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village, stopping in front of every man’s lodge, crying out 
till the owner asked who he was, and what was the matter. 
To this he replied by relating the sad catastrophe of the 
deluge, saying that he was the only person saved from the 
universal calamity ; that he had landed his big canoe on a high 
mountain , where he resided; that he had come to open the 
medicine lodge, which must receive a present of some edged 
tools from the owner of every wigwam, that it might be 
sacrificed to the water. “ For,” said he, st if this be not done, 
there will be another flood, as it was with such tools the big 
canoe was made.” Mr. Catlin adds that one of the Mandan 
doctors gravely told him how the flood was produced — namely, 
by four tortoises placed at the four cardinal points, each 
pouring forth water for ten days — a memorial of the forty 
days’ rain , as related in the Hebrew tradition of the deluge, 
which is singularly confirmatory of all that has been stated 
before. I might easily increase these evidences.. There is a 
tradition, for instance, among the Algonquin tribes of the 
Delaware, in which the deluge is described as covering the 
tops of the highest mountains, while a raft floats safely above 
them ; the point of the story being that Manabozho, the 
owner of the raft, declares the waters will not subside till he 
obtains a few grains of earth from the bottom of the deep. 
Upon this, the beaver first undertakes the mission, but 
without success ; then follows the otter, but with the same 
result ; at last the musk rat plunges in, returning with a few 
grains of earth in its claws, taking up which, Manabozho 
dries them in the sun, and scatters them over the waters. 
This done, the mountains emerge from the deep, and at 
last the plains and valleys come to view, and the waters 
disappear.* 
It will thus be seen that there is not only a remarkable con- 
currence even in minute particulars between the Old and Hew 
World traditions of the deluge, but that the points of similarity 
are such as would not have been likely to spring up naturally 
in the minds of independent nations out of the nature of the 
case ; while, on the other hand, they all conform themselves in 
some way or other to the history of the Noachic tradition pre- 
served by the Hebrews. This fact, connected with what has 
gone before, seems to add an almost conclusive argument in 
favour of the original dispersion of mankind from an Asiatic 
centre ; and in that manner of an organic unity between the 
native races of America and those of the Old World continents. 
* Taken from Squires’s American Archaeological Researches , where the 
whole story is narrated. 
VOL. III. 
Y 
