

 thought she was probably made in the same way as the first 

 man; so Du Pratz corrected his imperfect notions by reference to 

 Scripture^. The Michoacans of Mexico said that the great god 

 Tucapacha first made man and woman out of clay, but that when the 

 couple went to bathe in a river they absorbed so much water that 

 the clay of which they were composed all fell to pieces. Then the 

 creator went to work again and moulded them afresh out of ashes, 

 and after that he essayed a third time and made them of metal. 

 This last attempt succeeded. The metal man and woman bathed in 

 the river without falling to pieces, and by their union they became 

 the progenitors of mankind*^. 



According to a legend of the Peruvian Indians, which was told to 

 a Spanish priest in Cuzco about half a century after the conquest, 

 it was in Tiahuanaco that man was first created, or at least was 

 created afresh after the deluge. "There (in Tiahuanaco)," so runs 



' J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stdmme, Material zur Kunde des Ewe-Volkes in Deutsch-Togo 

 (Berlin, 1906), pp. 828, 840. 



^ Report of the International Expedition to Point Barrow (Waehington, 1885), p. 47. 



3 E. W. Nelson, "The Eskimo about Bering Strait," Eighteenth Annual Report of 

 the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part i. (Washington, 1899), p. 454. 



* Friar Geronimo Boscaua, "Chinigchinich," appended to [A, Kobinson's] Life in 

 California (New York, 1846), p. 247. 



•> M. Le Page Du Pratz, The History of Louisiana (London, 1774), p. 330. 



" A. de Ilerrera, General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America, trans- 

 lated into English by Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725, 1720), in. 254 ; Brasaeur de Bour- 



bourg, Ilistoire des Nations Civilisces du Mexique et de VAmerique-Centrale (Paris, 1857 



1859), III. SO >iq. ; compare id. i. 54 sq. 



