262 FOSSIL MEN. 



One part of the Iroquois tradition above referred 

 to relates to a deluge by which the descendants of 

 Atahensic were all destroyed, and the earth was re- 

 plenished with inhabitants by the conversion of beasts 

 into men. The traditions of the Mexicans on this sub- 

 ject are well known, and they are but a type of those 

 prevailing throughout all the American tribes, and 

 pointing to a division of the human period into two 

 portions by a great diluvial catastrophe. One Mexican 

 tradition conects this, as did the Egyptians, with the 

 disappearance of the great continent Atlantis, which 

 in antediluvian times connected America with Europe, 

 and whose name has perhaps as good a claim to be 

 derived from the Mexican Ail (water), as from the 

 somewhat conjectural root adopted by Greek linguists. 

 Another Mexican tradition, preserved by Humboldt, 

 relates that Tezpi, or Noah, embarked in a great acalli, 

 or house, with his wife, children, and animals, and 

 stores of grain. Tezcatlipoca, the second person of 

 the Mexican Trinity, equivalent to Atahocan of the 

 Iroquois, caused the deluge to abate. Tezpi sends 

 out a vulture and other birds, and finally a humming- 

 bird,* which returned to him with green leaves, and 

 then Tezpi joyfully disembarks on the mountain of 

 Colhuacan. This story bears very nearly the same 

 resemblance to the Noachic account of the Deluge 

 with that which we find in the Chaldean tablets trans- 

 lated by Mr. Smith, and with much the same amount 



* This bird, like the dove among us, was also the emblem of 

 the third person of the Mexican Trinity. 



