158 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 
other and began to laugh, whereupon God sent them into the world’. 
The Innuit or Esquimaux of Point Barrow, in Alaska, tell of a time 
when there was no man in the land, till a spirit named @ sé lu, 
who resided at Point Barrow, made a clay man, set him up on 
the shore to dry, breathed into him and gave him life* Other 
Esquimaux of Alaska relate how the Raven made the first woman 
out of clay to be a companion to the first man; he fastened water- 
grass to the back of the head to be hair, flapped his wings over the 
clay figure, and it arose, a beautiful young woman®. The Acagchemem 
Indians of California said that a powerful being called Chinigchinich 
created man out of clay which he found on the banks of a lake; male 
and female created he them, and the Indians of the present day are 
their descendants* A priest of the Natchez Indians in Louisiana 
told Du Pratz “that God had kneaded some clay, such as that 
which potters use and had made it into a little man; and that after 
examining it, and finding it well formed, he blew up his work, and 
forthwith that little man had life, grew, acted, walked, and found 
himself a man perfectly well shaped.” As to the mode in which 
the first woman was created, the priest had no information, but 
thought she was probably made in the same way as the first 
man; so Du Pratz corrected his imperfect notions by reference to 
Scripture’, The Michoacans of Mexico said that the great god 
Tucapacha first made man and woman out of clay, but that when the 
couple went to bathe in a river they absorbed so much water that 
the clay of which they were composed all fell to pieces. Then the 
creator went to work again and moulded them afresh out of ashes, 
and after that he essayed a third time and made them of metal. 
This last attempt succeeded. The metal man and woman bathed in 
the river without falling to pieces, and by their union they became 
the progenitors of mankind‘. 
According to a legend of the Peruvian Indians, which was told to 
a Spanish priest in Cuzco about half a century after the conquest, 
it was in Tiahuanaco that man was first created, or at least was 
created afresh after the deluge. “There (in Tiahuanaco),” so runs 
1 J. Spieth, Die Evbe-Stémme, Material zur Kunde des Ewve-Volkes in Deutsch-Togo 
(Berlin, 1906), pp. 828, 840. 
2 Report of the International Expedition to Point Barrow (Washington, 1885), p. 47. 
3 EH. W. Nelson, ‘‘The Eskimo about Bering Strait,” Eighteenth Annual Report of 
the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 1. (Washington, 1899), p. 454. 
4 Friar Geronimo Boscana, ‘‘Chinigchinich,” appended to [A. Robinson’s] Life in 
California (New York, 1846), p. 247. 
5 M. Le Page Du Pratz, The History of Louisiana (London, 1774), p. 330. 
6 A. de Herrera, General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America, trans- 
lated into English by Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725, 1726), mr. 254; Brasseur de Bour- 
bourg, Histoire des Nations Civilisées du Mexique et de V Amérique-Centrale (Paris, 1857— 
1859), m1. 80 sqg.; compare id. 1. 54 sq. 
