170 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 43 



they were still so brilliant that it was not difficult to believe that they had 

 come from the Sun. This man told us that having seen from above that we 

 did not govern ourselves well, that we did not have a master, that each one of 

 us believed that he had sufficient intelligence to govern others while he was not 

 able to guide himself, he had taken the determination to descend in order to 

 teach us how to live better. 



" He then told us that in order to be in a condition to govern others it was 

 necessary to know how to guide one's self, and that in order to live in peace 

 among ourselves and please the Supreme Spirit it was necessary to observe 

 these points : To kill no one except in defense of one's own life, never to know 

 another woman than one's own, to take nothing that belongs to another, never 

 to lie or become drunk, and not to be avaricious, but to give freely and with 

 joy that which one has, and to share food generously with those who lack it. 



*' This man impressed us by these words l)ecause he said them with authority, 

 and he obtained the respect of the old men themselves, although he did not spare 

 them more than the others. The old men assembled then and resolved among 

 themselves that since this man had so much intelligence to teach them what 

 it was good to do he must be recognized as sovereign, so much the more as 

 in governing them himself he could make them remember better than any other 

 what he had taught them. So they went in the early morning to the cabin 

 where they had had him sleep with his wife and proposed to him to be our 

 sovereign. He refused at first, saying that he would not be obeyed and the 

 disobedient would not fail to die. But finally he accepted the offer that was 

 made him on the following conditions : 



" That we would go to inhabit another country better than that where we 

 were, and which he would show us ; that we would live in future as he had 

 taught us the evening before; that we would promise to recognize no other 

 sovereign besides himself and those who should descend from him and his 

 wife; that nobility should be perpetuated through the women, which he ex- 

 plained to us in this way : If I have, said he to us, male and female children, 

 they will not be able to marry each other, being brothers and sisters, to which 

 he added that the boy should take from among the people a girl that pleased 

 him ; that this man should be sovereign ; that his sons should not be even 

 princes, but only Nobles ; that the children of the daughter, on the other hand, 

 should be princes and princesses ; that the eldest of the males should be sover- 

 eign and the eldest girl the princess who should give birth to the sovereign; 

 that the descendants of the sovereign and the princes should descend in caste 

 and not those of the girl, although this princess daughter or another princess 

 had married a man of the people; that thus the princes and princesses should 

 not ally themseves together, nor yet own cousins and the issues of own cousins; 

 and that finally, in the absence of a sister of the sovereign, his nearest female 

 relative should be the mother of his successor. Pursuing his speech, he then 

 said to us that in order not to forget the good words which he had brought to 

 us a temple should be built into which only princes and princesses (male and 

 female Suns) should have a right to enter to speak to the Spirit; that in this 

 temple should be ijreserved eternally a fire which he would make descend fi'om 

 the Sun, whence he had come; that the wood with which it was fed should be 

 a pure wood without bark; that eight wise men should be chosen in the nation 

 to guard it and tend it day and night ; that they should have a chief who should 

 watch over the manner in which they performed their duty; and that the one 

 who failed in it should be put to death. He then wished that at the other 

 extremity of the country which we should inhabit (and our nation was then 

 much more extensive than it is now) a second temple should be built, where 

 in like manner fire should be kept which had been taken from the first, so that 



