315 
Hence we must either conclude that all the traditions had 
little or no foundation, which would be absurd, or that there 
were a large number of floods, which would be almost as 
absurd; for in that event the tradition of one flood in each 
tribe could not have been preserved so distinctly, especially 
when a bird of some kind, and a branch of some tree, is often 
mentioned in connexion with it, or else that there was one 
great flood, so great that most of the descendants of those 
saved have preserved a tradition of it, and if so all must have 
descended from the few who were saved.* 
(4) Divine Teaching and Incarnation.—There are many 
Indians who speak of having received instructions from a 
Great Being; and some of these traditions remind us of an 
incarnation, while some remind us more of the descent of one 
from the spirit world, as when the Lord told Abraham of the 
destruction of Sodom, than of the coming of Christ. 
After the Fall of man, according to the Peruvians, it was 
the Son of Con, the Supreme Deity, who took pity on man, 
punished as he was, re-created him, and took special charge 
of him; but, after the introduction of the worship of the 
Sun, the Inca declared himself to be the Son of the Sun, and 
that his father had permitted him to become incarnate in 
order to teach the people the arts and sciences, and the will 
of the Supreme Being.+ 
Montezuma (after whom the Aztec king was named) was 
the God of the Pueblo Indians, who was once among them in 
bodily human form, and who left them with a promise that 
he would return again at a future day. In this may be re- 
cognised the Hiawatha of Longfellow, and the Ha-yo-wen’t-ha 
of the Iroquois. It is in each case a ramification of a wide- 
spread legend among the tribes of America, of a personal 
human being with supernatural powers, an instructor in the 
arts of life, an example of the highest virtues, beneficent, 
wise, immortal. { 
The Zufis believe that immediately beneath the Supreme 
Holder of the Roads are the twin children of the Sun, 
mortal yet divine, who fell for the salvation of mankind. 
They are the ancestors of the priests of the order of the bow.§$ 
The Karoks of California have a conception of a Supreme 
Being called Kareya, who sometimes descends to the earth 
to instruct the medicine men, when he appears as a venerable 
* American Antiquarian, vol. i. p. 72, Article by the writer, 
t Tschudi’s Peruvian Antiquities, pp. 147, 149. 
L Contributions to N. A. Ethnology, vol. iv. p. 153, 
§ Popular Science Monthly, June, 1882. 
