378^ 



Kiinnees, or foot people : an inoffensive race, fleet of foot, and 

 subsisting chiefly upon fish. The other Tehuelhets and the 

 Huilliches sometimes attack them for the purpose of making 

 slaves. The ordinary ' stature of all the Tehuel tribes is from 

 six to * seven feel. None of the Puelches either keep sheep 

 or sow, but depend entirely upon hunting, for v^hich purpose 

 they keep great numbers of dogs. 



Of the religion of the Moluches, Molina has given a full ac- 

 count. The belief in an infinite number of spirits, good and 

 evil, is common to all the tribes south of the Plata, north of 

 which a different language and different form of superstition 

 prevails to the Orinoco. It does not appear that the Puelches 

 acknowledge any of these spirits as supreme over the others. 

 The Taluhets and Diuiliets call a good spirit Soychu, or he 

 who presides in the land of strong drink. The Tehuelhets call 

 him Guayava-Kunnee, lord of the dead. The Tehuelhets and 

 Chechehets call an evil spirit Atskannakauatz, the other 

 Puelches, Valichu. Neither of these names are explained by 

 Falkner, nor does his Vocabulary include any thing which can 

 explain them. Huecuvu must be another name for the same 

 evil beings ; for a great sandy desert, which the Chechehets 

 never enter lest they should be overwhelmed there> is called 

 Huecuvu Mapu, the devil's country. 



Each family, as among the northern Indians, is of a cast 

 or tribe which they distinguish by the name of an animal : 

 some are of the cast of the tiger, some of the lion, some of 

 the guanaco, of the ostrich, &c. and they believe that each 

 cast had its particular creator, who resided in some huge cavern 

 under lake or hill, whitlier all of that cast will go after death, 

 to enjoy the happiness of being eternally drunk. These good 

 spirits, they believe, made the world, and then made men in 

 their caves. To the Indians they gave the spear, the bow 



It is curions that Falkner, though this is his own statement, which is 

 repeatedly confirmed in his book, should yet say he ntver heard of that 

 gigantic race which others have mentioned. 



