230 Traces of Solar Worship in North America. [ April, 
The same custom exists among the modern Pueblo Indians of 
New Mexico. Lieut. A. W. Whipple says of these people that 
“they are now anxiously expecting the arrival of Montezuma; 
and it is related that in San Domingo (one of the nineteen Pueblo 
towns), every morning at sunrise, a sentinel climbs to his house- 
top, and looks eastward, to watch for his coming.” 
Mr. Whipple also gives a tradition! of these Indians which _ 
assigns Acofi (another Puéblo village, situated on the Rio Grande 
del Norte, the ancient Tiguex) as his birth-place; but the tale is : 
so at variance with facts and so rich in imagination that it is evi- 
dently the invention of some fertile brain. The Spaniards who a 
came among the Pueblos, just after the Mexican conquest, about 
the year 1539, evidently introduced the name of Montezuma and . 
probably instilled into their minds this idea of his second advent. 4 
Thus the worship of heavenly bodies may have become blended 7 
with the deification of ancestors; then the sun may have taken 
the name of Montezuma. Whipple further states that they 
“ smoke to the sun that he may send them antelope to kill, In- 
dians to trade with, and save them from enemies.” 
Among the Navajos, also, by the same authority, “The sun, i 
moon and stars are sacred, as the authors of seasons of rain and of 
harvest.” He also says of the Zuñians, “ Beneath the apparent mul- 
_tiplicity of gods, these Indians have a firm faith in the Deity, the 
“unseen Spirit of God. His name is above all things sacred, and 
like Jehovah of the Jews, too holy to be spoken. Montezuma is 
His sonand their king. The sun, moon and stars are His works, | 
| 
worthy of their adoration.” 
The “ancient Pueblos” of the Pacific slope of the United States, 
whose ruined stone structures are found so numerously through- 
out portions of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and proba- 
bly Nevada, held the sun in high esteem, at least, if they did not 
worship it. This is shown in the situation of the houses in many 
localities. In the Cañon of the Rio Mancos, for example, the 
dwellings are almost invariably found secreted in the cliffs of the 
western bluff, and from their roofs the inhabitants were wort tO 
salute the king of day as he raised himself above the eastern 
plateau. 
1 Vol. III, Pacific R. R. Reports. 
2 A northern tributary of the Rio San Juan, in the extreme south-wester 
of Colorado. 
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