CHAP. XIV. 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



275 



to have been better known at that time than they are at present. 

 The Spanish writers say^ : — 



" The maize has ever been the delight of the Indians ; for, besides being 

 their food, their favourite liquor chicha was made of it ; the Indian artists 

 therefore used to shew their skill in making ears of it in a kind of very 

 hard stone ; and so perfect was the resemblance that they could hardly be 

 distinguished by the eye from nature ; especially as the colour was imitated 

 to the greatest perfection ; some represented the yellow maize, some the 

 white. . . The most surprizing circumstance of the whole is, the manner of 





■mrn'm- 



MAIZE-HEADS IN STONE. 



their working, which, when we consider their want of instruments and the 

 wretched form of those they had, appears an inexplicable mystery : for either 

 they worked with copper tools, a metal little able to resist the hardness 

 of stones ; or, to give the nice polish conspicuous on their works, other 

 stones must have been used as tools." 



Squier gives in his book on Peru (at p. 91) a bad representation 

 of one of these stone maize - heads^ and says that they were 

 specially mentioned ^^ by Padre Arriaga in his rare book on the 

 Extir2:>ation of Idolatry in Peru under the name zaramama," and 

 were household gods of the ancient inhabitants. The examples 

 engraved above came from Carranqui. 



1 Relacion Historica del viaje a la Americana meridional, 4to, Madrid, 1748, 

 §§ 1047, 1048. The quotation is made from the fifth English edition, 8vo, London, 

 1807. 



